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Music
Smith/Kotzen
Black Light/White Noise
This is the third album from rock veterans Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden) and Richie Kotzen (The Winery Dogs). The busy axeslingers – especially Kotzen, who is always involved in solo and band projects – released their full-length debut and an EP in 2021. Smith-Kotzen has happily blossomed into a going concern. What’s interesting about Smith/Kotzen’s
Eric Clapton
The Definitive 24 Nights
This box set heavily expands Slowhand’s 24 Nights, the live album and video of Eric Clapton’s 1990-’91 residencies at London’s Royal Albert Hall. It includes six hours of music, including 35 previously unreleased…
Rockabilly Rarities – Volume Two
Rockabilly Rarities Volume Two picks up where Volume One (“Spotlight,” June ’99) left off and features 30 tracks of rockin’, shakin’, foot-stompin’ music. Great/obscure labels like Bakers-field, Sure, Rebel, Cherry, Jan, Fox, Testa,…
Joe Beck and Ali Ryerson – Alto
We start this month with a very cool album. It features Joe Beck on alto guitar (three pairs of strings in three separate registers), Ali Ryerson on alto flute, and Steve Davis on…
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Chris Walz
All I Got and Gone
This traditional folk singer/guitarist’s solo debut is impressive. He’s been an educator at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music for three decades, but his approach is by no means academic. He not only reveals the influence of folk and blues legends such as Doc and Merle Watson, Elizabeth Cotten, Etta Baker, Dave Van Ronk,
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Nels Cline
Consentrik Quartet
ls Cline long ago established a parallel career as an eclectic instrumentalist and contemporary jazz virtuoso. His fourth Blue Note album is an extended set that unveils Consentrik Quartet, his new band with acoustic bassist Chris Lightcap, drummer Tom Rainey, and tenor/soprano saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. Their concepts are ambitious and their sound is free, Cline
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Charlie Musselwhite
Lookout Highway
John Mayall is invariably cited for the succession of guitar greats who passed through his band. But Charlie Musselwhite just might be the American equivalent. In a 60-year career, his six-stringers have included Harvey Mandel, Luther Tucker, Louis Myers, Tim Kaihatsu, Robben Ford, Fenton Robinson, Johnny Heartsman, Junior Watson, Andrew “Jr. Boy” Jones, John Wedemeyer,
Double Trouble – Been A Long Time
This celebratory debut release lays testament to the resilient talent of drummer Chris Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon, renowned as Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section, Double Trouble. Losing a front person of such…
Frank Meyers
Impossibly Cool Guitars
Frank Meyers’ first axe was a ’63 Fujigen EJ2 – a cheap-o, two-pickup solidbody like so many Japanese electrics used by beginner guitarists the world over. Though unremarkable, it spurred in him a…
Richard Thompson – Industry and Watching the Dark
Richard Thompson has always been an idiosyncratic musician, and the release of this CD finds him at perhaps his most eccentric – and creative. In fact, this CD was too far out for…
Brad Paisley – Play
Brad Paisley’s albums have been admirably consistent, emphasizing vocals, of course, but usually spiced by a couple great Telecaster workouts. In the case of Play, five of the 16 tracks are vocals, the…
Guy King
Blues veteran Guy King steps out with a full big band on his latest and proves up to the task of doing justice to various forms of American music – blues, funk, soul,…
Joyann Parker
Out of the Dark
Joyann Parker is a powerhouse vocalist and relative newcomer to the national blues scene, first gaining recognition beyond her Twin Cities base courtesy of a well-received 2018 release, Hard to Love. Its follow-up…
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Popa Chubby
I Love Freddie King
The latest from blues dynamo Popa Chubby is a star-studded tribute to the late great Freddie King. Produced by Mr. Chubby and Mike Zito, I Love Freddie King is a blues guitar love-fest covering some of King’s most potent and popular songs. With Popa fronting the band on guitar and vocals, guests include Eric Gales,
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Rush
Rush 50
The goal of any anthology is to capture the broad scope of an artist’s career. Rush 50 is a strong attempt, starting with their first singles (previously unreleased) all the way to their final live recordings in 2015. In between are reams of epic studio and stage recordings, summing up the band’s career in one
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Rik Emmett
Ten Telecaster Tales
At the risk of starting a brawl, Rik Emmett’s guitar work was arguably too good for Triumph. As evidence, his latest project centers on a custom-built Loucin that inspired both a book and accompanying music. “Magic Power” this is not. On Ten Telecaster Tunes, Emmett delivers 10 solo performances on the instrument he calls Babs,
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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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Greg Koch
Blues
The Gristle Master returns with scintillating blues and the influences that made him the six-string slayer he is today. On this live recording, Koch uses an array of guitars including his signature Reverend, a Deluxe Tele, Custom Shop Les Paul, and a Custom Shop Strat while sharing stages with Larry McCray, Jimmy Hall, Malford Milligan,
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2025 December Issue on Spotify
This month, we feature Rick Derringer, Kid Ramos, Booker T and The M.G.’s, Steve Stevens, Phil Manzanera, Doug Aldrich, Kenny Burrell, Eric Johanson, Gary Moore, and more! Spotify is free or available without ads via a paid subscription. Go to www.spotify.com and search “Vintage Guitar magazine,” or if you already have an account Listen to
Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan
In Session (Deluxe Edition)
Talk about a summit – this session was a Luke Skywalker-meets-Yoda moment. The live album, originally released in 1999, is finally available in its entirety on LP, CD, and high-resolution digital formats. Backed…
John Pisano – Guitar Night
This is two discs full of jazz-guitar blowing at its finest, as straightforward as it gets; 16 cuts of John Pisano and various six-string friends playing standards for appreciative crowds. This project started…
Elizabeth Cook
31 Tigers Records
Elizabeth Cook’s songwriting jumps to the forefront on this disc, whether the song is steeped in rock, carried by a funny lyric, or is a serious countrytinged ballad. On first listen, the lyrically…
2025 December Issue on Spotify
This month, we feature Rick Derringer, Kid Ramos, Booker T and The M.G.’s, Steve Stevens, Phil Manzanera, Doug Aldrich, Kenny Burrell, Eric Johanson, Gary Moore, and more! Spotify is free or available without…
Santana – Moonflower
Moonflower
I was never able to latch on to Carlos Santana’s excursions into jazz in the early/mid-’70s. Sure, there was always something to like in his playing, but I preferred when he mixed the…
Jeff Golub – Temptation
Lots of folks think Golub’s playing has grown a little too slick and “smooth” for its own good. You might agree, but to me, his playing has such a groove it’s impossible to…
Nels Cline
Blues Notes and So Much More
Nels Cline has quite the musical resumé, and yet has always been hard to pin down. Whether doing some form of fusion, manning the lead-guitar chair in Wilco, or serving up dissonance and…
Paul Revere & The Raiders – Mojo Workout!
If it’s a given that rock revisionists (er, historians) haven’t given Paul Revere & The Raiders the respect they deserve, then where does that leave Drake Levin? “Drake who?” you ask? My point…
Hilary Gardner
On The Trail with The Lonesome Pines
Vocalist Gardner explores the association between jazz and country, the Great American Songbook, and cowboy movie stars. Similar territory was mined by Asleep At The Wheel and Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks,…
Gary Moore: The Official Biography
Harry Shapiro
The ultimate unsung hero, Moore made a seismic impact on heavy guitarists, without being a huge star himself. That’s the thesis of this well-researched biography, describing a virtuoso with high standards, a fiery…
Check This Action: One Sax, Three Guitars
It starts with a tenor saxophone floating above spare electric guitar arpeggios. After a dipsy-doodle cadenza, the sax states a slow, deliberate melody and the guitar asserts itself more, while upright bass makes…
Various artists – Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens
The music of New Orleans has, by now, been over-anthologized, but, with four discs and an 80-page book, Shout! Factory’s deluxe treatment is perhaps the most ambitious to date, and quite possibly the…
Little Milton – Greatest Hits
I love Little Milton. I have since I first heard “Feel So Bad.” Any song that starts with the lines “Feel so bad..like a ball game on a rainy day” is alright with…
Dykes & Vaughan – On the Jimmy Reed Highway
Kent “Omar” Dykes is best known for fronting Omar and the Howlers, and though this disc was planned a solo effort paying homage to fellow Mississippi blues man Jimmy Reed, as word got…
Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey
Wilko Johnson was having quite a run. In 2009 he stole the show in Oil City Confidential, Julien Temple’s acclaimed rock doc about Johnson’s old band, Dr. Feelgood. In 2011 he began appearing…
Yes
Topographic/Drama Live
“Drama” is the perfect word to describe the 50-year history of Yes. They’ve had more personnel changes and internal strife than just about any band around. Yet as this live CD proves, they…
Jules Shear – More
Jules Mark Shear is living proof that talented pop musicians who prefer to remain on the fringes can maintain a successful career without cowtowing to the winds of fad and fashion. On his…
Gov’t Mule featuring John Scofield
Surprises
Fans have begged for this music to be released for a long time. For the most part, it’s two concerts recorded in September 1999 featuring the original Gov’t Mule lineup along with John…
Willie Nelson
That’s Life
My Way, Willie’s 2018 Grammy-winning Frank Sinatra homage, clearly didn’t satiate his desire to explore songs by the vocalist whose style profoundly influenced his own. With the same co-producers (Buddy Cannon and keyboardist…
Donna The Buffalo – Silverlined
Some still think Jethro Tull is the name of that band’s lead singer. So was it wise for a band, especially one with a female lead singer, to name itself Donna The Buffalo?…
Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
The most guitar-heavy album yet from Wilco has Jeff Tweedy, Nels Cline, and Pat Sansone weaving parts like insane musical tailors. A perfect example is “Impossible Germany,” which starts with lovely guitar that…
The Siegel-Schwall Band – The Complete Vanguard Recordings
The Complete Vanguard Recordings
Ana Popovic
Three Faces of Ana
The Love Dogs – New Tricks
New Tricks