Doyle lived in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida during the 1970s and early '80's. He was almost exclusively into Christian music at the time. I gather he still has a pretty strong faith, but he was a bit over the edge back then. In fact, a friend has a Gurian guitar she bought from Doyle in '82 or so which has "Jesus" inlayed on the fingerboard. I mainly knew of him through my in-laws who played and sang in a gospel group and had met him at those all-day sing things gospel folks do. I remember my brother-in-law, who is no slouch of a musician himself, raving about what a great guitarist Doyle was.

I first became aware that he'd developed a national reputation when I saw references to his music in Mark Hanson's book "The Complete Book of Alternate Tunings" and the name rang a bell. I've since heard some of his music and, yes, he's great. I'm glad he's got the workshop/demonstration gig with Taylor because I doubt doing smokey bar gigs for a bunch drunks hollerin' "Play some Buffet, man!" is what a nice Christian guy like Doyle wants to do for a living.