Jazz guitarist Johnny Smith died at his home June 11, 2013, two weeks shy of his 91st birthday. Arguably the most respected and revered guitarist of the modern era (1950 to present), Smith was sincerely humble and reserved about his extraordinary talent. In 1999, his peers and friends celebrated his career with a gala at […]
King’s X guitarist Ty Tabor is on a roll. Despite the band being on hiatus due to bassist Dug Pinnick’s health issues, Tabor stays busy with side projects like Jelly Jam, with Rod Morgenstein and John Myung. He operates a commercial audio mastering facility, and his new (more…)
Gov’t Mule’s blues-based rock has never followed a formula, opting instead for an improvisational modus operandi that gives its music unique breadth and scope – a fact supremely illustrated in its new album, Shout! An 11-song outing and the band’s first studio album in four years, the (more…)
Musicians being artists and artists needing to express themselves, it says something that Will Lee’s new album, Love, Gratitude & Other Distractions, is only his second in 20 years (his first was 1993’s Oh!). Mostly, it speaks to the fact that since James Brown is no longer with us, Lee may well now be the […]
Veteran guitar monster Richie Kotzen has done it all from opening for The Rolling Stones, recording with Stanley Clarke, to coming to the rescue for Poison and Mr. Big. Having recorded a stack of solo albums, he now joins former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy and (more…)
Best known as the Les Paul Junior-slinging guitarist stage left of Mike Ness in Social Distortion, Jonny “Two Bags” Wickersham speaks with a laid-back SoCal drawl and peppers his conversation with modest asides. The uninitiated would never suspect he has just dropped his first solo record, (more…)
“My dad was my biggest influence, especially melodically. He loved dark melodies,” says Eliza Gilkyson of her father, the late Terry Gilkyson. As the title of her latest CD hints, The Nocturne Diaries mostly habitates the darker side. Her dad sang with the Weavers in the (more…)
Though obviously a familiar name given his hits from the 1970s and ’80s were FM staples and today are virtually ubiquitous on classic-rock radio, last month we talked with Steve Miller about his less-discussed musical pedigree. Literally raised in the company of some of the biggest names in guitar music (Les Paul, T-Bone Walker, etc.), […]
It’s difficult to say which is more ironic: the fact that Robbie Robertson, one of rock guitar’s true stylists, is more famous for his songwriting, or that beneath the minimal, compositional style that marked his work with The Band hid one of the most animalistic maniacs in rock guitar history. • The son of a […]
Guitarists often cite instruments as sources of inspiration. For musician, songwriter, and producer Dave Stewart, it wasn’t a ’57 Strat or a ’Burst that recently caused a creative flurry, but a guitar far more pedestrian. Stewart and bandmate Annie Lennox rose to fame in the early ’80s as the Eurythmics, a pop duo that, especially […]
