-
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
Bill Frisell
Out of Sight
It’s almost impossible to pigeonhole Bill Frisell, and his latest album will make it even harder. The guitarist and his band reinterpret some of the pop and rock songs here that made Frisell…
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Boxed Set
This arrived just in time for me to program “Graveyard Train” to play over and over on Halloween, scaring (or at least bewildering) unsuspecting trick-or-treaters, wondering, “What’s with that old coot handing out…
Tom Principato – Anniversary DVD: Celebrating 40 Years
Anniversary DVD: Celebrating 40 Years
Tom Principato is one of those guitarists who has been around for a long time. He’s on the fringe of lots of stuff, has played with tons of great guitarists, and makes pretty…
-
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,
-
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
-
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,
The Beatles
Revolver Special Edition
“All in all, not a bad album,” says Paul McCartney in the liner notes, launching this massive reevaluation of The Beatles’ 1966 masterwork. With extensive CD and vinyl configurations, the entire album has…
Holden
Think of Holden as the Velvet Underground with a French accent. This noise-pop duo differs, however, in chronicling not the wild side of the ’60s, but the existential estrangement of modern-day life –…
Bill Monroe – Father of Bluegrass
First released on VHS in the mid ’90s, this documentary deifies Bill Monroe as the founder of bluegrass music and as an all-around swell guy. Whether the film crosses the line between documentary…
Joe Bonamassa
From the opening notes of “Slow Train” to the echo of the last note of “Prisoner,” modern blues guitarslinger Joe Bonamassa’s Dust Bowl is a masterpiece. Bonamassa has released 11 previous solo albums…
Peter Ames Carlin
Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince
Chances are a significant chunk of your music collection is from artists on the Warner Brothers, Reprise, Atlantic, Elektra, Asylum, and Sire labels. Innovative executives and record producers like Mo Ostin, Joe Smith,…
Barney Kessel with Shelly Manne & Ray Brown
The Poll Winners
Kessel, bassist Brown, and drummer Manne – pillars of West Coast jazz – had already topped reader polls in Playboy and two jazz publications before teaming for this 1957 collaboration. Using the rarely-employed…
-
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,
-
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
-
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,
-
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
-
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,
-
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
Steve Howe Trio
HoweSound Records
The idea of a straight jazz album from Steve Howe might bring out the skeptic in proggers and beboppers alike, but Travelling is a pleasant surprise. Certainly, Howe’s jazzflavored leads were prominent in…
Roky Erickson
Anti-
As front man of the 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson was one of the architects of ’60s psychedelic rock. The 63-year-old Texan’s battles with mental illness are chronicled in the documentary You’re Gonna Miss…
2025 June Issue on Spotify
This month, we feature The Meters’ George Porter, Tommy Emmanuel, Jedd Hughes, Dudley Taft, Lari Basilio, Ally Venable, The Police, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Dave Mason, Kenny Burrell, and more! Spotify is free or…
Blues Magoos
Sundazed
Following British Invasion bands like the Yardbirds and Rolling Stones, but mostly fizzling before 1967’s Summer Of Love, bands that straddled the transition from garage rock to psychedelia don’t get much respect. These…
The Rolling Stones
Rolling In The Blues
Mick Jagger’s famous 1968 statement – “What’s the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m A King Bee’ when you can hear Slim Harpo do it?” – has been a (sometimes) credo for…
Steve Miller Band
J50: The Evolution of The Joker
Miller’s beloved eighth album was recorded and mixed in 17 days, culminating in a jumble of rock, pop, R&B, and blues tracks – plus originals and covers, studio and live cuts. Yet it…
Alfred Wertheimer
The Man W ho Would Be King
In early 1956, soon after RCA Victor purchased the contract for a fledgling singer named Elvis Presley, a publicist hired photographer Alfred Wertheimer to follow the Mississippi boy on the road for a…
Daniel de Visé
King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King
Sixty years, 90 countries, 15,000 concerts – and that tally doesn’t include B.B. King’s early years of juke joints, radio broadcasts, and street-corner serenades. Over the years, Riley “Blues Boy” King became the…
The Nels Cline 4
Currents, Constellations
Outtasight Known these days for his lead work in Wilco, Nels Cline is a true guitar polymath, equally conversant in influences from Roger McGuinn to D. Boon to Bill Frisell. Cline’s many side…
Analog Man’s Guide to Vintage Effects Pedals – Tom Hughes
“Analog Mike” Piera was one of the first to recognize the power of the internet to disseminate information and as a tool for commerce. Peira’s background as a software engineer with a degree…
Lil’ Jimmy Reed with Ben Levin
Back To Baton Rouge
Leon Atkins got a cigar box guitar at six, after already playing harmonica. After subbing when blues legend Jimmy Reed was too inebriated to play a Louisiana juke joint in the ’50s, the…
Albert Cummings
Ten
Ten marks a creative milestone for Massachusetts-based Albert Cummings. It’s easily his most stylistically diverse recording to date, in addition to his most personal. It’s also an album that looks to Nashville, where…
My Life in Dire Straits
John Illsley
Check This Action: Dave Davies’ Kinky Journey
I first saw The Kinks live in April, 1973, at Winterland in San Francisco, where they played a flawless set with stops on almost every album. When Dave Davies delivered the power-chord F-G-G-F-G…
Sahara Smith
Playing In Traffic
At 15, this Austinite placed second in a contest for young songwriters on “A Prairie Home Companion.” Now 21, her debut consists of 12 originals, as impressive as they are mature in terms…
Iggy & the Stooges – Raw Power
Sony Legacy
Nearly four decades on, the reviled fathers of punk continue to inspire the underground masses. With the reissue of their seminal ’73 release, Raw Power, offers a lot of Iggy to enjoy. Reissued…
Brent Mason – Hot Wired
Some of you know Brent Mason because he’s one of the most-heard guitarists in the world. A mainstay on the Nashville scene, he has played on hundreds of recent country hits. That said,…
The Yardbirds – Ultimate
The Yardbirds: Ultimate
Two fallacies that invariably arise in discussions of the Yardbirds: 1) declaring them the fathers of psychedelic music and/or heavy metal; 2) focusing on their colossal lead guitar lineage at the expense of…
Mike Morgan & The Crawl – Texas Man
Texas Man
Dallas-based Teddy Morgan was a protégé of the less-is-more master Anson Funderburgh, whose rhythm work can be heard throughout this release, and to a large degree Morgan is still immersed in Anson’s style.…
Deke Dickerson and the Eco-Fonics – Number One Hit Record
Number One Hit Record
Walk the dog, son…walk the dog! I love this CD. Deke covers the roots bases, from rockabilly to country swing to surf and everything in between. And he looks the part with his…
Arthur Lee & Love
Complete Forever Changes Live
The fingerpicked intro to Bryan MacLean’s breathtaking “Alone Again Or” starts the heady, cinematic, night-through-day-through-night journey of Forever Changes. The 1967 album was the magnum opus of Love’s troubled visionary, Arthur Lee. MacLean,…
Wayne Adams’ Old “Classic” Banjo Collection 1897-1952
Various artists
“When you want genuine music – music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your…
