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Artists
Joey Molland
The word “underrated” is belabored in music journalism, but Joey Molland was just that. As co-guitarist in Badfinger, he was part of a quartet signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records, yielding glorious AM hits like “Come and Get It,” “Day After Day,” and “No Matter What.” The foursome fell into obscurity and tragedy a few
Martin Taylor M.B.E.
Jazz Guitar Royalty
Photos courtesy Martin Taylor. If Martin Taylor ever decides to quit playing guitar, he can always launch a career as a stand-up comic. Asked where he grew up, the guitarist…
David Catching
Desert Eagle
Producer and owner of the enigmatic Rancho de la Luna studio in the California desert, guitarist David Catching has been touring with Eagles of Death Metal since 2004. In November…
Bryan Beller: Aristocratic Riffs
Time-Signature Shifts on “Aristoclub Bryan Beller and his Lull Custom BBMF5 demonstrate what it takes to keep up with Guthrie Govan and Marco Minneman in their scary-good fusion trio, The…
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Duke Robillard – Lowdown
Vintage Guitar is happy to offer the premier of the new music video by Grammy nominee Duke Robillard. “Lowdown” is the first single from his upcoming album, Blast Off!, set for release February 20 on Nola Blue Records. “When thinking about a powerful song to launch the album, I chose a hard-rocking Tom Waits tune
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David Bowie’s Young Americans
David Bowie was always creatively restless. The English musician decided to step away from the glam rock he’d recorded for a few albums concluding with 1974’s Diamond Dogs, which included a few songs with tinges of soul, R&B, and funk. On tour promoting the album, he played a handful of soul covers. Bowie had long
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Fretprints: Cream’s Disraeli Gears
Supergroup Alpha
Jack Bruce claimed Cream was two bands – live trio and studio group. Live, bassist Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker were renowned for their highly improvisatory, powerful performance that was unprecedented in rock. Moreover, they were actually a jazz group (“…we just didn’t tell Eric,” Bruce said), as exemplified by their excursions
Leigh Stephens
Blue Cheer Flashbacks
Blasting out of the San Francisco Bay area with an amped-to-the-heavens heavy blooze/hard rock style, Blue Cheer spewed forth a lo-fi garage sound that found the trio lobbing grenades on…
Roman Bulakhov’s Radical Stew
Ukrainian guitarist fuses…. everything Inspired by Pat Metheny, Greg Howe, Guthrie Govan and others, guitarist Roman Bulakhov fuses rock, funk, jazz, hip-hop – and everything else into a radical, acrobatic…
Jack Petruzzelli
Fab Sideman For Osborne, Wainwright, Smith
“The first time the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, I was in my mother’s womb,” says Jack Petruzzelli. “That was February ’64, but then when they appeared the second time…
Jake Shimabukuro Plays the Beatles “Something”
Silky-Smooth Shimabukuro Jake Shimabukuro’s playing is a silky delight on this run through the Beatles “Something.” That’s his Kamaka tenor koa uke and the tune is from his fantastic new…
Snowy White
One Man, One Guitar
Snowy White, one of the finest blues and rock musicians to come out of the U.K., built a career on near-anonymity. Deliberately. “It is my nature,” he explains. “If the…
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Check This Action: Up Jumped Elmore
When someone recently asked me to recommend the most essential Elmore James album, I answered, “Any and all.” I’ve never heard a bad Elmore cut, and I’ve heard nearly everything he recorded. Everybody knows that he set the standard for slide guitar in electric blues, but he was also a fantastic singer and wrote some
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Javier Batiz
Mexican guitarist Javier Batiz, a teacher and inspiration to Carlos Santana and other musicians, passed away December 14 at his home in Tijuana, Baja California. He was 80. Known as the “Godfather of Mexican Rock,” “La Layenda” (The Legend) and other sobriquets, Batiz came to appreciate American blues guitarists such as B.B. King and John
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Josh Meader
Jazz Evolution
Josh Meader is a jazz and fusion player who breaks ground with virtuosity that’s never flashy for its own sake. On his new album, Tide of Times, the young Aussie ace blends styles on a dime, hybridizing music before our eyes; videos online include an especially stunning non-album rendition of “Misty.” It’s fascinating, seeing Meader
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Chris Walz
Debut, Long Time Coming
Chris Walz has done his share of performing. He played young Woody in the stage production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song. From the late ’90s to 2001, Walz toured and recorded with banjo player Greg Cahill’s Special Consensus bluegrass band. And for 10 years he took the role of guitarist Fred Hellerman in Weavermania, a
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Greg Koch
Way Of The Gristle
On Blues, Greg Koch reaches the outskirts of infinity with an album that showcases his wicked guitar skills and love for Muddy Waters. Flying V blues master Larry McCray drops by with the Memphis Horns, and the result is a passionate pentatonic party with soul and fireworks. How did this album come about?Devon Allman had
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Rik Emmett
Canadian Custom
Rik Emmett is a master of many guitar styles and other artistic endeavors. As co-lead vocalist/guitarist in the hard-rock trio Triumph from 1975 to ’88, he experienced life as a rock star, then released a string of solo albums, a book of poetry, and an autobiography. His latest project, Ten Telecaster Tales, is a book
Tim Lerch
Tele Jazz Master
If you watch any of Tim Lerch’s videos online, his virtuosity is immediately apparent. What may throw you is his use of a Telecaster, an axe more closely associated with…
John Notto
L.A. Burner
Dirty Honey is one of the most-exciting bands to emerge in the past few years. The Los Angeles quartet stands out by playing straight-up guitar-based rock and roll with a…
Joe Peña
Bad Breakups, Free Guitars
“[My ’59 Les Pal Junior] sounds so good that whoever’s going to play the main part in a song plays it. I insist! I think the pickups are late ’60s…
Michael Wilton
Rebuilding the Queensrÿche Brand
The highly publicized firing of singer Geoff Tate from the band Queensrÿche has divided fans and spawned two touring bands using the name; Tate assembled a group of well-known sidemen,…
Ty Tabor’s Six-String Meditation!
King’s X Guitarists’s solo work is mindful, complex Ty Tabor used his Player Strat (with a JB Jr. pickup at the bridge) to play this cool rendition of “Insane,” from…
One Unforgettable ’60s-Oddity Magnatone
Monster Mash
Drew Moniot and his band, The Sequins, were on top of the world, playing Gibson SGs through endorsement-deal amp stacks as 16-year-olds in 1967. Among their many favorite memories was…
Pop ’N Hiss: Santana’s Caravanserai
Pageant of Enlightenment
By the summer of 1971, 24-year-old Carlos Santana and his band – Neal Schon on guitar, drummer Michael Shrieve, Gregg Rolie on keys, bassist David Brown, and percussionists Mike Carabello…
Beckley and Bunnell
America History Lesson
Few bands warrant a career-retrospective box set, let alone two. Then again, most don’t keep going after 50 years. America is an exception. Their new eight-disc collection, Half Century, compiles…
Richie Kotzen
Venn Master
If a Venn diagram reveals a surprising truth between overlapping concepts, Richie Kotzen is the Venn core of heavy rock, fusion, and soul-funk guitar. This multiple-threat instrumentalist plays almost all…
Kim Simmonds
Half a Century with Savoy Brown
Now in its 46th year, the Savoy Brown band, fronted by founder/lead guitarist Kim Simmonds, has returned to its blues-and-boogie roots following a foray as a power trio in which…
Vince Gill & Paul Franklin
Homage to Ray Price
Vince Gill and longtime friend, collaborator, and pedal-steel giant Paul Franklin share a love of country music history. Bakersfield, their 2013 collaboration, paid homage to the timeless, twang-heavy music of…
The Rascals’ Gene Cornish
Wild Legacy
Gene Cornish is fond of the time he spent in the ’60s pop band The Rascals, which he credits for having never been sidetracked or making a bad decision… until…
Warner Hodges
Ahead of His Time, Two Times
Photo: Rusty Russell. Jason and The Scorchers hit the stage with bombast, conveyed true rock-and-roll punch in the studio, and was massively influential. But it never attained superstardom. The band’s post-/neo-rockabilly…
Have Guitar Will Travel 101 – Keola Beamer
In episode 101 of “Have Guitar Will Travel”, presented by Vintage Guitar Magazine! Host James Patrick Regan speaks with slack key guitarist Keola Beamer, the two of them cover Keola’s…
Jerry Kennedy
A-Team Guitarist, A-List Producer
Jerry Glenn Kennedy, a 13-year-old who recorded for RCA Victor as “Jerry Glenn,” got the shock of his young life when he walked into a Nashville recording studio in September…
Benjamin Kushner
Soul Patrol
Drawing from a vast well of American R&B and soul, Josh Hoyer & Soul Colossal deliver powerhouse sounds from their home base in Nebraska. On its latest, Green Light, the…
Jay Geils
Blues and Archtops
If you grew up listening to music in the ’70s, you probably associate the name J. Geils with a five-piece band that played raucous rock and roll to hip-shaking partiers.…
Sue Foley’s Pinky Tele
Powerhouse Blues on “Dallas Man” Sue Foley and her band (Corey Keller on drums and John Bradley on bass) tear through a chunk of “Dallas Man,” one of the tracks…
Steve Hunter
The deacon Sets It Straight
Photo: Sam Scott Hunter. In 1971, John “Polar Bear” Sauter called Steve Hunter, asking him to join Mitch Ryder’s band, Detroit. Soon, the 22-year-old guitarist was loading his little blue…
Buddy Guy
Legend Steeped in the Blues
Buddy Guy, Bayfront Blues Festival, 1997. Photo by Ward Meeker. When referring to the all-time great legends of the blues and the guitar, the formidable Buddy Guy comes to mind…
Mo Foster
Michael Ralph “Mo” Foster, British bass stalwart who played with Jeff Beck, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, and others, died July 3. He was 78 and battled cancer of…
