Sound the Eric Clapton holy grail klaxon: Slowhand’s 1989 to ’93 guitar rig is being auctioned off, and this is a big one.

ANALOGr is hosting the auction and has placed estimates between $2,500,000 and $3,000,000. One lucky collector will be able to set this up in their backyard and play the same 1988 Custom Shop signature Fender Stratocaster and the same Soldano amp that Clapton played at Cream’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in January 1993.

Heck, the neighbors won’t mind, not once they see what you’re playing through (though if you can afford to drop $3m a guitar rig then perhaps the neighbors will be far enough away not to matter).

This is is Journeyman-era treasure, and so it’s hard to know which item to get more excited about first. The Soldano SLO-100 was hand-built by Mike Soldano himself, and comes with a COA signed by the tube amp guru.

It’s paired with a full-stack – one slanted Soldano 4x12, one straight 4x12 – and they all come in that silver snakeskin vinyl covering that was the fashion of the time.

The Strat, however, has a sort of "Blackie" MkII mojo to it. This was built by the Fender Custom Shop’s founder and Master Builder Mike Stevens, and was the very first Clapton signature Strat. It’s finished in black with a white pickguard. It has trio of Lace Sensor single-coil pickups, and the onboard boost.

It looks like Stevens used a particularly nice piece of maple for the neck and fingerboard. This was for Mr Clapton, after all. But Clapton did enjoy a cigarette while he performed, and this guitar bears the scars from where he would place it between his strings.

This guitar was sold before in 2004 as part of Christie’s epic Crossroads Guitar Auction. Back then, Clapton’s tech, Lee Dickson, explained why this made this particular Strat special. Clapton was about to go on the patches.

“I think this is the last smoking guitar,” said Dickson “This to me is one of the killer guitars. It was played an awful lot through the early '90s. It has no serial number on it because it’s the first [black] one, almost like a prototype. It was Eric’s suggestion at the time. He said we should really have a black one in the range. So this is the first officially sanctioned black [Clapton] Strat.”

The Clapton Strat was released in Torino Red, 7-Up Green and Pewter. In 2004, Stevens revealed that this guitar was originally finished in Pewter. And it most definitely was a prototype

“I remember this guitar well. It started life in Pewter as the Royal Albert Hall pics show,” said Stevens. “When it finally became black and beautiful I do not know, but I applaud it.”

Like Stevens says, this guitar was at the Royal Albert Hall, played with Cream – it was his main stage guitar from the summer of 1990 to March 1993.

Stevens left no stone unturned when designing Clapton’s signature Strat, and he was given access to the holiest of holies to get the neck profile just right, Blackie. Stevens had Blackie for two weeks, and not that he was paranoid, but he says it “never left my sight unless locked in my office in Corona or stashed under my bed with a pistol under my pillow while I slept.”

“When I finally copied Blackie, to finalize the Clapton series for Fender, I made two necks for Eric that were approved,” he said. “John Page, George Blanda, the electronic R&D guys and I all worked on this project. I built the necks and the carving templates and later helped get it into regular production. But then my job was to assemble my necks on these two bodies and make them play great!”

According to Where’s Eric?, this 1988 Custom Shop prototype Strat sold in 2004 for $231,500. It might be worth considerably more now. Might Joe Bonamassa be tempted to add Clapton's SLO-100 to Gary Moore's?

Head over to ANALOGr for more.

Born out of a chance meeting between songwriter/producer Aryan King and P.A.F. pickup specialist Alexey Dovnar, Octaking Labs has announced its first pedal, the Burstphonic PAF.

This debut release sees the company teaming up with guitarist Jack Moore – son of Northern Irish legend Gary Moore – to create a pedal that aims to “authentically capture the Greeny Moore legacy” via its “massive headroom, rich, clean harmonics, and that unmistakable, soaring out-of-phase sound.”

The 100 percent analog pedal features controls for level, bass, sparkle and P.A.F., with two mini switches to select between ’59/Greeny and LP/Strat modes.

Octaking is calling it “the world’s first ever guitar pedal” because it was designed to reproduce the tonal identity of the storied 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that was owned by Peter Green and Moore before it made its way into the hands of Kirk Hammett.

Instead of emulating amplifier saturation, the pedal reshapes the input signal to reflect vintage P.A.F. response curves, midrange complexity and bloom, as well as the natural compression and harmonic richness of aged tonewoods.

“Dad’s sound was never just distorted guitar,” Jack Moore tells GW. “It was a living thing – mid-forward and singing, with this bloom after the note that made even a simple bend feel like it had air around it.

“There was grit, but it was musical grit. The amp and the guitar talked back to him. You could hear the pick attack, then the note would open up and hang there just long enough that he didn’t have to rush.”

This particular relationship with tone was undeniably symbiotic – the sound of the guitar and the amp together inspired the much-missed blues giant to find the right lines and phrases to play.

“When the sound has that kind of sustain and harmonic richness, you start writing phrases around it,” Moore adds. “You hold a note because it wants to be held. You leave space because the decay is doing half the work. You bend slower because the overtones are already doing the drama.

“A drier, tighter tone would have pushed him toward shorter, more percussive ideas. His sound invited melody, vibrato, and those little vocal-style inflections. The gear didn’t replace his hands – it gave his hands a voice that matched how he heard music.”

As for sonically replicating one of the most recognizable guitars in rock and roll history, Octaking deliberately chose not to pursue the instrument itself and instead opted for a more empirical and forensic approach to the project.

“We gathered primary source data, including measurements from Gary’s late-’90s signature model,” Aryan King explains.

“We also had access to Stripe – Gary’s iconic 1959 Les Paul heard on Still Got The Blues. Alongside these, we analyzed isolated DI tracks from benchmark songs like Parisienne Walkways and Need Your Love So Bad, and selections from the Blues For Greeny album.”

The company’s engineering team mapped the electrical profile of the original pickups using a spectrum analyzer – precisely tracking inductance, impedance, and the resonant peak response.

“A massive part of the pedal’s architecture accounts for the famous accidental Greeny mod,” explains Director and co-founder Alexey Dovnar. “The flipped neck-pickup magnet polarity that created Gary’s piercing, nasal, out-of-phase middle position.

“We modeled that exact phase cancellation and frequency curve inside the circuit to ensure that when the Greeny mode is engaged, the pedal delivers that unmistakable hollow, vocal bite. And then the ’59 mode captures the broader dynamic envelope of an authentic late-’50s P.A.F. ’Burst, with the woody lower-mid bloom, transparent top-end clarity, pick attack sensitivity, and smooth sustain.”

The final thumbs up came from Jack Moore, who had been working with Aryan King on the pedal prior to the company being launched, offering his personal insight, feedback, and – ultimately – approval.

“For the family, this release is very personal,” Moore says. “My dad’s voice is still in the room. For fans, it’s respectful and useful. They’re not being sold a costume. The best tribute isn’t imitation for its own sake – it’s when a kid in a bedroom hears that midrange bloom, writes a line they wouldn’t have written on a sterile clean amp, and the music keeps moving forward.

“That’s the point: preserve the character of the tone so people can use it, not just admire it.”

• Head to Octaking for more information.

Back in 2007, as part of its regular Dear Guitar Hero column, Guitar World asked readers to submit any burning questions they had for ageless blues guitar legend Buddy Guy. Guy, of course, had stories and wisdom aplenty...

What was the hardest part for you on the road to becoming such an accomplished guitar player? – Stephen Lang

The rhythm. When I first came to Chicago in 1957, they was making fun of me! The late Junior Wells used to say, “You can play, but you ain’t got no time.” And I was like, “What the hell is that?” So, [drummer] Fred Below and me would go play, just drums and guitar, and he told me, “Every time you hear me make this turnaround, that’s the end of a chorus.” And that's when I started learning rhythm.

What was it about those old blues players that gave their records such a warm, honest sound? – Todd Walker

I think it has to do with technology. What you hear on those old recordings is exactly what the artists were doing in the studio. Nothing was added to make my sound perfect; it was just a guitar, an amplifier, and a microphone.

Nowadays, you’ve got so many buttons to push in a recording studio, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

When I play the blues, I find myself repeating too much. How did you learn to keep your licks and phrases different and interesting? – Tommy Lee Atkins

I think you just need to let someone listen to you. Something new is coming out each and every time you play, but you can’t hear it. I know that I couldn’t hear it in my own playing.

I used to throw my guitar in a corner and attempt to walk away from it. I’d be thinking, ‘You’ll never get it!’ I felt like I was at a stand still, that I wasn’t learning anymore. But every time someone else heard me, they could hear things in my playing that I couldn’t. Man, all you’ve gotta do is keep playing that guitar.

Of all the musicians you’ve heard over the years, who stands out in your mind as being underrated and under-appreciated? – Patrick Fischer

Earl Hooker. I tried to figure out slide guitar after I’d heard Elmore James play slide, but people kept tellin’ me to go hear Earl Hooker play. I said, “Who is that?” ’cause he didn’t have no records out. But one night I walked into a club and I heard this melody, like someone was singing. I said, “Who is that singing?” and someone said, “No-one. That's Hooker playing the slide.”

I had a slide in my pocket, and even before I got introduced to him, I just walked up and gave it to him.

Buddy, some of my favorite albums of yours are the ones you made for Vanguard Records, like A Man and the Blues. How do you feel about that period in your career? – Rick Longley

My feeling was that Muddy Waters had made Chess Records a success, so where could I fit in? When I went to Vanguard, I was able to have some impact finally, because I had a little more freedom there. When the British guys started hearing my Vanguard recordings, they started cranking up, too.

Even so, I still had one hand tied behind me. Vanguard wanted that Muddy Waters kind of “real” blues, and they wouldn’t let me turn it up like I was doing when I played live.

What was the Chicago club scene like in the late Fifties and early Sixties? And what did audiences expect from their entertainers? – Janie Reagan

The audiences in the clubs were 99.9 percent black, and when you played for black audiences, you had to put on a show, just like Little Richard or James Brown did. It was a show when guys like that played, and that’s what people went to see.

The performers danced, and they wanted you to be into it. It wasn’t a Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra type thing where you could stand there and stop people in their tracks and make ’em just listen to your voice. We had to make ’em look and say, ‘What is he doing?’

Josh Smith’s Two Rock amp has been found days after it was declared missing – and he’ll be kicking himself over where it was discovered.

The blues guitarist, who also stars as Joe Bonamassa’s right-hand man in his live band, feared his amp missing last week. Bonamassa alerted his social media followers of its disappearance, promising a “generous reward” for its safe return.

Smith, though, will be rewarding himself. It seems to be similar to the case of Jerry Cantrell's missing G&L Rampage, which was innocently misplaced last year: it turns out the Two Rock was right where it had been left at a previous gig.

“Hey Josh,” Bonamassa mockingly says in a new Instagram post, filmed in Dortmund, Germany. The camera is pointed right at Smith. “What will you be using on stage as your amplification device?” he asks.

“I got my Two Rock back, it was right where we left it in Leverkusen, Germany,” Smith replies. “It was right underneath the stage.”

Despite the mix-up, the sentiment shared by Bonamassa and Smith here is that the post calling for people to be on the lookout did contribute to its safe return.

For Cantrell, he perhaps had fair reason to panic. A separate guitar that Eddie Van Halen had once gifted to him went missing for nearly 20 years. For Smith, he perhaps just needs to get better at sweeping venues during load out. It’s a valuable lesson learned.

Stolen gear, though, is a serious matter. Eddie Vedder recently came to the aid of an Irish band after their entire backline was stolen from the road, and Paul Gilbert had a cherished guitar stolen in a $12,000 theft. So no one can blame Smith for sending out the search party. At least it’s back where it belongs.

Orianthi’s new Band of Gypsys-inspired power trio, the Power of 3, have unveiled their third single, and it features a previously unheard guitar riff from Jimi Hendrix.

The former Michael Jackson guitarist has teamed up with drummer Cindy Blackman Santana (Buckethead, Lenny Kravitz) and Prince bassist Rhonda Smith for a band that pays tribute to Hendrix’s firebrand psychedelic blues.

They’ve even partnered with the late guitar legend’s producer, Eddie Kramer, for their debut record. Taxi, their latest single, takes their Hendrix lore to new extremes.

The four-strong team were granted access to the fabled Hendrix archives for the record. During her explorations, Orianthi discovered a Hendrix riff that’s never before seen the light of day, and so Taxi was built around it.

The song starts with some city streets foley, and is immediately reminiscent of Crosstown Traffic, before a galloping riff takes hold. Orianthi is a PRS artist, but there’s a snapping, Strat-like quality to her tone here. And she unloads a pretty tasty guitar solo, too, with enough whammy bar fluctuations and personal flourishes to take it away from being solely impressionistic.

“Getting to hear something from Jimi that the world hasn’t heard before was pretty incredible,” Orianthi says. “The moment I heard that riff, I knew there was something special there and immediately started imagining what we could do with it.

“There’s something really powerful about the three of us creating something new around a piece of music from someone who has inspired us so much,” she adds. “It’s our way of honoring Jimi while making something that's completely our own.”

The band’s self-titled debut album releases on December 11 via She2Music. Carlos Santana is set for a guest spot, too.

Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis encouraged Orianthi to assemble a Band of Gypsys-inspired power trio several years ago, and the project has grown legs since. The album follows two performances at the Raider’s Allegiant Stadium, where Nita Strauss just made her Alice Cooper return.

For many, the band is a better alternative to Eddie Kramer’s suggestion of using AI to bring more Hendrix material to life, just as the Beatles did with Now and Then.

The Power of 3 is out December 11 via She2Music and available to preorder/presave now.

Eric Johnson is one of those rare artists who has created a unique style from classic elements of blues, jazz and rock.

His playing covers a diverse range of sonic bases, from delicate harmonics and super-clean crystalline chords to edgy rhythms and roaring distorted solo lines. He delivers all these using a vintage or signature model Strat, according to his preference of the moment.

His modest pedalboard features a few carefully chosen pieces, plus the switching for his multi-amp setup – a rig that has hardly changed since his debut solo record, Tones, dating back to 1986.

Although Eric is renowned for his forensic approach to getting the perfect tone, he certainly isn’t one to jump on the latest fads looking for shortcuts and isn’t seduced by the novelty of new gear.

It’s worth noting that Eric has more recently been experimenting with modern digital units, so clearly has an eye on the future when it comes to his rig, but in the meantime recently shipped his whole backline to Europe, to avoid compromising his sound. That’s commitment to the art over profit!

The example solo, though split into four sections, was played as a continuous take. It borrows heavily from Eric’s approach to pentatonics, arpeggios and touches of Texas blues. And while I don’t claim to have duplicated Eric’s tone or style definitively here, this solo is very much inspired by him.

It contains quite a few ideas that can hopefully be of use should you wish to incorporate a bit of the ‘EJ magic’ into your own playing.

This isn’t a fast ‘shred’-type affair, but it does require sustained accuracy and concentration. Very much a case of building up to it, rather than expecting to jump straight in… Hope you enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1.

This first example aims to establish the feel, featuring a Texas blues shuffle-style riff with some pentatonic fills. As there’s a fairly sparse backing here of just bass and drums (echoing the line up of Eric’s live band), it felt important not to rush into a single-note solo immediately.

The feel is fairly loose – though there are some staccato notes, you’ll hear the open fourth and fifth strings ringing occasionally, such as in bars 1 and 3.

Example 2.

The ascending run during the first two bars features some wide intervallic skips based around D-Em-D7-G-Am chord shapes – all superimposed over a D on the bass. I’ve opted to pick these, but Eric will sometimes use a hybrid pick-and-fingers style, as he does on Cliffs Of Dover.

We break out of this into a more melodic D major based run, then some bluesy doublestops and 6ths (F#) as we move back to A in the bass.

Example 3.

Over the C major and D major chords I’ve opted to play a line influenced by Eric’s playing on the track Camel’s Night Out, then changed position with a few slides and legato moves to land at a D major arpeggio, which is played in triplets.

This is one of those moments that can be deceptively difficult to articulate, but running it through slowly (in fact, very slowly is surprisingly helpful) while maintaining a relaxed posture will definitely get you there. More haste, less speed…

Example 4.

Jumping down for that low E helps fill the gap between solo guitar and bass, followed by an E pentatonic/Mixolydian run and an E major arpeggio-based pattern. Framing the chords with arpeggios like this can also help with filling in any harmonic ‘information’ in this trio format, as we saw in Example 3.

The pinched harmonic at the end can be a hit and miss affair. Eric has a pretty good hit rate on these, but it’s important to be realistic – try just behind the neck pickup and you’ll find it somewhere there!

HEAR IT HERE

Eric Johnson – Ah Via Musicom

From Eric’s second solo album, we’re coming in here with the most obvious first choice, Cliffs Of Dover, a track that definitively demonstrates Eric’s blazing lead tone and cascading pentatonic lines.

Also, check out Desert Rose for more of his unique take on pentatonics, plus chord harmony in his solo lines. While you’re there, have a listen to Trademark to hear Eric switching between tones/amp rigs to great effect. Finally, Righteous is a great demonstration of Eric’s approach to a fast Texas blues shuffle.

Eric Johnson – Venus Isle

A lot to check out on this record. Firstly, Eric’s Hendrix-style chord accompaniment and stratospheric solo on the title track. There’s also a lovely extended solo at the end of All About You. Elsewhere, it’s well worth a listen to Camel’s Night Out (apparently played on a Gibson Flying V) and When The Sun Meets The Sky.

You’ll hear some switches in tone – sometimes a switch between amps, sometimes maybe a punch-in during the recording process. Whatever, the results speak for themselves!

Eric Johnson – Live From Austin, TX

It’s always interesting to check out the live versions of tracks for extra insight into the creative process and production/arrangements. Here, it also demonstrates that Eric is every bit as astonishing live as he is in the studio.

We hear him switching between amps, tones and techniques in real-time on tracks such as Trail Of Tears and an extended intro on Cliffs Of Dover. Live versions of Righteous and Zap feature lots of fluid solo playing. It’s worth noting that many of these tracks are available on video, too.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Grammy-nominated blues guitarist Josh Smith’s Two Rock amp is missing, and Joe Bonamassa is calling on his fans to help track it down.

The amp, Bonamassa says in an Instagram post, was last seen in Cologne, Germany, with the bluesman hoping his social media shout out will see it returned safely home.

“Friends, please help us retrieve Josh Smith’s Two Rock head that was last seen at the WDR Big Band gig in Cologne, Germany,” Bonamassa says. “It is in a black Two Rock road case with the letters JS stenciled on it.

“Any info please reach out as there is a generous reward for its safe return. Please email rachael@jr-adventures.com if you see it around.”

A celebrated solo artist in his own right, Smith is also a key player in Bonamassa’s live band, and together, they once brought a legendary pickup builder to tears.

While the social media post might feel like a Hail Mary, it can yield results. In 2021, Bonamassa pleaded for the return of his near-priceless Fender NoCaster, “The Bludgeon” after fearing it had gone missing in transit. It was found safe and sound just days later.

And when FedEx lost a session ace’s vintage Gretsch, Johnny Marr’s tweet helped track it down to a guitar store several states over. Bonamassa’s post might just help turn the tide here.

The guitarist, meanwhile, has been making his own splashes in the news. He’s shocked the gear world by releasing a signature Tone Master copy of his beloved ‘59 Twin, having already confessed to taking it on tour.

In putting the music together for my band Blackberry Smoke, I’ll often come up with a primary guitar part – the one that plays the principle riff of the song – along with a complimentary part that sits under it and offers musical and rhythmic support.

A good example of this can be found in Morningside, which we recorded for our 2021 album, You Hear Georgia. I wrote this song with my good friend Nick Perri, who’s a fabulous guitar player you may have heard of from his work with Perry Ferrell, Matt Sorum and many others.

Morningside opens with a heavy single-note riff that’s played in the key of B and with a triplet, or swing, 16ths feel, illustrated in Figure 1. The riff is based on the B minor pentatonic scale (B, D, E, F#, A) and alternately references the I (one) and IV (four) chords, B, and E, bar to bar. The triplet feel gives the riff a nice swing-type groove, especially as it’s played against a slow, half-time feel.

At the verse section, the guitars settle into ringing chords that serve to lay down a solid foundation for the vocals. Figure 2 shows the B root note octaves played as whole notes by the main guitar part, which I slide into.

Figure 3 depicts the complimentary ringing 1st-position chords played by the second guitar part, which is treated with a tremolo-type modulation effect and alternates bars of Bm7add4 and E7/B.

This is followed by a return of the intro riff, which leads into the second verse and a reprise of the ringing parts shown in Figures 2 and 3.

We then go to the chorus, the complimentary guitar parts for which are illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. The primary part (Figure 4) simply rides on major and dominant 7 chords with the progression E - F#7 - G7 - A7. At the end of the phrase, it reverts back to the single-note B minor pentatonic riff.

While the main guitar lays down the foundation of the progression of full chords, I felt that the complimentary guitar part, shown in Figure 5, needed to “dance” with the vocal melody.

This part adds syncopated, hybrid-picked dyads over each chord in the progression. While downpicking the low 6th-string root notes in a steady eighth-note rhythm, I fingerpick moving two-note figures on the D and G strings over each chord.

Notice that the pattern always begins with the B note on the G string’s 4th fret as the highest note, which then descends, offering its own countermelody behind the vocals.

I wanted the solo section that follows to move to an entirely different feel. As shown in Figure 6, a D5 power chord moves down to D5/C#, followed by C#7 then F#m and E. Underneath this part, the complimentary guitar arpeggiates the related but slightly altered progression Dsus2 - A/C# - C#7 - F#m7 - Esus4 with somewhat different voicings.

The modus operandi throughout this song has been for the primary guitar to “sit” in a very clear place while the complimentary guitar moves around it in various ways.

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, a master of layering multiple guitar parts, refers to the process as the “ancient art of weaving,” which is a perfect way to describe how two guitar parts can compliment one another.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse guitarist and British Blues Hall of Famer Robin Davey has launched a new solo album and took the opportunity to issue an astonishing attack on Joe Bonamassa and today’s cohort of blues players.

Davey, whose credits include the Hoax and Well Hung Heart, writes on Facebook that contemporary blues guitar has been “screwed up” by Bonamassa (as spotted by Louder).

“His influence has permeated through the younger generations and it hurts my ears,” says Davey. “It is devoid of soul, it is all about maximizing profits and maximizing Joe’s ego.”

He and Bonamassa have a different idea of what ‘keeping the blues alive’ looks like in practice. Davey claims his new album, The Blues According To Gutbucket Slim, is his “vision of what the blues can be”. Available via Bandcamp, the album – more an EP, technically – is a mash-up of blues and hip-hop, whose opening track is titled Hey Joe (Daddy’s on the Phone).

Perhaps Davey wants to inject a little Drake-Kendrick energy into the 21st-century blues scene. All scenes could use some spice. But then diss tracks and pop-cultural beefs usually work better when the audience is familiar with both parties to the feud – and especially when both parties in the feud are aware of one another.

Don’t expect to see Davey in Miami next March getting ready to board the Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea XII cruise to Grand Cayman. Bonamassa might make him walk the plank.

“I’m tired of the endless stream of white blues that dominates the blues festival circuit,” says Davey. “These people can’t write songs, they have no creativity and they all sound alike – their playing is so devoid of personality. There I said it.”

Davey’s Gutbucket Slim album was made some time ago but for a number of reasons he chose not to release it. He cites his core influences as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Rage Against the Machine, Beck, Lightnin’ Hopkins and B.B King, and Guy Forsyth, who guests on Migraine Blues. .

B.B. King? It's a small world. Bonamassa played with B.B. King, and the King of the Blues even taught him how to use an iPod.

“This record will not be hugely successful,” says Davey. “I don’t know if anyone will hear it, but I’m putting it out so that it may help people think differently about what the blues can be.”

Is Davey’s broadside going to be the opening salvo in blues guitar’s own version of the Bridge Wars, KRS-One vs Marley Marl? Oasis vs Blur? Gutbucket Slim has the stomach for a fight. But probably not. Still, it’s a good way of drumming up some attention, and it is always worth considering what the future of any art form is going to look or sound like.

You can give The Blues According To Gutbucket Slim a spin above and decide for yourself if Robin Davey has the songwriting chops to back all this future-of-blues talk up.

There’s a misconception that folk music is about preserving the past, but look at any worthwhile artists in the genre and you’ll see it’s about storytelling. Just like the classics, these songs are there to be adapted, and reshaped as each storyteller – or songwriter – sees fit. Folk music is really transformation, and Jake Xerxes Fussell is part guitarist, part alchemist.

He draws on an encyclopedic knowledge of folk and blues, polishes off the useless crud and carefully transforms it. What might start life as a sea shanty or Irish folk ballad somehow appears, through his glistening guitar work, newly minted and fit for purpose in 2026.

“Early on I realized something – and I think this had to do with watching other people play – but I really liked it when songs felt like they were a part of the person,” he tells Guitar World.

“That the person's playing was an extension of themselves. [It was the] transformative moments that really moved me – not a literal application of an idea.”

Fussell grew up in Georgia with folklorist parents and was immersed in the music from day one. His father would frequently take trips around the state to record blues and folk performers. One of those musicians, country blues and gospel musician Precious Bryant, became a family friend and an early mentor.

“She lived 25 minutes down the road in Thomson and she was a great guitar player,” recalls Fussell. “By the time I got to be in high school and I could drive, I drove out to her place a bunch and would sit with her and play and try to learn from her.

“When I was really young, 10 or 11, she said, ‘If you want to learn how to play chords, it might be easier on a ukulele.’ So that's the way that I taught myself chords. I just tuned the ukulele to the top four strings [guitar style].”

The move from four strings to six became a natural progression. “Nobody in my family played guitar,” says Fussell. “But my dad would keep one around in case he was going to visit somebody. A lot of these older blues guys, they would pawn their guitar, and so he would always have a cheap guitar hanging on a nail in the hallway.”

Fussell graduated to his own instrument, and soon the adventures with his father turned into solo excursions. Along the way, he met and learned – mostly, he says, through observation – from a huge variety of blues and folk performers, among them the likes of JW Warren, John Lee Ziegler, Robert Thomas and George Daniel.

He admits his recollections of the period are somewhat hazy, but there’s a “sense memory” tied to that time.

“It's hard to disentangle your feelings about the environment, or where you are, from the songs themselves,” he reflects.

“I remember the way that the interiors of people's homes felt, or I remember, a lot of these older guys smoked cheap cigarettes – that smell was always around – and there was whiskey and things like that. But also those environmental things, being in a rural area that's very different from where I live now.”

After leaving home, Fussell moved all over, with stints in Mississippi, and the West Coast and more encounters along the way. “I feel so fortunate,” he says, of his meandering guitar spirit quest.

“I learned some unusual things, different tunings, and it gave me a different respect for gear. A lot of those guys, growing up, none of them had money, so they would play whatever guitar they could get a hold of. But they would develop real closeness or fondness for certain instruments that worked for them, even though they weren't high-end gear.

“People would gift Precious Bryant really old parlor guitars that were valuable – and she had no interest in those. She liked really big cheap Japanese guitars from the ’80s. George Daniel actually played a Goldtop Les Paul that he had bought in the ’50s, which is amazing, but then a lot of those guys would play Silvertones.”

Like the players he learned from, Fussell has an agnostic approach, flowing easily between electric and acoustic – but mostly playing fingerstyle through his go-to Telecaster and a vintage Fender combo. Playing quietly through a loud amp means he can knock you down with a feather, with a clean sound that captures all the intricacies of his rhythm hand.

It’s a move he says was born out of practicality, during his time gigging in Oxford, MS. “Mississippi is a very talkative place,” he laughs. “You need to be loud or you're gonna be ignored!” However, he notes the connection was really cemented when he inherited his Telecaster from his friend J.D. Mark, who passed away suddenly in 2013.

“When he died, his family gave his guitars to his music friends, which is a very sweet gesture,” says Fussell. “So I had this Telecaster. I kept it around just to think of him, but the more I was playing around town, [the more] I realized it was the perfect guitar for what I was trying to do. Now it's actually the only electric guitar I own – so I can thank Jim Mark for that.”

• Jake Xerxes Fussell’s new album, The Old Beloved Path, is out now on Fat Possum Records. He tours the US and Europe in November and December.

John Mayer has an exceptional nose for guitar talent. In the past, he’s championed the likes of Madison Cunningham, Justus West and George Collins.

Therefore, when he dishes out praise, you know it’s reserved for the best of the best. And in a recent interview with Guitar World, he heaped acclaim on a British guitar ace who’s racking up quite the list of admirers.

“Chris Buck,” Mayer replies when asked who he’s listening to at the moment. “He’s great. He’s freaking phenomenal. The guy’s bending? He’s curving the bullet.”

The Cardinal Black guitarist is one of the hottest blues-rock stars working the circuit. His ultra-melodic style, which pivots between fingerstyle and pick action, brims with tastefulness and a vocal sensibility.

But his technique, particularly his bending, is top class. Mayer is particularly in awe of the way Buck is able to use the same tools at everyone’s disposal but go beyond the confines of the fretboard. It’s a skill that only the very best can master.

“They bend a little bit, but ultimately, you have six vertical lines and 22 horizontal lines,” Mayer adds. “If you can make your instrument sound like it’s circular, like it’s a ball, I’m done.

“Bill Evans played the piano as if you never saw a piano before. You would not think that that’s the instrument he was playing on. That’s even harder to do. He only had pressure, velocity, and could curve the bullet.

“It’s like, I love baseball pitchers because they can do things with a baseball that you can’t imagine. Those are physics. I love people who just have this other take on the physics of the instrument.”

Mayer isn’t the only one who has singled out Buck for praise. Guns N’ Roses guitar hero Slash is also a big admirer. In fact, he was so impressed by his playing that he helped Cardinal Black solve their visa issues when they were planning their first US tour last year.

Elsewhere in his Guitar World interview, Mayer listed the other contemporary guitar heroes that he’s currently listening to.

“I saw Marcus King playing with MonoNeon,” he reveals. “There’s a band called Improvement Movement that blew me away.

“In terms of guitar players, when Bill Frisell plays, I don’t scroll. When Charlie Hunter plays, I don’t scroll. I don’t scroll when I see Blake Mills play. I don’t scroll when I see Doyle Bramhall play, or when Julian Lage plays.”

Mayer was speaking to Guitar World about his newest Silver Sky collaboration with Land Rover Defender – which, as the timeline confirms, was not a dig at Fender.

While we all talk about minor pentatonic soloing, I'm often asked as a guitar teacher of 20+ years: “How do I get out of the pentatonic rut?” My answer is always the same: you don’t want to get away from the pentatonic scale, but rather take what it offers and supplement that with a few well chosen new notes.

So, what are the new notes? Well, they are your chord tones. These are the notes that make up each of the chords in a blues progression. If you want to navigate 'playing the changes', it’s important that you're able to target these chord tones at the right moment. This is how to make your soloing more melodic as more notes are sympathetic to the chords you're playing over.

If you think about the tonality of the minor pentatonic scale it is, obviously, inherently minor-sounding. However, many blues progressions are major chord-based. Sure you can use a few blues curl bends to fudge it, but that's missing the point – good notes played at the right time can't be substituted by styling it out.

Consider a blues in A that features the chords of A7, D7 and E7 – all of these chords contain major triads. This is where the minor pentatonic can start to grate as some notes will work for some of the chords, sometimes. By knowing when these chords occur in a 12 bar blues and the notes contained in them, the more likely you'll sound melodic and able to 'tell a story'.

So with consideration of great melodic bluesers like B.B. King, Peter Green and SRV, I’ve chosen to break the 12-bar blues down into bite-sized chunks, which makes it much easier to appreciate the structure.

To start off, listen to the backing track below which will provide the context for the following 10 examples. At this point, be especially aware of where the chord changes occur.

Example 1 - Target the roots (2:37 in the video)

The first step to 'playing the changes' in a blues context is to confidently target the root note of each chord. Blues is based on a I-IV-V progression, so in the key of A, it would be A7, D7 and E7 with each chord being major with a b7 added.

In each of these licks, you'll play the root note of the chord on the 1st beat of the bar, sometimes bending into the root from a whole tone below, or hammering onto the root from another scale degree. If you play with flow and good phrasing, things start to sound noticeably more melodic, even at this early stage... exciting!

Example 2 - Playing melodies (5:26 in the video)

Here you have a simple bluesy motif that moves between the I and IV chord. This approach to playing helps you create catchy little hooks that are both singable and memorable, less is more!

Example 3 - Chord tones (first four bars) (6:55 in the video)

You are making a point of targeting chord tones here. In order to do this you first need to understand a little about the types of chords you're playing over. These chords are typically either simple power chords, containing just the root and the fifth (eg A5 with the notes A and E), or full-on dominant 7th chords containing the root, 3rd, 5th and b7 (eg A7 with the notes A-C#-E-G).

With the first lick you’re playing over bars 1-4 of the 12-bar blues, so will be targeting the A7 chord tones (A C# E G) in the 1st bar, D7 chord tones (D F# A C) in the 2nd bar, and in bars 3 and 4 you're back to targeting the A7 chord tones. Notice only the A note is shared between both chords.

Example 4 - Chord tones (next four bars) (8:39 in the video)

Expanding on example 3, you can now target the chord tones for bars 4-8 of our 12-bar blues. So it's D7 for two bars, followed by A7 for two bars. Notice the amount of notes played that are derived from these two chords: you're 'playing the changes' with style!

Example 5 - The Blues scale (10:55 in the video)

If you add the b5 (diminished 5th) to the minor pentatonic you get the six note blues scale (R-b3-4-b5-5-b7). This b5 is referred to as the 'blue note' and can add substantial grit and grease to your phrases. For the A blues scale the notes are A-C-D-Eb-E-G.

Here you're playing over bars 5 to 8 of this 12-bar blues in A which results in D7, D7, A7, A7. Over the D7, start by hammering onto the blue note (Eb) from a D note, immediately return to D then off again to C. This a greasy blues lick, that works as well over A7 as it does here over D7.

Tip: the blue note (here, Eb) is often used best as decoration, rather than a note to dwell on.

The phrase is repeated (good blues licks thrive on repetition), before resolving back to the A7 chord via some tasty chord tone double-stops.

Example 6 - Old skool swinging 6ths (13:37 in the video)

This harkens back to the days of swing and jump blues (think T-Bone Walker or Tiny Grimes) by targeting the sixth degree of the scale. In this case, over the A chord, the sixth degree would be F#.

The opening phrase uses this interval across two octaves, before hitting one of my favorite rockabilly double-stops; the 6th (F#) with a b3 (C) on top. Over the D7 chord in bar 2, you'll target its 6th (B) as a note to bend up to the b7 (C). To end, you'll resolve to the A7 chord for bars 3 and 4, where there's liberal use of the sixth interval.

Example 7 - Bending to the right notes (16:18 in the video)

Here are the final four bars of the 12-bar blues: one bar of the V chord (E7), a bar of the IV chord (D7), then a two bar turnaround split between four chords; A7 for two beats, D7 for two beats, A7 for two beats, and then E7 for two beats.

Similar to earlier examples, you’re targeting chord tones over each chord. However, this time you're adding an extra layer of expression by bending into and out of chord notes. This is the next step for more lyrical and natural phrasing.

Important point; listen to how well you bend up to notes, especially when many are sustained such as in bar 2.

Example 8 - Navigating the turnaround (18:05 in the video)

Here you're playing over the final four bars of the 12-bar blues, making a point to efficiently outline the changes for the turnaround. Minimalism is valuable here, as is repetition and being melodic as opposed to more linear scale-based thinking.

Example 9 - Starting well (20:20 in the video)

It’s important that you can grab the attention of your listener right at the start of your solo. Sometimes the best way to do that is to kick the doors down and enter the room with some swagger! Powerful double-stop bends are great for this as well as having a strong vocal-like vibrato.

Good phrasing is key, as is confidence in your note choices. Your audience will be invested in your story from your first musical statement if you get this right.

Example 10 - Ending well (23:22 in the video)

Finishing well is as important as starting well. You want your solo to wrap up in a natural, cohesive way rather than coming to a sudden stop as if the bungee cord just snapped you back to the starting line. Good lead guitarists do just that: they lead the music so make sure you plan ahead and are aware of how and when to finish.

In this example, you'll finish on a powerful strike of an A9 chord after approaching it from a semitone above. It's a classic move you’ll have heard SRV use on many occasions.

Lonnie Mack’s guitar rig sold for more than half a million dollars at a recent auction event that set a new world record for a 1959 Gibson Les Paul ’Burst.

Heritage Auction’s Vintage Guitars and Musical Instruments Signature took place over the weekend and realized $2.16 million across 188 sold lots.

The two big hitters were the record setter – an “exceptionally preserved” 1959 Les Paul Standard – and Lonnie Mack’s workhorse Flying V, which was rarely out of the Stevie Ray Vaughan-adored bluesman’s hands. They sold for a combined $1.3 million.

Mack’s one-and-only 1958 korina Flying V went for a big six-figure sum. Just the seventh guitar off the production line of one of Gibson’s most prestigious runs, it sold alongside his 1962 Magnatone Custom 440 combo amp for $550,000.

Mack’s pioneering amalgamation of blues, rock, and country guitar playing cemented his place as a legend of the guitar world. He was a key influence of Stevie Ray Vaughan, who later helped revive the unsung hero’s career after a chance encounter.

The V was, as ever, put hard to work in the studio as SRV produced his comeback album, Strike Like Lightning, in 1985.

Heritage Auction’s Aaron Piscopo says the six-string “helped shape the sound of modern electric guitar,” and it’s hard to argue against the sentiment.

“Together, their results demonstrate the depth of collecting interest in great instruments and the musical history they carry,” he adds.

It shared the spotlight with a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which broke the record for the most expensive guitar of its kind without celebrity provenance to sell at auction. It went for $781,250.

1959 is the golden year of vintage Les Pauls, and this record-smashing electric guitar underscores just how valuable they are today. The guitar, bearing serial No. 9 0640, looks pristine all these years on, its sunburst finish as glorious as ever.

It still sports its original humbuckers, and the solder joints on its potentiometers and capacitors haven’t succumbed to any modifications since leaving Gibson’s former Kalamazoo factory.

It left the previous non-celebrity guitar record holder – a $611,000 1958/63 Gibson Explorer – in tatters.

“The 1959 Les Paul Standard has long been one of the most sought-after electric guitars in the world, and this example offered an extraordinary combination of originality, preservation and documented collecting history,” says Aaron Piscopo.

“Its record price speaks to the importance collectors place on finding an exceptional instrument.”

Visit Heritage Auctions to explore the full lot.

Naturally, the figures raised here are some way off the fees which celebrity axes fetched during the bumper auction of Jim Irsay’s collection earlier this year, which hugely changed the make up of the list of the world’s most expensive guitars.

“I suppose that it keeps hammering at me, why didn’t we slow down?” Dónal Gallagher reflects. “Why didn’t we take life easy? It’s all those questions. But that was part of ‘Rory the Dynamo’. And probably that’s what happened when he was starting to get ill – the Dynamo kept going, but he couldn’t stop.”

But of course Dónal’s brother, Rory, one of the hardest-charging guitarists of all time, just didn’t work that way. And that, beyond all else, is the story told in Dónal’s new book, Edged In Blue, an autobiography of his life as sibling and road manager to one of the most influential guitarists of all time.

This book, by extension, is also the de facto first authorised biography of Rory himself: the man who inspired The Edge and Johnny Marr to play, who toured the world so intensely that there was barely a fleck of paint left on many parts of his famous ’61 Strat when he died in 1995.

And what a story it was. The book contains stadium riots, parties so wild that the National Guard had to be called out to stop them, limousines overturned by cattle backstage with ZZ Top, Johnny Rotten scandalising nuns on a flight to Cork and coffins sneaked into Beat-era clubs as stage props.

It contains epochal encounters with a roll-call of musical legends from Muddy Waters to Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jerry Lee Lewis, Captain Beefheart, Elvis, Bob Dylan (who got turned away by mistake at Rory’s dressing-room door), U2 and scores more.

But more importantly it is a portrait of a man who, in some ways, remained a closed book, even to his brother, throughout his life. It’s the first authorised account of Rory and Dónal’s childhood in Derry and Cork and of their mother Mona’s courage and devotion in nurturing Rory’s extraordinary talent, even when the family could scarcely afford to buy guitars.

We run, with Rory, alongside JFK’s motorcade on the president’s 1963 trip to Cork and experience life on the colourful and sometimes violent showband circuit in Ireland in the 1960s. We look over Rory’s shoulder as he writes songs that would become legendary among fans, and see Belfast through the eyes of musicians playing there at the grim height of the Troubles.

Above all else, though, it is the story of two brothers, the remarkable woman who raised them, and how a Fender guitar in a shop window changed not only their lives but the path of music history in Ireland and beyond. It’s a lot to sum up, as Dónal freely admits.

Speaking of Rory’s early days in his first band, Taste, Dónal says it was obvious that Rory’s dedication to music was an almost sacred mission to him, even in the early days of his career.

“My mother would be like, ‘When are you coming home? Haven’t you done enough now?’ But Rory would say, ‘No, we’re only just starting this.’ I’d be missing my pals back in Cork… your day was completely upside down to what was a pleasant life back home. But we just kept pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing.”

This calling to music provides the continuous, vivid thread of their lives together that was only broken with Rory’s death and, in a sense, not even then. And Dónal was there to witness it all, from boyhood stage appearances together in Cork to becoming Rory’s roadie and then road manager throughout thousands of gigs and untold highway miles.

Dónal’s first sense that taking care of business on the road with his brother might become a serious career was when Taste was invited to support Blind Faith on tour in the States in 1969 – and, even then, it seemed there were no guarantees, he recalls.

“I didn’t know whether Taste were going to take me to the States in ’69 because I really felt that I’d be surplus to requirements – I thought that there’d be a communal PA system and Taste were a three-piece so there wasn’t so much gear – so I always made it look heavier and bulkier than it was [laughs]. But then when we got over there, you found out that basically Blind Faith’s production was really unsatisfactory, to put it that way. So you had to get stuck in.

“But it was a great way to bond and form friendships with their crew and the other musicians. I mean, at that time, Eric Clapton didn’t have his own roadie, though Steve Winwood had a guy who looked after his keyboard, and Mick Turner was looking after Ginger. But if you think of how many people would be required to stage an arena tour today, all the crew, catering, trucking companies and transport companies that would be involved… Back then it was just one bus.”

The book is also a salutary reminder that nobody, including management and the bands themselves, really knew the best way to go about touring continents back then.

Chaos often reigned, crowd control was dangerously poor, and long nights blending into endless motorway miles, with sleep a distant, fractured memory, were daily realities. For Dónal, touring as Rory’s roadie and seeing the world for the first time, all this was a baptism of fire.

“There was no-one there to tell you – you learned the hard way. But there was a certain luxury to the fact that somebody paid for you to get on a plane, like it was unheard of, you know? I mean, we were doing it for free virtually because you were just so honoured to be on the tour like this,” he recalls of that early milestone tour with Clapton and co.

Taste’s subsequent split and the beginning of Rory’s 40-year solo career – after an incandescent set at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970 – marked the point at which Rory truly matured from a promising newcomer to the major stages of the national music scene into the man of musical destiny he was always meant to be.

“It was such an enormous thing at the time, certainly in terms of the size of the audience,” Dónal recalls. “We’d been slogging away, doing gig after gig in a transit van up and down the motorway into Europe, in and out and back and forth… and then we got a slot on the Friday night at the Isle of Wight and the band’s equipment got stolen the night before – or part of it was – out of the van.

“It was so chaotic, and the band had already decided to split up and decided that the Isle of Wight was the last gig. And there were allegedly over 600,000 people there, you know. We were thinking, ‘Will people even be able to hear the performance? Will people be able to see it?’

“But on the other hand, Rory was such a fan of all the other musicians around the festival that he was almost there just to watch Tony Joe White play [rather than just to perform with Taste]. So that was the great thing about Rory – he kept his feet on the ground. He was always about the music.”

That sense of mission was sometimes the only frayed cord that kept them tethered to sanity at times. The book recounts bandmates having onstage hallucinations brought on by sheer exertion and unforeseen obstacles, up to and including having trucks full of gear towed away by the production crew of a James Bond movie, all of which made Rory’s life maddeningly unpredictable at times.

“Rory had great leadership in that sense. He kept very cool,” Dónal says. “I mean, behind the scenes, he’d let you know what he was unhappy about. But you had to think on your feet. You had to improvise. I mean, again, it’s one of the stories in the book, but we’d arrived to do a show at the arena where Elvis Presley had done the Roustabout movie, and it was huge – it could hold 100,000 people.

“We arrived there and we’d been sent the day sheet to say Rory was on at 11, so we got there that evening and the promoter said, ‘Where are you going? You were supposed to be on at 11 o’clock this morning,’ and we laughed. I mean, Rory doesn’t play in the morning.

“So the promoter said, ‘Well, that’s it, guys. Sorry. Alice Cooper is closing the show, so there’s no room.’ And we’re kind of standing there thinking, ‘Christ, we’ve come all this way…’ But the guy took pity and he said, ‘Look, you can play to the audience on the way out. That’s all I can do for you now. I’ll give you a few bucks for your expenses.’

“So there was a bit of humming and hawing, but Rory straightway was like, ‘Fine, let’s do it.’ And I said, ‘Well as it happens they have a second stage, so we’ll be ready to go if everybody’s up for it.’ And, yeah, they tore the place apart.”

And that’s another common theme of the book. Encores that lasted hours. Legendary acts being scared to follow the force of nature Rory became when he hit the stage – a man who even had the power to save the world’s most disastrously chaotic festival on Bull Island by sheer stage presence and stamina. Because sometimes when Rory was tearing the place apart he was also, in a sense, holding it all together.

This was never more true than when Rory later toured Ireland as a solo artist – including the North at the terrifying height of the Troubles – on his celebrated Irish Tour in ’74. Dónal argues that Rory’s family background made him uniquely placed to be a unifying force in music at a time when any common ground at all was bitterly hard to find.

“From our childhood, we had the experience of living in the North and understanding the social parameters and the differences and the subtleties and all that growing up. And it wasn’t alien to us to go back up North. And then we had the experience of being there from ’67 with Taste, actually living in Belfast. You could see the tensions rising then, but it was nothing like what turned into in the 70s, when it really went downhill, big-time. And then really very quickly, it had descended into war, really.

“So people on all sides appreciated the fact that you know Rory [had roots in the North as well as in Cork], and many of his musicians were from Belfast, too. I mean, if you look at various line-ups there was Wilgar Campbell, Lou Martin… They were all people from Belfast. So, in a way, Rory stands to, why wouldn’t I come back and play for these people? The real challenge was really for the promoter to get the venue and insurance to play there – or not get the insurance, as it might turn out.’”

What’s striking and, in the final analysis, tragic about the book is how little space Rory left in his life for any rest or private life. Recording and the road were his ruling passions and the book is partly so eventful because Rory, at least until the 1980s, very rarely took time to stop. Going hunting for guitars was as close as he got to a relaxing hobby, Dónal says.

“That was his downtime: going to Denmark Street and then getting to know the guys down in Denmark Street. Because he was trading all the time and it was part of what all the guitarists like Jimmy Page did… they were vinyl collectors as guitar buyers… that’s their downtime. It’s not like, ‘Oh, damn I have to go out and buy a new guitar because I’ve got to play the Albert Hall, what a terrible chore that’s going to be…’

“I mean, Rory couldn’t wait to get out the door and come back with something. But I suppose because of our kind of humble beginnings there was this guilt [about spending money on guitars] and so he would negotiate the best price he could.”

The book, of course, charts the tragic cost of Rory’s single-mindedness and his inability to accept the natural limits of the human body when put through the absolutely relentless demands of the road for too many years.

Although both Dónal and Rory observed periods of abstinence from drink, it was an ever-present palliative for fear of flying, and beer flowed like water in numberless backstage get-togethers.

But when back pains from shouldering heavy guitars, red-eye fatigue from far too many flights – and other side-effects of Rory’s relentless touring schedule – brought strong prescription painkillers and sedatives into the picture, the path to self-destruction had unwittingly begun and, sadly, that, too, is charted by the book, witnessed with love and a sense of helplessness through his brother’s eyes.

“And at the end of the day, it’s all about your health,” Dónal reflects of what writing the book brought to the surface for him. “If you don’t have your health, you have nothing. Doesn’t matter how many guitars you’ve collected, how much money you might have made, or how many records you put out.

“At the end of the day, if you haven’t got your health, it’s zilch. So I suppose the focus is very much back to that for me. And it is very cathartic in the sense that you think about what else you could have advised or influenced or tried [to help the situation]… that’s the hardest part. You say to yourself, ‘My God, why did I say that or do that or not say that?’ or whatever… and you can’t regret.

“But on the other hand, having left 30 years to [pass before beginning to write] the book, you’re able to reflect and then say, ‘Well, you see the counterbalance is his legacy’ – because it seemed after Rory died, it could have all just dissipated.”

And yet it never did. Partly that’s because Rory’s family – Dónal foremost among them – have worked incredibly hard to keep Rory’s music alive, through festivals, reissues of classic recordings and unearthed sessions, and even public art like the statue of Rory that was unveiled in Belfast last year.

But it is, ironically, the vital spark in Rory’s music – that volatile yet boundless creative energy that consumed him – that keeps people coming back to him. His charisma, his warmth and humanity as a writer, and that absolutely headlong, wild beauty to his guitar playing is what continues to captivate. 30 years on from his death, he’s playing encores.

• Edged In Blue: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Odyssey with Rory Gallagher by Dónal Gallagher with Jamie Dickson, is out now via Red Stripe Press.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Chuck Berry’s son has looked back on what made his father such a singular talent on the guitar – and it was all down to, er, the size of his hands.

Fire up one some archive footage on YouTube of Berry in his pomp and you’ll see, the man was built different. He had those elastic legs that let him duck walk across the stage then slip into the splits. He didn’t just play the Gibson ES-355, he took it dancing.

Berry gave guitar an electrifying new sound, and he brought a new sense of physicality to how it could be played. People can debate all they like about natural talent, and whether these gifts are in the blood.

But in a new interview with Guitarist, Berry’s son, Charles Berry Jr., explained that his dad had an advantage over other players – his hands were huge. We’re talking serious wingspan.

“Well, my dad could do things on a guitar neck that most people couldn’t, just because of the physical size of his hands,” explains Berry Jr.

“I mean, from thumb to pinky finger, he could almost stretch the entire octave. His hands were gargantuan. Even his first finger – he’s going easily eight or nine frets up the fretboard, so he could go crazy.”

This surely is not always an advantage. Might guitars that are thinner across the nut make it a little cramped to fret chords? Berry made his name playing a mid ‘50s Gibson ES-350TD, and at that time the guitars coming out of Kalamazoo had nut width of 41.3mm. It wasn’t until 1959 that the nut width was extended to 42.9 mm. All of this came into play.

Those fingers, the way they commandeered the fretboard, they played a crucial role in defining Berry’s style. Berry Jr. says his father’s lead-rhythm style, his trademark flurry of kinetic doublestops, was a function of his hand size.

“His fingers were really big, too. So they were long and they were thick,” says Berry Jr. “That’s why he did a lot of those doublestops because it was easier for him to play two or three strings at once than individual picking.

“Now, I’ve seen the man do that, and you can hear him doing stuff like that on Butterscotch or Woodpecker, where he’s just single-note-picking his brains out.”

But the rest of Chuck Berry was what came from the gut. He was not a player to bone up on chord shapes and scales or stay up all night sweating the technique.

“He just played,” says Berry Jr. “It wasn’t like he was Andrés Segovia, playing an acoustic guitar with every finger on both of his hands. He had a pick and it was mainly downstrokes, very rarely down/up.”

You can read this interview with Chuck Berry Jr. in the latest issue of Guitarist at Magazines Direct – subscribe and you'll save a ton of money.

I’d like to address the fact that not all Les Paul Juniors are created equal. Specifically, I’m talking about the three different variants of the guitar model that were offered by Gibson between the years 1954 and 1961.

In past columns, I’ve talked about the value in the creativity that can be inspired by working with just one single pickup; in the case of Les Paul Juniors, the pickup in question is a P90, which is a large single-coil pickup, in the bridge position.

All you’ve got is one volume and one tone control. But, for some players, such as the great Leslie West, this is all that’s needed to express a wide range of musical riffs and solos.

Figure 1 presents a four-bar improvised solo played on a 1956 Junior, one that I bought from my friend Jay Jay French from Twisted Sister. The patterns I’m playing here are based on the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D), and I begin with the tone on 10 (full treble) with straightforward blues phrases played in 12th position.

On beat 2 of bar 2, I roll the tone knob down to 1, or “zero” (no treble), in order to demonstrate the drastic difference in the sound and feel of the phrases. Setting the tone knob on zero is something Eric Clapton “patented” in the early Cream days, on songs such as I Feel Free.

At bar 4, I roll the tone knob back up to 10 and the end phrase with one of my favorite licks, descending through E minor pentatonic in groups of 32nd-note quintuplets.

One pickup, two knobs – what more do you need? Well, some of us need a front (neck) pickup, too! But don’t get me wrong, as I love Juniors of every type.

Figure 2 offers another example played in the 1956 Junior; it sounds just as good for the opening power chords as it does for the single-note blues licks that follow.

This version of the Junior is a single cutaway and is all mahogany. If one were to put a contoured maple cap on this slab body, the result would be a Les Paul Standard.

In 1958, Gibson decided to change the design to what is known as a “double cut” Junior, which has two cutaways, one on both the treble and bass sides of the body. These guitars were primarily offered in cherry red.

Figure 3 is played on a 1960 double-cut Junior, and again I am favoring licks in the key of E, based on E minor pentatonic. It’s basically the same guitar as the single-cut in that it’s all mahogany with a single P-90 pickup, but, as you will discover, not all P-90s sound the same. Generally speaking, they all sound big and fat with a massive amount of midrange.

In 1961, Gibson decided to switch up the Junior once again and offered a redesigned “SG”-style Junior, featuring a much thinner body with a body contour around the guitar’s top. Because of the loss of mass, SG Juniors tend to sound a bit slinkier and brighter, but they still rock.

If you ever get the opportunity, sit down and compare these three different types of Les Paul Juniors. They are all fantastic guitars, and Gibson offers true-to-vintage reissues of them all.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Sometimes, dream gear remains just that: a dream. Vintage 1959 Gibson Les Pauls and Custom Shop Strats don’t come cheap, but for Emily Wolfe, being forced to go down a more affordable route was positively life-changing.

For the longest time, she dreamed of executing her musical vision with a Gibson ES-335. Those hollow-bodied beauties aren’t exactly the cheapest, though. So she’s had to get creative with her instrument choices.

“The reason why I started playing [Epiphone] Sheratons was because they were so beautiful to me. Like, an ES-335 is so pretty, but as a college kid, you don't have any money,” she tells Guitar World.

“So I went to the Guitar Center and I was like, ‘I want a 335 so bad. But I have $600, and that’s a really beautiful black Sheridan... I’m gonna get it.’”

The Epiphone-branded take on the 335 recipe was the perfect suitor for a budget-restricted Wolfe. The fact she didn’t have more to spend that day has ended up being a blessing.

“That was the thing I played forever,” she smiles. “It was the only one. It was honestly part of my body.”

As her profile rose, she was introduced to Cody Allen, who has been her Gibson/Epiphone representative ever since. It’s been a fruitful partnership.

“She was one of the first people that was like, ‘I really believe in you,’” Wolfe relays. “She was like, ‘We need to go to NAMM. We're taking you and your band, and you’re gonna play the Gibson Showcase.’

“I guess we crushed it,” she reflects. “Because then Epiphone people came over and were like, ‘We've got to do a signature.’”

Wolfe now has two Epiphone Sheratons to her name: her flagship black model, and the most recent White Wolfe.

“I chose the Bone White this time around to represent my evolution as an artist,” she explained during its launch. “White is just something I wouldn’t normally pick, and I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. I feel like when you get out of your comfort zone that’s where the magic happens.”

The guitarist has since been expanding her guitar arsenal, and has also broken down her gnarly approach to tone. But her career may have taken a very different shape if she decided not to buy a Sheraton that day. It was $600 well spent.

Wolfe’s full interview is available to watch Guitar World’s YouTube channel.

Today, Wolfe released her new single, Kill Me With A Kiss, which you can listen to in the video above.

No matter how good at guitar a player may be, no one is immune to string breaks. It just so happened that when Joe Bonamassa snapped a string on stage recently – something that rarely happens to him these days – it was on a massive stage, surrounded by guitar legends.

The occasion was Buddy Guy’s all-star 90th birthday bash. The polka dot Strat veteran is still going strong despite closing in on a century, and celebrated his birthday alongside the likes of John Mayer, Derek Trucks, and Billy Gibbons.

“There’s videos of me playing five strings on this guitar because I broke a string in the first bend,” he tells Guitar World of the show.

Suffice to say, he and the white Strat he grabbed for the performance styled it out. There’s even a video on YouTube from the gig entitled “Joe Bonamassa killer guitar solo.” The fact he pulled it off with a major handicap is a real flex.

JoBo stepped in to play Many of Many Words before tackling Baby What You Want Me to Do with his good friend and fierce south paw, Eric Gales. Watching footage from the show, there is no obvious moment where the string breaks, and he does exceptionally well not to let any panic he will have been feeling in that moment show on his face. Fair play.

His Guitar World interview coincides with the launch of his latest Fender signature, and first-ever digital amp, the Tone Master take on his beloved ‘59 Twin. This, after he revealed he’s warming to amp modeling.

“I’m not the guy to go like, ‘Well, hey, I’m just I'm tired of dragging stuff around at gigs,’ because I don’t have to,” he explains of his decision to go digital.

“But today [for his interview with GW], there’s no entourage. I showed up myself, and I put that [Tone Master amp] in the Uber, and it was cool.

“I notice it cuts through, and it's got plenty of power, but it's not offensive,” he adds. “It's not too bright. It does what a high power twin does. It’s nice and crisp on the you know clean side, but roars and has plenty of gain to solo.”

Bonamassa has also joined the secret supergroup that used to play clubs in the ‘90s, and his soulful playing was a highlight of the 2026 edition of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads.

Head over to the Guitar World YouTube channel to watch the full interview with Joe Bonamassa.

When Jimi Hendrix died aged just 27 in 1970, he didn’t just leave behind one of the most revolutionary electric guitar legacies the world has ever seen: he left behind a slew of legendary guitars.

Back in 2010, Kenny Wayne Shepherd got to write another chapter in the history of Hendrix’s beloved six-strings, when he took to the stage with one of his most iconic Strats.

The Strat in question was the one Hendrix wielded at his iconic Woodstock performance in 1969. The guitar was reportedly bought by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $1.3m in 1993. After that, it was sent to the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, Washington, to be put on display. But it’s been more than just a museum piece since.

Through touring with the Hendrix Experience – a group that has also boasted Zakk Wylde, Eric Johnson and Buddy Guy on various tours – Kenny Wayne Shepherd was afforded the chance to take it to the stage in November 2010.

Playing the 1968 Olympic White Strat, named Izabella, was a moment to savor for the bluesman.

“When they handed me that guitar, I felt like I was fulfilling the dream of every guitar player on the face of the planet,” Shepherd recalled to Guitar World in 2011.

“What guitar player wouldn’t do anything to get their hands on that guitar, if only just for a moment? And I got to play it on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and in my set on the Experience Hendrix Tour later that night at the Beacon Theater [in Manhattan].

"I was the first guitar player to play that instrument in public since Hendrix himself. I don’t know if I can find the appropriate words to describe how much of an honor it was,” he adds. “You could see the wear marks – there’s all these dents on the neck from his jewelry and stuff.”

Hendrix is arguably the world’s most famous southpaw, but he used right-handed guitars, and flipped them the other way around. As a result, the guitar was specially restrung for the performance to aid Shepherd’s right-handed playing.

That, he says, only made him feel less worthy of the honor. The weight of the occasion was not lost on him.

“I spent several hours playing with the guitar before I did the TV show,” Shepherd says. “It felt like I was not only wearing somebody else’s shoes but had them on the wrong feet, too.

“If the guitar could have talked it would have told me, ‘Hey dude, you’re playing me backward. Flip me over, restring me and then things will be okay.’ But the guitar sounded incredible.”

Shepherd is a lucky man, because he’s also played David Gilmour’s uber-expensive Black Strat, too, given his closeness with the late guitar collector Jim Irsay.

Shepherd also owns Hendrix’s Uni-Vibe pedal, and took Izabella to the stage again in 2024.

Few players have ever found themselves as close to Hendrix through his gear as Shepherd. It’s enough to make most players green with envy.

Last Thursday, October 1, I had the privilege of seeing Buddy Guy’s all-star 90th birthday concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

I’m really not kidding when I say “all-star”. (Deep breath) John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr., Shemekia Copeland, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales, Billy Gibbons, Robert Randolph, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jimmie Vaughan, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Ally Venable all took a turn in the spotlight.

And of course, it had to end with a jam for the ages. The entire ensemble all backed Guy and vocalist Bobby Rush for two of the former’s standards – Hoochie Coochie Man and Got My Mojo Workin’.

It was a tad cacophonus, I must say, but seeing that much talent onstage at one time was a once-in-a-lifetime experience I’ll never forget. And, aren’t all the best jams a bit hairy anyway?

That’s my “and then they got up onstage and played together!” story, but I know a lot of you readers have one too. What’s the best guitar jam you’ve ever seen?

This doesn’t have to have taken place in an arena with big-name players, mind. It could’ve been a club, a bar, hell, a garage. It could involve guitarists from your hometown who work in insurance sales now, or “if you know you know” players who never made it beyond three-figure-capacity venues.

Tell us your story in the comments below.

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An important element in my improvisational style and approach is the use of position shifts, which serve to spark the development of new and spontaneous melodic ideas. As the saying goes, “there are a million ways to skin a cat,” and I am always searching for new ways to get from one area of the fretboard to another.

Figure 1 offers an example of some free improvisation in the key of E: though the majority of the lines are based on the E blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D), I begin with the notes B, C# and E, referencing E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#), switching immediately to the E blues scale, in 9th/10th position, in bar 1.

On beat 1 of bar 2 I shift down to 7th position then immediately shift down to 5th position. From there I shift down to 2nd position on the upbeat of beat 2. These shifts set up the final move to open position, where I perform some quick finger slides and pull-offs to the open strings and wrap up the phrase.

Also based on the E blues scale, Figure 2 offers another example of how I might move from the treble strings and higher region of the fretboard down to the low strings and 1st position.

Bar 1 sits squarely in 10th position, with slides, bends and hammer-ons used to evoke a vocal-like legato quality. In bar 2, I gradually work my way down to 9th, 7th, 5th and 2nd positions, utilizing quintuplet note groupings to give the lines an unusual and fluid rhythmic feel.

The opposite approach would be to move up the fretboard. In Figure 3, I begin on the bottom three strings in 1st/2nd position, ending bar 1 in 5th position and then shifting up to 7th, 9th and 10th positions in bar 2. Once I reach the high E note, I descend back to the G and D strings in 9th position.

I should point out that none of these position shifts are predetermined; I’m improvising spontaneously here and following where the melodic shapes and ideas will take me in an instinctive, natural way.

The way I developed the ability to move up and down the fretboard like this was to initially practice and memorize all the minor pentatonic and blues scale “box” patterns and positions, moving across all six strings, ascending and descending. Once I’d learned every pattern, I could easily envision each one as I jump from one area of the fretboard to another.

Figure 4 shows the E blues scale played in a descending manner, traversing the neck from 10th to 2nd position.

For any key you’re playing in, it’s very beneficial to visualize all of your root notes on each string as you move up the board. For example, Figure 5 shows the E root note on five different strings. That awareness will facilitate the phrase shown in Figure 6.

It feels very natural for me to start high and end low. Figure 7 is played in this manner, sticking mostly with the higher portions of the fretboard.

Try the “step ladder” approach, move up two positions, then back one, then up two more, then back down, etc. The possibilities for new melodic discoveries are endless.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Gibson’s latest reissue revives the 1957 L-5 CES, one of the most revered and influential archtops it has ever created.

In the firm’s own words, “few guitars carry a legacy as rich as the Gibson L-5,” and its 100-plus-year history proves that. First introduced in the early 1920s during the Lloyd Loar, it was quickly adopted by the leading country, jazz, blues, and rockabilly players of the era.

It was then electrified in 1951, and improved further still with the arrival of Patent Applied For humbuckers in 1957. Wes Montgomery, George Benson, and Pat Metheny were among those to take it under their virtuosic wings – and in the case of that trio, the very same model passed between them.

Releasing as part of Gibson’s Historic Reissue range, Senior Vice President of Product Mat Koehler says that “no corners were cut in bringing it back to life, even going as far as utilizing a dovetail neck joint for the first time at our Custom Shop.”

As ever with these no-expense-spared reissues, Gibson rolled out the red carpet. 3D scans of late 1950s models and exacting measurements were made. Here, a carved AAA spruce top is paired with a carved, bookmatched AAA curly maple back and solid AAA curly maple sides. There’s also seven-ply top binding and three-ply back binding for a “refined character” – it’s luxurious stuff.

Crafted to a 25.5” scale length, its neck is maple with a walnut center strip and has a period-correct profile. Its four-ply ebony fretboard is adorned with 20 medium jumbo frets and mother-of-pearl block inlays.

The hardware on offer is no less fancy. It has with an art deco-inspired tailpiece partnered with a Historic Reissue ABR-1 bridge, which is mounted on a rosewood base. The L-5 reissue also features a corian nut, golden Kluson Sealfast tuners, and a five-ply bound headstock that features a mother-of-pearl flowerpot inlay and Gibson logo.

Its Alnico 3 humbuckers are unpotted and promise to “capture warmth, clarity, articulation, and dynamic sensitivity,” of classic L-5s. Each pickup gets dedicated gold top hat-style Volume and Tone controls alongside a three-way toggle switch.

“With its fully carved construction, vintage-accurate specifications, responsive Custombucker pickups, and extraordinary appointments, the Gibson Custom 1957 L-5 CES Reissue is the summit of Gibson archtop design,” says Gibson.

“It is an instrument for players who demand uncompromising sound, feel, and craftsmanship, and a fitting continuation of a legacy more than a century in the making.

The Gibson Custom 1957 L-5 CES is strung with .012–.052 flatwound strings and ships with a Gibson Custom Shop hardshell case. All that amounts to a $11,999 / £9,699 price tag.

See Gibson for more.

John Mayer has made it pretty clear that he sees the Silver Sky as an elevated electric guitar built for the modern age. It shuns old-school finishes in favor of sleeker stylistic choices, which are largely inspired by the consumer tech we surround ourselves with today.

That may have been his intention for his signature guitar, but that hasn’t stopped people taking creative liberties with the Silver Sky. And we’ve seen some pretty hefty DIY mod jobs over the years.

We had Zach Myers’ insane relic’d pink model, which predated Mayer’s actual Roxy Pink example. There was also a sunburst Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute Silver Sky. Neal Schon stuck a Floyd Rose on his.

Mayer has seen all of these mod jobs, and while they may seem at odds with his curated vision for the Silver Sky platform, he is actually very fond of them. In fact, he’s highly encouraging of it.

When asked by Guitar World if he approved of these jobs, Mayer gave a strong vote of confidence.

“I love it,” he says. “Hack it all you want. I think it’s important – like, you’re supposed to. If you want to, you have my blessing to do whatever comes to mind with it.”

Mayer has gone on record before to say there will never be a sunburst Silver Sky, but he’s not against players taking matters into their own hands. For him, the sunburst ‘thing’ just wasn’t what he had in mind for his signature model.

“I use the sunburst as the brown M&M,” he notes. “The brown M&M checks the contract. No sunburst reinforces the contract with what the mission statement of the guitar is.

“If I started a guitar in 2018, why would I do sunburst? Because that’s how you do it? Well, I didn’t do it. That’s not part of my history. You know what I mean?

“But what is part of my life, which could be future history, is when I see colors. Mojave Brown [which was used on an earlier Silver Sky] comes from a thing, that when I saw it, I went, ‘I’ve got to use that color.’”

So, there you have it. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your Silver Sky. You’ve got Mayer’s approval.

Guitar World sat down with John Mayer earlier this month to talk about his new collaboration with Land Rover and the Defender Silver Sky models – which, the timeline confirms, is not a dig at Fender.

Whether as a solo instrument or the centrepiece of a band, the acoustic guitar continues to be one of the world’s most popular instruments, in just about any style you could name.

This example piece is played unaccompanied (Blackbird-style foot taps are optional, of course), so you’re responsible for holding the whole thing together. If you take a look at the transcription, you’ll see this isn’t a hugely complex exercise, but keeping the alternating bass clear and regular is crucial, so tapping your foot (audibly or not) is a good idea.

I chose to use a pick-and-fingers approach, as this got more definition out of the all-mahogany Martin I used for the recording, while keeping the sweet treble response. Depending on your guitar and/or preferences, you could also try a thumbpick or simply fingerstyle.

Breaking the example piece down into its component chords, we have versions of D7, D5, F6/9 and G5 in the first section. F6/9 is a chord that will likely raise questions. This version of F uses the open third and fourth strings, so we have a G (9th) and a D (6th) respectively. As with all unusual chords, there are multiple angles from which this could be described theoretically.

The simplest seems to be F6/9, rather than F6sus2, which is also correct – though neither of these names addresses the fact that the 3rd (A) is omitted! Also of note is the Em9 in the next section, which takes an influence more from the English-style folk of John Renbourn or Bert Jansch than American bluegrass, but it’s a nice chord.

As with any new piece, it’s best to take things slowly and patiently while the muscle-memory/conditioned reflex develops.

First, note that this is in drop D tuning, meaning that the low E is lowered by a tone. The overall feel of this piece owes a little something to 4 + 20 by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Sometimes the bass alternates between octaves, usually wherever we’re playing any kind of D chord.

This changes to root and 5th for virtually everything else. One notable exception (which escaped our notice until transcribing this…) is bar 7, where the low D swaps to beats 2 and 3 of the bar.

This must have helped with playing the doublestops above! It can be helpful to separate the bass notes and chords/doublestops at first, then build up to some of the more complex moments such as in bar 14.

This is the only other time we break the rhythmic pattern of the bass. Lastly, be sure to slow down in the last two bars for a grand finish.

Hear it here

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Déjà Vu

4 + 20 is the best style-match for the example piece, with its alternating bass fingerstyle pattern, even though this was played in an open tuning (similar to open D). You’ll hear the same alternating bass pattern (albeit strummed) in Teach Your Children, which is completely driven by the acoustic guitar.

Elsewhere, the acoustic’s presence is very evident in the title track. As an extra bonus, try to imagine waltz-style Country Girl without the strummed acoustic!

John Renbourn – The Best of John Renbourn

This collection of tunes allows us to hear not only the inestimable John Renbourn but also his collaborations with Bert Jansch and the group they went on to form, Pentangle. Be sure to check out Can’t Keep From Crying, Lord Franklin and – with the disclaimer that it may be intimidating on the first listen – I Know My Babe.

If this collection should make you curious about what else Mr Renbourn was capable of, then we urge you to check out Faro’s Rag from 1976’s The Hermit as well.

Alison Krauss & Union Station – Paper Airplane

If you like great acoustic, bluegrass and blues playing, we’re confident you’ll love this album. Check out the title track, followed by Lay My Burden Down; this flatpicking style could be played hybrid or with fingers only, but the accuracy and attack from the pick is hard to beat.

Another version of the alternating bass style drives album closer, My Opening Farewell. Also, listen out for some exemplary slide/resonator playing from the great Jerry Douglas.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Stage curfews in New York are serious business. The watchful minders of the city’s imperious Radio City Music Hall are getting visibly nervous – it’s almost 11, and Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush are piling one blues classic on top of another. The biggest names on the guest list haven’t even done their numbers yet.

One of the Secret Service-like pros snakes onstage and whispers something in the ear of the leader of the evening’s house band, the veteran drummer Steve Jordan. From a distance, he seems indifferent.

Ever the wily frontman, Rush keeps egging Guy on. 90 years young, Guy is in his element – he’s got a stinging answer on his Strat for all of his old friend’s exhortations, and the Cheshire Cat grin on his face keeps getting bigger. He shouts, “Y’all wanna hear another one?”

The gig in question – held on Thursday, October 1 – was officially titled Buddy's Got The Blues: A 90th Birthday Concert Celebration. The blues guitar legend – the last major living link to the origins of the form, the last big, theater-filling name in the genre who grew up on the wrong side of the hellish Jim Crow south – actually turned 90 three months ago, but the cavalry came in to celebrate either way.

And we do mean the cavalry. John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr., Shemekia Copeland, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales, Billy Gibbons, Robert Randolph, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jimmie Vaughan, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Ally Venable all took their turns onstage. And that list doesn’t even include Eric Clapton, who was listed on the bill but unable to perform due to illness.

For all that fanfare, Guy opened the proceedings in the simplest way possible. He, house band guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, and Derek Trucks sat next to each other, plucking away at I’m In the Mood. It had the ease and sweetness of a low-stakes front porch jam – three guys playing to an audience of none but crickets and fireflies.

That was until Trucks busted out some otherworldly slide licks on his resonator – that keyed the faithful into what was in store for the next three or so hours.

One after the other, three generations of virtuosos put their own spins on Guy’s voluminous body of work – channeling the raw spirit and knockout power of the originals and imbuing them with their own DNA.

One might call it a “dessert for every meal” situation. Ingram wailed away on a red polka dot Strat for his sharp-as-a-tack version of Crosscut Saw, and traded blistering, quickfire jabs with steel king Robert Randolph on a rendition of Shake Your Money Maker so spirited that it got even some of those in the “Google me” seats up and moving.

Asked to salute Stevie Ray Vaughan, Shepherd dug in on his Strat with a version of the Guy-via-SRV classic, Let Me Love You Baby. The ever-studious Bonamassa didn’t put a foot out of place in his version of A Man of Many Words, and sat perfectly in the rhythm slot while Gales took Let the Good Times Roll onto another planet.

Gales, in turn, singed eyebrows with Fish, while Gibbons and Jimmie Vaughan churned out Texas-sized grooves together and on their own. Guy and Mayer, meanwhile, took their high-profile sparring time in a funky direction. And of course, it had to end with the whole gang coming together for Hoochie Coochie Man and Got My Mojo Workin’.

That particular jam will likely draw the headlines and YouTube views, but, in the end, this was about Buddy Guy.

For all of the magnificent, fretboard-scorching, bows-from-the-crowd inducing 12-bar breaks the audience took in over the course of the three-and-a-half-plus hour show, it was Guy who really had the magic wand.

He can’t play torrents of notes anymore, obviously, but man, what he did with the ones he did play. He’d sting them, hit something and leave it for five, even 10 seconds while feedback curdled around.

When Guy was at his loosest, jamming on the likes of Boom Boom and I Just Want to Make Love to You with Rush, all the big names and bright lights fell away. Two guys, two of the last of their kind, running through the songs that they love, the songs that they can do more faithfully than anybody.

They’re getting carried away, they’re taking too long. Employees need to clock out, people need to go home. But Buddy Guy, 90 years old, is still playing. And neither Father Time nor a curfew is gonna stop him.

Eric Clapton says selling two of his prized electric guitars at auction in 2004 was a “big, big mistake” but accepts the wider context justified the painful split.

The two guitars – his late Cream-era Gibson ES-335 and his iconic “Blackie” Stratocaster – sold for a combined $1,807,000 at the Christie’s auction. In total, the event raised $7.44 million, with roughly $6.4 million going to Clapton’s Crossroads drug addiction rehabilitation center.

The ES-335, a 1964 model with a mysterious origin story, featured at Cream’s farewell show at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1968. It’s now been confirmed that Epiphone will release a special re-issue of the guitar next summer.

The Strat, meanwhile, came into Clapton’s life in 1970, and was pieced together from three different 1950s models. He recorded seminal hits including Cocaine, I Shot the Sheriff and Lay Down Sally with the guitar.

They’re both iconic six-strings in their own right, and they helped raise vital funds for Crossroads, which celebrated its 28th anniversary in star-studded style over the weekend. But that didn’t make letting them go any easier for Slowhand.

“When the auction was going on, I had to constantly keep saying, ‘This is your purpose. You are an alcoholic, and if you don't stay sober, you won’t be able to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety,’” he recalls in an interview with Guitar Center.

“So this is all for that purpose. Crossroads is for that purpose. So I’m disproportionately obsessed with the survival of that place.”

Crossroads offers “a therapeutic, supportive and safe environment—away from the confusion of life in addiction – on the beautiful island of Antigua” in the Caribbean.

Everything from high-profile auctions to seven editions of the Crossroads Guitar Festival, which unites a host of prolific players on the stage, have helped raise funds for the center. It means everything to Clapton.

“My primary purpose is to stay sober, and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety,” he notes. “That’s above me being a musician or a husband or a father. It’s the number one thing.”

So, yes, selling those guitars, he says with a nervous laugh, was a “big, big mistake.” But zoom out, and it's easy to see why Slowhand parted ways with them.

Now, Guitar Center’s Crossroads collection – which takes in high-end recreations of some of Clapton’s most historic guitars – is adding more money to the pot.

The seventh edition of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival blazed into life over the weekend, with one of its strongest line-ups bringing firepower galore.

First conceived in 1999, it's been an opportunity for Clapton to celebrate the players he loves, all while raising funds for his Crossroads addiction recovery facility.

This year, the festival marks the 28th anniversary of the center in Antigua, and though Pete Townshend was forced to pull out of proceedings, there was plenty of talent on the lineup.

Yet for all the bill’s six-string slingers, it was actor Bill Murray who got the party started, performing Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues.

Later on, a powerful holy trinity of blues guitar in Clapton, the evergreen Buddy Guy, and Jimmie Vaughan shared the stage for a triple Strat attack. Clapton’s tone here was particularly glassy, but he and Vaughan are shushed by Guy at one point. He’s probably the only man on the planet who could get away with it.

Elsewhere during the weekend, John Mayer made his Incline Blue PRS Silver Sky, made to raise money for Crossroads, sing with the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Watching Mayer and Trucks trade licks was a standout moment of the festival.

The Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi-powered band also invited Trey Anastasio – who traded off phenomenally with Mayer, it should be said – Doyle Bramhall II, and, of course, Eric Clapton, up for jams. It made for one of the most action-packed sets of the weekend.

But it wasn’t just the established guard bringing their A game, as Gibson artist Marcus King and bluegrass picker Sierra Hull joined forces for the first time in their careers, playing King's slinky and smoky cut, Falling for the Devil., amongst others.

After that, King tapped up Joe Bonamassa for a surprising-but-exceptional cover Led Zeppelin's How Many More Times. He also brought Trucks and Tedeschi out for his set closer, a cover of Blind Faith's Had to Cry Today.

“I like to use the festival platform as a way of getting [musicians] to come and play to a big audience, maybe for the first time,” Clapton said of the festival in 2019. “I think it's quite nice for the other musicians to meet them, too. I like cross-fertilization. I mean, that was a fascinating thing for me, the fantasy. And it worked.”

The festival was also the first time fans could get their hands on Epiphone's new Eric Clapton ES-335 signature, after Guitar Center launched a slew of Crossroads models earlier this year.

On his second album, Wrong Kind of One, Birmingham, UK-based folk singer-songwriter Amit Dattani is taking listeners deep inside the heart of Americana.

Songs such as Steady The Boat, Gathering Acorns and One Too Many Mornings are brimming with a sense of soul-baring honesty, almost like a musical confession, one where the guitar tones are every bit as exquisite as the voice accompanying them.

Fingerstyle Fan

Though he grew up listening to blues masters such as Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy, it was the fingerstyle approach of Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt and Elizabeth Cotten that helped guide Amit towards the musical style he would pursue.

“Hearing them cover so many bases with their fingers blew my mind wide open,” he says. “It was magic. I got pretty obsessed with trying to work out how the heck they managed it, spending weeks and months working on my right hand – learning how to syncopate, mute and emphasise different notes.”

Open Approach

This led to Amit discovering the likes of Kelly Joe Phelps and Paul Curreri, and looking deeper into their techniques. “That’s when I got into open tunings,” he continues, “as well as wrapping your thumb over the top of the neck to grab those lower strings, giving more freedom to my fingers. I was amazed by how they were able to merge voice and guitar in such a unique way.

“Now I listen to folks like Ali Farka Touré, Joseph Spence and contemporary players like Kris Drever or John Doyle. I’m always interested in new picking patterns and ways to express yourself through guitar in ways that best serve a song.”

Custom Creativity

On his latest recordings, Amit can be heard playing his custom Hammett Guitar Co Astro Strat.

“It’s a hollowbody electric fashioned after the old Harmony Stratotones,” he says. “I’d always been an acoustic player. In 2018, I got diagnosed with a genetic degenerative nerve condition that impacts my hands and my feet. Long story short, the prognosis was I’d likely have two years of playing left in me before the batteries in my hands ran out.

“I got talking to Pat Hammett and we hatched a plan to create a custom electric with lower string tension and a flatter angle for my picking hand, plus super-wide string spacing. It has single-handedly helped me carry on playing.”

Electric Connection

The album was recorded live with Steph Sanders on drums. “I plugged my Astro Strat into a Tone King Imperial amp,” Amit says. “Stepping into the electric space as a fingerstyle acoustic player has been so fun. Everything was in straight takes with my incredible drummer Steph.

“I find her musicality so inspiring. I wanted to make an album that sounded like the stuff I listened to as a kid – stripped back, live and all about the energy and performance. It’s all about connection between the folks in that room in that moment.”

Under the Thumb

A Rory Gallagher DVD inspired Amit to give thumbpicks and fingerpicks a try.

“He was on an old National and I just loved the sound,” Amit says. “By then I was already sort of hybrid picking with a plectrum and using my middle and ring finger to pick melodies, so the transition to a thumbpick felt natural. I find using it with fingerpicks helps me to play cleaner and more articulately.

“The main thing for me is making sure the thumbpick blade is tiny. I file it right down so it’s more like an extension to my thumbnail. I would recommend experimenting lots and making sure it’s on tight – I once had one fly off mid-concert before, which was not fun.”

Amit picks his favourite guitar moments on Wrong Kind Of One…

“There’s a semi-improvised take on the hymn Just a Closer Walk With Thee that felt super emotional to record. And the song Now I Can Play On is an ode to my guitar and literally being able to play on.

“It makes me smile because I can sort of hear the joy I’m feeling from being able to play along to Steph’s drums in full flow. The hardest song to play is the title track. It’s a pretty detailed picking pattern, and depending on what kind of day my hands are having, it can be tricky to keep up.”

• Wrong Kind of One is self-released and out now. Get it at the official Amit Dattani website.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

For guitar players, an element that is essential to recording as well as writing a song is choosing the right guitar for the job. I love a lot of different guitars – all guitars, really! – but especially Gibson guitars fitted with P-90 “soapbar” pickups.

For those unfamiliar, a P-90 is a large single-coil pickup that was standard issue on Gibson electric guitars prior to 1957, when the double-coil humbucker pickup replaced the P-90 on most of their instruments. I love the sound of P-90s! They’re loud and clear and have more top-end than a humbucking pickup.

When choosing a specific guitar for its tonal qualities, for me it will often happen when I’m writing the song. The riff itself will “decide” whether it needs to be played with a single coil pickup, a humbucker or something else entirely. There are Blackberry Smoke songs played on Gretsch and Rickenbacker guitars. So it’s all over the map!

When I sat down to write Workin’ for a Workin’ Man, recorded for our 2016 album, Like an Arrow, the guitar that brought the song to life was a 1953 Gibson Les Paul Standard, fitted with P-90s and a Bibsby vibrato tailpiece. The “honk” of the bridge-position P-90, with its accentuated midrange, was perfect for a hard-driving riff like this.

Figure 1 illustrates the song’s primary riff, which for me felt so “at home” on a P-90 guitar set on the bridge pickup. I begin with an A5 power chord and then play two-note voicings on the D and G strings against the open A string, making brief reference to G/A and D/A. Bar 2 incorporates the A minor blues scale (A, C, D, Eb, E, G). In bar 3, the two-note voicings move over to the A and D strings.

Figure 2 shows the song’s pre-chorus, which is built around two-note 6th intervals, fretted on the A and G strings, which are played against an open low E pedal tone. In bar 1, I begin in 9th position and then slide down to 6th position. In bar 2, I begin in 9th position and slide up to 11th position. Be sure to allow your open low E string to ring out while playing the two-note 6ths on the other strings.

About midway through the song, we hit a breakdown section that features the riff shown in Figure 3, which is primarily a single-note riff based on the A blues scale. Here, I utilize double-stops along with D5 and C5 power chords.

At the guitar solo section, shown in Figure 4, I switch from the bridge to the neck pickup. Bars 1-2 are based on the E major pentatonic scale (E, F#, G#, B, C#). Bar 3, played over a G chord, is based on G major pentatonic (G, A, B, D, E), and bar 4, which is played over an A chord, is based on A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G).

After this, it’s back to the bridge pickup for a recap of the main riff for the final verse. To me, this song is a prime example of how the right guitar, in this case a 1953 Les Paul Standard, serves every aspect of the song perfectly.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

George Thorogood’s knack for popularizing older songs by blues greats – coupled with his trademark brand of high-energy boogie blues – has made his music a radio mainstay for the past couple of decades or so.

And, much like his inextricable link to American rock radio, Thorogood has been associated with his go-to hollow-body electric guitar, the Gibson ES-125, since the early ’70s.

A week before his first gig with what would become the touring behemoth, the Delaware Destroyers – later, the Destroyers – Thorogood headed to a pawn shop to buy the guitar model that would go on to accompany him throughout his career.

“I’d been traveling around the country as an acoustic street musician,” Thorogood recounts on his official website. “I was back home for my sister’s wedding, and Jeff booked the gig without telling me.”

Speaking more about his early days to Guitar World, Thorogood describes what led him to the ES-125: “I was broke. I only had $200, and we booked a gig, and there was this guitar at a pawn shop – a $200 Gibson that had been there for years. So, I bought it, and it worked because I was always playing acoustics.

“And in those days, they called those guitars [the ES-125] ‘semi-acoustic.’ And the Beatles played guitars like that, and so did Keith Richards. I thought, ‘If it’s good enough for The Beatles and The Stones, it’s good enough for George.’"

The rest, as they say, is history, though Thorogood can now be seen mostly playing Epiphones – a decision born out of necessity.

“I’m using a custom-made Epiphone archtop, single cutaway design, just like my Gibson [ES]-125 that I used to play, because I wore them out,” he explains. “The only guitar that I could ever play was the 125, and I wore them out so bad; it was costing thousands of dollars to repair them.

“And they stopped making them in like 1970, so I was ready to stop playing altogether. And then, our manager got together with Epiphone, and they donated me like 10 Epiphone guitars. 10 of them!

“I said, ‘Wow…’ and they started working on them to make the sound right. So, that’s what I’m using these days.”

As for how his new Epiphone compares to his vintage Gibson, Thorogood – with the help of some baseball jargon – admits he still prefers his trusty Gibson.

“There’s no comparison. It’s [the Epiphone] like hitting a baseball into the gap, and you have to slide into second [base] with a double. The other thing [the Gibson] is like hitting a ball into the upper deck,” he adds with a laugh.

This month's Inquirer finds Guitar World in the company of Micki Free, and having administered the truth serum, he's going to tell us all about his firsts – first gigs, first songs and first guitar he ever got – and share his most embarrassing moments.

Just don't ask him to save only one guitar from burning building...

What was your first guitar?

I made it out of a Cheer detergent box! I cut a hole in it and used a ruler as a neck and rubber bands as strings. I’d imitate Jimi Hendrix. Then one day, my Uncle Frank says to my mom, “You’ve got to buy Micki a guitar because he’s driving me crazy with that Cheer box!” So, he finally got me a guitar. It was an acoustic; I don’t remember what kind it was.

What was the first song you learned how to play?

Secret Agent Man by the Ventures because I loved them too. I played that as much as I could play it, and my mom would be like, “Would you shut up with that?” It was annoying because that’s all I could play – but I could play it well.

What was your first gig?

In the early 1970s, we had moved back from Germany to the Midwest. I had a little band there that I was playing with that had started in school. At the time, Grand Funk Railroad was my favorite band, so I thought I was Mark Farner. I even had really long hair. The first gig was playing in the school gym for a dance when I was 16.

Have you ever had an embarrassing moment on stage?

When I was younger, the most embarrassing moment of all I had was when I was trying to look cool onstage as I was playing my guitar. I fell off the freaking stage! They had to help me get back on – and that was pretty embarrassing. After that, I started to get my footing, so I never did that again, thank God!

What’s your favorite piece of gear?

Since I dig Hendrix and Cream, I’m a Marshall purist because that’s what I grew up on. My go-to amp is my 18-watt Marshall 1974X with a 12-inch speaker. It’s like the Bluesbreaker amp.

They have a fantastic sound because their impedance is low, and, because it’s 18 watts, when you crank it up, it breaks up at the best time. It’s like money in the bank. [I can get] the tone I like to get, which is kind of like a cross between Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

The building is burning down; what one guitar from your collection would you save?

That’s too hard. Can I take three? If it has to be one, it’d be my Teye guitar with the turquoise inlays. It’s so versatile. I can get sounds that are close enough to a Strat and to a Les Paul – and if you back it off a little bit, you can get anything you want with it. It has something called a Mojo button on it, and I can select the kind of vibe I want. It’s amazing. I love it so much.

When was the last time you practiced, and what did you play?

I don’t practice a lot. I’m not that kind of a guy that goes, “I’ve got to play my scales.” I pick it up when I feel like it. Billy Gibbons once told me, “Play the stuff you want to play, like, the stuff you hear,” and I got what he meant by that. So, when I’m practicing, I’ll play some Jimi, I’ll play some ZZ Top, I’ll play some funky stuff, some Santana. That’s how I practice. It’s not like a schedule.

What aspect of the guitar would you like to be better at?

I’d like to know more about the scales since I’m mostly a blues-rock player. Technically I’d like to really get into scales and see how they do arpeggios and stuff like that, because that’s not in my lane. I play more like Billy Gibbons. Hendrix didn’t play scales, either – and I learned everything from those guys.

But as I listen to current players, there are some where I’ll go, “Wow, that sounds good.” Maybe I should investigate that, widen my style and go to some places where I’d normally not go.

What guitar-centric advice would you give your younger self if you could?

I’d tell myself to practice more and widen my range of music besides the greats, like Clapton, Hendrix and Jeff Beck. When I was young, I only listened to blues-rock. I’d tell myself to open my mind a little more.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Some players have a seemingly endless supply of electric guitars. Others, like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar hero, Lonnie Mack, had a one and only. Now, his noble steed is heading to auction.

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s adoration for Jimi Hendrix and Albert King is well documented, but his ties to Mack, who was a formative figure in blues rock, often slip under the radar. But he was no less impressionable on the virtuoso.

Mack’s trusted six-string companion was certainly unique. The 1958 Gibson Flying V is saddled with a Bigsby vibrato, which, given the guitar's shape, isn't a pairing we see all too often. To make it possible, the tailpiece of the tremolo sits on a metal bar that connects to the inside legs of the V-shaped body. It’s a little crude, sure, but it’s effective, and a big part of the guitar’s uncanny charm.

Dubbed “Number 7”, indicating how soon this model came off Gibson’s inaugural production line, it stayed by his side throughout his pioneering blues-, country-, and soul-blending career.

Here, Heritage Auctions is offering it alongside his 1962 Magnatone Custom 440 combo amplifier and stage-used strap.

“This is far more than an exceptionally rare 1958 Gibson,” says Heritage Auctions. “It is a cornerstone of American popular music history. The recovery and first public offering of this remarkable instrument represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to acquire one of the most important and iconic artist-owned electric guitars ever to become available.”

The auction is launching with a starting bid of $300,000, and there are a few historical caveats to note.

"Number 7" Was refinished in its red visage by Gibson around 1963, and its neck has had a major repair. Scars of that, two korina wood dowels, can be found at its heel. Given its Bigsby, the original string-through-body holes have long since been filled in, and its tuners have been replaced with period-correct reproductions. The original Kluson tuners are part of the package deal.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Mack would go on to collaborate numerous times, with SRV producing his 1985 comeback album, Strike Like Lightning.

Naturally, “Number 7” was there for the whole thing and has featured during their on-stage linkups, meaning the guitar has a deep connection to both blues guitar greats. Indeed, the instrument was so significant that Gibson re-produced it as a signature model in the ’90s, complete with bar bracket and Bigsby.

It's not the only totem instrument Heritage Auctions is offering right now. The prototype of Eric Clapton's Crossroads ES-335, modeled on his faithful 1963 guitar; Ace Frehley's 1972 Gibson Les Paul, used on stage with Kiss throughout the '70s; and a skull-laden Telecaster formerly owned by Keith Richards are also heading to the auction block.

See Heritage Auctions for more.

Carvin Jones, the Texas-born, Phoenix-based blues player, best known by his moniker, the “King of Strings,” has died at the age of 60.

The news was confirmed by his friends and family, who announced his passing via a statement posted to social media.

“It is with immeasurable sadness that we share that Corvin Keith Anthony Jones, known to his family and friends around the world as Carvin Jones, the ‘King of Strings,’ passed away in the early morning of September 20, 2026,” reads the statement.

“Carvin loved being onstage because he loved being with people. He would leave the stage to play in the crowd, turning every show into something shared. That same generosity shaped his life offstage. Basketball was Carvin’s other great love, and he sponsored and coached youth teams. During the pandemic, he created Carvin Cares, using his own money to deliver groceries to elderly residents throughout Phoenix.

“Our family is deeply grateful to everyone who supported Carvin during these last months. Your generosity meant so much to him and to us.”

Born in Lufkin, Texas, Jones devoted his life to music, with his sound rooted in East Texas and, true to the region and scene, blending blues, gospel, R&B, and rock. He first discovered the blues through his grandfather’s B.B. King records, and soon started playing guitar at seven, after his grandmother bought him his first guitar.

Largely self-taught, Jones moved to Arizona at 19, a journey that would eventually lead to him taking the blues across the U.S. and beyond. In fact, his career took him to 37 countries and three continents. He ended up sharing stages and bills with the likes of B.B. King, Santana, Jeff Beck, Albert King, Albert Collins, Joe Cocker, and The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Eric Clapton once touted Jones as “a young cat out of Phoenix who I think is the next up-and-coming blues player,” and he was named as one of the top 50 blues guitarists of all time by Guitarist in 2001.

The bluesman released more than a dozen albums and, as aptly described by The Blues Magazine, “built the kind of career that depended less on a single breakthrough record than on returning to the stage night after night and winning over another audience.”

A simple, effective way to discover new sounds on the guitar is to use a capo along with 1st-position open chords, commonly referred to as “cowboy” chords.

A great example of this approach can be heard in the title track to my 2012 album, Driving Towards the Daylight, which I co-wrote with the great Danny Kortchmar. Danny is renowned for his work with James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Ringo Starr and many others.

In truth, this was a song that I had forgotten all about. Around 15 years ago, I had a Korg multitrack machine that I was going to get rid of, but before I did, I decided to go through it to hear what had been recorded on it. I saw the title and thought, “What is that?” and when I heard it I remembered it was a song Danny and I started but never finished. I decided to finish it, and it became the title track of my next record.

The song is played in the key of F minor, because that is the best key for my voice. But I opted to use a capo at the 1st fret and play the song as if it were in E minor. The capo allows me to play 1st-position “cowboy” chords throughout the song, along with many open-string embellishments that 1st-position chord shapes facilitate.

Stylistically, the song has a country/Americana feel. Personally, I like all kinds of music, and this song affords me the opportunity to visit that musical terrain.

Figure 1 illustrates the first four bars of the intro/verse section of the tune, wherein I play a single-note melody that connects the chord progression of Em-G-D-C. For each chord, I allow all the strings to ring together.

When it comes to soloing, there’s an old adage that you can’t do a lot of string-bending if you’re using a capo. The truth is that you can, as long as you have a good capo.

It needs to be affixed to the guitar tightly, so that when you bend and release a string, it will go back to the proper unbent position.

Figure 2 presents a nine-bar solo that moves loosely between Em and C; you can imagine a G and D chord played in bars 2 and 3, as well. This improvised solo is based primarily on the E hexatonic minor scale (E, F#, G, A, B, D) with brief use of C, C# and D#.

When using a capo, it can get a little disorienting when playing more than five frets away from it because all the fret numbers are relative to the capo. In this case, a note tabbed or visualized to be at the 9th fret is actually at the 10th.

Because we’re thinking in E minor here, I wouldn’t play country-type licks such as that shown in Figure 3, because these phrases are more suited to the key of E major.

Figure 4 is a better example of sitting firmly within the key of Em by sticking with E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) or hexatonic.

Driving Towards the Daylight is inherently a rock song with country elements, akin to the music of the Eagles, Jackson Browne and the music that came out of Laurel Canyon in the late ’60s.

And in this application, the capo helps to achieve some chordal sounds that would otherwise be unavailable.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

In this month's column, I’d like to demonstrate a really cool technique that I learned from the great Larry Carlton that’s commonly referred to as the “super arpeggio.” It’s based on stacking major and minor triads on top of a chord, yielding much longer arpeggios that move through different triadic forms and sounds.

Let’s start with a Cmaj7 chord, as shown in Figure 1. The most natural triad to play over this chord is C major, which consists of the notes C, E and G.

The “super arpeggio” concept is based on forming successive triads off the second note of each triad. As shown in Figure 2, we start with a C triad and then play a triad based on the second note, E; this yields an E minor triad formed by the notes E, G and B. We then form a triad from G, the second note of Em, which yields a G major triad with the notes G, B and D.

In Figure 3, I play over a static vamp on a Cmaj7 chord by outlining the C major, E minor and G major triads.

In Figure 4, I use this approach to play a solo-type line, moving from C major to E minor to G major in steady 16th notes before resolving the line with a lick based on the C major pentatonic scale (C, D, E, G, A).

Figure 5 offers an example of “bookending” the three triadic shapes with lines based on C major pentatonic at the beginning and end of the improvised melody.

It’s useful to be aware of what intervals each triad includes: a C major triad consists of the C root note, the major 3rd, E and the 5th, G. Relative to C, the E minor triad gives us the major 3rd, E, the 5th, G, and the major 7th, B. Superimposing a G major triad over a C root gives us the 5th, G, major 7th, B, and the 9th, D. All together that gives us a Cmaj9 arpeggio (C, E, G, B, D).

These triads can and should be played everywhere on the fretboard. In Figure 6, the three triadic forms are moved down to 2nd/3rd position.

A great place to go from here is to apply this concept to a minor chord. The relative minor of C major is A minor, so many of the same notes will appear but within the triadic forms built from A minor.

If I were to play a static Am vamp, I can play lines based on the triadic forms of Am (A, C, E), C (C, E, G), and Em (E, G, B).

In Figure 7, I move through all three of these triadic forms with an improvised line played in a rhythm of 16th notes and 16th-note triplets. Notice that I end the phrase with a lick based on A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G). You’ll find that combining the progression of triads with minor pentatonic lines will sound very musical and also offer many different options for improvisation.

This will be the last installment of Blues Expansions for now, so I hope you have enjoyed these columns and that the concepts presented have been useful to you in your soloing endeavors. Thanks for reading, and please check out more of my lessons at Corey Congilio.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of the Beatles’ most enduring classics, but it had a rocky start. Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr weren’t all that keen on George Harrison’s opus. It took a special guest to help get things off the ground.

Not only was it one of the best songs Harrison ever wrote, it was one of the greatest Beatles songs full stop, and a standout inclusion on the White Album.

During the record’s studio sessions, though, Harrison’s bandmates didn’t care too much for the tune. It made tracking the song difficult. At one point, they abandoned the song altogether, only to later start over again.

In the February 2001 issue of Total Guitar, which featured a long-lost interview with Harrison conducted in the 1990s, the Beatle looked back on the frustrating experience.

“We’d be in a recording situation, churning through all this Lennon/McCartney, Lennon McCartney, Lennon/McCartney! Then I’d say, ‘Can we do one of these?’” he said.

“When we actually started recording While My Guitar Gently Weeps it was just me playing the acoustic guitar and singing it and nobody was interested. Well, Ringo probably was, but John and Paul weren't.

“When I went home that night I was really disappointed, because I thought, ‘Well, this is really quite a good song, it's not as if it's shitty!’”

The song’s fortunes turned when Harrison lift-shared with an old friend. Eric Clapton was in town. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, he invited him to the studio.

“The next day I happened to drive back into London with Eric Clapton, and while we were in the car I suddenly said, ‘Why don't you come and play on this track?’” Harrison continued. “And he said, ‘Oh, I couldn't do that, the others wouldn't like it.’”

“Eric was reluctant, and I finally said, ‘Well, sod them! It's my song and I'd like you to come down to the studio.’”

Clapton’s presence had a transformative effect in the studio. Harrison had seen it happen before. The band picked up the song and made history.

“The same thing occurred that happened during Get Back, while we were filming the movie,” Harrison observed.

“Billy Preston came into our office and I pulled him into the studio and got him on electric piano. And suddenly everybody started behaving and not fooling around so much. Same thing happened with Eric, and the song came together nicely.”

Slowhand entered the studio on September 6, 1968, to record his overdubs. Clapton played Harrison’s red 1957 Gibson Les Paul through a Fender Deluxe. His isolated guitar parts were shared years later.

Eddie 9V has a whole lot coming to you on his eclectic fifth studio full-length, Down Here, and the vibe is downright electric.

Though he’s an Atlanta-raised six-stringer who began self-producing music when he was a teenager, he linked up with Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach at Nashville’s Easy Eye Sound studios to help capture the raw and wide-smilin’ sound of his new album.

Eddie walks the ledge with exuberantly reckless vibrato on lead-off track Whole Lot Coming for You, and on Blowin’ Up, he becomes part of a three-headed hydra of boogie-rocked goodness during a back-to-back-to-back solo section with Marcus King and Dustin McCook. But he also brings daiquiri-sweet falsetto crooning to a Southern soul cover of KC and the Sunshine Band’s Rock Your Baby, and drawls laissez-faire wisdom into the sunset-strummin’ It Don’t Bother Me.

Just before slapping a bunch of chicken thighs onto the grill for a family cookout at his new home in Greenville, South Carolina, Eddie 9V served up some thoughts on meaty tones, greasy guitar heroes, and more.

What was your first guitar and how did you get it?

I don’t know what brand it was, but it was tiny, and it had a speaker in it – it was just one of those old Japanese knockoffs from the Seventies. I was 6; I wish I still had it. It’d probably be a great-sounding blues guitar, because you could probably distort the speaker.

What was in your teenage guitar rig, and what did you love or hate about it?

I had a Samick guitar, and I tried to relic it, which is a horrible idea when you’re 14. It looked like somebody took a hacksaw to it. But I got my first good rig when I was 14. My dad sold his Honda 450 motorcycle and we got a Fender Blues Deluxe and a Highway One Strat, which I still use today.

I love that guitar – it’s amazing. I traded the amp. I’m not a big fan of the Blues Deluxe. They’re too quick. They don’t have any sag, like a good Fender two-band.

What’s a piece of gear you own that might surprise people?

I just own a lot of old shit, like Wurlitzers. I’m into old mics. My favorite amp that I have, which I’m debating on selling, is a brownface ‘61 Fender Concert. If I sell it, I’ll get some good money for it, but I’ll be kicking my ass in 20 years when they’re [worth] $30,000.

What’s your number one tone tip?

Turn the amp all the way up, and turn your guitar volume down. You’re gonna get better tone that way.

How did you get your first break in music?

Man, I was doing a lot of dumb gigs for a long time… There’s a guy named Tinsley Ellis, a blues cat from the Eighties and Nineties… I sent him my first demo, and he got me a booking agent, which got me on the road.

Then the booking agent got me the management, and then the management got me the label. Luck and hard work meet at the crossroads, but I owe all my success to Tinsley Ellis.

What is the most glorious guitar moment on your new album, Down Here?

One of the most important things to me about this record was that I got to use Sean Costello’s 1953 goldtop. He was an Atlanta blues musician, and he was my idol as a kid growing up. He was absolutely wonderful.

He died when he was 28, and I never got to meet him. Mat Koehler at Gibson ended up buying it – he was a good buddy of Sean’s – so Gibson lends it out to people who want to play it. So, the moment was [when] I was playing that guitar straight into a tweed Champ.

Marcus King had his recently acquired ‘59 Les Paul, an MK Burst. We were in the room for A Whole Lot Coming for You, lookin’ at each other like, ‘Holy shit, is this really happening?’

Tell us about a time you had an argument over tone or gear choices. Did that ever happen with Dan?

They like to use small amps that are turned up, but I need a really big amp. We didn’t have any qualms, but there was one time I wanted to bring this amp into the room and dime it, where it bleeds into the other mics. Everybody was like, “Why?” But everyone loved the sound after I got done with it. But yeah… me and Dan haven’t argued yet!

What was your worst onstage moment?

This was one time in Athens, Georgia… I had just bought new shoes, and they were real slick, but I came out and totally slipped on a cable and busted my ass. I almost broke a headstock. That was embarrassing. And there was one show in New Orleans where I ran out and didn’t have my guitar with me.

The band was playing and everything, [so] I went back to the green room, but I didn’t know the code [to get back in]. The whole venue could see me looking like an idiot. That was pretty funny.

You can only take a Strat or a Les Paul to a gig. Which are you choosing and why?

I would almost always play a Les Paul, because you’re gonna have the most meat – you’re gonna be louder; you’re gonna have more gain in your guitar.

I’ve made the mistake of showing up to a jam with a Strat, and you sound like you’re just plinking, you know? Strats are really hard to make sound fat, especially if you’re not with your own rig. I’d always pick a Les Paul.

If you could magically absorb the playing skills of one famous guitarist – and play like that person for a year or so – who would it be and why?

Probably Albert King, because there’s nobody nastier than Albert King. Freddie King is like the brisket, B.B. King is the filet mignon, and frickin’ Albert King is just a damn ham-hock. He is greasy and nasty. I’m not trying to toot horns here, but Joe Bonamassa did a video basically saying there are only a few guitar players that can do the Albert King bends correctly, and he said my name. I was super honored.

Who is the guitarist you’d most love to jam with or collaborate with next?

John Mayer is like our generation’s Eric Clapton. That would be awesome.

• Down Here is set for a November 6 release via Easy Eye Sound.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Hello everybody, and welcome to my new column for Guitar World. In this series of lessons I will demonstrate the techniques and approaches that are essential to my playing style. I hope that the material we cover will be beneficial to you in your own musical endeavors.

I’d like to begin by talking about the importance of the blues and blues-influenced music, such as gospel, soul and R&B, in my approach to music and the guitar. I come from a family of musical brothers, and blues and gospel played a big part in our lives and provided a strong foundation for me as a musician.

Like all aspiring blues guitarists, my brothers and I listened to B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, and all of the blues guitar greats. I learned as much as I could from all of them, as well as gospel music, in trying to develop a sound and approach of my own.

Figure 1 illustrates a solo played over medium-slow shuffle in the key of B. I begin in bars 1-5 with simple melodic phrases based on B major pentatonic (B, C#, D#, F#, G#) that are supported by chordal accents, such as B9 in bars 1 and 3, and E7 in bars 2 and 5.

To me, these single-note phrases are very vocal-like; maintaining a “vocal” mindset helps me to stay focused on speaking in a musical way in the lines that I play.

I must mention that I choose to play the guitar “upside down.” I take a guitar strung for a right-handed player and flip it over and play it left-handed, in the same manner as Albert King, Otis Rush and a variety of other players, including my late brother Emmanuel Gales, aka Little Jimmy King.

Playing this way completely changes the riffs, phrases and chords that are available to you. One of the big differences is that, to bend one of the treble strings, I need to pull it downward, as opposed to pushing it up as most players do.

Additionally, with the guitar strung and played this way, it’s easy for me to finger some unusual chord voicings that would be unnatural for “normal” players; a good example is the F7#11 chord in bar 4, wherein the high B note, the #11 (or b5), is fretted by wrapping my thumb around the top of the neck at the 7th fret.

Figure 2 illustrates a few more examples of my pull-down string bends, with many of the accented notes in the phrases treated with a wide, fast vibrato, a la Albert and B.B. King. If playing the guitar in the conventional way, you would, of course, need to push the strings upward to perform these bends and vibratos.

As I move through the I-IV-V (one-four-five) blues chord progression – B7-E7-F#7 in the key of B – I like to reference each chord with the chord tones. Over B7, I’ll accentuate B, D#, F# and A. Over E, I’ll touch upon E, G#, B and D. And over F#7, I’ll emphasize F#, A#, C# and E, resolving back to the I chord, B7 when necessary.

Having a firm grasp and understanding of the blues lays an essential groundwork for all guitar players, regardless of the specific style of music they choose to explore and perform.

Just about every style of music has had an influence on me as a player, but blues is definitely at the core of my playing style.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Joe Bonamassa has another signature Seymour Duncan pickup set under his belt – and this one is inspired by the pawn shop SG that spawned his love for P-90s.

From vintage guitar shops to auctions and beyond, Bonamassa goes to great lengths to score rare pieces of gear. Sometimes, he finds beauties in more unlikely places, and it was a pawn shop guitar that ignited his love affair with P-90 pickups.

The guitar in question was a 1961 white Gibson SG, and now Seymour Duncan has faithfully recreated those underdog pickups as the Joe Bonamassa “Pawn Shop Special” 1961 P90 Set.

Promising “airy highs, expressive midrange, and snarling overdrive response,” they’re wired with Alnico 4 magnets and have been given a custom wind.

Each set uses period-correct components to “bring the coveted Nerdville tone within reach of every P90 aficionado.”

Bonamassa discovered the ’61 SG while on tour after a tip off from a tech. It was the best heads-up he’s ever had.

“Very rarely do you find a special guitar in a pawn shop,” he says. “Well, one day in 2010 I was playing the Embassy Theatre in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was the middle of winter, and I heard there was a pawn shop around the corner with an interesting SG from one of the crew guys.

“I ended up bringing it back to the Embassy Theatre in Fort Wayne. I plugged it in, and these particular P-90s were the P-90s that I was searching for. Over the years, I always thought they were either too dark or too bright; not for me. But this was the beginning of my love affair with P-90s.”

That love affair has since seen him drop a stunning signature Iridescent Copper Epiphone Les Paul, saddled with Epiphone-made P-90s.

The “Pawn Shop Special” 1961 P90 Set is the first time Seymour Duncan and Bonamassa have worked on signature P-90s. Previous collabs have included recreating Tommy Bolin’s PAFs and single-coils inspired by his obscure Greenburst Strat.

The first 610 sets sold will include a Nerdville #001 inventory tag, a certificate of authenticity signed by Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan, and limited edition packaging. The sets are priced at $375.

Check out Seymour Duncan for more.

Elsewhere, Bonamassa has shown off how drop D can be killer for the blues, revealing how “hiding” your pick can make you a more expressive player.

It’s being billed as the only chance you’ll get to hear such a variety of historic electric guitars played live and loud by some of the best guitar players in the country and, fittingly, it’s being held at the epicentre of guitar music in London – Denmark Street, on the edge of Soho, at The Lower Third music venue.

From 1959 Les Paul Standards played by the likes of Mick Taylor of the Stones to Golden Era Fenders in ultra-rare Custom Colours, the Legendary Guitars event, which takes place on the evening of Wednesday, September 16, offers a one-off opportunity to hear the guitars by which all others are measured by played by some of the best guitarists in Britain, accompanied by expert commentary on the guitars’ history and heritage from leading guitar authors and historians.

Speaking in the run-up to the event, which takes place in less than two weeks, Chris Buck said:

“Opportunities to play and hear iconic, museum-grade instruments in all their glory are few and far between. As such, it's easy to forget that they are exactly that – instruments meant to be played and enjoyed.

“You can read about their history and specs all you want, but ultimately, the interesting bit comes when you plug it in and see why it inspired such great music.

“Couple that with Denmark Street being one of those iconic London landmarks where the weight of history and expectation is almost palpable, and you've got the perfect storm. ‘Don't f**k it up, Chris!’”

To whet your appetite for this mouthwatering bill of legendary guitars and stellar players, here are three guitars that will be on show on the night you’ll definitely want to pay close attention to.

The Grainger ’Burst

Famously owned and played by Gary Grainger, who played it in Rod Stewart’s band in the late 1970s, this 1959-spec ’Burst (AKA sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard) emerged from Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory in 1960, making it a transitional model.

It has substantial play-wear just beneath the neck pickup in particular that bears witness to its years on the road and is known to be one of the better-sounding original ’Bursts out there, explaining why it was a go-to for Gary Grainger. Playing it for a Guitarist magazine vintage Les Paul shootout video back in 2023, Chris Buck said:

“I’ve been lucky enough to have played quite a few ’Bursts now, and this is the one I always find myself gravitating towards whenever anyone asks me what the pinnacle of Les Pauls is. To be honest, this is consistently the best one that I’ve played.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with this guitar, and as much as the gravitas or kudos of playing a ’Burst is never totally lost on me, having spent so much time with Grainger in lots of different settings, it does give me a little more objectivity about it in terms of not being totally blown away by the fact that it’s a ’Burst.”

Guitarist Tone Lounge demo guitarist Richard Barrett, who traded licks with Buck in the video, added, “The Grainger ‘Burst is not super-high output, but it’s got that sound.”

So if you want to hear what a genuinely great original ’Burst sounds like – even when compared to other Les Paul Standards from the late 1950s – head down to Denmark Street on September 16 to hear Chris Buck put it through its paces once again.

It’s not the only ‘Burst that will be on show - there’ll be the ex-Mick Taylor ‘Exile’ ‘Burst too, plus a first-year-of-issue 1958 Les Paul Standard, so you can leave knowing you’ve heard, direct from source, what all the fuss is about.

T-Bone Walker’s 1949 Gibson ES-5N

His playing influenced everyone from Hendrix to SRV, and gave Chuck Berry the inspiration for his swaggering showmanship. Texas-born bluesman T-Bone Walker was the godfather of electric blues, with a silk-smooth and droll vocal style and a fistful of licks that went on to form the very lexicon of modern blues guitar.

After moving to America’s West Coast in the 1930s, his star rose. The earliest publicity shots of T-Bone show him playing a Gibson ES-250, and this was the guitar he used for what remains his most influential single recording, Call It Stormy Monday, recorded in 1947 for the independent Black And White label.

However, the guitar that would become most synonymous with T-Bone was the 1949 ES-5N (the ‘N’ standing for Natural finish), which he began playing as his main instrument from August 1951.

From this point, as blues writer and jazz guitarist Denny Ilett wrote in Guitarist magazine, “there was a marked change in Walker’s tone [with this] full-size archtop that sported a cutaway and a trio of P-90 pickups. You can hear the difference on the likes of I Get So Weary, which features an out-of-phase tone made possible by the new guitar.”

You can see this very guitar, currently in the stewardship of famous Denmark Street guitar store Regent Sounds, being played on the night – one of the highlights of the Legendary Guitars show and a must for any fan of blues guitar.

Revolutionary Rickenbackers

The Legendary Guitars event will kick off with a presentation of Rickenbacker electrics with expert insights from Martin Kelly, co-author of Rickenbacker: Pioneers Of The Electric Guitar.

Speaking in a 2021 issue of Guitarist magazine, Kelly reminded readers of the design genius behind the Rickenbackers we know today, German emigrant luthier Roger Rossmeisl, who is especially notable for designing the Capri series of guitars that included some of the most iconic Ricky models ever built, including the 325, which was adopted by the Beatles and the 330 played by Pete Townshend of The Who, catapulting Rickenbacker to the forefront of ’60s pop culture.

“The Beatles were the spark,” confirms Martin. “Suddenly, you’ve got all these British bands in the US like The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, The Zombies and The Animals turning up on American TV shows playing Rickenbackers, and all these kids are going, ‘That’s a cool guitar!’ So many people I’ve interviewed told me, ‘I didn’t know it was an American guitar.’

“The British Invasion introduced this American brand to America, a bit like how The Stones did with the blues. It had to go to Britain to be made popular.

“Pete Townshend took it somewhere else. He really played the hell out of his Rose Morris six- and 12-string models. If you get a 12-string, you can play pick-y stuff like [Roger] McGuinn, but if you hit it hard, you can really get the sound of those early Who records.”

Martin will take the audience through the evolution of some iconic Rickenbackers, while explaining their historic connection to Denmark Street retailer Rose Morris. While Martin covers the history, the guitars will be demonstrated by the superb picking skills of Guitarist Tone Lounge demonstrator and ex-Tony Hadley guitarist Richard Barrett.

If all of the above sounds too good to miss (which it is), head down to the Legendary Guitars event at The Lower Third on Denmark Street in London on September 16.

Places are strictly limited, so book your tickets now.

Marcus King may be going at a thousand miles an hour as the face of contemporary blues rock and Americana. However, between the release of his new signature Epiphone, the El Dorado, and his switch from Orange to Marshall, King is determined to pay homage to his late friend, Brent Hinds.

The Mastodon co-founder died in August last year at the age of 51 following a fatal motorcycle accident that left the guitar world grieving. King, who was both a long-time admirer of his work and a dear friend, looks back on their friendship and how life changed after Hinds’ untimely death.

“Man, I had Brent in my life for the better part of a decade,” he tells Guitar World in a new interview.

“We became really good friends really quickly. And something indicative of his character is that anybody who knew him knew that if you were going to be friends with Brent, you knew it very quickly,” he adds with a laugh. “And we did become really good friends really quickly. He was a groomsman at my wedding, and just a good friend to talk to. He was a brother.”

One of the top qualities that he admired about Hinds was how equally “passionate” and flippant he was about his playing.

“He was also sometimes like, ‘Oh, man… fuck it. Dude, let’s go do something else.’ We never really spent much time talking about playing per se, but every now and then we’d nerd out about a Mark Knopfler solo.”

“We’d just sit outside, get really stoned, and nerd out about a solo or two,” he illustrates. “But his playing style and his ability to bring chicken pickin’ into the metal realm… I was always really inspired by that. He also has a really good sense of melody and was just a beautiful composer.”

Hinds also recorded a guitar solo – one of his very last – before he died for King’s 2025 release Red Door.

“He slept on the living room couch for a week (or two, who's counting) with The Marcus King Band at the house they rented down in Macon, Georgia,” boutique American custom guitar shop Banker Guitars wrote on social media.

“Ever the stubborn perfectionist, he managed to do 278 takes before landing on the one he liked best.”

Guitar World’s full interview with Marcus King will be published in the coming weeks.

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram has signed a new emerging guitar talent to his record label, hailing him as the future of the blues.

For years, a host of blues greats have pointed towards “Kingfish as the future of the genre. Now, he’s pledging his support to the next great torchbearer: Mathias Lattin.

Kingfish, who has two signature Fender Teles, has signed the Houston, TX talent to his label, Red Zero Records, and believes he can take the blues to new heights. The 24-year-old has celebrated the deal with a song, Cadillac Assembly Line.

Curiously, Lattin is the grandson of NBA Hall of Famer and two-time NCAA All-American David “Big Daddy” Lattin. Like many blues icons before him, he has been haunting blues venues since before he was a teenager. His playing has blown Kingfish away.

“I’ve known Mathias for a while, and I’ve watched him really grow into his own thing,” Kingfish says of Lattin. “He can really play, but it’s bigger than just the guitar. He’s got his own sound, he can write, he can produce, and most importantly he’s not afraid to take the music somewhere different“

"That’s what I’m really excited about," he adds. "He represents where the blues can go next.”

Cadillac Assembly Line showcases Lattin’s melting pot of sounds, with soulful blues guitar and R&B beats as its bedrock. There’s a purity to his clean, emotional bends, but as Ingram says, it’s not explicitly nostalgic; he’s not afraid to steer the blues down his own lane.

“It’s refreshing to be a part of something where I can be unapologetically me,” Lattin says. “With Red Zero, I have the freedom to explore my music the way I hear it, take chances, and bring all of my influences into the mix. The blues will always be the foundation, but I’m excited to see how far I can push it.”

Lattin has already shared stages with Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, and Eric Gales amongst others. With Kingfish’s support, he’s sure to add many more names to that list.

Elsewhere, Kingfish has explained why the Telecaster is the perfect blues machine in his eyes, and though he’s rightly classed as a modern blues great, he’s never forgotten his roots.

One thing that has always appealed to me about blues guitar soloing is that it can express emotions much in the same way as the human voice.

A key factor in making the most of what the instrument has to offer is articulation. It’s all about the many variables in the pick attack, as well as fret-hand technique.

But another option is to “hide” the pick and incorporate a fingerpicking approach. I do this by tucking the pick into the flexed knuckle joint of my index finger and then pick the strings primarily with my thumb and middle finger.

To demonstrate, Figure 1 is a fingerpicked phrase based on the F minor pentatonic scale (F, Ab, Bb, C, Eb). I use my thumb to pick the lower strings and my middle finger to pick the higher strings. There is a “pop” to the notes and a breadth of tonal variations that can only be achieved with fingerpicking.

One of the greatest purveyors of fingerpicked blues soloing is Albert King, and you’ll find yourself in A.K. Land pretty fast when taking this approach. In Figure 2, I begin by thumbpicking the G string then use my middle finger to pick the B string, leading into a big, two-step “overbend” and release, from Ab to C to Ab.

On beat 4, I bend and release the Bb note on the 1st string’s 6th fret with my index finger (practice those index-finger bends!) and then slide the finger down to the 4th fret.

In bar 3, I make reference to the V (five) chord, C, via the C major pentatonic scale (C, D, E, G, A), with some chromatic passing tones added. In bar 4 I reference the IV (four) chord, Bb, by playing a few notes from Bb major pentatonic (Bb, C, D, F, G), before wrapping up with a return to the I (one) chord, F with lines based on F minor pentatonic.

By fingerpicking a note, you can greatly vary its volume, tone and character, more so than when using a pick. In Figure 3, I stick to picking only with my thumb on the low strings to demonstrate just how much warmth this way of playing can produce.

Herein lies the beauty of the blues: each simple melodic line can be phrased and articulated in so many different ways, which is dictated by how you feel. And this is greatly impacted by how you perceive the audience to feel.

When performing live, there’s a rapport between you and the audience. You know it’s right when you hear cheers, and you know something’s not right when everyone heads for the bar.

A good example of how I build from a blues approach to branch off into other sounds can be heard on The Ballad of John Henry. As shown in Figure 4, there’s an E minor pentatonic lick (E, G, A, B, D) that alternates with G5 and A5 power chords.

When soloing over it, I can start with the blues element by fingerpicking, as I do in bars 1-2 of Figure 5, then shift to using the pick (bars 3-4) and incorporating the more exotic sound of the E Phrygian-dominant mode (E, F, G#, A, B, C, D) before returning to straight blues. You can start with rock and end with B.B. King! Or vice versa.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

This month on Bought & Sold, we speak to Hannah Wicklund about her life in guitars. A gigging player since childhood, it wasn't long before she acquired a taste for the finer things on the rack…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

My dad is a painting contractor, but his friend was one of those attorney gear collectors – he literally had a room full of amps and guitars. So we went in halfsies when I was nine years old. I paid $800, my dad paid $800, and I went from playing a Daisy Rock to my very first Anderson Drop Top Classic.

I think the price was down to the ‘cute’ factor of being a little nine-year-old who was paying for half of it myself. I think the poor attorney took pity on me. But my first full-on, by-myself guitar purchase was this amazing sparkle Cherry Red Custom Shop Tele. They only made 13 of them and it was my introduction to Abby [Ybarra]-wound pickups, learning the lore behind that amazing woman.

What was the last guitar you bought and why?

I bought this incredible Custom Shop Gibson 339 – it’s white with cream binding. I’m a sucker for binding. Y’know, the devil’s in the detail. I’d gone a long time of playing more Strat/Tele-dominant guitars, but I was going on tour solo with Yes and Deep Purple, and I wanted a hollowbody to ratchet things up with an instrument that really fit the stage.

What’s your best guitar-buying tip?

It’s really just to follow your intuition and your gut. Before I even pick up a guitar, there’s a special moment, there’s a spark. It’s like love at first sight. I’m not into forcing anything. I love the universe and divine intervention, so I just wait for the perfect guitar to fall into my lap – and it usually does.

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve had when buying guitars?

I mean, I’m a lady with expensive taste. I went into Fanny’s [House Of Music] when I was still living in Nashville, and there was this stunning parlour with checkerboard binding. It also had these weird symbols carved into it, almost like little cats or something.

It was obviously very old, you could tell, and the name on the headstock was Herwin. Like, ‘Her Win’, I loved that. Turned out it was an 1800s parlour, so I was expecting to look at the tag and see a super-duper high price, but it was only two grand.

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?

Honestly, I haven’t. I’m a quality-over-quantity girl. I mean, $2,000 for a guitar is the minimum I would spend. I’ve been really fortunate: I started making good money playing music as a literal child, so I’ve taken my time with my purchases. I will say that I’ve been gifted a few things I didn’t end up enjoying… but I’m not going to tell you who gave me what!

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go of?

Definitely. That would be my first two guitars, which were a Baby Taylor and my Daisy Rock. It’s so weird because I’m the most sentimental gal in the world. I have, like, an altar of all of these knickknacks and tokens from my life surrounding me, even on tour.

Are there any common design features on electric guitars that are an instant turn-off for you when you’re auditioning potential new guitars?

I prefer a natural shape. I’m not a huge pointy guitar fan. And I’m not a fan of gold hardware. I don’t know… there’s something about it that really turns me off, other than on a really high-end Black Beauty Les Paul. Now that is beautiful. But other than that, I just don’t trust gold on a guitar.

When was the last time you stopped to stare in a guitar shop window and what were you looking at?

It was literally the other night in Soho. I stopped and stared at this gorgeous natural-finish Gibson 335. It was very clearly quite old and had been worn in. But then I looked up and I was like, ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ Because they had it hanging on a string from the headstock, and I was like, “That can’t be good for this beautiful old guitar.”

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp – or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?

Well, I really don’t like this question. It’s slightly torturous. But I will answer it: I would much rather have a shitty guitar through a fantastic amp. I do believe there’s a lot that lies in your hands, so I think for somebody who knows how to work with an instrument, there’s always a lot you can do to make a guitar sound better. But there’s not a lot you can do when there’s a solid-state amp just killing your tone.

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your life, which one would you choose and why?

Oh, that’s very easy – humbuckers all the way. I love digging in. I love being loud. I love having a ferocious guitar tone. I love sustain. And I play most of my set on humbuckers anyways. Y’know, if I need to, I’ll just roll the tone back and figure something else out. You can always go less, but it’s harder to go more.

What’s your favourite guitar shop and why?

Honestly, I love Gruhn Guitars [in Nashville]. There is something quite spectacular about being in a place that has so much history and love and attention put into it. It’s like an art gallery of guitars. Passion is very palpable, and George Gruhn is the heartbeat of that place.

I love being anywhere where the person in charge has as much love for it as I do for what I do in my life. But I also really do love Fanny’s. I usually have a lot of shit to talk about Nashville, I’m not gonna lie, but the guitar shops in that town are quite spectacular.

Hannah’s Go-To Rig

My Anderson guitars are an extension of me at this point. The Drop Top Classic is my go-to, but last year they sent me a Wolfhound, which has some fantastic humbucker energy.

I also have a Cobra with these custom-painted flames. It’s funny… flames can be kinda corny, but these are beautiful. I’ve had plenty of dudes make fun of me and that guitar, but I’m ready to embrace my fuck-you energy and break it out for this next run.

I’m playing through an Orange Rocker 30, but I’m gonna test the waters by adding a Supro Amulet. I love a tiny amp with a bit of break-up. On my ’board, there’s my Keeley-modified Blues Driver, my old T-Rex Room-Mate, the [MXR] Carbon Copy, the J Rockett Archer and my MXR Talk Box. I’m also playing the shit out of this incredible guitar called a Myooz guitar.

The builder, Tudor Maier, reached out and asked if he could send me a guitar, and I’m not a crazy person, so I said, “Sure.” It’s the most beautiful custom guitar. Anybody who sees it, their jaw drops, especially guitar nerds.

• War On Women; Calling All Good Men is out now via Strawberry Moon Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

In this column I’d like to talk about the oft-used drop-D tuning, wherein the guitar’s low E string is tuned down a whole step to D (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E). Drop-D tuning creates the opportunity for all kinds of otherwise inaccessible riffs and chords, plus it’s a great and easy way to expand the instrument’s low range into new subsonic territory.

I play the song Trigger Finger, from 2025’s Breakthrough, in drop-D. What I find most useful about the tuning is that it simply presents more options to me as a guitarist. For example, as shown in Figure 1, I can play the song’s main riff in 8th-10th position in standard tuning, but as you’ll notice, I sneak in the open low D root note in bar 3 on the upbeat of beat 2.

Another option is to tune all six strings down a whole step, to D standard (low to high: D, G, C, F, A, D). But only dropping the 6th string down a whole step gives you the best of both worlds – you’ve got your low D note while the other five strings are tuned normally.

Figure 2 illustrates the main riff as I play it on the track. Performed mostly in 3rd position, it’s based on the D blues scale (D, F, G, Ab, A, C) with the inclusion of the major 3rd, F#. Notice how I utilize the open low D note, bouncing off it for rhythm and sonic emphasis in a few spots.

One of my favorite purveyors of drop-D riffing is the late, great Chris Whitley, whose playing I love, especially on his 1998 album Dirt Floor. My band and I opened up for Chris in 2000, at a place called the Patio in Indianapolis. I’d heard of him but didn’t know his music or his playing. In all honesty, his solo performance blew us off the stage! He was a brilliant player, and I recommend you check out Dirt Floor, as well as his many other albums.

Chris used drop-D to play some fantastic octave figures, fretted on the 6th and 4th strings. In drop-D tuning, each note of the octave is located at the same fret.

Figures 3 and 4 present Whitley-esque passages. In Figure 3, the phrase moves up and down the fretboard in the aforementioned octave shapes.

In Figure 4, I combine these octave-based phrases with shifting power chord licks in bars 4, 8 and 9. In bars 8 and 9, I barre my index finger across all of the strings at the 7th fret while playing a single-note melodic line on the 5th and 4th strings.

This is along the lines of Whitley’s approach to using drop-D tuning. As you play the figure, you’ll notice how unusual the rhythmic patterns are. Chris would play in this type of “choppy” style, and he blew me away when I saw him perform. His standard guitars of choice were both a National steel acoustic and an electric Les Paul Junior in “TV” yellow.

If you really want to get adventurous, try dropping both your low and high E strings down to D, what’s called double drop-D tuning (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, D). This will get you into some CSN&Y territory, as both Neil Young and Stephen Stills have explored this tuning to great effect, as has Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin’s Going to California.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Pete Townshend has pulled out of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival due to injury.

The Who legend was set to share the lineup for this year’s annual Crossroads with an all-star cast of guitar heavyweights. However, complications surrounding knee replacement recovery have forced him to pull out.

"I'm so sorry to say that due to damage to my left foot, and subsequent issues with my balance, I cannot commit to travel to appear at the upcoming Crossroads Festival in Austin,” he said in a statement.

“I so desperately wanted to appear, and have battled to get in shape, and I am improving, but the long flights from London, and the jetlag on my return, would cause backtracking I really can't afford.”

It’s not the first time Townshend has had to pull out of Crossroads due to unforeseen circumstances. However, he’s holding out hope he will finally get to feature one day.

“I am making a $50,000 donation to the festival cause from my charity Double O,” he continues. “One day I hope I can accept Eric's invitation to appear with him. He has now asked me several times.

“There has always been some issue, in this case it is my recovery from my knee replacement in February of 2025, and some complications.

“I want to especially thank Derek Trucks and Susie Tedeschi for their offer to support me as my backing band. Wow! That is something I can only dream about, and maybe one day it will happen.”

In his statement, Townshend also quietly confirmed plans for a Who reunion are in motion, days after Roger Daltrey revealed the band were back in rehearsals.

“Meanwhile I will keep working on getting well so I can work with Roger and The Who in future,” says Townshend.

Crossroads Guitar Festival 2026 is set to take place in Austin, Texas, on September 26 and 27. The lineup will feature Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, Tedeschi Trucks band and more.

To celebrate the festival, Guitar Center has launched a run of limited-edition acoustic and electric guitars.

Visit Crossroads Guitar Festival website for more info.

The famous writing on the wall read “Clapton is God” but not everyone was a believer. Sure, he helped write the book on British blues-rock, was electric guitar point man in the archetypical rock power trio Cream, and made acoustic blues platinum in the MTV era, but still there were doubters.

Some had little faith. Angus Young was one of them. Speaking to Guitar World in 1986 – granted, six years off Clapton’s triple-Grammy-winning turn on MTV Unplugged – the AC/DC lead guitarist admitted that he never understood all the fuss. Given Clapton or the Godfather of Rock ’n’ Roll, there was just no contest.

“Everyone always used to rave about Clapton when I was growing up, saying he was a guitar genius and stuff like that,” said Young. “Well, even on a bad night, Chuck Berry is a lot better than Clapton will ever be.”

When Clapton broke out, he was on a mission. He wanted to bring the blues to the world. Speaking to Guitarist in 1994, he saw his life’s mission to make others feel what he felt when he put the needle down on a Freddie King record.

“I thought everyone else was either in it just to be on Top Of The Pops or Ready Steady Go, or to score girls or for some dodgy reason,” said Clapton. “I was in it to save the world. I wanted to tell the world about blues and to get it right. Even then I thought that I was on some kind of mission, so in a way I thought, ‘Yes, I am God; quite right.’”

Clapton always cited his sources. He was devoted. But that didn’t wash with Young.

“Clapton just sticks licks together that he has taken from other people – like B.B. King and the other old blues players – and puts them together in some mish-mashed fashion,” said Young.

He did, however, give Slowhand some credit. Clapton’s work with John Mayall cut the mustard. And Cream – Sunshine of your Love, White Room, et cetera – were OK.

“The only great album he ever made was the Blues Breaker album he did with John Mayall, and maybe a couple of good songs he did with Cream,” continued Young. “The guy more or less built his reputation on that. I never saw what the big fuss was about Clapton to begin with.”

Young was more impressed with Clapton’s fellow Yardbird alumnus, Jeff Beck, whom he argued was… well, he wasn’t boring.

“There are guys out there who can play real good without boring people. Jeff Beck is one of them,” said Young. “He’s more of a technical guy, but when he wants to rock and roll he sure knows how to do it with guts. I really like the early albums he did with Rod Stewart.”

But Young’s all-time favorite is the irrepressible Chuck Berry, from whom Young took much of his sound – not to mention stagecraft. Berry was brilliant because he just didn’t care. Put an electric guitar in his hands he would light up.

“Chuck Berry was never a caring person. He didn’t care whether he was playing his tune, out of tune or someone else’s tune,” said Young. “Whenever he plays guitar, he has a big grin from ear to ear.”

On that note, Young and Clapton have something in common. Chuck Berry played a huge role in both players’ musical education. In his interview with Guitarist, Clapton said it was players like Berry and Bo Diddley who encouraged him to investigate the roots of rock ’n’ roll and explore where it came from.

“I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music,” Clapton said. “But for some reason it did something to me – it resonated.”

Joe Bonamassa has paid tribute to Tim Curry, the renowned English actor and singer who has died at the age of 80.

Curry was best known for portraying the flamboyant Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 movie musical The Rocky Horror Show, as well as for playing a wide range of dynamic roles both onscreen and onstage.

Shortly after the movie was released, Curry launched a music career, releasing his debut album, Read My Lips, in 1978. Among the tracks on the record is Sloe Gin, which Bonamassa later covered on his 2007 album of the same name.

“Rest in Peace Tim Curry,” writes Joe Bonamassa on social media. “Many do not know that Tim cut the original version of Sloe Gin on his debut album Read my Lips in 1978. The song was composed by Bob Ezrin and Michael Kamen.

“20 years ago, [producer] Kevin Shirley rang me and said he found the perfect desperate blues song for me. He was right and our version changed my career trajectory forever. Tim's version was bold, beautiful and featured the mastery of Dick Wagner on guitar.”

Wielding one of his many Les Pauls, against a backdrop of Fender stacks, Bonamassa gave a heartfelt rendition of Sloe Gin – a song which remains one of his biggest hits to this day.

“That song initially came to me via [producer] Kevin Shirley who was born in South Africa,” Joe Bonamassa previously told Total Guitar. “It was a hit there but nowhere else.

“I have to give a special shout out to Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner who played on the original version. They were basically Bob Ezrin’s ringers… What you hear on the record and how we play it live are two different things. That song’s got a life of its own. I’m thrilled with that… sometimes we just have to play it!”

Bonamassa’s solo on Sloe Gin, played with incredible restraint and intensity, is one of the bluesman’s signature solos, coming 42nd in Total Guitar’s 2020 poll of the greatest guitar solos of all time. It perhaps comes as no surprise, then, that it remains part of his setlist to this day.

“The first time I played it, people applauded like they knew the song. And they didn’t know the song, it just sounded familiar. That was a very cool thing. That song has been with me for 20 years now.”

Guitar Center has unveiled its Crossroads 2026 guitar collection, which includes exclusive Eric Clapton and John Mayer models.

As is tradition, Guitar Center has celebrated the annual Crossroads guitar festival with a capsule of limited-edition electric guitars and acoustic guitars. And there are some absolute stunners on the menu.

Like previous editions, Clapton’s guitars get the spotlight. The headline is a recreation of his Blind Faith Telecaster, the famed hybrid-esque model he played alongside Steve Winwood and Ginger Baker in the rock supergroup in 1969.

A regular sunburst Tele at first glance, the Blind Faith guitar famously combined a single-cut body with a Stratocaster neck for an oddball Fender mash-up. Along with the likes of The Fool SG, it’s one of Slowhand’s most visually distinct instruments.

To keep it as authentic as possible, there’s a 1956 “Brownie” Stratocaster neck replica and period-correct details, with an included “Woof Tone” wiring kit for more vintage Blind Faith sounds.

At $4,999 apiece, the Tele will be limited to 130 units worldwide, and was presented to Clapton in a launch video published by Guitar Center.

The other big inclusion is a PRS Silver Sky, finished in a one-off Incline Blue colorway and adorned with some never-before-used silhouetted Bird inlays, along with a custom Crossroads Sun design at the 12th fret.

Only 70 will be made, and Mayer himself will use the Incline Blue Silver Sky when he plays at the Crossroads Festival next month.

The two electrics are joined by a list of ultra-premium Martin acoustic guitars, the most expensive of which is the $25k 000-42 Eric Clapton Brazilian.

Inspired by his MTV Unplugged 000 model, it represents “the pinnacle of Eric Clapton’s relationship with Martin” – thanks in part to the rare Brazilian rosewood back and sides.

It’s joined by a Ziricote 000-42, which is available in Sunburst and Clear Natural and starts from $9,699, and the 000-13E, which is the most affordable guitar of the drop at $1,899.

“Music has always been my most reliable source of inspiration, or salvation,” says Clapton. “These guitars are sacred things to me.”

To cap off the launch, Ernie Ball has produced some special edition string sets. They are regular Slink 10-46 strings, but they come in a collectible tin – which is a rather nice touch.

The Crossroads 2026 collection will be available at Guitar Center stores and on the retailer’s website. They’ll also be available for purchase at The Guitar Center Experience during the festival.

Visit Guitar Center to find out more.

Crossroads Festival 2026 will take place on September 26 and 27, and the lineup features an all-star cast of guitar greats.

There’s an honesty to South African singer-songwriter Steve Louw’s music that hits listeners straight in the heart.

On his latest album, Traces Of The Flood, he’s mixing elements of folk, country and classic rock using tones that will have just about any fan of guitar music grinning from ear to ear.

And with long-time collaborator Kevin Shirley (Joe Bonamassa, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden) once again sat behind the desk, these minimalistic songs sound bigger and bolder than the simple chords at their core.

Triple Threat

Ask Steve Louw what makes this record different from the others across his four-decade long career and he’ll tell you a lot of it comes down to the addition of a third guitarist.

“Adding Bob Britt into the band made a big difference,” says Steve. “His friend Doug Lancio has been on my last three albums; they’re great friends and have played together in Bob Dylan’s touring band. I saw them in Memphis and loved the interaction between them. Their chemistry affected all of us in this band.”

Unplugged Victory

It’s not often you’ll hear a song with three guitarists all playing acoustic, but that’s exactly what happened on standout track Echo Dream.

“We played it a couple of times on electric, but it wasn’t working,” admits Steve. “So I said to Kevin, ‘Let’s do it with three acoustic guitars.’ He looked at me a bit strangely but gave it a go. The other musicians started adding extra touches.

“Then I asked Bob to do something electric in a Mick Taylor style and he played this beautiful line. You’re hearing three acoustics and a 1956 Strat. It ended up being one of the best-sounding tracks on the album.”

Vintage Mojo

As it happens, the 1956 Strat wasn’t the only golden-era guitar used on the album.

“Bob was playing a 1956 Les Paul Junior on the song Angeline, while Doug was playing mandolin,” adds Steve. “Bob has an original ’60s Princeton. A lot of the album was the Junior going into that. Doug has some interesting and quirky guitars like his Harmony Rocket and there was an Epiphone Casino in the mix, too.

“We also rented a beautiful 335 12-string from 1966, which you can hear on songs like Time To Move. I mainly played my Gibson J-45. It’s a 2015 reissue with a darkish sound that really works for me.”

Like A Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan’s influence on Louw stretches far beyond the personnel heard on this latest release.

“Bob’s a genius,” he says, “a brilliant musician and storyteller. He keeps reinventing himself in unique ways. He knows what sound he wants and always manages to find it. He’s more than a writer; he’s a leader who knows how to get the best out of people.

“Songs like Tangled Up In Blue are extra special. It has such a great story and rhythm to it. The story is quite long, but the structure is simple, taking you right into the lyrics. Translating the journey of the subject through music is so mystical to me.”

Featuring JoBo

The Kevin Shirley connection led to Joe Bonamassa appearing on three of Steve’s most recent albums.

“Me and Kevin started working together early on,” says Steve. “We both had bands in Cape Town and made our first record together in 1986. Much later on he introduced me to Joe, who played this beautiful solo on Wind In Your Hair from my 2021 album, Headlight Dreams.

“Then he played on the track Mother, Don’t Go from my next album [Thunder And Rain, 2022], and Cruel Hand Of Fate from my last album [Between Time, 2024], using his Fender B-Bender Telecaster. It’s been a privilege to have him elevating my songs because he’s a musical genius.”

Why the Electro-Harmonix Wiggler Tube Vibrato/Tremolo is his favourite pedal

“I love how it’s got a valve in it. You can get a really nice Leslie tone. I don’t use it on stage because it’s hard to travel with. But I just love how it sounds. It reminds me of how Robbie Robertson from The Band sounded on Music From Big Pink.”

“Back in those days a lot of guitar players were plugging straight into the Leslie, which brings this amazing kind of movement and modulation.”

• Traces of the Flood is out now via BFD
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.