Samantha Fish has played with a who's who of the blues world, but one especially memorable mentor has been bona fide blues legend, Buddy Guy.

Back in 2013, after a whole night driving across Canada to make it to Guy’s show on time, Fish was coaxed to the stage to jam with the guitar ace himself.

“I see this look on Buddy Guy’s face that’s like, ‘What’s this girl's name? I’ll put her on!’” she recalled in a 2019 interview with Blues Blast Magazine.

“That’s when Buddy called me up. I was so nervous. My recollection of it is terrible, ’cause I was so damn nervous. I do remember him saying, ‘When shit like that happens, I can play all night.’”

Since then, Fish has carried on Guy's mission of “keeping the blues alive,” even trading licks with him on stage as a special guest on multiple occasions.

Those experiences have presented plenty of valuable lessons for Fish, who revealed the most important ones she learned from Guy in a recent Guitar World interview.

“​​Well, Buddy Guy is, as far as guitar players go, one of the best conversationalists on the planet,” she says.

“What he does with his guitar, and when you're doing a back and forth with him, trading licks, he's fully immersed. For me, the best thing you can do for a guitar, as a guitarist, is try to make it sound like a human voice. Emote a voice out of it... and he just does that perfectly too.”

Fish notes that Guy “takes a lot of pauses,” and when he stops playing, the audience “just goes nuts”. It's all about finding the space, playing with emotion, and trying to squeeze every ounce of emotion out of each note.

“It’s amazing,” she raves. “People really do respond to it. He's just one of the best emoters there is.”

Fish will be taking part in Buddy Guy’s 90th birthday concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on May 1st. As part of a stellar lineup, she’ll be honoring his legacy and celebrating all things blues alongside Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi & Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa, and, of course, Guy himself.

Among all the great blues guitarists, Buddy Guy holds the crown as the most expressive when it comes to playing solos with rhythmic variety. In particular, he’s got an uncanny knack of drifting away from the band’s time, particularly in a slow blues, where there’s more space to play with. Clipped notes, sustained vibrato notes, quick-fire note bursts, accelerating repetitive licks and moments of silence: these and more have become his beloved rhythmic trademarks for blues soloing.

One of my favorite eras of Buddy’s is the mid-to-late ’60s, and this encompasses albums such as I Left My Blues in San Francisco (1967), and A Man and the Blues (1968), as well as his incredible work with Junior Wells. There’s something special about this period, where his playing was cleaner, and yet more raw-sounding. He was considerably ahead of his time.

And don't forget his renowned tone: neck and middle pickups on a Strat (legend has it that he originally taped his three-way selector to get the sound). I’ve gone for this pickup position in all the examples, with some mild breakup on the amp. He has also used neck and (especially) bridge positions, so feel free to experiment.

All of the examples are in C# major. This is perhaps an unusual key for guitar players but one that Buddy has enjoyed playing in over the years. The benefit of this key is when you’re using minor pentatonic shapes 1 and 2, you're in the middle of the fretboard, so bending and vibrato is easier. But it’s rhythm that we’re really going to dig into, so let’s get into it!

Match My Sound: play-along enhancements

For this lesson, we've partnered with MatchMySound to offer the ability to record yourself and see how close you are. MatchMySound is a great tool to help track your progress.

Click on the word 'options' (lower left, below the tab/notation) to select from 'demo audio track' (just guitar), 'backing track' (just the backing), 'full audio' (backing and real guitar audio) and 'metronome' (just a click to play along to).

Below that, select 'options' for how you can record your performance.

At the upper right, the magnifying glass images let you alter the playback speed for learning and pushing your playing onwards.

Follow the cursor to keep up with the tab/notation accurately on screen.

Lastly, to view the music better by filling your desktop/tablet/phone screen, click on the square brackets at the top right.

Buddy Guy rhythmic examples

Example 1a - On the grid time feel

Before you explore playing around with time or playing ‘off grid’, it's important to be able to play on the grid, showing you can synchronise with the band. In a 12/8 blues groove, most players gravitate to underlying groups of three (played on the hi-hat on the backing).

In this example, this is evident but also there are fast pull-offs that come from a smaller 12-note grid. Even though you’re playing with different rhythmic groups here, notice that almost every line begins on one of the strong beats.

Example 1b - Shifting the rhythm

Buddy Guy is about vibe and spontaneity rather than precision. This extends to some of his string bending as well as his timing. Here you're shifting some of the lines to either side of the strong beats as this will make your phrasing sound less predictable. Experiment with the speed and placement of the faster pull-offs.

With repeating licks like this, it’s worth making it sound more conversational and expressive, as opposed to being completely uniform.

Example 2a - On the grid time feel

One of Buddy’s trademark ideas is using pedal note bluesy double-stops. He does this with thumb and first finger (or you could use hybrid picking as I’ve done in the video), which means you can easily achieve wide intervals that jump strings.

On this first ‘on the grid’ version, view the whole phrase as a classic blues call and response line.

Example 2b - Off the grid time feel

Here you're letting go of the grid. The ‘dragged’ sound should feel a little lazy in the picking hand as this will give you a behind the beat feel. The second half of this line includes a ‘4 over 3’ grouping that’s common in slow 12/8 blues.

Don't overthink this, as aiming for precision can often ruin the effect. Just as with harmony, you can create considerable tension with rhythms like this, with a feel good release when you hit the final note.

Example 3a - On the grid time feel

Buddy loves to milk simple blues phrases over time (and often over an entire 12-bar solo). Here you’ll start off with a typical pentatonic lick that’s grouped as six notes per beat.

As before, the bends can be loose in terms of tuning (anything from a ¼ note to a ½ note bend will sound good). The first finger bend is a Buddy Guy trademark but it can be tricky: explore bending towards your face rather than towards the floor, as it can feel easier to do.

Example 3b - Elastic/bungee time feel

The notation can be a little bit daunting here but all you’re going for is a “start slow and soft, then gradually get faster and louder” vibe. As with the previous example, the release of tension will be at some future point – ideally when the chord changes.

Again, it’s not about precision. You can put the brakes on if you feel yourself going too fast, but if you end the line too early or late it doesn’t really matter. For added expression, try picking close to the bridge for a spikier sound and vary the dynamics from whisper quiet to loud.

Example 4 - Putting it all together

In this longer 12-bar solo all of the previous ideas are put together so you can see the examples are interchangeable over different parts of the progression. There are also some extra Buddy-isms, including the ‘catch bends’ in bar 2.

Normally, the fretting fingers push a lower string out of the way during a bend up, but here you can allow the fingers to be slightly flatter to push onto the second string. It’s got a glorious out of tune sound that’s worth getting into your playing (you can also hear where the great SRV got this from).

This line resolves in bar 3 with the second finger bending down from F# to E# for a sus4 to major 3rd sound that Buddy was fond of using. You're also being more explicit with the harmonic change to the V chord (G#7) during the turnaround by playing notes from G# minor blues, rather than C# (this is another trick that SRV loved to use).

Buddy Guy in action

Damn Right, I've Got The Blues

Here are two live performances by Buddy Guy of one of his most famous songs, Damn Right, I've Got the Blues. The first is from 1994 and he's in full showman mode, bursting with enthusiasm and sporting a rich neck pickup overdriven amp tone. His searing string bends, on-grid/off-grid rhythmic phrasing and shredding speed bursts are nothing short of stunning.

The second performance is from 2019 and while he's slightly less animated here, his soloing displays gorgeous string bends and expressive vibrato. His rhythmic phrasing is masterful as he weaves around the band's feel with sustained notes and dragging lead licks.

At nearly 90 years old, Buddy Guy is still carrying the torch for the blues and remains a guiding force for current and future generations of blues players.

Fresh off his cameo in Ryan Coogler's highly lauded film Sinners, Guy’s legacy is continuing to be celebrated, as Blackbird Presents and Live Nation are teaming up to organize Buddy’s Got the Blues: A 90th Birthday Concert Celebration.

The event, taking place on October 1 at the iconic Radio City Music Hall in New York City, is set to be a one-night-only event with collaborations, performances, and heartfelt tributes from artists influenced by Guy’s work.

The all-star lineup includes a veritable list of legends and blues virtuosos: Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi & Derek Trucks, Jon Batiste, Aloe Blacc, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr., Shemekia Copeland, Robert Cray, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales, Billy F Gibbons, Ivan Neville, Robert Randolph, Bobby Rush, Isaiah Sharkey, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jimmie Vaughan, Ally Venable, Willie Weeks, and Kim Wilson.

More artists and special guests are set to be announced soon, and the man himself, Buddy Guy, will (of course) also perform, proving that he's still got the blues.

Current Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan serves as the musical director.

Speaking about the event, Guy says, “Can't wait to celebrate 90 years of living, loving, and playing the blues with all my friends. We’ll make it a night not just for me, but for the folks who taught us, the friends we’ve played with, and the ones coming up behind us.”

In a recent interview with Guitar Player, the blues icon has explained why he’s not giving up touring just yet, as he prepares to hit the road on July 15, starting at Massey Hall in Toronto.

“I thought about retiring twice,” he says. “But, y’know, I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us – B.B. King. Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys – and they used to tell me, ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on radio or anything anymore.

“So I said to myself, ‘Well, Buddy, you better hang on a little longer. My health ain’t doing too bad, so I’m still doing what I’ve always done. Every time I get onstage, just try to play the best I can.”

Tickets go on sale to the general public on June 26 at 10 AM ET. Head to Buddy 90 to find out more.

Guy is set for a very busy rest of the year, having also been announced for this year's edition of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival.

Since its inception in 1999, Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival has featured the crème de la crème of guitarists who, in one way or another, have earned the blues-rock legend’s respect.

Now, the seventh edition of the festival will be held on September 26 and 27 in Austin, Texas, at the Moody Center, marking the 28th anniversary of the 1998 founding of the Crossroads Centre Antigua, the drug treatment facility spearheaded by Clapton himself.

Among the numerous Crossroads veterans returning this year will be Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons, Buddy Guy, Gary Clark Jr., Sonny Landreth, John Mayer, the Del McCoury Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Jimmie Vaughan, as well as Clapton himself, who will be performing on both nights. Meanwhile, Trey Anastasio, Tommy Emmanuel, Julian Lage, and Pete Townshend will all be making their festival debut.

Guitar Center was also announced as the exclusive retail partner of the festival, and, in addition to onsite retail, there will also be a rare showcase of its Legends Collection. This includes Clapton’s 1956 Fender Stratocaster, “Blackie,” the 1964 Gibson ES-335 he played in Cream, and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s iconic 1965 Fender Stratocaster, “Lenny.”

Speaking about the festival in a 2019 interview with Guitar Center, Clapton said, “My identity is always going to be linked to Crossroads. I can't walk away, so I've come back to do the thing I know how to do best, which is play, and also invite people that I have high admiration for in the music world.”

He continued, “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. 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.”

Tickets for the event will go on sale on April 3 at 10 a.m. CDT. For more information, head to the official Crossroads Guitar Festival website.

An all-star cast has recreated the defining scene of Sinners on stage at the Oscars as Ryan Coogler's film went on to win four awards from a record-breaking 16 nominations.

The Mississippi Blues-meets-vampire-horror film scooped up awards, including best actor, screenplay, and score, which Ludwig Göransson spearheaded with some 1930s Dobros and a tender care for the genre's history and legacy.

The film was intended to shine a light on the blues and its influence on myriad musical styles that have followed in its wake – from rock ’n’ roll to hip-hop. Blues icon Buddy Guy features on the soundtrack and in the film itself, and was present at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood for a performance of I Lied to You.

Actor and musician Miles Caton, who made his acting debut in the film and has more recently given a taste of Sinners during Buddy Guy’s Tiny Desk spot, led the way with some slide guitar playing on a Dobro – quite possibly the Dobro.

The stage was set to resemble the film’s juke joint, and it was littered with VIPs, from Guy and his polka dot Stratocaster to Brittany Howard, who wielded her Gibson SG, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram with his signature Telecaster, and newly anointed Kiesel signature artist Eric Gales.

It was teased ahead of time as a homage to the blockbuster's “singular visual style,” (via Variety), but it also stands as a celebration of acoustic and electric blues, with intergenerational stars locking fretboards in style.

Ballet star Misty Copeland and Grammy-winning Americana/hip-hop artist Shaboozey also starred, as the performance cast its celebratory net wider still, and it rightfully brought the house down.

Speaking after claiming his third Oscar win for best score, after Black Panther and Oppenheimer, Ludwig Göransson said: “My dad bought his first blues album in Sweden [where he's from] in 1964.

“It was a John Lee Hooker album, and even though it was from the other side of the world, in a place where my dad had never been, and could not relate to, the music was so powerful that it changed his life. He dedicated himself to music.

“When I was seven years old, he put a guitar in my arms, and it became everything to me,” he adds. “The guitar opened up a lot of doors to me; it brought me to the States and eventually led me to one of the greatest storytellers of our time, Ryan Coogler.”

Indeed, Kingfish hopes his role playing on the film's soundtrack, alongside the likes of Jerry Cantrell, Cedric Burnside, and James Blake, will introduce the blues to a new generation of players and listeners.

Guy, meanwhile, has been left to muse on how far the blues have come since the 1930s, when the film is set, and what he wants to achieve before retiring from performing.

Eric Gales is no longer the underdog threatening to take the world by storm. He’s already done it, and is now enjoying recognition with Grammy nominations and sold-out performances across the globe.

But Eric is keen to acknowledge that it might have been a different story had his older sibling not shown him the musical ropes from an early age. Eric’s latest album, A Tribute To LJK, acts as a doff of the cap to his brother.

The record starts with a familiar voice saying, “All hail, a tribute to our brother Manuel Gales, also known as Little Jimmy King,” followed by 47 minutes of the most life-affirming blues.

As the leader of the Memphis Soul Survivors, Little Jimmy King enjoyed a successful career in blues, having cut his own records with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section, performed in Albert King’s band and toured with Buddy Guy, until Manuel’s life was tragically cut short by a heart attack at the age of 37 in 2002.

A Tribute To LJK was co-produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, and is the sound of Eric reimagining his sibling’s music and celebrating his memory through the medium of electrifying noise. A fitting tribute.

What was the vibe like in the studio while you were cutting this record?

Pretty straightforward. Just me plugging my Magneto guitar into my DV Mark amp, as well as one of Joe’s Dumbles. That was the bulk of the tone. I used one of Joe’s Les Pauls for a solo or two, maybe a rhythm here or there. It was my normal pedalboard running in front, nothing had changed. There’s no sense in messing with things when they’re working fine. So that’s what we did. We just kept the tape rolling.

Was it strange plugging into a Dumble amp that didn’t even belong to you?

It worked well with my DV Mark. It was a suggestion from Joe that he first floated when we did the Crown record; it’s good to have that sonic contrast.

I can’t remember which Dumble it was exactly, but we dialled in a tone, it sounded great and we got busy. There was no extravagant story behind it. We switched it on, turned some knobs, heard a good sound and started tracking.

Why do you think Alexander Dumble’s amps are so highly revered?

To be honest, I don’t know. There’s a bit of a taboo fascination with them. Obviously, they are highly respected and deeply admired for the sound they make, but I don’t see the big draw factor. Sure, they sound great, but I’ve heard other amps that sound great.

I’m very honoured and privileged to have plugged into one a few times, but it wasn’t like a ‘heavens opened up’ sort of moment. I’m not speaking bad about them, I’m just saying there’s nothing the Dumbles did for me that other amps hadn’t done before, you know? I was just going off a suggestion and I trusted Joe enough to go with it.

He has plenty of Dumbles and runs through them pretty rigorously. I had no reason to go against it. If it was the only amp that was there and my DV Mark wasn’t around, I’m sure I would have been fine.

I have some really nice amps, like my Two-Rock, and the Dumble did nothing less than that. If it wasn’t as good, then I wouldn’t have used it on the record. I remember it had great sustain and delivered every single nuance I put through it. At the same time, my DV Mark was doing the same thing. Both amps were standing tall beside each other, doing a great job in giving me what I needed to accomplish this record. That’s all I can ask for.

Your sound lives on the funkier side of blues. You have a cleaner and more spanky tone than most of your contemporaries.

That’s what I prefer. I am known as a blues-rock player, but I am probably less rock than other people. It all depends on the style of the song and the feel or vibe that I’m going for. I’m not a typical I-IV-V slow-blues kinda guy.

There are different variants in what I do. I like a crystal-clean tone for a lot of the music I write, especially if it’s more chordal. In those situations, I’m not looking for any break-up. When I need a little more grit, I’ll use my MXR Raw Dawg pedal or whatever other drive I have lying around to get the sound I’m looking for.

You’ve been very loyal to the Mojo Hand Colossus fuzz pedal over the years.

It’s my go-to because of its warm and milky tone. There are so many boutique pedals I haven’t even had the opportunity to plug into yet. I’m not one of those guitar players who sits there testing them all out. If one thing is working well, then I’m fine with that.

Opportunities for a big shoot-out are rare, so I have to apologise to all the people who give me pedals. I will definitely try them out at some point. The Mojo Hand is just what I’ve been going with.

The last one that impressed me was the Pedal Pawn Fuzz from the UK. It sounded really, really good. They make some nice stuff. A few weeks ago I was gifted a handmade pedal and the builder told me the schematics were exactly like Eric Johnson’s fuzz.

He even wrote ‘LJK’ on it, which made it awesome and memorable. I haven’t plugged into it yet, but I’m sure it’ll sound amazing because everybody knows I’m a huge Eric Johnson fan. I hope to be blown away by how beautiful it sounds.

Your current wah pedal of choice is a Buddy Guy Cry Baby. What do you like about the sound of that one?

I was running a different wah and having some issues. Then Buddy Guy’s tech Connor [Korte] happened to have a spare one fresh out of the box, so I put it on the ’board and it never left. All of the ones I’ve used come from the Jim Dunlop company and this one just happens to be the one I stick with. If it ain’t broke, there ain’t no need to switch it out.

I didn’t use my Whammy because it didn’t call for it. I guess there could have been room, but I decided to keep things traditional – if it’s even safe for me to use that word because I don’t consider myself that traditional. This record was a homage to my brother, who was more old-school.

Buddy appears on the final track of your album, titled Somebody. That must have meant a lot to you because not only is he blues royalty, but he’s a friend and also knew your brother.

When I heard what he played on that track, I was blown away. He knocked it right out of the park. I sent a reference track over with the general direction I was going for and he gave me exactly what I was looking for.

When I pressed play, I heard the work of a legend. He made the track what it was. It would not have sounded as good without him. My brother did a miraculous job on the original version and Buddy was the perfect person to help me recreate that kind of vibe all these years later.

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram cited your brother as a big hero of his, and you invited him to play on Rockin Horse Ride.

That was intentionally done; I wanted to incorporate people who had a connection to my brother. I wanted to nod to the older generation and the younger generation, bringing it all full circle in memory of my brother.

I wanted to acknowledge the impact that he had on the blues world and try to keep some of that alive. Through Kingfish, his music still lives. Young people are taking notice of this style of music that was around way before their time. We can leave it in the hands of Kingfish and know that everything will be taken care of well.

Which Magneto guitar do you record with the most?

It’s my Magneto Sonnet RawDawg. The neck has a flat radius, so it feels great in my hands. It’s something I can play all day long and the tone is just immaculate. The owner Christian [Hatstatt] is an amazing guy who has always been in my corner, even at times when a lot of people weren’t.

I have great relationships with other companies who understand that I might play different guitars for different things. Nobody has forced their exclusivity on me. I don’t like being told what to play, especially if my heart is telling me to use something else. Magneto have always understood that and been very understanding. They’re a great company to work with.

I also have a new signature model through Kiesel that comes with all the bells and whistles in this lovely gold finish. It turned out really dope, man.

You used one of Joe’s vintage Les Pauls, a 1954 Goldtop, on the album. How different was that for you?

That guitar sounded great. I’ve never said I don’t like humbuckers or Les Pauls, SGs, Flying Vs, Explorers, Firebirds, Telecasters, Jazzmasters, Mustangs, 335s or whatever. They’re just not the normal go-to for me.

Joe said, ‘Check this out,’ and had the tone dialled in, so that’s what I used on my solo for Don’t Wanna Go Home, as did Joe. It worked great for that song. It just so happened to be a quarter-of-a-million-dollar guitar that got the job done.

Could a guitar worth 200 bucks have also been good enough? I think so. Equipment plays a part in things, but I’ve always been a die-hard advocate of ‘it’s all in the hands of the player.’ That’s what ultimately determines what you hear coming out of any instrument. So much depends on the human being.

Was it scary holding a quarter-of-a-million-dollar instrument that doesn’t belong to you?

No, not at all [laughs]. I wasn’t afraid.

How different did it make you play, though?

I find using humbuckers instead of the usual single coils can shift where I’m coming from, mentally. The approach, feel and tone can end up a little different. But at the end of the day, it’s all down to whatever comes out of my mind.

That’s what determines what comes out. I’m not uncomfortable playing anything, unless there’s an outrageous setup that prevents me from doing what I usually do – things like extremely high action or action that’s too low to get a good sound. I like my action as low as I can get it without buzz. Normally, it only takes me a few minutes to get myself acclimated to any instrument.

You, Joe and Josh Smith have such distinct voices on the guitar. It’s very easy to tell who is playing on It Takes A Whole Lotta Money – you might be more twangy, Joe might be more thick-sounding and Josh has more of a country-fusion feel.

Yeah, Josh definitely fiddles around in that world. On that track, it was all intentional. You’ve got three players who want to sound different to each other. I’ve heard that some people struggle with hearing the differences between me and Joe. There’s a lot of similarity at times, maybe in how we do runs or riff. Both of us are highly influenced by Eric Johnson, so that’s always going to seep through at points.

But I think on this record, the distinction of who’s who is made pretty clearly, especially with Josh because he chose to set himself apart purposefully. He went in a different direction to add something completely new. That guy can adjust, shift and shape into any kind of style. He always makes the right decisions.

What have you learned about the art of recording guitars since working with Joe and Josh?

Honestly, I don’t get too involved. I’m in a session right now and my engineer toys around with the mics and placements. I always have to ask him what we’re using. Right now, he’s telling me that it’s some new Roswell Cab Mic that we are trying out. I leave that whole world to the experts: I sit in the control room listening in, saying what sounds best to my ears.

I don’t really have much desire to change anything there. I don’t have the time to learn about this stuff, either. I hear things in my head and always try to get it as close as possible. That’s the goal for me. How it gets done is semantic, but working with good engineers and assistant engineers definitely makes the process a lot easier. I don’t even know what my mic preference is. If I’m by myself, I’ll just pick something up, put it in front of a speaker and take it from there.

Your guitars come with the five-way pickup selector that’s typical for an S-style design. Which positions do you use the most?

I use them all. It’s quite a subconscious choice, going back and forth between the different tones. It’s so random for me. It’s all done in the moment in real-time. If I have the gas pressed pretty hard, I might be on the back pickup because of the high energy and intensity. If I want something warm, I might be on the front. If I want a Stevie Ray sort of tone, I’ll go for the front two pickups, and if I want country and western it might be the back two pickups.

It just depends on what I hear in my head. Using your volume control is also an art form. You can go from full-on to something way cleaner without even thinking of your pedals or amp channels, you just roll that knob down and end up with a completely different kind of sound.

Do you mess with the tone knob much?

Not much, really. The only times I do, is if I’m trying to do some jazz stuff or emulate a warm, milky fuzz tone with a distortion or overdrive pedal that isn’t a fuzz.

So what do you think Manuel would say if he heard this record?

I think he’d say, “Great fucking job, little bro!” I really do. All of the songs came out really well. I love the ride-out solo in You Shouldn’t Have Left Me because it sounds really intense with this strong blues shuffle that had horns and everything. I like the flower power feel to Blues Been Too Good To Me. We had a lot of fun on that track.

I was really happy with Somebody, which I played a PRS parlour acoustic on. Baby Baby came out great. It’s hard to single out one song that I would leave off the album, to be honest. This record gave me the avenue to dive into many different areas of my brother’s career. Then I chose to give these songs a new vision through my own eyes.

• A Tribute to LJK is out now via Provogue.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Buddy Guy has become the latest guitar legend to perform on the internet's favorite music stage, the NPR Tiny Desk.

The living blues legend had planned to retire from touring in 2023. He’s since done a U-turn on that decision, and insists he won’t stop performing until the blues get a higher profile.

His starring role in the multi-award-winning Sinners movie has certainly helped that. His stylish four-song set on NPR’s cosy corner stage won’t hurt, either.

Playing a polka-dot Fender Stratocaster throughout, moments like his raw, unfiltered edge-of-breakup guitar solo on Hoochie Coochie Man nod to the blues hero’s unparalleled emotiveness.

It's a cross-generational set, too, with Guy inviting singer and guitarist Miles Caton – who made his acting debut in Sinners, a genre-bending blockbuster with the blues at its heart – on stage. Together, they played Travelin’, and I Lied to You, taken from the film.

“Can we make some noise for the legendary Buddy Guy?” Caton asks while picking up a Gretsch resonator guitar. Sadly, it's not one of the 1930s Dobros that the film's chief composer, Ludwig Göransson, tracked down for the soundtrack.

Travelin' in particular is a stunning performance, with the room quiet enough to hear a pin drop between the call and response of Guy’s twanging start and Caton’s sumptuously soulful voice.

“If you play blues right all the time, you’re wrong,” says Guy, who puts Caton through something of a blues bootcamp.

In all, it’s a playful but heartfelt representation of the blues, full of witty remarks and porcelain dynamics, that prove why, in 2026, Guy remains the blues’ biggest torchbearer.

“I thought about retiring twice,” Guy told Guitar Player last year. “But I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us – B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys – and they used to tell me, ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on the radio or anything anymore.”

With Sinners having scooped up two Grammy wins and a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, guitar heroes like Slash going back to their roots, and sets like this, the blues might not be on radio exile for much longer.

The blues can rock out, it can be solemn and balladic, or it can throw down some R&B and funk. A prime example of the latter is Buddy Guy's ode to his hometown, Meet Me in Chicago, from his 2013 album Rhythm & Blues.

Credit Guy's producer/co-writer/drummer Tom Hambridge, who helped expand the legendary guitarist's stylistic palette beyond traditional blues. Also credit Hambridge for calling up the late Nashville session ace Michael Rhodes to tackle the riff-based 16th-note bassline.

Speaking to Bass Player in 2017, Rhodes, who queried Hambridge about the song, said, “While Tom was in Chicago recording Robert Randolph for Buddy's previous album, he heard Robert play a riff that caught his ear. He had him play it again and recorded it on his phone, and later he wrote Meet Me in Chicago based on the riff, giving Robert a co-write.”

For the 2013 session at Nashville’s famed Blackbird Studio, Rhodes recalled Guy (who sat next to him), Hambridge, guitarist David Grissom, and either Reese Wynans or Kevin McKendree on keyboards, all playing live in the main room.

“Buddy had a stunt singer in the booth so he could play live with us and react to the vocals and play his solos, and then he overdubbed his vocal later. Tom had provided a demo track, and there was a Nashville number chart on which we could put any additional notation needed. We probably ran it down once or twice and then did no more than a couple of takes."

The bass was recorded direct via an Avalon US DI/preamp and Tube-Tech CL1B compressor, and also miked via a Fender Bassman head into Rhodes’ signature Euphonic Audio Rumbleseat, a ported 200-watt cabinet he’d sit on with an 8-inch speaker inside. Rhodes played his ’57 Fender Precision, which has a Seymour Duncan Single Coil ’51 P-Bass Stack pickup and Sadowsky flatwound strings.

The track begins with a drum fill into Grissom playing the main guitar riff, for which Rhodes drops some 12th-fret slides and then momentarily kicks on his Dunlop Cry Baby Bass Wah for the double-stop slide up in bar 4.

In bars 5-8, Rhodes joins in on the riff for the first half of the bars, adding his own answers at the back end, creating two two-bar phrases. He also purposely doesn't match the riff note-for-note.

The A section at 00:21 has a verse feel for the first half and the main riff and chorus lyrics in the second half. At first, Rhodes is on his own and plays the downbeat with funky responses. Then it's back to the riff at 00:31. He mirrors this approach the second time around.

“With the riff already doubled, I kind of pick and choose where to double it, to keep it loose and not so static. Maybe I'll catch the jewelry of the riff every so often, just to prove to myself I can do it.”

The bridge or B section kicks in at 01:01. Here, Rhodes eases back to eighths for his descending notes against the D (IV) chord.

“That was in contrast to everything being so staccato, to open it up and let it breathe a bit. I typically play off the lyric, jumping in the gaps.”

In a cool compositional twist, for Guy's solo at 01:23, the harmony shifts to the V chord. As before, Rhodes doesn't exactly double the riff (now in E), at times leaving out the downbeat and creating his own measure-ending fills.

The third and fourth verses (listen for where Rhodes steps out at 02:12) lead to a breakdown section at 02:23, for Guy's second solo.

The bridge section returns at 02:42, this time with Rhodes working some of his trademark reharmonization magic at 02:53.

“I thought, why not move up instead of down, and re-name the chords in the process? That's the beauty of what the bass guitar can do.”

Finally, Guy's third solo is at 03:06, and he continues to blow through to 03:25, where the chorus background vocals come back. Here, Rhodes breaks from the riff to freelance with some descending lines before the band plays the closing riff four times and the vocalists end the track.

“I'm sitting back a bit in the pocket, to anchor everything else that's on the beat or pushing. Listen to our interpretation and find the important elements of the part. Once you have the essence, feel free to make it your own.”

He may only be approaching his late-20s, but at this stage of his career, blues singer-guitarist Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram can no longer say he’s the new kid on the block.

He’s a Grammy-winning artist who has earned the respect of his elders and peers, with his own Kingfish Telecaster Deluxe signature through a Fender Twin, along with invites to open for artists such as The Rolling Stones, Slash and Joe Bonamassa.

Last year saw the release of his third studio album, Hard Road, which features more nuance than ever before. It’s still a blues-rock record all in all, although Ingram has broadened his horizons by moving away from heavier tones in favour of cleaner and more soulful musings.

There’s more variety to the new music than anything you’ve recorded to date.

I wanted to focus on my artistic growth; that’s all I wanted to showcase on this record. My sound hasn’t changed too much, there are still some heavy tones in places, but I did think about my sound just before we started recording.

Certain songs needed a cleaner approach, so I decided to experiment and try out some things I haven’t done in the past.

So where exactly did these songs come from?

I’ll explore new directions and navigate through whatever might be happening in my personal life. This album is like a documentation of my last four years. Some of the songs were written during the sessions for [Grammy-winning previous studio album] 662 but ended up conveying how I’ve felt in the time since, too.

I’ve also been working with a few external writers. There was one song I did all by myself [Clearly], where I was in the studio alone one night. I’m proud of how it all came out.

What gear are we hearing on this album?

I used my signature Tele a lot, as well as an ES-335 on some songs. The semi-hollow wasn’t mine; it was an early 2000s model that the studio had. The album was mainly recorded with my live rig, so you can probably hear pedals like my Marshall ShredMaster on there. The main amp was a regular Fender Twin. I even plugged straight into the board for some of the rhythms. That was about it.

The opening track, Truth, benefits from some funky single-note lines, a screaming wah solo and some of your catchiest vocals to date.

That was all done on a Strat – it was the purple Custom Shop one seen on the cover of my 662 album. Singing is definitely another area I’m trying to grow in. I’ve always felt my voice is just as good as my guitar playing, so this record was about trying to push both at the same time.

Bad Like Me has some chord shapes that move up and down chromatically, as well as some jazzy ideas at the end of the solo. It’s not a million miles away from the kind of thing Stevie Wonder would write.

Yeah! That was a fun thing to do because it was so out-of-the-box. It helped me come up with things I haven’t done before vocally. There are some cool changes in there.

I think the jazz influence comes from doing a lot of listening – and not just listening to guitar players but other instruments as well. [Pianist] Oscar Peterson is one of my favourite jazz musicians, and the same goes for [pianist] Art Tatum and [saxophonist] Charlie Parker.

Which guitar players have influenced this side of you?

People like Charlie Christian demonstrated how much you can achieve with simple bebop lines, which led to me trying to implement them into rock and blues. Josh Smith is amazing at that stuff; he’s someone who I really look up to. The way he plays is how I want to sound one day in the future because it’s a mixture of blues and fusion.

The self-penned track Clearly features some beautiful jazz voicings. It could be the jazziest song you’ve ever written.

There’s definitely some major 7s in there. I had that groove in my mind for a long time. I was struggling with it for a while, but one night in the studio, it just all came out really easily.

Nothin’ But Your Love is a ballad in Ab major. When you play on a song like that, are you thinking more in Ab major or F minor in terms of where you place your fingers?

I will be thinking more in terms of Ab major, trying to paint a picture in my mind and tell the story. I might use some swells or go for a more mellow attack. It’s the opposite to what I normally do. I’m more used to playing like that nowadays, though it wasn’t always like that because blues tends to be more minor. When you play in major, you really have to dig deep.

This music is indicative of how confident you must be feeling at this stage of your career.

It’s like riding a wave. I have three Grammy-nominated records – and one of them was a winner – as well as all these other blues awards, so I’m just trying to keep on doing what I’m doing.

You’ve been championed by Eric Gales, having played on his 2017 Middle Of The Road album, as well as his latest release, A Tribute To LJK.

Yeah, I played on the track Help Yourself on the Middle Of The Road record, and then Rockin Horse Ride on his latest one. When I was expanding my sound, I remember being influenced by Eric’s brother Manuel, who we all knew as Little Jimmy King.

Then hearing Eric is what made me want to push the blues-rock envelope. Here was this Black dude from Memphis, which isn’t too far from where I was in Mississippi, with this hip-hop persona but also playing fiery blues riffs with all the soul you’d get from people like B.B. King. That’s what did it for me.

A lot of people would say he’s the best blues guitarist alive today. What did you end up learning from him musically?

Mr Gales was my introduction to the whole Eric Johnson pentatonic approach. That’s something I took from him, looking at that scale and playing it in different positions all over the neck ascending or descending in groups of four, five or six. It’s a very melodic and rhythmic kind of sound.

That’s what got me caught up on my speed, though we all know he can play soulful as well. I’m still learning this stuff, but I was able to cheat my way in thanks to watching how Eric Gales was doing it. It doesn’t matter if you pick every note or use legato or economy picking – if it sounds good, go with it.”

Buddy Guy, who has spoken very highly of you, also appears on Eric’s latest album. He’s one of the last living original blues legends.

Yeah, of that crop of blues musicians, I would say Mr Guy is the last link. He’s the one who started this whole style of blues-rock playing that felt kinda wild and crazy. I feel like he was the one who pushed the envelope while all the other guys were playing with more restraint.

He was the one who said, ‘Hey, I’m going to knock this out the park and past the wall!’ And that’s exactly what he did. His bends never seem to end. I sound like shit when I try that, but Mr Guy always makes it sound good.

You’re very comfortable with the pentatonic scale. What helped you break out of the classic box shapes?

If you just listen to blues, it might show. I enjoy anything from MonoNeon to Ghost-Note and Snarky Puppy. If I hear something I like, I will try to implement that into my own sound. You have to keep trying to find different ways to make the blues sound interesting.

That means playing it in different positions, rather than sticking in the first couple of boxes or changing your tone for certain songs. I also think it’s important to add extra notes in places or even take certain notes away. Sometimes I double-pick certain notes to really bring out their quality. It’s all about doing stuff like that.

If you could have a lesson from any guitar player, living or dead, who would it be and what would you ask?

I would choose Prince because he was a great example of shredding and being melodic at the same time. I’d ask him about his approach to the solos because he always seemed to play the right thing. I often wonder if he was thinking in terms of scales or just feeling it right there and then.

There’s that classic Purple Rain performance at the Super Bowl in 2007, but maybe the one people talk about the most is his While My Guitar Gently Weeps solo at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame Induction.

Hell, yeah. He killed it big-time on that. He was an incredible lead guitar player, but he could do it all, to be honest. He could write songs, play keys and bass, as well as sing. He was such a versatile musician in that sense.

My favourite Prince songs are ones like I Wanna Be Your Lover, Erotic City and Kiss. That funky pocket playing ended up being a huge influence on me. I think it came from him being influenced by players like Catfish Collins and other people who played with James Brown.

Finally, where do you want to go next as a guitar player?

I’m really working on playing over the chord changes and bringing out more of my jazz influences. That’s my main homework right now.

• Hard Road is out now via Red Zero.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Now in his mid-60s, Larry McCray’s career has taken him all the way from new kid on the block to elder statesman of the blues.

With mentors such as Albert King, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins, McCray was schooled in the art of pentatonic conversation like few others and learned how to make his guitar speak as profoundly as any human voice.

This year the Michigan-based musician is back with new album, Heartbreak City, which was produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith and features a host of special guests including the producers themselves, along with Kirk Fletcher and Double Trouble keyboardist Reese Wynans.

This is a very uplifting record that crosses over into lots of areas of the blues.

That’s the intention. Whenever I’m asked what kind of music I play, I usually say I play ‘feel-good music’. I like to sing songs that are soothing in any kind of situation. I always felt that blues was broader than how it was depicted. Whenever I meet people who don’t have the same appreciation for it, I realise they haven’t discovered the right presentation of it.

The opening track, Try To Be A Good Man, kicks everything with some Albert King-inspired lines that really wail.

He was one of my biggest mentors. I loved Albert King. He would notice if you were trying to be good. You always had to show a bit of respect to Albert because that’s just what he was like.

He’d come around saying stuff like, ‘Hey boy, what you playing? Quit doing all that skipping and gimme something from the gut!’ like an antagonistic coach [laughs]. I’m lucky I got to meet people like him, BB and Koko Taylor. They made me fall in love with music in the first place. I used to be the youngest of all these players and now I’m the fuckin’ oldest!

The title track is a G minor blues that runs seven-and-a-half minutes long. What’s the secret to holding people’s attention like that?

It’s because I’ve listened to a lot over the years and incorporate other elements into my sound. Being a teenager in the ’70s, I was a big funk fan, listening to Larry Graham and Louis Johnson.

Then I left Arkansas and moved to Michigan and got exposed to heavy metal. I ended up becoming a big Def Leppard and Judas Priest fan. My criticism of blues at the time was that everybody was going for the post-war or Delta acoustic sound. Nobody was trying to take things to the next level, which is something I’ve always strived for.

You’re holding a Guild electric on the cover. Is that what we’re hearing?

That’s the one. It’s a Polara S-100 reissue with push-pull switches to split the coils. It’s a great-playing guitar, man. I wrote them a letter this morning trying to see if they would endorse me.

Because I love guitars like the Bluesbird, which is a bit like a Les Paul, and the X-175, which is reminiscent of the ES-175. The tones you hear are incredible.

I think Guild guitars sound in between a Fender and a Gibson. They are brighter than Gibsons, but still have the low-end punch of a humbucker. I’ve played Gibson my whole career – now I want something different.

And what were you plugging into?

I played through Joe’s rig. He has a nice collection of Dumble amplifiers. It was a little combo that was about the size of a Princeton, with a really warm tone. I plugged into Joe’s MXR FET Driver and a Klon clone. I have a real Klon, but I don’t take it anywhere because it’s worth so much. Effects are great, but the more you have, the more things can go wrong.

It’s amazing how lyrical your solos can be, almost most like a voice at times.

I use vocals for inspiration. I’m a baritone singer; I can only go so high, so I use my guitar to visit places I can’t with my voice. It’s like I’m singing through the guitar. I forced myself to learn all five pentatonic positions. Most people only tend to play in the 1st and 2nd [positions].

The best key to learn in is A minor: you can start with a G note on the 3rd fret and then climb into the 1st position, moving up the neck horizontally. You can mix minor with major for a blend.

You can transfer this knowledge to any key and find melodies naturally. We all know how the pentatonic scale sounds. It’s such a big part of the guitar, so it’s important to know how to play it across the neck.

Beyond that, what’s the secret to a good blues solo?

When I start playing, it’s usually with a slow bluesy lick. The second time I come around, I might throw in something a little jazzy. The third time, I might be all-out rocking and then the final pass is bringing it all back home.

It’s good to change it up. Try not to think in the same vein, whether it’s how you attack the notes, what notes you play or the rhythm. You have to tell your truth. As long as you’re speaking your truth and playing from the heart, people will listen.

This is your second time working with Joe. What have you learned from him?

I learned I’ll never be able to play like him and it’s best to stick to what I know. Joe is a one-in-a-million kind of player. He’s a special talent, and the same goes for Josh Smith, who wrote Bright Side and the title track. Even though I can’t play like Joe, I still use him for inspiration.

I have good dexterity for moments that call for me to play fast and step outside of the box. It was fun jamming together on the track I Know What I’ve Done. It reminds you to stay humble and be as good as you can be. Music isn’t a competition against other players. It’s a competition against yourself.

It really is an all-star cast on this album, especially with Reese Wynans involved.

I loved talking to Reese about his time with Stevie [Ray Vaughan], who I never got to hang with. The night he died, I was at Buddy Guy’s Legends club [in Chicago] waiting for Buddy, Stevie and Clapton because there was a rumour they were about to come and jam. All these musicians were waiting to see them.

Then we were told they’d all gone down. You’ll never see a house full of people get so quiet, it was pin-drop silence, and eventually we found out Buddy and Eric were okay. It was a terrible thing. I’ll never forget that day.

You’ve seen this kind of music rise and fall numerous times over the years. Where does the blues stand in 2025?

There are some great people trying to keep the blues alive. My biggest criticism is that the format seems to have changed. When we were coming up, there was always a structure; you’d know where the changes are. Nowadays, young people just change when they want to.

I know I’m getting older because I sound like my dad! I’m just happy there are people interested enough to preserve it. I love Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram. I have a 25-year-old son who’s a better singer and guitarist than me, so I have high hopes for him. And there’s another great young man in Arkansas called Josh Parks. He’s one to watch.

• Heartbreak City is out now via KTBA.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Best of 2025: Over the holiday season, GW is shining the spotlight on some of its biggest stories of the year.

Though often an accidental and unwanted byproduct, guitar feedback has widely been accepted as yet another expressive tool that players can add to their arsenal in order to inject their playing with some additional color, flair, or personality.

Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Pete Townshend are just some of the electric guitar heroes to have adopted feedback as a means to supercharge their performances, as was blues veteran Buddy Guy, who was one of the earliest pioneers of using the noise to his advantage.

However, while players of today may be inspired to channel feedback by watching their heroes online, Guy didn’t have such luxury, and as it turns out, he first stumbled upon the tool entirely by accident.

“In Chicago then, we didn't have stages. We'd always go in a corner and play,” he told NPR. “And they had jukeboxes during their breaks, and they would play tunes. And that's how I learnt, by listening to other people, greats – Muddy Water, Wolf and so on.”

During one fateful gig, though, Guy left the stage with his Strat still plugged in and, having forgotten to turn off his guitar amp after the set, left it vulnerable to passers-by – one of whom would inadvertently influence Guy's approach to the guitar.

“I forgot to turn my guitar off one day and a lady passed by, and her dress tail hit the G string,” Guy continues. “And it just stayed there with distortion for about 20 minutes. And I said, I'll never forget that. And I went up, and it worked with me, and I've been doing it ever since.”

“We were just in the corner playing. And she got up from her table to probably go get a drink or use the bathroom or something like that. And I said, wow, I forgot to cut my guitar off. And it was right in tune with the particular tune what was playing on the jukebox.”

It was a lightbulb moment for Guy, who put this newfound feedback hack into action as soon as he could. From the 1960s onwards, some of Guy’s most impressive feats of soloing – especially his live cuts at Montreux and Austin City Limits – were decorated with tasteful uses of feedback.

“After I found out it would stay and distort that long, I just went up one day and played and stood right there where it was, and it works,” he says.

The select use of feedback and using it to his advantage was only one aspect of Guy's expansive style, though, which would influence everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Mayer.

You won’t always know when the Guitar World editorial conclave is in session to determine the magazine’s top 20 guitar players of any given year, but as the internet might put it, there will be signs.

The heavy traffic to and from the office, as Grubhub delivery drivers beat a path to the door.

The lights, always on, reveal hunched, anxious figures – some staffers taken to chewing aspirin and sipping bourbon to cope with the anxiety at the prospect of leaving out Tony Iommi, who played his final show with Black Sabbath and reissued his signature humbuckers via Gibson, or Yvette Young, whose Ibanez Talman met Superman on a movie soundtrack, developed a signature pedal with Walrus Audio and is helping emo kids sleep with music.

We feel bad that honorable mention Nick Johnston, who stepped into Mastodon as the late Brent Hinds’ permanent replacement, didn’t make the top 20, but when the smoke emerged as the hallowed 6L6 blew during the “Eureka!” moment, this was the final list. In no particular order, here are our top 20 guitarists (and, in some cases, guitar duos) of 2025.

Jake Kiszka & Chris Turpin

The only mistake Jake Kiszka and Chris Turpin made when putting together their transatlantic Greta-Van-Fleet-meets-Ida-Mae rock alliance was by naming it Mirador – Kiszka had misspelled “Marauder” – but even that worked out okay and was conceptually relevant.

“A mirador is basically a vista or a viewpoint suspended on a high place, typically overlooking a body of water,” Kiszka told GW. “That seemed to fit, and it felt symbolic being that Chris is British and he was always looking to the West for influences, whereas I looked East and got my influences from Europe. So that’s how we became Mirador.”

The forces of kismet are keeping the wind in their sails. Or perhaps it is a more ordinary magic, as practiced by the big beasts of rock in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s as the sonic expansion redrew the boundaries of artistic possibility. Kiszka and Turpin can see such horizons clearly; the sepia vistas of roots and blues to the shimmering silver of psychedelia, riffs, tumult and everything in between.

Turpin says it was “hugely freeing” to be playing in a two-guitar band for the first time; “There was just a natural symbiosis between us, like feathers folding around each other.”

Feels Like Gold opens Mirador’s self-titled debut album as though heaved from the earth, the guitars scratching the soil off themselves as a Headley Grange groove leans forward (BTW, Dave Cobb’s production is on point).

A project such as this deserves special instrumentation. Martin came through with Pre-War style acoustics, one-of-one custom builds complete with the Mirador logo. You’ll also hear Kiszka’s ’61 Les Paul/SG let rip – most notably on Roving Blade, which, with a little help from a ’60s Vox wah and a Fender Princeton, dropped jaws in the control room.

While we're at it, Jake and his Greta Van Fleet (and literal) brother, Sam Kiszka, made an appearance in the 2025 Dave Cobb-produced Bruce Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. They're part of a fictional band that jams with "Bruce" at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Jake E. Lee

Jake E. Lee is Ozzy Osbourne’s true miracle man. In October 2024, Lee was shot multiple times while walking his beautiful dog, Coco. Recovering from that sort of thing takes time, and getting fit to play again was further complicated by arthritis, which involves “strengthening, stretching and steroid shots” to manage.

“The cartilage is basically gone,” he told Guitar World. “I’ve had to adjust my playing style to where I’m using mostly the elbow on the right hand, trying to use as much elbow movement as I can, while keeping the wrist movement down to a minimum.”

A lighter pick and a set of .07s helped him recover in time to give his former boss the sendoff he deserved at July 5’s Back to the Beginning all-dayer in Birmingham, England. He tore through The Ultimate Sin and Shot in the Dark.

The latter is a little on-the-nose, but you need a sense of humor in this business. This is the man who was playing with the Double O when Ozzy forgot the words to War Pigs and sung Old MacDonald Had a Farm instead, and most importantly, he was the player who brought his A-game when Ozzy needed it most. Twice.

Spiro Dussias

A guitarist whose economy picking has its own laws of physics, people simply can’t compute Spiro Dussias. He’s got people making reaction videos simply to admit a total defeat of comprehension before their heads ultimately explode a la David Cronenberg’s Scanners.

STEM researchers could probably break his technique down better than we could, but luckily Dussias was good enough to explain. He calls it “muted sweep picking.”

“It comes from experimenting with the mechanics of economy picking and what you can do with different angles and muting,” he said. “There’s this notion that economy picking gives you a more fluid or bubbly sound than alternate picking – but I’ve been proving the opposite.”

We all have heard testimonials from Tim Henson and Tosin Abasi, but Dussias’ entire social media presence is filled with bamboozled A-list players in a state of total cranial eruption.

Just listen to Negative. It’s unreal, neo-shred as sci-fi, an arpeggiated code for the mother ship with instructions to beam him back. But can we please keep him a little longer? Henson has something planned for him, and it ain’t a BMX ride around suburbia under the light of the moon.

Tom Morello

It is not for his adventures in hot-wiring the electric guitar with tools he bought in Home Depot, nor for animating a next-gen Tony Iommi riff with a hip-hop beat and then blazing some Whammy squawk over the top.

This year, Tom Morello makes our MVP list because of his powers of convening, serving as musical director for the biggest gig of the year (that didn't have two Gallagher brothers onstage), and maybe even the biggest metal gig of all time.

Hired by Sharon Osbourne to be Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s head of HR for Back to the Beginning, Morello assembled a bill of A-list hard rock and metal talent for “Metal’s Live Aid,” raising a heap of money for charity.

He also played some guitar, performing Snowblind and Breaking the Law with K.K. Downing and jamming with Aerosmith. Well, it would’ve been rude not to. And let's not forget the launch of Morello's Fender 'Arm the Homeless' guitar.

Marcus King

When Marcus King is at home, he doesn’t touch the guitar all that much and will sooner pick up a ukulele or banjo – or sit behind a piano before picking up the guitar – and you can hear that in his songwriting and his playing.

Ably backed up by six-string lieutenant Drew Smithers on the Marcus King Band’s 2025 studio album, Darling Blue, King’s playing is unimpeachable. It’s never too needy, his feel and note choice immaculate. It’s like the opposite of Larry David; King’s guitar always says the right thing at the right time.

King has spent the year in good company, getting himself sober with the help of his wife, getting Derek Trucks, Charlie Starr, Billy Strings and more to sit in on Darling Blue. He played Gregg Allman’s actual Guild Starfire bass on the sessions.

Since King emerged from South Carolina with his grandfather’s ES-345, Big Red, there’s been this promise that he'd follow in that tradition and become the next giant of Southern rock, pulling soul, R&B, blues and more into his orbit. He’s making good on it and then some.

Kiki Wong

One minute, Kiki Wong was one of among 10,000 guitarists applying for the vacant role in the Smashing Pumpkins, the next she is on the cover of Guitar World alongside Pumpkins king Billy Corgan, looking like she had been there since day one.

Wong is many things. For one, she’s the most metal player in the band. She has a different skill set from James Iha and Corgan. She looks totally different, too. But as Corgan explained, that’s what makes the Pumpkins.

“If you’re looking across the stage at the Pumpkins, James is wearing a suit. I’m wearing a priest’s dress, Jack is wearing the Manchester outfit of a lumberjack shirt and jeans, and Kiki looks like Rob Halford’s cousin,” he said. “And I go, ‘Yeah, this is the band.’”

What Wong is doing musically is extending the Pumpkins’ range. For all the honeyed melodies, the high-concept musical progressivism, they have always embraced audio extremity. Wong’s down picking has given Pumpkins a monster power-up. “We’re heavier with Kiki, which is actually to the benefit of the band live,” Corgan said.

Noel Gallagher

We will have to wait for the full story on how Oasis’ reunion went down, but we’d like to think that, after years of being called a “potato” by his kid brother, Noel Gallagher finally got hungry and popped over to Liam’s for some lasagne. Pasta fixes everything.

Or was it simply inevitable that the fraternal wound would heal and they’d put the band back together to pack out a bunch of stadiums and play for more than a million fans in the U.K. and Ireland alone? And then they hit the U.S.…

Either way, Oasis’ triumphant second act put the spotlight back on Noel, the guitar player, and the Chief did not disappoint, stepping out of the rhythm game to play lead once more, setting the guitar internet ablaze when he pulled out this mystery P90-equipped Les Paul Standard, and later releasing it as a signed Murphy Lab limited-edition model, and then as a regular Gibson USA model.

The word around the campfire is that the world’s second biggest rock reunion of 2025 will reconvene in the not-so-distant future. Clearly, there were no hard feelings that Spinal Tap stepped out of retirement to steal their thunder. More on that soon.

Pat McCrory 

There’s always one player on our year-end MVP list whom you’ll be advised to wear a crash helmet and gum-shield when watching them perform live. This year it’s Pat McCrory, the guitarist for hardcore superstars Turnstile, who of late has swapped Les Pauls for a Jackson Soloist, a high-performance upgrade for a band whose live show is worth a bruise or six weeks in bandages. No barrier, just lots of people living in the moment, etc.

Hardcore can be a cloistered medium, attracting a demographic that Thurston Moore has called “cement heads,” but Turnstile’s multimedia full-court press for their audience’s affections combines brains, brawn and soul, and if McCrory’s electrified riffs send you off a wedge monitor in celebration, well, there will be an abundance of similar-minded maniacs to catch you.

With touring guitarist Meg Mills now a full-time member of the Turnstile clan, we’re excited to see what the pair cook up next year.

Nigel Tufnel

When the news broke like the wind that Spinal Tap was getting the band back together, we had to seek out the British rock institution’s firebrand lead guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, to get the story behind the biggest reunion of the year. We hope you enjoyed it. It wasn't easy.

Secreted in the north of England, selling cheese and trading guitars, Tufnel was living the quiet life, keeping his chops up in the pub circuit, Brown Sound to go with the warm brown beer.

But for Tufnel and Tap frontman/guitarist David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap II: The End of the Beginning was a serious guitar event, with custom gear coming in from the likes of Ernie Ball Music Man, Collings and Marshall. Joe Satriani made headlines when they showed up with the Ibanez JS-3 signature models he gave them, but proving there is a fine line between stupid and clever, Tufnel’s new Marshall stole the show.

“Marshall has made for me an amplifier, the head, and if you look at the dials, it now goes to infinity,” he told GW. “Just think about that for a moment. Think about infinity – oh, my God, that’s literally infinity.”

Stephen Carpenter 

Deftones have forever been about contrasts, light and shade, war and peace, Netflix and chill, and Private Music continues in the tradition, threatening mosh-pit dynamite before Chino Moreno’s barbiturate vocals smooth out the edges, casting us into a fugue state.

They’ve been doing this since the ’90s, but it’s still fresher than just-laundered bedsheets.

Carpenter is principally in charge of building the wall of sound, and this time he has a guitar tone cleaved from analog tube fire as his digital detox finds him reengaging with old-school amplifier worship. My, does it give some of those low-end riffs some physical energy. Sometimes it does us all good to touch grass now and again.

Chris Buck

Not everyone had been paying attention to Chris Buck’s Friday Fretworks on YouTube or the social media and streaming metrics underpinning Cardinal Black’s irresistible rise. When Buck booked a small show in Nashville, the promoter was skeptical – then aghast that tickets sold out in two hours.

Thing is, Buck and Cardinal Black have been doing bigger venues, most notably playing the Royal Albert Hall in 2022, as special guests of Peter Frampton. Cardinal Black’s Midnight at the Valencia is similarly opening doors for their aggressive expansion into larger-capacity venues.

Midnight is a record of smoking-hot tones, the sound of vintage Fender combos being dimed into submission. Buck’s signature pedal from ThorpyFX, Electric Lightning, is a tube overdrive/boost with a 3-band EQ that tells you everything about his tonal proclivities. The Welsh guitarist is in his 30s, yet his heart belongs to the holy ritual of pushing air.

Nuno Bettencourt

Nuno Bettencourt should have lifetime tenure in our end-of-year list. There is no greater box-office rock player alive. But lifetime tenure is officially not a thing. Bettencourt’s on this list because his performance at Back to the Beginning damn-near stole the show – also begging the question why he never joined Ozzy’s band.

“For better or worse, I’ve always had my sights set on – and I’ll never reach it, probably – becoming Randy or Edward or Brian May or Jimmy Page, and the list goes on,” he said. “You have this mission to carve your own path, whatever that is.”

Well, Bettencourt’s path has been carved by string-skipping, percussive harmonics and all kinds of juicy overdriven magic from a rig that’s basically a Marshall and a Rat distortion pedal that’s not even really on. When Extreme returned with Six in 2023, he said he was “out for blood.”

At Back to the Beginning he was collecting heads, ripping through Believer, Sweet Leaf, Changes… Even his warm-up shred in the car ride to the show was essential viewing. And we're not even getting into his MTV VMAs appearance in September.

Oh, and he formed his own guitar company, Nuno Guitars, launching with two very Bettencourt-esque S-styles, reverse headstocks, a promise to continue with the N4, and carrying a lot of the design DNA from his 35-year-long collab with Washburn.

Mk.gee

Michael Todd Gordon is his name. Mk.gee is his superhero name. The manipulation of sound is his superpower. And the guitar never stood a chance. He was always going to pick it up and bend it, mold it, reshape it, keep it lo-fi and yet somehow at the center of our attention.

Talent can take you places. But musical curiosity is its own kind of talent; it can take you strange places. This year it notably took Mk.gee into the studio with Canadian pop-superstar Justin Bieber to co-write, produce and play on Daisies, the lead single from the first of Bieber’s two new albums, Swag.

First, Eric Clapton declared his love for Mk.gee’s talents, now Bieber. If we catch Mk.gee live and he has a friendship bracelet on, it'll be an “oh-shit” moment, because we know what’s coming next… Don’t rule it out.

In other news, Mk.gee’s gourmet retro-chic tone also inspired the JHS Pedals 424 Gain Stage, as everybody and their TikToker sought out the analog fuzzy drive magic of the direct-to-Tascam sound. A heroic 2025, sir.

Arianna Powell & Olivia Rodrigo

If the Jackson Soloist is an unorthodox choice for a hardcore player like the aforementioned Pat McCrory, then it is something way out of left field for pop.

But when you think about Arianna Powell’s playing style, and more to the point, her mission (to inculcate a love of all things guitar in an explicitly pop audience and to encourage more young people – especially girls – to pick up the instrument), it makes perfect sense.

It’s a platform for next-level virtuosity, blockbuster shred and, with Olivia Rodrigo the brains of the operation, also a serious player in her own right, the mission is proceeding as planned.

“We all get DMs on Instagram from fans that are stoked and wanting to play,” Powell said. “And I can only hope that inspires them, right? [Olivia] has so many fans who are young girls and young women. It’s important to see that.”

So, yeah, booksmart with a degree in jazz guitar from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and a flair for stunt guitar, Powell is Rodrigo’s ace in the hole. She might be this generation’s Jennifer Batten, which is to say an icon in the making.

Daniela “Dany” Villarreal Vélez

Whatever you do, never let Dany Villerreal of the Warning tune your guitar for you. Lord only knows how it would wind up, but it sure wouldn’t be EADGBE.

Pitch-shifted drop tuning and weird AF alternate tunings are the not-so-secret sauce in the Warning’s competition-grade riffs. She explained to Guitar World how she tuned her baritone Fender Strat, and it still didn’t make sense.

“It is a baritone guitar, but I have it dropped as well,” she said. “So the last string is not in B, it’s all the way down to A. For some reason, I always looked at this guitar as a seven-string guitar without the first string.”

This unorthodoxy is giving the Warning’s riff-rock serious weight. Who could have guessed that a band that shot to fame as teenage sisters covering Enter Sandman would later orbit the almighty riff as adults?

The Mexican rockers grew up in full view of the internet, TV and onstage supporting blue-chip acts such as Muse and Royal Blood. Only now does it feel like they’re approaching critical mass, Villarreal Vélez’s rhythm figures rivaling Jupiter for gravitational pull.

Maya Delilah

Given her bravura take on Slow Dancing in a Burning Room (more than a million views on YouTube), there is a lot of scuttlebutt about Maya Delilah being the quote/unquote “next John Mayer,” and we hope for her bank account that this comes true.

But artistically, she’s doing just fine as Maya Delilah, a twenty-something singer-songwriter from north London, signed to Blue Note, whose debut longplayer, The Long Way Round, bears all the hallmarks of natural, unworked talent (belying the fact that Delilah is a booksmart alumnus of BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology).

Like Marcus King, she’s another artist whose voice is just as strong as his or her guitar playing, but GW has a beat to cover, and on guitar – be it the Strats you’ll have seen her with after her graduation from the Fender Next 2024 program or the bizarro Maton electric she unearthed – she has this fingerstyle approach that’s just… Well, it can be learned but it can’t be taught.

“I think the only thing it feels like it holds me back from is occasional speed,” she said. “But at this time, I feel like I get a lot more feeling when I play with my fingers as well.”

Buddy Guy

For a man who was supposed to be retiring from the road, Buddy Guy has clocked up an impressive amount of shows in 2025. But then the world’s greatest living bluesman is a force of nature, his Damn Right Encore Tour! testament to his physical and artistic momentum.

It’s only when speaking to him that you realize his age, his stories recounting the formative years of Chicago blues, and the before times, growing up in Louisiana, the son of sharecroppers, seeing a first-generation blues guitarist for the first time, and what that did to a young kid. Dress him in dungarees with a polka-dot shirt, hand him a Strat, he’s eternal.

Guy bemoans the lack of airplay for the blues, but like today’s blues artists, he is transcending the traditional routes of promo, taking matters into his own two hands by starring in Ryan Coogler’s box-office hit Sinners alongside the likes of Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Bobby Rush. He also put out a new studio album this year, fittingly titled Ain't Done with the Blues.

“Muddy Waters and B.B. King – I knew ’em before they passed away,” he said, speaking to Variety, “and they told me, ‘Man, if you outlive me, just try to keep the blues alive.’”

Muireann Bradley

The internet has made cynics of many and skeptics of us all, so when 13-year-old Irish country blues artist Muireann Bradley first put her Blind Blake cover on YouTube, some would've harbored the suspicion that this was just one of another online phenomenon, like a German Shepherd driving a speedboat. But they would be getting Bradley all wrong.

This is a player weaned on old-timey country blues. Taught by her father, her musical vocabulary and playing style is drawn from players such as Reverend Gary Davis and Memphis Minnie, and from music that’s over a century old and has been passed from generation to generation like an heirloom. Like Buddy Guy, she’s here to keep the blues alive.

Bradley shoulders that burden lightly, playing in open tunings. Her fingerstyle approach isn't a million miles away from folk – but as Keb’ Mo’ says, blues and folk are one and the same. Bradley performs on her father’s Waterloo WL-S Deluxe and WL-14 X, modern-day boutique reproductions of the a 1920s Stella and 1930s-style Gibson L-00.

Decca just signed her, remixed and reissued an expanded edition of her debut LP, I Kept These Old Blues, and it features a stellar rendition of “When the Levee Breaks,” which brings it on back to its pre-Led Zep form.

“A lot of people out there don’t seem to be aware that the original was written by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy,” she said.

“I just love Memphis Minnie; she was an amazing guitarist and incredible songwriter. There’s another amazing version of the track by Philadelphia musician Ari Eisinger, which influenced me heavily.” Bradley turns 19(!) this December.

Tim Henson

Polyphia’s sound has always been so difficult and/or dense that it was hard to imagine just how it would play live in physical spaces, where the audience is fewer than for their online presentations and yet orders of magnitude more demanding.

Tim Henson and Scott LePage make “high-information music,” as one-time collaborator and instrumental guitar guru Steve Vai would describe it. And Henson admitted to GW that the awesome spectacle of playing stadium shows and Euro festival slots has made them reconsider how to shape their sound for such occasions.

“It was really like, ‘Oh, we’re playing Playing God to 80,000 people. And I have no idea what this sounds like to the 55,000th person way in the back there!’” Henson said. “It made us realize, like, ‘Hey, we should start composing for it to work in these situations of 80,000-plus people.’ So we’re trying to, obviously, bring more energy by making it heavier.”

Henson’s strategy involves eight-string guitars, baritones and rethinking the instrument from the ground up. “We’re just making new guitars that don’t exist for the sole purpose of writing something really, really cool,” he said.

How that turns out is TBC. Henson, in the meantime, has been in perpetual motion, guesting on the Babymetal record, collaborating with Hans Zimmer on the F1 score (Johnny Marr, Guthrie Govan and now Henson? Zimmer can pick ’em), playing stadium shows with System of a Down, pulling together guests for his solo album and Polyphia’s next LP, the latter to feature SOAD frontman Serj Tankian… And so on. Just how much RAM is left in Henson’s giga-brain?

Hester Chambers & Rhian Teasdale

Watching Wet Leg simply enjoy being in an indie-rock band – and embracing it as the unreal reality that they are living through – is a legal high with no comedown. They are like a 21st-century indie-pop Devo – utterly singular, lo-fi, meta, high-volume and playing altered-states oddball disco for oddball and mainstream audiences alike.

At the fulcrum is Hester Chambers, assuming the Malcom Young position way in the back, working a Kramer Jersey Star as though it were some incognito choice. Fellow guitarist Rhian Teasdale goes over the top, 100 percent gung-ho in her role as frontwoman, heaving a fluoro-green, see-thru acrylic B.C. Rich Mockingbird.

Famously, Teasdale didn’t play guitar until they formed the band – at the top of a Ferris wheel – and approached it with the musical purpose of a pianist and the naïvety of the novitiate, and that’s how you can make a sound that… Well, how you can make a record like Wet Leg’s sophomore album, Moisturizer?

“She’s got a really beautiful way of playing and writing,” Chambers said. “She’s not restricted, not like, ‘Oh, I need to learn these chords so I can make this song.’ She just kind of plays around.”

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

Deep breath, everyone. We made it. 2025 is drawing to a close, and what a wild ride it’s been. It seems like only yesterday we were knee-deep in the annual NAMM gear avalanche, but a lot has happened since then – and it seems high time to sit back and take a look at what made ’25 such a great year for guitar.

Because there’s no doubt about it. 2025 was a great year for the guitar. There were some historic shows, a once-in-a-lifetime reunion, the emergence of generational guitar talents, a complete tonal revolution, some watershed gear drops… we won’t spoil it at all here, but a lot has happened.

In a year that wasn’t without its sad moments – we lost many guitar and music greats in 2025 – we head into 2026 off the back of a genuinely inspiring 12 months, which will live long in the memory.

So pull up a pew, grab a brew, and take a jolly through our guide to the 25 reasons why 2025 was a great year for guitars – as assembled by Team GW. Starting with…

1. Ozzy Osbourne went out in style – and made a music event a global phenomenon

In July, Ozzy Osbourne headlined Back to the Beginning, a generational farewell concert featuring, deep breath, Metallica, Pantera, Halestorm, Slayer, Alice in Chains, Jake E. Lee, Nuno Bettencourt… this could take all day. Barely two and a half weeks later, he was gone.

My GW online colleague, EIC Michael Astley-Brown, noted at the time that although it was Ozzy’s chance to say goodbye, the evening was also a tribute to Tony Iommi’s singular impact on guitar music, and I couldn’t agree more.

I’m hardly a Sabbath fanatic, but when I heard Ozzy confidently declare, one last time, “we are Black Sabbath!” as the leviathan opening chords of War Pigs rang out around him, I was shocked by how emotional I became.

Mentally, I found myself in my best friend’s basement at 12 years old, him playing Paranoid on his Epiphone SG, me doing Ozzy, then him showing the riff to me (“look how easy it is!”) The freaks storming the castle. “Back to the Beginning”, huh? – JM

2. Guitar solos are big business in pop again – just ask Olivia Rodrigo

‘Move over Taylor Swift: Olivia Rodrigo is this generation’s Eddie Van Halen – her Glastonbury performance proved it’.

Of all the headlines I expected to write this year, this was not it. But that proves the sheer guitar magnetism of Rodrigo’s set at one of the world’s biggest music festivals: session vet Arianna Powell shredding a Jackson Soloist at every opportunity, extended riff breakdowns, Rodrigo herself busting out a Mustang and duetting with the Cure’s Robert Smith. This was no polished pop performance: this was a legit rock show.

Oh, and before you @ me without reading the article, lemme break down that headline: EVH inspired people to pick up the guitar in the ’80s. Taylor Swift was hailed by The Internet as doing the same in the 2010s. And I think Rodrigo will do that for 2020s kids. She is promoting visibility of the electric guitar and its musical lineage at the highest level – and I think that’s pretty rad. – MAB

3. Amp modelers continued to level up – and 2025 was a watershed moment

Every year, something raises the bar in the amp modeling market. But 2025 felt different. It felt bigger. Part of that was the arrival of Helix 2 – AKA Helix Stadium – which reinvented one of the world’s premier floorboard modelers from the ground up with new tech. Part of it was also down to the various updates introduced by Fender, Neural DSP, and Kemper to their own hardware, and the huge strides made by more affordable companies.

But, if we’re being honest, the biggest wave in the modeler market was caused by John Mayer, who created a rip tide when he partnered with Neural DSP for a signature plugin. It is a watershed moment for the industry. A tube amp loyalist putting his faith in digital modeling? A true sign of the times. Expect even more people to make the switch now. If it’s good enough for Mayer, it’s good enough for anyone. – MO

4. Geese and Y2K nostalgia are keeping the dream of the guitar band alive

If you frequent music TikTok – specifically, #indierocktok – chances are you've probably come across Geese. The Brooklyn-based indie-rock band reached new heights this year, arguably becoming “America's most thrilling young rock band” (according to GQ at least).

The Y2K and indie sleaze nostalgia are rife with Geese – you'd be forgiven for mistaking them for a band billed alongside The Strokes at a festival in the early to mid-aughts.

But the band, led by frontman Cameron Winter, are dominating the algorithm and introducing indie rock to a whole new generation, while also keeping the dream of the guitar band alive. – JB

5. People still want their guitar heroes to be worthy of the term

If the whole sorry saga of Giacomo Turra has taught us anything, it’s that originality and credibility are still qualities that we want from our guitar heroes.

The sad fact is that not every guitarist we encounter is technically gifted, exuberantly creative, and treats others with kindness and respect. But let’s just agree not to accept one out of three, OK? Especially, if you’re going to take to social media and portray yourself as a pastel-clad international playboy.

Social media is a delivery mechanism and, used well, a levelling force in championing new music and musicians. On the other hand, you could also argue it’s an unpoliced hellhole and an ecosystem that encourages profile over providence – that need for a reality check has never been more apparent to players. – MP

6. Bad guitar tone is a thing of the past

2025 was the year bad tone got good, and we have mk.gee to thank. The trailblazing tonesmith is not only a leading gen Z guitar hero, but he’s also Eric Clapton’s favorite new guitar player – and he recorded all his anthems with a Tascam 424 preamp. You know, like in that Portastudio you used to own/read about in history books.

Cue two big-brand reincarnations of the recently reappraised preamp via JHS Pedals and Benson Amps, plus one philosophical John Mayer demo, and suddenly, the guitar world found itself reevaluating its sense of tone. Or, at least, GW staff did.

As I posited in my own thesis, ‘Does ‘bad’ guitar tone even exist anymore?’, you could argue that it’s too easy to get a pro-level guitar tone with plugins and modelers these days. Adopting a traditionally maligned one might be the quickest way to stand out. And that’s A Cool Thing: every tone is valid! – MAB

7. The blues is in remarkably good shape, and was the musical driver of a box office smash

“Yeah, that was Buddy Guy! He’s, like, the last of the original bluesmen. He’s a legend!”

I’m in a bar with my friends after we’ve just seen Sinners, the (literally) barnstorming Ryan Coogler-directed horror smash set in early ‘30s Mississippi. Though it’s primarily a vampire movie, Sinners is true to its setting with a score heavily inspired by the haunting acoustic blues of that era and region – with a joint cameo from Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Buddy Guy linking two generations of the genre together.

I can’t fully explain his role without revealing too much of the story, but Buddy Guy isn’t just our last living line to the real origins of the blues – he’s a hell of an actor, too!

The highest-grossing fully original film in the United States since 2010 (!), Sinners brought the blues to new audiences far and wide.

“They had me play a little spot in a movie,” Guy told Guitar World earlier this year in reference to Sinners, “and I still get more calls about the movie than I do my records!” – JM

8. The Oasis reunion no one thought would happen actually happened

If you asked the Gallagher brothers three years ago whether there’d ever be a chance we’d see them on stage together again, they’d have called you a naughty word and laughed you out the room. Well, we got the last laugh, because that’s exactly what happened. 2025 will forever be remembered as the year Oasis got back together.

Did it help put the spotlight on guitar music? The instrument was in rude health well before the Oasis reunion, but Liam’s son sure thought so. Whatever the case, the Oasis reunion was a cultural and musical phenomenon like no other.

It was also a goldmine for guitar fans. Noel started playing solos again. He had a mystery Les Paul built for the shows, and it broke the internet when it was released as a signature model. Gem Archer and Bonehead also got signature guitars. The biggest music event of the year – Back to the Beginning aside – had guitars at its heart. That alone makes it worthy of praise. But for fans like me, who never thought we’d see the day, it was a helluva ride. – MO

9. Guitar brands are leveling up their budget guitar game

Buying a budget guitar hasn't meant settling for subpar specs for a while now. But some of this year's standout releases were, in fact, guitars at the lower range of the price spectrum – and, frankly, we're here for it.

The T-style PRS SE NF 53 was perhaps this year’s most impressive release, blowing away our reviews team, who described it as “a workingman’s tool pure and simple: any guitar player could use one, which might well qualify it as the most essential guitar yet of 2025”.

The Cort G200SE, Spira T-450, Sterling By Music Man's Intro Series Cutlass, and Jet Guitars' JT-350 BKM H and JJ-300 P90 SFG are also among 2025's standouts. – JB

10. The year hardcore went mainstream – and embraced guitar solos

Yeah, I hear you, ‘hardcore has been going mainstream’ for about five years now, but 2025 feels like a new zenith.

At the head of the pack, still, are Turnstile who returned with Never Enough (tied with Broncho’s Natural Pleasure for my personal album of the year). It got laden with more glowing reviews than an Amazon drop-shipper; enjoyed a previously unthinkable profile on late-night TV; received five Grammy nominations; they played in front of enormous crowds worldwide – and were even asked to rep Fender’s new American Professional Classic line.

They also made a video with a vocalist on a jet ski, a drummer in the desert, and Pat McCory ripping a whammy-laden guitar solo in an alpine valley. The hardcore tag is now largely irrelevant: Turnstile are now looking like a solid bet to be one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

And Turnstile might have broken the mould but they’re not alone. Look at Drain’s Cody Chavez bringing the thrash riffs and shred solos to their last album …Is Your Friend. Hardcore is a changed beast that’s for sure. And all this from a scene in which the biggest flex used to be what kind of van you had… – MP

11. One of the best – and biggest – indie-guitar albums in years arrived

moisturizer confirmed that tongue-very-much-in-cheek Brit-rockers Wet Leg are one of rock’s most exciting new talents. Their second record is a masterpiece: it has the catchiest guitar hooks of the year and the sharpest indie-pop songwriting, tapping into the sweet spot between Pavement and PJ Harvey I never knew I needed.

It’s subverting the genre’s norms, too: Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers have been repping B.C. Rich and Kramer shred sticks onstage – and yes (trigger warning, Kevin Shields acolytes), one of them is being used for shoegaze whammy dives. Myles Kennedy and Steve Stevens told us this was their most-listened to album this year. It was mine, too. – MAB

12. TikTok – still kicking, and bringing new audiences to guitar innovation of days past and present

As the sun rose on 2025, it seemed like TikTok would be banned from the US app market, but after a round of rope-tugging between outgoing US President Joe Biden and incoming President Donald Trump, the app lived to see another year – and now it’s bigger than ever before.

Last year, it brought the Darkness’s seminal I Believe In A Thing Called Love, 20 years later, back to the top of the US Rock charts, and this year, it brought a three-decade-old slow-burning Radiohead ballad that nearly broke the band up back, improbably, into the Billboard Hot 100.

It also brought my personal favorite guitar riff of the year – the nasty, nylon-string one that drives Hudson Freeman’s If You Know Me – to the attention of John Mayer. Everyone and their brother has a take on whether TikTok is a force for bad or good, but its power to elevate tunes, riffs, and players into – or back into – the limelight, is indisputable. – JM

13. The metal offset campaign reaches its conclusion

“Are we still talking about metal offsets in 2025?” I hear you ask. Well, yes, we are, because although it’s been a topic of conversation the past few years, the campaign to have them back in the mainstream finally came to a head in 2025.

After spending over a year ogling at Misha Mansoor’s Surfcaster, and drooling over Mike Stringer’s Charvel, our thirst for an accessible offset was quenched when Jackson revived the Surfcaster as an ultra-affordable model at NAMM. Lee Malia was then given a signature version. Aristides also unveiled its STX collection, designed with Stringer.

Sure, some brands have been doing this for a while – Balaguer for one – but before 2025 these things were always a rarity, reserved only for high-end or signature models. The democratization of the metal offset came to the forefront this year. Long may it continue. – MO

14. The notion of the guitar hero is far from dead – it's just being redefined

Who says the concept of the “guitar hero” is dead – or a long-forgotten relic of the past? Like any other notion, it has simply transformed and adapted to the 2020s and the digital age.

Yungblud immediately springs to mind: the Ozzy Osbourne protégé and Aerosmith collaborator has proven he's the embodiment of a 21st-century rockstar. His Back to the Beginning performance was perhaps the most defining “passing of the torch” moment – but rest assured, he's not on his own.

Thomas Raggi, Grace Bowers, Diamond Rowe, Yvette Young, Tim Henson, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Sophie Lloyd, Yoyoyoshie, Mateus Asato, Geese's Emily Green and Spiro are just a few of the younger generation of guitarists who are challenging the traditional notion of “guitar hero,” and proving to everyone that, while it may look slightly different, rock ’n’ roll is far from dead. – JB

15. Collaboration not confrontation

It would be a brave writer proclaiming that the guitar industry is not somewhat cutthroat in its business dealings, but it does feel that in the face of adversity in the last 12 months, we’ve seen it pull together in a new way.

NAMM have been directly lobbying Washington over the impact of tariffs, pedal builders (who admittedly have a more fraternal approach among those in the boutique clique) have been highlighting their own plight, and firms of all stripes are realizing they’re in it together when it comes to raising awareness of the cost implications of changing import policies.

On a similar-but-different note, guitar-makers seem to be taking a much more pluralistic approach to their signature deals (Cory Wong’s signature Strat and StingRay, for example) – understanding that it’s better to have the right artist’s name on some of their gear, than force them to commit completely and risk it being on nothing.

I don’t think we’re going to see Gibson and Fender falling out of a bar together anytime soon, but the idea that an iconic guitarist might want to acknowledge that they play both a Strat and a Les Paul no longer seems unthinkable in the eyes of the corporate machine. – MP

16. We got a new contender for Mayer-level feel

Put me in a (gentle, please) headlock, and ask me to name the most lyrical guitar players on the planet, and Mayer and Trucks would be the first names out of my mouth. Buck, if you need a third. But Maya Delilah would be next.

The Fender-backed 25-year-old’s first album on storied jazz label Blue Note dropped this year, and highlights her off-the-charts feel – the dynamic control and soul-searching note choices are pure storytelling. No wonder, given how intertwined she finds lyrics and leads. “If I’ve said exactly what I want to say lyrically, I feel like I need to mirror that with feeling when I play the guitar,” she told us.

It’s not all aching neo-soul solos, though: Delilah does a mean line in sleazy Prince funk and skronky fuzz, too. We can’t wait to see where she goes next. – MAB

17. Jake Kiszka and Chris Turpin conjured old-school guitar magic on Mirador’s debut album

Back in May, Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka and Ida Mae’s Chris Turpin stopped by Guitar World’s NYC headquarters to discuss their influences and how their six-string chemistry developed, and to play through a selection of the heaviest (and sweetest) tunes featured on the self-titled debut album from their new project, Mirador.

With their partnership hardly public knowledge at that point, I didn’t quite know what to expect when I joined my GW colleagues in the studio for the session. Seeing them plug in and rip from a few feet away, though, showed clear as day the unique wavelength these two found together. Listen to the thundering Mirador standout Fortune's Fate – with its whirlwind Kiszka solo – to hear it for yourself. – JM

18. Jacob Collier’s five-string revolution opened up new ways to think about playing

If 2024 was the year Jacob Collier became known for his guitar chops, 2025 was the year he put in a serious case for being a modern-day guitar hero. He might not be shredding at the speed of light, but he’s doing something even more important: he’s encouraging people to approach the guitar in new ways.

He’s doing that through his five-string guitars, and a symmetrical open tuning that makes playing chords hugely accessible. It also opens up whole new paths for exploring the instrument, and is a reminder that, when we think everything there is to discover has been discovered, there’s still room for so much more.

The proof is in the pudding. Collier’s five-string Strandberg was more popular than the six-string. Players are buying into the five-string. We dare say it could soon be a mainstream option. Viva la revolución. – MO

19. Guitarist biopics are all the rage

2025 has been the year of music – and specifically guitarist – biopics.

The Bob Dylan biopic (and a big shout-out to Joan Baez as well), A Complete Unknown, was released in 2024 but continued buzzing all the way through 2025 with eight Oscar nominations – not too shabby!

Bruce Springsteen’s Deliver Me from Nowhere followed, with high hopes to replicate the success of Dylan’s biopic, albeit to mixed reviews.

Hollywood is also betting big on director Sam Mendes’ four (yes, four) Beatles biopics, while finally shining a long-overdue spotlight on Sister Rosetta Tharpe in an upcoming film starring popstar Lizzo. Oh, and did I mention that the first – and only – authorized biopic of B.B. King was just announced? – JB

20. The redemption of Jake E. Lee

Back to the Beginning was an emotional experience for a lot of reasons, but for me, one of the most compelling parts was the long-overdue redemption of Jake E. Lee in the eyes of Ozzy fans and the wider guitar community.

The man’s main sin of the last 40+ years has essentially been the fact that he was not Randy Rhoads, which is an affliction that I think we can all relate to. But the fact is he was there when he was needed, he did fine work in a tough situation with Bark at the Moon and he – quite literally – did not get the credit he was due.

More miraculously, he mostly refused to badmouth the Ozzy camp, chalking a move that would have destroyed lesser players up to ‘business’.

To see him take to the stage, and to his shock, be greeted by a stadium full of Ozzy fans, led by Nuno Bettencourt, all chanting his name was incredibly moving. – MP

21. It’s easier than ever to practice guitar – and it’s never sounded better

Bit of a personal one, this: I became a dad this year and am therefore legally obliged to tell you about it. My new arrival has made me not only value every spare minute I can find to play guitar, but also realize how fortunate we are to have so many handy practice doodads. I have become reliant on headphones and extremely low-volume mini amps whenever my newborn blesses us with 10 minutes of sleep.

There were some big shifts in that arena this year: Positive Grid brought the price of guitar amp headphones way down with the Spark Neo and Core, and Blackstar and IK Multimedia dropped some serious guitar-jack units that offer proper big-rig tones. It’s devices like this that can keep your skills ticking over when you have to fit the guitar around the people that you love. – MAB

22. Legacy bands gave the people what they want

Each of the last five consecutive decades, guitarist extraordinaire Robert Fripp has completely reinvented the sound and onstage repertoire of his band, King Crimson, and he’s never apologized for it.

With that in mind, one might assume that he’d regard the idea of a group devoted to performing the band’s knotty ‘80s material with disdain. Quite to the contrary, he was delighted by the formation of BEAT – a group comprised of two Crimson alums – vocalist/guitarist Adrian Belew and bass maestro Tony Levin – Tool drummer Danny Carey, and none other than Steve Vai. Fripp even offered some tips to Vai as BEAT worked through their first gigs.

Former frontman John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) has been much less enthusiastic about punk legends the Sex Pistols reuniting with Frank Carter in his place, but the band’s shows have proven to be a rousing success.

Age hasn’t dwindled the audiences for these and countless other legacy acts, and as long as they’re there, many of these bands and artists will be happy to give fans new and old what they crave to hear. – JM

23. Gear nostalgia hit new heights

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That means, for every step taken in the direction of a futuristic digital utopia, there is also a move to embrace the gear and tones that have come before us.

That force was particularly apparent in 2025, especially through the gear drops that took place and the playing habits of guitarists. JHS Pedals released the Tascam-aping 424 Gain Stage. Gibson and Epiphone launched a Back to the Future ES-345. MXR’s MX100 Rockman repurposed cult classic ’80s tones.

And everyone went nuts for it. Reverb’s end of year stats show the MXR topped its new-to-2025 best-selling pedals. The Epiphone did the same for the guitar list. As companies use cutting edge tech to push the boundaries of guitar gear, it seems an appetite for cult kit of yesteryear is gaining traction. – MO

24. Movie and TV soundtracks are prioritizing guitar

Guitarists have long lent their chops to movie soundtracks. Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood has carved out a niche for himself as a composer, scoring the likes of 2021's The Power of the Dog and 2017's Phantom Thread, while Jimmy Page leveraged his session musician days to write, produce and record an array of instruments for the Death Wish II and III soundtracks.

The tradition continues with each generation of guitarists – in 2025, Yvette Young, Tim Henson, and IDLES played key roles in soundtracks for blockbusters Superman and F1, and Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing, respectively – while shows like Cobra Kai continued to recruit top guitar talent to their musical dojo.

As Young herself told Guitar World earlier this year, in an increasingly oversaturated (and expensive) touring environment, “it's really difficult to figure out how to monetize certain things, especially with streaming being so ass at paying.”

Therefore, soundtracks are proving to be one of the remaining solid avenues where guitarists (and musicians at large) can flex their creativity and still get fairly compensated. – JB

25. AI in music gear = good, AI in music-writing = bad

“Create a statement of 150 words on why AI is good and bad for creativity in 2025.” Oh, hello. My apologies, I was talking to someone else…

AI is now, officially, all-up in just about everything. Gear-wise, it’s gone from ‘press release-worthy’ to ‘accepted norm’ in the space of a year. The debate rumbles on, but I think we can broadly define the conclusion of the musician community thus far as ‘AI in gear = useful’ and ‘AI in writing music = bad’.

The fundamental point of the tech, of course, is to offload all of the boring, repetitive, and fiddly stuff that we don’t want to, or cannot deal with, to leave us free to focus on the things we do want to do. I have a hard time accepting AI will replace musicians, because music is the thing we do for fun, whether listening, or consuming it. It’s, quite frankly, the last thing I’d wish to automate, or direct towards all my copyright material.

The point of music, and any culture, is to express emotions and connect people, to create literal and emotional resonance between humans. I think that process is broken by AI writing or song generation.

On the other hand, browsing and creating patches on a modeler? For me, that often gets in the way of playing, so if I can ask AI to knock a patch together as a starting point, then, I for one, welcome our new robot overlords. – MP

Larry McCray's remarkable list of mentors is chock-full of blues heavyweights, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Albert Collins, to name a mere few.

In his new album, Heartbreak City, the elder statesman of the blues’ talents are on full display – boosted by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith in the production chair, and guest features by the likes of Kirk Fletcher and Double Trouble keyboardist Reese Wynans.

“I loved talking to Reese about his time with Stevie [Ray Vaughan], who I never got to hang with,” McCray tells Guitarist.

Indeed, the blues veteran was in Chicago, eagerly awaiting the famous Strat wielder’s rumored surprise appearance on the night the guitar and blues worlds were left reeling by Vaughan’s death.

“The night he died, I was at Buddy Guy’s Legends club [in Chicago] waiting for Buddy, Stevie, and Clapton because there was a rumor they were about to come and jam,” he recalls.

“All these musicians were waiting to see them. Then we were told they’d all gone down. You’ll never see a house full of people get so quiet, it was pin-drop silence, and eventually we found out Buddy and Eric were okay.

“It was a terrible thing,” he says solemnly. “I’ll never forget that day.”

Vaughan was 35 when he passed away in a helicopter crash outside East Troy, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1990. That evening, the guitarist and his band, Double Trouble, performed at Alpine Valley Music Theater – alongside Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and Vaughan's older brother, Jimmie.

For more from McCray, plus new interviews with Keith Urban and Steve Stevens, pick up issue 532 of Guitarist.

Since the release of the box office-smashing Michael B. Jordan movie, Sinners, Buddy Guy has reached a completely new audience – and a level of recognition he's using to, in his own words, “keep the blues alive.”

“I promised Muddy, B.B. and them, and we all spoke about this day – that whoever lived longest, please try to keep the blues alive,” he extrapolates in an interview with Variety. “Even at my age, when they ask me to do something, I say, ‘If I can still walk, I’ll be there.’”

And speaking of legends, Guy also looks back on the first time he encountered another Strat-wielding icon.

“[At first], I ain’t know who he was, man,” he says, referring to Jimi Hendrix.

“After I played 1967 Newport Jazz Festival, I got invited to play in New York, and I’m on the stage putting on this show, trying to play with my teeth and throwing the guitar. Somebody put a spotlight on me, and I missed the guitar coming down after I threw it. When it hit the floor, I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ so I just jumped down on it and everyone thought I did it on purpose.

“I heard somebody with real taste was sitting in front – Jimi Hendrix. I said, who? They [introduced] us and he said, ‘I canceled a gig to come watch you play, could I steal some licks from you?’ That’s when we got to know each other, and we finally got to jam – I can’t [remember] when, but it was in New York.”

As for his initial thoughts on Hendrix's playing, well, Guy revealed in a recent Guitar World interview that he “thought he used to play too loud,” since, coming from the Muddy Waters school of blues, Guy was used to a much cleaner sound.

As I wrote in this space last year, we typically get an early start on our annual end-of-year issue. Therefore – out of necessity – a lot of this issue was put together in late October, including our annual “biggest guitar news of the year” feature.

But, to prove how alive, dynamic and inherently interesting “guitar land” is, I had to update our news feature – literally on the page – almost every day as our printer deadline approached. Whether it was the sale of Eddie Van Halen’s “Kramer Ad” guitar, the Stray Cats’ tour cancellation, Gibson/Epiphone’s Back to the Future ES-345s, Nigel Tufnel’s new Marshall amp or who knows what else, there was always something happening.

Of course, the biggest – and most tragic – piece of “late news” was the death of Kiss co-founder Ace Frehley, a down-to-earth and charismatic guy (not to mention a local boy) who graced our cover several times.

We happened to have an unpublished early-2025 Frehley interview in the can, so it made sense to include that as part of this issue’s 11-page Ace tribute. This "lost interview" conveys everything that made Ace fun to talk to and know – his honesty, his sense of humor and his wealth of detailed memories about the good-ish ol’ days.

This dashing, rectangular and bulbous issue includes...

* Our editors choose the guitarists of the year – 20-ish players who left their indelible mark on 2025, including Nuno Bettencourt, Jake E. Lee, the guys from Mirador, Marcus King, Nigel Tufnel, Noel Gallagher, Stephen Carpenter, Tim Henson and a ton more.

* A recap of the biggest guitar news of the year – including the deaths of Ace Frehley, Ozzy Osbourne and Brent Hinds, plus that massive Back to the Beginning event way back in July, the end of Megadeth, those Modified Marshalls and more.

* The GW gang chooses our favorite new gear of the year, including the EVH SA-126 Standard, the Boss RT-2 Rotary Ensemble, Taylor's new Gold Label acoustics and many, many more things that we'd love to own.

* A plethora of guitar stars – including Don Felder, Brad Gillis, Kiki Wong, Max Cavalera, Herman Li, Vernon Reid, Joe Perry, Keith Urban, Eric Gales, Richard Fortus, Melanie Faye, Steve Stevens and more – choose the year’s best albums, solos, riffs, songs, guitar moments, guitarists of the year and more.

* A tribute to Ace Frehley, including an interview conducted in early 2025 but not published till this issue.

Not so fast! We've got this stuff too

The Gear Hunter checks in with Paul Reed Smith over at PRS Guitars, a company that's celebrating its 40th anniversary.

We also chat with Nuno Bettencourt (one of our guitarists of the year) and transcribe – for the first time in our 45 years on the planet –Young Man Blues from Live at Leeds by the Who. Our other transcriptions are Shinedown's 2025 track Three Six Five and Buddy Holly's Blue Days, Black Nights, featuring the late, great Sonny Curtis on guitar.

Gear-wise, we explore the history and allure of the Gibson SG Standard, and we review all this lovely stuff:

• Ibanez Q54W
• Boss PX-1 Plugout FX
• Sterling by Music Man Kaizen 7
• Fender American Professional Classic Stratocaster
• Warm Audio Throne of Tone
• JHS Pedals 424 Gain Stage

Finally, we have new columns by Joe Bonamassa, Jared James Nichols and Cory Wong, and we introduce a new columnist, Blackberry Smoke guitarist Charlie Starr.

You can buy new issues of Guitar World at Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Hudson News, Books a Million and other stores. But why not save on every issue by subscribing?

Hard Road is a landmark album for Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. It’s not only his first studio recording since 2021’s Grammy-winning 662, but it’s the first release on his own label, Red Zero Records.

After two studio LPs and one live album for Alligator Records – which helped establish him as a rising star and likely future of the blues – Ingram has boldly charted his own path.

Ingram had just turned 20 when he debuted with his 2019 album, Kingfish. Even so, he’d already been gigging around his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, for years, having learned to play at the Delta Blues Museum’s music-education program. Ingram’s mentor, the late guitarist Bill “Howlin’ Mad” Perry – who gave Ingram the name “Kingfish” – would bring star pupils from the classes to perform with him at the Ground Zero Blues Club, partly owned by Morgan Freeman.

“That was like a reward, and it was a great experience,” Ingram says. “The first time he did it for me, I realized this was it for me. It wasn’t going to be a hobby.”

Buddy Guy’s endorsement – and working with Tom Hambridge, Guy’s producer and songwriter – gave Ingram a boost, as did being signed to Alligator, the landmark Chicago label that was home to Albert Collins, Son Seals, Koko Taylor and other greats. The strength of his debut gave Kingfish immediate credibility, swiftly generating a buzz around him as the future of blues guitar playing.

Hard Road remains rooted in Kingfish’s singing and searing blues guitar playing, but the songwriting veers into more modern approaches, with touches of rock, pop and R&B. The songs’ lyrics also explore emotionally raw and complex topics of love, loss, identity and personal growth. Ingram, now 26, has seen a lot more of the world – literally and metaphorically – than he did as a debut artist.

In recent years he has lost his mother, Princess, his earliest and biggest supporter; he’s toured the world; he’s worked with legends like Guy and Steve Miller; and he’s appeared in the hit 2025 film Sinners. And now he’s started a label and begun establishing himself in a new world. All of these experiences are reflected in the songs of Hard Road.

“This record comes from real-life reflection,” Ingram says. “I’ve been balancing fame, heartbreak, love and relationships while trying to stay grounded, touring, creating and maturing. These songs are about owning my story. They’re about learning to see myself clearly and seeing others with more compassion. That’s changed the way I write, the way I play, the way I live.”

How and why did you start your own label?

Red Zero Records was an idea my manager, Ric Whitney, formulated a couple of years ago. It morphed into me wanting to give opportunities to other artists who probably didn’t have the same resources I had.

You’ve come a long way. Could you have imagined yourself five or six years ago talking about your resources?

In a relatively short time! Yeah, I’ve been grateful. When I was 15, I was hustling it out in the juke joint clubs, and then along came Mr. Buddy Guy, who was gracious enough to help me out with my first record and put me on the road with him.

Then I got on Alligator Records and I’m in a position now where I can help the other guys and gals coming along, and that is exciting. Mr. Guy is, of course, an OG, and I was so honored that he helped me get out of my region, where I was playing since I was a teenager.

Tom Hambridge worked with you as well; it felt like he helped you craft your story into great songs that have your voice. Been Here Before from your debut always stuck out in that regard.

Yeah. That was the last song we did on the Kingfish sessions. We were upstairs in the studio, and I had an acoustic and we were going back and forth, and out that song came, and we went downstairs and recorded it. And, yeah, it is my story.

As a child, before I even knew anything about blues, I would always repeat some of the soul songs my mom would listen to and give people a show. Five years old, singing stuff like the Stylistics, and people would always say, “He’s not normal; he’s an old soul.”

I did an interview with Derek Trucks when he was about your age now. I remember him saying, “I’m just really excited to get past the 'kid' thing.” Do you relate to that?

Definitely. It can be a blessing and a curse. When people see a kid playing, they automatically think “gimmick,” but there’s been some serious guys coming up as kids. No-one wants to get stuck being the cute kid that plays guitar. So that’s when you got to focus on the lyrics and singing, which I did on this one. I’m ready to just have my music listened to and not have people think, “He’s great for a kid.”

On the new record, you show more blues and R&B influences. Do you feel free to do anything you want, or do you worry about how your audience might respond?

It’s definitely something I think about a lot, and it’s a double-edged sword. I’m always told I’ve got the potential to go here or there. It’s something I struggle with, and I look at it like this: I have the potential to go a lot of places musically, and that’s what I want to do.

I have a lot of influence, but what I do is always gonna be rooted in the blues, because that’s the aim and that’s who I am. I want to reach my generation, and to do that, I need to mix it a little bit to pull them in. Once they get in, I can really show them the real raw thing, and that’s pretty much what I’m doing.

Did recording this for your own label change the way you approach the material? Would it have been more straight blues for Alligator?

That’s a good question. Probably not. I was ready to branch out a little in any case.

What songs on the album highlight where you are now?

Can I say all of them? I do feel that way, but I think the ones that really showcase what the album is about, the journey in the different genres are Voodoo Charm, which is the blues-rock space; Bad Like Me is more in the pop rock vein; Nothin’ But Your Love is serving the adult contemporary, R&B space. Those three songs showcase what the album is trying to say, showcasing my voice and my range on the guitar.

You have a great voice. Have you worked on that a lot, or was it more like you started playing guitar, opened your mouth and started singing – and that’s what came out?

That’s exactly how it started out! I literally just focused on my guitar playing and started singing. I’m just now trying to work on my voice. I’m learning more about myself, that I have range. There were places where I thought I couldn’t go vocally, and working on this record showed me that I could.

How much do you still work on your guitar playing? How much do you practice?

I play guitar every day. My weak point is that I don’t have a regimen; I just pick up the guitar and play. Sometimes I do try to work on different scales or whatnot, but there’s no plan, and I think I can and should be more orderly in that regard. But I’ll never not play my guitar every day.

When you’re not on the road, are you happy relaxing and chilling at home, or are you pacing the floor waiting to get back out on the road?

All of the above! The first couple of days are straight chilling. But I’m here in the studio, still working and making music every day. After a few days, I am – like you say – starting to pace the floor. [Laughs] When it’s time to go back out, I’m ready to get it popping.

Who are your greatest guitar influences?

Acoustic guys like Son House and Robert Johnson and then Albert, B.B. and Freddie King, Prince, Ernie Isley, Gary Moore. There are also a lot of players of the day that I’m into, and I hate to even mention them because I know I’m leaving out so many, but I really like Isaiah Sharkey, Matteo Mancuso, Yvette Young and so many others. I love where the world of guitar is going, even though I’m considered to play an old style.

You mentioned that on Red Zero you wanted to be able to give other people an opportunity. Is anyone else signed?

Yes, two artists to start. Dylan Triplett, a young man out of St. Louis. What’s so dope about Dylan is that, even though we have a lot of young guitar slingers – male and female – coming up, we don’t have a lot of young Bobby Blue Bland-style soul singers, and that’s Dylan’s main thing, though he also plays guitar.

We also have Matthias Lattin from Houston, who won the International Blues Challenge in 2023. He’s a young guitar slinger in the rock-blues-fusion space, a great writer and arranger. We have a lot of other artists we’re developing as well, but those are the guys we’re starting with.

How involved in the label are you? You have a trusted manager, so do you get involved in the label and in your own business?

I have no other choice but to know it, because Ric isn’t going to let me just leave it to him. He tells me everything. We’re both hands-on with my career and the label. As far as giving other guys resources, it’s imperative for me to know what I’m doing so I can share some knowledge, too!

• Hard Road is out now via Red Zero.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

For Pat Faherty of Canyon Lights, starting at the source is the only way forward. When the former GA-20 frontman listens to the blues, more often than not it’s going to be originators like Hound Dog Taylor or T-Bone Walker.

And when he reaches for inspiration to create the riffs behind his new band’s rolling early ’70s rumble, he’s coming from the same place as guys like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.

“All of those guitar players who started the concept of the guitar riff, they were learning comping before the style even existed,” Faherty says. “They were learning to back up the melody, not take over the melody with their guitar playing. I think what helps me for Canyon Lights is that the riffs come from the comping style of playing rhythm guitar.”

Faherty and drummer Tim Carman, his bandmate in GA-20 – a band that, incidentally, recorded an entire album of blues covers, 2021’s Try It... You Might Like It: GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor – formed Canyon Lights after jamming on riffs and song ideas that didn’t fit the more conventional blues of their previous band.

Modeled in the mold of power trios like the James Gang – whose Walk Away they covered and released earlier this year – and Cream, Canyon Lights paints with a much broader brush.

Breathe Easy, their debut album’s title cut, is rooted in a bluesy shuffle and accented with slide licks, but Faherty’s approach to vocals and harmonies carries the song deep into the disco decade. And the single-note picking in the intro to Song Behind Those Tears rings like a long-lost Byrds tune before he lays down the stomping main groove.

Faherty’s ability to move seamlessly from chunky riffing to slinky funk to ripping slide reveals his virtuosity. After all, he’s schooled in jazz and once took on the role of Eddie in a Van Halen cover band; he even posted YouTube tutorials on how to play some of the late guitar legend’s solos during Covid days.

“I grew up with a lot of different sounds in Boston in the ’90s. I have a basic rock background, but I was also playing punk, hardcore and metal,” Faherty says. “All of that coalesced into certain kinds of vibes that just weren’t going to work with GA-20.”

Breathe Easy has the organic tones and feel of garage rock’s glory days, but those blues touchstones are still Faherty’s north star.

“That live video of Buddy Guy doing First Time I Met the Blues in 1970 that was in the documentary Chicago Blues – if I could ever even get close to the feel or touch of that performance, I'd be able to die a happy man,” Faherty says.

• Breathe Easy is out now via Canyon Lights.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram is bridging the generational gap in blues. At just 26, he continues to lead the new school of blues players – proving to naysayers that the genre is as relevant than ever.

His cameo in Michael B. Jordan's Sinners says it all. The movie finishes with Ingram playing alongside Buddy Guy – a visual representation of the veteran and the rising star truly keeping the blues alive.

“I was mentored by older people who helped me with my songwriting and playing,” Ingram tells The Guardian.

“Blues isn’t just a guy with a guitar – it’s a feeling, and rap can be blues. See, blues is the foundation of so much American music – jazz and soul and rock and rap – but people tend to narrow it down to a guy with a guitar. I might be a guy with a guitar, but it’s more than just this.”

Hard times growing up pushed Ingram to immerse himself fully in the genre, which his classmates found odd.

“Everyone was into rap and R&B and, while I didn’t get bullied, they would ask me: ‘Do you really like that old music?’ I’d tell them: ‘Yeah, I do. You should check it out.’ Maybe they now are!” he adds with a laugh.

“I learned a lot in church as a child – my mom’s side of the family are all church people and gospel is a great teacher.”

Ingram's next-gen star status was recently solidified by the fact that he just landed his second signature guitar – a new-look Delta Day version of his original Telecaster Deluxe.

The Eric Gales we know today is undoubtedly a product of his environment growing up. In this case, as fate would have it, we’re talking about an incredibly musical family. Older brothers Manuel and Eugene guided his journey on guitar from the age of four, giving him the kind of blues education that can’t be bought.

By the time he was 10, he was already being labeled a prodigy, landing a major record deal in his mid-teens before eventually becoming one of the modern era’s greatest blues guitarists.

Manuel also made a big impression on the circuit, from performing in Albert King’s band and touring with Buddy Guy to cutting records with Double Trouble, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section. However, tragedy struck in 2002 when the singer/guitarist – better known to audiences as Little Jimmy King – died from a heart attack at age 37.

This year, the youngest of the Gales brothers is paying tribute to his sibling through A Tribute to LJK, an album packed with his own interpretations of Manuel’s biggest and best tracks. The record was co-produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith and features guest appearances from the producers, plus big-hitters like Buddy Guy, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Roosevelt Collier.

“My brother was a powerhouse blues player,” says Gales, who – as we can see, because we’re on Zoom with him – has a framed poster of his Grammy-nominated 2022 album, Crown, on the wall behind him.

“Manuel was a big part of the recipe that made me who I am. I want the world to discover his music and learn things they may not have known. I’ve been thinking about doing this for quite some time. This is a homage to a badass left-handed, upside-down player who did his own thing."

Manuel got you started on guitar. What did you learn from him?

“He was all about power. He took that from Albert King, who was a strong player. There was a rigor and intensity to what Albert chose to play. It was always very intentional. Every push and bend meant something and had some pain or emotion behind it. That’s something I learned from both of them.

“It’s prominent in certain riffs and licks I do, with touches that are very purposeful. When I go in, I go all in. There’s no second-guessing with a six-note bend. Once you commit to something like that, you commit. You are going in raw with all that power. He wasn’t one to delve into a lot of effects. He would turn his amp up, maybe there was a bit of [Dunlop] Cry Baby, and that was it.”

You’re similar in that sense.

“I have a couple of devices here and there, but they aren’t a necessity. I look at effects as a comfort zone. They’re on the pedalboard, but whether I use them depends on how I’m feeling. My brother was a raw guitar-and-amp dude. In situations where your pedalboard doesn’t make the plane and all you’ve got is your guitar and amp, the show needs to go on. You should be able to plug in and go for it.”

He made a pretty big name for himself as Little Jimmy King.

“He even had Double Trouble on a couple of his records. He had a relationship with Stevie Ray Vaughan, too. People knew about Little Jimmy King. He was a touring machine who did it the hard way through grind. If he wasn’t on the road, he was at B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street every single weekend playing in the house band.

“But it didn’t come easy to him. It kinda came easy to me, with the record deal at 15, tour bus and all that stuff. It came a little harder for him, and I saw that struggle. It gave me a glimpse of the real grind it takes to make a name for yourself to beat the pavement like that. He’d be in places that were far from pristine, but every night he’d play his heart out. That stuck with me.”

Given the connection between Buddy Guy and your brother, it’s great to hear Buddy guesting on Somebody.

“It was important for him to be part of this record because of that. Buddy may be a big blues legend, but he was all in when it came to paying tribute. The same goes for Kingfish, who has often said my brother was a big inspiration to him. I was quite methodical in who I chose to involve with this record.

“We got MonoNeon to play bass. Of course, Joe Bonamassa knows about my brother. Josh Smith is a big fan too; we’d talk about Manuel all the time, referencing songs like Soldier for the Blues, Baby, Baby and Shouldn’t Have Left Me. Those conversations actually influenced the songs I picked.”

Hearing you, Joe and Josh go head-to-head on It Takes a Whole Lot of Money feels like one of the big guitar moments on this release.

“We all sat back and played our asses off. We did it for the culture and the whole blues world. That was really fun. People have been wondering if there’s another I Want My Crown [his 2021 single] on the way with more epic battles between me and Joe.

“As long as we are both playing, there’s always a chance for it, but I think we gave it a nod on that track. There’s another track with Joe called Don’t Wanna Go Home. It has a rock feel. Joe takes the middle solo and I do the outro solo. We did a tag-team one-two punch, nothing too competitive or outrageous. It came out great.”

What did you use for the sessions?

“I had my signature Magneto guitars. For a solo or two, I used the same Les Paul that Joe left in the room. I forget what year it was, but it was old as shit. It was an old-ass Goldtop, maybe a 1954 or something like that. We used my DV Mark amps and blended a little bit of Dumble in there.

“As for my pedalboard, nothing has been added or taken away for a while – it’s the same Custom Audio Electronics wah, Mojo Hand Colossus Fuzz, the MXR Raw Dawg overdrive, a Tech 21 Boost DLA and a DigiTech Whammy. I used a PRS parlor acoustic on Somebody.

“I really like how they sound because they give me that old Robert Johnson small-Gibson acoustic vibe. I really like those PRS acoustics; even though they’re small guitars, they sound nice, full and thick.”

Does a Les Paul change how you play?

“Sometimes. It puts me in more of a rock zone. There’s a guitar that was gifted to me by Nik Killa from Killa Guitars that’s a brown replica of a Gibson Explorer. He made it and brought it to a show. I’ve been playing that thing a lot and like the hell out of it. I would actually say I’ve been playing it more than my Magneto recently.

“I also have an SG that I occasionally pull out. It’s not like I said I wouldn’t play humbuckers, I’m just more prone to the spanky single-coil tones. At home, I’ll play whatever. I’ve got PRS guitars and all kinds of things I’m not seen with that often.”

You’ve also been playing guitars made by Eric Gale at Freestyle Custom Guitars.

“He’s an amazing luthier, and it’s pretty crazy we’ve almost got the same name. He made me a couple of guitars; one is called Crown and the other is Model Two. He’s a badass builder using amazing materials. I take those guitars out with me along with the Magnetos.”

You recently worked with Maricela “MJ” Juarez on launching your own set of Seymour Duncan pickups. What kind of sound were you going for?

“The sound I’ve always liked, something fat and spanky. MJ did the rest. We put my name on them and there we go. I told her what I was looking for and she totally got it. I wasn’t thinking of vintage tones or anything. I might have mentioned Texas Specials or Jason Lollars – things in that vein.”

Do you have any other signature gear coming out in the near future?

“I’m not allowed to unveil anything yet. I think it’s going to raise some eyebrows, though. I probably should keep this one to myself, but it’s a good thing. It’s a company everyone knows. I can tell you it’s not Fender and it’s not Gibson. People are going to be shocked.” [Editor's note: since Gales spoke to GW, he has signed up as a Kiesel artist.]

How do you keep improving, and what would you like to get better at?

“I’m proud of my involvement with the Sinners soundtrack. I’d like to get more involved in things like that, even orchestral stuff that’s beyond just making records and touring. It’s a different side of the industry, and the same goes for producing. I have colleagues on much bigger playing fields than me, selling out huge places.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I want that as well. I don’t know what separates them from me. I don’t think it’s skill. I’m not really doing anything too different. I just want to continue doing what I’m doing but on a much bigger scale. Fill more seats, bring more people out and let them know this is what I was born to do. When the world catches on, I’m ready.”

• A Tribute to LJK is out now via Provogue
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The rumor was that Buddy Guy planned to retire – and considering that he’s pushing 90, no-one would blame him – but it seems that, despite Guy’s age, rumors of his retreat were, well, premature. Still, that doesn’t mean he isn’t feeling his age.

“I’m gonna tell you like I tell everybody else; if I tell you I’m doing all right, I’d be lying,” Guy says. “When you get to this age, everything gets to be aching. But other than that, I guess I’m doing okay.

“If you live to my age, your muscles and everything else aches. I was told in my twenties, ‘Wait till you get to my age,’ so I knew it was coming if I hung around long enough. Still, people say, ‘You don’t have any gray hair, and you still look good!’ I say, ‘You need glasses!’” [Laughs]

Yet when it comes to playing live, Guy is an ageless wonder. With a few pre-show sips of cognac and his famous polka-dot Fender Strat slung over his shoulder, Guy runs circles around players half his age.

But live shows aren’t all that Guy has planned, as he dropped a new record, Ain’t Done with the Blues, on his 89th birthday on July 30. Rather than be over-the-top excited about his 19th solo record, the first since 2022’s The Blues Don’t Lie, Guy shrugs with a been-here-before vibe.

“With the blues, I still think I’m doing good. I appreciate you all from my heart – and whatever you can do to help the blues.”

You’re nearly 90, but you’re keeping up a furious pace. How do you do it?

“A double shot of cognac before I go to the stage. [Laughs] Muddy Waters taught me that. When I first came up, I didn’t drink or do anything; I was too shy to talk and almost too shy to play. And they would say, ‘Man, stop dragging this schoolboy stuff with us. Get out there and play.’

“I had cognac at home, but I didn’t touch it unless my friend came over. Now, the only time you’ll see me drinking cognac is if I’m gonna go up and try and play a song. A little shot might give you the best that you got. [Laughs] You can’t ask for anything more.”

With cognac on your side, are you able to play as well as you always have?

“I ain’t gonna lie to you. I can’t do what I did when I was 22. Once, I was playing at Central Park in New York City and jumped off the stage. They thought I was crazy! But man, that was way up there, and I kind of sprained both ankles. [Laughs] I had to have two police officers help me go to the hospital. Now I almost need help walking off the stage, because I’ll be 89 in July.”

You seem to be going strong. Do you ever consider retirement?

“I thought about it, but all of my friends who I learned everything from – B.B. King, T-Bone Walker and those guys – used to tell me, ‘Just try and keep the blues alive. The blues are being ignored by big radio stations.’ Those guys wouldn’t catch airtime, so I haven’t stopped yet.”

In recent years, you’ve had your son Greg playing guitar in your band. Was he a blues fan growing up?

“I’m glad you asked that, because he’s been coming out there with me. When he was growing up, I’d never ever come home and say, ‘Here’s a guitar.’ But I remember when he was 12, 13 or 14, on the Fourth of July, we’d put the speakers in the yard and spin records.

“They’d play Michael Jackson and all kinds of stuff, but when somebody would put on one of my albums, Greg would run out and say, ‘Don’t play that.’ I didn’t say nothing, but when he turned 21, he came into the blues club, looked at me and started crying. He said, ‘I didn’t know you could do that. Now I want to get tough.’”

Get tough?

“It was kept from him. Let me give you an example. They would take a young man, or a young daughter, and put them in the army at 17 or 18, right? They can go there and survive or be killed, and they’d come home at 20. You ain’t old enough to drink a beer, but you’re old enough to kill or be killed. I don’t think that’s fair.

“So you can make a man or woman at 18 or 19 think they should be tough enough to come back and drink a beer and listen to some blues. That’s what happened to him. Ever since he saw me when he was 21 in that club, he’s had some good times and success. If you come to the show, I’m gonna bring him out. He can do a lot, but I didn’t teach him.”

Do you think you’ll record with Greg?

“He wanted me to play on his album, but I don’t know. But he’s playing very well. And like I said, I didn’t show him nothing. He looked at me once, bought a guitar with the Jeff Beck whammy bar on it, and he said, ‘I want to play a few licks.’”

Tell us about your recent album, Ain’t Done with the Blues.

“I had a birthday on the 30th of July, and the new record came out on that day. I’m still able to do a little to try and keep the blues alive, and I’m hopeful for another young person, like Kingfish, and a couple of other people.”

When you make a new record, do new developments in the sound of the blues impact how you approach things?

“You never know about a record. They had me play a little spot in a movie [2025’s critically acclaimed Sinners], and I still get more calls about the movie than I do my records. [Laughs]

“You know, with Michael Jackson and James Brown, everything they touched went to gold. If I knew how to do that, I’d probably be more than I am now. When I go into the studio, I just hope I’ll be playing the right lick and get lucky. You just never know.”

Seeing as the blues is often observational and inspired by life, do you find yourself influenced by different things as an older man?

“If people would just listen to the lyrics of the blues – you know, if you haven’t lived through some of the things that root blues lyrics, if they haven’t happened to you, keep living. The blues don’t just happen to somebody; it’s about good [and] bad times. And who doesn’t go through life and have bad and good times?”

Ain’t Done with the Blues is a pretty symbolic title for where you’re at in life. What does it mean to you?

“The way I came up, you had the blues, but it was a joyful blues. My parents were sharecroppers. We couldn’t even afford a bicycle, so a horse was the only way to stop walking for miles. [Laughs] And we picked cotton and raised potatoes and everything like that. We didn’t have no radio or nothing.

“My grandparents would say, ‘I don’t know how that boy got to be a musician, because we didn’t have no radio to listen to at night.’ But when I was 13 or 14, I got my first record, and I was still driving a tractor and plowing a mule. If that ain’t the blues, what is?”

While recording, are there any pieces of gear that you rely on the most?

“You know, all the super British guitar players, like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, when I went there to England in 1965 with this Strat, they all looked at me – and they weren’t famous yet – and said, ‘Man, I didn’t know that kind of guitar could play the blues.’ Then they all went out and bought Strats. But I had and still have a Fender Bassman amp.

“I just turn on the amplifier, and it’ll get on down. But the British guys all say I had something… people used to look at me and ask what I had. I’d say, ‘I didn’t make it, Leo Fender made it. It’s just a tone.’ That tone is so clear, and I never really paid attention to it. I just turn on the amplifier and play my guitar.”

As they say, tone is in the hands.

“Well, you know, after I met Jimi Hendrix… you’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud. When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound. But when the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls. And when I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and say, ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’

“That type of sound just took over. That clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. It was just a rat race. And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest that ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

You’re something of an ageless wonder. With a new record coming and no plan to stop, what does it mean to you to have been such a mainstay within the past and present blues scenes?

“All I do is just keep my fingers crossed. When you’re in this kind of business, it’s almost like good food, you know? You ain’t gonna know what it tastes like until you taste it. Then you say, ‘I’m gonna keep buying that here.’ I look at all kinds of things like that. It’s just like with Leo Fender; if I knew what Leo knew, I’d be one of the richest men in the world.”

• Ain't Done With the Blues is out now via RCA
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Jimi Hendrix was a guitar-playing revelation and blew the minds of those who heard him on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1960s. However, despite admiring what the new kid on the block could do, Buddy Guy has confessed he didn’t love everything about Hendrix.

Guy, raised on Louisiana and Mississippi blues greats like John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, was from a slightly different school than Hendrix – who brought something completely new to the table.

“Well, you know, after I met Jimi Hendrix… you’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy says in the new issue of Guitar World. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”

Hendrix, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so clean. He was, in truth, a product of changing times.

“When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls,” Guy explains. “And when I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and say, ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’ That type of sound just took over.”

Ironically, Guy was told early in his career that he abused the volume dial of his amps too much. But in his days playing blues clubs, tucked away with a small amp in the corner of the room, he made some quiet innovations. That included embracing feedback after a lady's dress accidentally whipped his guitar during a break.

Jimi Hendrix would continue reinventing the blues.

“The clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. It was just a rat race,” Guy recalls. “And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest who ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

Guy first met Hendrix in 1968, when the latter is said to have cancelled a gig to watch his hero play, and they struck up a fruitful friendship.

“I'm so grateful we had the chance to become friends. It's an honor to help keep his legacy alive,” he tells Guitar World, alluding to his decision to play the 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour. The lineup included stars from across generations, including Zakk Wylde, Samantha Fish, and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram.

Guy has since said that he won't retire until the blues gets a higher profile, and his role in the blockbuster smash Sinners certainly helped with that mission.

Find Guy’s full interview in the latest issue of Guitar World, which features a bumper cover story on Guns N’ Roses, with work on a new album confirmed.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

On what would have been B.B. King's 100th birthday, Joe Bonamassa has announced he’ll be joining forces with an astonishing cast of guitar heroes to celebrate the blues great's legacy via the upcoming tribute album, B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100.

The project has just launched with the release of its first five tracks out of a total of 32. The rest will be released in monthly installments through February 2026. Buddy Guy, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, George Benson, Keb' Mo', Slash, Shemekia Copeland, Marcus King, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Larkin Poe, Warren Haynes, and many more are set to feature.

Speaking about why this collaborative effort is important for blues history, Bonamassa says, “Very few people in music define the genre in which they flourish, and B.B. King is one of them. When B.B. was alive and active, he was the blues – he was the sun which all planets rotated around. Only a few artists are the true north guiding the genre in which they participated, but he was that shining star.”

Bonamassa first opened for B.B. King at the age of 12, and therefore credits the blues titan for jump-starting his career and shaping his approach to both his life and career.

“He mentored me,” he says matter-of-factly. “But I wasn't the only one. All the people in his orbit have the same story about how kind B.B. was, and how he embraced the younger generation.”

For the other artists involved, the project goes beyond simply being a collaborative music project, but a reflection of King's immense legacy. Bobby Rush, who first met King in 1948, calls him “the man I looked up to all my life,” while Kenny Wayne Shepherd talks about receiving life advice from him on his 16th birthday.

The album title itself is a nod to King's Grammy-winning 1993 album Blues Summit, which, for Bonamassa, continues to solidify one of the blues greats' mission statements: “B.B.'s only wish was, ‘Do what you can to keep the blues alive.' Well, hopefully this album gives a B12 shot to his legacy – and to the legacy of the blues.”

For more information, visit Joe Bonamassa's official website.

In more recent news, fellow blues veteran Buddy Guy reveals that his cameo in the Michael B. Jordan movie Sinners was one of his many attempts to keep the blues alive.

Buddy Guy has revealed that despite thoughts of retiring, he’s not ready to hang up that polka dot Strat quite yet. It’s a decision the 88-year-old blues icon say is directly related to his concern over the state of the blues.

“I thought about retiring twice,” Guy admits in a new interview with Guitar Player. “But I thought about all those great blues players who are no longer with us – B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys – and they used to tell me, ‘You need to keep playing and keep representing the blues,’ ’cause they don’t play it on radio or anything anymore.

“So I said to myself, ‘Well, Buddy, you better hang on a little longer. My health ain’t doing too bad, so I’m still doing what I’ve always done… every time I get on stage, just try to play the best I can.”

That mission statement has guided Guy since he first found his spiritual home among the Chicago blues greats in the mid-20th century. Now, nearly 70 years on from his relocation to the city and acceptance into a circle that included the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, Guy says he still fears the genre is not getting its dues.

“The blues has been treated like a stepchild,” Guy tells Guitar Player. “Your big FM station don’t play our music anymore… If you’ve got satellite radio, you can hear a little more, but they don’t play the deep stuff.”

Guy points to the excitement of younger generations when they do get to experience blues music first-hand, noting that kids as young as seven will still approach him after shows to express their enthusiasm.

“[It’s] not me – the blues,” he clarifies. “When they hear it, they love it. They just ain’t hearing it enough, so… that’s why I’m still here.”

The bluesman does point to one ray of light in terms of mainstream perception – noting that his cameo in Michael B. Jordan horror movie Sinners does seem to have caused a stir.

“I’ll do anything to help the blues, and that family [in the film] is kinda based on the blues,” observes Guy, in the same piece. “[So] I think Sinners might help it a little bit, ’cause maybe some young kids will be like, ‘Wow, I saw that movie. I like what he played. I wanna try that.’”

Guy’s surprise cameo in the vampiric juke joint thriller earlier this year certainly caught people’s attention – and he had an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May – but as Guy explained to Guitar World in 2023, around the time of his ‘farewell tour’, he’s having to be selective about his appearances.

“I can’t tour the world anymore,” said Guy. “I’m too old to be jumpin’ from town to town on a bus. I’ll still be playing guitar; I’ll do that until I can’t. And I’ll keep making music, but I’m at the age where my heroes passed away. I’ve gotta keep that in mind.”

Head to Guitar Player to read Guy’s full interview.

Jimmy Rip has looked back on his time working with Jerry Lee Lewis, and recalled his experiences of recording a legion of electric guitar greats over a four-year period for the late pianist/singer's 39th album, Last Man Standing.

Released in 2006, the record sees Lewis dueting with other members of the rock ’n’ roll elite – including Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and more – on a score of covers. For producer/guitarist Rip, the four-year recording process brought some wild moments, but his memories of putting such an ambitious project together were nothing but joyous.

“I had nothing but a blast making that record,” he tells Guitar World as part of a soon-to-be-published interview. “Needless to say, Jerry’s dangerous reputation preceded him, but in the four years it took to finish that record, we did nothing but laugh and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Across its 21 tracks, Rip formed a fruitful tandem with his “dear friend” Kenny Lovelace, who was Lewis’s guitar player and band leader over a staggering 55-year spell. But they weren’t the only players bringing some electric guitar spice to proceedings.

“Of course, there was what I’m sure is the greatest guest list on any disc in rock history,” Rip continues. “If you’re only speaking about the guitar-playing invitees, there was Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, and Neil Young.”

Capturing such a stellar cast, naturally, had its challenges. Rip was tasked with recording the contributions of each guest player – a mission that took him around the globe.

“I traveled around the world for four years, recording the 22 guests in total in some crazy places, like hotel rooms, rehearsal rooms, and kitchens,” he says. “I had a mic, a preamp, a laptop, and a relentless drive to show the world how great Jerry Lee still was.”

Most tracks saw Lewis reshaping a song in his own sharply dressed style, with ties between his guests and the original songwriters common. That saw Page aiding Lewis’ take on Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll, Ronnie Wood helping him cover Mick Jagger’s solo track, Evening Gown, and John Fogerty starring as he recoloured CCR’s Travelin’ Band.

The full conversation with Jimmy Rip is due to be published online in the coming weeks.

Buddy Guy is the pioneer who influenced Hendrix, Clapton, Page and Beck among others. His fiery playing (and equally impassioned vocals) remain as exciting today as ever.

Like Eric Clapton, he was told early in his career that his playing was too loud, too strident and outside the accepted norms of the day. This necessitated him largely pausing his solo career after 1967’s I Left My Blues In San Francisco to become a sideman for artists such as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter, supplementing his income with club dates and working as a tow truck driver.

Thankfully, he hung on in there, and though his recorded output was minimal during the 1970s, his career really took off in the late ’80s and early ’90s and hasn’t slowed down since.

The focus in these examples isn’t to perfectly imitate Buddy’s playing because this would be an impossible task. Neither is it on extended scales, arpeggios or advanced music theory: everything is played within a few frets, using shapes 1 and 2 of the A minor pentatonic scale, with hardly any additions.

There is complexity in Buddy’s playing, but this is to be found more in the phrasing, particularly the rhythmic groupings. Longer held notes are deliberately contrasted with rapid-fire triplet bursts, taking pause between phrases for the vocals.

Obviously, demonstrating the silence between phrases would be of dubious benefit in this context, so please bear this in mind.

The examples were recorded separately but with the intention that they could be heard and/or played together as a continuous solo. I’m using the neck and middle single coils together with a fairly hard, driven sound. A bit of reverb is always nice, but the idea is to squeeze a lot out of a little. Enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1

In this opening phrase, there’s an instant switch from shape 1 to shape 2 of the A minor pentatonic scale. You’ll notice that the backing track is very major in its tonality, but blues often makes a feature of combining the two, or of treading a fine line between them.

There’s plenty of repetition here, with no hurry to burst into flurries of notes. There will be a little of that later, but this phrase is key to establishing the mood.

Example 2

Staying squarely within A minor pentatonic shape 1, this example starts out in a similar fashion to Example 1 but then unleashes some faster triplets going into bar 2. The importance of absolute accuracy in this is debatable.

While we don’t want to drop the ball completely, being too slick seems to lose the quality we’re after. Jimmy Page’s playing in I Can’t Quit You Baby is another example of this quality. Have a play and see what you think.

Example 3

Back to shape 2 to start with some repeated bends. Switching position for these is actually quite tricky, so after all that talk earlier of not being too accurate, this may be a surprise.

We stick with a similar vocabulary and rhythmic groupings until the end of bar 3, when we slide down towards shape 1.

Here’s an example of how not to be too slick: my first instinct was to go back and not play that A over the final E chord in bar 4 but spontaneity would have been lost.

Example 4

This is an alternate take over the first four bars, pulling out a few more stops. Note the C# and C natural playing off each other in bars 1 and 2. This is a clear example of the major/minor interplay we see so often in the blues.

The rest of this example reimagines some of the ideas we’ve already seen in a slightly different context, showing that there is always more than one way to deliver them.

Hear it here

Buddy Guy – Left My Blues in San Francisco

Buddy’s debut solo album was released in 1967. This is much more of a ‘soul’ sound than the rip-roaring blues Buddy became known for later in his career, but even though the guitar tones are cleaner and the arrangements more brass-heavy, the impassioned vocals and distinctive guitar are recognisable on Crazy Love.

I Suffer With The Blues features some edgier guitar, and Buddy’s Groove manages to capture the vibe of a live performance over a great rhythm section.

Buddy Guy – Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues

We’re skipping forward in time to 1991 and the album that finally established Buddy as a major recording artist in his own right. The arrangements are more rock than soul, and though there is brass, this more often forms part of the backdrop to Buddy’s guitar, rather than sharing centre stage.

You may have noticed that the examples/solo were somewhat inspired by Buddy’s playing on the title track. Elsewhere, check out the gospel 3/4 time of Early In The Morning and the laid-back phrasing of Black Night.

Buddy Guy – The Blues Don’t Lie

Buddy’s most recent release from 2022, the 16-track album The Blues Don’t Lie, has a polished rock sound, but his guitar and vocals retain the raw edge he has become so known for.

Check out the nimble soloing and wah-wah on opening track I Let My Guitar Do The Talking, and the more delicate touches on the autobiographical title track, which is more akin to that first album back in 1967. Well Enough Alone features hard-rock riffing with Buddy’s guitar slicing through the mix.

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

Eric Gales has announced a new album paying tribute to his brother, the late blues guitar maverick Little Jimmy King – and its first single finds Gales trading licks with the great Buddy Guy and Florida “sacred steel” phenom Roosevelt Collier.

Produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, both of whom play on the record, Tribute to LJK is an album that Gales admits has been a long time coming.

“I wanted it to be the ultimate tribute to my late brother, Little Jimmy King, to keep his memory alive and make sure people remember who he was and still is,” he says.

All of the tracks bar one were written by Little Jimmy King, aka Manuel Gales, who died in 2002, aged 37. Those who caught LJK live will see a lot of him in his younger brother’s playing.

He, too, was a southpaw player who played the guitar upside down, giving him a radical, unorthodox style. Manuel was born on December 4, 1964, along with his twin brother Danuel. Both were not long walking on two feet before they were presented with a guitar. When little Eric Gales came along, they encouraged him to play.

If you are wondering how Manuel Gales came to be known as Little Jimmy King, that’s all to do with left-handed guitar heroes. Manuel put his portmanteau together to honor two of his favorite players, Jimi Hendrix and Albert King.

Manuel played in King’s backing band. He played with his share of blues royalty. For his 1994 studio album, Something Inside of Me, Little Jimmy King could call upon SRV’s Double Trouble duo, bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton, as his rhythm section.

That Gales’ new album’s lead single, Somebody, should feature Buddy Guy feels appropriate. Little Jimmy King and Guy shared the stage together back in the day. The idea for the collaboration came from Gales’ wife, LaDonna.

“He knew my brother, and they played together, so I think it was easy for him to agree to do this song – and the rest is history,” says Gales. “Me and Buddy actually did our parts at separate times, but you wouldn’t know it: it seems like we’re in the same room at the same time. And that was the intention, to bridge the gap between semi-old and middle-aged, if you will.”

Gales is right. They do sound like they are in the room together, all call and response, their vocal lines almost overlapping as though it was mixed like was a Bob Altman film, with Roosevelt Collier’s steel guitar part putting a great overdriven glissando bow on the jam. And, of course, there’s some ripping leads from Gales.

“That’s an anthological sort of tune, in how it starts off acoustically, blows up big, then comes back down again,” he says.

If you’ve got the “semi-old” in Buddy Guy, the “middle-aged” Eric Gales, you need a young buck to keep this generational thread going. Enter, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, with the Clarksdale, Mississippi blues prodigy sitting in on a cover of Rockin’ Horse Ride.

“I foresaw a great record,” says Gales, “but I didn’t foresee it turning out as amazing as this. My brother is there throughout this whole record – and I can’t wait for it to start turning people’s heads.”

The album was recorded at Curb Studios, Nashville and features and introduction from Danuel Gales.

Tribute to LJK is available to preorder, out digitally on August 29 with vinyl/CD following soon after.

Former David Bowie electric guitar player Earl Slick has recalled the moment blues legend Buddy Guy walked in while he was jamming with Edgar Winter and was floored by Slick’s playing.

Throughout his storied career, Bowie collaborated with some of the greatest guitarists in the game. From his early tandem with Mick Ronson to the avant-garde flair of Robert Fripp and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s blazing guitar solos on Let’s Dance and beyond, he sure knew how to pick them.

Slick, who arrived in Ronson’s wake, quickly earned his place among them. Chatting about his life, career, and unexpected friendships with blues greats with Mary Spender, he says he crossed paths with Guy after succumbing to peer pressure.

“I love Buddy Guy,” he says. “I’ve always been a fan. So they had the Bowie exhibit going on in Chicago, [David Bowie Is at the Contemporary Art Chicago]. A friend of mine in Chicago wanted to go, and he wanted me to go with him. I get an email: there’s a plane ticket in it. So, I have to go.”

Arriving in the Windy City, the pair agreed to visit Buddy Guy’s Legends, the club owned by the veteran bluesman.

“I said, ‘Maybe he’ll be there,’” Slick continues, “He said, ‘No, he’s out of town.’”

However, Edgar Winter, who had played sax on Slick’s 1991 track Slow Down Slick (from In Your Face), was in town.

“So, Ed invited me to jam, and during the show, I’m standing on stage, and from the stage, you could see the door entrance. In walks Buddy. I was like, ‘Holy shit! He showed up.’

“I meet Buddy, and he says something irreverent but funny at the same time. He loved how I played, he said, ‘From now on, anytime you want, and I’m playing, you just jump on stage.’ I was blown away.”

A month later, Slick put his words to the test. It was January 2015, and Guy was playing a residency at his club. When Slick showed up, he was more than inviting. Slick, however, felt the effects of trading licks with his hero.

“After the first night I sat in with him, it was 1:00 in the morning and 20 degrees below zero. I’m bundling up. I had to go for a walk,” he recalls. “My brain got so exploded and wired by being on stage with Buddy Guy!

“I love the blues, and I looked at him as an original dude,” he explains. “All I kept thinking was, ‘He thinks I'm good enough to be on stage. I'm actually good!’ I had to walk it off. I was out there for two hours.

“That was the [biggest] highlight I’ve had in a long time. It was like this out-of-body experience!”

Slick’s career has been peppered with standout moments. He adds that sharing a stage with Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison for Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session, a televised concert in 1985 was “fucking crazy”.

“Around ’85, I was kind of in-between things,” he reveals. “I drove my wife crazy. She goes, ‘Dude, go to NAMM, get outta here.’ So I went to NAMM and ran into the Stray Cats’ tour manager. He goes, ‘I’ve got Slim Jim and Lee Rocker here, and they’re looking for a guitar player.’”

Though he felt the gig “was a little out of the box”, he agreed to the project, and Phantom, Rocker & Slick’s self-titled album was out by November. At that time, HBO was putting together a big-budget special to honor rockabilly legend Carl Perkins, and, because of his new bandmates’ association with him, the group were invited to participate.

“We rehearsed for four or five days. It was a big production,” Slick recalls. “So I'm standing there and I’m looking around like, ‘There’s Eric Clapton, George Harrison… Did someone drop me out of a spaceship?’ These are the guys I grew up watching, and I'm on stage with them. It was mind-blowing.”

Guy, meanwhile, has opened up on how he played a key role in the soundtrack of the blockbuster new horror film, Sinners.

Sinners composer Ludwig Göransson has discussed the lengths he went to in order to put the film's score together, revealing he scoured the globe to get hold of three 1932 Dobro resonator guitars for the job.

The Ryan Coogler-directed film is set in that same year of 1932, deep in the Mississippi Delta, and, naturally, the region’s deep-rooted connection with the blues plays a crucial role in the story.

Buddy Guy also stars in the film and features on its soundtrack. He recently said the role helps him fulfill the wishes of fellow blues legends Muddy Waters and B.B. King, who told him to “keep the blues alive” before they passed.

For his own role on Sinners, Göransson worked closely with blues producer Lawrence "Boo" Mitchell, recording at his Tennessee-based Royal Studios. In fact, it was Mitchell who introduced Guy and Christone "Kingfish" Ingram into the project to ensure the blues was authentically portrayed. The Dobros proved the jewel in the soundtrack's crown.

“I was able to find three of them in the world. One in London, one in Nashville, and one in LA,” Göransson says of his Dobro treasure hunt. “Playing it with a slide [lets] you use the guitar almost like a voice, where you can slide in between the notes – almost like you're singing. So it creates this beautiful note and gives you a lot of variety on how you can play.”

The guitars play a huge role on screen and is the protagonist’s weapon of choice (in multiple ways). Having typically gone big on synths and strings on previous soundtracks – such as Tenet, Oppenheimer, and the Mandalorian – Göransson says penning this paritcular score saw him dive deeper into his first instrument of choice.

“My dad is a guitar teacher, so when I was about six or seven years old he started giving me lessons,” he says. “Then when I was eight or nine I heard [Metallica’s] Enter Sandman for the first time and that's when I got really passionate about music. It was kind of my own thing; my dad was into the blues and I was into heavy metal, [even though] at that age I didn't even understand that like all music, even heavy metal, comes from the blues.

“It's something that I think came out in this score, and it's a very personal score,” the Swedish composer extends. “It starts mostly acoustically. I wrote almost the entire score on this guitar, and then as the story develops, it transitions into heavy metal, orchestra, strings, and big drums. So the guitar tones transitioned from acoustic to electric.”

Göransson exhibits a sizable trick bag of playing styles across the film’s score, from slide guitar to fingerpicking and thunderous heavy metal, with one scene in particular acting as a showcase for the origin of the blues, and how its influence has been felt in so many different styles since.

“In the middle of the movie, there's this beautiful, surreal music montage,” he explains. “When I read it on the script, I got goosebumps because it's a beautiful, out-of-body experience; it goes into all these different music genres. And you know, [the protagonist] goes into his past African music and he goes into the future with a DJ, a blues funk guitarist. And this all takes place in the 1930s in a surreal kind of dreamy state.”

Göransson also recruited multi-instrumentalist Raphael Saadiq, who's written for Earth, Wind & Fire, Joss Stone, and Whitney Houston, among others, to help write the song for that particular scene. It turned out to be the perfect union.

“It was a dream of mine to work with him, and he had this idea of this blues song his whole life,” he says. “It was the perfect moment how the stars aligned. The way that music performance came together was really a work of so many different departments working together for two months to [get the shot].”

Meanwhile, Guy, who had previously spoken to Guitar World about the possibility of retiring from touring, appears to have gotten a second wind as a result of his involvement with the film. He now wants to get back out on the road.

“B.B. King was in a wheelchair for maybe four or five years before he died,” he has said, “and I’m not on crutches yet.

If you've been anywhere near the cinema lately and managed to catch Sinners – the buzzy new movie starring Michael B. Jordan – you may have noticed a familiar figure at the end.

Spoiler warning for those who haven't, but Sammie (who is played by Miles Caton for the majority of the film) survives, and lives on as someone who looks very much like Buddy Guy... although, it actually is Buddy Guy.

The cameo continues the legendary bluesman's ongoing mission to keep the blues alive – and, although Guy has previously hit the road for an extended farewell tour, he very much intends to keep on playing.

“They put that in: ‘farewell tour,’” clarifies Guy in an interview with Variety. “I’m having kind of a delayed farewell tour; maybe after this year, I might say that. But I’m still playing some of the big festivals.

“Bobby Rush, Willie Nelson, and me, they call us the last of the 89- and 90-year-olds that’s still out there, and that’s kind of kept me to say, ‘Buddy, you better go back out there and play a little more, because there ain’t nobody left after you of that age that’s still standing around.' Because B.B. King was in a wheelchair for maybe four or five years before he died, and I’m not on crutches yet. So I want to at least go another year.”

He continues, “Age takes effect on your voice, your walk, whatever you do as you get up into your 80s. And damn, I’m near 90 years old, man. You can’t do what you did when you was 25 or 26. But I’m gonna give you the best I got, and that’s all I got.”

In 2023, Guy told Guitar World that his previously-announced retirement is not a “full retirement. It's just time for me to be done with traveling” – insisting that he doesn't “want to cheat people”.

“I have a reputation for giving 100 percent, but I’m 87 now, and I can’t kick my leg as high as I did when I was 27,” he said. “I’ll still do blues festivals and one-offs, but I can’t tour the world anymore. I’m too old to be jumpin’ from town to town on a bus. I’ll still be playing guitar; I’ll do that until I can’t.”

The blues great's (very welcome) change of heart means he has a generous list of U.S. tour dates coming up, running through August. Earlier this year, he joined the star-studded 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour lineup on the final date of the tour in Atlanta, Georgia, to pay tribute to the late Jimi Hendrix.

If you managed to catch the latest Michael B. Jordan movie Sinners, you might have spotted a very familiar figure who's a dead-ringer for Buddy Guy. Spoiler alert: it is indeed Buddy Guy. Much like Sammie (the character Guys plays in the movie), the 88-year-old still plays at his club in Chicago – all in the name of keeping the blues alive.

“There’s very few radio stations other than satellite who play blues now,” he tells Variety. “And the older people I learned from is no longer with us. But when I was coming up, on the AM stations everybody’s records were being played. There was gospel, jazz and the blues, and everybody knew who the late Lightnin’ Hopkins was.”

However, according to Guy, blues pioneers aren't as well-known among the younger generation anymore. “They’re like, ‘Who is that? Who’s Muddy Waters?’ My grandkids don’t know nothing about the blues until they hit 21 and come up in the club while I’m there, and they say, ‘Granddad, I didn’t know you could do that!’

“So I’m 100% trying to support it so the next generation of white or Black kids can hear it and know more about the blues that was created way before the British type of (blues-rock) stuff come along and all the different types of music we have now,” he asserts with conviction. “Muddy Waters and BB King, I knew ’em before they passed away, and they told me, ‘Man, if you outlive me, just try to keep the blues alive.’

The triad of Guy, Waters, and King goes way back. When Guy moved to Chicago from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he didn’t think he was good enough to play guitar with Waters or even make a record. In fact, he was previously working as a custodian at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

“But I come up to Chicago, and the next thing I know, Muddy was asking me to play,” he related in a 2015 Guitar World interview. “And I found out that the money Muddy was making wasn’t much more than I was making working day jobs at LSU. But here’s Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson… and they were having so much fun just playing. And I learned that they were playing for the love of music, not the love of money.”

As for B.B. King, one of Guy's ultimate guitar heroes, he imparted valuable advice that the veteran blues guitarist still recalls to this day.

“B.B. King once told me that he’d never play the same thing twice,” he recalled in a 2023 Guitar World interview. “He said, ‘If you come to hear me play, you’ll never hear me play anything as I did before.’ So if you come and see a Buddy Guy show, you won’t hear me intentionally try and do anything note for note.”

Guy recently performed on the final date of the 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.

It's 1963, and the music world is changing faster than just about anyone can keep up with.

Folk singer Bob Dylan, walking down a road paved by Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and acoustic blues and country singers both well-known and anonymous, was suddenly a superstar, writing genuine #1 hits for himself and others.

Just a couple of years earlier, a compilation called King of the Delta Blues Singers had improbably made a legend out of Robert Johnson, a Mississippi Delta singer and guitarist who had died 25 years before.

Acoustic blues was not the specialty of Chess Records, a Chicago label that had over the previous decade played a hugely significant role in bringing the excitement and rawness of electric blues to the world in the form of pioneering recordings by the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

But, seeing that there was success and prestige to be had with that older strain of blues, label head honcho Leonard Chess wanted a slice of the pie.

With that in mind, he tasked one of his biggest stars, Mississippi native Muddy Waters, with recording his first – and what would be his only – all-acoustic album.

Furthermore, Chess, knowing his Mississippi roots, wanted Waters to essentially find for him his own Robert Johnson – an overlooked Delta bluesman from the same era.

Chess may have been the head of the label, but ultimately, it was Waters' record, and he had other ideas. Enter the fiery young blues guitarist Buddy Guy, who Waters had discovered when the latter was barely out of his teens.

“Leonard told Muddy to go to Mississippi to find an old guy who really knew how to play [Delta blues],” Guy told Guitar World in a 1998 interview.

“Chess didn't want me around. But Muddy called me. That was one of the thrills of my life. Muddy sings like a Baptist preacher on those songs, doesn't he?”

Chess had known Guy for a number of years, and he wasn't a huge fan of his ultra-aggressive playing – his experiments with feedback, outrageous bends, and his desire to bring the raw power of his live show to the studio.

He was essentially the last player Chess wanted on what he envisioned as a spare album done the old-fashioned way – and he didn't hide his skepticism or anger about Waters' decision.

“Chess was cussin' when I came to the session with Muddy,” Guy recounted to Guitar World. “But when he heard me, Chess just sat there with his mouth open and then said, ‘Motherfucker, where did you learn that shit?’ I said, ‘Man, there's my teacher.’”

Satisfied that his young protégé had proven himself, Waters, according to Guy, kindly told his boss, “‘I told you I had the man to play this shit. Now get the fuck out of here.’”

Of course, Guy's high-wire take on the stylings of his blues guitar predecessors would go on to hugely inspire the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and especially Jimi Hendrix, who Guy said once cancelled a gig to see him in concert.

“I would go into the Chess studio wanting to sound basically like Jimi Hendrix sounded years later, and they would tell me that I was crazy,” Guy told Guitar World in 1993. “All of the stuff that Jimi did – making noise, squeezing strings, feedback – which is acceptable today, wasn't acceptable at the time.”

It took the success of the blues-rock revolution of the late '60s (success, which, it's worth noting, completely eluded Guy himself at the time), for Chess to realize his misunderstanding of the blues guitar legend.

“When Leonard Chess found out about Hendrix, Beck, and Clapton, he told me to kick his ass,” Guy told Guitar World in 1993. “See, he realized he should have listened to me in the first place, because by that time those guys were selling millions.”

Lindsay Ell might very well be your favorite artist's favorite guitarist. Having been mentored by Randy Bachman, opened for Chris Isaak, collaborated with Keith Urban, and recently played side by side with Shania Twain – including at last year's Glastonbury Festival and Las Vegas residency shows – it's safe to say that the Canadian guitarist and singer-songwriter has hustled hard to hone her craft and establish herself as a versatile guitarist and artist.

Aside from these big names, Ell also cut her teeth touring with Buddy Guy as a teenager after being invited by the veteran blues guitarist to play at his Legends club in Chicago.

“I remember the first time I did that, I wasn’t 18 yet,” she tells Spin. “And so I was just this tiny little blonde girl in this blues club. And I sat in this chained-off section of the club because I was so underage. Buddy used to do a residency there every January.

“And so he invited me up and he was like, ‘This is Lindsay Ell and she’s going to play some blues with me.’ And I didn’t even know what we would play. He would just be like, ‘Honey, we’re in G.’ And I’d be like, ‘Okay, here we go.’”

Speaking more about this quasi-surreal experience to Guitar World back in 2013, Ell said, “Getting to meet and share the stage with Buddy was a humbling experience.

“We were touring Canada with him, and I remember one night I was sitting side-stage watching his set when he turned to the crowd and said, ‘How about that Lindsay Ell? You know, I might just have her out in a bit.’

She continued, “I had no idea he was going to do that! I quickly grabbed my guitar just as he invited me out on stage. He's so infectious when he picks up a guitar and will always be a huge inspiration to me.”

Elsewhere in her Spin interview, Ell reflects on another early mentor – Randy Bachman.

“He would sit in the studio and play all of these crazy jazz chords up and down the neck,” recalls the guitarist.

“And I’d just sit there as my 13-year-old self and be like, ‘Randy, what are those?’ He learned to play guitar from a jazz guitarist, Lenny Breau. And so a lot of his songwriting and chords that he uses are very influenced by jazz.”

Another once-in-a-lifetime experience came by way of fellow Canadian Shania Twain – and while Ell never saw herself sidemanning, she recently revealed how the Queen of Country Pop made her an offer she simply couldn’t refuse.

After Buddy Guy announced his retirement from touring last year at 88, the blues hero is making a brief return to the stage by performing on the final date of the 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta on April 12.

The blues legend – who Jimi Hendrix himself looked up to and eventually befriended – has been added to the lineup, which features a who's who of guitar heroes, including Zakk Wylde, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Eric Johnson, Samantha Fish, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, and Marcus King.

Among the artists involved in this iteration's lineup, Buddy Guy has the distinction of being the only performer whom Hendrix himself acknowledged as a significant influence on his playing.

A testament to Guy and Hendrix's mutual respect and admiration is perhaps one of rock history's most underrated gems – the rare footage of Jimi Hendrix jamming with Buddy Guy in 1968, which kicks off with Guy performing a rendition of Stormy Monday at a small club with his band, followed by Hendrix joining him on stage with his Strat.

Commenting on his return to the stage and his friendship with Hendrix, Guy says, “Thank you to the Hendrix Tour family for bringing me back to perform at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta on April 12. I'll never forget meeting Jimi at that club in New York in 1968, and I'm so grateful we had the chance to become friends. It's an honor to help keep his legacy alive.”

Janie Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix's stepsister, who has been pivotal in steering his legacy, also comments on Guy's inclusion in the lineup.

“Having Buddy come out of retirement to play with us in the Atlanta show is an amazing finale,” she says. “It’s a true act of friendship and mutual admiration. I can’t think of a better way to close out such an epic event.”

The 2025 edition of the Experience Hendrix Tour kicks off at Cincinnati's Taft Theatre on March 11, with a total of 27 stops throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Many nine-year-old guitarists dream of shredding on stage with their electric guitar heroes, but very few get to live that reality – let alone at that age.

As part of the second generation of talents to play in The Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks’ story is much different. Indeed, by the time he was legally able to buy a drink, he’d already played live with Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan and a handful of other greats.

“I was really lucky to play with a lot of my heroes early,” Trucks tells the Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett on a new episode of the Shred With Shifty podcast. “I started touring at nine or 10 years old, and remember doing shows with Buddy Guy and sitting in with Bob Dylan at 11.”

It proved to be an incredible early boost to Trucks’ resume, which got Shiflett wondering: at such a young age, was he encouraged to show off his talents, or did he recoil into the background?

“I was reserved naturally so they would have to pull you out of your shell a little bit,” he replies. ”Buddy Guy was always great about that. He’d let you know, like, ‘Get your ass out here.’

“What I remember about Buddy Guy is, we were playing a lot of small blues clubs in the early ’90s. He hadn’t really had [his] big resurgence yet. When he wanted, he would bring the band down to a whisper. I could hear the amps humming.”

In that moment, Guy instilled what would eventually become a core characteristic of Trucks’ playing into the baby-faced guitarist.

“I remember that discipline and that use of dynamics just being a huge thing that went off in my head. It’s powerful when you can bring things down to that level but still hold the intensity. Then when you take the lid off of it, it’s a big trip that you've taken.

“I'm lucky,” he repeats. “I’m sure there were people along the way that were less inviting, but those were usually the mediocre musicians. The great ones are usually really confident in their shoes and they’re like, ‘Come on, what you got?’”

Guy has a long history of supporting the next generation of blues guitar players. Earlier this year he linked up with Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram for a Fender promo, and during their chat he recalled how Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page all rushed out to buy Fender Stratocasters after they saw him play.

Trucks, meanwhile, recently reunited with his former bandmate Warren Haynes to finish a long-forgotten Allman Brothers track. Around that time, Haynes remembered how he was skeptical at first about Trucks – then only 11 years old – ahead of seeing him play live for the first time. His opinion quickly changed after Trucks started to play.

Back in May, Trucks traded licks with Duane Betts for an emotional cover of Dreams following Dickey Betts’ passing.

It is hard to believe it, but back in the ‘60s the Fender Stratocaster was not considered a great blues guitar.

Then along came Buddy Guy, switching his Guild semihollows for a solidbody that could be thrown around and take the abuse that comes with working with the greatest showman in the blues.

In this interview, he sits down with GW to talk about his signature Strat from the cover of the July 1991 issue, and explain just what makes the model great.

The Clapton Strat we hear on Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues – is that the same guitar that’s on the GW cover? If so, why did you choose it?

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I woulda chosen this Stratocaster because I had used it on the record, and I liked the way it felt and sounded then. I probably just liked how it looked, and since I was using it a lot then, and it was before the polka dot Fender guitar, I went with that one.”

Can you tell me more about how your signature Strat came to be?

“The polka dots were something Fender said they couldn’t do in 1991. But finally, they got a guy who was able to do it, and I can’t remember the year, but after telling me the polka dots weren’t going to work, they figured out a way to stamp them right and finally made me one.”

Did you use the guitar on the GW cover for any other notable recordings after Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues?

“Yeah, I think I used it, but I can’t tell you which ones because back then, I was using a few different ones. Some of the things, you know, you’d have to give me a flashback, and I’d say, ‘Yeah, I used that.’”

Jeff Beck is on the cover with you. That must have been quite a shoot.

“Yeah, it was. When we did the cover, they said that back in 1965, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page didn’t think a Strat could play the blues. But then they all went to buy Strats after they saw me because, as a matter of fact, one of ’em told me I threw the guitar, and I caught it back in the right key.

“And I don’t even remember that, man, because I think somebody flashed a light, and I missed the damn guitar. But they surprised me because they thought back then that the Strat was for Texas, Tennessee and country/western; they were always playing those kinds of guitars.

“But I just liked the Strat. Even if it was busted up and had a few scratches on it, it played like somebody stole it.”

Do you still have the Strat from your ’91 GW cover shoot?

“Yeah, that cream-colored guitar we’re talking about, I still got it. My son Greg takes care of all my guitars, so he would know best, but actually, I still do play that guitar. I might have used it in January [2024] at my club [Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago].”

How did it feel and sound?

“It’s still got that tone, you know? It’s like an Edsel car from 1959. You get in there to drive, and it just feels a certain way. It’s like my old friend Junior Wells would say, ‘Man, you can pull your woman so close to you in the car that you could kill her headache,’ and with the guitar, it’s the same way.

“It’s still got that tone, but a lot of people forgot about the tone. And a lot of people ask me about that tone, and it’s still got it. But they start looking at the looks, and just like a car, the looks sell it more than the ride; it’s about how pretty it looks. But I don’t care how pretty it is; if it don’t run, I don’t want it.”

What does the Fender Strat mean to you?

“I’ve dedicated just about all my life to it. I started with the Guild, but I’ve been a Stratocaster man ever since. The first one I had, man, I had to play at this lady’s club until I paid her back for it. I can’t tell ya how much I was makin’, but it took me a long time to pay it back. [Laughs]

“But I kept it, and somebody broke into my apartment, and that one got scratched up; I intended to keep it the rest of my life, [but] they stole it. Then I finally was able to say I could go buy one, and all of a sudden I started getting my guitars [for] free, so that was a blessing.”

Like many rock guitar greats, former Bon Jovi electric guitar player Richie Sambora grew up listening to the blues, and as such cites Eric Clapton and B.B. King as two of his biggest heroes.

However, those heroes would eventually become close colleagues for the passionate bluesman, as evidenced by the fact he was once invited by Slowhand to participate in a spontaneous star-studded jam session.

Sambora recalled the experience in the latest issue of Guitar Player, and reflected how the invitation unofficially marked the moment he was fully accepted by the blues community, and was viewed as an equal among his peers.

“In 1991, when I was finishing up Stranger in This Town, I wrote a song, Mr. Bluesman, about a young man like me following blues guys around,” Sambora says. “I asked Eric if he would play on it, and he obliged.

“One day he called and said, “Richard, this is Eric…” I’m like [drops his mouth in amazement] because I’m still crazy and starstruck. He says, ‘Buddy, George [Harrison] and I are playing the Roxy tonight. You’re going to come and jam.’”

Naturally, Sambora accepted the invitation without hesitation: “I’m like, ‘I will be there, I promise you!’ Meanwhile, I’m shitting my pants. So Harrison didn’t show up, but it was Eric, Buddy, John Lee Hooker... and me.”

It was, unsurprisingly, a surreal experience for Sambora, who, having endeavored to hold his own against his heroes, ended up making quite the impression on both Clapton and Guy.

“I played every lick I knew about three times faster – whatever I had to do to get through the whole thing,” he continues. “Buddy’s like, ‘Come on, come on!’ and Eric’s just laughing.

“We blew the roof off the place, and we were backstage at the end. Hooker looked at me and said, ‘Hey boy, was that you playing them strings up there?’ And I went, “Yes, sir.”

“He said, ‘You keep playing. You’re good.’ I got on my knees and kissed his hand.”

That was just one of many encounters Sambora would go on to have with the upper echelons of the blues world. As he goes on to explain, he also developed a close bond with B.B. King.

“Every time Buddy was around or I was anywhere in the vicinity, we’d just call each other. B.B. was the same way. I was accepted by the blues community. But I did the work, man. I did the stuff. I played the blues clubs for a reason, and I loved every second of it.”

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest copy of Guitar Player.

As if playing alongside seminal country artists like Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack and Wynonna Judd wasn’t enough, Nashville-based Tele-toter Rob McNelley is a three-time winner of the Academy of Country Music’s Guitar Player of the Year.

It’s well-earned – with his twangy yet bluesy and soulful sound filling the airwaves, McNelley is proud when he reflects on the sessions that mean the most. “There’s a lot of them,” he says. “But when I recorded Need You Now with Lady Antebellum [now known as Lady A – Ed], that was such a big song that it put me out there. When everybody seemed to find out about me, it was because of that song.”

He hasn’t only impacted country records – he’s done blues too. “Man, playing on Buddy Guy records is really cool,” he says. “I’ve idolized him since I was a teenager, and I’ve read so much about him. But to actually meet him and hear him tell all these stories about his life while we’re in the studio, that’s a highlight for me.

“And getting to work with producer Jay Joyce on the Eric Church stuff – those sessions have always been very fun. Jay is so creative so the Eric stuff is cool.”

While McNelley’s session career is booming he’s working on his next solo record, which won’t be country-oriented – to the surprise of some. “It’s more rock,” he explains. “And people don’t know that I sing; these are actual songs with lyrics and vocals.

“It’s not a guitar instrumental record, which is what people automatically assume before they hear it. I have yet to aspire to make an instrumental record, but you never know. Maybe I will someday.”

What inspired you to pick up the guitar?

“I grew up in a household where my dad, Bobby Gene McNelley, was a musician. People came around all the time playing guitars. By the time I was about eight years old, I had my own guitar and I was getting started. It was such a way of life in our house so it was just something I did.”

Do you remember your first guitar?

“Yeah. Sadly, I don’t have it. It was a Hondo nylon-string acoustic. I thought it was cool because I really liked Willie Nelson. It looked like his guitar, but a brand-new version of it.”

And what about your first proper guitar?

“By the time I was 10, my dad had a really cool ’61 Gibson SG Junior. I guess it’s called the Les Paul SG Junior – whatever. And I’m pretty sure I had some kind of custom amp; that was my first amp. I don’t even know what it was.”

When did country music become something that you were not just a fan of but could see yourself doing professionally?

“My dad was a country musician and songwriter, so that music was always on in the house, and at my grandparents’ house. But when I started playing seriously, and trying to get into bands in high school, I was playing rock music. Country music was just something in the background at that point.

“Years later, when I decided to move to Nashville, I realized I could fit in there because I grew up with that music. And I do love that kind of music – it's not like I didn't like it. It's just that nobody else my age played that. If I was going to be in any bands, I played rock music. Getting to Nashville was almost more like coming back to my roots.”

From your vantage point, especially as a young player, how inspirational was Nashville?

“These days there’s a lot more going on in Nashville than just country music. There’s so many players from all over living here now. So the bar is high for how good the musicians are here, you know? These days it seems to be more guitar-centric than ever.”

How did session work become a path you chose?

“I totally fell into it. When I moved here, it wasn’t on my radar to be a session musician at all. It just started happening when I was playing with Delbert McClinton. People just started asking me to do it here and there. And then, before you knew it, I was doing it every week, a couple of days a week. It just snowballed, to be honest.”

What do you need in your toolbox to be a successful session guitarist?

“A lot of it is personality things more than playing. Obviously you’ve got to be at a certain level of playing to be able to execute the ideas needed. You’ve got to be well-versed in a bunch of different styles and be able to play them well. But the other thing is you’ve got to have a lot of humility, because you’re gonna put ideas out there and people are not gonna like all of them.

“They’re gonna tell you, ‘Try something else,’ and they’re not gonna say it nice sometimes! They’re gonna say it like, ‘No, I really hate that, try something else.’ You’ve got to have thick skin and not take those things personally. Just take them as somebody who’s got different levels of ability to communicate. You’re trying to help them get the sound in their head out to the speakers.

“So, thick skin, humility, and a lot of patience with people. And you’ve got to bring a good vibe to the room – you’ve got to be a positive person, even if you don’t think the idea is right. That’s not your job.

“Your job is to get their ideas out there, and when they need your help and want creative input from you, that’s when you have the floor. Until then, you’re trying to help them get their sound.”

You’ve worked with some of some the biggest names in the industry, so your guitar playing is woven into the sound of modern country in a way that very few players are.

“Wow – well, I never thought about that! I mean… I guess so! There’s a handful of us that play on all these people’s records, and now you put it that way… it's crazy to think about. I don’t even know what to say about it.

“But yeah, I guess that is kind of true. For as long as I’ve been doing it, there’s a sound that I guess people probably associate with me – whether they know it or not.”

How would you describe that sound, in the spirit of helping listeners identify it?

“I guess I’m maybe unique next to my direct peers in that I came up through blues and soul music. When I was learning how to play I got immersed in playing lots of rock ’n’ roll, blues and soul gigs. Maybe that’s something about me – I lean a bit more into soul and I bring all that stuff.”

What are a few pieces of gear that you’d never go into a session without?

“One of my old Strats, one of my old Teles, and probably a Les Paul. I can get most things done with those three guitars. Amp-wise, a Fender Deluxe Reverb. And pedal-wise, a Boss Distortion DS-1 or an Analog Man King of Tone overdrive. I can get a lot done with just all of that.”

Which guitars mean the most to you?

“The Strat and the Tele were both my dad’s; I inherited those when he passed away. The Tele is a 1955 one that he bought when I was about 10 or 11. I remember him bringing it home and showing it to me; I remember him laying the case on the floor, and I opened the case, and right away, even at that age, I knew it was a special guitar.

“I played it a lot when I was a kid whenever he had it around the house, when it wasn’t on the road with him. Years later, when he passed, that guitar was not around and I didn’t know what happened to it.

“He’d made some records in Nashville with Paul Worley in the ‘80s, and apparently sold it to Paul. I found that out through a mutual friend, and then when I connected with Paul for the first time down here, we talked about that guitar.

“I told him that if he ever sold it, or wanted to get rid of it, to contact me first. At the time I was new to town and I was broke. I was like, ‘Well, he’s probably not going to get rid of it… and even if he does, I don’t have the kind of money these things go for.’

“About six months after that, our mutual friend called and said, ‘Hey, come over to the house tonight. I need you to check something out.’ When I walked in, there’s a guitar case on the floor. It was like the first time I opened the case again, like déjà vu – it was the Tele. My friend said, ‘Paul wants you to have it back.’

“Ever since, that guitar goes with me to every session. It’s my main Telecaster and by far the most meaningful guitar in my collection, with the most meaningful story behind it. And Paul also put me on my first Number One hit – he hired me on Lady Antebellum stuff, so he’s done a lot for me.”

Can you name some notable sessions the Tele can be heard on?

“Oh, my goodness, man. There’s so many. There’s some newer stuff that Riley Green is doing with Dan Huff – it’s all that Tele. It got me on those records because Riley did a demo session with me when he first got his record deal, and every time I played that guitar, he was like, ‘That is my sound right there.’ So I use that guitar on everything I play with him.”

What advice would you give somebody thinking about getting into country session work?

“First and foremost, get to Nashville. This is one of the last real active studio communities where bands track every day. If you want to do that, you’ve got to get here. And when you get here, have some patience; it’s gonna take some time.

“There are more musicians than there are gigs so it takes a long time to gain a producer’s trust. Having your playing together goes without saying – you got to be at the level that any producer will like.

“From there, it just takes you a while to meet everybody. If you can play, somebody’s going to hear you, and somebody’s going to use you on something eventually. But you’re gonna have to meet a lot of people first.”

• Follow Rob McNelley on Instagram and YouTube.

As many of you are probably aware, the Fender Stratocaster celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2024. Now, Fender has continued its celebrations with the help of Buddy Guy and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, bringing together two generations of blues greats for the first installment of its Strat Sessions jam series.

The brand's latest jam is a little more intimate than the star-studded affair it delivered earlier this month, which featured the likes of Tom Morello, Ari O'Neal, Nile Rodgers, and Mateus Asato stomping through a Hendrix classic.  

However, it leans into that intimacy with aplomb with a stripped-back, improv-rich performance that sees Kingfish and Guy take on Willie Dixon's classic blues standard, (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man. 

There are no drums, and no overdrive pedals get stomped on; what you get is two Strats played cleanly and personably with just their smooth, soulful voices for company. 

Buddy Guy has his iconic, time-beaten polka dot Stratocaster draped over his shoulder for the performance. Kingfish, meanwhile, plays his Tobacco Burst Player series model.   

The word 'smoky' is an over-used adjective when it comes to the blues, but hearing the pair's voices – Guy's gravel-flecked and honest, Kingfish's warm, round and deep – brings that particular word to mind. 

They may represent two completely different generations of blues players, but during the raw, minimalist jam, they are united by their ability to pour their soul into their instruments.  

Asked by Kingfish why he plays a Strat above all other guitars, Guy revealed: “The first one I saw was [played by] Guitar Slim, and I thought it was a joke; all I knew about was the acoustic guitars I saw in the catalog. 

“The band would play for 20-30 minutes, then all of a sudden Guitar Slim would come from the back of the room playing the Strat.” 

Returning the question, Kingfish said that Guy himself was “definitely one of the reasons”. The 25-year-old guitarist, who believes you need to understand the history of the blues to play it well, then embellished his answer.

“A lot of blues and gospel guys in my area, all I saw them using was Strats,” he says. “The specifics of a Strat have always been trebly-sounding pickups; you can get a nice screaming blues sound and it’s always a part of my arsenal when I need it.”  

Kingfish isn’t the only player that Guy, who has stoked the flames of the blues across his dazzling career, has inspired to pick up a Stratocaster. 

In the video, Guy explains how a trip to England in the mid-’60s left a huge impact on a trio of British blues masters. 

“When I first went to England in 1965, there was Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton sleeping in a van,” he says. “When I got to know them, they said, ‘I didn’t know a Strat could play the blues.’ They all went and bought Strats after they saw me play.”  

He also details how he’s accepted it’s “impossible” to please everybody. As such, a stubborn but ceaselessly personal approach to the instrument has defined his playing style.

“I turn this damn thing on and say, ‘I’ll give you what I got, take it or leave it,’” he says, with his polka dot Strat sat like a cat on his lap. “If you pick up the guitar and give it the best you’ve got, it’ll give you the best it’s got and that’s how I look at it every night I play the guitar.” 

Guy calls his Strat his wife, and his love for the instrument has outlived his actual marriage. 

He says: “I was once married but if I decided to practice in bed for a little bit, she had to get out. I don't know if that caused us to not stay married for long, but I said, 'When I met you I had a guitar and I guess when we leave one another I'll still have a guitar with me, because it took me around the world.'” 

Fender has been celebrating the Strat's 70th anniversary in style. So far, it has dropped the futuristic color-changing Ultra Strat HSS and souped-up its Player and American Professional II models, bringing a well-loved finish back in the process.  

Jim Irsay has announced plans to host a free show in LA on January 11, featuring an incredible selection of guest talent and, we think it’s safe to presume, some of the world’s most expensive guitars.

The Jim Irsay Collection Exhibit and Concert (to give the event its full title) is described as “a traveling museum of rock music, American history and pop culture” and is set to hit LA’s Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall next month.

A string of A-list special guests have already been announced, including Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons, Ann Wilson and Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band. 

Elsewhere, Irsay will take on vocal duties for selected songs, with backing provided by even more guitar talent: namely, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Nashville session legend Tom Bukovac, while REM’s Mike Mills (bass) and Kenny Aronoff (drums) will handle the rhythm section.

While the show takes place in the evening, ticket holders will also be able to view the the Indianapolis Colts owner’s guitar and pop culture collection in the venue’s expo hall.

As regular readers will recall, the Jim Irsay collection was valued at more than $1 billion earlier this year and features David Gilmour’s Black Strat, Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang and Jerry Garcia’s Wolf guitar, among many other iconic instruments from The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Prince. 

Previous Irsay performances have seen the collector allow some of the most expensive guitars in the world to be put through their paces onstage by artists. For instance, the time Kenny Wayne Shepherd performed Comfortably Numb on David Gilmour’s Black Strat.

We’re hoping for more of the same from the January show – and perhaps even an outing for one of Irsay’s most recent acquisitions, Eric Clapton’s 1964 ‘The Fool’ Gibson SG. 

To get hold of tickets for the Jim Irsay Collection Exhibit & Concert, Los Angeles on January 11, 2024, head to Eventbrite.

Buddy Guy is one of the most influential and important Chicago bluesmen in the history of blues, and of guitar playing in general. He’s influenced generations of players including many of the world’s most iconic names including Hendrix, Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, and as up-to-date as John Mayer.

Guy was born and raised in Louisiana in the mid 1930s. By the time he hit his early 20s he was performing in local bands while holding down a day job. But Guy had his sites on bigger goals and so made the move to Chicago. 

Here he fell under the influence of Muddy Waters, and in 1958 won a competition hosted by Magic Sam and Otis Rush, gaining him his first record deal. Not long after this, he signed with Cobra Records which led to even more opportunities.

Ike Turner helped Buddy make his second record, contributing rhythm guitar work and composing some of the material. From there he went from strength to strength and stepped up with a new record deal with the legendary Chess Records.

Sadly, this particular move didn’t work out too well for Buddy. He wanted to make records that captured the power and excitement of one of his shows, but the label tried to force him down a different artistic route. His way around this was to release music with Delmark Records under the pseudonym Friendly Chap. But he was able to earn money with Chess records as sideman for Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and other stars of the time.

Buddy is often associated with the Chicago blues style, but he has a very eclectic approach and loves to explore all expressions of the blues. This in part will have been what’s made him a success for 50 years and enabled him to maintain a busy touring schedule even to the present day. (To get Buddy’s full story from the man himself, check out our recent interview where he opens up on his retirement from the road and his 70-year career as a true blues original.)

Buddy has accumulated many awards over the years. He’s won eight Grammys throughout his career and has also been granted the Lifetime Achievement award. As well as these prestigious accolades he was inducted into rock and roll’s Hall Of Fame by no less than Eric Clapton and B.B. King.

Buddy’s playing covers a broad range of approaches. Our first study explores his tradional 1950s 12-bar major pentatonic-based approach, including some great turnaround phrases. The second example utlises more major pentatonic playing but in a much funkier R&B setting. There are lots of great licks to learn here, but make sure you play them with Buddy’s fire and passion. 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 2, Bass 6, Middle 4, Treble 7, Reverb 6

Buddy is best known for playing Fender Stratocasters. His tone is aggressive and precise, most likely due to using Fender Bassman or Twin Reverb tube amps turned up extraordinarily loud, to give his tone that clear but gnarly edge. To achieve this kind of attack, a very mild overdrive or clean boost pedal can be used, alongside a touch of slapback delay or reverb.

Example 1. '50s-style blues shuffle

This study is great 12-bar shuffle with some large bends and 50s-style double-stop phrases. Approach the lines in this with a ‘minor pentatonic visualisation’ approach, but replace the b7 on the second string with the 6th interval, and focus on the major 3rd on the third string for the major pentatonic sound.

Example 2. R&B-style blues

This study builds on a thematic idea that grows and expands over the solo. Again, we’re drawing on the major pentatonic vocabulary here to outline the sounds of the chords. The key to this study is getting the rhythmic elements really locked in, so pay close attention to the note lengths to make the solo sound authentic.

He might not have admitted it then, but when Eli Toscano signed a 22-year-old Buddy Guy to his first recording contract with Cobra Records in 1958, Toscano undoubtedly knew Guy was special. 

Unlike anyone before him, Guy reshaped the sound of the electric guitar, pushing the blues to its limits in the late ’50s and into the ’60s. Of course, when we look at the now 87-year-old bluesman on stage, years’ worth of polka dot-tinged exploits come to mind.

But in his early days, Guy was as mild-mannered as they come. Profoundly religious and hailing from Lettsworth, Louisiana, Guy’s formative years were more about survival than chasing dreams. But it didn’t take long for Guy to catch on with Cobra and later Chess Records as a session man, a period when he received his “first real education on guitar,” he says.

“I was never someone who would jump out in front of Junior Wells or Muddy Waters,” he adds. “When I walked in, I said, ‘It’s time for me to go to school.’ And that’s what I did. They’d put me in the corner, and when it was time to play, I’d play. And when it was time to learn, I’d learn.”

“But I’ve always been quiet,” Guy says. “I remember going into those studios with all these crazy, loud men who were all yelling. And whenever they’d see me in the morning, the first thing they’d say was, ‘Oh, good morning, motherfucker.’ And then, I’d go back in the corner, and when they needed me, they’d say, ‘Come over here, motherfucker,’ or ‘Turn that guitar up, motherfucker,’ or, ‘Hey, I told you to play this differently, motherfucker. So I was ‘Motherfucker,’ but I remember thinking, ‘Well, shit… I thought my name was Buddy.’”

By the late ’60s, having realized he had captivated the imagination of several young British bluesbreakers, Chess Records turned Guy loose. The result was 1967’s Left My Blues in San Francisco, which saw to it that Guy’s energetic style – which included the innovative use of a Fender Strat and featured hard-rocking yet blues-soaked sounds – was finally allowed to be laid to tape.

But despite his influence, Guy was unable to break through to the mainstream. He soldiered on for another 24 years before going dormant in the ’80s. But in 1991, well past 50, Guy unexpectedly found widespread success with 1991’s Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.

Looking back, Guy recalls the difficulties resulting from waiting so long to find success, saying, “It was hard because Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues was recorded when I was 55. I had gotten used to things being how they were and never expected anything big to come. I came from nothing, and to have Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues do so well, all I could think was, ‘Well… better late than never.’ I’ve been living by that motto ever since.”

In the years since, Guy has recorded a dozen more records, with 2022’s The Blues Don’t Lie being his most recent. At 87 – a full six years older than Paul McCartney and his generation – Guy’s energy is still infectious, his voice in fine form and his smile as wide as ever.

And so, in early 2023, it came as a bit of a surprise that Guy – a guitarist who has made a habit of playing at least 150 shows a year – announced his farewell tour. 

Of course, it had to happen sometime, but considering Guy is a man who has outlasted his contemporaries, the idea of a Buddy Guy-less touring circuit is hard to fathom. But Guy is unfazed, knowing his time in the sun has come and gone. To that end, he elaborates, insisting, “I’m not calling this a full retirement. It’s just time for me to be done with traveling.

“I don’t want to cheat people,” he says. “I have a reputation for giving 100 percent, but I’m 87 now, and I can’t kick my leg as high as I did when I was 27. [Laughs] I’ll still do blues festivals and one-offs, but I can’t tour the world anymore. I’m too old to be jumpin’ from town to town on a bus. I’ll still be playing guitar; I’ll do that until I can’t. And I’ll keep making music, but I’m at the age where my heroes passed away. I’ve gotta keep that in mind.”

It’s comforting to know this isn’t the end of the road for Guy, only an end to his wide-scale touring. Still, the knowledge that one of music’s most effervescent personalities will be globetrotting no more comes with more than a hint of finality. 

As for Guy, he, too, is aware of the impending finish line. Having watched the likes of B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells and oh so many more strum their final chords and slay their final solos, Guy knows time waits for no-one. Now more than ever, Guy is reflective as he looks back on a career bred through grit and determination. 

And while music as we know it will forever show the imprint of Guy’s growling tone, when it comes to special treatment, he is having none of it.

“I remember growing up with people who I won’t name, and we’d be sitting there eating a hot dog together as friends,” he says. “Then they got a hit song, and it was like they had no idea who I was. I’d go up to them, and it was like we were strangers. I didn’t know success could do that, but I swore I’d never do that. 

“So I’m still the same Buddy Guy who used to pick cotton and hang out. I ain’t never gonna be someone different. But people sometimes look at me and say, ‘Are you Mr. Guy?’ And I say, ‘No, I’m not Mr. Guy. You can call me Buddy.’ Man, look – I’m just a guitar player who taught himself to play long ago. I never wanted to be treated no better than you or anybody else. I ain’t gonna start now.”

You’ve been performing at a breakneck pace for years. Why stop now?

“Age is something I’ve been thinking about more and more. I watched all the old guys like B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters go until they got old. Often, when you watch older people playing shows, you think, ‘Man… they just don’t sound the way they did when they were younger.’ I remember listening to some of my heroes when they got older and thinking it wasn’t the same. I don’t want someone coming away from my show thinking, ‘He doesn’t sound any good.’”

How vital were guys like B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in terms of developing your sound?

“They were everything. I would listen to a little bit of everything, man. But it wasn’t just guitar music; if I heard a note on a horn, I’d try to play that with my guitar. If I was listening to gospel, I’d see what I could learn from that. And when B.B. came along, I loved his licks. I wanted to play a few of those licks just like he did, but I also knew I wanted to add something else. I wanted to add a little bit of lighting. I saw the guitar as being almost like Louisiana Gumbo. I put a little bit of everything in.”

Is it true that you signed your first recording contract with Cobra after winning a competition against Magic Sam and Otis Rush?

“A lot of people say that, and I’ve heard it, too. But the way I remember it is I sent a letter to Cobra, and I never heard anything. So I went in there and asked them, 'Did you get my letter?' and they said they never got it. After that, I started playing some of the old blues clubs, and it was around that same time that Magic Sam and Otis Rush showed up. 

“And I don’t remember any competition; those guys were always patting me on the back, saying, 'Hey, Buddy, hang in there and keep trying.' I think they were the ones who spoke to the president of Cobra, a guy named Eli [Toscano], saying, 'Man, you had better sign that motherfucker, Buddy Guy.' Well, they signed me, and not long after, I did my first single [Sit and Cry (the Blues)/Try to Quit You Baby].”

In your early days, Chess often credited you as “Friendly Chap”. Was that to keep the attention on the bigger artists?

“Yeah, I think so. Those guys were the hit-makers. They had big contracts, and they were the stars, you know? My job was just to back them up. They didn’t want any attention on me. They wanted me to back them up and add whatever they needed for the record. Nothing more than that. 

“And when the records came out, no-one wanted Buddy Guy’s name on the sleeve. No, sir. So they came up with the idea of me going by a different name. And they called me 'Friendly Chap.' I think the Chess brothers initially hoped nobody would ever figure out who I was if they called me that. [Laughs]”

It’s said that Cobra and Chess were initially reluctant to allow you to record with the same energy that you brought to your live shows. Why is that?

“I wanted to turn up and add some energy. But they weren’t ready for that. And I can understand why because they made many hit records doing what they did. Having someone like me come along probably scared them. But I’ll never forget something that happened in the ’60s when the Chess brothers sent old Willie Dixon to my house, saying, ‘Go get that boy and bring him back down here.’ 

“And when I got down there, they had me come to their office, and all I could think was, ‘Oh, boy… they’re gonna get rid of me now. I’ve really done it.’ But they said, ‘Buddy, I want you to kick us in the ass.’ And I said, ‘Why? What’s wrong with you?’ And they played some Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton licks for me, saying, ‘Buddy, these guys got this stuff from you.’”

When you started playing in that style, it was far from common. What inspired you to push the limits?

“I had to find my own unique voice on the electric guitar. Because I had heard guys like B.B. King and T-Bone Walker, I said, 'I’ll never be that good. I’ve got to do something different from them or I’m done for.' A guy like Guitar Slim was wild, and B.B. King had a left hand that could do things that were not of this Earth. I knew I could never do any of that. So I told myself, if I can ever become any good at guitar, I’d like to act like Guitar Slim but play like B.B. King and T-Bone Walker.”

In retrospect, many people would argue that you were their equal, if not better.

“I don’t know about that. Those guys had something special that they took with them to the grave. I ain’t never gonna be those guys. I can try, but I ain’t one to ever say I’m that good. But I did find my voice, and Leo Fender’s Stratocaster guitar had a lot to do with that. 

“But my first endorsement was with Guild, not Fender – but my amp was a Fender; it was a Bassman. And the first time I played Newport [Jazz Festival], Guild heard my amp, and they told me, ‘Buddy, keep that amplifier; we love the tone. Give it here; we want to take it back to our factory and reproduce it.’ 

“Man, Guild had that amp at their factory for maybe a year, and they couldn’t find the sound. They returned to me and said, “We can’t figure out what Leo Fender did. Keep that amp, and don’t ever let it go. Whatever he did with that amp is going to die with him.”

Have you changed your settings since then?

“I never messed with that Bassman amp. And after I switched to Fender guitars, I told Leo Fender how special it was, that Guild wanted it and not to mess with it. It sounded so good that all those British guys started using it too. The thing was, though, there was something special about that amp. I think it had something to do with the transformer Leo Fender put in it. Nobody could reproduce it.”

Do you still have that Bassman?

“I had it for years, but it got lost after I did some shows in Africa. I didn’t realize it got left behind until I was on the plane, and I was devastated. I searched and searched for it but couldn’t find it. But then, about five years later, we finally found it. But it had been sitting outside in the wilderness and was all rusted out. 

“I had it fixed up, but all the parts were ruined. So when I got it back, it looked alright, but with all the redone electrical parts, it never sounded the same. I’ve still got it. It’s stored away. But I don’t play it much anymore because it doesn’t sound like it did.”

Why did you switch from Guild to Fender?

“The first time I saw a Strat, I thought it was a joke. [Laughs] So I had gone down to New Orleans and saw Guitar Slim playing a Strat, and I had no idea what to make of it. But I realized the hollowbody guitars I was playing needed to be babied because of the weather. 

“God forbid one got wet; they’d swell up and break. Then I’d have to get them repaired, and they’d have all these nasty scars all over ‘em like someone was chopping at them with an axe. So I turned to Strats because they didn’t get overwhelmed by the weather. And I’ve stayed with them ever since.”

How’d you come up with your classic polka-dot finish?

“My mother would have a stroke with worry whenever I’d go out into the world. At the time, I was working at LSU [Louisiana State University], making nothing. I knew I had to do something different. So I decided to go to Chicago, but my mother was sick over it. So before I left home, I lied to her and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to Chicago. I can make more money there.’ 

“Then I told her, ‘And when I make some money, I’m gonna drive back down to you in a big polka-dot Cadillac.’ That made her smile. But I regretted it because I never got the chance to tell her that I lied to her before she passed away. So, I said, ‘You know what? I never did get that polka-dot Cadillac, but I can get a polka-dot guitar in her honor.’”

Is it true you were still driving a tow truck to make ends meet before recording Left My Blues in San Francisco?

“Oh, you’d better believe it. I was driving that tow truck because it was the only thing I could do to afford anything. I couldn’t make any money playing the blues until the British guys started getting big. That’s when it came out that they were influenced by all of us guys. I’d play in the clubs, but I wasn’t going to Europe like other black players who made a name for themselves by going there to make money. I had a family and couldn’t do that. 

“Only when the British guys came along did playing the blues become an honest living. That’s when we were able to start playing the colleges. Before that, I couldn’t make enough money playing guitar. So I said, ‘I’m gonna drive this tow truck in the daytime to feed my family.’ And I’d play guitar seven nights a week for pennies.”

You recorded Left My Blues in San Francisco in 1967 – and 1991’s Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues was your breakthrough. Do you see either of those as your “definitive” album?

“I don’t know what the people who buy albums think, but I’ve always liked Feels Like Rain [1993] and Skin Deep [2008], which have a lot of songs that people request. I guess maybe those resonated with people. I even like the album I made last year [The Blues Don’t Lie]. 

“But at my age, people don’t look for anything new; they wanna hear the old stuff. So I try to carry on with the type of music people want to hear and give them the old licks that can make the whole house stand still.”

Regarding solos, is there one guiding principle you carry with you?

“B.B. King once told me that he’d never play the same thing twice. He said, ‘If you come to hear me play, you’ll never hear me play anything as I did before.’ So if you come and see a Buddy Guy show, you won’t hear me intentionally try and do anything note for note. I might hit a note that sounds the same, and maybe it even is the same, but I ain’t tryin’ to. I don’t care if it’s a hit song or one nobody knows; I go with the flow and do what feels right.”

Is there anything you’d go back and change?

“No, I wouldn’t change anything. Whatever I have achieved seems to have come later, but that’s alright. I’ve always been someone who gives everything he has to what he’s doing. When you come to see me, you know you’re getting the best I’ve got. 

“I know I ain’t never been the best in town, and I see a lot of guitar players who are 10 times better than me. But I’ve always been the best I can be ‘cause that is all I knew. I never wanted to be the best in town; I just wanted to be the best that Buddy Guy could be.”

What will you miss most about touring?

“Looking at all the good-looking women smiling up at me when I hit the right notes. [Laughs]”

• The Blues Don't Lie is out now via RCA Records.

Universally regarded as one of the best blues guitarists in the world today, Buddy Guy is a true link to the genre’s heritage – the last of the original Chicago blues titans still rocking stages around the world.

Last year, though, Guy – now 87 – announced that his next world tour would be his last.

In a newly published interview in the latest issue of Guitar World, Guy revealed that, though he'll play guitar “until [he] can’t,” he decided to retire from touring before he became unable to perform onstage to the best of his ability.

“I don’t want someone coming away from my show thinking, ‘He doesn’t sound any good,’” the blues guitar legend explained to GW, also mentioning the toll age took on the live performances of some of his own heroes.

“I watched all the old guys like B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters go until they got old,” Guy explains. “Often, when you watch older people playing shows, you think, ‘Man… they just don’t sound the way they did when they were younger.’ I remember listening to some of my heroes when they got older and thinking it wasn’t the same.”

That said, the electric guitar hero certainly isn't going out with a whimper. Back in June, he was joined onstage by Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitar A-lister Tom Morello for some bluesy six-string dueling. 

Next month, meanwhile, Guy will take part in Eric Clapton’s 2023 Crossroads Guitar Festival, which is set to feature a truly dizzying lineup including (but not limited to) John Mayer, Joe Bonamassa, Santana, ZZ Top, H.E.R., John McLaughlin, Marcus King, Stephen Stills, and Gary Clark Jr.

To read Guitar World's full interview with Guy – in which the bluesman reflects on his nearly 70-year-long career, and a particularly unforgettable Fender Bassman guitar amp – pick up a copy of the newest issue of the mag at Magazines Direct.

Last week, the fairly self-explanatory Best of Blues and Rock festival was held at Parque Ibirapuera in São Paulo, Brazil.

Tom Morello headlined the festival's first night, which also featured a set from Extreme. Naturally, the two joined forces for a hard-hitting version of Audioslave's Cochise during Morello's set, which featured an extended call-and-response solo section from Morello and Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt.

That, however, wasn't Morello's only unexpected collaboration at the festival. 

Morello also headlined the fest's third night, on which blues guitar legend Buddy Guy also played a set. You can probably see where this is going, eh?

Indeed, Morello joined the bluesman onstage, and donned one of Guy's trademark polka dot Stratocasters to lay down some licks far bluesier than those that populate the electric guitar hero's catalog with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.

“No fascismo! Helluva night rocking with Chicago’s greatest guitarist, Buddy Guy, and The Freedom Fighters Orchestra in São Paulo at the Best of Blues and Rock festival,” Morello wrote on Instagram following the performance. 

Though aesthetically light-hearted, Guy's polka dot Stratocaster (the motif also extends to the bluesman's outfits and Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal) has a bittersweet backstory, connected to Guy's mother, Isabell Guy.

“I promised her that I was going to buy her a polka dot Cadillac to make her feel better, because she had had a stroke and she never saw me play, so I always felt I was lying to her about being a musician,” Guy told Guitar World in 2015. “I was going to get famous and drive back to Louisiana in a polka dot Cadillac to show her I’d made it.

“She saw me with an acoustic guitar at home but she never saw me play after I left Louisiana and moved to Chicago,” Buddy continued. “As a matter of fact, she never saw me play in Louisiana either, because she had a stroke before I left and I had made no records yet until after I got to Chicago in 1957. So I finally got the guitar company, Fender, to make me a guitar with the polka dots, and they’ve made quite a few of them now.”
 

The 44th Annual Blues Music Awards took place last week (May 11), in Memphis, Tennessee, and saw Buddy Guy, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Tommy Castro all take home top prizes. 

Blues guitar legend Buddy Guy won Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Album for his 2022 full-length, The Blues Don’t Lie, while Tom Hambridge scored a hat-trick of awards for that same record, one of which was the Best Song Award (for writing the title track.)

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, meanwhile, continued his hot streak, picking up Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year for the fourth year running. 

Ruthie Foster won Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year. Her latest album, Healing Time, is certainly rooted in blues, but is also a life-affirming journey through gospel, Motown, and ballads such as 4am that are written around the acoustic guitar and are 100 percent soul.

Tommy Castro, bandleader and frontman of Tommy Castro and the Painkillers, picked up the prestigious B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Award, for the second year in a row.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band picked up the Band of the Year award, receiving recognition for their epic quadruple album I Am the Moon, on which Derek Trucks performed some of the most dynamic, vocal, and human slide playing in recent memory on his Gibson SG – the perfect foil for Susan Tedeschi’s peerless vocals. 

It was also a big year for John Primer, who picked up an award for the ‘Traditional Blues’ male artist of the year – and was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame. 

Speaking earlier this month to Guitar World, the 78-year-old Primer was tickled to be up for three awards as a solo artist after honing his reputation as one of the best side-men in the game, offering electric guitar support to the likes of Muddy Waters and Magic Slim. Primer was nominated for Album of the Year, Traditional Blues Album of the Year and Best Male Traditional Blues Artist.

“For Hard Times to be recognized by the Blues Foundation, to me, that's something right there. I ain't counting on any Grammy, no way, but I'll take the three awards I’ve been nominated for. 

“It’s a sad thing, though – people these days don't know or maybe just don’t want to hear the real thing when it crops up. And when it comes to the blues, I am the real deal, I can tell you that.”

He’ll get no arguments here. Joining Primer on the trad blues podium was Sue Foley, who has amassed one serious band (featuring Chris "Whipper" Layton, of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd's respective groups, on drums) to join her as she takes a deep dive into Texas blues guitar history on her latest LP, Pinky’s Blues, which features covers of classic tracks by the likes of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Lavelle White, Frankie Lee Sims, Angela Strehli, and Lillie Mae Donley, and three original compositions.

One of these, the title track, will be recognizable to seasoned blues fans. “It’s kind of my rewrite of Earl Hooker’s Blues in D Natural,” Foley told Guitar World last year. “Everybody who plays the blues has their own take on it.” 

Other guitar-playing winners included Doug MacLeod for Acoustic Blues Artist, Albert Castiglia for Blues Rock Artist, Laura Chavez for Instrumentalist (Guitar), and Charlie Musselwhite, who picked up the award for best Acoustic Blues Album. 

You can check out the full list of winners at The Blues Foundation's website.

Eric Clapton’s 2023 Crossroads Guitar Festival takes place on 23-24 September 2023 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, CA – and it’s no exaggeration to say it could be the guitar event of the decade. 

Among the biggest names scheduled to appear across the two nights are ZZ Top, John Mayer, Santana, Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa, but even that set of heavy-hitters barely scratches the surface…

Elsewhere, 2023’s Crossroads seventh instalment will also feature sets by rock greats including John McLaughlin, Robbie Robertson, Albert Lee, Roger McGuinn and Stephen Stills.

Then there’s a who’s who of blues and blues rock including Gary Clark Jr, Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Samantha Fish, Jimmy Vaughan and Eric Gales. 

Country blues fans, meanwhile, will spot Sonny Landreth, Marcus King and Clapton-collaborator Doyle Bramhall II, then moving towards the folk/roots end of the spectrum there’s Ariel Posen, Bros. Landreth, bluegrass legend Del McCoury, dobro maestro Jerry Douglas, plus next generation torch bearers like Sierra Hull and Molly Tuttle.

Last but by no means least, there’s the likes of H.E.R., The War On Drugs, Sheryl Crow, Los Lobos, ‘sacred steel’ player Robert Randolph, jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and… well, that’s still not everyone, but we imagine you get the point by now.

Elsewhere on the weekend, the Guitar Center Festival Village will feature booths from leading guitar companies, offering the chance to try new gear, as well as an exhibit featuring the retailer’s Legends collection of historic six-strings, including Clapton’s famous Blackie Strat. 

As a whole, it’s a crazy lineup and it’s hard to recall an event in recent memory that has brought together more accomplished guitarists than this one, at least not for full sets. Then there’s the prospect of the one-off jams and guest spots that such a gathering creates – and we haven’t even mentioned that it will, of course, all be topped-off by two sets from Clapton himself.

As usual, a slice of the proceeds from the event will go towards supporting the Clapton-backed Crossroads Centre in Antigua, which supports chemically- and alcohol-dependent persons and their families through treatment and education.

Tickets will go on sale this Friday (April 21) at 10am PT and will be sold as individual day passes, rather than weekend tickets.

For more information, head to Crossroads Guitar Festival.

The rule that says guitar amps and beverages should be kept apart is one to live by. No matter how cold, refreshing and convivial the drink, any liquid is not going to play well with electronic circuitry, and it’s game over with a hot vacuum tube.

Putting some distance between the amp and the bottle is a good idea. But there are exceptions to the rules, and maybe it takes some of Buddy Guy’s character to make them. 

The world’s greatest living blues guitar player, the Little Wild Man from Louisiana, has just launched his farewell tour and this time, aged 86, he really means it. To mark this occasion, Buddy Guy sat down with online music retail giant Reverb to discuss his life in guitar, and he revealed that some of his gear has enjoyed a life that’s nearly as colorful as his, like his long-serving, long-suffering Fender Bassman combo, which he says was a great place to stash your hooch should the authorities take an interest.

“We couldn’t afford a good drink,” Guy explains. “We had wine. So the policeman would come in and you would have that bottle of wine in the back of the amp, saying, ‘Don’t go back there fooling around – the police are gonna come and pour it out.’ Because you weren’t suppose to bring your bottle into the club.”

File this under useful life hack, wisdom from a great, but as Guy admits, all those years serving as a make-do fridge, bearing witness as the good times rolled, did not leave the Bassman unscathed. In effect, it froze his settings into a de facto Buddy Guy preset.

“The knobs on it, the volume and all that, we had wine and whiskey on it, they were frozen,” he complains. “That damn thing [goes] on and off; I can’t set different tones on it. It had the same tone.”

It could be worse. This beat-up old Bassman has seen better days, sure. Its Tweed covering has been recovered in contact paper, the sort of adhesive vinyl you might line your store cupboard with. The handle is gone. Those chicken-head knobs don’t turn like they used to. Maybe you wouldn’t want to turn them anyway. As Guy explains, there is magic in that amp that even Fender can’t explain, and not for the want of trying.

“It had that sound that Leo left us with,” he says. “They took this amp into their factory, tried to reproduce what Leo had, and for two years. And they brought this amp back and said, ‘Don’t every get rid of that because whatever Leo had in that transformer he took it to the grave.’ But I had kept it so long; it was getting worn out, and I wasn’t making enough money to make another one. I just got some contact paper. People were looking at it going, ‘Man! Where did you get that one from?’”

Elsewhere, Guy talks Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, and his early beginnings, playing on a $2 guitar, and sounding “like a bunch ‘o bees”, getting shooed out of the house by his parents driven mad from an out-of-tune guitar. It was out on sitting by the levees in Louisiana where he made his first big breakthrough, learning the lick to John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillen. Worried he’d forget it, he kept on playing it.

“I clamped my fingers on the fretboard, and when I found it I thought I’d never find it again,” he says. “I played it for an hour, and then I went walking, trying to find somebody to see what it sound like. Everybody I found, one by one, said ‘That’s good, man! You gonna play that again?’ I said, ‘I can’t stop now because if I stop I don’t know if I can find this again.’ So I played that for about two-and-a-half hours before I stopped. And I found it again.”

Buddy Guy is stopping this time, however. The 2023 Damn Right Farewell Tour is just that. Maybe he’ll play in his club, Buddy Guy’s Legends, in Chicago, or the New Orleans Jazz Festival, but that’s it. He is through with the road. He has lined up some top support acts for his last hurrah on the bus.

Depending on the date, you could rock up and see him supported by Samantha Fish, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Eric Gales, the Robert Randolph Band, and more. For full dates and support details, head over to Buddy Guy.

Buddy Guy's new album, The Blues Don't Lie, is out now via RCA. And check out the  interview at the top of the page. That man can tell a story.

Still recording and performing at the age of 86, Buddy Guy has lived the archetypal blues story. His first job was picking cotton in Louisiana before he moved to Chicago at 21. He didn’t expect to become a star; he just wanted to live somewhere he could see the greats play. 

After starving for several months, he lucked into jamming with Otis Rush at the 708 club, where Guy caused such a stir that the owner phoned Muddy Waters to come and watch. 

With Waters’ patronage, Guy quickly landed a record deal, but his early recordings were watered down, without the distortion and feedback he used live. “I told [label boss] Leonard Chess we should get that sound on record,” he recalled later. “He just told me, ‘Ain’t nobody gonna buy that noise, man!’”

Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton did buy that noise, however, and a young Jimi Hendrix once cancelled a show to watch Buddy Guy instead. A spectacular showman, Buddy used his 150 foot cable to begin gigs outside the venue and leap into the crowd. 

His new album The Blues Don’t Lie shows Buddy as the last and greatest of the electric blues pioneers. “I promised them all,” he remembers, “BB King, Muddy, Sonny Boy – as long as I’m alive, I’m going to keep the blues alive.”

1. Sit and Cry (The Blues) (1958)

Buddy arrived in Chicago with a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop. Two days before his first recording session, though, the guitar was stolen, changing the course of guitar history. A desperate Guy borrowed $160 from a club owner to buy a Stratocaster, which he used on this, his debut single. 

The all-star band also included Willie Dixon on bass, second guitarist Otis Rush, and future Chuck Berry sideman Odie Payne on drums. Although the tone is cleaner and more controlled than Guy would have preferred, his lead style was already well developed. At 2:17 there’s a turnaround lick that Stevie Ray Vaughan clearly borrowed, and Guy’s approach undoubtedly informed Vaughan’s version of Texas Flood. 

The riffs to this song and Larry Davis’ original Texas Flood, released the same year, are similar but Vaughan’s lead fills sound more like Guy than Davis. Compared to the likes of B.B. King, Guy is noticeably busier. The licks between vocal lines have a tumbling quality, tripping over themselves with rhythmic variations. 

“Didn’t mind jammin’ notes together in a way that wasn’t proper,” Buddy wrote later. “Notes crashing into each other was another way to get attention. I learned how to ride high on electricity.” The electricity was toned down for the studio, but the notes still crashed into each other.

2. Mary Had a Little Lamb (A Man and the Blues, 1968)

A reworking of a nursery rhyme is an unpromising premise for a blues classic, but Guy’s stonking riff and acrobatic vocals made it a triumph. The way his syncopated chord stabs bounce off the horns shows his time as a session musician at Chess Records had paid off. 

There’s still no sign of the howling distortion he could conjure live, but his Strat sounds big, punchy and clear – there’s no sign of the weedy or shrill tones that lesser players can suffer from. A clean amp at that volume is an unforgiving beast, but Guy delivers his licks with authority. 

Stevie Ray Vaughan covered this version faithfully on his debut album, even using the same opening lick on his solo. Vaughan, though, sticks to the minor pentatonic, while Guy ventures out into the major at points. 

This album, A Man and the Blues, combined Guy’s blues styles with soul much as Albert King had done on Born Under a Bad Sign, and the insistent Motown drum pattern and horn arrangement make this a jubilant blues performance.

3. One Room Country Shack (Live in Montreux, 1978)

The live album with Junior Wells Live in Montreux (re-released in 1999 as Everything Gonna Be Alright) finds Guild-era Guy delivering humbucker-fueled madness. He throws the kitchen sink at this opening cut, showing that whatever can be said for B.B. King’s ‘less is more’ philosophy, more can also be more. 

The licks cascade into each other like someone talking too excitedly to pause for breath, but there’s an art to the chaos. At the end of his intro solo, around 1:23, Guy plays a perfectly executed turnaround, a constant stream of notes that nevertheless beautifully highlight the changes underneath. You could listen to the isolated guitar line and still know exactly what chords he’s playing over just from the guitar melody.

Back in the ’60s, Guy had been among the first to spot to the potential of an overdriven amp. “When I heard the buzzin’ and the fuzz tones distorting the amps, that didn’t bother me none,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I figured fuzz tones and distortion added to the excitement of the sound.” Live recordings are the only place to hear the vintage Guy with a cooking amp, and here he balances it perfectly on the edge of clarity and sustain.

4. Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues (Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues, 1991)

While the guitarists he influenced became stars, Buddy spent the ’70s and ’80s in the wilderness, with no record deal in his home country and a relentless gigging schedule. After a performance with Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall, though, Guy was introduced to Silvertone Records boss Andrew Lauder.

Signing immediately, Lauder brought in Roxy Music’s John Porter to produce, and Guy was finally happy with the sound. “John worked hard to let me sound the way I sound live,” said Buddy in his autobiography. “What you hear is a man used to wearing handcuffs flying free as a bird.” 

Guy’s Strat tone was dirty yet clear. Guy had pioneered lodging the 3-way switch on his 1958 Strat between positions to get combinations of pickups, and it’s those in-between sounds that predominate here. Damn Right became the biggest hit of Guy’s career, bolstered by guest appearances on the album from Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler.

Still, on hearing Guy’s potential finally captured on tape it’s hard to ignore the missed opportunity. It’s a great blues album, but its impact is lessened because it came after Wheels of Fire, Are You Experienced and Texas Flood. It could and should have been made 30 years earlier, when it would have been truly revolutionary.

5. I Let My Guitar Do The Talking (The Blues Don’t Lie, 2022)

Released exactly 65 years since he first arrived in Chicago, 2022’s The Blues Don’t Lie arrives with Buddy receiving something like the recognition he deserves: multiple Grammy Awards, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and a queue of star collaborators.

But on this album opener, Guy takes care of business on his own. Hearing his wah-soaked Strat, it’s hard to avoid thinking of Hendrix, but as we’ve discussed, that comparison is back-to-front. The frenetic tremolo picking and scorching double-string bends show the octogenarian Guy hasn’t lost a step, and the scorching tone is among the best he’s ever recorded.

Elsewhere on the album, Jason Isbell, James Taylor, and Mavis Staples feature. In many ways, Guy’s 21st century resurgence is similar to the latter stages of Johnny Cash’s career: after decades in obscurity, a 1960s legend is revived through collaborations with new talent, all of whom were influenced by the original ’60s material. Where Cash’s voice grew hauntingly fragile with age, though, Guy’s guitar and voice have an intensity that show little sign of waning.

• The Blues Don't Lie is out now via RCA.

Buddy Guy has announced his retirement from extensive touring, with the legendary blues guitar veteran set to embark on a Damn Right Farewell tour early next year.

Guy has had one of the most prolific live careers of anyone in the blues world, which started back in the mid-'50s when he first began performing with bands in Baton Rouge. Now, after seven decades of performing, the 86-year-old has called time on his touring days.

For the event, Guy will be joined by a series of special six-string guests, including Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Eric Gales – players at the forefront of this generation’s blues scene who were no doubt influenced by Guy’s own style.

Similarly influential players such as Ally Venable, Tom Hambridge and King Solomon Hicks complete the guest list, with each player set to cameo on a handful of separate nights.

The Damn Right Farewell tour will kick off on February 17 in Rockford, Illinois, and will see Guy make his way across Indiana and Michigan throughout the rest of the month.

After six February dates, Guy will venture to Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and more throughout the whole of March, which comprises almost a full-month of near-consecutive dates.

The final stretch will see Guy perform three dates in April, all of which will take place in Australia.  At the time of writing, the Damn Right Farewell tour is scheduled to concluded on April 12 in Newtown, though more dates are to be added shortly.

See below for a full list of current dates, and to find out when each guest guitarist will crop up for a cameo.

Tickets are set to go on sale this Friday (October 21) at 10am local time. Head over to Buddy Guy’s website for more details.

Guy recently released his latest studio album, The Blues Don’t Lie, which became the bluesman’s seventh number one album. For the first single, Gunsmoke Blues, Guy teamed up with Jason Isbell.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Living Colour – Cult of Personality (Rock in Rio 2022 Remix) (featuring Steve Vai)

What is it? Sure, you’ve heard Living Colour’s iconic late-80s-era breakthrough hit before, but not like this. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the band’s first appearance in Brazil, the group re-recorded this hard-riffing classic with the special guest they jammed with during their recent set at the 2022 Rock in Rio festival: a certain Steve Vai.

Standout guitar moment: Right at the three-minute mark, when Living Colour axeman Vernon Reid and Vai embark on a guitar duel for the ages. Reid brings the light-speed funk, Vai his cosmic, just-on-the-edge-of-madness fretboard pyrotechnics. It’s a phenomenal musical conversation that puts a thrilling new spin on a beloved classic.

For fans of: Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine

– Jackson Maxwell

Buddy Guy – I Let My Guitar Do the Talking 

What is it? Buddy Guy’s upcoming album The Blues Don’t Lie is just over a week away, and to heighten the anticipation the blues guitar veteran has cranked up his wah pedal for the album’s fiery new single, I Let My Guitar Do The Talking. It’s Guy dialed to 11, boasting a detonation of explosive, uncontainable wah licks, which sporadically crop up and weave their way through the punchy rhythm progressions.

Standout guitar moment: At the 1:25 mark, Guy remains true to his word and lets his guitar do the talking: for more than 30 seconds, the guitarist goes to town on his axe, lighting sonic fires with a ferocious wah-fueled throwdown.

For fans of: Joe Bonamassa, Eric Gales, the wah pedal

– Matt Owen

Smashing Pumpkins – Beguiled

What is it? It feels like Billy Corgan has been teasing the sequel to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for, well, infinity, but its first single is finally upon us. Beguiled will be reassuring for fans put off by 2020’s synth-heavy Cyr, dominated as it is by relentless chugging riffs. We’re hoping subsequent singles have a little more bombast, but this is a decent start.

Standout guitar moment: The return of James Iha’s foot to the Whammy pedal – those Zero-esque wails add a welcome edge to proceedings. Nice to see his secret Yamaha prototype make an appearance in the video, too. Whatever happened to that guitar?

For fans of: Alice in Chains, Bush, Silverchair

– Michael Astley-Brown

TERMINA – Take Flight

What is it? A crushing new single from TERMINA, the metal duo comprising YouTube star Nik Nocturnal and Monuments leader Andy Cizek. Underneath Cizek’s blood-curdling vocals sits a clutch of vicious seven-string guitar riffs courtesy of Nik Nocturnal, which incorporate almost everything in the modern metal playbook: drop-tuned chugs, uber-melodic chorus leads and even the odd Gojira-style pick scrape.

Standout guitar moment: The two-handed tapping line in the intro and chorus sections offers an injection of melody in a track that’s otherwise unstoppably chaotic and brutal.

For fans of: Monuments, Carcosa, Periphery

– Sam Roche

Kenny Wayne Shepherd – True Lies 

What is it? After Kenny Wayne Shepherd hit headlines by performing Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb – using David Gilmour’s Black Strat, no less – the talismanic bluesman announced Trouble Is.. 25: a complete re-recording of his most successful album, Trouble Is… To preview the album – which will also feature unreleased cuts and an accompanying documentary – Shepherd has dropped a tightly reassembled version of True Lies.

All in all, it’s a faithful reinvention of the 1997 original, featuring ample amounts of swampy, Stevie-style six-string riffs and tasty turnarounds, though has been noticeably amped up – in every sense of the word. The riffs pack a heavier punch, the lead licks cut through like a razor and though the solo follows the same structure, it seems to be delivered with the additional finesse of someone who has seriously sharpened their chops since the original first arrived.

Standout guitar moment: It’s got to be the solo, which is quintessential Kenny. Served with a healthy dosage of swagger, it crams in every hammer-on, pull-off and rolling pentatonic lick of the original, but adds a layer of spice that Shepherd has been brewing ever since ‘97.

For fans of: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Gales, Jimi Hendrix

– Matt Owen

The Mars Volta – Blank Condolences

What is it? If you think politics is divided, you should see the debates going on between Mars Volta fans right now.

The respected Texas prog outfit’s new self-titled album is their first in 10 years, and finds Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala taking a distinctly poppier turn. Some people really don’t like it. But the Mars Volta have been eclectic from the off – they ain’t gonna make another De-Loused at this stage.

Bury your expectations, and it’s a laid-back alt-rock album with Latin influences. It’s not going to melt your face. But it is going to gently massage your brain, and Blank Condolences is a good example of how Rodríguez-López’s six-string approach has also softened. His solos are as wiry as ever, but they’re clipped to tight, meaningful phrases rather than long, flowing improvisations.

Standout guitar moment: The outro, where Omar’s wah-teased leads play off Cedric’s vocals. It’s a bit like a De-Loused cut where the intensity has been dialed back by 75% and the duration cut in half. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you.

For fans of: John Frusciante, Dredg, The Fall of Troy

– Michael Astley-Brown

In Flames – Foregone Pt. 1

What is it? A new track from In Flames’ just-announced 14th studio album, Foregone. In the band’s typically sprawling and expansive compositional style, Foregone Pt. 1 is flavored with the hallmarks of the early-noughties heavy metal, including frantic palm-muted electric guitar riffs over laser-precise blast beats and harmonised riffs that bolster the track’s sense of melody, therefore juxtaposing the sonic carnage that takes place in the verse sections.

Standout guitar moment: The solo from the 2:22 mark illustrates why In Flames remain standard bearers for metal guitar playing, with a series of feel-driven scale runs, occasionally harmonised for additional melodic intrigue.

For fans of: Avenged Sevenfold, Arch Enemy

– Sam Roche

Thrice – Open Your Eyes and Dream

What is it? 5/4? Crunchy baritones? Clustered arpeggios? It must be another post-hardcore bruiser from Thrice. There are clearly still embers burning from the fierce Fire chapter of the band’s Alchemy Index concept record, as Open Your Eyes and Dream traverses similarly aggressive territory, albeit with a little more light and shade.

Standout guitar moment: That mid-pushed, distinctly ‘woody’ tonality that bridges the riffs on some of the heaviest Thrice cuts makes a return here, and we are all in favor of its revival.

For fans of: Thursday, Glassjaw, Radiohead

– Michael Astley-Brown

Hannah Jadagu – Say It Now

What is it? A new, standalone single from the up-and-coming, New York-based singer/songwriter. The distorted guitar-pop field is crowded for sure, but Say It Now is effortlessly evocative, and stands out on the strength of Jadagu’s unique songwriting touch.

Standout guitar moment: That solo after the first chorus. Vocal-like in quality, it plays beautifully off the song’s melody.

For fans of: Soccer Mommy, Breeders, My Bloody Valentine

– Jackson Maxwell

Bonecarver – Carnage Funeral

What is it? Spanish death metal purveyors Bonecarver have announced their new album, Carnage Funeral, and launched its pulverizing title track. The first release since the band’s brutal 2021 album, Evil, Carnage Funeral is driven by speaker-rattling seven-string guitar chugs and insanely complex drum patterns, placing Bonecarver as a promising new act to carry the death metal genre forward even further.

Standout guitar moment: The riff that begins from the 3:58 mark helps establish a solid groove in a track that's otherwise a grinding cacophony of guitars, kick drums and stomach-churning vocals.

For fans of: Cannibal Corpse, Nile, Carcass

– Sam Roche

Miss Grit - Like You

What is it? Not especially keen on St. Vincent’s shift into ’70s funk? Miss Grit – aka Margaret Sohn – is Annie Clark’s spiritual successor, and new single Like You is driven by a series of off-kilter guitar riffs whose disparate tones channel Sohn’s themes of multiple inner voices.

Standout guitar moment: Sohn’s production is always next-level, and those fuzzed-up main riffs slide into the mix real nice.

For fans of: St. Vincent, Soccer Mommy, Japanese Breakfast

– Michael Astley-Brown

Steve Hill – Everything You Got 

What is it? With the announcement that multi-instrumentalist Steve Hill would be dropping his 12th studio album in less than two months came Everything You Got – the LP’s scorching lead single, which serves up chicken pickin’ licks a plenty for three-plus-minutes of classic blues rock action.

Flaunting a hook akin to AC/DC’s Stiff Upper Lip – though delivered from the fretboard of Hill’s P-90-loaded Jazzmaster instead of an SG – Everything You Got leans heavily on the fingerstyle action, which is delivered with aplomb as Hill serves up robust riffs and snappy, vibrato-heavy solos.

Standout guitar moment: The infectious main motif gets the nod here, which pays homage to Angus Young with some see-sawing hammer-on and pull-off open string action.

For fans of: AC/DC, Derek Trucks

– Matt Owen

Girl Scout – Do You Remember Sally Moore?

What is it? The very first single from this young Stockholm-based quartet. Urgent, unique and catchy as hell, Do You Remember Sally Moore? explodes out of the speakers. Keep your eyes on these four… 

Standout guitar moment: We love the grimy side of the song’s lead guitar work. Those nasty bends early in the first verse and after the first chorus, in particular, are the perfect counterpoint to the sunny arpeggios in the first chorus, and the tune’s buzz-saw, laser-like bass line.

For fans of: Ramones, Alvvays, Best Coast 

– Jackson Maxwell