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Music
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,
The Band
Stage Fright 50th Anniversary Edition
Released in 1970, the Band’s third album showed the earthy vibe of Music from Big Pink and The Band evolving into something darker, as the group confronted internal tensions and addiction. That evolution…
Emmylou Harris – Red Dirt Girl
Emmylou Harris seems to have finally found her freedom. It’s rare to follow an artist who, after almost three decades of recording, still has something new and fresh to say – and who…
Oz Noy
Oz Noy masterminds an inspired jazz sequel with spectacular feel and blues embellishments. Amidst Noy’s quirky, energetic, funk-charged compositions is gutbucket slide. “You Dig” features slide player Greg Leisz, who offsets Noy’s intervallic…
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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
Wink Keziah & Delux Motel – Working Songs
Like Blue Ribbon and Texas Red, some music is best enjoyed in the neon blue of a honky-tonk. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always travel well beyond the barroom. That’s not the case for Wink…
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…
Close Enough for Jazz, II
October’s “CTA,” titled “Close Enough For Jazz,” surveyed a half-dozen indie jazz releases featuring guitar in different capacities and styles. Fortunately for jazz guitar fans, there’s never a shortage of such releases –…
Rick Vito – Complete Guide to Slide Guitar
The guy who played the slide part in Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” and played in Fleetwood Mac lends insight on improving your slide playing. He covers a range of topics including setting…
Mitch Seidman, Jamie MacDonald, Claire Arenius
Kyran Music
The set, recorded live at the Open Music Collective, in Vermont, perfectly captures the workings of this trio and the inherent quirkiness in the playing of Mitch Seidman, who surprises on pretty much…
Josh Williams
Josh Williams would be the first to tell you he’s heavily influenced by Tony Rice – vocally and instrumentally. Rice has had vocal-cord problems since the ’90s, and in a cosmic “irony,” arthritis…
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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
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Paul Johnson
The Hepcats Live at the Ajax Novelty Company
This isn’t live, there may not be an Ajax Novelty Company, and the three felines known as the Hepcats are actually the brainchild of Paul Johnson, whose Belairs were early-’60s pioneers of surf music. Suspend reality and dig how the “trio” expertly articulates layers of acoustic guitar. Across decades, Johnson has embraced folk-rock, psychedelia, and
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Yes
Close to the Edge: Super Deluxe Edition
Are you a high-fidelity audio geek? If the answer is, well, yes, this Rhino release brings together an HD experience of Close to the Edge in no fewer than four versions, plus rarities and a ’72 concert. For starters, the 2025 remaster sounds as close to the analog 1972 mix as you’re going to get
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Pink Floyd
Have You Got It Yet? – The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd
It’s understandable that fans warily approach the flood of pseudo-documentaries and biopics. Add the fact that the late Syd Barrett, Floyd’s original guitarist/leader, suffered from mental illness, and exploitation alarms are sure to go off. But this documentary handles the subject with dignity instead of sensationalism. Interviews by longtime Floyd cover artist Storm Thorgerson with
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The Wildhearts
In the raging ’90s, The Wildhearts blasted out of Newcastle upon Tyne like some unholy melding of Guns ’N Roses, Cheap Trick, and The Replacements. Hard rock, power pop, and punk still make up their secret sauce, heard on this latest effort with original singer/guitarist Ginger Wildheart. Ben Marsden plays lead, while Kavus Torabi adds
California Breed
Big rock crooner/bassist Glenn Hughes has seen it all. From Trapeze and Deep Purple to Black Sabbath, his life is a compelling rock escapade filled with good drugs, great music, and over-the-top excesses.…
LA LOM
The Los Angeles League of Musicians
It’s Latin, it’s surfy, it’s twangy – okay, what the heck is it? LA LOM is an instrumental trio that mines a vein of electric South and Central American music known as “chicha.”…
Donald Fagen – Morph the Cat
Donald Fagen – Morph the Cat Of all the records associated with Steely Dan, Walter Becker, and Donald Fagen, this may be the best since “the comeback.” And that’s something coming from someone…
The Meters – Trick Bag
Sundazed has done it again. This particular release is only one in a large series of CDs released by this fine band. And they did a great job with them all. Original liner…
Wilco
Roger That
Tough to believe it’s been two decades since Jeff Tweedy reluctantly took the remains of the critically adored but ultimately doomed alt-country standard-bearers Uncle Tupelo and laid down roots for a Chicago-based band…
Scorpions
Rock Believer
The 19th studio album by Germany’s metal titans reveals a re-energized band recording live in one room, like they did in the ’80s, and with no outside songwriters. Guitarists Rudolf Schenker and Matthias…
Robben Ford
Night In The City
A live recording can be a snapshot in time or the accumulated powers of an artist’s lifelong passion. Robben Ford applies both with his latest, which showcased his catalog live at City Winery,…
Merle Haggard – Roots, Vol. 1
Roots, Vol. 1
Norm Stephens isn’t a household name, even to country music fans who have no doubt heard his guitar playing. But to Merle Haggard, Stephens – the original guitarist behind Hag’s biggest influence, Lefty…
Cailyn
Cailyn Lloyd’s former life as a blues rocker of the Peter Green school gave her the stuff to put blood into the New Age music she has been making for the last few…
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…
John 5 – The Devil Knows My Name
The third solo album from the guy with the Tele, platinum hair, and heavy makeup, best known for his work with Marilyn Manson, David Lee Roth, Rob Halford, and Rob Zombie. Several of…
Eli Cook
Self-distributed
As music evolves and grows, it sometimes hits roadblocks. That has been a problem in the past with the blues. Eli Cook’s latest album takes a stab at helping the music evolve. It’s…
Jim Ed Brown
Jim Ed Brown was one third of the vocal trio The Browns with sisters Bonnie and Maxine, a popular act whose ’59 hit recording of “The Three Bells,” topped both country and pop…
The Minus 5 and the Monkees
Monkee Business
The 1960s – that halcyon decade which Americans today are most inclined to reconsider with dewy eyes – is in the midst of a retrospective heyday. Assuming the Stones’ ill-fated NorCal bacchanalia in…
Lee Ritenour
In honor of his 40th year of recording, Lee Ritenour blended a bit of new material with journeys in time, revisiting tunes he’d recorded starting with First Course, his 1975 debut. He kicks…
The George Benson Quartet – It’s Uptown and The George Benson Cookbook
It's Uptown and The George Benson Cookbook
George Benson was another of A&R legend John Hammond’s famous discoveries, alongside the likes of Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen. This put Benson in a tough position…
Dave Alvin – Romeo’s Escape
Romeo's Escape
Here’s a reissue of Alvin’s 1986 solo debut that didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved back then. After his stints with the Blasters and X, he cut out on his own, doing…
Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East
Bob Beatty
This book examines the importance of guitarist Duane Allman as a musician, his leadership of the Allman Brothers Band, and the power of ABB’s seminal 1971 album At Fillmore East, presented by an…
Derek and the Dominos
Polydor
Many supergroups lack true superpowers, but Derek and the Dominos was the real deal. Burned out on the supergroup phenom after his troubled times in Cream and Blind Faith, Eric Clapton sought anonymity…
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Déjà Vu 50th Anniversary
The essential tragedy of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is that they never recorded a sequel to Déjà Vu. Instead, the quartet resorted to fractious live reunions and disappointing studio albums cut decades…
Big Lazy
The guitar universe has been inundated with all things “retro” for the past decade, but the all-instrumental trio Big Lazy gives it a fresh spin. Old-school twang meets gritty Hollywood-soundtrack music here, with…
B.B. King: From Indianola to Icon
Charles Sawyer
Robben Ford – Blue Moon
Blue Moon
