Rich Brotherton had been playing the guitar for more than five decades before he ever had a problem with his hands. Then, in September 2024, Brotherton—who, at 65, had worked with everyone from Robert Earl Keen and Patty Griffin to Scottish folkie Ed Miller and Lubbock cowboy singer Andy Hedges—was recording in his Austin home studio, using the Travis picking style he had executed tens of thousands of times: his thumb playing the alternating bass rhythm while his other fingers picked the melody. It was a fast, intense song, and while his fingers were doing fine, he realized that his thumb just wasn’t pushing the strings very hard. “My thumb was not speaking,” he said. “It was weak.” He finished the session—and since he didn’t have to play another fierce picking song for a while, he did

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