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Artists
Ally Venable
Connection
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
“Monster” Mike Welch
“Monster” Mike Welch digs deep on “Walking to You Baby” “I was thinking about my late friend, Luther ‘Guitar Junior’ Johnson, and how his records were always direct, full-throttle,…
Jim Campilongo
Taking Chances With Kindness
Fans of forward-thinking Telecaster spank and cluck will get a kick out of Jim Campilongo’s new album, Live At Rockwood. What he does with two hands and a guitar plugged…
Billy Flynn
True Chicago Blues
The phrase “electric blues” is a catch-all for many genres, but for aficionados it refers to a highly specific idiom from the Windy City. In fact, if you listen to…
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Sean Chambers
Shoulders Of A Legend
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
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Lari Basilio
The Artist’s Way
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.
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Dudley Taft
Life At Full Speed
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
Danny Fender
Danny Fender was one of the great guitarists you may never have heard. He died December 3, 2024, at age 54. Fender was well-known among his people, the American Roma.…
Blu DeTiger: Funk-Pop Pioneer
When she was seven years old, sibling rivalry spurred Blu DeTiger to get a bass so she could play along with her brother on his new drum kit. After honing…
Alvin Youngblood Hart
Electric Gutbucket
Alvin Youngblood Hart surfs the musical landscape of blues-based music to make his own great art. His influences range from Howlin’ Wolf, Link Wray, Thin Lizzy, and Skip James, to…
Lance Lopez
Hard-Time Music
Several years after being liberated from Supersonic Blues Machine, Lance Lopez is back and better than ever. Wielding hard lessons from the road and the influence of players named Billy,…
Matthias Jabs
Still Got That Sting
It won’t be long before the Scorpions, a veteran hard rock aggregation from Hanover, Germany, celebrates its 30th anniversary of creating guitar-based music with memorable hooks for an untold number…
Eric Clapton & J.J. Cale
Blowin' Down the Road
Photo: David McClister, courtesy Reprise Records. Blowin’ Down the Road With Eric Clapton & J.J. Cale by Dan Forte It’s fitting that The Road To Escondido, the long-awaited collaboration between…
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Jonas Reingold
Bass Mechanic
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),
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Tommy Emmanuel
One-Man Orchestra
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
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Jedd Hughes
More Personal
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.
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Classics: Norman Harris
Rare Pioneer
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
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The Doobie Brothers
Road Rules
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
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“Buy That Guitar” podcast with special guests Robb Lawrence and Kim Shaheen
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
Johnny Hiland
The eagle has landed
For an artist who hadn’t yet seen his first solo release when VG spoke with him 18 months ago, Johnny Hiland had made a lot of inroads. His well-deserved reputation…
Warren Haynes
Gov’t Revolution
Digging through the Gov’t Mule catalog recalls a legacy of great music. More than just another jam band, the group spent the last 22 years not only mining the Southern-blues-based…
Honkytonk Homage
Guitars Venerate Bakersfield Landmark
Country-music fans familiar with the history of Bakersfield, California, know of Trout’s nightclub. The last of the venues that gave birth to the “Bakersfield sound” epitomized by the twang of…
Alex Lifeson
Three at 30
The legendary Canadian rock trio Rush certainly knows how to market a birthday celebration for its fans. The deluxe version of R30 is not only a musical and visual tour…
Marty Stuart
Too Country for Country
Let’s say you’ve been on the country music scene for around 30 years, even though you’re only in your early 40s. And let’s say you’ve served as an instrumentalist for…
Rick Vito
Disciples Of Greeny
A Grammy-nominated guitarist with an enviable career, Rick Vito has played with everyone from Bonnie Raitt to John Mayall and appeared on hundreds of recordings. He even did a stint…
Alan Sparhawk
Lowdown
Blame it on a guitar. For Low’s Alan Sparhawk, the inspiration behind the band’s latest album, Ones and Sixes, came in part thanks to a new six-string. He had been…
Carl Filipiak
Knack for Jimi
After 20 years of play-ing and recording his blistering fusion of jazz and rock, Carl Filipiak’s latest record, I Got Your Mantra, mixes his mastery of the instrument with his…
Kay-Ta Matsuno’s fluid fingerstyle
Raised on classical, inspired by movie music Lovers of fingerstyle likely know the music of Kay-Ta Matsuno. For the uninitiated, here’s a glimpse of his first-call work. Using his Godin…
Benjamin Kushner
Soul Patrol
Drawing from a vast well of American R&B and soul, Josh Hoyer & Soul Colossal deliver powerhouse sounds from their home base in Nebraska. On its latest, Green Light, the…
Elliot Easton
Lefty Goes to the Left Coast Part 1
Last month, former Cars guitarist Elliot Easton conversed with Vintage Guitar about his experiences prior to the formation of the platinum-selling quintet that cruised out of Boston in the mid-Seventies,…
Richie Kotzen
Fight For Familiarity
So he’s not burning up the Top 40, but Richie Kotzen has been a soul-crooning monster guitarist for a very long time. With almost 20 solo albums and group projects…
Big Al Anderson
Pawn Shop Guitars
Since last spoke to him, songwriter and master of the Telecaster Al Anderson has been extremely productive. More than a dozen of his songs appear on Vince Gill’s new These…
Billy Duffy
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…
Jimmy Vivino
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…
B.J. Baartmans shares his “Cabin Fever”
The Space Age Travellers: Eclectic Instro B.J. Baartmans’ trio, The Space Age Travellers, defies genre labelling. Here, he uses his ’73 Fender Strat (tuned down a full step) with a…
Hilton Valentine
1943-2021
“The first song I learned on guitar was ‘House of the Rising Sun’ by the Animals.” The statement could have come from literally thousands of fledgling guitarists in ’64, when…
Jerron Paxton
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,…
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…
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…
Full-Grown Rocker Comes Full Circle
In 1986, when singer/guitarist Webb Wilder and producer/songwriter R.S. “Bobby” Field pressed up 1,500 copies of It Came From Nashville, they could have just as easily called the debut It…
