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LOCAL MUSIC; GUITAR LESSONS; A crippling disease posed a tough test for acoustic maestro Billy McLaughlin. So he learned how to play with his other hand.

Article Excerpt
Byline: CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER; STAFF WRITER

Everyone knows guitar players can be a tad cocky. You heard the joke about how many of them it takes to screw in a lightbulb? (Ten -- one to do it and nine to say they could've done it better.)

Billy McLaughlin truly regrets having some of that ego in him. It made it all the more difficult to come to grips with a disease (focal dystonia) that caused immobility in his left hand and almost completely took away his ability to play the instrument he had long since mastered.

"It was a pretty humbling and desperate thing for me," McLaughlin remembered. "You take great pride in your work, and here you are not being able to do the things you used to be able to do. My family's income is built around me being able to play guitar."

Humility is hardly the hardest thing inflicted on the all-acoustic, New Age-y classical/jazz/rock instrumentalist, who specializes in fingertap-style guitar.

Since his 2001 diagnosis of dystonia -- a neurological disorder whose origins are still mysterious -- McLaughlin first tried to "play through it," he said. When gigs became too difficult, he made a more vocally driven, song-oriented CD with his band in 2003 that required less...

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