On Inheritance, his second release for Favored Nations and ninth overall, Legg blends his extraordinary virtuosity on the acoustic with a lush sonic arena that harkens back to the musical textures of his childhood life before the guitar - gentle contemplative ballads, snappy percussive jams, rock-edged electricity,

hints of folk music, Irish jigs, raw swampy blues, and high energy modern rock-fusion improv. The accolades have come nonstop since Guitars and Other Cathedrals, the first of five releases on Relativity Records, tweaked the ears of guitar fans everywhere in 1990. 1993’s Wine, Women and Waltz was selected by the readers of Guitar Player magazine as Best Overall Guitar Album in the 1994 Reader’s Poll. He earned Best Acoustic Album in this same poll in 1992 and 1993, respectively, for Guitar For Mortals (1992) and Mrs. Crowe’s Blue Waltz (1993). Readers of England’s Guitarist magazine voted Legg Acoustic Guitarist of the Decade in the magazine’s 10th anniversary poll.

Over the years, he’s played at the Montreux Jazz Festival and toured with Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and as part of the G3 Tour featuring Satriani, Johnson and Favored Nations founder Steve Vai. He’s also shared the wealth of his talent and experience with three teaching videos (Beyond Acoustic Guitar, Fingerpicking & Open Tunings, How To Cheat At Guitar) and two books—the technical Customizing Your Electric Guitar and the musical “Pickin’ and Squintin" - a collection of Legg’s guitar compositions in tablature and standard notation. In recent years, he has also been a commentator at large for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and more recently, regular listeners have heard his guitar versions of the show’s theme music. 

Born in the Salvation Army Hospital in Hackney, London, Legg is a classic mongrel Londoner, with the long mixed East End blood of entrepreneurial Hugenot and Jewish refugees topped up from a sturdy line of East Anglian farmers; a fertile genetic stew mixed further with Welsh, West Indian and Philippino in his grandchildren. While studying oboe under parental pressure (his own words), he began fashioning his own guitars, “or rather odd stringed instruments that at least could execute an acceptable twang” from pictures in newspapers, scraps from the school woodwork scrap bin, fret wire and with strings held on by head rest cover containers taken from the local bus station.

While working at the airport in Liverpool, he met a young man who invited him to join a band and introduced him to country music. After two years of working in Liverpool working men’s social clubs, he hitch-hiked back to London, where he played electric guitar in clubs and joined up with bands that eventually traveled outside the U.K.   

A demand from a band leader that he use an acoustic to play loud chords up against a mic for one number nudged him towards the acoustic as a separate instrument.