On Money & Power, Ally Venable wields the power of wisdom and emotional connection. It’s an album about empowerment and comeuppance, but there’s plenty of playtime with guest stars Shemekia Copeland and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. An audio bluesfest, it’s songwriting brings substance carried by guitarists swinging for the fences. What does the albums title represent?What

Akron’s Finest
On Things Eternal, jazz-guitar wizard Dan Wilson fuses post-bop, spirituality, and the songs of Stevie Wonder into a satisfying musical journey. The album is a celebration of those who have…
Head, Heart, and Hands
Popa Chubby is back on the road again, preaching the gospel to blues fans around the world. His new album, Universal Breakdown Blues, is a rollercoaster through the many facets…

Season 02 Episode 1 VG’s “Buy That Guitar” podcast opens its second season with host Ram Tuli joined by Alan Greenwood, founder and publisher of Vintage Guitar. They discuss the…
When Hubert Sumlin sideman Sean Chambers played a gig with Savoy Brown bassist Pat DeSalvo and drummer Garnet Grimm, the result was blues-rock ecstasy. Live From Daryl’s House Club is the next best thing to being there. Fans of incendiary slide playing and Rory Gallagher, look no further. How did you meet Pat and Garnet?I
On Lari Basilio’s latest record, Redemption, art and life collide to make beautiful music. Effortless instrumental guitar techniques merge with rib-sticking melodies to captivate and astonish. Bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta are back to add rhythmic fire, but Basilio’s muse is life’s challenges and, of course, super cool gear. You became a mother.
A songwriting blues-rocker in the purist sense, Dudley Taft is succeeding in an era when nothing comes easy for his ilk. His new album, The Speed of Life, required a departure from the norm; while his previous three were recorded at his own studio in Cincinnati, this one used down time during a European tour

Michael Ralph “Mo” Foster, British bass stalwart who played with Jeff Beck, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, and others, died July 3. He was 78 and battled cancer of…

A Likely First
Had he survived to this day, Elvis Presley – cultural icon extraordinaire – would be 80 years old. The man who would rise from very modest means to become arguably…
The Life and Times of John Fogerty
It would seem that, for decades, John Fogerty has had his finger on the pulse of the record-buying public. After all, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the band he formed as the…

Rocking Back to the Future
Brian Setzer wears several hats – rockabilly, swing, even hard-rocking Christmas music. But through it all, by and large he plays only one guitar – a Gretsch. And ideally, just…

Back to the (Barefoot) Basics
Legendary jazz guitarist Larry Coryell’s new album, Barefoot Man: Sanpaku, is a simpler, intentional step backward. It draws inspiration from his 1971 disc, Barefoot Boy, which included musical assists from…

Heaven Sent
It’s impossible to overstate the influence Led Zeppelin’s “untitled” fourth album – call it IV, ZoSo, Runes, Four Symbols, whatever – has had on musicians of all stripes. Released November…
Acclaimed as bassist for The Flower Kings, Jonas Reingold is a master four-stringer. He’s recorded with many artists, including Jon Anderson (of Yes), and has become an integral part of Steve Hackett’s band, re-creating the complex bottom of early Genesis. Twenty years ago, Reingold started the prog group Karmakanic (repeat it slowly a few times),
Tommy Emmanuel is a real guitarist in its truest sense. On Live At The Sydney Opera House, he stands onstage with only an acoustic guitar, and mesmerizes a packed house. His virtuosity employs country, Celtic, and folk fingerpicking styles that lift the spirit. The set is loaded with fan favorites, but a song suggestion from
After landing on American shores in 2002 to study bluegrass, then shifting into a career as a country singer/songwriter/picker, Jedd Hughes has spent 20 years on an alternate – but rewarding – path as A-list session player and touring sideman. While being busy tempered his flow of original music, in 2014, he returned to songwriting.
As a teenager who just wanted to play music, Norm Harris lived with the reality that he and his band weren’t going to be millionaires anytime soon. So he did what musicians do – side-hustled. But when most were manning the counter at a music shop or serving tables, Harris was up at the crack
If you’re making a list of beloved bands with a long string of hook-heavy hits, the Doobie Brothers will surely be on it. Their new album, Walk This Road, features the creative core of vocalist/guitarist Patrick Simmons, vocalist/guitarist Tom Johnston, multi-instrumentalist John McFee, and vocalist/keyboardist Michael McDonald. The news of Walk This Road generated significant
Season 03 Episode 10 In Episode 3.10 of “Buy That Guitar,” host Ram Tuli is joined by Robb Lawrence and Kim Shaheen. Robb’s experience in the vintage market spans from the golden age of electric-guitar innovation to the modern world. Beyond simply studying the history, he lived it, documented it, and played alongside giants who

1946-2021
His business card read “Phil Chen De Bassman,” and his picks had “OD” after his name, standing for the Order of Distinction award he received in 2014 for his contributions…

Full Plate, New Strats
After trading football for guitar at age 13, Jimmie Vaughan forged a remarkable career as a blues-roots guitarist, first with The Fabulous Thunderbirds then with a string of solo records…

Opens Up
Part One It used to be that photos didn’t lie. But nowadays (as supermodels and tabloids have proven) that’s not always true. But it is true that when Rod Price’s…

Vintage Guitar magazine Presents Greg Martin's Head Shop
This is a regular series of exclusive Vintage Guitar online articles where The Kentucky Headhunters’ Greg Martin looks back on influential albums and other musical moments. It was 50 years…

Prog Shred Ain’t Dead
After bursting onto the scene in 1995 with the screwball shred classic The Adventures of Bumblefoot, Ron Thal (a.k.a. Bumblefoot) has shape-shifted his playing, adapting to the hard rock of…

Country-Blues Scholar
Hailing from Los Angeles, Jerron Paxton is a remarkable bluesman, able to conjure sounds of the rural, interwar South through his voice and fingerstyle guitar, as well as banjo, harp,…

Hillbilly Jazz Takes Hollywood
Woefully under-recognized guitarist Roy Lanham was a favorite of leading country and jazz pickers and rock innovators; Merle Travis extolled his musicianship, and when Barney Kessel sought him out for…

Melodic Passion
Blake Aaron’s fifth solo release, Soul Stories, features eight originals and a couple of covers that have at least one thing in common. Each instrumental relies heavily on the listener…

The First Golden Age of Ibanez 1973-1982
Thirty-Five years ago, Ibanez was a scrappy upstart guitar company that dared to challenge the big boys at Gibson and Fender. Today, is a dominant force in the guitar universe.…

Brazilian guitarist plays American funk Igor Prado, organist Raphael Wressnig, and their band bring all-American funk on the new album, “Groove & Good Times.” Here’s a jam from the track…

Jazz guitar is one of my main loves, whether it’s Eddie Lang’s work with Bing Crosby in the early ’30s or Rick McRae playing at an Austin restaurant next week.…

Looking Back at Stax
The gloriously soulful music recorded by Stax Records is still entertaining listeners six decades after its release, and the label has been celebrating its 60th anniversary with a reissue campaign.…
Windy City Diversity
James Elkington tweaked the paradigm when he began working at a luthier shop before hitting his stride as a guitarist. Born and raised in a small English village northwest of…

Weapon: Chosen
Billy Duffy has long been a different sort of bloke. As his peers in rock bands of the mid ’80s mostly fell in line to play modified “superstrats,” Duffy stuck…

Blues Is Everywhere
6’2″/300-pound Phil “Big Dez” Fernandez is an international emissary of the blues. The French-born son of a Bosnian mother and Spanish father is a favorite at European blues clubs and…

Feel and Tone
He was the real-life team member on the infamous Charlie Murphy/Prince basketball game parodied on “Chappelle’s Show,” but Grammy winner Micki Free’s latest is bursting with the sounds of…
Showtime!
Growing up in New Jersey, Jimmy Vivino was in many ways a typical Italian-American kid. His life centered around family – his parents, siblings, and extended relatives – all of…
Flying Vs, Les Pauls, Laneys and Marshalls
Paul Stanley Paul Stanley shakes his groomed mane, peering into the sea of smiling facing as he rises from the smoke and shadows to strike an A chord. The arena…

Moody, Introspective, Intimate Kurt Rosenwinkel’s new album features him improvising solo on nine tracks like this one, “Peace Please.” That’s his Collings Baritone SoCo16 LC running through a Pure Tone…

Blues and Archtops
If you grew up listening to music in the ’70s, you probably associate the name J. Geils with a five-piece band that played raucous rock and roll to hip-shaking partiers.…

NYC Jazzer Brings Tasty Jazz/Blues/R&B Confection Guitarist Eric Zolan knows jazz guitar has been cool, and his new album, “Calder’s Universe” proves it. Here, he and drummer Mike Camacho lay…