"Anybody else into making that kind of sound (the Guthrie, Carter one)? How do you go at it?"

Some years ago, I found that I wasn't getting any better just pattern-picking, so I worked on playing chord melodies. Then, I found it was possible to play melodies and patterns, except that I could vary the patterns now instead of being locked into them. For practicing, I recommend concentrating on the melodies and finding positions for the chords that will get you the melody note and not worrying too much about the accompaniment at first. It will come.

This will get you to play all over the fretboard and you'll learn the individual notes of the chord positions instead of just that one position is "G", another is "Em", etc. You'll also be able to relate melodies to the chords and know what's possible with one voicing or another.

A nice thing about the bass notes of the guitar is that the fifth is on the next-lower string on the same fret (where there is a next-lower string, of course). This makes alternating between the fifth and the tonic very easy, which is nice, because this is the basis of most accompaniments. With practice, it can be varied.

Lately, I've been "thinning out" my style, playing less rather than more. It's nice to have the ability to play more, but less usually sounds better and it's easier on the hands.

I usually play with my bare fingers, but then I only have a classical guitar. I also keep my fingernails very short. I sometimes play with a flatpick and sometimes with a thumb pick and fingerpicks (metal) just for practice. In my opinion, the main thing about picks is: It doesn't matter. Use whatever you feel comfortable with. Each technique has its advantages and disadvantages.

I like the flatpick for single-line (or mostly single-line) playing. Otherwise, I prefer fingerpicking.

This sort of style seems to demand fairly simple chord changes with long periods of staying on one chord. If you use fancier chords, it starts to sound like Western Swing --- also good, but different. The simpler chord changes make it possible to really "stretch out" and play extended patterns. I recommend just experimenting with picking the strings in different orders, using different rhythms, etc. I didn't find that learning patterns out of a book helped me very much.