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…

A Mick Ralphs Sampler – Definitive Listening

Curated by Vintage Guitar’s Willie G. Moseley, this playlist showcases the evolution of Mick Ralphs’ sound through various songs he wrote or co-wrote. Included are tracks from Mott the Hoople,…

The Story of Jay Gower

Startup in Music City

In Nashville today, there are enough professional luthiers to meet the need for guitar repairs, modifications, and custom builds. In the 1950s, though, musicians typically returned broken instruments to the…

“Telecaster Bob” Bain

Studio Immortal

For seven decades, he flexed his chops on more sessions than any living guitarist, laying down famous licks on Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” and a host of others, playing in The…

Noel Redding

Up to Date With

When Vintage Guitar interviewed bassist Noel Redding in the Fall of 1992, he recounted his musical and personal history in an eloquent and easygoing manner, focusing primarily on his adventures…

Michael Schenker

Golden Guitar Jubilee

Incredibly, it’s been 50 years since Michael Schenker recorded his first guitar bit on a studio album – the Scorpions’ debut, Lonesome Crow. To celebrate the anniversary, the guitar great…

Charlie Musselwhite’s blues chops on a vintage J-45

See it Here: “Blues Gave Me a Ride” Charlie Musselwhite and his ’54 Gibson J-45 do it up (so) right on “Blues Gave Me A Ride,” from his latest album,…

Richie Kotzen

Goin’ Supergroup

Veteran guitar monster Richie Kotzen has done it all from opening for The Rolling Stones, recording with Stanley Clarke, to coming to the rescue for Poison and Mr. Big. Having…

Greg Lake

Welcome Back, My Friends Part 1 and 2

Bassist/vocalist Greg Lake, a force in the advent of progressive rock in the early 1970s with Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP), died December 7 following a battle with cancer. He was…

Ty Tabor

Digging Deep

King’s X guitarist Ty Tabor’s latest solo album is a guitar-centric meditation on mindfulness and the complexities of existence. With a break from touring, he had time to whip out…

Zakk Wylde

All photos Neil Zlozower. With Zakk Wylde, what you see is very much what you get. An unassuming, tell-it-like-it-is guy, he makes no apologies for being the beer-swilling, English-language-brutalizing, boot-and-leather-wearing,…

Marty Stuart

A Country-Music Odyssey

Marty Stuart’s life is the stuff of movies. Just nine years old when he started singing and playing guitar in his own band, while his grade-school classmates in Mississippi were…

Duane Allman

Duane Allman in 1970. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. Though he stood in the limelight a scant three years, Duane Allman mastered and changed the art of slide guitar, and became…

Joe Negri

Royal Handyman, Jazz Legend

Long before becoming Handyman Negri on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” he had already been a teen guitar prodigy, first-generation bopper, and a peer of the giants of jazz guitar. Though New…

The Uncanny Approach of Walter Strauss

Fingerstylist melds melodies, polyrhythms, and visceral picking on “Fabara” Walter Strauss shows his extraordinary technique with help from his Sexauer JB-16 while playing “Fabara,” a song from latest album, “For…

George Fullerton

Guitar Icon

George Fullerton, whose decades-long association with Leo Fender earned the two early electric-guitar innovators a place in history, He died July 4, 2009 at the age of 86. He succumbed…

Sue Foley: Tribute to Female Pickers

 Revisiting the Work of Pioneers From Austin by way of Ottawa, Sue Foley is known worldwide as a blues artist, but her new album “One Guitar Woman,” exhibits great…

Mark Tremonti

Three-Band Man

The odds of any guitarist being in a highly successful rock band are long. Chances of being in two are slim. Three? Virtually unheard of. But guitarist Mark Tremonti is…

Charlie Starr: Open-Tuning Magic on “Azalea”

Blackberry Smoke frontman on a vintage Gibson Enjoy a bit of the supremely tasty “Azalea,” played by Charlie Starr and his ’55 Gibson J-45.  It’s just one of the great…

Greg Martin honors Dickey Betts

Tribute licks Kentucky Headhunters co-founder Greg Martin was a senior in high school when he first heard the Allman Brothers Band “At Fillmore East.” Like so many guitarists, for Martin,…

Seth Lee Jones

Pedal Pusher

Thanks to giants like Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, and Sonny Landreth, we’re living in a golden age of bottleneck guitar, with exceptional young sliders arriving regularly. Tulsa guitarist and builder…

Warren Haynes

Lights-Out Blues

Blues is the beating heart of Gov’t Mule, and guitarist/bandleader Warren Haynes can play them lights-out. Standing as evidence is his work on their latest album, Heavy Load Blues, a…

George Cotsirilos – Jazz Sans Cliché

Deft work on an L-5 for “The Three Doves” George Cotsirilos grew up listening to Bloomfield, Hendrix, and Clapton, then studied jazz guitar. Here, his influences are on full display…

Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka

Heavy Steps : Road Ready

“Rock and roll is a young man’s game.” Once upon a time, it was the genre’s calling card. A half-century later, though, young bands playing bombastic guitar rock often trod…

The Rolling Stones

Buffalo Civic Auditorium, June 28, 1966

The Rolling Stones were the ultimate bad boys of rock – with leather jackets and arrests for peeing on a service station in England, these guys were anti-establishment. Most kids…

Dave Alvin

Return of the Battlin’ Brothers

“The title says it all,” explains Dave Alvin of his reunion with older brother Phil on Lost Time. Known for a long-standing sibling rivalry, they hadn’t recorded new music together…

Dan Wilson

In Mighty Footsteps

A riveting soloist, Dan Wilson honed his chops as a sideman to jazz greats like organist Joey DeFrancesco and bassist Christian McBride. If his latest, Vessels of Wood and Earth,…

Steve Howell Fingerpicks “Stocking Feet Blues”

Solo acoustic homage to rural-blues great Steve Howell is a veteran of blues, rock, and jazz. Here, he fingerpicks a terrific rendition of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Stocking Feet Blues” using…

Neil LeVang

Six Strings Behind — and Beyond — Champagne Music

Neil LeVang was about to get a lecture. Days earlier, the A-list studio guitarist’s new boss, Lawrence Welk, had golfed with a couple well-known singers who mentioned that LeVang had…

Woody Harris: Fingerstyle a la Fahey, Basho

Reemergence With a Rare Guitar Woody Harris used his ’76 John Mello guitar (“It has dimensions of a classical guitar, but made for steel strings.”) to play a piece of…