Marcus Cannon hails from Salem, a small burg roughly an hour west of Greenville in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

"The high school I went to was tiny," Cannon said. "I graduated with 38 kids."

He gravitated to the guitar early and said there’s a picture of him on his sixth birthday with his first guitar. One of his brothers played the guitar – and this made an impression on him. But there was more to this motivation.

"When I look back, I think I just liked to be the center of attention and impressing people," he said. "Guitar was an easy way to do that."

When he was growing up, there were four-wheelers, dirt bikes and guitars.

“That’s pretty much all we did. We would get together after school or hang out through the summers – ride four-wheelers and just play guitar and sin

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