Eleven-year-old Micah Yoder is one of seven guitar players featured on the Web site YoungGuitarProdigies.com.
"It was just after my eighth birthday when I got my first guitar," the Albuquerque resident said. "Dad said if I played six months for a half hour each day that he'd give me lessons."
Half a year later, his father signed him up for guitar lessons at Marc's Guitar Center with RJ Perez, from the band Civitas.
"Then I got better and better, and I got good really fast," Micah said. "I skipped all the smallish one-two chord things, and I moved on to a lot of the harder stuff, like Ozzy - a little bit of that - ZZ Top. Led I can do. Led - that's my strong point."
The Micah Yoder Band's premier concert and CD-release party is Dec. 20 at the El Rey Theater. Micah wrote nine of the 10 songs on his CD. He'll duplicate the show in Los Angeles afterward.
His father, Dave Yoder, said that each time he picked Micah up from his half-hour practices, he would play with no mistakes the songs he'd just learned.
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"I knew that wasn't entirely normal," Dave said. "It occurred to me that well, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm a proud papa and I'm just imagining things, so I got on the Internet and started researching other kids who were good on the guitar, and I couldn't find any kid within three years of his age that played anywhere near as well as he did, anywhere. And I looked extensively."
Perez arranged a music session with a professional drummer, Dave said, to see how he worked playing with adults.
"They had to lie to the drummer and not tell him it was a kid, just that it was a jam session," Dave said. "The day before the session, they told him, 'By the way, the kid's 10 years old,' and the drummer almost didn't come. When he came, he stood in the room and he looked. Micah was just warming up a little bit. He didn't say a word. He walked over and sat down at the drums, and the very first time they played, it just happened. The magic happened, and those same two guys are his band."
Micah has studied for 2 1/2 years with Perez, who plays bass in the Micah Yoder Band and acts as musical director.
"He definitely had a lot of potential and a lot of drive," Perez said of their first lesson together. "I think he's good for his age. He picked up the songs quick, he did."
Perez, who is finishing his degree at UNM in classical guitar, said he has seen kids play collegiate-level classical music.
"Prodigy - that's a tough word," he said. "I think it gets tossed around a little too loosely. He's definitely one of the more talented kids that I've seen, and I've seen some pretty talented kids."
Micah is home-schooled, so he has the flexibility to work on his music and audition for TV, film and commercial acting roles in Los Angeles.
"With the back and forth to L.A., there's no way you could keep a school schedule," Dave said. "We have to go out to L.A. at the drop of a hat. They call us up and it's sometimes 24 hours. They tell you, 'You have an audition tomorrow at 1 o'clock. We keep airline tickets, and (his mom) Dianne and Micah run to the airport and jump on the plane."
Micah Yoder Band CD-release party
Saturday, Dec. 20, 7:30 p.m.
El Rey Theater
620 Central Ave. S.E.
$12 in advance, $20 at the door
