• 2025 December Issue on Spotify

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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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Ted Leo

The Hanged Man

Critically acclaimed East Coast songwriter Ted Leo’s press clippings are filled with references to the Canon of British Bands Whose Names Are Collective Nouns: The Who, The Jam, The Clash. Fair enough; after…

B.B. King & Friends – 80

B.B. King & Friends – 80 To mark his 80th birthday, the King of the Blues has cut an album of duets with friends old and new. The gimmick is nothing new, but…

Phil Keaggy – Zion

Phil Keaggy doesn’t always get his due. Those of you familiar with his work know what I mean. He’s a marvelous singer and guitarist who’s been around awhile, but because he records mostly…

Danny Marks – Big Town Boy

On his Off The Floor Live! album, from 1996, Amos Garrett talks about all the clubs and acts he heard as a kid along Toronto’s Yonge Street – the Shays, David Clayton Thomas’…

Play It Loud

By Brad Tolinski and Alan Di Perna

BOOK REVIEW This new history of the electric guitar should be required reading for all guitarists. And a joyful one at that. Subtitled “An Epic History of the Style, Sound, & Revolution of…

Willie Nelson – The Complete Atlantic Sessions

It’s ironic that one of the terms coined to describe the music various singer/songwriters were making in Austin in the early 1970s was “progressive country” (others being “redneck rock” and the more marketable…

John Monteleone

The Chisels Are Calling

Captured in this documentary, John Monteleone’s hand-crafted fretted instruments draw inspiration from the past. His chief inspirations are legendary guitar craftsmen John D’Angelico and Jimmy D’Aquisto, and he incorporates untraditional design ideas such…

The Immediate Family

The Immediate Family

The Immediate Family consists of bassist Leland Sklar, drummer Russ Kunkel, guitarists Steve Postell, Waddy Wachtel, and Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar. In the ’70s, these iconic sidemen were called the Section and their resumes…

Mike Zito

Mike Zito’s latest serves up large helpings of boogie, blues, and roadhouse-ready rock. His guitar work is stellar as usual and the band features Rob McNelly on guitar, Tommy McDonald on bass, and…

Faces

Sloppy Rock, The Way God Intended

When singer/guitarist Steve Marriott left England’s Small Faces at the end of ’68, to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, the band replaced him with two émigrés from the Jeff Beck Group –…

Russell Malone – Heartstrings

Heartstrings

It’s the age-old question, does the use of strings somehow cheapen the music? Wes Montgomery is still to this day vilified for using strings. Wrongly, I might add. George Benson takes grief. Even…

Tom Feldmann

Old Blues with New Soul

Everyday you hear someone who claims to have the blues. But if you’re going to revive the old songs once again for the umpteenth time, you better have something new to add. Tom…

The Country Gentlemen – The Complete Vanguard Recordings

The Complete Vanguard Recordings

If you listen to vintage Bill Monroe recordings, then to current bluegrass from the likes of Allison Krauss, it’s hard to see how we got from there to here. But once you listen…

Nate Najar

This Is Nate Najar

Nate Najar plays accessible jazz on a classical guitar and applies classical technique to match. This album showcases the music veteran playing a variety of tunes that range from Chopin’s “Prelude in E…

Bruce Cockburn

True North

In more ways than one, American audiences are still catching up with this Canadian singer/songwriter. In fact, that tag illustrates how those of us south of the border are largely familiar with only…

Greg Nagy

Blues rocker Greg Nagy makes the Northern industrial equivalent to Southern country of the 1950s and ’60s. He melds ’70s West Coast R&B, British blues rock, Albert King tones, dollops of Steely Dan,…

Tab Benoit – Fever For the Bayou

Benoit has a feel and authenticity to his playing. His records always bring a smile of familiarity to my face when I first hear them, like an old coat that you haven’t worn…

James Brown – I Got the Feelin’

Shout Factory

While a generation may remember James Brown as a soul star who fell on hard times, or as a man whose death has led to a tabloid-ready story of a fight for his…

Omar And The Howlers – Swingland

I first ran across Omar Dykes in the mid ’80s when I heard a bluesy radio-ready rock album called Hard Times In The Land Of Plenty. I liked it, and some quick research…

John Mayer

Sob Rock

John Mayer’s latest is a somber ode to the soft-rockin’ ’80s – think Henley and Hornsby. But don’t start eye-rolling just yet. Produced by Don Was, Mayer delivers the most polished guitar playing…

Eric Clapton

With Eric Clapton’s 2014 announcement that he would no longer tour, his tribute album to J.J. Cale the same year, and subsequent revelation that he’d been suffering from peripheral neuropathy, the double-CD release…

Mississippi John Hurt – Memorial Anthology

John Hurt played a different breed of blues from Delta stalwarts like Son House and Robert Johnson. Hurt was an all-around songster, and his simple guitar and downhome voice were infectious. This two-CD…

Cedric Burnside

Be Trying

One of 35 grandchildren of the late R.L. Burnside, Cedric grew up in the rundown Holly Springs, Mississippi, home that housed four generations of Burnsides. An award-winning drummer, he was behind a kit…

Rodrigo y Gabriela

This is Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero’s first album of new material in five years. It comes two years after the duo’s big collaborative effort, Area 52, and marks a return to the…

Washita Love Child: The Rise of Indigenous Rock Star Jesse Ed Davis

Douglas K. Miller

“(Jesse Ed Davis) is the cream of the crop; he’s better than Clapton and Hendrix put together,” said Gram Parsons. How’s that for an endorsement? Davis, a brilliant guitarist whose playing was loved…

The Clutter Family

(Self-distributed)

Whatever else happens to The Clutters, they will never be invited to Sarah Palin’s house for Thanksgiving dinner – the name of their song about her can’t even be printed. But they are…

Steve Khan – Got My Mental

Khan’s been around for awhile. He’s made some great albums as a solo artist, dating back to the ’70s. He also served in Billy Joel’s band in the late ’70s, and has done…

Jimmy McIntosh

While guitarists in high-profile bands get the lion’s of share of publicity, the working stiffs who slug it out on local stages get no love. Las Vegas sideman Jimmy McIntosh is one of…

The Best of Sessions at West 54th – Volume 1 (DVD)

Although this DVD is over two years old, I think it’s still the best live performance music DVD out there. What makes it so good? Not only are the production values top-notch, but…

Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison waxed optimistic about life and music on December 4, 1988, the day he played a concert near Cleveland and did a video interview discussing his dramatically revived career. Two days later,…