Rock stars ditching walls of cranked stacks for acoustic guitars and a country twang is nothing new. If anything, it’s become somewhat of a default second-act career trajectory, claiming everyone from Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett to pop-punk royalty Jaret Reddick and even Staind frontman Aaron Lewis.

The latest rocker to make the leap is none other than Zacky Vengeance – aka Zachary Baker – guitarist of metal titans Avenged Sevenfold. Zacky is using his own name for this new project, announcing his debut solo album, Dark Horse – and by his own admission, it wasn't exactly part of the plan.

“I’d never ever anticipated doing a solo album – it wasn’t something that was on my radar,” he tells Guitar World.

With Avenged Sevenfold taking a near five-year hiatus, Baker found himself with something he’d rarely had before: free time.

“I’d just go up to my studio and play acoustic guitar and sing, play piano, play electric guitar, and just record anything that I liked. I kept coming back to these basic songs, singer-songwriter, three-chords-and-melodies type stuff. Which is not typically what we do in Avenged,” says Baker.

“I really am a huge fan of it. I love the element of simplicity in music. I can appreciate complex songs and progressive songs, I love it all, but there's something that really speaks to me about simple songs; it's the reason that I got into music.”

Fans who’ve followed Zacky’s career from the early days won’t be surprised to hear where those roots lie.

“In the beginning, I was just listening to punk-rock bands, to be honest, like The Misfits and Social Distortion. Bands that can use the same chords for a verse as they use for a chorus.”

But his musical horizons stretch considerably further than three-chord punk these days.

“I love listening to the old stuff like Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins. I love Willie Nelson. I love the type of music that they were making back when you had to stand in a room and play into one microphone and sing.

​“I'm a huge fan of interesting voices,” he continues. “People like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. For modern country, I like Zach Bryan. I just feel like there’s an element of humanity to it, and you know, great songs.”

Dark Horse is, at its core, a deeply personal record. One where Baker wears his heart firmly on his sleeve. Nowhere is that more apparent than on The Storm, a song that chronicles his life from the early days of the band right through to the tragic passing of drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan and beyond.

​“With every single song on the album, they kind of shook me to my core,” declares Baker. “I had to go as deep as I could go with what I have going on in my life. And all the feelings that I've gone through.

“It brought up real emotions about how I felt about Jimmy and everything leading up to it, and I never really got to write the song that I wanted to myself. It wasn’t going to be an entire ode to Jimmy. It was going to be a song, and as it was being written, I was talking about the early days in the band and the stuff that we went through, and that’s why it’s so sincere,” he says calmly.

“It was a chance for me to get to say exactly how I felt in that moment. Like with the album Nightmare with Avenged, Matt [Shadows] wrote the most heartfelt lyrics that are so perfect and passionate that I feel that we got our point across as best friends and a band, but for me, I wanted to have that one impactful moment. I didn’t want to write an entire album about it by myself. I just needed that one impactful moment.”

But recording a song about a lost friend was never going to be easy, and it certainly brought up feelings of grief for Zacky.

“While I was writing that, I think while I was playing the organ, I just lost it. I was in tears. It was hard to recover, hard to sing that part,” recalls Baker.

“I never went back and re-recorded the vocals. They’re kind of rushed. I didn’t want to do multiple takes. I didn’t go back and try to make it perfect. It’s like, yeah, they sound like that because I was fucking sad, I was crying. I think that’s real.”

Now, when you picture the making of a country record, the mind drifts to dusty old tube amps and worn-in vintage flat-tops, but Baker's process on Dark Horse was anything but traditional. Admitting his limitations in the studio, he explains that leaning into a DIY punk attitude was precisely what gave him the confidence to track it himself.

“I just decided I’m going to record the same way I did when I was 15, in my punk bands,” he says. “Do it by any means necessary. Whatever gets the music and the sounds I want recorded.”

Surprisingly, Baker reveals that he used digital amp modelers for the majority of the amp sounds.

“So honestly, I used a lot of the Fractals, because that’s what we’ve been using with Avenged Sevenfold.

​“I’d like to say that I was using a lot of Twin Reverb amps and just bringing out all the classic stuff,” he says, laughing. “But with that said, I wasn’t trying to make a retro album. I’m not trying to do an entire vintage record on two-inch tape.

“It just wasn’t the tools that I had available to me, so I used what I had. I went through a Fractal. Went through all the sound banks and just tweaked the tones until they sounded right to me. I literally recorded it in the moment, tweaked it till it sounded good, laid it down, and then called it a day.”

For his guitar choices, he says that, as well as using his faithful Schecter signature models, he wasn’t scared to experiment with different options.

“I was picking guitars that I've never ever even thought about using with Avenged. I have a really nice collection of Nashville Teles and Strats. I love those guitars. They’re so fun to play,” he says. “I was bringing out my Schecters, and bringing out guitars Schecter has made me that I've never brought on stage, like a couple of hollowbody guitars.

“It was just a chance for me to basically pull out anything from the arsenal and capture the sound in that moment.”

When it comes to acoustics, Baker is quick to champion both the premium and the budget models. While he’s partial to his Martins, it’s an affordable Epiphone that’s become one of his most-reached-for guitars.

“My favorite acoustic guitars right now are Martin and Epiphone. So I have a few Martins that I bring out with Avenged, and I've used them in the studio. I don’t even know what models they are,” he says with a smile.

“I love the look of the classic Gibsons, but I don't want to give up-and-coming guitarists the wrong impression – that they have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to do what they love – so, I came across the Epiphone Hummingbird, and they sound amazing, they play amazing, and they look amazing.”

Yes, but is it on the album? “It absolutely is on the record... I’d always just pick up whatever was next to me, was in tune, and sounded right. I absolutely used it,” says Zacky.

​“So if it’s good enough for me, someone who is considered a professional guitar player, then it’s good enough for anyone. That’s what I want to always instill in people, because I was never turned off music because of my lack of ability to afford crazy guitars – it was all about picking up whatever you could.

“My first guitar was a Squier Strat that probably cost about 150 bucks, and I cherished it, and I’ve never lost that mentality. I still feel the exact same way. It’s not about what you’re playing. It’s about who you are and what you're doing with it.”

• Dark Horse is out now.

Melissa Etheridge's technical dexterity and songwriting chops can be heard on established classics like I’m The Only One, I Want to Come Over, Come to My Window, and Bring Me Some Water, as well as on her latest single, Bein' Alive, from her upcoming album, Rush.

“I’m a slightly technically trained guitar player,” she tells Guitar World when asked about her roots and the evolution of her playing style.

“I had the greatest guitar teacher in Leavenworth, Kansas, Don Raymond, and had my first lessons in 1972. He was an old blues and big band guy from Kansas City. He had his own band, and then, in the late ’60s, he was in a terrible factory accident that cut his fingers off at the knuckles.”

Etheridge explains that Raymond was falling into a deep depression, when a guy from a music store suggested that teaching could be a viable second career option. He also had some keen students lined up, including a 10-year-old that would become the Melissa Etheridge.

“He kind of scared me ’cause he didn’t have any fingers, and he was really grouchy. But he saw that I didn’t give up… he always said, ‘No, she’s too young. She’s gonna stop playing, and her fingers are gonna bleed.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m not.’”

Aside from teaching her the essential guitar skills, Etheridge says that he taught her the most valuable lesson she's ever learned.

“He had a little footstool, like the ones that would raise up, and he would sit there and tap his foot. He would say, ‘I don’t care what notes you play, just never go out of time.’ So, he taught me the importance of time and rhythm."

As Etheridge very aptly puts it, "Man, you can play wrong notes, but if you play out of time, you’re done.”

Guitar World's interview with Melissa Etheridge will be published in the coming weeks.

In more recent news, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced the nominees for its Class of 2026 – and the list includes Etheridge.

Steel guitarist Pete Finney, the Nashville-based musician who has toured with the likes of Vince Gill, the Judds, Reba McEntire, the Chicks, and the Monkees, has died at the age of 70.

The news was announced by Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “Steel guitarist Pete Finney, who died Saturday at age seventy, was a widely admired Nashville musician,” reads the statement. “He exemplified how top instrumentalists can adapt to a remarkable range of styles and settings, whether in a recording studio, a concert stage, or the corner of a small nightclub.

“On America’s biggest stages, Finney backed the Chicks, Vince Gill, the Judds, Reba McEntire, and Patty Loveless, among others. He toured with Loveless for more than twenty years. He was touring with McEntire when eight members of her band and two crew members lost their lives in a plane crash in 1991; Finney survived because he flew on a second plane, with another musician and crew members.”

Born in Maryland in 1955, Finney played his first shows in Washington, D.C. with singer-songwriter Liz Meyer, before relocating to the Netherlands in the mid-’80s. Upon his return to the States in the late ’70s, the steel guitarist moved to Austin, Texas, and then Nashville in the mid-'80s, where he made a huge mark on the local scene and beyond.

Upon his Nashville debut, Finney toured with Foster & Lloyd, and later, in Washington, D.C. Along the way, he recorded and performed with a myriad of artists, including Beck, Jon Byrd, Shemekia Copeland, Justin Townes Earle, and Jon Langford.

Alongside his session career, he also gained a reputation for his extensive knowledge of American music history, so much so that he co-curated the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's exhibition, “Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City,” between 2015 and 2018.

The book that accompanied the exhibition was also co-written by Finney and won the Chet Flippo Award for excellence in country music journalism from the International Country Music Conference.

“So many good memories with Pete back in the ’80s,” Vince Gill tells the Nashville Scene. “He played in my band, and he played with Radney [Foster] and Bill [Lloyd]. This was before he started doing [the Patty Loveless] gig.

“He came out with me whenever I’d get a band and go travel. The consummate road dog, you know, and a good hang. He was just one of those people who would always put a smile on your face, and you were glad to see.”

Nashville's iconic country institution, the Grand Ole Opry, has teamed up with George Gruhn of Gruhn Guitars and Martin Guitar to create a limited edition Martin: the HD-28 Grand Ole Opry 100th Anniversary.

The one-of-a-kind acoustic was handcrafted to “honor a century of music, storytelling, and unforgettable moments on country’s most iconic stage”. The collaboration is a no-brainer, considering Martin’s long legacy with country artists.

Built on the brand’s HD-28 platform, the guitar sports a dreadnought design and promises “powerful bass, clear trebles, and rich overtones.”

Featuring a Sitka spruce top, East Indian rosewood back and sides, bold herringbone top trim, ebony fingerboard, and Golden Era Modified Low Oval neck, the 25.4” scale build is further sculpted with Martin's forward-shifted, scalloped X-bracing.

Further customization is provided via a custom inlay of the historic WSM microphone – the premier symbol of the Grand Ole Opry – in mother-of-pearl and abalone, and, to top it off, matching commemorative fingerboard inlays.

“These elements blend Martin tradition with Opry heritage in a single, remarkable instrument,” comments Martin. “It’s a playable piece of history made for those who keep the circle unbroken.”

Limited to 650, the Opry 100th Anniversary Martin HD-28 Guitar is priced at $4,299 and is currently available from the Grand Ole Opry's official website.

For more information, visit the Grand Ole Opry.

In more recent news, Martin has just introduced its debut signature models for bluegrass virtuoso Molly Tuttle.

Longtime collaborators Keith Urban and Dann Huff have looked back on one of their most contentious studio experiences, which involved a particularly grueling hour-long solo session.

It is well-documented that all-star producer and session pro Huff was recruited by Capitol Records in 2002 to produce Urban's third studio album, Golden Road, in an effort to make it sound more “guitar-oriented.”

Urban wasn't especially enthusiastic about the appointment. “Keith didn’t want anything to do with it because he’d heard records I produced, and he hated them,” Huff told Premier Guitar in a 2025 interview. “It wasn’t his kind of music. He made country records. So basically, he set up a whole scenario to try me out on one song, to see if it worked.”

During that time, things threatened to come to a head when the two were in the studio crafting what would become Urban's second number-one hit on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, Somebody Like You.

As Urban recounts in a new interview with Huff, the producer's insistence that he spend an hour looping over the same section to track the guitar solo seriously tested his patience.

“I discovered this little camcorder video that I found, that the engineer had filmed of me playing the solo of Somebody Like You,” Urban remembers.

“I watched it for the very first time when I rediscovered it. [When] I was watching, I went, ‘Oh, my God, that's so cool. He captured the solo. There it is.’

“And then you had me do it again, and then I did it again, and then I'm fast forwarding it, and I swear the tape goes for like an hour – over an hour – and I'm playing the same thing over and over.

“I'm sitting there in a tank top – sweating and exhausted – so pissed off at you. Like, ‘What the fuck do you want?’” he adds with a laugh.

There was method behind the madness, though, and Huff had Urban looping over the same solo for a reason. He was "looking for the magic", but he just didn't know where that magic would come from.

Huff's production approach embraces the philosophy that “there's magic in different places when you play the solo”. Huff was trying to squeeze out and tie together all those different magical nuances that come from playing the same solo over and over again, for an hour straight.

Urban may have been less-than-pleased at the time but the collaboration worked, and it has continued working ever since – Huff served as one of the key producers of Urban’s latest record, High.

In an interview with Guitar World upon the album's release, the country star revealed his pickup obsession during the recording process – and teased his forthcoming signature model with PRS.

We all love a good Craigslist find – whether it's Este Haim buying her dream ’70s Precision Bass for a bargain, or Lzzy Hale adopting her now go-to shape, the Explorer, thanks to the humble online marketplace.

Nashville-by-way-of-Indiana country star Stephen Wilson Jr. also took to Craigslist to find his now-workhorse nylon string – a rare Takamine C136S.

“I bought this on Craigslist [at] a parking lot in Nashville. Some random guy met me in this weird van,” the country and rock star tells Tiny House Concerts.

“He had an amp that he plugged into a cigarette lighter," he continues. "The big thing is, I play these [acoustic guitars] through an amp. It needed to sound good. At the time, I didn't have any money to put a pickup in it, and I wanted to start playing it through amps.

“So I was like, ‘Can you bring an amp?’ And he brought one, and it sounded incredible.

“In the first second, I knew it was like my forever guitar,” Wilson asserts.

And while he wasn't shopping for this specific model, he claims that, as soon as he saw it, it was pretty much love at first sight: “It was in my price range, and it just showed up, and ever since then, I've yet to put it down.”

Explaining his affinity for nylon-string guitars, Wilson says it’s partly because that’s what he started playing as a kid. “I got super into – and I still am super into – Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucía and Willie Nelson.

“All the classical guitar players taught me more about guitar playing, really, than any rock ’n’ roll guitar player did, because they made the guitar a drum,” he says matter-of-factly.

“They made it more than just something that sustains a note. It became something very percussive. So when I realized it was also a percussion instrument, it changed everything.”

Speaking of flamenco guitar legend Paco de Lucía, after spending 60 years stored in a meat can, the virtuoso’s lost recordings were finally unearthed and officially released in 2024.

When we think of guitarists with the name Guthrie, two probably come to mind first – English fusion virtuoso Guthrie Govan, and Nobels ODR-1-toting Nashville session ace Guthrie Trapp, who’s worked with everyone from Dolly Parton and John Oates to Alison Krauss and Garth Brooks.

“I haven’t really listened to the other Guthrie, to be honest!” laughs Trapp. “I guess we live in different worlds and come from different backgrounds. But I do know he’s a very respected player.”

Having grown up in a bluegrass household with very little Top 40 music, and benefiting from the guidance of his musician uncle Jerry, Trapp was molded from a young age. And while the 46 year-old is often typecast as a country player, he points out that, to have a longstanding and meaningful career in music, you need to think a lot broader.

This is well documented in his ArtistWorks School course, The Guitar Styles of Guthrie Trapp, which was recently relaunched. It’s a roundup of the most important things he’s learned, with tips and guidance on how to navigate through all kinds of musical situations.

“I don’t consider myself a country player,” he tells Guitar World. “I played in a country band with Don Kelley about 25 years ago, and I got pigeonholed. I’ve been trying to get away from that ever since! I just like music, you know?

“Of course, American roots music, bluegrass and traditional blues is important to me. I didn’t really idolize the big rock guitar players because I didn’t know any of them.”

Did any big rock guitarists that impress you later on?

Mark Knopfler was a favorite because his lines spoke to me. I’m not a diehard Pink Floyd fan, but I’ve always loved David Gilmour’s playing. Fast chops are impressive when you’re young, but that stuff doesn’t last. What does last is songs and melodies. Shredding is amazing but nobody can do that forever. Your hands will slow down, so you better learn how to play melodically.

Your approach is less singular and more contextual to the music situation.

It’s good to have speak different languages. If all you want to do is sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you’re kinda fucked. There was only one of him and he did it better than anyone else.

The same goes for Eric Johnson or B.B. King. But honestly, I couldn’t care less about guitar players. I’ve kinda heard it all at this point, you know?

From an alternate picking perspective, country guitar is one of the hardest styles out there. How did you develop those techniques?

If you play those lines sloppy, it won’t work. The whole down/up thing came from the flatpickers. For the younger crowd who might not know Tony Rice and David Grier, I’d say Billy Strings is doing that right now.

You have to alternate-pick those lines because they’re from fiddle tunes. And 99 percent of everything should come from your ear. If you just focus on theory without knowing how to make music, it’s like a chef who can chop perfectly but can’t actually cook.

At this point I like to zoom out and wonder, “Why are we doing any of this? What’s the point of pedals or theory?” I find the “why” gets diluted by the “how.” The goal should be to write a song, record it and let others enjoy it.

You usually stick with boutique T-style guitars made by companies like Floyd and Russ Pahl, going into vintage Fender amps via a Nobels ODR-1, or your signature JTO pedal made by J. Rockett Audio.

Here in Nashville we all love the original Nobels pedals, which sound better than the reissues. They’ve shot up in price – I used to get them for $100 and Uncle Larry [aka Tom Bukovac] would pick them up for $30. Now they’re upwards of $1,500.

After playing it for 20 years, the Floyd guitar’s done. I had it refretted a while ago and it got weird. I gave the Russ Pahl guitar back because I wasn’t using it. I’ve moved on to this Dan Strain Danocaster that Uncle Larry sold me. Then there’s this 1969 335. Now that’s a good guitar.

So you’re pretty minimalist when it comes to gear?

I don’t have many electrics. There’s a Gretsch that Zac Brown gave me that I don’t use much. I’ve probably got the smallest collection out of any working musician in Nashville! I don’t own a Strat, Les Paul or anything with P-90s.

I have everything I need. You’ll never hear me do anything high gain unless I’m told to. The Nobels works great through my 1966 Fender Pro Reverb. I don’t even use my signature overdrive anymore.”

What else is on your pedalboard?

There’s my Boss tuner and Xotic RC Booster. Then I go into the Nobels, a tremolo, a Strymon Brigadier delay and a Strymon Lex. There’s also a Strymon Cloudburst synth reverb for intros. I love my EarthQuaker Dispatch Master, which is a delay and reverb.

I just got a Tomkat Super Day Dreamer which is another badass delay and reverb. I’m a big fan of having both together – it creates this cool ambient world.

I’m not into any digital things with memory banks where you need to program a bunch of shit. I’m old school! There are no amp modelers with me – none of that garbage.

Have you ever tried one?

I did play through a Fractal or Kemper once. I flew in and had to go straight to this stadium to play the kickoff riff. They supplied all the gear, including the guitar.

I plugged it into this box and realized that if you try to play with dynamics, the thing will stop tracking. It wanted signal the whole time, which felt like insanity to me.

But I saw Mark Knopfler twice on his last tour; he was using digital modelers and sounded so fuckin’ incredible, I was in tears. Of course his tech had it all dialed in. Uncle Larry once told me that good tone is heavy. When you pick up an amp with a proper transformer and good speakers, it’s not going to be light.

Billy Gibbons is a fan of your playing. How did you meet?

I met him at Todd Sharp’s amp shop eight years ago. During Covid I got an email from him – I thought I’d ended up on his newsletter by accident! But he wanted me to be a special guest for his lifetime achievement award at the Ole Opry House.

The email had been sent six days before. I thought I’d blown it! I replied immediately and we had a call soon after. He said he’d been checking me out and wanted to jam.

What did you learn about him?

He’s every bit as cool as he looks, if not 10,000 times cooler! He’s one of the most generous people I’ve ever met – always sending me crazy shit like hot sauce, knives, dice and pedals. He’ll chat to and take photos with every single person he meets.

We went to the grocery store once and he ended up talking to this woman for 45 minutes about tamales. She was in tears, being such a huge fan. There’s only one Billy Gibbons walking the planet. He’s less about music and more about humanity.

How important is theory for a career as a session guitarist?

I avoid a lot of that stuff. I don’t look at this as a day job. I’m not a big fan of that “this is my office today” mentality. It isn’t about clocking in and out. I don’t play for anybody, but I do play with a lot of great people. It’s about having dignity.

You have to own your shit to get anywhere. The only originality we have left in this world of AI is ourselves. I tell young people to get themselves out there in an authentic way. The only thing you have left that’s original is your story.

You released an album called In Stereo with Tom Bukovac last year. What did you bring out of each other?

It was original because we were only making music for ourselves. We’d occasionally walk into a $2,000-a-day studio with zero ideas, so we’d grab some acoustics and start playing. That’s fresh creativity.

I don’t want to play another train beat or blues shuffle in A. Don’t regurgitate the same old shit that’s been beaten to death. I don’t want to pay homage to country and blues; that’s been done. I respect those styles enough to leave them alone.

Remember that the guitar neck is a super-conducting lightning rod for building relationships that could change your life. That’s the bigger picture with this shit. It’s not about how tall the frets are on your Telecaster.

Music is a language. Think like that and you’ll be better off than anyone who only knows how to shred through A minor pentatonic.

• The Guitar Styles of Guthrie Trapp is available now at ArtistWorks.

Country guitar icon Brad Paisley has named his new favorite guitar player, whom he gifted a relic’d Fender Telecaster with a secret message hidden beneath its pickguard.

Paisley, who has won three Grammys, was bestowed with his new signature six-string earlier this year, reviving a cult 1960s finish in the process.

In a recent appearance on The Zak Kuhn Show, Paisley looked to the future, highlighting Hayden Baker as the “great new” kid on the block of the country scene, in part for how closely his style draws from his own.

The pair had met when Baker invited Paisley to provide a guest solo on his track Don’t Meet Your Heroes. Now Baker, who has now featured on Kuhn’s show as a result of that praise, has opened up on their burgeoning friendship.

“This piece of junk is a 1953 refin that our buddy Brad gave to me a couple of years ago, and she's number one, man,” he says of the Telecaster Paisley gave him. “Just look at it. It’s an amazing instrument.

“Under the pickguard, he wrote a note that says to stop ripping him off. He's made it clear that he could he could have sued me by now, but he chose to just play along,” Baker laughs. “He’s been wonderful, and this is an incredible gift.”

Though the electric guitar’s relic’d finish was done by Paisley before it became Baker’s main squeeze, he says he’s “played it enough where it should look like this. I can’t put it down.”

Quizzed on how he came to embody Paisley’s spirit so well, Baker credits YouTube and tab books, saying he became “determined” to master his “captivating style” after getting hooked on his music.

So what are Paisley’s standout quirks?

“It’s a combination of attitude, really digging into the strings, and putting open strings where you normally wouldn’t,” Baker believes. “It can sound so weird slow, but once you get it up to speed, it sounds really cool.

He’s since had the sizable task of learning Paisley’s Dont Meet Your Heroes solo, and it’s left both guitarists perplexed.

“There's this great new kid named Hayden Baker, and I played on a song with him, I played the middle solo,” Paisley had explained to Kuhn. “I saw him yesterday and he said, ‘I'm having to learn your part, what did you do?’ and I said, ‘I have no idea. I just hit record…’ I have to learn it just the same way; it may take me longer than Hayden.”

Responding to those comments in an Instagram reel, Baker quipped, “I tell you this much, buddy, I ain't got it figured out. So when I play it [live], I'm gonna make up my own stuff.”

Even for a pro Paisley-esque shredder, Baker is stumped. That says a lot about the technicality of the solo. But Paisley’s praise also says a lot about Baker’s abilities.

Paisley's new signature guitar, he says, is based on an instrument so rare that Fender couldn't believe he had one.

With his well-worn Primer Gray Tele in hand, Brent Mason has redefined session excellence throughout his stellar career, which includes appearances on over a thousand albums.

While appearing on records by George Strait, Alan Jackson, Shania Twain, Zac Brown, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire and Willie Nelson, to name a few, there’s a simple six-string principle that’s guided Mason: “When things get worked out too much,” he tells Guitarist, “they kind of lose their charm. The first takes are usually the best takes.”

Simple as that sounds, Mason’s unparalleled longevity, and habit of ending up on hit albums by iconic country musicians, is anything but.

In short, there are plenty of players who aspire to what Mason doesn’t but few who understand what he learned long ago: “You’re playing to service the artist,” he explains. “You want to complement their record. It’s not about you. You need to get into the head of the artist and try to connect with them. You need to be a real listener and you’ve got to pay attention. It’s like school, you know?”

What’s your secret to being so effective across so many genres?

“Gear-wise, it’s a little bit of everything, along with the education of the different styles of music. I’ll bring in a lot of different guitars when I come in to record. My main arsenal might be an ES-335, a Les Paul and a Fender Tele, of course. But a lot of times, a baritone is real useful in sessions.

“I’ll grab one of those if somebody wants something a little different; it transforms things into something else. But most of the time, it’s the Tele, and mainly it’s just the whole mindset. It’s just about conforming to whatever they’ve got in mind and [what they’re] wanting.”

Specifically, what’s the key to getting into such an open-ended mindset?

“It’s just understanding the character of the artist. Artists bring a certain characteristic to the music, and I’ll say, ‘Okay, I see where he’s coming from.’ But if you join in with them, they still might hear something different, and say, ‘Well, I want to do something a little different…’

“Sometimes you get a heads-up when you walk in – because in Nashville, you really don’t know what you’re going to play till you get into the studio. [That’s] what sets Nashville recording apart from just about anything, really. Somebody just makes out a number chart and you kind of fill in the blanks from there.”

Do you have a tried-and-true method for nailing your parts in one take?

“Just by letting the emotion escape. Right away, when you feel a song, you go, ‘Wow, that’s a great song,’ and sometimes, instead of sitting there and working out a solo note-for-note, you just turn it on. Your thoughts about the song and the emotion and soul just come, and that’s the first take, and you go, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I can top that.’”

And is it that easy to accept that you can’t do better?

“Well, I’ll go, ‘I think you’re right, that’s pretty good…’ but then my perfectionism comes into play [laughs]. Literally, it’s like, ‘I wish I woulda ended it right there,’ you know? Sometimes I’ll paste an ending onto something, maybe on that first take, just because it’s hard to resist. But it’s that first take that really captures that emotion. Any take after that is you trying to play something you like on the first take and duplicate that. You’ll think you did, but it never comes off that way.”

Why do you think that is?

“Oh, you know, it doesn’t have squeaks or the right vibrato. In other words, it sounds ‘worked out’. That starts to get into the sound and it becomes redundant. There are some songs that you need to work out, or some solos if they’re melodic, and you mess up the melody. You’ll want to perfect that.”

Are there any techniques that you needed to master to get to the point you’re at now?

“When I first started doing sessions in Nashville, you needed to have a great sense of timing. I remember a lot of times, I was working up things and didn’t have a metronome – and we all hate metronomes [laughs]. It’s just clicks that are uninspiring. But now, you can set up in your hotel room and practise, so it’s about timing.

“When I first started doing sessions, I found out that I was speeding up a little bit, and guys would go, ‘Hey, you’re on top of the beat, man.’ I always heard that and now I know that it’s about timing and dynamics. Those two things, timing and dynamics, without even bringing up melody or notes, it’s about those things.”

What are some common pitfalls that session players often fall into?

“You gotta watch out when you go in there. Studio musicians like to play a song, jam and get loosened up to check and see if everything is clicking. But sometimes you can play too much. You’ve really gotta listen to the vocalist and mark down on your chart where the fields go, make sure you’re off the vocal point and make sure you understand what the artist wants.”

Is it just a matter of simple communication?

“Yeah, a lot of times, you can ask the artist, ‘Hey, give me your vision of what you’re looking for on this…’ Then you can sit down with a pen and pad of paper and take notes… if you want to look real dignified [laughs]. Or you could just nod your head, and go, ‘Yeah, I got you!’”

We touched on gear a bit earlier, when you mentioned the 335, Les Paul and Tele. Those aside, do you have a very large collection of vintage gear, or do you mostly use newer guitars?

“It’s a little bit of both. I’m always real fond of vintage instruments, you know? But I always have a Gretsch 6120 as a main guitar; it’s not a real vintage one, but it sounds killer. I bought it in the ’80s. And I’ve a ’65 sunburst Strat that I’m pretty fond of. I just make sure that I’ve got the guitars I need, you know?

“It’s good to have some different kinds of guitars that are a little bit off-kilter. I even have a sitar and, like I said, I carry a baritone, which I use a lot. And the Gretsch has got that nice Bigsby, and the Strat, you know, I like to set it up to where I can bend the tremolo bar a little bit. So it’s just carrying different things that inspire you to play a little differently on a song. It helps to have those extra guitars, and I have quite a few different ones.”

Do you find yourself using mostly studio amps, or do you generally use your own?

“I bring my own amps. Lately, I’ve been using a [black-panel] ’67 Deluxe with a lot of reverb. It has some vintage Celestions in it and it’s sturdy. I found myself using that thing a lot because it marries up to pedals really nice, especially different distortions. And I’ve got a Matchless and a Marshall, but it’s mostly that Deluxe lately. It’s surprising what that thing will do.

“So I bring my own amps and I’ll only use the studio amps if mine all blow up or if I see one in the studio that’s cool. I’ll go, ‘Hey, is that an old Vox? You mind if I use that?’ Some studios have a good supply of amps and some you really can’t count on at all, so you want to make sure your amps are working really good and are tubed up.”

In terms of pedals, do you have any particular secret weapons?

“I love those old EHX Memory Man pedals. It’s got one feature that’s really cool, which is that it’s got a gain knob on it, so it’s like you’re taxing an amp. It’s so natural-sounding, and when you start adding a little edge on it and crunch, it’s perfect. And I’ve had the Boss GE-7 seven-band equaliser, the kind of off-white one, since the ’80s.

“Now, when I walk around and see other guitar players, I see one of them stuck to their ’boards and I say, ‘You get that off of me?’ [Laughs.] They go, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did. Man, you’ve used these for a long time.’”

Your own personal contribution to the tone of many sessions, even ones that you’re not on…

“I kind of puff my chest up and say, ‘Yeah, I can probably take credit for that [laughs].’ But those pedals right there – and they’re just basic pedals – are great. Other than that, I’ve probably got more distortion pedals on my ’board than any other kind of pedal, like a Tube Screamer and my [signature Wampler] Hot Wired pedal.”

What’s the story behind your first signature guitar, the Valley Arts Custom Pro Telecaster?

“That was the first deal that I had with the Valley Arts Custom Shop. It had a bigger neck on it – it really had a lot of wood and it had an oil finish, which made it nice… but it was really big. When they were shaping that neck, I said, ‘Stop right there, it sounds great. It feels good… but the neck is big [laughs].’

“Some guitar players say, ‘That neck is just too frickin’ big,’ and some of them shave it down a little bit. But I haven’t played that guitar in a long time, and then I went to Paul Reed Smith [for the PRS Brent Mason signature], but we weren’t trying to duplicate my Telecaster; it was kind of a three-pickup guitar that had a floating tailpiece and all that.”

It sounds like the Valley Arts Tele was nice but not quite right. Is that why you eventually hooked up with Fender for your Stories Collection signature Tele?

“Yeah, this guitar with Fender, finally it was the right people. And why is that? It’s a Fender Telecaster that I’ve always played, right? It was like the perfect match-up and, finally, with the right company and vendor. They got it perfect for the most part.

“It’s got the Glaser G-Bender, which Glaser showed the guys at the Custom Shop how to work and put together. So that guitar is definitely my favourite. It was a dream come true for me since I was a little youngster to have a signature guitar of my own.”

Why do you prefer the Glaser G-Bender over the B-Bender system?

“With the Glaser, I can set the tension a little bit better. And now, these new signature model Fenders have the new Glaser with the new and improved G-Bender in it. But my original guitar still has the old one in it because I’m just used to it. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks [laughs]!

“With the old Clarence White [B-Bender], I played Marty Stuart’s and you know that he plays the shit outta his. I grabbed it and it was a little too flimsy, but he had it set light. With mine, a lot of guys go, ‘Holy shit, is this working?’ because the tension is so high. I say, ‘Yeah, that’s the way I want it, man. You just gotta muscle it down, so it doesn’t warble.’

“With Marty’s, it’s like having two guitars glued together or something. That’s the whole thing. But with my Tele, I didn’t want to alter it too much and the Glaser only takes out about one per cent of the wood; it’s just a pathway to the saddle from underneath the bottom, right where the neck goes in the body. But everybody likes a different thing. I’m just kind of stuck with my style, so like I said, it’s like trying to teach an old dog new tricks.”

You seem as busy as ever. Will you ever slow down?

“I’m getting more selective about what sessions I do now. Back in the day, I was hitting the sessions until my eyeballs were popping out. I’d go in early in the morning, start at 10 and get home at 11 or midnight. It was starting to wear me down, so I’m happy to say that I don’t have to do that any more. So I don’t hit it that hard any more, but there’s some young guys who do.

“I see them doing it, and there’s some great players out there right now. I see a lot of young guys doing what I used to do and hitting it hard, and they get them big black eyes, you know? It’s like Don Kelley used to say when he saw somebody tired like that, ‘Your eyes look like two piss holes in a snowbank!’ [laughs]”

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

Fresh off her partnership with Gibson on a signature J-45 acoustic signature guitar, country star Margo Price knows a thing or two about collaborations.

The guitarist and singer-songwriter has worked with the who’s who of the music world, including Bonnie Raitt, Mike Campbell, and Willie Nelson, to name just a few. Now, her autograph is etched forever on a guitar signed by many legends, including one of her idols, Johnny Cash.

So how did this come about? Well, one of Price's co-songwriters on her upcoming album, Hard Headed Woman, Rodney Crowell, is a Nashville legend in his own right.

Aside from having had five number one singles on the Hot Country Songs chart, all from his 1988 record, Diamonds & Dirt, he also bagged two Grammys and has co-written with Keith Urban and Tim McGraw, among others.

He was also married to Rosanne Cash between 1979 and 1992. So it’s perhaps because of this period that Crowell owns a guitar with Johnny Cash's signature etched on it.

“We had so much fun over there that day, just swapping stories with him and passing the guitar around,” Price recalls of one of their songwriting sessions in an interview with Broken Record Podcast.

“And he has this really old black acoustic guitar that everybody has signed. It's got Johnny Cash's name scratched into it, and at the end of the write, he had me sign his guitar. It was like a rite of passage. And I had him sign mine, too.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Price talks about her approach to guitar playing.

“Sometimes I don't know chord names, but I know how to play them,” she asserts. “I mean, I know my circle of fifths, and there's definitely been times where I've been able to kind of break through something that's never been done, like Hands of Time is an A, but the chorus goes down, it modulates down to G.

“And when I initially wrote that song, my husband said, ‘I don't think that works. That doesn't sound right,’ but it gives the illusion that the key is being moved up, because I'm jumping up into my belting voice, but I'm actually modulating down.”

In more Margo Price news, the country star recently talked about playing Willie Nelson’s Trigger, and her prized Martin acoustic, signed by Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Kris Kristofferson.

As one of Nashville’s first-call session players, Derek Wells’ work can be heard on tracks by the who’s who of the country world and beyond – with names such as Brooks & Dunn, Maren Morris, Mason Ramsey, Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Combs and Post Malone all recruiting him for their records.

Wells’ parents are both musicians – his mom a songwriter, singer, and pianist, and his dad a guitarist and producer – but being raised in a family of musicians didn’t necessarily mean that he had it easy.

On the contrary, it forced him to prove himself and think carefully about whether he wanted to pursue music and sideman-ing as a career – with all its massive highs and lows – or not.

“I actually had a very real understanding of how good you had to be, because I’ve watched my dad play guitar, and he’s great, and, I still watched him have ups and downs in his career as a sideman and as a guitar player – lose gigs and go from this thing to this thing,” he says on the Zak Kuhn Show.

“I knew I wasn’t ready at all. In that period, when I came home, I was living in the basement. I had a job waiting tables. I did nothing but go to work to wait tables, and come back and play guitar in the basement.”

As he sums it up, “If I wasn’t at The Cooker [the restaurant], I was playing guitar. I didn’t have a girlfriend, I didn’t hang out… I was just trying to prove to my parents [that] I wasn’t going to be a loser.”

When they saw him taking his craft seriously, his parents decided to pitch in. “They were like, ‘Okay, we see the hours you’re logging. If you’re serious, here are some things you should be working on. One of those being – go buy the Nashville Number System book.’”

Emerging from Music City, the Nashville Number System is a shortcut number system that conveys chord progressions, originally developed in the mid-’50s by the Nashville vocal group, the Jordanaires. At the time, the outfit was very much in demand, recording multiple sessions and songs per day.

Since they were only given lyrics – and not sheet music – they didn’t have time to memorize their harmony parts for so many songs, so they came up with a system of using numbers based on each song’s key, kind of similar to solfège (Do-Re-Mi, etc.).

Wells continues, “I'd say, every week, when the new records came out, I would go to Walmart, and I would buy a contemporary or classic country record, like something you would hear on country radio.

“And then I would buy something that I thought was just cool, like an Incubus record or something. I would just try my best to learn those records, cover to cover. I was not good enough – but I was practicing all these things at once [and] trying to teach myself how to write the charts.”

The grind has definitely paid off for Wells, with the in-demand guitarist recently sharing the spotlight with Chris Stapleton, Brothers Osborne, Keith Urban, Dan + Shay, Reba McEntire, Clint Black, LeAnn Rimes, and Little Big Town at the 60th Academy of Country Music Awards.

Historically, producers and guitarists have often enjoyed and endured a love/hate relationship. After all, it’s a producer’s role to challenge musicians and question their decision making and that can sometimes lead to creative clashes. Session pro Dann Huff knows all about that first-hand.

In the early 2000s, Capitol Records chief Mike Dungan had earmarked Huff – who’d produced records from acts as diverse as Megadeth and Faith Hill – to supercharge Urban’s third studio effort, Golden Road.

Urban’s previous efforts – The Ranch and his first solo effort proper debut – had some success, but, as Huff notes, “It wasn’t as guitar-oriented as [Capitol Records] thought it would be.”

As such, label chief Dungan felt Huff was perfect for injecting some more electric guitar into the heart of Urban’s sounds, given his talents behind the desk and with a guitar in his hands. But there was a minor problem.

“Keith didn’t want anything to do with it because he’d heard records I produced, and he hated them,” Huff tells Premier Guitar. “It wasn’t his kind of music. He made country records. So basically, he set up a whole scenario to try me out on one song, to see if it worked.”

Urban had given Huff free rein to pick any song slated for the upcoming album for his carefully devised test, with Somebody Like You his pick of the bunch. The rest, from the band to the studio and engineer, was up to Urban. When Huff arrived in the studio, it turned out that they’d already been tracking for several days.

“So I took my Matchless [amp] and my Gretsch, and I got in there,” he says. “I had decent instincts about the song. It was like one of those things where it dropped from the sky. Everything was right.”

Urban’s skepticism was, of course, laid to rest and they became a successful team, but Huff explains the two players were initially like “oil and water”.

“It was never a struggle, but there was intensity about our recordings,” explains Huff. “He had this ridiculous punk rock ethic. I had this whole pedigree of pop music. Music for me was orchestration, so you put these two guys together and you got a confrontation.”

That often resulted in explosive moments, and the guitar solo for Somebody Like You proved to be especially tense.

“He got so pissed off at me,” Huff adds. “Keith is such a physical guitar player, and up to that point, I was more auditory. He was pulling one way, and I was pulling another, but his weakness at that point was settling for something that doesn’t sting as hard as it can sting. I’m listening for those moments – you could play the same five notes 100 times, and they’ll always sound different. I’m waiting for the stars to align.

“So I’m waiting this out, enjoying his guitar playing. But I was not reading the room, he was getting angrier with each take and he said, ‘Crikey! What the fuck do you want?!’ I was like, ‘If you’re done, you’re done. I think we might have it.’”

Despite their constant push and pull, there was a magic sweet spot to be found somewhere between their contrasting schools of thought. The pair would go on to work on six albums back-to-back, which produced a litany of number-one singles.

Three Golden Road singles, Somebody Like You, Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me, and You'll Think of Me all topped the US country charts. Defying Gravity (2009) produced two chart toppers in Sweet Thing and Only You Can Love Me This Way, and its follow-up, Get Closer, saw all four singles reach the summit: Put You in a Song, Without You, Long Hot Summer, and You Gonna Fly.

Despite his long-standing relationship with Fender and the Telecaster, Urban has surprised many by joining the PRS family. His signature guitar, he says, will be a T-style build designed to put up a fight.

First-call Nashville studio guitar ace, Justin Ostrander, has had his fair share of anecdotes. He has, after all, featured on over 20 number-one hit country records, with his recording credits including Steven Tyler, Cody Johnson, Luke Bryan, and David Lee Murphy, to name a mere few.

Being a busy session guitarist means keeping an eye out for guitars and accessories that can give you an edge over other players and help you land the gig – and, in Ostrander's case, one of his trump cards is a Coricidin bottle slide...

The story starts with Ostrander's search for an offset, specifically a Jazzmaster, that he could add to his arsenal.

“So Dan, of Danocaster [Guitars in Nashville] fame, is a huge Fender offset nerd, and I bought a Tele from him a few years ago,” he tells Vertex Effects.

“He said, ‘Well, if you find one that you think you want to buy, let me know, and I'll go with you and we'll check it out. I know those guitars inside and out, or I could just build you one.’”

Ostrander explains he scoured the menagerie of guitar stores in Nashville, but he still didn't find anything that tickled his fancy.

“So I said, ‘Okay, let's do a build then,’ and he asked me what color I wanted. And I said, ‘You know, I've always really liked that Burgundy Mist Metallic from the ’60s.” Dan worked his magic, and lo and behold, the guitar was finished – but, as Ostrander puts it, there's another cool part to the story...

“I went to play it at his house and to pick it up. He told me, ‘No pressure. Play it. See if you like it.’ And he actually had this slide sitting on his [Fender] Deluxe Reverb. And so I picked it up, and I started goofing off.”

The slide wasn't just any slide. As Ostrander notes, “I was like, ‘Man, this sounds different than all the glass slides I have,’ and I noticed that it's kind of wavy on the sides, and it's got this little logo on it.

“It was this old Coricidin bottle – one of the ones that people pay way too much money for on eBay. And I was like, ‘You know what you've got here? Like, this is a really great slide.’”

Traditional bottles of the cough and cold medicine Coricidin, from which DIY glass slides were made, were favored by Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, and Gary Rossington, and famously formed a key part of Duane Allman's signature tone.

They have since taken on a life of their own, with vintage bottles fetching insane amounts on the secondary market.

“And he goes, ‘If you take the guitar, you can take the slide.’ And I was like, ‘Are you sure? Because the last time I saw one for sale on eBay, somebody wanted $300 for it.’”

“I mean, it had the original label in it and everything,” Ostrander details. “But that's literally the Duane Allman slide, and it's real glass. It's not like the Pyrex thing that people do now. And so I got a free slide with my sweet Jazzmaster.”

However, as the guitarist explains, there's a downside to playing such a highly sought-after slide...

“I'm terrified to play at most places because I don't want to drop it!” he adds with a laugh. “Especially [if] backstage has a concrete floor.”

In other session legend tales, Dann Huff recently talked about his intimidating experience recording with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones for the first time.

Rockie Lynne has his adopted family to thank for their support during his early acoustic guitar journey, but it turns out he already had a passion for six-strings running through his veins – something he found out after he finally met his biological father as an adult.

His 2006 self-titled debut album saw the country music ace arrive on the scene in style, with a score of hits including Lipstick breaking into the Billboard country charts. The success came after an atypical childhood, though.

“I was abandoned as an infant, so I did not know who my parents were,” he tells Guitar World in a new, soon-to-be-published interview.

As for how he started on his guitar-playing journey, Lynne remembers, “A man came to the orphanage where I lived and played for us kids. He sang and played traditional folk songs in a thumb-picking style, and I was hooked. I began to dream about having a guitar, and soon it was all I could think about.”

Then, when he was an adult, Lynne made a fascinating discovery about his birth father – and it led to him getting hold of what he now considers to be his most cherished guitar.

“I met my biological father as an adult through a DNA test and was surprised to find that he had been infatuated with the guitar his entire life as well,” he reveals. “He worked as a truck driver, played guitar, and sang every weekend with his band around the Southeast.

“His prized possession was a 1972 [Martin] D-35 that he played for all those years. Shortly before he passed away, he gave it to me. I cherish his memory and his guitar every day when I play it. I wrote My Father’s Guitar in his honor. It is indeed my most important piece of gear.”

The song, released in March last year, tells the story of the instrument and the generational passing-of-the-torch it signifies. It’s one of a run of single releases that coincided with a documentary film, Rockie Lynne: Where I Belong, which charts his career.

Martin guitars are so often steeped in history. Joe Bonamassa's pre-war acoustic is the only one in his sizable collection that he's “scared to play”, while Eric Clapton was moved to tears when he sold the 1974 000-28 he wrote Wonderful Tonight on. Lynne’s Martin has a very different kind of history behind it – and it's a touching one at that.

Rockie Lynne’s full interview with Guitar World will be published in full soon.

Country guitar hero Brad Paisley has joined forces with Fender on the Limited Edition Brad Paisley 1967 “Lost Paisley” Telecaster – a vintage-inspired guitar that revives the cult classic Paisley finish originally introduced in 1968.

“From the very beginning, there has always been a pattern following me, from the moment they wrote my last name on my birth certificate,” comments Paisley.

“It’s unreal that my own name is one of the coolest finishes I think Fender has ever done. This is an attempt to show what this lost color could have been. It’s the best guitar I’ve ever had.”

First introduced in the late ’60s, the Paisley Red and Blue Flower finishes, albeit short-lived, were Fender's response to the Summer of Love counterculture movement – featuring decorative Cling-Foil paper adorned with vibrant colors, a matching metallic burst, and a psychedelic flair.

However, the finish's composition made the instruments particularly vulnerable, with chipping and flaking becoming unavoidable. By late 1969, Fender had discontinued the line, and these guitars became somewhat of a rarity.

However, Brad Paisley, who shares a name with the design, naturally gravitated towards these guitars. In fact, together with close collaborators Zac Childs and Joe Glaser, Paisley set out to restore one of his well-worn ’67 Teles and revive the Paisley finish, and, through painstaking research and craftsmanship, managed to recreate the original Paisley Cling-Foil paper.

Now, through his collaboration with the Fender Nashville R&D team, Paisley will personally build 19 guitars (available exclusively through his channels) while the Fender Custom Shop in Corona, California, will produce 67 guitars, which will be sold through Fender's dealer network.

Featuring a lightweight body crafted from a combination of alder, paulownia, and spruce, the “Lost Paisley” Tele promises to deliver “exceptional resonance and comfort”.

Aside from its striking Blue Paisley Relic finish, it's fully kitted with a ’60s Oval “C” maple neck with a round-laminated maple fingerboard, Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Hand-Wound Lost Paisley pickups, and Glaser “G” Bender system for “fluid, pedal-steel-like bends.”

And for a period-correct touch, the $7,000 guitar is bundled with custom accessories, including a vintage-style case and Fender strap, as well as a certificate of authenticity.

For more information, visit Fender Custom Shop.

Earlier this year, the elite team of Master Builders and Apprentices launched the Cocktail Collection – a keenly spec'd collection that blends the artistry of fine guitar-making with the vibrant aesthetics and spirit of classic cocktails.

Guitarist and songwriter Mac Gayden – best known for his work on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and co-writing the long-standing pop hit Everlasting Love – has died at the age of 83, at his home in Nashville. According to his cousin, Tommye Maddox Working, the cause of death was complications due to Parkinson's disease.

Gayden played a key role in helping turn Nashville into the cross-genre recording hub it is today. As part of an elite group of session players known as the “Nashville Cats,” Gayden gained a solid reputation for being the first call from that group. Bob Dylan producer Bob Johnston once dubbed him, “The best guitar player I ever heard.”

One of his most notable contributions was his work on Dylan's seventh studio album Blonde on Blonde. His percussive guitar work on Absolutely Sweet Marie showcases his breadth as a player – which makes it all the more unfortunate that it went uncredited for decades.

Non-country artists flocked to Nashville to work with Gayden – which is why he ended up on records by Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, The Valentines, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Cohen, Bobby Vinton, and The Pointer Sisters.

“I first met Gregg and Duane [Allman] when they first came to Nashville and played the Briarpatch for a while. Jammed a little with Greg one night and did a session with Duane at RCA studio B one night,” he told Blues GR in 2013, giving a sneak peek into his day-to-day life as one of Nashville's hottest tickets.

“We were both beginning to play slide guitar at the time. So we would swap licks with each other in between songs. Everyone thought that it sounded cool but it didn’t go down on record.”

In fact, it was his slide guitar and wah pedal combination – epitomized on J.J. Cale’s 1971 Top 40 single Crazy Mama – that cemented his signature technique and sound.

“A few years ago, a writer called me ‘father of the wah slide,’” Gayden wrote in his 2013 autobiography, Missing String Theory: A Musician’s Uncommon Spiritual Journey. “It’s humbling to realize I developed a stylistic approach to playing slide.”

As a songwriter, his most enduring success came in the form of Everlasting Love – the evergreen song he co-wrote with Buzz Cason and which eventually found its way onto records by artists as diverse as Town Criers, Gloria Estefan, Sandra Cretu, Love Affair, and even U2.

However, his exploits didn't end there. As the ’60s rolled into the '70s, Gayden and a couple of other alumni of the early ’60s pop combo the Escorts formed two improvisational country-rock outfits: Area Code 615 and later, Barefoot Jerry.

The former – a supergroup of sorts consisting of some of Nashville's most prolific session musicians – was formed in the wake of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album and managed to record two albums, which included their best-known track, Stone Fox Chase, before resuming their session work.

Barefoot Jerry, on the other hand, was an early Southern rock group, which also featured Gayden on vocals and a hodgepodge of Nashville session players. Gayden would depart after just one album to record his first solo album, McGavock Gayden, in 1971.

After a series of other projects and accomplishments – including being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as part of the Nashville Cats, and being featured in the 2015 exhibit Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville – Gayden released his last album, Come Along, in 2020.

Speaking about his intimate relationship with music and its links to spirituality in the Blues GR interview, Gayden concluded, “I knew from an early age that music comes from another dimension, because it grounded me. In other words it relaxed my physiology and allowed me to feel Bliss, something as child that comes naturally.”

“On days when I didn’t have some music or art, I felt something was missing. So as an adult, meditation takes me every day to that subtle place of experiencing the world, and thus feeling that inspiration and bliss once again.”

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.

Johnny Cash is inextricably linked with Martin acoustic guitars, and most often spotted with dreadnoughts – primarily his D-28 and D-35.

As the story goes, in the early '70s, Martin was commissioned to craft an all-black lacquered D-35 for Cash. While the guitar brand had never considered designing a guitar with the star's requested finish, Cash eventually did get his all-black “Man in Black” Martin, which became a staple of his performances for the next two decades.

One of the standouts in Cash's ample Martin collection, however, was his D-42 Johnny Cash – the 1997 signature model crafted to wholly unique specs. It was, of course, finished in Cash's preferred all-black lacquer; however, it's also the only 42-style guitar with a three-piece back that Martin has ever built.

“As far as his black Martin [D-42], he said [luthier] Dick Boak called him one day and said they [Martin] wanted to do a signature guitar for him,” his daughter, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash tells Guitar World.

“He kind of paused and said, ‘I've been waiting for this phone call my whole life.’ I am certain he was involved in the design element of that one, the black guitar.”

In August, Rosanne launched her very own signature guitar with Gibson, the Rosanne Cash J-185, alongside the Johnny Cash SJ-200 – a rare, handmade version of her father’s distinctive signature late 1950s SJ-200. These guitars were released in celebration of Gibson's incredible 130 years of music history, as well as the Cash family's equally remarkable legacy.

Speaking about the process of bringing these signature guitars to fruition, Rosanne says, “Gibson called me and said that they would love a reissue of my dad's iconic Gibson at the same time as a signature model for me.

“They wanted to pair it with mine and release both at the same time. At first, I was afraid of getting too close to my Dad's model. But then I thought about it with my husband, John Leventhal [noted musician, producer, and songwriter], who said, ‘No, this is a good idea. Let's do this.’”

Canadian country-pop singer-songwriter and guitarist Lindsay Ell cut her teeth co-writing her first album with Randy Bachman and touring with Buddy Guy in her late teens.

She went on to establish herself as a bona fide solo artist, as encapsulated in her latest EP, the introspective Love Myself, while also taking on the role of host for the revived Canada's Got Talent. Another impressive addition to Ell’s résumé? Becoming fellow Canadian Shania Twain's go-to lead guitarist.

“I never saw sidemanning being a part of my job,” Ell tells Guitar.com. “When she asked me at the beginning of the year if I would come be her lead guitar player, I just was like, ‘Um, how can I say no to Shania?’ But what an exciting adventure!”

Ell had supported the Canadian icon on select dates of her Queen of Me tour in 2023, before fully joining the Twain circus with performances at her Las Vegas Come On Over residency shows and the Legend slot at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, to name just a few.

Ell adds: “It’s been so wild playing the songs that I learned to sing and play on guitar when I was really little, now standing on stage three feet away from her.”

In an interview with The Standard, Ell also referred to this opportunity as “a full circle pinch me moment.

“I think the first song I fell in love with Shania was No One Needs to Know, one of her very first singles and now, I play that song on stage with her. It has just been so lovely getting to see how Shania works and really see how she empowers everybody in her crew and her band and she lifts us all up and challenges us to be better and so it has been such a beautiful experience.”

Back in July, Twain was presented with a stunning handmade guitar in celebration of her musical legacy and Irish heritage.

80-year-old Walmatjarri elder and blues musician Kankawa Nagarra has just won Australia's most prestigious music award – the $50,000 Australian Music Prize (AMP) – for her debut album Wirlmarni, beating established music acts such as Amyl and the Sniffers, Nick Cave, and the Dirty Three.

The AMP, now in its 20th year, aims to focus “entirely on artistic merit” and “financially reward and increase exposure” for Australian musicians who have released what they consider to be the best album of the year. It often goes to new acts, with previous winners including some of Australia's best exports, like Courtney Barnett, King Stingray, and the Avalanches.

Nagarra, also known as Olive Knight and “the Queen of the Bandaral Ngadu Delta,” said she was “thrilled and proud” to win the award. She stated that the album “has been thousands of years in the making,” as it incorporates sounds from the nature and people of Wangkatjungka, a large Indigenous community in northern Western Australia.

“Coming from the remote community of Wangkatjungka, which in the past has been shown in a negative light with the focus on the issues and problems, people don’t often get to see the beautiful and positive aspects of my home,” she continued.

“And I know this award brings much pride to the people of Wangkatjungka, especially to the school and all the children who I hope to be a role model for.”

Nagarra is part of Australia's Stolen Generations – having been taken from her parents and sent to a mission where she first discovered gospel music.

While working on homesteads, she immersed herself in country music and rock – which were popular on radio at the time. However, she fell completely in love with the blues – the genre that made the most significant impact on her – when she first heard it played by a busker. She didn't buy her first guitar until she was 40.

Nagarra sings in both Kriol and English and has performed her works around the world, including touring with Hugh Jackman for his Back on Broadway show.

After thanking musician Darren Hanlon, who recorded and produced Wirlmarni, she added, “I feel that music is a responsibility. Caring for nature is a responsibility, and protecting culture is a responsibility for its holistic well-being. All these things are connected, and I make it my life’s work.”

Also included in the shortlist were Amyl and the Sniffers' Cartoon Darkness, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Wild God, the Dirty Three's Love Changes Everything, Grace Cummings' Ramona, Dobby's Warrangu: River Story, Hiatus Kaiyote’s Love Heart Cheat Code, Rowena Wise’s Senseless Acts of Beauty, and Audrey Powne's From the Fire.

Warner E. Hodges of Jason & the Scorchers is perhaps the most energetic country rock guitarist of all time. Slinging his Telecaster on its strap 360 degrees over his thigh, spinning in circles, soloing with a cigarette up his nose – while his hat stays on his head and no note is missed – is definitely cowpunk.

Born to country musician parents, he joined the band formerly known as Jason & the Nashville Scorchers in 1981, alongside equally energetic lead singer Jason Ringenberg. Over the decades they’ve been given many wacky genres, but their roots stem from punk rock and country.

“The musical influences from the four guys was a pretty amazing thing,” Hodges says. “Everyone brought their quarter but the four quarters added up to way more than a dollar. We were listening to Hank Williams and George Jones; and also the Ramones, AC/DC and the Sex Pistols. Jason was listening to Neil Young and Bob Dylan. The drummer, Perry Baggs, was listening to Van Halen.”

The Scorchers built a hefty reputation for their wild stage presence. “It was four dudes that all fronted a band before themselves,” Hodges explains. “Everyone had been the guy – nobody was gonna get outshone. You didn’t know where to look or who to watch.”

Were there ever any onstage mishaps with the Scorchers?

“Oh, yeah! It’s an expensive mistake with a Les Paul if you lose it! And that’s happened a few times… I’ve torn up 15 or 20 nice guitars. I would literally put two Telecasters in a gig bag and check it. People would say, ‘Aren’t you worried about them?’ I’d say: ‘They aren’t going to do anything to each other that I wouldn’t do.’

“I had a Sunburst Anniversary Tele that I did the forward throw with in Norway – and I felt the strap go. I was like, ‘Okay, it’s gone.’ I watched it sail out into the dark. I got it back after the show; it went 16 rows deep and it still worked!

“That same guitar got run over by an airplane tractor. It destroyed the case but didn’t do anything to the guitar. I played it the next night! You can’t do that with a Les Paul. That Tele’s probably the toughest guitar I own.”

When did you first feel an emotional connection to the guitar?

“I started noodling when I was 14. The first time I saw AC/DC it was like, ‘I gotta learn how to do that!’ I didn’t sell myself as a guitar player until I was 19 or 20. When I heard Never Mind the Bollocks – we had a little punk rock scene here in Nashville – I was like: ‘Okay, I’m a guitar player. I can do that. I can sell my services.’”

Was AC/DC the drive for you to play rock music?

“Yeah – I’ve seen them 106 times. I go see those guys and I’m that 15-year-old kid again for two hours. It was like, ‘Oh, I gotta get out from behind the drum kit and get out the front there. Angus looks like he’s having too much fun! Let me in on that!’”

Jason & the Scorchers have released many albums over the years, but their most successful track was a cover of a Bob Dylan’s Absolutely, Sweet Marie.

“Part of the reason we did a good job with it was that I thought it was the greatest song Jason Ringenberg ever wrote – I didn’t know it was a Bob Dylan song! Had I known, I’d probably have refused to play on it, like a complete 22-year-old idiot.

“The cover came out the way it did because we didn’t bring a lot of preconceived ideas to the song. And we lucked-up. That was the first time we worked with a real producer, Terry Manning. He was involved with Eliminator for ZZ Top at the time. Terry brought technical proficiency and ideas to the band that we didn’t have as stupid kids.”

Did Bob Dylan have a reaction to your cover?

“We toured with Bob in 1989. The first three or four shows, we weren’t playing Sweet Marie because it was his song. Cut to show four and Bob asks, ‘Why ain’t you boys playing Sweet Marie?’

“‘Well sir, it’s your song.’

“‘Yeah – your version’s better than mine. You should be playing it!’”

I heard he wanted to buy your ’64 Jazzmaster.

“Yes, he did. It was the first guitar my parents ever got me; they left it for me in the closet for when I decided to start learning. I still have it. Most of our debut album, Lost & Found, is that guitar.

“Mr. Dylan asked me almost every day when on tour, ‘Hey, when are you going to sell me that Jazzmaster?’ I said, ‘No sir, I’m not going to sell that Jazzmaster.’ It’s not a seriously valuable guitar – but it is to me. I’d be remiss to get rid of it.”

How much might you have got out of him?

“I wasn’t even going to negotiate. He could have offered me half a million dollars, and I wouldn’t have sold it. It’s not worth anywhere near that, but I’m not selling it. I don’t tour with it any longer – I’ve caught two different people trying to steal it.”

Early on in the Scorchers, you opened some shows for the Ramones and R.E.M. – how did those opportunities arise?

“I don’t know where the Ramones opportunity came from, but we did well with it and they were good to us. They made sure we got fed. By the end of the tour our stuff was broke-down and we were playing all of their gear. They didn’t get all buddy-buddy with us, but when we had a problem they sorted it out for us.

“The R.E.M. thing… I saw their first show in Nashville. They played to 16 people in a little punk rock club and slept on the floor of the club. We probably played 100 shows with them in the first three years we were together. They’re great guys, and I still have a relationship with all four of them.”

You’ve moved between Fender and Gibson throughout the years. Why is that?

“The Scorchers is basically a Fender Telecaster single-coil gig. I played Teles and Strats forever. But I had to become a Gibson guy in Dan Baird and Homemade Sin, as well as Bad Satellites.

“It’s almost like learning another language. The first few tours, I’d bring a Les Paul and a Telecaster, and I would inevitably end up on the Tele. I finally just brought two Les Pauls, and I was miserable for a week or two. It was such a different animal. All my Tele tricks didn’t work on a Les Paul; your right hand, you’ve gotta have a lot more finesse.

“Here in Nashville, there’s the Gibson Custom shop. Cody Higbee built me a magnificent guitar – a 1958 custom shop Lemonburst. I’m glad I had to learn to speak the Gibson language. I’ve got a nice Custom Shop SG with a huge neck, and a Custom Shop 345 with a jumbo neck. The fatter, the better for me.”

What guitar gear do you depend on now?

“I went through a lot of gear, but what I’m trying to do has remained the exact same. With Jason & the Scorchers I always tried to find one amp that could play ‘cry in your beer country’ and as loud crazy punk as you wanted to go.

“If we’d just played country, I would have bought a Fender Deluxe. If we were playing just rock music, I’d have bought a 50- or 100-watt Marshall and been done with it.

“Now I use a Goldfinger 45 Bognor amp – it’s the best amp to do both things. It’s a two-channel amp that also has a volume boost for both. The clean side, you can’t make it get dirty; it will not get dirty. The dirty side, you have three different versions of a Vintage Marshall amp.”

For readers who might not be familiar with the Scorchers’ music, could you recommend one song that encapsulates the band?

“I’d have to give you two or three: Harvest Moon, Sweet Marie of course, and Last Time Around, all from Lost & Found. Then White Lies, Pray for Me Mama or Still Tied. It’s all serious ‘cry in your beer country’. I’ve given you six now!”

Any regrets from your musical journey?

“Not regrets. It took what it took to get here. I do wish I didn’t start drinking. I think alcohol and other things caused a lot of things in Jason & the Scorchers, and I’ve seen it destroy many a band. It would have been nice if I had just said, ‘Nah, I’ll pass.’”

What would your advice be for someone who’s going through a similar situation?

“Don’t drink, just for a day. Take a day off. You don’t have to decide about tomorrow just now. Take the day off. Talk to someone about it – nobody understands a drunk better than a drunk.”

• The Warner E. Hodges Band’s latest album Soul Shaker is out now.

Actor and songwriter Kris Kristofferson has passed away at the age of 88.

The news was confirmed in a statement issued by Kristofferson’s family, who said the country music great passed away peacefully in his home in Hawaii surrounded by his loved ones.

“It is with a heavy heart that we share the news our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 28 at home,” the family wrote.

“We’re all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”

Born in Brownsville, Texas, on June 22, 1936, Kristofferson would eventually find his way to country music and silver screen stardom following an academic upbringing that saw him study literature at Pomona before attending the prestigious University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.

While in the UK, Kristofferson experienced an early fling with the grassroots rock ‘n’ roll scene there, performing unreleased music under the name ‘Kris Carson’. After graduating in 1960, a spell as a helicopter pilot in the US army, which did nothing to diminish his musical sensibilities, followed.

In the army, he’d write songs inspired by the likes of Hank William and Bob Dylan. An offer to teach English at West Point came, but the aspiring artist turned it down in favor of becoming a “Nashville songwriting bum”.

After relocating to the country music capital of the world in ’65, Kristofferson worked as a janitor and held down other odd jobs as he tried to get a faltering solo career off the ground. After persevering with his passions in Nashville for more than four years, Kristofferson soon found his big break – not, as legend has it, until after he’d flown a National Guard helicopter to Johnny Cash’s house to drop off some tapes of his music.

Big-name artists soon began covering Kristofferson’s material. Cash and Ray Stevens both recorded Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, which gave its composer his first award: the Songwriter of the Year at the 1970 CMAs.

The floodgates opened, and soon Kristofferson had everyone from Waylon Jennings and Gladys Knight performing his material. Janis Joplin also recorded Me and Bobby McGee – a cut from Kristofferson’s second album – which became her signature track.

Simultaneously, Kristofferson’s solo career finally found its footing, with the arrival of his self-titled debut in 1970 and 1971’s The Silver Tongued Devil and I.

Kristofferson’s style was credited with having a transformative effect on the Nashville scene and country music as a whole. As Bob Dylan himself once put it, “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”

A leading light in the ‘outlaw country’ sound of the 1970s, Kristofferson adopted a harder-edged style that eschewed the contemporary commercialism of Nashville – a sound that would reach its fore in 1985, when Kristofferson formed The Highwaymen with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash.

Music was just part of Kristofferson’s talents, though. By ’72, a hugely successful acting career was in full swing, with the songwriter starring in features directed by Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah and others.

He won a Golden Globe for his performance in A Star is Born – for which he shared the screen with Barbra Streisand – and starred in Semi-Tough, Songwriter, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Blade.

Over the course of his career, Kristofferson released 18 studio albums, and until the pandemic continued to tour incessantly with his Gibson acoustic guitar.

“When I got started, I was one of the people hoping to bring respect to country music,” Kristofferson once reflected. “Some of the songs I had that got to be hits did that. I imagine that’s why somebody might vote me into a Hall of Fame. I know it’s not because of my golden throat.”

Keith Urban has revealed he’s currently working with PRS to produce a new Tele-type electric guitar, having recently followed his close friend John Mayer into the brand’s ranks.

Country rock great Urban is, understandably, closely associated with the Telecaster, and over the years has developed a close bond with ‘Clarence’ – a 40th Anniversary Fender Telecaster that has been his main guitar since 1989.

And, after John Mayer inspired him to whittle down his guitar collection, it turns out it was also Mayer and his PRS Silver Sky signature – coupled with the sonic shortcomings of Clarence – that prompted Urban to jump ship to Paul Reed Smith.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Urban has shed light on his upcoming PRS guitar, which will look to put his own unique stamp on the timeless T-type template.

“John had Paul build a guitar for him for the Dead & Company run that he did [the ‘Dead Spec’ Silver Sky], and he wanted one guitar, like, 'Can I just play one guitar all night?'” Urban remembers. “I thought, 'Let's see if I can get back to a bit more of that.'

“I can play anything on Clarence; I just wish it sounded a little bit better,” he continues. “It's a frustrating thing. So, that was really the beginning of the search with Paul and the people up there at PRS. I want to see if we can create something modeled on the feel of Clarence but with a better tonal range.

“I like a little bit of a hollowbody, so it's got a little bit of that in there. We have a customized f-hole shape that is modeled after the phoenix tattoo on my forearm. And it's got these pickups that are specifically Paul's design.

“They're humbuckers but have an amazing, almost Dumble harmonic range. I can get squeaks and squawks out of them; unlike any other guitar I've got. And the playability is just beautiful.”

According to Urban, one of the biggest teething problems with moving to PRS guitars was their apparent lack of ‘fight’. In other words, PRS guitars play too well – and Urban is used to playing vintage guitars that offer a bit of resistance.

As such, Paul Reed Smith had to throw out the rulebook to dial in some artificial ‘fight’, which seemingly goes against the entire design ethos of a brand widely recognized for its perfectionism.

“My struggle is I like a little fight out of a guitar,” Urban admits. “I'm used to it, and I'm a bit more of an aggressive player. I'm trying to see if I can get Paul to help me get a bit of fight out of a guitar designed to give you no fight and effortless play.

“It's like, 'Good God, what are you asking for?' I'm like, 'I'm just asking for a little struggle!' I do better when I struggle a little bit with the guitar, if that makes any sense.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen PRS work with an artist to produce a T-type, having tapped Myles Kennedy for its flagship Tele-inspired model last year.

Will Urban’s be similarly shaped, and will it also be made as a widely available signature model? Only time will tell, but seeing as Urban is one of the biggest country Telecaster champions currently around, this looks to be something of a coup for PRS.

Guitar World's full interview with Keith Urban will be published later this month.

Country artist Tommy Cash, the younger brother of Johnny Cash, died on September 13 at the age of 84.

His death was confirmed by Nashville's Johnny Cash Museum. Icon Entertainment Founder & CEO Bill Miller, who launched the museum over a decade ago, said: “Shannon and I lost a very, very dear friend last evening. I knew him for over 50 years.

“Tommy Cash was a loyal supporter of the Johnny Cash Museum and a very beloved member of our extended family as well as a highly respected member of the music industry. This great man will be deeply missed by his friends and many loyal fans around the world. Please keep Tommy’s beloved wife, Marcy and his family in your prayers.”

Cash was born in Dyess, Arkansas, on April 5, 1940, the youngest of six siblings, one of whom was Johnny Cash. While in high school, he dipped his toes into the music industry and forming a band. After graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and worked as a DJ for the Armed Forces Radio Network.

In his early years as a musician, Cash played with Hank Williams Jr. and eventually landed a record deal with Musicor Records in 1965. He gained further notoriety with his 1968 single The Sounds of Goodbye, and his breakthrough single, Six White Horses, in 1969 on Epic Records, which was dedicated to John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Other notable releases include Rise and Shine, One Song Away, and I Recall a Gypsy Woman.

While his relationship with Johnny was at times strained, the brothers remained close. Tommy toured with Johnny in 1976, and the two performed around 120 shows together. He later toured with Connie Smith, George Jones, and Hank Williams Jr.

Since Johnny's death, Tommy continued to pay tribute to him in concerts and even released the records Tribute to My Brother (2004) and Fade to Black: Memories of Johnny (2008). Throughout his career, he performed around the world and carried the torch for the Cash music legacy long after his brother passed in 2003.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my new Guitar World column! Over the course of these lessons, I look forward to demonstrating many of my favorite approaches and techniques that I rely on for rhythm guitar and soloing.

Stylistically, I’m a big fan of everything from classic Chicago blues to country, western swing, jazz and more, and it has become natural for me to draw on elements of all of these different styles in performance and recording situations.

I’d like to begin by offering a cool country/blues-style fingerpicked rhythm guitar part that’s played over a “train beat” which is so named because of the incessant repeating accents a drummer would play on the snare drum that resemble the “chugging” of pistons on a fast-moving locomotive.

In 44 meter, these accents are played as 16th notes; in 22 meter, also known as “cut time”, these accents are eighth notes. The examples in this column are illustrated in 44, so the parts are written with combinations of eighth and 16th notes.

Figure 1 illustrates a standard I - IV - V (one - four - five) 12-bar blues form in the key of A. In this key, the I (one) chord, or tonic, is A, the IV (four) chord is D, and the V (five) is E.

I fingerpick this rhythm part, using a thumbpick to strike the lower strings while fingerpicking the higher strings with my index and middle fingers.

If you prefer to use hybrid picking – combining fingerpicking and flatpicking – the low strings are sounded with the pick and the higher strings can be fingerpicked with the 2nd-4th fingers (middle, ring and pinkie).

In bars 1-4, I start with my fret-hand index finger barred across the D and G strings at the 2nd fret and ascend and descend on the D string, moving between the 2nd, 4th and 5th frets.

Notice that each measure ends a little bit differently as the lick is repeated in the subsequent bar. Figure 2 offers a more detailed look at this rhythm part.

In bars 5 and 6 of Figure 1, I switch to the IV (four) chord by first playing D/A, with a low A note fretted on the 6th string at the 5th fret and F# and D played on the 4th and 3rd strings, respectively.

On beat 2 into beat 3, the notes on the 6th and 4th strings ascend while the high D note on the 3rd string remains stationary with each voicing. Figure 3 focuses on these chordal shapes.

After the return to the initial figure over A in bars 7 and 8 of Figure 1, I move to the V (five) chord, E7, in bar 9 and play an identical figure to that of bar 1 but moved down to the bottom three strings. I then return to D/A and resolve back to A in bar 11. Figure 4 focuses on these four bars.

This rhythm part is not all that different from a standard “Jimmy Reed” type of chordal figure, where a root note is alternately played against the 5th, 6th and flatted 7th notes; this is the basis of the classic Chuck Berry “rock and roll” rhythm guitar accompaniment style.

To make this part effective, it’s essential to accentuate the syncopated feel of the 16th- and eighth-note upbeats throughout the fingerpicked part.

This article is part of Guitar World's series of interviews and features with artists addressing and raising awareness around themes of mental health, particularly as they relate to musicians.

Koe Wetzel’s new album, 9 Lives, isn’t his first chart success – but it’s his fastest-rising, debuting at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and reaching Top 5 status on the Country and Americana/Folk Album charts.

He’s no stranger to the charts and packed concert houses, thanks in no small part to his unfiltered honesty. A talented singer/songwriter, and an anarchic performer on and off stage, his exploits are documented in his lyrics about hard living, wild nights, substance use – and the consequences.

But 9 Lives is different. When it was time to write and record, Wetzel found himself at a crossroads, ready to rip the Band-Aids off of some of his internalized wounds. With help from producer Gabe Simon, the lyrics, melodies and hooks that embed his songs into listeners’ heads are still there, along with the usual healthy dose of rebel spirit; but they’re presented with a mature, deliberately introspective approach.

You stated that writing this album was like therapy. How did Gabe Simon help you?

“He was open-minded to everything I had to say. Whenever he asked a question, he wouldn’t just let me spin. He wanted more facts. He opened up every little part. If I didn’t want to talk about it, he was fine with that; but there were certain things I needed to get off my chest, and Gabe made me feel comfortable doing that.”

What took you so long? Stigma? Upbringing?

“For sure. I grew up in East Texas and I was raised rough and rowdy – ‘boys don’t cry.’ It wasn’t that I never had anybody to talk to; I did. And it’s not that I don’t have anybody to talk to now; I do. But there are certain things I don’t feel comfortable talking about. So it was pretty much upbringing: take it on the chin and keep on moving.”

Your main guitar is Iggy, a Gibson J-200 Iguana Burst. What makes it right for you?

“I’ve had that guitar for six or seven years. It was unlike anything I’d ever held before. It’s near and dear to me – I think about retiring it and putting it in a glass case in my house. But as broken and beat-up as it is, and how many times it’s been in the workshop getting repaired, it’s one of my best-sounding guitars.

“Every time I talk about retiring it, everybody tells me to shut up and keep it on the stage. It’s a piece of me; every nick, every crack, I remember where I was and how it happened. It’s a memory holder. And she’s so smooth when I play her. She’s my main love; my best girl.

”I love the big, warm sound of the J-200s, and I’m a bigger dude, so they fit my build. I’ve got a J-45 rosewood – my first Gibson – and I call her Misty Rose. I’ve got a couple of Memphis 330s, a 335, a J-45 Roy Smeck that Ray Wylie Hubbard used to record one of his albums. It’s a really cool guitar that I keep in the studio.”

Which guitars did you use on 9 Lives?

“The writing was done on my J-200 and J-45 because I’m comfortable with them. I carry those with me wherever I go. We did most of the writing at Sonic Ranch [Tornillo, Texas]. We used some Martins and 1958 Hummingbirds on the album. Sonic Ranch has a phenomenal guitar collection. Opening those cases, I felt like I opened up the room to all the other artists who’ve written and played on those guitars. It was awesome to pick them up and play.”

You’ve said you had a good childhood. What were those early years like?

“I had a great childhood! It wasn’t the fairytale you see in movies, but it was great. My dad was gone a lot because he worked different jobs, and my mom worked her ass off as well. I was an only child for eight years, so I was alone a lot.

“We lived out in the sticks, a long way from town, so I didn’t grow up with a whole lot of friends out there – except for the cousins I’d see every so often. I found ways to cope with being alone and to entertain myself.”

When did music become a refuge?

“Music has always been there for me. I could be alone with it and express how I felt. When you get to your teenage years and really start listening to the lyrics and understanding music a lot more, that’s also when you start having feelings you’re never felt, like your first love; things like that. That’s when I picked up the guitar. I played music my whole life, but I started writing in my early teens. That’s when it became my outlet.

“I’ve definitely been in dark places, and that’s where I do my best writing. Also, writing helps me get out of those places. Having a guitar and being able to put stuff to paper helps me; comforts me. It’s a sense of security, knowing that I’m not alone and I have something nobody can take away from me.”

How do you protect your mental health?

“I’m still that small-town kid from Pittsburg. Whenever I’m off the road, I’m home doing stuff I love. I stay off my phone and off social media as much as possible, because after a day of that my morale is down, I’m pissed off at the world, and I’m like, ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’

“We’ve started leaving the venue as soon as we get off the stage. That’s helped with getting away from the staying up all night, partying until 4 or 5 in the morning and getting carried away.

“I’m not drinking as much. I’m going to the gym, taking care of myself a lot more, and waking up in a better mood. It’s given my mental health a big boost, being clear-minded instead of washing everything down with a bottle of Jack and some painkillers.

“Before, it was always about the party. Now it’s about seeing the bigger picture, keeping my head down, and doing my best. I’m more alive onstage and my voice is a lot better.”

Your image seemed to be at ‘Motley Crue at their worst’ level. Fans get off on it, but the persona is not the person behind it. You’ve changed your persona with 9 Lives – was that a risk?

“I never thought of it as a risk, but I was curious to see how the fans were going to react. I think people are responding because of the realness and vulnerability – me deep-diving into who I am instead of that persona of just being a fucking drunk rockstar.

“It’s definitely a softer side that people aren’t used to hearing. But I think they got exactly what we wanted them to get out of it – learning who I am, and knowing that I’m not this bland dude that only plays one style of music.”

What does that say about the progress we’re making regarding mental health conversations?

“That’s one of the main reasons I’m writing and speaking out the way I have. I’ve gotten messages from people saying, ‘I planned on killing myself, but I found your music and you saved my life.’ That means a lot to me. I don’t think I could live with myself knowing that people are doing that and I’m not speaking out. I guess knowing that is what keeps me writing and wanting to tell the truth.”

Have you ever been in that place?

“I haven’t, but I’ve known people who have, and it’s terrible. Luckily, I have a great support system. My family is awesome, I’ve got great friends, I have people around me who ask how I’m doing. Especially at this stage, I’m always busy and on the road, so the friends and family that check in on me keep me level-headed and let me know I always have somebody to talk to.”

There’s a moment in the Damn Near Normal video where you visit your friend Saul Martinez’s grave. Was it important to share something so raw and private?

“As personal and in-depth as that song is, I wanted people to get the same visual. I didn’t come from a whole lot – me or him, or most of my friends – and I wanted everyone to get a clear-eye view of exactly who I am and where I came from.

“Every time I’m back home I visit his grave, pour out a beer for him, and I sit there and have a conversation with him. As a society we don’t deal with death very well, and I’m no different. Having that scene in the video was a little bit of how I’ve dealt with it.

“I named one of my records after him [2019’s Harold Saul High]; that was another way. All those little pieces are in remembrance of him. He was a great dude and I never want anybody to ever forget about him. I won’t.”

Moving forward, has Gabe Simon opened the gates for your songwriting?

“We’ve talked about making more music. I’ve got a lot more stuff to get off my chest, so shout-out to Gabe for opening up this new side of me. I’m very blessed to have put out a record like this one, and I’m excited for what the future holds. I don’t know what that is yet, but I know there’s a plan for me; so I guess we’ll see in the months coming.

“I’ve got a long way to go and I don’t want to get burned out. We’ve been on the road for 12 years now and we’re coming up on some of the biggest times of my career, so I’m taking it all one second at a time, with a grain of salt, and enjoying everything in front of me.”

• 9 Lives is out now.

Mental health resources

• Mental Health is Health
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
• National Alliance on Mental Illness
• Samaritans
• Speaking Grief
• MusiCares

Once described in the country press as ‘a hardened Sheryl Crow’, young American singer-songwriter Morgan Wade certainly has a knack for finding the right chords to get to the truth.

The Gibson endorsee’s approach is one that’s deeply rooted in the music that soundtracked her childhood, but she’s also been able to add in her own contemporary twists, stretching out further into realms of pop, folk, rock and beyond.

“It’s hard for me to commit to just one genre,” she says, “but anyone who listens to my music will be easily able to tell I grew up on country.”

Ahead of the release of her fourth album, Obsessed, she shares some of the lessons she’s learned along the way…

Where did it all start for you in terms of picking up the acoustic guitar?

“Growing up, all I wanted was a Gibson guitar. I’d be looking at magazines, seeing photos of SJ-200s thinking to myself, ‘I’ve got to get one of those some day!’ I ended up with my first guitar around the age of 10, and it was made by a brand called Johnson. I guess it was a cheaper version of a Martin-style acoustic.

“But I held out and kept my eye on those Gibson. In my freshman year of college, I went and bought a small L-00 Gibson. I remember it was just about the cheapest one they made. I paid 40 bucks for it up front and then put the rest on a payment plan because I was just a college kid.

“It’s cool now, because I probably own around 15 Gibson acoustics. I can even call them up and get them to make me some custom models. It’s a full-circle moment for me, because all I wanted as a kid was a Gibson guitar and now they’re exclusively all I play.”

So which were the Gibson players you looked up to early on?

“I was a huge Elvis fan. When I was seven years old I was obsessed with him, and of course he had that Super Jumbo, and he also played the Dove. All these years later, Gibson still make Elvis signature models. But back when I first saw clips of him, I remember seeing his name on the fretboard and thinking that was the coolest thing!”

As for other players, who ended up affecting your sound the most?

“I grew up listening to a lot of Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash. I grew up with my grandparents, so that’s how I listened to the older generation’s music. I remember seeing Loretta Lynn and thinking, ‘That’s one small woman holding this huge guitar!’ I was listening to her songs a lot and learned a lot from playing those songs.

“I look up to her as a songwriter and guitar player. I never wanted to be someone who can shred on the guitar. That will never be my strong suit. I just want to play those chords and write those songs. That’s what I look to the guitar for. I’m happy with my C and A-minor shapes. I guess I’m more of a simple player. I have really small hands, so I’m not a huge barre-chord person.”

And, like Loretta, you still love your oversized acoustics!

“People often laugh, telling me I’ve chosen to play the biggest guitars possible, but I like them because of the louder tone. They tend to be pretty powerful. And even when I play live, my tech guy prefers the sound of me using Super Jumbos. For some reason, they always sound the best.

“For backup, I have three custom J-45s that also sound really good. They’re not quite as loud or bright as the Super Jumbos, but they’re still nice and clear. In the studio, it’s usually all about the Super Jumbos.

“I have a pre-war J-200 that I’ve used for recording. It’s one of the best-sounding acoustics in my collection. It’s loud but also very smooth when you need it to be. It’s funny, I’ve seen people much taller than me with smaller guitars but I’m only five foot two and happy playing the biggest ones Gibson make.”

What would you say are the defining characteristics of acoustic country?

“My first introduction to live music was bluegrass. Where I grew up, in Virginia, it was all heavily bluegrass. My grandfather loved it and we’d be listening to those bands every Friday. One thing I noticed about all of those writers is that it always felt like they were telling a story.

“The chords would often be very simple, it was more about the storytelling behind it all. That stuff is more powerful than just the chords. Country is just four chords and the truth. The same goes for most kinds of Americana, it’s all about the storytelling and honesty, whatever that may be.

“And there’s a lot of sad stuff in there, even when you don’t expect it. A lot of bluegrass music would have all these happy banjos but the words would be about really dark stuff. I love that, and it ended up influencing how I write now.”

Is there one guitar that you always use to write with?

“For writing, it used to be my J-45 in black. I used that for a really long time, but in 2014, Gibson put out a Cherry Red Everly Brothers J-180 and I wanted that guitar so bad. They didn’t make that many but it’s all I wanted. I also had zero dollars in my bank account, so I couldn’t get that guitar. I’d been searching for years hoping to find it but struggled.

“I tried all the guitar shops and asked around. And then six months ago, there was this new vintage store in Nashville who had that guitar. I had about one hour free before I needed to be somewhere else, so I hopped in my car and got it. That’s now my favourite guitar to write with.

“It’s so good that I’ve already started writing a bunch of songs for my next album after Obsessed. That J-180 is now my go-to guitar. I’m not touring with it because I don’t want anything to happen to it. What I use live is an Everly Brothers Black SJ-200 with the double white pickguard. I’ve got a thing for those double pickguards!”

Are those the guitars we’re hearing on the new album, then?

“Actually, the main guitar for this one was Miranda Lambert’s signature Gibson Bluebird. It’s another one I haven’t toured with, but man, it sounds great. That got used and then we added in the Black SJ-200, which also had a great tone for the record. I feel like everything has gone more simple, even in terms of electric stuff.

“My guitar player, Clint Wells – who funnily enough runs a Metallica podcast called Metal Up Your Podcast – used an ES-335 a lot and some good Fender amps. You can’t go wrong with a Blues Junior.

“Everything felt more simple with this record. It’s a very acoustic-led singer-songwriter record, but we stuck a lot of pedal steel on there as well. I bring my live band in for the records. When I’m on tour, I’ll play electric for a couple of songs, there’s an ES-335 that I love. I’ll throw a little overdrive on there for a couple of songs, but the rest of the time is me with my acoustic and the other guys handling the tearing it up.”

Which of the new songs are you most excited about?

“The title track is very acoustic-driven, with a lot of fingerpicking. I really like that one because it’s so much fun to play. The same goes for Moth To A Flame, which also has some great-sounding pedal steel on it. Those are the most fun ones to play. I don’t usually do a lot of fingerpicking, but this album has a lot of stuff that was written and recorded that way.”

What other gear could you not live without? You’re clearly no stranger to a guitar capo…

“I’ve tried a bunch of different capos, but to be honest I always come back to my Kyser one. I’ve spent a lot of money trying out the more expensive ones, but for some reason, the Kyser is like the gold standard for me.

“I’ve had other brands hit me up to send over free ones but by this stage, I just don’t need them, and I know what works best for me. I use D’Addario strings, they’ve always been the best and we go through a lot of those! I’m a pretty simple player, I like to keep things low-key. But a good capo and a good set of strings are two things I couldn’t live without.

“As for picks, I like the real heavy ones. I cannot stand a thin pick! So I tend to stick with the Fender Heavy ones, they always sound really good. I’ve actually been using them since I started playing guitar. They’re all I’ve ever wanted to use, though we also have some Dunlop custom picks which have my name on them.”

Is there a riff you use to test out acoustics in the shops?

“I have these strange noodle-y things that I like to do. I might do these little walk-downs and stuff like that. Weirdly enough, I always like to play the Bobbie Gentry song Ode To Billie Joe, but I don’t know why. It’s a strange little hooky and repetitive thing but I always play it when trying out acoustics.”

Speaking of writing, how exactly do you go about finding the right hooks and rhythms for each song?

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is to not overthink. When I write a song that I know I will be using – like Met You and Take Me Away from my Reckless album, or the title track from Psychopath – they seem to come in one take.”

“For some reason those are my most popular songs! I will just sit down, pick up my guitar and feel inspired in that moment. I can’t be one of those people who sits down and forces myself to write a song. I could do it, but I don’t think it would create anything that ends up on a record. I need to feel inspired first.

“I could go a month without coming up with anything and then suddenly sit down and write three or four songs. I overthink absolutely everything, but with songwriting I’ve learned not to. You just write what you’re feeling. It doesn’t matter if you don’t end up using it. Just get it out there. I don’t pressure myself.

“In the world today, I feel like we all crave real stuff. Everything is so fake, you look on the internet and it’s just the best parts of everybody’s life. But when I tend to write these songs, I’m not really writing about the best parts of my life, I’m writing about the stuff I’m going through and all the tough shit.”

What would you say are the greatest acoustic tones you’ve ever heard?

“I’ve really gravitated towards Jason Isbell’s Southeastern record. That dude is just a maniac on guitar, songs like Cover Me Up, Elephant and Live Oak are amazing. Obviously he’s an incredible songwriter, but he’s also a brilliant guitar player.

“I guess I tend to think more about the acoustic-driven songs. That record was my favourite album for a long time and it’s what got me into his music. Another album I love the sound of is the first record by The Lumineers. It’s simple guitar stuff, but I love how it feels raw and real, instead of sounding crazy polished.”

You’ve achieved great things since making your recording debut six years ago. What has felt like the biggest moment so far?

“I would say right now! We’re currently on tour with Alanis Morissette and Joan Jett. On the first show, I saw both of them watching me from the side of the stage. You can’t really beat that! Those are two badass women who have been such a huge part of music and paved the way for more female artists.

“Then I woke up to Alanis texting me, being really kind and saying she thought my show was amazing. I couldn’t believe it… how did my life end up here, chatting to Alanis and seeing Joan Jett watching my whole set? That’s crazy!”

• Obsessed is out now via Sony Music Nashville.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has had an illustrious career sessioning for artists like Joni Mitchell, Donna Summer, and Dolly Parton, alongside stints with Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers. One of the most iconic songs he played on is Dolly Parton staple 9 to 5, originally written for the 1980 comedy of the same name, starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Parton in her first movie role.

“I was out here in LA, got the call, showed up, brought my original '61 Jazzmaster with me. [During that time,] I was playing in and out of the house band in the Palomino Club [a popular music venue in North Hollywood that was once the most prominent country music club in LA],” Baxter says in an interview with Vertex Effects.

“I was on the road with Johnny Rodriguez [Tejano and Texas country music singer]. I mean, I was playing country music. And so to me, this was an easy one. But when I heard the song, they didn't tell me what to play. They called me because they wanted the Donna Summer thing [Baxter had previously performed on Hot Stuff]. They wanted something a little different.

“So I thought I would give it some bounce, which eventually helped the song out because it has a syncopation to it that you don't really hear in country music.”

He also recalls his experience meeting and recording with Parton: “Dolly just sat there and listened very sweetly. She was so kind. She was baking cookies. And really, this woman is an angel.

“But when they ran the track, I asked the producer, I said, ‘Is there anything special you want from me? You know, because there's really all these chords here.’ And he said, ‘I want you to do what Skunk does.’ So okay, I will.”

According to Baxter, what made the song stand out from the hundreds of country singles out at that time was its R&B influence.

“When I listened to it, it has a lot of [American funk and disco band] Fatback feel to it and R&B. And I think that any good flavor of R&B, if it's done tastefully, can be positive for any record because it's in people's DNA.”

There are two types of guitarists in the world: those who stick with one, maybe two guitars, throughout their entire career, and others who simply can't get enough. Keith Urban has given his take on why having fewer guitars can actually work in your favor, with a little insight from John Mayer.

“I had this conversation with John Mayer recently. He said to me, ‘You can tell when you hear a solo, how well that guy knows that guitar.’ I went, ‘He's so true.’ More than the sound and or whatever, more than anything, you can just tell that dude knows that guitar inside out,” he says in an interview with Rick Beato.

“And I said to him, ‘I kind of miss that.’ I think I played better when I had two guitars. And I'd like to get back to a little more of just one dominating the show, which has happened recently with this Telecaster I've had forever.”

Urban admits that he usually tends to fall into the latter category, as he uses specific guitars to achieve the tones he wants to incorporate into his songs.

“I've made a lot of records, and I've reached for certain things because I want that sound on that song. And so now I have this Danelectro.

“I didn't want a Danelectro, but I just wanted that for that one song. Then I wanted this old Gretsch for this song. Before you know it, you have all these guitars. I wasn't sort of going, ‘I want this in the collection, that in the collection.’ I don't do that.”

In other Keith Urban news, the Australian country star recently spoke out about scrambling to buy guitars at the last minute after a devastating flood ruined most of his collection back in 2010.

Keith Urban has recently recalled how the 2010 Nashville flood left his equipment storage complex under water, and ruined his guitar collection just before he was about to record his sixth album Get Closer.

The unfortunate timing meant he had to scour the Internet for a last-minute guitar purchase, a move that made him feel like he was “cheating” on his beloved guitars.

“So we know that our stuff is floating in the water in this warehouse every day, and we can't get in there to get it and get started drying it out. So days and days of that going on, and I got to start my record, and I have no guitar, so I buy a Clapton Strat off eBay,” he says in a new interview with Rick Beato.

“It shows up. I start the record with this Clapton Strat, and then I'm looking on eBay and I find some nice guitars. I know you and other guitar players might understand this. I felt like I was cheating on my guitars that were on life support in the hospital, and I'm looking at dating sites.

“That's what it felt like. I'm, like, ‘You never know. I might have to start a new relationship.’ So it felt so awful, getting anything new while all my babies were floating around in a river. So I got one or two guitars, and that was it. I couldn't get a bunch of new stuff. I just couldn't do it.”

Urban also discusses how one of his favorite guitars, a '58 Goldtop Les Paul he bought from Guitar Center's vintage room, was resuscitated after nearly getting ruined by the flood. “A lot of this stuff started chipping away post-flood,” he explains.

“But it came out of that thing sounding exactly the same as it was. Crazy the work that [Nashville-based luthier] Joe Glaser and those guys did, and my guitar tech, Chris Miller, did so much restoration work to drive everything out and put it all back together. It's remarkable how everything survived the way it did. The old guitars fared better than the new ones.”

Bruno Mars has returned with his first single in half a decade under his own name – a duet with Lady Gaga titled Die with a Smile. The retro-inspired track, released on August 16, was produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Andrew Watt.

Speaking about how the track came about, Lady Gaga says, “Bruno and I have a lot of mutual respect for each other and were talking about collaborating. I was finishing up my own album in Malibu and one night after a long day he asked me to come to his studio to hear something he was working on.

“It was around midnight when I got there and I was blown away when I heard what he had started making. We stayed up all night and finished writing and recording the song. Bruno’s talent is beyond explanation. His musicianship and vision is next level. There’s no one like him.”

“Getting to work with Gaga has been an honor. She’s an icon and she makes this song magical. I’m so excited for everyone to hear it,” adds Mars.

The music video features Gaga and Mars in a retro variety TV show setup, with matching red-and-blue outfits and an overall aesthetic that harks back to Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner.

Mars' guitar-of-choice, a 1960s Silvertone 1454 in redburst finish, further elevates the country-tinged tone of the single.

The three-pickup hollow body model with a Bigsby was produced by Harmony under the Silvertone brand for Sears. At one point, it held a top-of-the-line position under the Silvertone umbrella.

In addition to the fast-rising Gaga/Mars single, Watt has recently worked on a wide array of high-profile projects, including Iggy Pop's 19th studio album, Every Loser; The Rolling Stones' Hackney Diamonds – their first album of original music in 18 years, and Pearl Jam's Dark Matter.

“If you’re talking about a band like Pearl Jam or the Rolling Stones, who wants to hear those bands polished? No one,” Watt said when talking about his reputation for recording quickly.

“Those are two of the greatest live bands of all time. So, let’s record them live. Let’s have the edge. You’re there to produce. What good am I if just yes ‘em to death, right? I put [who I’m working with] right out of my mind. Otherwise, how could you possibly do anything besides just be a fan in the front row screaming?”

Country music's ‘hardened Sheryl Crow,’ singer-songwriter Morgan Wade, is a Gibson endorsee with a penchant for oversized acoustic guitars – and her love of jumbo six-strings is rooted in her formative influences.

“I remember seeing Loretta Lynn and thinking, ‘That’s one small woman holding this huge guitar!’ I was listening to her songs a lot and learned a lot from playing those songs. I look up to her as a songwriter and guitar player,” she tells Total Guitar.

“People often laugh, telling me I’ve chosen to play the biggest guitars possible, but I like them because of the louder tone. They tend to be pretty powerful. And even when I play live, my tech guy prefers the sound of me using Super Jumbos. For some reason, they always sound the best.”

The King of Rock and Roll was another artist who inspired her to pick up a Super Jumbo.

“I was a huge Elvis fan,” she says. “When I was seven years old I was obsessed with him, and of course he had that Super Jumbo, and he also played the Dove. All these years later, Gibson still make Elvis signature models. But back when I first saw clips of him, I remember seeing his name on the fretboard and thinking that was the coolest thing!”

Elsewhere in the interview, Wade talks about what it's been like to tour with Alanis Morissette and Joan Jett. “On the first show, I saw both of them watching me from the side of the stage. You can’t really beat that! Those are two badass women who have been such a huge part of music and paved the way for more female artists.

“Then I woke up to Alanis texting me, being really kind and saying she thought my show was amazing. I couldn’t believe it… how did my life end up here, chatting to Alanis and seeing Joan Jett watching my whole set? That’s crazy!”

For more from Morgan Wade, plus new interviews with Molly Tuttle and Tommy Emmanuel, pick up issue 387 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct.

Foo Fighters' Chris Shiflett's new EP, Starry Nights & Campfire Lights, features his own rendition of Thin Lizzy's Cowboy Song and Hanoi Rocks' Don't You Ever Leave Me.

Shiflett used a couple of different electric guitars to capture the tone he had in mind, including a Gibson Murphy Lab ‘59 Les Paul reissue that he tried to trick Joe Bonamassa into believing was a real ‘59 Les Paul 'Burst.

“It was a half-hearted effort. I had no illusion there, I knew he would clock it, of course,” says Shiflett in a new Total Guitar interview about the joke he attempted live on his Shred With Shifty podcast.

“Pretty much all the rhythm tracks were done on a Telecaster, and there’s some acoustic stuff. That was the meat of it. I did one pass of the solo, all the way through, on my Tele, and then at the halfway point I overdubbed a Les Paul on top, because I was copying what Scott Gorham did on the original.

“I felt like it needed that little extra something. On my last run of solo shows, I brought a Les Paul, Tele and Strat. Between those three I could cover all the sounds I needed to. The Les Paul was brand new, I just got it a few months ago from Chicago Music Exchange. It’s a Murphy Lab pretend 1959.”

In a MusicRadar interview, Shiflett had spoken at length about his Murphy Lab. “It's kind of a little bit of a darker burst – it's not the real pink ones. It's kind of dark, and it's really light. It's seven, or a little over seven pounds. So it's just light as a feather, and that thing just, wow. It sounds incredible and plays amazing.

While the Les Paul is far from the quintessential country guitar, Shiflett insisted that choosing something that’s a bit unconventional for a genre can pay off.

“I love it. Love it for country. I went to go see Hank [Williams] Jr. a few months ago, or maybe six months ago or something, when he played in LA and [he was] playing an SG a lot of the time and [had] real crunchy tones. It was kind of inspiring in terms of guitar choices, amps, overdrives and all that stuff.”

For more Chris Shiftlett, plus a rundown of the greatest guitar cover versions of all time, pick up issue 386 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct.

Gretsch has just announced alt-country star Orville Peck's first-ever signature guitar, the Limited Edition Orville Peck Falcon. With this new signature guitar, Gretsch promises to capture “Peck’s true iconoclast spirit with mid-century swagger.”

The headline spec here is that dazzling Oro Sparkle finish, which is complemented by a gold plexi pickguard and aged pearloid Humpblock fingerboard inlaid with western-themed artwork by Judith Rothman Pierce, one of Peck's go-to designers.

Construction-wise, the guitar features 2.5"-deep maple body with Gretsch "ML" bracing that aims to deliver “huge hollow body sound with exceptional clarity and acoustic nuance.”

Its 12"-radius streaked ebony fingerboard, with rolled edges and 22 medium jumbo frets, tops a 25.5"-scale maple neck with Gretsch’s U-shaped profile.

In a nod to contemporary players, the neck also features Luminlay side dots to make for easy fretting in low light.

When it comes to pickups, the Orville Peck Signature Falcon comes equipped with FT-67 Filter'Tron humbucker pickups. These were designed to emulate vintage Gretsch voicings, with a more well-rounded tone to fit the genre-fluidity of modern guitarists.

The Bigsby B6GP String-Thru vibrato tailpiece provides increased vibration transfer for enhanced sustain, while promising easier string changes.

“It's my sort of love letter to that era of country which was sort of rhinestone-y and flashy during the 60s and 70s, and so that's kind of what I wanted to approach with this, but still keep the classic feel of the Falcon,” says Peck.

“The white Falcon is such a versatile, beautiful guitar, so we wanted to stay true to the original and keep the classic feel, whilst adding some pizzazz. I think whoever picks up the guitar will be able to show a little bit of themselves through it.”

In a 2020 interview with Guitar World, Peck revealed that the Gretsch White Falcon is his “favorite guitar on the planet. They [Gretsch] were very, very kind to give me one. And I’m terrified to take it on tour.

“It’s so funny, I take it into every hotel room. I mean, I won’t keep it on the bus. I’m so afraid someone’s going to steal it! So, that’s, like, my absolutely number-one precious thing.”

Priced at $3,999, the all-new Limited Edition Orville Peck Falcon is available now. For more information, visit Gretsch.

Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter has been lauded for its modern take on country and Americana. Still, it might come as a surprise that guitarist Justus West, who played on single 16 Carriages, brought some progressive gear choices into the studio.

“As soon as I heard the demo version of the song, I knew it would be crucial to add rock elements on the chorus to really emphasize the scale of the song,” he tells Guitar World.

“Also, with all the songs on this album paying homage to Black American music, the blend of genres was also a worthy and needed addition. Honestly, the brief in my mind was to make this song as epic as possible.”

To convey the vision he had in mind, West opted for gear you might not expect to crop up on a Beyoncé album.

“Gear-wise, I used my blue Abasi Concepts Larada. Those active pickups really gave me the huge tone and bite I was looking for,” says West.

“I used the Plini Neural DSP as an amp sim with some added reverb from the stock Ableton reverb and also the stock Ableton Chorus to add a touch of wideness to the distorted guitars.”

Released by Animals as Leaders guitarist Tosin Abasi's company Abasi Concepts, the Larada's distinct shape, plus multi-scale fanned frets and Abasi signature Fishman Fluence pickups, make it a favorite among prog and metal guitarists. The same can be said for Neural DSP's Archetype, created alongside prog guitar virtuoso Plini. 

Their use on Cowboy Carter maintains the genre-fusion trend that country music is currently experiencing, with guitarists and bassists such as Matheus Canteri, Harmoni Kelley and Justus West tearing up the rulebook. 

In a 2022 interview with Guitar World, West explained how despite country not being his forte, the genre served as his springboard into the session world via an unlikely collaboration with country legend Vince Gill.

“Country is nowhere near my background, so it was a huge honor to go there [Guitar Center’s OnStage contest with Vince Gill] and be accepted. A lot of people don’t realize Vince is an incredible guitar player, so it was cool to be up there chicken pickin' with one of the greatest ever, and to be told I actually did a good job. Because of that, I ended up moving to Nashville, and played with Vince a few times.”

Speaking to Guitar World today, West also lifts the veil on how he got involved with the project in the first place – and how the recording sessions for a project as high-profile as Beyoncé’s went.

“I had actually worked with Dave Hamelin, the producer of this song, previously on an artist named 070Shake,” he explains. “He felt I could be an instrumental piece in helping him put this Beyonce song together as well.

“The recording session was a lot of fun. I was in the studio with Ink [producer, songwriter and guitarist Atia Boggs] and Dave until the sun started rising working on this jam! We recorded my parts in Los Angeles at Record Plant.”

Alongside West, Gary Clark Jr., Raphael Saadiq, Jon Batiste, and Nile Rodgers were among the extensive list of veteran guitarists who contributed to Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter.

Over the past year, country-inspired music has experienced a renaissance in the mainstream. From Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter to guitarists like Pedal Steel Noah, Matheus Canteri and MJ Lenderman racking up millions of views on social media, guitar-forward country music has solidified its position in the global mainstream music landscape.

To acknowledge this new country movement, Seymour Duncan has announced pickups “designed with the contemporary country guitarist in mind.”

The new Hot Chicken Strat and Hot Chicken Tele pickups' dual-coil design ensure an “old school” character to the tone, minus the 60-cycle hum. Seymour Duncan also promises that these new pickups have been tailored to meet high-gain demands while retaining clarity and tone definition.

As Seymour Duncan puts it, “These noiseless Stack pickups deliver searing hotness that will cut through any mix. Whether laying down scorching leads or simmering rhythm licks, these pickups ensure fiery country tone without the vintage hum.” Both pickups also promise to deliver a “natural compression” that's especially useful in the hybrid picking and country fusion worlds.

The pickups are designed to fit all Strats and Telecasters, as well as other electric guitars built in those two styles. The Hot Chicken Strat pickups, available in off-white, white, and black, consist of three single coil-sized pickups that can be bought individually or as a set. They come in a stacked coil design wound around A5 Chamfered rod magnets.

The Tele counterpart is made in a similar way and can also be bought as a set or as individuals.

“In the early 80s, we designed a stacked Strat pickup. Based on feedback of the Strat pickup, we're like, ‘Hey, that sounds like it would make an awesome Tele pickup,’” says Seymour Duncan. “We're not trying to make it sound like a Strat, but [use] these same characteristics that are working well for the modern country player.”

The Hot Chicken Strat set will set you back $357, with the Hot Chicken Tele set coming in at a slightly cheaper $238. For more information about these two new pickups, visit Seymour Duncan.

Last year, Gibson and country star Miranda Lambert reimagined the Hummingbird acoustic guitar as the Bluebird, which – according to the Gibson Gazette – became the company's best-selling signature acoustic over the past 12 months. Fittingly, Epiphone has now responded to that demand with a more affordable version. 

Lambert, who has eight solo albums and three Grammy wins to her name, had called the signature build “a dream come true,” upon its release, praising Gibson as “a company that was an early believer in me and my career.”

Now, players working with tighter budgets can enjoy her take on a dreadnought acoustic staple, which she gave a radical makeover as a nod to her song, Bluebird.  

“I wrote Bluebird with Luke Dick and Natalie Hemby in 2019 when Luke brought the line, 'There's a bluebird in my heart' from a poem by Chuck Bukowski to us,” she told Guitar World last year. “I love that Bluebird has a hopefulness to it; even when we face tough times, getting through them makes us stronger and makes us appreciate the good moments.”

The same tone woods have been used for the gloss-finished square shoulder body acoustic, with a solid Sitka spruce top combined with layered mahogany back and sides. Six- and four-ply ivory is used for the body’s binding, with one-ply binding used for its fretboard.

It offers a rounded C-profile mahogany neck, a 24.75" scale length, and 20 frets for its Indian Lauren fretboard. There are also Pearloid Split Parallelogram inlays, with its nut made of plastic. 

Its neck differs from the Gibson version with a tapered dovetail neck joint, as opposed to a compound dovetail neck-to-body joint, but otherwise, its core build is very similar indeed. 

Gold hardware continues the aesthetic, with a reverse belly bridge, Epiphone Deluxe tuning machines, and ivory pins helping keep the price point low.    

The Gibson model's L.R. Baggs VTC under-saddle pickup and preamp have been replaced by a Fishman Sonicore pickup and Fishman Sonitone preamp, which are tweakable via soundhole mounted volume and tone controls.  

While the custom bluebird design of its Hummingbird-style tortoise pickguard remains, its colors are a little more muted.

In conversation with Guitar World last year, Lambert spoke of how the ornate signature model could also help inspire more female artists to pick up an acoustic guitar, and that its extension into the Epiphone family will help further those aims. 

“My hope is that the release of the Epiphone Bluebird with a more approachable price point will make it possible for young girls and women in general to get their hands on one,” she told the Gibson Gazette. “If it makes it more accessible and achievable for girls to chase their dreams, then it’s a win in my book.

“A guitar is a powerful thing for a young artist, so we wanted to create a design that was special because of that.”

It ships with .012 - .053 gauge strings in a hardshell case and is available for $799 from the likes of Guitar Center – nearly $4,000 cheaper than the Gibson model. 

Head to Epiphone for more information about the Bluebird. 

2019 was yet another massive year for the dynamo that is the Zac Brown Band. The band played over 60 shows in the US and released The Owl, their fifth straight number one album on the US Country Charts. 

Despite this, the album is in no way contained within the country genre as it also contains elements of electronic, pop and more. We recently caught up with ZBB guitarists Clay Cook and Coy Bowles to talk about the album and mass appeal of their music.

You both started with the band at different points - did you both expect the band's sound to change over time the way it has?

Cook: "When I came in the band, it was just after they had some success with Chicken Fried and at that point even country music was in a different place. We were the different guys.

"The very first album had Brent Mason playing guitar on three or four of the songs. So it was coming out of the 90's and 2000's country scene. So that's what was happening in the band when I came in on the actual record. Live though, it was a lot more jam-bandy, with a lot of it improvisation and jamming.

"I'm coming up on 11 years for my anniversary and Coy I guess is at 13. We've seen lots of changes in not only country music but in ourselves. And even in the style of songs that Zac is writing."

Bowles: "I would answer that question completely differently just to give a different perspective. I mean, I think Clay's completely right. I wouldn't say that I'm surprised.

"From the very beginning it's always been just a journey and there's never really been one clear genre defined. So the fact that we are where we are right now is not surprising to me at all. 

"From the very beginning the idea was that we had a home country radio. We had songs that were getting played there and that was where we had a connection to our fans. Still, we were doing all kinds of crazy stuff on albums and all kinds of crazy stuff on the live show. Things that were way outside of that box. 

"We ended up here I guess because this is where we're supposed to be if that makes sense."

Does the success you've had stagger you considering this type of music doesn't fit into one genre? You’re not just in the country bin at the record store!

Bowles: "It's really interesting and I think that has something to do with the idea that we don't necessarily fit into one style. We've been blessed with success because if you're a hardcore country person then there's probably a way to listen to our albums as there'll be a few songs on each one that sound just like us five years ago.

"Then another person could listen to the album in a certain way and enjoy all this new stuff thinking this stuff's not country. So it's the idea that just one piece of art can be represented in so many different ways.

"I think music is at a really interesting point. My wife's father passed away years ago and his sisters sent us his record collection probably a year ago. It sat in a box for a long time because Clay and I both have really young kids so we've been pretty busy with that.

"My wife recently unboxed the records and I had a chance to start listening to them. I never got to meet him as he passed away before my wife and I met, but the cool thing is he had an amazing taste in music. I looked at the records and found that it was all my favorite stuff, too!

"So having the experience of holding a record in your hand and getting to visualize, touch and hold the art, look at the liner notes then take out the record and play it. It's such an experience.

"So, coming from that to how people listen to playlists now, I don't think the way people listen to music has necessarily settled into one thing. Things are headed to streaming services and it's probably going be based more on songs than albums. But then again, physical albums are still doing well because people my age still want that tactile experience."

A song like The Woods doesn't necessarily fit someone's preconceived notion of what country music is. Do you feel any pressure from the radio at all in that regard?

Cook: "Honestly, in some respects I think The Woods is actually more representative of what's on country radio right now than anything else on the record.

"But yes, it's not what we would think of as Alan Jackson country. It's just one of those things where it was written and produced in a certain direction and that's where it ended up. It feels a little like Thomas Rhett and a couple other things at once."

The one of the things that impresses me most about you guys is that variety of styles, especially live. Even though you've sold a gazillion albums and you’re playing giant venues, this is real honest music and not cookie cutter.

Bowles: "I appreciate that, man. That means that you get it. From the very beginning, the idea was that we didn't have a lot of rules. None of that stuff was ever taken seriously as long as it made sense to everybody. 

"I think if there's one thing that we'll go down in history for, it would be the ability to play a lot of different styles of music. At the same time we are trying to have our own sound which is hard to do."

Do you guys get involved at all in the planning of the setlist?

Cook: "It starts out with our tour manager and he kind of lays out a good idea. He knows what we played last time we were in that city. He approaches it from an almost mathematical perspective.

"Then about an hour before we go on, he comes into our warm up and we're playing songs and warming up with acoustic guitars and he presents that setlist. Then we tear it to shreds!  We play what he writes but we move things around."

Bowles: "He basically comes in with a really rough idea of it and sometimes we’ll be like cool, this is killer. Other times it's literally like somebody handing in their homework.

"So it's kind of an ongoing joke with us, with him bringing the set list and we basically do whatever we want with it.

"The cool thing is he's bringing some legitimate concerns because at the end of the day, a lot of people pay a lot of money to show up and hear us play so we're all really determined to deliver the best show we possibly can. 

"So there's a couple of different checkmarks that need to get checked off. The crowd needs to have fun. We need to have fun, but the crowd comes first for sure. So there are certain songs that we know that we definitely need to play. 

"But at the end of the day, it's good to know that we played Whipping Post in whatever city the last two times we were here. So we probably don't need to play that song again because they've heard it already. So we switch it up and do something different."

Cook: "Another thing that is really predictable is that Paul, our tour manager, will send the list earlier in the day and every single time our bass player Matt Mangano comes back and has notes [laughs]. It could be the most perfect setlist in the world and Matt has notes."

How do you handle production? You are not playing a small club or theater where you can just throw some thought lights behind you and jam. You've got video screens and prerecorded video.

Cook: "They deal with it all the time. I'd say once a weekend at least, if not more, Zac calls an audible on stage. Every now and then we'll scramble but the songs that have pre-recorded material on the screen are pretty much song by song. 

"So it's pretty easy for them to dial up if Zac says, 'Hey I want to play Beautiful Drug.' It might cost us an extra 15 seconds between songs."

Bowles: "One of our main video guys, a good buddy of mine, really enjoys that element of it because there's so many shows he's been a part of where he says you just go into autopilot. So it's fun for them to be part of the improvisation."

So many bands can end the show within a minute or so of the previous night because they're so regimented with click tracks and the videos. Everything is so precise.

Bowles: "You know, to each their own, it's all good. We've found that on a night-to-night basis, depending on where Zac's voice is, there may be a handful of times where we switch it up.

How do you guys decide who does what night to night?

Bowles: "It's really interesting you mention that because honestly we don't do a lot of talking about it. Specifically, when we're in the studio it all falls into place but there are some guidelines. 

"For example, if it's chicken-pickin' or a traditional country kind of element, that's probably more of Clay's guitar alley than mine. If there's maybe an Allman Brothers slide kind of thing, that probably falls in my lane. Clay's really good at that jangly funk stuff. The riffy stuff is up both of our alleys.

"We play a lot of the same instruments but we play guitar very differently even though we're influenced by a lot of the same people. I mean, we're definitely blues influenced, definitely Allman Brothers, '90s stuff, classic '70s rock and we both are very heavily influenced by jazz as well. 

"We could go on for days talking about Grant Green and Wes Montgomery and all of that world or we could start talking about shredder stuff like Eddie Van Halen and '80s hair-metal. But we still come at those influences from different angles."

Cook: "I think whoever has an idea will try a part and we start there. Just like Coy said, if it's jamming then that's where it comes from. It's like a tag team thing."

Bowles: "I remember recording the Alan Jackson song As She's Walking Away. I remember being in the studio and having a guitar in my hand and fiddling around with it for a few takes and it was just completely obvious any ideas that I had were forced and Clay said, 'Let me give it a swing.'"

"The part he came up with is one of the coolest guitar parts ever. I think part of it is we're both really, really good friends with each other. I mean, we hang out with our kids aside from the show, during the show and when we're on the road cutting up. We're both really supportive of each other's playing. 

"I know Clay's one on my favorite guitar players. There are nights when we do shows on our own and he'll come and sit in with me and my band. I'll look over and think, 'Damn, dude - you can play the shit out of the guitar.'"

It's nice to hear is that there's humility and you guys are checking your ego. Guitar tandems can be notorious for breeding jealousy.

Cook: "That may have happened if we were 21 when we got together. We were 32 years old when we started playing together. People ask me, 'How is this band still together?' And I say, 'Number one is that it's one central leader and one guy makes all the real decisions.  Number two is that we weren't 20 when we all got together.'

Bowles: "We had all been in failed bands that we'd all put a lot of energy and effort into and we weren't going to screw this up. We had all been there before so when it started poppin’ everybody got in gear.

Cook: "I don't see music as a competition. I really don't want anything to do with being in a competition. From day one that was never a part of it. It's an art, it's creativity and there's no competition when it comes to art. To me, this is what it really boils down to and you appreciate it for what it is. I don't want to be compared to anybody else or have to compete with anybody else because I do my thing."

Bowles: "It is so strange about the reality singing shows. I guess it's based just purely on entertainment but you're removing all of the art aspect of it."

Cook: "I mean, look at Neil Young. I don't know if anybody is going to say that he's the best singer in the world. But he's definitely one of the most emotional singers in the world. If you asked my dad who his favorite singers is, he'd say Neil Young all day long."

You guys are heading out on the road after the holidays. Right now just the spring dates have been announced in the US. Is 2020 going to be The Owl tour part two?

Cook: "We're gonna be playing a good amount of the new album. We're talking about new covers. We're talking about how to reimagine some of the older songs.

"This is just how we're talking about it so it may be something completely different once February rolls around. You can expect Zac Brown Band to come out there and do what we do."

How do you guys approach picking cover songs?

Bowles: "It's actually a very complicated, long discussion going back and forth. Ultimately, it comes down to if Zac is comfortable singing it. We've worked out a bunch of different tunes, and ultimately Zac has to pick up on the vibe of it."

The Owl is available now via Wheelhouse Records. Catch Zac Brown Band on tour this Spring.