Self-taught guitarist Erik Mongrain learned Nirvana songs by ear and Bach compositions by heart while he was still a teenager. The Montreal musician honed his craft on his native city's streets, developing a "lap tapping" technique that has him holding the guitar in his lap and tapping out chords as if the instrument was a piano. After performing for pedestrians in several European cities - including Granada, Spain, where a journalist wrote about Mongrain in the local newspaper - the musician returned home to release his debut album, Fates, in 2007 and the follow-up, Equilibrium, the next year.