The hard-driving husband-and-wife rock act that hits the stage as Pat Benatar and Neil “Spyder” Girlado is responsible for more than a handful of stalwart classic-rock jams. For the past 15 years, Benatar and husband/guitarist/producer/co-writer Giraldo have spent many of their summers touring, then scratching their itch to perform with one-off and weekend gigs throughout […]
Forget about the classic quartet. Forget the power trio. Forget any preconceived shortcomings you may have concerning a rock-and-roll duo. There’s no denying it – the Black Keys crank out impressive noise. As one half of the band – drummer Patrick Carney – once joked, “We’re normally a 12-piece jazz big-band, but the other 10 […]
Carl Verheyen is a member of that elite (and shrinking) group of musicians known as “session guitarists.” Super-qualified pickers, they’re the hired guns brought in for the most demanding and important recording dates. They command triple-scale fees, but work in a pressure cooker where time is money, where skillsets call for expertise in blues, jazz, […]
Many of the people we today consider “guitar heroes” – Eddie Van Halen and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to name a couple – spent more than their fair share of time stowed away in their bedrooms, playing guitar while other kids in the neighborhood played baseball, kick the can, or spin the bottle. Rock guitarist Mark […]
Rodrigo Sanchez is one half of the fiery acoustic duo known as Rodrigo Y Gabriela. They have evolved from a stripped-down dual-acoustic-guitar sound to catapult their music in new directions. On their latest release, Area 52, Sanchez and partner Gabriela Quintero enlisted the help of producer Peter Asher and a 13-piece Cuban orchestra. The result […]
Since 2007, guitarist/vocalist Nick Moss has released five albums on his Blue Bella label, including two live discs. And while Moss still loves his Chicago-style blues, his most recent effort, Here I Am, is an adventurous album. Though it begins with a raucous Windy City-type rave-up called “Why You So Mean,” by the third/title track, […]
In his prime, Howard Roberts played more than 900 studio dates annually and recorded the hippest guitar records of the era. His legion of fans still revere his incalculable influence and musical legacy. Vesta Roberts, who grew up in a family of lumberjacks, gave birth to Howard just three weeks before the Wall Street Crash […]
In 1985, speaking of the ’83 Action Research into Muscle Distrophy (A.R.M.S.) Tour that united Yardbirds alumni Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton, the latter stated, “At that time and for many months after that, I began to think of Jeff as probably being the finest guitar player I’d ever seen. And I’ve been […]
Thirty-Five years ago, Ibanez was a scrappy upstart guitar company that dared to challenge the big boys at Gibson and Fender. Today, is a dominant force in the guitar universe. • Ibanez was – and still is – a brand of Hoshino, a Japanese company with a U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia. In the mid ’70s, […]
Billy Duffy has long been a different sort of bloke. As his peers in rock bands of the mid ’80s mostly fell in line to play modified “superstrat” guitars with locking vibratos suitable for the trickery of the day, Duffy stuck with his trusty Gretsch White Falcon as his band, The Cult, scored its first […]
