MacKenzie grew up in St. Louis and Memphis and was headquartered in Chicago and Los Angeles in the ’70s and ’80s, respectively, but lately has been hiding in plain sight, as it were —in Nashville, where he demonstrates guitars at the Country Music Hall of Fame. As evidenced by this recently released live DVD recorded in 2004 at Henderson, Kentucky’s W.C. Handy Blues Fest, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better man for the job.

The hour-long program features some insightful interview clips slipped unobtrusively between songs. The multi-camera shoot features excellent sound and some nice, up-close footage that guitar players will appreciate. Dave explains that he prefers pre-war blues because the music was more diverse then, before it got distilled down to a few forms. He keeps both the variety and humor of that tradition alive and fresh, with 11 originals that exhibit his wry wit, such as “She Ain’t No Southern Girl”, “If Jesus Comes Back”, “Big Ol’ Girls”, and the autobiographical “Slender Man Blues”, sitting comfortably alongside covers like Muddy Waters’ “Sad Letter” and Robert Johnson’s “Me and The Devil”.

Using bare fingers and a thumbpick, MacKenzie’s dexterity is equally impressive, splitting the set about evenly between his Taylor 712 and a new National polychrome, steel-bodied Tricone (for slide), and switching to an Eastman Strings Uptown archtop for a couple of tunes —thus demonstrating that this is, indeed, the Golden Age of acoustic guitar building (as he says, “The more, the merrier.”).

MacKenzie also plays electric in a band context, but admits that when he plays solos, “It’s always different; all bets are off.” So if you’re not heading to Nashville any time soon, and the tour dates on Dave’s website don’t include your town, this DVD offers a rare opportunity to discover an extremely talented blues picker and songwriter you haven’t heard before.