• Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery

    Artists

    Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery

    Jon Butcher tales his Olympic White ’63 Strat for a rip on “Jam,” a track from his new album, “Nuthin’ but Soul.” The disc is an homage to sounds of Motown, Stax, James Brown, and Sly Stone highlighted by Butcher’s mastery of Hendrix-style psychedelia. It was recorded using a ’63 Princeton, a Vibrolux, and a…

    Read more >>

Fretprints: Stevie Ray Vaughan

The Blues Man’s Jazzy Side

Stevie Ray Vaughan is the uncontested blues champion of the new age. Though he’s been gone more than 30 years, his music still reverberates and much continues to be written…

Bryan Beller

Bass Aristocracy

If you love daredevil musicians, you’ll dig The Aristocrats. A contemporary-fusion trio, the band includes guitar monster Guthrie Govan (VG, September ’21), drummer Marco Minnemann, and Bryan Beller, a wizard…

Have Guitar Will Travel 088 – Kevin Bernier and De’Wayne

In Ep 88 of “Have Guitar Will Travel,” host James Patrick Regan speaks with guitarist Kevin Bernier of the Suffers, and with power-pop singer De’Wayne. Kevin tells how the Suffers…

Greg Howe

A New Wheelhouse

Greg Howe is a globe-trotting, guitar-clinic-teaching, concert-performing fusion monster. He’s known for taking risks and pushing his playing into fresh environments. His latest album, Wheelhouse, shows the guitarist coming full…

Have Guitar Will Travel 085 – Michelle Malone

Host James Patrick Regan talks with singer/songwriter Michelle Malone about the inspiration behind her new album, “1977,” and life on the road to support it. The music brings a Laurel…

Charles Moothart

Fuzz: Sons of Sabbath

While ’80s metal is past its heyday, the proto-metal of the late 1960s and early ’70s is making a huge comeback, thanks to younger bands re-imagining the saturated sounds of…

Darryl Jones photo: P. Baumbach

Darryl Jones

Stones’ Side Man, Ron Wood Fan

“Unofficial” Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones, who replaced Bill Wyman in 1994, readily admits that playing with the carousing rockers has been a revelation compared to working with stern jazz…

DAN ROSE AND HIS TASTY TAKE ON A CLASSIC

DAN ROSE AND HIS TASTY TAKE ON A CLASSIC! Dan Rose used his ’58 ES-175 (with a PAF at the neck) plugged into a Fishman Loudbox to play the Rodgers…

Six-String Kicks

Six-String Kicks

Wood from Famed Bowling Alley Set to Sing

Few things scratch America’s cumulative itch for nostalgia like Route 66 – the famed wagon-trail-cum-highway that offered passage to those migrating west from Chicago in the mid 19th century, then…

Brian Setzer

Brian Setzer

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…

Larry Coryell

1943-2017

Guitarist Larry Coryell died February 19 in New York City after performing the previous night at the Iridium. He was 73 and passed away in his sleep, from heart failure.…

Fretprints: Fenton Robinson

Unsung Blues Icon

In the encyclopedia of American music, there oughta be a picture of Fenton Robinson next to “unsung blues hero.” Drop his name, though, and most fans are unfamiliar – until…

Albert Lee

English Country Gentleman

Photo courtesy of Ernie Ball. Admittedly, Albert Lee doesn’t play a Gretsch Country Gent, but a more appropriate description of the veteran guitarist might be hard to formulate. Lee has…

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…

Lord Bizarre

Bedlam in Belgium: Electric Guitar & Amp Museum

Ivan “Lord Bizarre” Symaeys with a 1965 Wandré Bikini and an assortment of guitars. All photos by Joe Bigley. When most Americans think of Belgium, it’s usually beer, chocolate, or…

Lynyrd Skynyrd

30 Years Strong

Gary Rossington leads the charge against the challenge that has always come with being a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band and its musical patriarch have defined resilience in their…

Fretprints: Roy Lanham

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…

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…

Greg Rzab

On a warm summer’s night fifteen years ago, I met Greg Rzab for the first time. I sat on his backporch steps and listened to this 19-year-old kid play a…

Eddie Cochran’s Gretsch 6120

Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got that Twang

One night in the late 1950s, Eddie Cochran set the world alight onstage in the City of Angels. Though the details are lost to history, The Los Angeles Times reported,…

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram

Evolution

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram’s latest album shows the 22-year-old blues prodigy flourishing with maturity and tone for days. Titled 662, the digits reflect the area code of his North Mississippi home.…

James Elkington

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…

Blues guitarist Charlie Apicella’s “Booze and Blues” and “Just Like a Woman”

Honoring B.B., Rainey Being V.P. of the North Jersey Blues Society isn’t the only thing that separates Charlie Apicella from the typical blues player. A devotee of B.B. King (and…

Tab Benoit

What 10 Sounds Like

I Hear Thunder marks a return to recording for Tab Benoit. With 13 years between albums, he is recording music that stirs his soul. Rugged guitar tones and fierce vocals permeate…

Eric Johnson

Acoustic Resonance

On Eric Johnson’s new – and first all-acoustic album – EJ, the guitarist takes a break from the intervallic inventions of his electric work and finds greater depth in his…

Rik Emmett Fixes it for Us!

 Triumph guitarist shows how to properly play four classic songs Plenty of players on socials post video showing how to play the “pretty” chords from classic Triumph songs, but…

Sam Williams

Sinister Surf

Sam Williams is known as the guitarist for the roots-punk band Down by Law, but now he’s shaking it up with his surf outfit, Black Moon Valley. Their album, Songs…

Good Times In Bad

The Origin of Fender’s Vintage Series

The years leading up to CBS Musical Instruments’ 1985 sale of the Fender brand were fluid times at the instrument maker’s headquarters in Fullerton. Faltering in a market death struggle…

Mark Andes

Son of Straight Arrow

There probably aren’t too many fathers of rock stars who’ve had a song written about them, but such is exactly the case with veteran actor Keith Andes. His son Mark…

Brad Paisley

Keep Pushing Play

Ten years into what has become a stellar career, when Brad Paisley hits your town to play a show these days, it’s with nine semi tractor-trailer rigs and a fleet…