Trace Bundy

Trace Bundy is an American acoustic guitarist born in Austin, Minnesota and raised in Buena Vista, Colorado, widely known to fans as the Acoustic Ninja for his jaw-dropping fingerstyle technique. He came to the guitar by accident as a kid when he and his brother pooled five dollars each to buy a $10 acoustic at a yard sale, then taught himself entirely from guitar magazines - starting with Metallica songs before gravitating toward acoustic playing. A self-taught guitarist and engineer by training, Bundy earned both undergraduate and master's degrees in civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder and spent two years teaching engineering courses there before his growing concert bookings convinced him to pursue music full time. His playing style is immediately distinctive: he uses both hands on the fretboard simultaneously, combining intricate fingerpicking arpeggios, two-handed tapping, harmonics, percussive body slaps, looping pedals, and multiple capos that he moves mid-song to make one guitar sound like several instruments at once. His first major release was the Adapt CD/DVD in 2004, filmed live in Boulder, and his viral YouTube videos - including his finger-tapping arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon - accumulated over 45 million views and brought him a global following before social media virality was commonplace. Acoustic Guitar magazine named him Most Promising New Talent of 2008 and placed him third for Best Fingerstyle Guitarist the same year. Bundy has independently sold over 150,000 albums on his own Honest Ninja Music label, performed in 28 countries, and shared stages with Brandi Carlile, Neko Case, Judy Collins, David Knopfler of Dire Straits, and Chris Hillman of the Byrds.