Alex Houghton - guitar chords like ear candy

Alex Houghton should be a lot more famous.

She is a wonderful finger style guitar player from the Ottawa area.

I used to help organize a folk music club in Windsor, Ontario where we booked Alex to play. It was in the mid 90's sometime. She was the opening act for somebody. I can't remember the headliner but I do remember Alex. Her performance blew us all away. I haven't heard much from her but, judging from her website, she is still at it.

Here's a bit about her love of the instrument from her website.

"I'm pretty much a late comer to the guitar. I first picked it up in my mid teens. I managed to learn the basic chords and then stopped playing until my early twenties when I began to play in earnest. I came back to the guitar because I loved to write music. From the very first when even an 'F' chord seemed like an impossibility, I was making up music. I fell in love with fingerpicking because playing a beautiful chord seemed like ear candy to me and fingerpicking allowed me to hear different notes in the chord sounding together or against each other depending on the rhythms."

Alex may become a bit more famous soon because one of her songs is on a new compilation of women guitar players. She's part of a project called La Guitara. It was put together by another wonderful artist Patty Larkin, who is already pretty famous.