https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
9iPqbZIJC3Y&list=PL2F45zh895KAp_
uWmG9vgWEtgV1aFHUwt
Teaching is where Yardley found his gift.
He has taught some of the biggest names
to come from Calhoun County including
Will Owsley who played with Shania Twain
and Ben Folds and who received a Grammy
nomination for the first record he ever
released. “I taught Will when he was 11 years
old, and I’d love to tell you that I taught him
everything he knows, but I just got him
started really,” Yardley says. “It was all I could
do to keep him in his seat. Most of his guitar
lesson was ‘‘Will, would you please just sit
down?’ because he was so full of energy.”
Yardley also taught country music singer
Riley Green. “I taught him when he was
eight or nine years old… I went to college
with his mother and she called me up about
giving him lessons. He was a scared little
rabbit. Of course all of that’s changed now,”
he says with a laugh.
Yardley has been teaching guitar for more
than 40 years. He taught at Hubbard Pianos
for 14 plus years and has been at Chevalier
Productions, 230 G Street, in Anniston for
INSIGHT
the last five years. “I tell my students, ‘All I
can do is show you how to do it and make
sure you’re doing it correctly and then you
have to do the work.’”
“I teach one student at a time,” Yardley
adds. “I don’t teach classes because classes
don’t work. Every student learns at a
different pace.” Guitar lessons are 30 minute
sessions and cost $25 per lesson. For more
information contact him through Facebook;
Chevalier Productions, 256-835-0360; or on
his cell, 256-473-3883.
Yardley, born in Missouri, found his way
to Anniston as a young adult. His father
worked in the grocery business which
meant his family moved several times
during Yardley’s childhood. “At three years
old, we moved to Peoria, IL and lived there
for eight years,” Yardley explains. “That’s
when I went to grade school with Dan
Fogelberg, a very popular folk style singer in
the 70s and 80s.”
As a teenager, living in Fargo, SD, Yardley
says he really began to develop as a
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