By: From The London News Review

I used to think I was a freak. An outsider. A pervert even. But at last I've found that I'm not alone in my twisted practices. I now know that - at the very least - there is one other who shares my deviance. His name is Albert Cummings, and he, like me, holds his plectrum sideways.

I've never held the damned thing "properly", point downwards, like they tell you to at the best guitar universities (and like the Internet Guitar Database insists is the norm):


I hold my pick with the narrowest end pointing back into my hand, and bring the bulbous side edge into contact with the string, thusly:

- where the dotted shape is my right thumb.

And so to Albert Cummings. Albert Cummings is "a custom cat in the 'off the rack' world of contemporary blues guitar". He's "the Pride of Williamstown". He's played and recorded with Double Trouble (Stevie Ray Vaughn's old band) and counts BB King as an admirer. And he's also an award-winning builder. But more significantly, what I discovered today, and what brought all those years of doubt and self-recrimination to an end, is this.... Albert Cummings holds his plectrum sideways:

Q. You started out on banjo. How does that affect your guitar technique?

A. I hold the pick sideways, which lets me roll across the strings faster and more smoothly than if I had the pick’s point sticking straight down. Plus, you get two sides out of the pick instead of one.

I know exactly what he means! Smoothness and speed! God, what a relief it was for me to hear someone else express what I had always known, deep inside, was true. Sideways is best.

Below is a photograph of Cummings, the award-winning builder and guitarist, hard at work:

If you look closely you can't quite see that he's got the pick turned sideways, but I assume that he has. Why would he lie? Unless he thought it was somehow "cooler" to be known as the guitarist who holds his pick sideways. Well, if that's the case, I've got some bad news for you Cummings. You're too late. That ship has sailed, my friend. Sideways. It's my gimmick. Always has been.

You're going to have to make something else your trademark. Like the fact that you're an award winning builder. Play to your strengths. Wasn't it a certain Albert J. Cummings IV who, in 2001, clinched a prestigious Best In American Living Award for a certain four-bedroom custom-built home...?

Now that's cool.

All you need is to weave it into your act. Maybe start dressing like that guy out of Village People. Get yourself a nickname that fits.
Ladies and Gentlemen, all the way from Williamstown, it's Albert "Masonry Drill Bit" Cummings!

It could work.

Note: whenever Remonstrance play live, it isn't long before someone shouts "hey Charlie, show us how you use the plectrum sideways!" and I crouch by the front of the stage and the folks in the first few rows can check it out for themselves. The ladies go wild for it, let me tell you. Phewee, I remember one gig at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. There was this nun. She can't have been more than 22. "Play me sideways," she said when we got back to our motel. And God knows I tried.

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