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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
Ruth Moody
Red House Records
Founding member of the The Wailin’ Jennys, here, Ruth Moody asserts her musical individuality. Using a cast of 27 musicians, she embraces a breadth of musical genres – old timey, Celtic, and even…
Rick Fowler – Back On My Good Foot
The closing, extended version of Savoy Brown’s “Hellbound Train” is this set’s only cover, but it may be the set’s most revealing track. With so many blues guitarists aping the Vaughans, it’s refreshing…
Sean Watkins – Let It Fall
Let It Fall
Sean Watkins is one third of the young Grammy-nominated supergroup Nickel Creek. Along with his sister Sara and mando phenom Chris Thile, they’ve lit up the festival circuit with fresh musical energy. Let…
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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,
Junior Sisk – Blue Side of the Blueridge
Being a top-echelon professional bluegrass musician is similar to being a member in an exclusive underground club. The members all know each other from their not-so-secret handshake, which is the ability to play…
Bob Dunn
Origin Jazz Library
Bob Dunn was the amplified steel guitar’s first stylist. More than 75 years after his first appearances on record, Dunn still amazes those who have never heard early music on electric-steel guitar. This…
Sarah Harmer – You Were Here
Canadian musicians have long found it necessary to come south to the US of A if they want to make it big. Sarah Harmer is one of a long line of Canadians lured…
The Metallica Blacklist Album
Various artists
Conquering the charts 30 years ago with their “black album,” Metallica has become the global ambassador for heavy metal – and this 52-track tribute set confirms it. Artists from nearly every genre, from…
Eric Bibb – An Evening with Eric Bibb
Eric Bibb plays blues and folk with his own touch, and is one of t he most underrated acoustic artists making the rounds. On this disc, an appreciative audience hears 14 songs delivered…
Jas Obrecht
Blues Primordial
When did blues guitar begin? Many people think of Charley Patton, but in this book historian Jas Obrecht teaches us the idiom began long before that Delta legend – back to the turn…
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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
The Explosives – Ka-Boom!
The Explosives were possibly the best of the punk/new wave bands that sprang up in Austin (centered around haunts like Club Foot, Raul’s, and the Continental Club), on the heels of the city’s…
Delbert McClinton – Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation & Journey
Depicting several of the acts on Delbert McClinton’s Sandy Beaches Cruise from ’06, this film was recognized at a host of film festivals. Both the conversation and music throughout are thoroughly engaging; McClinton…
Willie Nelson
Soon after arriving in Nashville in 1960, Willie Nelson signed a songwriting contract with Pamper Music, co-owned by Ray Price, one of the era’s biggest stars. It launched a friendship that endured until…
Social Distortion
Epitaph
After 30-plus years, seven studio albums, a live album, and two DVDs, Social Distortion may have just released its masterpiece. The band came rocking out of Fullerton, California, in 1978, playing a tough…
Grateful Dead
Road Trips, Vol. 1 No.4: From Egypt With Love
In 1978, the Dead played a series of shows at a venue many Deadheads swear was just built for the band – The Great Pyramid of Giza. Still high from the shows, the…
Dave Ray
Snaker is Back!
Kudos to Red House Records for this three-CD set of rare and unreleased recordings by blues singer/guitarist Dave Ray. It probably won’t fly off shelves, but more people need to be exposed to…
311
If you remember the ’90s, you probably weren’t there. But if you were there and had your thumb on the pulse of contemporary music, you remember 311. Songs like “All Mixed Up” and…
Dr. Harmonica and Rocket 88 – Swingin’ Easy Live
Yow! Dr. Harmonica (Mark Kenneally) and the boys swing, jump, shuffle, and do everything in between on this wonderful live effort. You’ll know some of the tunes – there are nice remakes of…
Boss DD-200 Digital Delay
Test For Echo
Delay pedals are essential, but there are so many different types – tape, reverse, tap, cascade, shimmer, analog and more. What if you could get all of them in one box, without breaking…
Dex Romweber Duo
Dex Romweber and his trusty Silvertone have been kicking over the gnarly dustbins of American music since he was a teenager. (The uninitiated are advised to seek out a mini-documentary that aired on…
Check This Action: My Kind of Blues
The great Junior Parker sang, “You will feel like dying when you get these kind of blues.” But he sang it over an infectious rhythm, to an upbeat melody. Such is the ability…
Jimi Hendrix Experience – Paris 1967/San Francisco 1968
Paris 1967/San Francisco 1968
Got to hand it to the folks at Experience Hendrix, who keep coming up with good Hendrix music and packaging it in fine releases. This new work, on its Dagger Records subsidiary label,…
Richard & Linda Thompson
Rhino Handmade
In 1981, the Thompsons recorded their last and best album together, as their marriage was crumbling. So, even though some of the material dated to a couple of years prior, during happier times,…
John Lee Hooker & the Coast to Coast Blues Band
Live at Montreux 1983 & 1990
The early ’80s weren’t a high point of John Lee Hooker’s career. Demand for all blues – including his Mississippi hill-country music – had eroded and record deals were scarce. None of that…
Paul “Mayo” Mayasich
The latest from guitarist Paul Mayasich and his band of buddies is an eclectic mix of American music. You get blues of all kinds, country, folk, and lots more – all of it…
Cheap Trick – Budokan 30th Anniversary
Okay, Rick Nielsen was no Jimi Hendrix. But who cares – he hit the road with an army of vintage guitars and now-valuable early Hamer solidbodies, which is cool enough! You can enjoy…
The Rolling Stones
Eagle Rock
Some people think Exile On Main Street is the best album the Rolling Stones ever recorded. Those people are wrong. And it’s certainly not “the rock and roll Bible,” as Sheryl Crow proclaims…
The Routes
Mesmerised
Color the Routes’ mastermind Chris Jack’s music how you like: vintage-y, psychedelia, joyfully and unapologetically garage. But be sure to color it outside the lines. Jack is a musical mad scientist. Each release…
Paul Priest
Self-distributed
The title references the “impact” of the guitar effects pedals made by Robert Keeley in making the album. That’s all fine and good, but more important is the fine music, propelled by the…
Steve Waksman – Instruments of Desire
This is a work of scholarly intent in which the author presents a treatise on the history and development of the electric guitar and how its subsequent use shaped the course of popular…
Kenny “Blue” Ray – Git It!
I’ve lost count! I believe this is Kenny’s sixth self-produced CD. And, as have its predecessors, Git It, his most recent effort, again illustrates Blue Ray’s dedication to the blues craft. Rumor has…
