Josh Hungate won the Walnut Valley National Mandolin Championship in September, 2008. I love his story because he wasn’t born great. He realized that he had deficiencies and worked his ass off to get better. That’s an admirable thing for an 18-year-old kid. Yeah, yeah, I know a mandolin isn’t a guitar, but we could all take a page from his book. Josh decided he wanted to win mandolin contests and then did something about it. That’s inspirational. Bill Graham wrote about Josh for mandolincafe.com:

When he decided a few years later he wanted to make his mark on the mandolin contest circuit, he began a steady practice schedule.

“My dad always told me I could do anything I wanted to if I put my mind to it,” Hungate said. “He suggested I practice two hours a day.”

That paid off in technique improvement.

And as Hungate whipped through some of his contest tunes for me such as “Whiskey Before Breakfast” and “Red Haired Boy,” it’s clear he has that youthful ultra-fast speed yet with clean, full and sweet tones, especially in the treble register. He’s also one of those players that can come at a tune from multiple melodic directions and improvise at will.

However, a contest player also needs gunslinger nerves, as he discovered when he first entered the Winfield competition in 2007 and didn’t place. Mistakes kill your chances of winning and worrying about mistakes makes them more probable.

“The first time, I was really nervous,” Hungate said. “I was trying to win and not let down my family and friends.”

But by last fall he was a veteran on the contest circuit, having competed at several festivals and having won the Kansas state championship. He felt like he belonged in “the group” of the frequent contest top dogs, and he was playing with a more relaxed and improvisational approach that sounded fresher than playing strictly rehearsed licks.

Here’s Josh playing at the Kansas State Mandolin Championship, which he won. Listen to his improvisation. I swear if you put that in a jazz context, he’d sound like Pat Martino or Hank Garland: