• 2025 December Issue on Spotify

    Music

    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

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Tom Walsh and John King

C.F. Martin’s ukuleles have long been the standard by which all others were judged. Though bookcases brim with books about Martin guitars, the merest mention of the company’s extraordinary ukes has been largely…

Blue Lunch

Bob Frank’s Band Blue Lunch prowls the musical alleys haunted by the spirits of Bill Doggett, Dave Bartholomew, and the Five Royals, whose “Monkey Hips and Rice” makes for some of the finest…

Roy Jay

Roy Jay’s music flutters between swaggering suburban bar blues to California country/rock; sometimes within a single song, as on “Fatal Mistake.” But he’s a good player, with a fine acoustic sound (“John Brown”),…

Ian and Silvia – The Complete Vanguard Studio Recordings

The Complete Vanguard Studio Recordings

I suppose some husband-and-wife singing duos were more influential than Ian and Silvia, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any. Their combined voices have a power and energy that is unique: instead of…

Doc Watson – Best of Sugar Hill

Doc Watson is such an icon of American music and the country and bluegrass fields that it would be impossible to point to one recording and pin down his best work. This collection…

Dierks Bentley

Capital Records

From the outside, one could easily judge Dierks Bentley’s music too slick, his status as merely a phenom on country radio. But Up On The Ridge might slap you up-side the head. Recorded…

Paul Burch

Blue Yodelin'

Meridian, Mississippi, was Jimmie Rodgers’ birthplace and the starting point for Paul Burch’s “imagined musical autobiography” of the Father of Country Music. In these 20 songs and musical interludes, he draws a rich,…

Bob Marley & the Wailers

Ume/Tuff Gong

For such a guitar-driven genre, reggae doesn’t get many props from the six-string community, though its offbeat-chord trademark is as much a part of the rock lexicon as anything. For proof, check out…

Barney Kessel

Stompin’

A year after Barney Kessel began recording his now-landmark material for Contemporary Records, he performed at Phoenix’s Jazz Mill backed by the house band, the Jazz Millers. The event was captured on a…

John Thomas

Intrigued by that “Only A Gibson Is Good Enough” decal on the headstock of his World War II-era Gibson Southern Jumbo, musician and writer John Thomas began delving into the story behind the…

Robben Ford – In Concert Revisited

The premise of the Autour Du Blues DVD was to stage a transatlantic blues summit for the 25th anniversary of Paris’ New Morning club in December ’06, teaming the group of France’s studio…

Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, and Tony Rice – The Pizza Tapes

This material came from the first Tone Poems sessions at David Grisman’s studios, and its title came from the fact the master was allegedly stolen from Jerry Garcia’s kitchen table by a pizza…

The Andy Poxon Band

Poxon might present a dilemma for some listeners. He was only 16 years old when this material was recorded, and considering the mix of blues, country, rock, and funk he presents, it’s easy…

Andreas Oberg – My Favorite Guitars

If you were to judge this disc by its cover, you might think something was fishy; a handsome Swedish guy with a leather jacket and t-shirt, guitar thrown over his shoulder… Yeah, right!…

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…

Big Head Todd and the Monsters – Crimes of Passion

Big Head Todd and the Monsters have been around, and been a part of several music scenes. They were “the next big thing” in the early ’90s, with a hit record and a…

Joanna Connor

Best Of Me

With a decades-long career and a boatload of albums to her credit, slide queen Joanna Connor is no stranger to blues, rock, pop, soul, and the acoustic-folk tradition. On her new album, fans…

B.B. King & Friends – 80

B.B. King & Friends – 80 To mark his 80th birthday, the King of the Blues has cut an album of duets with friends old and new. The gimmick is nothing new, but…

The Slambovian Circus of Dreams

Here is a “best of” album by a band that’s not exactly a household name, nor does it have any hit songs. But don’t let that dissuade you. They’re a tight ensemble that…

Taste

Taste was a criminally short-lived Irish blues-rock trio in the late ’60s, featuring bassist Richard McCracken, drummer John Wilson, and the extraordinary guitar and vocals of Rory Gallagher. They played 1970’s infamous Isle…

The Grascals

Cracker Barrell Records

The Grascals understand that making music professionally is a business, and strategic partnerships are part of being successful. On The Grascals + Friends they partner with some of the biggest names in country…

Styx

Crash of the Crown

BreaBreaking While 2017’s concept album The Mission embraced progressive rock, the new Styx album has even higher ambitions. Returning to their guitar/keyboard-fueled ’70s style, the band takes prog’s grandest elements and condenses them…

Dio

There’s his music, his style, and his metal-culture influence. But above all, Ronnie James Dio is responsible for creating one indelible symbol – the flashing of the goat horns. Rhino has now released…

Adrian Quesada

Boleros Psicodélicos

Grammy-winning guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada and his band, Black Pumas, opened for the Stones on their last tour, providing a scintillating vision of modern rock and roll alongside the classics. Now, Quesada injects a…

Big Star

Shining Even Brighter

Big Star’s star shone only briefly. The band formed in Memphis in 1971 around guitarists-songwriters Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, and then blazed out by ’74 despite rave critical reviews and two stellar…

The Beau Brummels

Turn Around: The Complete Recordings (1964-1970)

In the mid ’60s, this Bay Area band straddled British Invasion, garage rock, and emerging psychedelic sounds. More important, they cut some of the most sophisticated rock and roll of the time, thanks…

Crown Lands

Fearless

This Canadian duo doesn’t disguise its Rush fanaticism. The obvious parallel is Greta Van Fleet, and what that quartet did for Led Zeppelin, Crown Lands does for Rush. On the 18-minute “Starlifter: Fearless…

Tony Holiday

Motel Mississippi

Following his two volumes of Porch Sessions collaborations with artists Lurrie Bell, Bobby Rush, Charlie Musselwhite, and the two Kids – Ramos and Andersen – the Memphis-based Holiday presents a fully realized, intriguing…

The Yardbirds – Birdland

Birdland

It’s hard not to be skeptical over every “reunion” that comes along when you’ve got Toad The Wet Sprocket reuniting after all these years – five to be exact. If that’s a reunion,…

Andy Timmons Band

To translate one of the touchstones of popular music is not something most guitarists would attempt, but Timmons and his trio take the Beatles’ classic and turn it into an instrumental rock album…