Fresh off the announcement of his Marshall endorsement, Jared James Nichols is taking it back to his roots – and by that, we mean the very reason he decided to ditch the pick and play fingerstyle exclusively, in a journey that took him from rural Wisconsin to world stages.

“I remember the first guitar I picked up, I picked it up, and I wanted to play it like a lefty. The first real guitar I got, though, the guy at the store was ‘Dude, flip the guitar, you're holding it wrong,” he says in his new Gibson documentary, The Long Road: A Jared James Nichols Documentary.

“He was like, ‘If you want to be a real guitar player and play really good guitars, you got to play righty. They don't really make great left-handed guitars.’”

Nichols was 15 at the time, and while he quickly got used to his newly purchased right-handed guitar, one thing that felt unnatural to him was playing it with a pick.

“It was fucking me up,” he says matter-of-factly, “and I needed to feel the strings under my fingers. I started to play without a pick, and I distinctly remember people telling me, ‘Man, it's never gonna work, you're never gonna be a great guitar player without a pick.’”

Discovering “guys like Jeff Beck and Mark Knopfler and Derek Trucks,” was the epiphany that he needed to stick to his own unique brand of fingerstyle playing.

“I was like, ‘Well, they do it,’ and then I just started to kind of do it my own way. No one taught me how to do it. I just said I don’t care. I’m just gonna try and see what happens. And what ended up happening was, I started to develop my own sound and technique with it, and I’m so happy now that I did.”

In one of his Guitar World columns, Nichols broke down his one-of-a-kind fingerstyle technique and waxed lyrical about the players who inspired him.

“Fingerpicking felt like the most natural approach. I use my thumb for downstrokes and my first three fingers for upstrokes,” he wrote.

“There was one player in particular who inspired me the most in regard to playing fingerstyle, and that was blues legend Hubert Sumlin, who was known most notably for his work with Howlin’ Wolf.

“When I heard Hubert play, it changed the way I approached the guitar. Then I heard Albert King, Derek Trucks, and Mark Knopfler, all fingerpickers. All these players demonstrated the incredible range of sounds available when fingerpicking.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julian Lage thought he was dreaming when he got to grace the stage with slide guitar legend Derek Trucks, and needed to see video footage of the performance to confirm it really happened.

The jazz guitarist burst onto the scene before he hit his teens, culminating in an appearance at the Grammys aged 12, and picking up the award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album with his debut album 10 years later.

He’s had a pretty wild career, but playing with Derek Trucks might take the biscuit for the 38-year-old.

“It was our friend Mike Elizondo, who is a masterful bass player and producer,” he tells Guitar World of how he was introduced to the virtuoso.

“He produced Tedeschi Trucks’ new record, and they’ve known each other for years. Mike was in New York for the release of that album [2026’s Future Soul], and he was at the Beacon Theatre with Nels Cline and Derek, and just texted saying, ‘Can you be here Friday?’”

Needless to say, he was game to join the band, which Trucks co-leads with his Fender signature artist wife, Susan Tedeschi, on stage for a song.

“I, like everybody else on planet Earth, think Derek’s just the best,” Lage purrs. “He’s such a gift.”

Trucks himself was a child prodigy, having shared stages with Buddy Guy aged just nine, so it was something of a collision of kindred spirits. But it happened in a flash.

“It was over before I knew it,” he says. “I showed up, I plugged in, and it was over. I went home, and then I saw a video, and I thought, ‘I’m glad I didn’t dream it.’ I had a wonderful time.”

Lage stepped onto the Beacon Theater’s hallowed stage on March 20th, 2026, a white Fender Telecaster in hand. Trucks, armed, as usual, with a Gibson SG, led the way through a free-flowing and sprawling Keep on Growing that lasted the best part of 15 minutes.

Lage’s smile gives away how much of a blast he was having, counterbalancing Trucks’ biting blues licks with plenty of spangly charm of his own as his jazz background poked through in all the right ways.

“It’s a testament to the guitar,” Lage adds of the show. “It’s a very friendly instrument, you know. The genre thing isn’t really a thing when you’re with like-minded musicians.”

Trucks, meanwhile, has been enjoying his own ‘pinch me’ moment, having taken Jerry Garcia’s $11m Tiger guitar to the stage just hours after it became the world’s second most expensive guitar.

Lage’s full interview with Guitar World will be published online in the near-future.

Tedeschi Trucks Band’s sixth album, Future Soul, containts plenty of guitar-driven fun, but it arrives with lessons learned. “Sometimes you throw ideas out there and get rid of them before they’re finished,” Derek Trucks says. “There’s no harm in writing a song that doesn’t see the light of day – and there’s a lot of those!”

He adds: “More often than not you stumble across something that sounds like it’s worth chasing down. There’s lots of great writers in this band, and I always trust the collaboration.”

Trucks – one of the most accomplished players of his time – keeps his playing fresh. “You’re always looking to refine a sound that you’re familiar with, but you’re also always looking for inspiration and to dig into that.

“When you’re playing using tube amplifiers, you’re chasing shit down every single night. There’s never two nights in a row where you go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s it – Great!’ It’s a never-ending search.

“Some nights you feel you can play anything, but some nights you’re pushing a boulder uphill. But that’s the charm of it: it’s never easy and you can never take it for granted. But that’s a common thing for guitar players – it’s a lifelong search.”

Did you mostly write your parts for Future Soul on acoustic or electric guitar?

It’s a mix for me. You’ll hear a line or a melody in your head and you find it where you can find it. When we get into writing mode and I pick up a guitar, I follow it where it leads me.

From a guitar perspective, what signals you’re on the right track?

When you know, you know. There’s a tune on the record called Who I Am, which was one of the first ones we wrote, and you could tell right out of the gate that the riff sounded great. But other ones are slow burns; they grow on you. When you finish writing it you end up liking it more than you did with first instincts.

Were you mostly leaning on your SG while writing and recording?

I write mostly on my SG, just not plugged in. I have a few small Fender Princetons in the room that sound incredible – I wrote with those too. I used an old ’58 or ’59 Flying V on a few tracks, a lot of acoustic guitars, and a few Les Pauls, which I don’t play all that often.

I used the Flying V on the track Future Soul. I wanted a super-aggressive sound, and the V is just incredible. I had this Octavian peal and just overdrove the shit out of the amp. It’s a lot of fun to play an instrument you’re not used to and getting a sound you’re not used to. So that track stands out.

I used a 1960 Les Paul on the outro of I Got You, which almost has a Duane Allman or Dickey Betts sound – I was kind of hearing that “family sound” in my head.

For new listeners, which track would you say best reflects where you and the band are at now?

I Got You feels new and fresh, and I think Future Soul is great. For me personally, the really simple guitar solo on What in the World is fun. That was one of the last ones I tracked.

There was a blank space for a solo – that’s always the most daunting, because you don’t wanna play some shit that sounds silly. You have to live up to the rest of the track. The longer you wait to play the solo, the more daunting it seems.

But when I finally got around to doing it, just kind of happened, and I felt like, ‘That feels like it belongs here,’ which was a relief! But I really like this record. You can start at any spot and it’s a good representation of the band.

A couple of months back you had the opportunity to play Jerry Garcia’s Tiger guitar.

My buddy Bobby Tseitlin was involved with buying that thing. I happened to be in New York with a night off, so I went down to the show. I was sitting next to Bobby. I was actually trying to bid on the John Coltrane horn because the estimate looked kind of reasonable.

It ended up being maybe ten times the estimate, so I was not involved with buying that! I was kind of dreaming about sitting on my couch playing John Coltrane’s alto – maybe it’s better that I didn’t get it! But I went in with that dream in my head.

The rumor was that you were buying Tiger.

Bobby ended up buying it for Family Guitars. Because I was sitting beside him, you could tell that everyone in the room thought I was buying it. Maybe it helped – people weren’t bidding the way they were on some of the other guitars!

But it was fun, man. I’ve never witnessed anything like that. I certainly couldn’t afford that guitar, but it was fun to play it and spend two or three days with it at the Beacon Theater, and see how fans of Jerry and the Grateful Dead revered that instrument.

Watching the way people reacted was pretty special – and I get it. I remember the first time I got to hold one of Duane Allman’s guitars, feeling like, ‘This is the reason I started playing the instrument.’

That guitar changed the way I thought about life and music. It’s a special thing that certain instruments have. So I understand the allure. Family Guitars are letting the people who really love and respect the guitar play it. That’s an important thing, I think.

What was it like to play Tiger?

It’s a very unique instrument. It’s super heavy and has a lot of different tones in it. It’s really articulate. It’s not a guitar where you grab the strings and bend them Albert King-style… I tried twice and broke two strings!

But by the second night I felt I could really get into it. I found some spots between the different pickup combinations where you could really get some unique sounds. And there were a few sounds where I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s that Jerry shit!’

I went to bend a string, and I could feel it; I was like, ‘Oh, it’s about to give,’ and I backed off! I found the threshold, and I felt like we understood each other a little bit more on the second night.

It was fun having enough time to get to know the personality of the instrument. It’s a really articulate guitar, and when you listen to Jerry, he was a bluegrass player doing electric music with a dash of acid and blues. All the Jerry guitars I’ve had a chance to play have a very articulate sound from top to bottom. Every note speaks pretty clearly, which was the way he played. It makes sense to me.

You said could feel the DNA in Tiger.

Certain instruments have a sound, feel, and personality. Had I picked up that guitar and not known it was a Garcia guitar, something about it would have made me feel it had his vibe and sound.

It nudges you to play a certain way. I said, ‘I’m gonna play this thing like it’s a guitar – I’m not gonna play a bunch of Dead tunes, because everybody else that plays it will!! I’m gonna play slide on this sucker and see how it acts.’

It was really fun to play it as an instrument and then try to play it as his instrument. It seemed to react a little differently when you just played it. It wants to be played a certain way, I think.

Tiger sold for $11.56 million. Could you have ever imagined that?

I wouldn’t have guessed that would have been a thing – it’s a wild time! When Covid hit, you saw it with sports cars and Pokémon cards, and it’s happened with guitars too. But a guitar is a piece of art that you can carry with you.

I’d rather see a Duane Allman guitar go for that much than a card with art on it. But Pokémon cards are pretty cool – I collected cards growing up, so I totally get it! It’s fascinating to watch: the whole world has gone insane.

Maybe years from now, one of your SGs will auction for millions!

Maybe! But I won’t get any of it, and neither will my kids! That’s the way it goes; they wait until it’s been away from the fans or the family for years, and then they sell it. I gotta tell my kids to hide a few guitars under their beds for 10 years longer than they think!

What’s next?

We’re gearing up for a big summer tour, where we’ll be leaning into the new record pretty heavily. The band is in a really healthy spot; there’s a lot of joy coming off the stage. To be this far into being a touring band, and to have that kind of energy, is a special thing.

It can be a grind sometimes – and it still is with the travel and other stuff. But the music and the headspace on stage are really good. We’re gonna ride that as long as we can.

• Future Soul by the Tedeschi Trucks Band is out now.

Derek Trucks has looked back on his experience playing Jerry Garcia’s Tiger guitar on stage, revealing the iconic six-string beast is a struggle to tame.

Some vintage gems play like butter and are everything their glittering reputations promise. But there are others that either put up a fight – like Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein – or, as Derek Trucks found out, crumble at the first sign of one.

“It’s a very unique instrument,” Trucks tells Guitar World in a new interview. “It’s super heavy and has a lot of different tones in it.”

But, he adds, “It’s not a guitar where you grab the strings and bend them Albert King-style. I tried twice and broke two strings!”

One of several highly customized guitars the late Doug Irwin made for the Grateful Dead pioneer, the hefty slab of tone was part of the recent Jim Irsay auction, where it sold for an eye-watering $11.5m, making it the second most expensive guitar in the world.

Trucks attended the event when Bobby Tseitlin, of Chicago-based collectors, Family Guitars, became its proud new owner. Hours later, Tseitlin loaned the guitar to the slide guitar ace for a run of shows at New York’s Beacon Theater, and Trucks believes his presence might have helped keep the price slightly lower than the $14.5m that David Gilmour’s infamous Black Strat sold for that same day.

“I was sitting with Bobby, [and] you could just tell that everyone in the room thought I was buying it,” he laughs, “Maybe it benefited in that people were not bidding against Bobby the way they were on some of the other guitars.”

Taking the guitar to the stage so soon after, Trucks says, helped him understand “how fans of Jerry and the [Grateful] Dead revered that instrument.”

“Watching the way people reacted to it was pretty special,” he continues. “I remember the first time I got to hold one of Duane Allman’s guitars, and feeling like, ‘This is the reason that I started playing the instrument.’ That guitar changed the way I thought about life and music. So, I understand the allure of it.”

Thankfully, night two of his brief affair with the guitar went far better.

“I found some spots between the different pickup combinations where you could really get some unique sounds,” he says. “And there were a few sounds where I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s that Jerry shit.’

“On the second night, I went to bend a string, and I could feel it, where I was like, ‘Oh, it’s about to give,’ and I backed off. I found the threshold, and I felt like we understood each other a little bit more.”

Trucks’ full interview will be published in the coming weeks.

At just 32, Matthieu Lucas has managed to build something extraordinary.

The entrepreneur, guitarist, and music enthusiast has painstakingly chipped away at building the emporium that is Matt’s Guitar Shop from the ground up, attracting A-list clients from all four corners of the globe.

The journey was far from plain sailing. However, judging by the caliber of artist guitars gracing every inch of the walls in this slice of musical paradise – tucked away on an unassuming street in Paris – it has well and truly paid off.

“It was not easy because you just show up at a store, and you look like a baby, and somehow, you start talking big dollars to very reputable dealers or collectors, and some of them were like, ‘How is this possible… this guy is selling drugs somewhere,’” he quips, as he recalls the early days of his ambitious venture.

However, it’s perhaps Lucas’ marketing prowess and ethos – that even the most prestigious of guitars are meant to be played on stage – that has transformed him into the go-to guy for artist guitars, with players such as Marcus King, Craig Ross, Billie Joe Armstrong, Myles Kennedy, and Yungblud all getting in on the action.

“I was very inspired by banks and huge associations buying Stradivarius [violins] very early on and lending them to musicians on tour playing classical music,” Lucas says.

“Guitars need to be shared with the world. That's my theory. That's why we lend ours on stage all the time, and that's always going to raise the value. They're really artifacts of a very specific period when the guitar revolutionized everything.”

What inspired you to start Matt’s Guitar Shop in the first place?

It’s been a little bit more than 10 years, actually. Time flies! [However], it all started when I was 15 years old.

I was not really interested in music or guitar in general. I was just playing video games with a friend of mine. His father showed up in the room and he said, “Guys, you need to listen to AC/DC.” And then I said, "Okay, [I’ll] give this guy five minutes with his old band and then I'm going to be finished with him.”

And we listened, and Angus Young was really the guy who penetrated my brain, and my passion for guitar started there. Six months later, I was seeing AC/DC in a stadium and buying an SG copy, and that started it all. And then I just wanted to buy more and more guitars because I started to discover bands.

Step by step, I went to Paris guitar stores. I was hanging out in a store called Guitar Store in Paris, and the guy was nice to me, and he let me discover the world of guitar sales – buying, selling… the daily life of a guitar shop.

I was already buying and selling privately. So it [Matt’s Guitar Shop] started in an apartment in Paris – a very small apartment. Three years, maybe four years later, we had the opportunity to get the place here, and that was it.

What were some of the initial challenges, especially as a young businessman?

They really put you in boxes initially, and that was not easy, but step by step, we met people that trusted me, and I knew who I wanted to work with over time.

I don’t come from a musical family myself. So I was mainly listening to those guys in my headphones when I was younger. I was listening to Lenny [Kravitz] and Craig [Ross] quite a lot because I have deep respect for that duo and what they represent.

One day, I show up at Rudy's Music [in New York], and Rudy just traded me one of Craig’s main touring guitars, which was his 1964 ES-345.

I didn't have the money back then, so I said, ‘Give me three months. I'm going to buy and sell in France, and I'm going to come back and pick it up.’ And my friend, who was with me at this time, told me, ‘Are you crazy? This guitar is way too much money.’

It was a time when social media was different. I just sent a message to Craig on Facebook, and two weeks passed by, and I was like, ‘Okay, this guy is busy. He's never going to reach me.’ And, suddenly, my phone is popping off, and Craig Ross just answered me, and he was so kind. [He was like,] this guy is 22 or 23 years old, he just made a huge purchase for himself, compared to his capacity.

So when I bought this guitar, we met at L'Olympia in Paris, and we got that connection going. So, for me, just meeting him was great because Craig really proves that you can’t buy class. I met Lenny later, but with Craig, it's been like 10 years and I still have that connection with him.

Which artists’ guitars command the most demand and attention?

It's quite mixed. We have John Frusciante's 1961 [ES-]335 that he played on stage. We have, of course, Paul Kossoff's 1955 “Black Beauty”, which was also used by Eric Clapton during Cream because they used to trade guitars quite a lot.

I’ve had this guitar for almost 10 years now, and I don't regret buying it. Another interesting one is Steve Lukather’s 1951 Esquire. We [also] have AC/DC's Cliff Williams’ bass – we have number three, which was toured all around the world for four years with AC/DC.

How has your vision for the showroom evolved, compared to when you first opened the doors?

When I started this business with artists’ guitars, I had two kinds of people: the people who believed in it and the people who were laughing at me.

Now, I was very proud when I was assisting at the [Jim Irsay] auction in New York City because I think that the guitar changed the world, and that the guitar will still be listened to in 1,000 years, and all those guys will be gone, and what's left is the music and their instrument. [When you buy that guitar,] you are the owner of their legacy.

So we feel kind of amazed at the shop every day because I really believed in that market when it was not fancy.

What made the Jim Irsay auction different?

Everybody was waiting for that auction. That was, after all, the greatest collection [that ever existed] of artists’ guitars.

People are starting to understand that there are good aspects to buying a guitar – whether it's for the investment or whether you're a guitar player – but if you choose wisely, those guitars will never go down [in price] because there is always somebody richer than you who wants to have that guitar.

Why have the Jim Irsay guitars leapt in value in such a short time span?

It depends on the auction house you're dealing with, the place you're buying the guitar from, and the marketing around that.

Marketing is key when you want to sell a pricey instrument like that, and I think Christie’s did a great job. They went everywhere, and when you're doing that, you just attract the best buyers because they don't have any doubt about what they're buying.

Everything went through the roof because those buyers were brought together by Christie’s in one room. They could have been telephone bidders. They could be room bidders, or internet bidders, but they were all together in one room for this collection, which was exceptional.

I see that with the shop. I don't have a single customer older than 60, and usually my customers are between 25 and 50, so it's a new generation who just discovered the world of guitars, and those people are working hard to get those guitars.

When you put them in one room, I can guarantee you that you will see new world records. If Jimmy Page's “Number One” was in that room that day, that would be between 20 and 30 million [dollars] easy.

But who are these people? What are their backgrounds?

I can give you an example of one person I know: Bobby Tseitli in Chicago. Bobby is a good friend of mine – those guys are really amazing, and they're putting together a collection called Family Guitars.

I knew they wanted [Jerry Garcia’s] “Tiger” so much. I gave him a huge hug when he bought that guitar, and I can guarantee you that this guy probably cried like a baby in his room sleeping next to the guitar that night, and that everybody in the room was feeling amazed because he was bidding with all his heart. The night after, Derek [Trucks] played it on stage. I mean, what's better than that?

I think we should be thankful for those guys who believe in the market and make it dynamic because they're not only buying guitars; they are making the shows more attractive. Everybody in the room will remember the day they saw Jerry Garcia's guitar in the hands of Derek Trucks. [In terms of the buyers’ backgrounds], I never ask too much unless they talk about themselves.

For sure, at Christie’s, we saw hedge fund guys, tech guys, cryptocurrency guys… so it's new money, in a good way, not in a bad way. From what I can tell, we have more and more young people who are just working hard, and they could be in tech, they could be in sports, whatever… we have so many kinds of buyers, and that's the beauty of this job.

Do you think we're going to see David Gilmour’s Strat one on stage anytime soon?

I know by name the guy who bought it. I don't know him personally. If he reads the interview, [I would say] I think you should put that guitar on stage. But I hope all those guitars [from that auction] are going to be on stage soon.

How do most of these clients find you?

Social media helps. You put the guitars on stage, and people are always filming. The audience recognizes the guitar, and I get texts or messages on Instagram.

So, I think it's a win-win-win because the crowd is winning because they get to see a very special guitar that day. Marketing-wise it's great for the shop, and it's also great for the artist because when this is going to the press, the tour is gonna get some marketing.

When Marcus King was touring in Paris 10 years ago, he was playing in clubs [in front of] 20 people, and we were there already, and now he's more famous, of course. And he still loves to play that Paul Kosoff guitar. Every time he’s in Paris, he plays that guitar on stage, and it's one of his favorite guitars to play.

What trends are you noticing in the types of guitars that command the highest prices in today's market?

When I started, nobody really wanted a guitar from Green Day, for example. Now, I’m getting asked more often.

I think it's a generation thing – Green Day are getting bigger because the older they get, the bigger their legacy. When the band is getting older, their fans are also getting older, and they have more capacity to buy the items of their dreams. When artists pass away, sometimes you get a bit emotional. So, of course, people are missing them so much that they want their guitars.

But I would be curious to have one of those big “dinosaur” guitars on stage [at an auction]. After the success of the Gibson Keith Richards signature, [I would be curious to have] one of Keith's guitars going on stage, the black [ES-]355, the “Micawber” Tele... or Jimmy Page's guitars or Brian May's guitar or Paul McCartney's bass – those legendary guitars that are still used by them.

I think we would be surprised by the price they fetch because records are made to be broken and are made to be set higher every time. And again, it wouldn't surprise me in the near future if we see a guitar [sell for] between $20 and $30-40 million.

Do you see any risks or misconceptions for new buyers entering the vintage guitar market, especially those treating it as an investment?

I would suggest that you check the provenance of the instruments. You have to choose wisely. If you're advised wisely and if you decide to buy the guitar at the right price, that's great.

To give you an example, when I bought Steve Jones' guitar, I knew there were rumors of Steve selling the original one 14 times to different people.

So we checked the mother-of-pearl inlays. We checked all the dings and marks. We scanned the pictures of the guitar today, and we matched those mother-of-pearl inlays. When [there are] three matches, then you know.

Beyond the monetary value, what makes a guitar collectible?

The more provenance you have and the more history you have with the guitar [the better]. For example, if Keith Richards just played one guitar one time on the sofa two minutes backstage and signed it, that doesn't really make sense to me. But what matters to me is if he played it on stage. Why did he choose that particular one for his personal collection? Was there a reason sound-wise?

I don't agree with comments on the internet that say that, ‘Oh well, David Gilmour modified the Black Strat like 700 times over time…’ [If you want a pristine guitar,] then just buy a vintage guitar. Don't even look at an artist guitar.

I understand that it doesn’t make sense for some people to buy a $15 million guitar, but I think the more modifications it has, the more personal the instrument becomes – and that’s what makes its value even higher.

There's been a lot of criticism over the amounts spent at the Jim Irsay auction. What would you say to people who feel that collectible guitar prices have lost touch with reality?

I think we are living in a world where records are made to be broken.

I would get [that comment] from the perspective of somebody earning a medium salary. That's understandable, because for some people, it's just hard to feed their children, and then you see on the news that somebody just bought David Gilmour's guitar for $15 million.

But I would say it has been like this forever, in sports, the arts… let's not even talk about the football world. I think the world is discovering guitars with these auctions, with these pieces of history, [and] with the new players as well. The rich will always be richer. We can't control that. If they want the David Gilmour Strat for $50 million one day, that's it.

What's been your proudest moment of seeing one of your guitars being played on stage?

I lent Myles Kennedy Jeff Buckley's guitar on stage in Paris a few years ago. That was the final show I assisted before Covid, but that was a moment because it was at L'Olympia [in Paris].

It was full of symbolism. We were preparing for that day for four months. Myles was the perfect guy to sing Hallelujah on stage with the very guitar that Jeff recorded the song with. I still get chills talking about it.

[Another standout moment was when] I saw Craig Ross playing [Jeff Beck’s] Yardburst in Paris.

If I told my young self, [who was] listening to Lenny Kravitz and Craig Ross, that one day I would have Jeff Beck's guitar and then Craig would play it on tour, especially in Paris, my hometown, I wouldn't believe it. It was really a full-circle moment.

• Learn more about Matt's Guitar Shop.

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi have described the experience of getting hands-on with Jerry Garcia’s iconic Tiger, after the pair were given the opportunity to play the $11.56 million electric guitar hours after it was sold at auction.

The sale of Garcia’s Tiger was one of the biggest headlines of the Jim Irsay Collection auction, which shattered world records on multiple occasions and ushered in a new dawn in the value of the guitar.

Though David Gilmour’s Black Strat was the most expensive six-string of the evening, selling for a cool $14.6 million, Garcia’s Tiger was just behind, becoming the second most expensive guitar of all time when the hammer went down for just shy of $12,000,000.

Hours after the event ended, the Tiger was on its way to the Tedeschi Trucks Band camp, and swiftly returned to the stage in the hands of Trucks. The slide guitar master used the legendary instrument – crafted by Alembic Guitars in the late 1970s – for one of the band’s residency shows at the Beacon Theatre, New York.

Trucks and Tedeschi both took the Tiger for the spin backstage, and now the pair have looked back on the experience in a new interview with Howard Stern.

“It’s super-unique. It weighs about 14lbs, which is about twice what my guitar weighs, but it’s super-articulate,” Trucks says. “There’s a unique sound. It was very Jerry Garcia-sounding – like, you play it and you know it was his. It was a very 1980s instrument.”

The guitar is famously a bit of a beast. The body has a layered concoction of cocobolo, maple and paduak, with a bunch of expansive electronics and ornate accoutrements to boot (although, it should be noted, no secret drugs compartments).

It is heavy, and unlike anything else out there. As such, it proved to be a unique instrument to wrangle – something that stuck out to Tedeschi.

“There’s metal on the neck. It’s kind of hard to play, honestly,” she admits. “Guitars want to be played, and they want to be played in a certain way. So when you start playing it, it’s like, ‘Oh, it wants to play this kind of stuff.’”

Garcia’s Tiger was bought at auction by Bobby Tseitlin of Family Guitars – a Chicago family of historic instrument collectors – who wanted the guitar to see back in action as soon as possible.

“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass,” Tseitlin explained to Rolling Stone. “They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.”

Other highlights from the Irsay auction include Prince's Yellow Cloud guitar, Neal Schon's Don't Stop Believin' Les Paul, and a suite of basses played by Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac and ZZ Top.

Just hours after someone raided their piggy bank to buy Jerry Garcia’s fabled ‘Tiger’ guitar for just shy of £12 million, Derek Trucks has taken the iconic instrument to the stage.

It was auctioned off along with a raft of seven-figure electric guitars from the late Jim Irsay’s monumental collection last week. The eye-watering $11.56 million sale price makes it the second most expensive guitar in history, with the winner also crowned during a record-shattering auction.

The guitar, crafted by Alembic Guitars for Garcia in the late ’70s, weighs 13.5 pounds, and the chiropractor's nightmare is lavishly kitted out. Garcia is said to have told Alembic not to hold back on its creation, and the ornate axe was the result.

It, along with Alembic’s Wolf build for Garcia, is the only guitar on the most expensive list (now expanded to 22) that is not produced by a major manufacturer.

For its body layers of cocobolo, maple, and padauk are laminated together for a 'hippie sandwich' approach to tonewood, and the six-string, which cost Garcia a comparatively measly $5,800, became his main guitar for the next decade.

Not much longer after the gavel went down in New York, Trucks was taking the instrument 24 blocks away, to the Beacon Theatre. There, the guitar featured Tedeschi Trucks Band's latest residency show.

“There are instruments where you look at it and go, ‘Holy shit, what has this thing seen?’” Trucks tells Rolling Stone. “Just imagining Garcia in his dressing room, fucking playing the thing. Instruments carry a spirit.”

But Trucks isn’t the guitar’s owner; he was merely loaned it. Bobby Tseitlin, 44, from Family Guitars – a Chicago family of historic-instrument collectors – is the man who broke the bank on this one-of-a-kind guitar.

The Tiger is his third purchase linked to Garcia's legacy, after the Travis Bean TB500 and Modulus Blackknife.

But like Matt's Guitar Shop has done with Jeff Beck's Yardburst and Steve Jones’ Les Paul, the family wants them to “live and breathe” rather than become museum pieces. So expect to be seeing a lot more of the Tiger in the hands of guitar greats in the future.

“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass,” Tseitlin explains. “They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.”

Samantha Fish has risen to the upper echelons of the contemporary blues world. Aside from clinching the top spot on the Billboard Blues Albums chart in 2023 for Death Wish Blues, 2024 found her opening for the Rolling Stones and joining Slash's blues menagerie, the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.

Her non-stop touring schedule has also led her to rub shoulders with a gamut of blues players – so who, in her opinion, are some of the best around right now?

“I just got off the road with [Christone] Kingfish [Ingram], and he’s pretty amazing,” she notes in a new interview with Guitar World.

“I think Derek Trucks is one of the greatest there is, not just in blues playing but any playing. He’s an alien. I like Gary Clark Jr. – he’s very tasteful, and he’s got a great tone. Eric Gales is incredible. He just blows everybody away. Luther Dickinson is one of my favorite contemporaries, too. He's awesome.”

As for her response to being ranked the 38th greatest blues player by Total Guitar, Fish says that it's “crazy and a big honor.

“I feel like being a guitar player is all about self-expression,” she enthuses, “so when you’re ranking guitar players, it’s tough for me, because I don’t think there’s one better way to do it.

“There are obviously people who are technically light years down the road from me, but I think when it comes to self-expression, it’s hard to rank them. I’m just trying to do what I can and what I know and get better at what I do.”

Speaking of keeping the blues alive, living legend Buddy Guy recently said that he's not retiring until the blues gets a higher profile – which is why his recent cameo in the Michael B. Jordan blockbuster Sinners was so pivotal.

For more from Samantha Fish, plus new interviews with Chris Buck, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, and many more, pick up issue 597 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Jeff Beck's guitars are finding a new home in the hands of some of the best players out on tour at the moment.

Marcus King recently wielded the ‘YardBurst,’ alongside KALEO's JJ Julius Son at Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheatre – while Lenny Kravitz's longtime guitarist, Craig Ross, took it for a spin after it fetched $496,484 (£403,200) at auction earlier this year.

Warren Haynes is the latest in a line of guitarists breathing new life into the ‘Yardburst,’ as seen in several social media videos of him jamming alongside Derek Trucks. According to the official Gov’t Mule Instagram account, it all took place while the band was recently on tour in Chicago.

“We had the chance to meet the team behind @timeless.gem + @family_guitars. One thing led to another, and a jam session turned into @thewarrenhaynes sporting some of rock and roll’s most iconic guitars on stage during our Northerly Island play on Sept 9 – including the Jeff Beck “Yardburst” and Doug Irwin #24.”

The caption continues, “We had such a great time exploring @timeless.gem’s collection and having them at our show, that we’ve decided to link up again for our NYE run in New York at the end of this year. Their team will be generously lending a few guitars (hand selected by Warren himself!) for our end of year run culminating with our 1971: The Year Music Changed The World show.”

Jeff Beck's famed 1959 ‘Yardburst’ Gibson Les Paul Standard was one of the many tools of his trade sold at auction in January. The sale generated $10,746,430 (£8,727,284) – over eight times the pre-sale estimates.

Leading the sale was Jeff Beck's 1954 ‘Oxblood’ Gibson Les Paul, which went under the hammer for around $1,315,708 (£1,068,500) – breaking the world auction record for the most expensive Gibson Les Paul ever sold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Warren Haynes has been one of the greatest, most active musicians on the roots and jam scene for four decades now, working with Gov’t Mule, the Allman Brothers Band and the Dead, among many others. Yet the new Million Voices Whisper is only his fourth studio solo album across all those years.

Like its predecessors, it’s a collection that focuses a bit more on the songcraft than jamming, a diverse set of songs with a heavy soul underpinning.

The headline for fans of the Allman Brothers Band is that Derek Trucks appears on three songs that the two guitarists co-produced. Though they’ve played together on stage many times since the ABB’s last show a decade ago, these tracks represent the first studio collaboration between Haynes and Trucks since 2003’s Hittin’ the Note, the ABB’s final album.

One of the songs, Real Real Love, was based on lyrics written by Gregg Allman, who never completed the song. These three tracks go a long way in completing an unbroken circle for Haynes and Trucks, who played together in the ABB from 2001 to 2014.

“I always wanted to do one more Allman Brothers studio record, but that just wasn’t meant to be,” Haynes says.

The Allman Brothers Band’s final concert, which took place October 28, 2014, was released in a newly remastered version on the 10th anniversary of the show, further adding closure to Haynes and Trucks’ sparkling partnership in the group.

Million Voices Whisper also features guest appearances by Lukas Nelson and Jamey Johnson, whom Haynes toured with for several years as part of The Last Waltz Tour, a tribute to the Band.

The album’s core band, now on the road with Haynes, is John Medeski on keyboards, New Orleans drummer Terence Higgins and Gov’t Mule bassist Kevin Scott. Though the quartet had never played together before the album sessions, Haynes says, “it felt really natural really quickly.”

Haynes has been a fixture since he came to national prominence as a member of the reformed Allman Brothers band in 1989. Gov’t Mule, which began as a side project for him and ABB bassist Allen Woody, who passed away in 2000, recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

He’s also worked extensively with the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, toured as a member of the Dead and been at the center of countless classic jams, including at his mostly annual Christmas Jam.

The holiday tradition has brought musicians including Dave Grohl, Billy Gibbons, John Paul Jones, Gregg Allman, Bob Weir and Dave Matthews to Haynes’ hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, raising millions of dollars for Habitat for Humanity, building more than 50 homes and creating three new neighborhoods.

Million Voices Whisper feels a little different from anything else you’ve done. The songs really work together as a cohesive album. Did you write specifically for this project or did you end up with a certain number of songs that felt similar and then decide you should make a solo album?

“A little of both. I wrote a few of the songs during the lockdown, but most of them are brand new, and once I started writing with a sonic goal in mind, it became easier to focus on what songs belonged together.

“It’s a very song-oriented album that falls somewhere between Ashes and Dust and Man in Motion, which it’s closer to because it’s also very soul-music influenced.”

Real Real Love is a song Gregg Allman started and you finished. You co-wrote a lot with him. Was this something you had worked on together?

“No. He had shown it to me, but we never did tackle it. Bert [Holman, Allman Brothers Band manager] sent me a copy of Gregg’s incomplete lyrics and asked if I remembered the song, which I did.

“I don’t know if he had music to it or not, but there’s no evidence if he did. So I wrote the music and finished the lyrics, all based on how he would do it. We spent enough years writing together that I had a good idea of how to shape it in a way that would be reflective of what he would want it to be.”

Did that impact how you sang it? Did you have his voice in your head?

“Yeah, absolutely. More so than probably anything I’ve ever done. I was thinking of how he would sing it and how he would arrange it. That was one of the reasons I added the horn section – because I could hear Gregg saying, ‘Hey, we need to add horns.’”

Lukas Nelson, Jamey Johnson and Derek Trucks all make significant contributions to the album. Did you make a conscious decision that you wanted to do a project with a lot of collaborations?

“Not really – except for Derek. When I finished writing Real Real Love, I sent Derek a work tape and said, ‘We need to record this tune together.’ It just made sense to have him on that side because of the Gregg connection.

“Then we decided to get together and write, so “I went down to his farm in Georgia and we spent three days writing together and wrote quite a bit of music, including These Changes, Hall of Future Saints and a couple of others that I think will surface because I really like them a lot.”

Of the three songs, Hall of Future Saints has the most extended guitar jamming. Was it structured that way?

“Sort of, but we were really getting into it in the studio and it became over nine minutes long with that extended outro. We kept the long jam at the end as opposed to fading it or cutting it out just because we felt like the fans would want to hear it.

“I think what we wound up with is the proper way to capture what we were trying to do, which is capturing the live energy and chemistry of everyone playing together in real time in addition to the songs themselves.”

How did Lukas and Jamey end up on Day of Reckoning?

“We worked together on The Last Waltz shows, and I loved the way our voices blend together and wanted to do something with the three of us. Lukas co-wrote Day of Reckoning, making some suggestions that made a big difference, and then Jamie co-wrote Go Down Swinging.

“Lukas plays the first two solos on Day of Reckoning, and it was very exciting as it happened, which wasn’t necessarily how it was structured. He was playing his Les Paul Junior through an AC30 that was in the studio, and it sounded amazing.”

Lies, Lies, Lies sounds like it could slide onto a Gov’t Mule album, partly because it’s so driven by Kevin Scott’s bassline. He seems to have unleashed something in your playing since he joined last year, and he’s the only other connection between the two bands.

“Kevin is such a strong musical personality that he’s constantly pushing everyone else to play differently, based on his approach. Much of my music is pretty bass-driven, but Kevin takes it the extra mile.

“This was the first time we had worked in the studio together, and it was interesting to watch the way he approaches recording as opposed to live performance. It’s a very different thing, but his playing is very similar in both contexts, and I love that.

“Most of the musicians I choose to work with don’t get caught up in the recording traps. It’s nice if we can approach the music much more similarly to the way we approach it on stage than the average person does.”

“I’ve always tried to do that, but it’s interesting getting other people’s perspective on it, and we were forming a new band in the studio rather than on stage. Terence [Higgins, drums] and John [Medeski, keyboards] are such strong players that we easily forced a chemistry upon ourselves.

“I had played with everyone individually, but the four of us had never played together until then; it felt like a band right from the beginning, which is the most you can hope for. I always want a band, not a group of backing musicians, and I could feel that growing day by day.

“Then when we went on the road, we added [saxophonist] Greg Osby to the fold, which brought another fantastic sonic layer and it has continued to grow.”

Your playing on You Ain’t Above Me is very B.B. King inspired, almost a tribute. That may have sounded derivative 20 years ago, but it’s so welcome now. B.B. is gone, and for those of us who miss him and that type of playing so much, it’s very powerful and heartening to hear it so well executed – and there aren’t many people who can do it justice.

“Thanks. I agree that the more time that passes, the more it’s not only okay to honor your heroes and influences, but absolutely the right thing to do. A lot of guitar players are going to keep B.B.’s style alive, but he influenced us all more than most people even realize. Still, this is just what happened naturally responding to what I was hearing. I did not write the song as a tribute to B.B.

“In fact, I thought of it more like a soul ballad, which is just a short walk away, and when we started playing it, I naturally gravitated toward that B.B. influence when Medeski started playing that gospel organ intro. That kind of thing is why I like to let the songs breathe and unfold as we work them out.”

If you get the right people in the room, the right things will happen.

“Yes, exactly right. You know, there’s also a strong B.B. influence on Go Down Swinging, so the second and third songs on the album tip the hat to B.B. King, which is fine by me.”

You have a very nice, mostly clean, tube-driven sound throughout the album. What was your primary gear?

“My two main guitars were my signature Les Paul and my blonde 335. On the bonus track, Baby’s On the Move, I played a signature J Mascis guitar that he gave me when I sat in with him. It’s basically a Squier Jazzmaster, a very inexpensive, fantastic-sounding guitar. I really don’t think I had ever played a Jazzmaster and certainly had never recorded with one and it was very cool and a lot of fun.

“I used a combination of three amps, as I’ve been doing a lot recently. It was mostly my little Alessandro recording amp, a Homestead combo and one of my Gibsons, mostly the prototype of the new Falcon. We swapped some stuff out, but that was my main combination. We would record all three, then decide what combination we wanted to use, which was different on every track but worked well.”

“Effects wise, the [Hughes & Kettner] Rotosphere appeared here and there. I used a Boss OC-2 octave divider on the solo for Day of Reckoning and there are a couple of backwards solos on Lies, Lies, Lies, where I just stepped on the Hardwire DL-8 [delay/looper] pedal while playing.

“Maybe one was overdubbed and one was live. I keep saying I’m going to do more overdubbing, but I wind up keeping the solos from the track because it’s so much more fun.”

You’ve been telling me “The next one will have more overdubs” for 30 years!

“I know. I start every album saying I’m going to do more overdubbing on this record and there are a few here, but I’m always going to favor playing live!”

• Million Voices Whisper is out now via Fantasy.

An all-star lineup, featuring members of the extended Allman Brothers Band family, will perform at a Dickey Betts tribute concert, In Memory of Dickey Betts, scheduled for February 28 at the Macon City Auditorium in the group's stronghold of Macon, Georgia. The event will be hosted and curated by Betts' son, Duane Betts.

Alongside former Allman Brothers Band members Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Jaimoe, Chuck Leavell, and Oteil Burbridge, the concert will feature Susan Tedeschi, Duane Betts, Gregg Allman's son Devon Allman, Blackberry Smoke's Charlie Starr, Wet Willie's Jimmy Hall, and Lamar Williams Jr., the son of ABB's bassist during the '70s, Lamar Williams. More musicians are expected to be added and announced soon.

“For so many of us, Dad's gift to the world was music,” reflects Duane. “I'm so happy to come together with some very special friends to honor the depth and beauty of his life and, of course, to share that sweet, melodic sound he is so well known for.”

A portion of the proceeds from the star-studded concert will go toward furthering music education in honor of Dickey Betts, including the new Dickey Betts Scholarship at Berklee College of Music.

Tickets for the show will go on sale on January 13 at 10 a.m. ET via Ticketmaster. A limited number of VIP ticket packages will also be available, including an artist meet-and-greet, a T-shirt, a signed poster, and a commemorative laminate.

Dickey Betts passed away on April 18, 2024, at the age of 80. As a tribute to Betts' legacy, Guitar World’s Andy Aledort, Betts' right-hand man who played over 250 shows around the globe with him, reflected on his experience touring with Betts, asserting that he “laid the foundation for what was at the time a new style of music to be known as Southern rock.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blues rock guitarist Jared James Nichols has established himself as a high-energy pick-less guitarist. Wielding a variety of P-90-loaded Les Pauls, Nichols has developed an intriguing technique that enables him to achieve the same kind of attack he would get with a pick – albeit with an added, distinctive flair.

Speaking about how he developed his fingerstyle technique in the first place, the blues player tells Guitar World that being left-handed led him to approach the guitar in a slightly unconventional way. “Now, I don't mean I hold the guitar like a lefty where I would flip it. It's that everything I do in life is with my left hand,” he clarifies.

“When I picked up a guitar, I held it righty, but the pick never felt right in my hands, so I started to make up my own technique for how to play, which was essentially very simple.”

In his early days, he would use his thumb as a downstroke, while his index, middle, and ring fingers functioned as upstrokes. After discovering Albert King, Derek Trucks, and Mark Knopfler, he decided to take a page from their playbook and hone his own version of the fingerstyle technique.

“I'm [now] using my thumb as a down, pulling up with my index finger as well as my middle finger. Now playing that slowly, you can hear I'm sliding into that and I'm snapping up on the string. It gives it a percussive attack,” he explains while playing a blues riff in the key of G.

“There's a lot of snapping going up. It's almost as if my string is hitting the frets. And that gives me a certain tone that has a little bit more of, not only a shimmer, but a snap and a sparkle to it that I really like for sitting out of the mix."

Nichols also mentions how his technique allows him to pay more attention to dynamics. Essentially, the harder he snaps, the louder the volume.

“As hard as I pick with my fingers, I can feel all the notes underneath my fingers; it’s almost all about the pressure,” he says. In addition to dynamics, his fingerstyle technique enables him to manipulate tone depending on whether he plays more toward the bridge or the neck.

“So for instance, if I go near the bridge more and I get [plays the riff] more towards the neck, as you can tell by the bridge, it gets a little bit more bright. It gets a little more snappy. And as I move up the neck towards the frets, it starts to get a little bit warmer. So that's one of the big things using my fingers that I do.”

To further bolster his tone, Nichols recently teamed up with Blackstar on a new signature guitar amp head and corresponding plugin.

Warren Haynes has recalled the first time he saw Derek Trucks play electric guitar, and admitted he was blown away by his talents after initially being skeptical over the youngster's chops.

Across the years, the pair have developed a strong musical bond, having locked fretboards via spells in The Allman Brothers Band, as well as collaborating on various occasions under The Derek Trucks Band moniker and beyond.

Furthermore, they recently reunited to revive a lost Gregg Allman song on Haynes' new solo album, Million Voices Whisper. During the promo trail for the record, Haynes was asked about his first impressions of Trucks.

“He's obviously gotten better, and better, and better, but he was great even at 11, surprisingly,” he tells Mike Hsu of 100 FM "The Pike” [transcribed by Ultimate Gutiar].

Trucks was barely in his 20s by the time he was sharing The Allman Brothers stage with Haynes, who in turn had rejoined for a second stint in 2000. But, by Haynes’ account, even as an 11-year-old, Trucks seemed destined for greatness.

“I remember the first time we played together,” Haynes goes on. “The Allman Brothers had a night off, and we were recording in Miami for the Seven Turns record [1990], and Butch [Trucks] said, 'What are we going to do on our night off? We should all go hear my nephew play. He's amazing.'

“Somebody said, 'How old is he?' Butch said, 'He's 11.' And we're all like [dismissively saying], 'Yeah, okay.'”

Their skepticism was quickly questioned by bass player Allen Woody, who backed up Butch’s hyperbole.

“And so we all went out there, and we wound up playing on stage together in his second set, Gregg [Allman], Butch [Trucks], myself, Allen Woody, and Derek. He was smaller than his guitar, but playing like a grown man. And I just remember all of us being like, 'Wow, this kid's really got something special,' you know?”

Trucks and Haynes' return to the studio marks the first time they've recorded together since their Allman Brothers days, which came to an end in 2014.

Trucks is set to feature on a trio of tracks, including a Greg Allman tribute titled Real, Real Love. A new slide guitar-heavy version of the Trucks-Haynes composition Back Where I Started is included with the deluxe CD edition.

Haynes, who teamed up with Slash and Billy Gibbons for an all-star tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington at the CMT Awards last year, recently told Rick Beato that he prefers a guitar that puts up a fight when you try to play it.

Warren Hayne's Million Voices Whisper is due for release on November 1.

Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes has announced his forthcoming solo record, which will feature a long-lost Allman Brothers song that’s been revived and completed with the help of Derek Trucks.

Million Voices Whisper will find Haynes lean further into soul music, with Trucks set to feature on three songs. One of those, Real, Real Love, was initially co-written with Gregg Allman and later finished by Haynes in the late guitarist’s style.

The song was completed to honor the guitarist, who Haynes says “lived to perform… There was no separation between Gregg and his music.”

The record marks the first time Haynes and Trucks have shared a studio together since their time in the Allman Brothers Band, which ended in 2014. Trucks also features on album opener These Changes and closer Hall of Future Saints.

Among the four bonus tracks on the deluxe CD version is a new version of the Trucks-Haynes composition Back Where I Started, originally recorded by the Derek Trucks Band. This new version sees Haynes take center stage on lead vocals and slide guitar.

“This album is quite different than my previous solo records,” Haynes says. “There's a lot of soul music influence but [it’s] very song-oriented with subtle nods to a few of my heroes,” with longtime bandmate Gregg Allman chief among them.

“And what a treat to get back into the studio with my brother Derek,” he continues. “Big shoutout to him as well as Lukas [Nelson] and Jamey [Johnson, producers] for being a part of it. I'm really proud of this new album.”

We’ll have to wait a little longer to hear any of the Haynes-Trucks tracks – including the unearthed ABB song – but the first track, This Is Life As We Know It, can be heard via the video above.

Real Real Love will follow Everything a Good Man Needs, which featured Gregg Allman on guitar alongside Taj Mahal. The song was released posthumously in 2018.

Haynes' new album releases November 1 via Fantasy Records.

Million Voices Whisper is available to preorder now.

Derek Trucks and Duane Betts have shared a stage for the first time since the passing of Dickey Betts last month, swaying through a soulful rendition of the Allman Brothers' Dreams.

Joining his former bandmate and the Tedeschi Trucks Band on stage at Miami's Sun, Sand, and Soul festival, Duane Betts helped pay tribute to his late father in the best way possible, and the lick trade-offs across the 15-minute track are a sight to behold. 

The pair grew up together side of stage at Allman Brother shows, a band they would play in alongside each other at the turn of the century, so it’s fitting that the band would unite them once more – as they have done their entire lives.  

During the jam, there appears to be a hint of apprehension from Betts, perhaps feeling the weight of the moment. But their rapport is plain to see, with Trucks encouraging his lifelong friend, coaxing him out of his shell.

Pride and joy then pours from Trucks, wielding a Gibson SG for the performance, as Betts and his Les Paul, flicked onto the neck pickup, starts to let go, unfurling a stream of single-note bends that draw roars from the crowd.  

It’s something viewers of fan-shot footage have also noticed. One commented: “[I] love how Derek looks so proud during Duane’s solo, like a brother would.”  

Betts’ tenure alongside Trucks in the Allman Brothers was short-lived, lasting about a year, and has since focused much of his efforts on his solo material. 

The pair collaborated on a song, Stare at the Sun last year, as a tribute to Dickey, which has become more far poignant in recent weeks. 

Speaking to Guitar World, Duane Betts recalled a conversation he’d had with Derek Trucks about the legacy of his father’s playing and how he’s “one of those players who’s not afraid to stare directly into the sun,” a line he said he loved. 

“I was already working on a new song,” he explained, “and Derek’s sentiment gave the song a center.”

The song effortlessly succeeds in achieving an “old school Florida vibe” with the song, and its parent record. But Guitar World's Matt Parker extends that it pulled off much more, saying it “also entwines some beautiful, fleeting nods to Betts Sr.’s playful major pentatonic runs and chiming tones.” 

Earlier in the day at the same festival, Trucks joined Duane Betts & the Palmetto Motel for a live rendition of the song, which you can check out via the above video. 

Betts Sr. passed aged 80, having suffered from cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was one of the more influential rock guitarists of his generation and leaves behind a legacy of work that includes Jessica – named after his daughter – and the Allman Brothers' biggest hit, Ramblin' Man.

Derek Trucks is the nephew of Butch Trucks, the original drummer in the Allman Brothers Band, so naturally, the child prodigy Derek was influenced early on by Duane Allman’s slide guitar style.

Over time he has formulated his own highly personal approach to slide guitar playing. His style is very lyrical with a more legato approach than many great slide players. His band with his wife Susan Tedeschi is one of the most popular blues-based live acts on the worldwide scene.

Trucks is a great accompanist. In fact, it’s worth listening to his records just for the way he accompanies his wife’s voice and guitar solos. He is also a fine non-slide soloist, too, and in the examples here I’ve used a slide for nearly but not all of the notes.

Intonation is always an issue with slide playing, so it’s really important to make sure that you can hear the bass in the mix. A great tip that Dominic Miller from Sting’s band recently told me is that you should use your eyes as well as your ears – so look at the frets. For slide playing you want to be directly above the fretwire to replicate the intonation of a normal fretted note. 

When you are more experienced you can explore further nuances of intonation but for now aim to hit the pitch exactly. Fretting-hand damping is also a vital part of slide playing.

If you want single-note lines to come out clearly (without the sympathetic ringing of other strings), try gently holding your fretting-hand first finger straight across all the strings, keeping it parallel to the slide.

Picking-hand damping is also important if you want to avoid all the strings ringing out. Like Derek, you may want to just use fingers, or perhaps try damping with the fingers that you’re not using to hold the pick. As with bending strings on the guitar, you should regularly check the accuracy of the notes you’re aiming at by playing the fretted note’s pitch before you practice going for the same note using the slide.

The licks here are all pretty melodic and don’t stray too far from the blues. Note that sometimes I’m playing the bluesy Minor 3rd and sometimes the Major 3rd, as is common with blues players like Trucks. 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 6, Bass 6, Middle 5, Treble 6, Reverb 3

An American amp with reverb is probably best for this sound, plus a good overdrive pedal. A compressor pedal will help to give you maximum sustain, and delay is useful for this, too (sustain is vital for slide playing). Also, experiment with different kinds of guitar slides until you find one that suits you. I used glass in the past but have settled on a closed-end brass slide. 

Example 1. Developing a theme

Here we develop the idea in the first bar and the idea builds and flows from there. Be careful with the grace notes, as they are short!

Example 2. Descending Mixolydian lick with added Minor 3rd #1

Here we start by walking down the C Mixolydian mode (C-D-E-F-G-A-Bb). The slide from Minor to Major 3rd adds a more bluesy character.

Example 3. Descending Mixolydian lick with added Minor 3rd #2

We again start with a run down the Mixolydian mode and also target the Major 3rd from a semitone below. See if you can take these ideas and develop them.

Example 4. High second-string lick

Here we slide way the second string for a Trucks-style legato feel. Derek’s intonation is flawless, so keep checking yourself against fretted notes from time to time.

Example 5. Solo

Our solo takes the above ideas but embellishes some of them to get deeper into the style. While some of these licks sound simple, it can be difficult to execute them convincingly, so practice slowly and deliberately. Listen out for any extraneous noises from in front or behind the notes and be mindful of your string damping.

As the only son of Dickey Betts and the namesake of Duane Allman, his father’s legendary foil in the Allman Brothers Band, Duane Betts has spent the past two decades honing his craft between the massive legacy he inherited and the contemporary music he grew up on.

Now, with his debut solo album, Wild & Precious Life, Betts reckons with his father’s legacy and makes considerable strides toward creating his own. “The idea was to take the kind of playing I come from and intertwine it with some cool songs that have a modern kind of flavor to them,” he says. “I think we accomplished that.”

Betts cut his teeth playing alongside his father in his backing band, Great Southern, and later toured as a member of Dawes and co-founded the Allman Betts Band with Devon Allman. 

For his solo debut, he recruited longtime sidemen Johnny Stachela and bassist Berry Duane Oakley and recorded at Swamp Raga Studio, the Jacksonville haunt of friends Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi.

Trucks makes an appearance on the jammy Stare at the Sun, a 6/8-meter tour de force named in reference to the elder Betts that finds the trio of guitar slingers stacking licks toward the song’s crescendo. “Derek said something about my dad being one of those players that’s not afraid to stare directly into the sun,” he says. “It was a no-brainer to have Derek on that song.”

The spotlight shifts to a guest turn by Marcus King on Cold Dark World, but one of the album’s most unexpected moments arrives on the instrumental Under the Bali Moon. Arranged by drummer Tyler Greenwell – and every bit as adventurous and exotic as its title suggests – the song flits from light to dark and back again, as Betts and Stachela weave dreamy, Allmans-esque guitar harmonies around a taut rhythm.

“I love stuff from the early ’90s when I was a teenager, like Jeff Buckley, and it has a little bit of that,” he says. “The drumbeat could be something Radiohead would do. It has a little bit of the Allman Brothers influence, but it definitely has this other really mysterious, beautiful, dark energy entangled in it that’s unique to anything we’ve done.”

• Wild and Precious Life is out now via The Royal Potato Family.

In tribute to the late Jeff Beck, Derek Trucks has been playing the electric guitar legend’s 1966 instrumental epic Beck’s Bolero while on tour with the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

Beck passed away at the age of 78 earlier this year, prompting an immediate outpouring of emotional tributes from the wider guitar community, both on stage and on social media. 

Prominent examples include Eric Clapton’s mammoth Jeff Beck tribute shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall from May, which saw Slowhand, Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Kirk Hammett, Ronnie Wood and countless others honor Beck’s memory with a triumphant eight-minute jam of Going Down – a track that featured at Jeff Beck’s funeral.

But for Trucks, honoring the legacy of his fellow fingerstyle master has become a full-time consideration, with the Gibson SG-wielding slide titan adding Beck’s Bolero to the band’s setlist for their summer tour.

To take on Beck’s Bolero just once is hard enough – Beck’s first solo recording is widely considered one of the most influential guitar instrumentals ever committed to tape – but to include it as a setlist stalwart over various points during an entire tour (and seemingly nail it each time) is another achievement altogether.

Of course, owing to Trucks’ own elite feel, phrasing, fingerstyle control and dynamic sensibilities, he’s probably one of the best-equipped individuals currently around to take on such a daunting task – a task, judging by various video clips, he passes with flying colors each time.

In a technical tour de force of both left-hand and right-hand ability, Trucks takes his SG to town, introducing some of his own mid-lick embellishments while ensuring to stay faithful to Beck’s mountainous melodies.

As the closing stages roll in, the high-octane cover reaches its peak: Trucks takes artistic liberty to blitz through a barrage of upper register licks that combine both his slide and picking abilities to devastating effect.

Trucks isn’t the only guitar player to tackle Beck’s Bolero in memory of the Fender Stratocaster master: In May, Joe Perry doffed his cap to one of his heroes with a faithful, impassioned cover of the iconic instrumental from the fretboard of a custom Telecaster.

Tommy Emmanuel also celebrated Beck’s memory with a heartfelt acoustic fingerstyle performance of Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers – a track that was also covered by Clapton and Gary Clark Jr. at the Royal Albert Hall tribute shows.

Visit the Tedeschi Trucks Band website for a list of upcoming tour dates.

Yesterday (May 22), a huge ensemble of A-list electric guitar heroes converged on London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall for the first of two Jeff Beck tribute concerts.

As previously reported, the event was a who’s who of guitar talent, with the likes of Eric Clapton, Gary Clark Jr., Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, John McLaughlin and many more all coming together to pay tribute to the late guitar great, who passed away earlier this year.

The evening itself was filled with high-profile collaborations, but the biggest of all occurred right at the end of the night when everyone – yes, everyone – squeezed onto the historic stage for an eight-minute jam of Going Down.

If ever there was a competition for the most guitar stars to feature on the same stage, this lineup would stake a strong claim, with all those mentioned above performing alongside Ronnie Wood, Billy Gibbons, Johnny Depp, Doyle Bramhall II and Kirk Hammett, who made a surprise appearance with Greeny.

Outside the guitar department, Jeff Beck band members Rhonda Smith and Anike Niles lead the rhythm section, with Rod Stewart, Imelda May, Olivia Safe and Joss Stone all assuming vocal duties.

Having that many people on stage at once was always going to be a logistical challenge – a fact made clear by the drastic level differences between each player’s guitar.

Having said that, a guitar band of almost 20 players was never going to deliver a super-polished performance of Going Down, but that was never really the goal anyway.

Instead, the participants ensured their eight-minute rendition of Going Down turned out exactly as it should have: a gloriously improvised, larger-than-life guitar jam in honor of one of the most influential guitar players of all time. 

Clapton was the de facto conductor of the cover, kicking things off and then conceding the six-string spotlight to his fellow guitar-paying peers for a huge melting pot of solos.

Gary Clark Jr. – with his Gibson ES-335 in tow – took the first 12 bars, followed by a PRS-wielding John McLaughlin, and then a Telecaster-toting Depp, who spent much of last year touring and recording with Beck.

Two solos that especially cut through the mix were the closing efforts offered by Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. Trucks took the lead, utilizing his Gibson SG for yet another guitar slide masterclass, while Tedeschi went to town on her Tele for 12 bars of bend-heavy blues.

It proved to be a poignant ending to a marathon show, which had been prefaced by an emotional Clapton who told the crowd, “I wish he were here.”

The cover of Going Down was just one of numerous tracks performed by the assortment of guitar heroes in honor of Beck. 

Highlights from the setlist included McLaughlin joining Smith and Niles for a cover of You Know You Know – a Mahavishnu Orchestra track that Beck played live – Depp, Hammett and Gibbons teaming up to perform Isolation, and Clapton sharing the stage with Trucks and Tedeschi for The Sky is Crying.

The second and final Jeff Beck tribute show is set to take place tonight (May 23) at the Royal Albert Hall.

Duane Betts is gearing up for the release of his debut solo album, Wild and Precious Life, and has shared a new single, featuring Derek Trucks, called Staring at the Sun.

The track is reportedly sparked by something Trucks said to Duane about his father, Dickey Betts – the Allman Brothers Band’s iconic guitarist.

“I was inspired by a conversation I’d had with Derek,” explains Betts. “He was talking about my father’s guitar playing and he told me, ‘Your dad is one of those players who’s not afraid to stare directly into the sun,’ and I loved that line. I was already working on a new song, and Derek’s sentiment gave the song a center.”

Of course, there are few players better placed to assess Dickey Betts’ guitar style than these two and they share a musical kinship, given Trucks’ own connections with the Allman Brothers Band. 

For his part, Betts has said he “wanted to make a record which would really capture that old school Florida vibe.” Stare At The Sun certainly does that, but it also entwines some beautiful, fleeting nods to Betts Sr.’s playful major pentatonic runs and chiming tones.

Betts has spent much of his playing career serving as a sideman, whether in his father’s group, Dickey Betts Band and Great Southern, or the folk rockers Dawes. He then formed the Allman Betts Band in with Devon Allman and Berry Oakley Jr. in 2018.

“It felt like the right time to make something that was entirely my own vision,” says Betts of his first solo album. “This is a record that guitar players will love, but at its core, it’s really a song record. It’s an album about who I am, where I come from, and what I believe in.”

Trucks isn’t the only big name guitar player to drop in, either. Blues/Southern rock maestro, Marcus King also appears to take a solo on the song Cold Dark World. 

Meanwhile, in a recent Guitar World interview, Derek Trucks named 11 guitarists who shaped his sound and took the chance to discuss his admiration for the Allman Brothers Band’s other guitarist. “Duane Allman was an almost mythical character in my house...” says the slide virtuoso. “The starting point for me when it comes to guitar.”

Wild And Precious Life is out July 14. Head to Duane Betts’ site for more information and pre-orders.

The 44th Annual Blues Music Awards took place last week (May 11), in Memphis, Tennessee, and saw Buddy Guy, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Tommy Castro all take home top prizes. 

Blues guitar legend Buddy Guy won Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Album for his 2022 full-length, The Blues Don’t Lie, while Tom Hambridge scored a hat-trick of awards for that same record, one of which was the Best Song Award (for writing the title track.)

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, meanwhile, continued his hot streak, picking up Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year for the fourth year running. 

Ruthie Foster won Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year. Her latest album, Healing Time, is certainly rooted in blues, but is also a life-affirming journey through gospel, Motown, and ballads such as 4am that are written around the acoustic guitar and are 100 percent soul.

Tommy Castro, bandleader and frontman of Tommy Castro and the Painkillers, picked up the prestigious B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Award, for the second year in a row.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band picked up the Band of the Year award, receiving recognition for their epic quadruple album I Am the Moon, on which Derek Trucks performed some of the most dynamic, vocal, and human slide playing in recent memory on his Gibson SG – the perfect foil for Susan Tedeschi’s peerless vocals. 

It was also a big year for John Primer, who picked up an award for the ‘Traditional Blues’ male artist of the year – and was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame. 

Speaking earlier this month to Guitar World, the 78-year-old Primer was tickled to be up for three awards as a solo artist after honing his reputation as one of the best side-men in the game, offering electric guitar support to the likes of Muddy Waters and Magic Slim. Primer was nominated for Album of the Year, Traditional Blues Album of the Year and Best Male Traditional Blues Artist.

“For Hard Times to be recognized by the Blues Foundation, to me, that's something right there. I ain't counting on any Grammy, no way, but I'll take the three awards I’ve been nominated for. 

“It’s a sad thing, though – people these days don't know or maybe just don’t want to hear the real thing when it crops up. And when it comes to the blues, I am the real deal, I can tell you that.”

He’ll get no arguments here. Joining Primer on the trad blues podium was Sue Foley, who has amassed one serious band (featuring Chris "Whipper" Layton, of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd's respective groups, on drums) to join her as she takes a deep dive into Texas blues guitar history on her latest LP, Pinky’s Blues, which features covers of classic tracks by the likes of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Lavelle White, Frankie Lee Sims, Angela Strehli, and Lillie Mae Donley, and three original compositions.

One of these, the title track, will be recognizable to seasoned blues fans. “It’s kind of my rewrite of Earl Hooker’s Blues in D Natural,” Foley told Guitar World last year. “Everybody who plays the blues has their own take on it.” 

Other guitar-playing winners included Doug MacLeod for Acoustic Blues Artist, Albert Castiglia for Blues Rock Artist, Laura Chavez for Instrumentalist (Guitar), and Charlie Musselwhite, who picked up the award for best Acoustic Blues Album. 

You can check out the full list of winners at The Blues Foundation's website.

Alt-rock titans Wilco aren't exactly a jam band, even if they sometimes get lumped into that category, and have significant fan overlap with the Grateful Dead. 

Impossible Germany – a standout cut from their 2007 album, Sky Blue Sky – however, is a song where they really get to stretch out. A longtime fan favorite, it features an extended guitar solo from Nels Cline that to this day stands as one of the most scintillating guitar moments in the band's discography.

When Wilco stopped by the St. Augustine Amphitheatre in St. Augustine, Florida for a show last month (April 19), they not only included Impossible Germany in their setlist, they also invited North Florida native and Tedeschi Trucks Band electric guitar ace Derek Trucks to the stage to spice the song up. 

You can see fan-filmed footage of their performance of the song – which features some truly sublime call-and-response exchanges from Cline and Trucks – below.

Between the two of them, Cline and Trucks channel a world of guitar influences – the former is steeped in jazz and avant-garde music, in addition to the more conventional psychedelic classic rock influences he grew up with, while the latter takes his six-string cues from the blues, plus a number of stylistically diverse players from around the world, such as Madagascar native D'Gary.

All of these influences come to the fore in the duo's extended solo, which begins with Cline largely echoing what he plays on the studio version, before Trucks spins things off in new and fascinating directions.

Showcasing his stinging slide skills and evocative phrasing – and using, of course, his trusty Gibson SG – Trucks is the perfect foil for Cline, who's armed with one of his trusty Jazzmasters. 

Taking it all in is Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who – playing his own SG – clearly enjoys watching the two guitar heroes engage in friendly battle.

Wilco are set to tour Europe this summer, with festival dates and shows of their own scheduled. For the band's full forthcoming itinerary, visit Wilco's website.

At the tender age of 20, Derek Trucks became an official member of the Allman Brothers Band – the same band that inspired him to pick up the guitar in the first place.

Some 24 years later, now a grizzled veteran at the age of 43, Trucks is still on the road. These days, he takes the stage with his partner in both music and life, Susan Tedeschi, leading an ensemble unit aptly named the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

Ever-busy, Trucks is pounding the pavement, unleashing music from the group's latest record, I Am the Moon. "We've been out for a good part of the year, and it's been great," Trucks says of the jaunt. "We've been doing a lot of theater dates and learning the new material, which a lot of people haven't gotten the chance to hear live yet. 

"It's the first time we've gotten to really dig into it, so it's been nice to chew on it. It feels like a fresh and new environment when there's new stuff to play, and I love that."

For a seasoned player like Trucks, one might think that playing live is where he's most at home, and early in his career, that might have been true. But as the years have gone on, and the studio records have piled up at a relentless pace, it seems that Trucks' perspective has changed.

"I love to play live, and we play live more than we do anything else," Trucks says. "So, I think that's probably the base. I think in the studio, maybe I tend to think a little bit differently, but not totally. These days, I feel like we're pretty comfortable in the studio, so I don't mind taking chances and putting a little bit of extra feel into something."

"Early in my career, without a doubt, the studio was a pain in the ass," Trucks continues. "I didn't enjoy it as much as I do [now]. But now, I love the time in the studio, the creativity of it, and the birthing of ideas. I feel like it's as big of a part of things and sort of the last step in the evolution. So, I really do love them both. I wasn't always that way, but I am now."

As far as inspiration is concerned, Trucks draws from all corners of the guitar map, cherry-picking tidbits of ingenuity and making them his own. Indeed, the Jacksonville, Florida native has penned quite a few enchanting solos in his day, but which is his favorite?

"Wow. That's a tough one," Trucks admits. "But maybe it's the solo in Midnight in Harlem – it felt effortless when I first played that. Sometimes you get into the stream, and the band goes with you. That's what happened there. 

"I loved playing Blue Sky when I was with the Allman Brothers Band – it felt that way, too. One of my favorite things of all time is listening to Duane Allman's solo in that song, and I think that solo was probably the inspiration for Midnight in Harlem. There's just something timeless and beautiful about it. It's not in a hurry, but it gets there."

With a player as diverse as Trucks, one has to wonder where it began. To that end, the slide maestro dialed in with Guitar World to reveal the 10 (or 11) guitarists who shaped his sound.

1. Duane Allman

"For me, it started with Duane Allman. I mean, that was the music that was playing in my house all the time. And that was what first got me interested in playing guitar. Just the excitement of it all was so alluring to me.

"Duane was an almost mythical character in my house. My dad grew up around a lot of what came before Duane, but I wasn't alive to see any of that. So, he was the starting point for me when it comes to guitar."

2. Elmore James

"When I realized that slide guitar was a thing and that I was interested in it, Elmore James was the next guy who came into play. He was so elemental, and he was really the first electric slide player who busted the doors down, changing the game entirely. Elmore was a big one for me in terms of slide guitar."

3. B.B. King

"One of the great honors of my life, and I think Susan's [Tedeschi], too, was just getting to spend a lot of time with B.B. – [to] play music with him, and become friends with him. He's somebody that I think about almost every time I'm on stage. His feel and emotion, as a guitarist, were special, and the performance aspect of what he did was something I look to often."

4. Jim Graves

"If we look at people who I met early on and from whom I learned a lot, my first real guitar teacher, Jim Graves, had a huge impact on me. He used to play in a band with my uncle in Jacksonville, Florida – I think the band was called Trucks at the time. Jim is a great guitar player. He was the first guy that really showed me how to get around the instrument, so he was a big influence on me."

5. Jimmy Herring

"From there, hanging out with Jimmy Herring from Widespread Panic, Aquarium Rescue Unit and a bunch of others was big for me. That whole scene was amazing, but Jimmy was the first guy that really sat down with me and looked at the guitar and sort of opened my mind a bit. 

"I was playing in open E a lot, and we were rooming together on tour. We would just sit down, draw out the neck of the guitar and every scale you could possibly think of, and just find all the chord combinations. Jimmy cracked open a lot of lanes for me in those days."

6. Eric Krasno

"I remember doing a lot of shows with Eric Krasno's band Soulive, and he was awesome. He was one of those guys that played such good rhythm guitar. I heard him doing his thing, and suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head. Playing rhythm is sort of a lost art – there are so many guitar players out there who can just shred, but hardly any of them know how to play rhythm the right way – especially behind another guitar player.

"Playing with Eric refocused that for me. It became a mission of mine to the point that one of my favorite things to do now [is to play] behind another soloist, no matter what instrument they're playing. I feel like that's often an overlooked thing."

7. Doyle Bramhall II

"Seeing Doyle Bramhall II in action was a big eye-opener for me. I was playing with him when I was out with [Eric] Clapton, and he has such a unique way of playing. It was inspiring, and I started writing a lot of songs with him just to crack my head open to all the different avenues you can explore. He's so unique, and his way of thinking and approach were really refreshing for me."

8. D'Gary

"There's a guitar player named D'Gary from Madagascar who has this absolutely beautiful style. He put this record out called Malagasy Guitar in the early '90s, and it's full of really unique and beautiful guitar stuff. I still listen to that all the time. It's not one that too many people know. If you haven't heard of it, I recommend it."

9. Charlie Christian

"I love some of those early recordings – they're just so good. I think there's a recording of him at the Minton's Playhouse where he's playing Topsy (Swing to Bop), there's this guitar solo on there that's just one of the fiercest things that I've ever heard. It's one of the earliest recorded solos, and to this day, I don't know if anyone's bested it. That's something that I would dig into a lot."

10/11. Eric Clapton/Albert King

"I'll go with a tie between Clapton and Albert King. With Clapton, from all the music he made, the way he influenced people, and the way that he was able to run his band, all of that was impressive. 

"I ended up learning a lot from the way he was running the show and his economy of emotion when he's really tagging a solo – it's incredible to watch. And Albert King, he's a guy that I go back to if I'm ever out of gas, inspirationally or creatively. All I have to do is listen to one Albert King solo, and that snaps me back."

• Tedeschi Trucks Band's I Am The Moon is available now via Fantasy Records. 

Not only was B.B. King one of most influential blues guitar players ever, he was also one of the most complementary guitarists on the circuit, regularly heaping praise on his peers after witnessing their electric guitar chops.

Playing in front of King would no doubt have been a daunting prospect, but the Lucille-wielding guitar master made sure to keep his contemporaries calm by lauding their six-string efforts and showering them with compliments whenever the chance arose.

Case in point was King’s performance with Grammy winner Bonnie Raitt, who left King in awe with a series of stunning slide solos at the House of Blues Chicago in 2004. King’s fondness for Raitt’s playing is well-documented, having once called her “the best damn slide player working today”.

That wasn’t the only time a slide player caught the attention of King, though. Back in 2012, King shared the stage with John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks at the Hollywood Bowl, and ended up giving the latter the greatest compliment a guitarist could receive after marveling at his slide skills.

As the quartet jammed over King's 1972 cut Guess Who, Trucks took the opportunity to unleash his glass guitar slide upon the fretboard of his Gibson SG, turning in a supremely soulful solo that had everyone on stage in disbelief.

Though one clip predominantly focuses on Truck and Mayer – who shows his appreciation through a series of disbelieving waves and head shakes – King can be heard heaping on the praise, playfully telling Tedeschi, “I can see why you married him.”

The solo only lasts around 75 seconds, but that’s more than enough for King, who proceeds to tell Trucks, “That’s probably as good as I’ve ever heard.”

Now, King would have listened to an insurmountable amount of blues music throughout his life, so for Trucks to hear he’d just performed some of the best King had ever heard… well, we can’t think of higher praise.

It's no wonder King was left so stunned by Trucks' solo, given the slide master's impactful and purposeful approach to soloing.

In an interview with MusicRadar back in 2017, the Tedeschi Trucks Band founder discussed his approach to lead playing, which had been influenced by a quote from jazz drummer, Elvin Jones.

“He’d say, ‘When you’re playing and when you’re soloing, always tell a story,’” Trucks reflected. “You hear it in the great musicians, whether it’s a drummer or a horn player or a guitar player – you hear them take those breaths. You can feel that there’s something they’re trying to tell you.

“It’s emotion. It could be a literal story you have in mind that you could be telling, but it’s important that it’s not just a pile of things that you practice that you think are cool. You really should be trying to express something.”

It’s been announced that Eric Clapton is set to team up with a huge array of artists and electric guitar stars for two upcoming tribute shows, which will be hosted in honor of the late Jeff Beck.

Set to take place on two dates at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall this May, the shows will see Slowhand team up with the likes of Gary Clark Jr. Doyle Bramhall II, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, as well as Billy Gibbons, John McLaughlin and Robert Randolph.

Beck’s close friend and guitar partner Johnny Depp will also make an appearance at the tribute concerts, as will some of Beck’s other close musical collaborators, such as Imelda May, Olivia Safe, Rod Stewart and Joss Stone.

Members of the Jeff Beck Band Rhonda Smith, Anika Nilles and Robert Stevenson are also slated to feature on the nights. Most of these guest musicians are expected to take part in both concerts.

As star-studded as the above list already is, even more musicians and guitarists will be confirmed for the show in due course, with the full guest list set to be finalized nearer the date of the performances.

According to a press release, surplus income from the shows will be donated to the Folly Wildlife Rescue, which is based in Kent, UK. Beck’s awareness for environmental activism was recently highlighted by Paul McCartney, who shared a previously unreleased track that featured the late guitar great.

Tickets for the Jeff Beck tribute concerts – which will take place on May 22 and 23 – are set to go on sale next Wednesday (March 15) over at Bookings Direct. Pre-sale will take place the day before, and registration for access is available at See Tickets.

Jeff Beck passed away earlier this year at the age of 78, prompting an outpouring of tributes from across the music world.

Last Saturday (January 14), Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi made an on-field appearance prior to the NFL playoff game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Los Angeles Chargers to deliver a powerful, electric guitar-driven rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

Ahead of the match, Tedeschi and her microphone lined up alongside the Gibson SG-wielding Trucks to perform the national anthem, with the pair flexing their unrivaled musical chemistry by effortlessly doubling up the vocal melody with silky, slide-driven chords.

Speaking to First Coast News prior to the performance, Trucks and Tedeschi divulged what they believed to be the hardest part of the song: the beginning passage.

“The hardest part is actually the very beginning, because it’s so low – because the whole range of the song is actually pretty wild,” said Tedeschi. “Hopefully I’ll get it.”

At the same time, Trucks also teased his plans to put a bit of “flair” into the guitar part, and said his rendition would be inspired by his late grandfather, who recently passed away at the age of 101.

“I’ll put a bit of flair into it,” he commented. “[My grandfather] was very particular about his anthems. He wanted to hear it. He wanted to hear the melody of the song, so I always think about him a bit whenever I play it.”

Indeed, that flair was present in abundance by the time the pair took to the field, and that opening exchange that was slated to be particularly tricky came and went like a breeze. A few harmonic rings and gain-tinged slides later, the Tedeschi Trucks duo were truly well on their way, with Trucks combining chords and licks alike to prop up the vocal melody.

Trucks has personal history performing the national anthem for the Jacksonville Jaguars, having recorded a live cut of it for the team two years ago.

It’s not the first recent example of Jaguars fans getting treated to a rousing, guitar-heavy rendition of the national anthem, either. The other week, a Jacksonville native named Paul Wane delivered a shred-heavy version of the anthem via his US flag-emblazoned T-type model.

Last year, there were countless examples in the wider world of sports. Metallica’s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett traded licks on the national anthem prior to a San Francisco Giants game, while Flea upped the fuzz for a particularly memorable run-through ahead of an LA Lakers game.

Tedeschi Trucks Band spent the first week of October hosting a residency at their regular pitstop The Beacon Theatre, in New York. They’ve since shared one of the highlights from their closing night – a stunning, emotive and entirely unexpected cover of Harry Styles’ Sign of the Times.

While we might be forgiven for waxing lyrical about Derek Trucks’ electric guitar playing at, frankly, any given show, this is a stop-you-in-your-tracks performance from Susan Tedeschi, in particular. Indeed, her soulful vocal interpretation takes a track that revolves around a repetitive four chord verse and chorus structure (F Dm C C7) and seems to make it levitate.

It’s also something of an unlikely song choice from a band that has often remained firmly associated with rock and soul music of a particular vintage – from Trucks’ Allman Brothers Band stints, to TTB’s full album performance of Derek And The Dominoes’ Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. The latter in turn led to this year’s four-record project, I Am The Moon, inspired by the same source material. 

Perhaps it’s this recent immersion in the past that has led them to add some newer material to their ever-expanding setlist. Styles’ 2017 single – his debut solo track – nonetheless has something timeless about it and Tedeschi’s performance, like all great covers, finds the song’s core and re-contextualises it. 

In TTB’s hands, Sign Of The Times becomes a sort of lost R&B classic: a could-have-been cut tragically left on the studio floor by Otis Redding or Etta James. Trucks, meanwhile, is content to play the role of beaming sideman in the performance, but still throws in some killer little Steve Cropper-style fills and slides. 

Several viewers of the pro-shot footage above claim they were in attendance at the show and have dubbed it the best vocal performance they’ve ever witnessed. 

As one comment puts it: “[I imagine] Harry Styles all of a sudden realized he's made It.”

Tedeschi Trucks Band will now head to Europe for a headline tour. You can purchase tickets from Ticketmaster.

On the new Tedeschi Trucks Band album I Am The Moon: I. Crescent – the first of four themed albums released this summer – there are moments that could very well document Derek Trucks at his world-beating best. 

Widely considered to be the finest slide player to emerge since the likes of Duane Allman, Sonny Landreth and Ry Cooder, the 43 year-old Trucks is still finding new ways to make his guitar speak. These latest recordings with the Grammy-winning 12-piece band he leads alongside his guitarist/vocalist wife Susan Tedeschi are evocative in a way that can transport the listener to different times and places.

Take 12-minute instrumental Pasaquan, for example, which reveals a distinctly edgier and moodier player than the Southern rock poster boy most of us are familiar with, and stands as the definitive guitar hero moment on this first chapter of the I Am The Moon series.

Talking to Total Guitar from his home on a typically balmy Floridian summer’s day, Derek explains how it was The Allman Brothers Band – the very group he was recruited by at the end of his teens – who inspired this wildly intense musical direction, with angular dissonance in place of his signature seductive sweetness.

“I mean, shit, we were all in a different headspace, right?!” he laughs when he considers how the I Am The Moon concept came together during the pandemic. “Instead of our usual life on the road, we’d been locked away at home thinking ‘Let us out!’ 

"Mountain Jam by the Allman Brothers was a big influence on Pasaquan. We would save it for the end of the day when everyone was warmed up. We’d take stabs and see where it took us. Some days it would be 10 minutes long, other days it would be 25. It just depended on the energy in the room. We didn’t want to beat it to death. We never did more than one take at a time. We all knew we’d get there when the spirit was right.”

Derek’s main electric guitar for the sessions was the number one that’s almost singlehandedly soundtracked the last decade of his career – a cherry red Gibson SG modelled on the 1961 original given to Duane Allman by bandmate Dickey Betts. The Custom Shop replica (Artist Proof #4) was gifted to Trucks by Allman’s daughter Galadrielle in 2011. 

As with a lot of his favourite SGs and guitars in general, it’s “super light in weight” – Trucks reasoning that drier and more porous woods result in instruments that resonate better. The same goes for acoustics, he nods, as it’s “the paper light ones” which, at least to his ears, fill rooms best...

“Sue brought a lot of different electrics,” he says, “and we both used quite a few acoustics like an old Roy Smeck model plus some Dobros and Nationals, but I just stuck with that [Dickey Betts] SG, although for the instrumental I used an old ES-335 from 1965, which I tuned down to a looser open B instead of open E. 

“Listening back I noticed my vibrato was a little swirly at times because of the different tension. Most of the record was done through an old Fender Deluxe, and I’d occasionally run an Echoplex through an old Supro as well, depending on how much dirt I needed. For a couple of tunes I took a Super Reverb into the middle of the room and dimed it, which is always fun!”

And on other occasions, he obtained his gargantuan tones through running lower watt combos at quieter levels. What works best in the studio, he remarks, can be very different to what he might use live. 

“Some of the biggest sounds actually came from this tiny Tweed Deluxe on three,” he reveals. “There was something about the tone that totally barked. When you go back into the control room, quite often it’s those tiny amps that sound biggest. Live is a totally different beast. I have Duane Allman’s 50-watt Marshall [as used on the Allman Brothers Band’s classic 1971 live album At Fillmore East], and it sounds incredible. 

“But it’s hard to make it sound the same on the record as it does in the room. It’s almost like the bigger the sound in the room, the smaller it sounds through speakers in the control room. That’s something you are always balancing: how it sounds on the floor and how it sounds later.”

While he has a long list of slide heroes – describing “the early Bukka White recordings specifically from 1928 to 1932” as his regular go-to for musical inspiration – there’s also a discernable Eastern twist to a lot of Derek’s classic leads. 

At times he’ll stay on one string and cover as much distance as possible, giving a philosophical sense of motion to the music that wouldn’t be quite the same if he was making life easier for himself on different strings. 

These ideas, he explains, were learned from sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and the time he spent studying at the late Indian classical virtuoso’s music college in California...

“Playing on one string can almost emulate the human voice, I think,” he smiles. “A lot of that came from hearing Ali Akbar Khan on the sarod. He’d hit a note and travel all the way up that fretboard – or steel plate, in his case. The first time I realised you can do that on a fretted instrument was through the great Indian mandolin player, U. Srinivas. 

“He’d just be flying around, almost leaving you wondering whether it’s intentional! Those two musicians really set the light bulb off for me. And even those old Delta guys, when they were trying to call and answer with a voice, it would usually be one string. The more you do it, the more you know what feels right.”

So what else can be learned from the man generally considered to be the greatest slide player on earth? 

When we ask about the secret to playing with all that emotion and power, and the advice he has to offer those of us trying to get anywhere close to his magical sense of feel, he once again points back to the early blues innovators and Hindustani raga concepts, which despite being worlds apart geographically, often share Mixolydian themes. But be warned – there aren’t any back doors when it comes to the general fundamentals of this sacred art form...

“Slide playing is all about intonation, which only comes through time,” he says. “You can’t skip over those things. When I feel like I’m not where I need to be, I’ll check in with players like Elmore James or Son House to remind myself. Through them I learned how you attack a note affects whether it sings or not, which can change whether people want to hear it. If you bring them in with a beautiful emotion from the beginning, you can dig in and take it anywhere. 

“You just need to start and end well. You need an entrance and an exit – you’ll be forgiven for a lot of what happens in the middle! You might have this phrase and then need to find ways to get in and out of it. 

“You find different cornerstones in this thing you’re building. You go off and explore, and then come back home occasionally. That’s an Indian classical concept, where somebody improvises and then comes back to the melody with everyone else, before it’s someone else’s turn to run with it.”

Equally as important as your note choices, he adds, is your vibrato. Few would disagree with him there – it’s one of the most defining elements of any lead guitarist, arguably even more so when slides are involved.

Just search through any of the YouTube playlists compiling Trucks’ greatest live solos, of which there are many, and you’ll find moments where he attacks one note with as much fury as he can muster and ride it out for as long as possible.

“Vibrato is really where you hear someone’s personality,” he says. “I remember my dad taking me to see players like BB King and we’d just listen to him shaking out one note for ages. You could hear his life story in that vibrato. It was exactly who he was. And yeah, some of the best moments are where you pin one note and just sting it! It can be either uncomfortable or incredible. You have to play about with the tension.

“It’s the threat of tension and release that works as the payoff. There are moments where I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I often see videos of myself and think, ‘What the f*ck, how did you get there?!’ But it seemed right at the time. Everyone will be waiting for these moments to happen and you have to find different ways to get there. They might not always work but you have to try!”

And, of course, there are some occasions where the rules were made to be broken. Just listen to John Lee Hooker, if you’re ever in doubt. 

“Some of my favourite John Lee Hooker recordings aren’t actually a 12-bar blues,” Derek concludes, “it’s more of an 11 or 13-bar blues, with the changes going wherever John said they should go, making it up as he went along. I’ve always loved that sense of freedom.”

• I Am the Moon is out now via Fantasy, and as a deluxe four-LP box set.

Modern slide guitar maestro Derek Trucks discusses his enduring love and admiration for Gilmour’s playing and tells us just why “you can’t duplicate that shit!”

“It’s hard to find just one specific track to key in on with a player as talented as David Gilmour. When you go back to those early Pink Floyd records now, you can hear there has obviously been an evolution. But other things about Pink Floyd remained absolutely unchanged. There are certain things you can’t run from if that’s who you are!

“That whole idea of having your own musical identity is very beautiful. That’s why we do it, to express who we are. David Gilmour is one of those characters who has this holistic thing going on. I feel like he’s created his own universe on guitar through his tone and approach. And you can hear it in his earliest recordings with Floyd – on things like The Nile Song.

“When he plays, it takes you back and makes you feel like you’re in a certain place. So whenever I hear him, it takes me back to spending time with one of my uncles when I was growing up. He was such a massive Pink Floyd fan, specifically David Gilmour’s guitar playing. Any time I hear that tone, those are the things I feel and think about. It’s always been there for me, with all these sounds that felt so magical.

“I can’t think of a single time I’ve seen him or heard David play and not enjoyed it. I’m always intrigued by what he’s doing. You know pretty immediately when it’s him plugged in, his sound is very singular. I can’t think of anyone else you could mistake him for... even though so many people have been influenced by him. 

“There’s a whole wave of players that got into the soundscape-y thing because of Pink Floyd, but you can’t duplicate that shit! I don’t know if it’s in his hands or the way he hears things or the way he attacks his instrument or dials in his gear... whatever it is, for some reason, a few people have it and most others don’t!

“But I guess a big part of that sound comes from his bending. It’s how he gets into those notes, and sometimes it’s already halfway bent before he strikes the notes but always perfectly controlled. It’s a rare thing, being able to make your guitar speak like that. Not many people can do it that well!

“This reminds me of a Hubert Sumlin moment I had. I would listen to his playing on those old Howlin’ Wolf records from the 60s, trying to figure it all out and find those sounds, like, ‘How the hell was he doing that?’ 

“And then one time we were backstage at a festival and he came into our room. There was this new Fender amp with a digital display on it and all these knobs, plus a brand new guitar with a tag on it. He plugged in and it was that same f*ckin’ sound from the 60s! I was wondering how that’s even possible. 

“But it was just his hands and how he attacks each note, which is just like Gilmour. He could play through anything and you’ll know pretty quickly it’s him. I always thought it was the gear but, actually, it rarely is!”

The Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi-led Tedeschi Trucks Band have dropped the third video installment of their ambitious I Am The Moon quadruple album and film project, which is titled Episode III: The Fall.

The Fall’s Alix Lambert-directed companion film has been unveiled ahead of the record’s digital and physical release, which is set for this Friday (July 29). According to the band, the video lets fans experience the music as TTB intended: in an unbroken, communal setting, blending together live footage and visualizations.

It’s the latest addition to the mammoth four-album project, which has so far been previewed by the first and second episodes, titled Crescent and Ascension, respectively. As such, it offers up the next six songs in I Am The Moon’s 24-song collection.

And, just like its predecessors, The Fall sees the 12-member outfit continue to tackle themes of passion and despair, with its lead songwriters Susan Tedeschi, Mike Mattison and Gabe Dixon once again taking inspiration from a 12th-century poem about lovers Layla and Majnun.

The poem, written by Nizami Ganjavi, explores two characters from Persian mythology who are thought to have set the mold for the well-known tale of star-crossed lovers.

The Fall offers a similar thematic, sonic, lyrical and contextual depth that has been consistent throughout the project thus far. Throughout the 31-minute video, TTB harness the very best of their playing – film opener Somehow is full-throttle soul, packed with tasty slide grooves and some of the best solo tones we’ve heard all year.

Throughout the next three tracks – None Above, Yes We Will and Gravity – the band build in the momentum by delicately traversing the boundaries between blues, soul and R&B, before Mattison takes the lead and slows things down for the emotive waltz-time ballad, Emmaline.

TTB cap off proceedings with Take Me As I Am – a heartfelt slow-dance, whose arrangement builds and swells all the way to its cliff hanger by way of operatic backing vocals and a dizzying slide solo.

At the time of I Am The Moon’s announcement, Trucks spoke of the album’s natural development, and confessed that the mammoth undertaking proved to be easier than one might expect.

“There are even chord changes that mirror other tunes on the albums – themes and variations, lyrical allusions, that pop back up,” said Trucks. “You always want to do something bigger and thematic. This is the first time it happened naturally.”

The fourth and final video installment to the I Am The Moon saga, Farewell, will debut on August 23. The physical and digital release will take place three days after on August 26.

To preorder I Am The Moon, head over to the Tedeschi Trucks Band website.

Tedeschi Trucks Band has released the second instalment of their epic I Am The Moon project, Episode II: Ascension.

The enormous undertaking was first announced back in April and sees the 12-member group release four thematically-linked albums, each with an accompanying film, across 2022.

The albums all draw inspiration from Persian mythology and the Layla and Majnun story of 12th-century poet Nizami Ganjavi – which was in turn, a source of inspiration for Derek and the Domino’s classic album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Central to that story is the tale of a young couple, Layla and the poet Majnun (‘The Madman’) – two characters from Persian mythology said to have set the mold for the classic tale of star-crossed lovers, forbidden to be together. 

The story’s ancient origins have filtered down into wider popular culture throughout history, reaching not just the magpie ear of Clapton and co, but also one William Shakespeare – reportedly providing the template for Romeo and Juliet in the process. 

Tedeschi Trucks Band are the latest to tackle the material, and they’ve done it in  depth – finding parallels between the enforced isolation and separation of their two protagonists and contemporary experience of the pandemic and its associated lockdowns.  

Episode II: Ascension offers the next seven songs in the 24-track collection and it is packed with some appropriately beautiful and exotic playing, blurring the lines between Eastern scales and Western slide work. 

As the band accrued more and more material, connections between different ideas started to present themselves, holding everything together thematically and musically

“There are even chord changes that mirror other tunes on the albums – themes and variations, lyrical allusions, that pop back up,” said Trucks. “You always want to do something bigger and thematic. This is the first time it happened naturally.”

As with the first instalment, Ascension is accompanied by a film directed by Alix Lambert (which you can watch above) that blends studio footage, visualizations and live performance clips. The full physical and digital release will follow on Friday (July 1), while the third and fourth instalments will premiere on July 26 and August 23, respectively.

Head to Tedeshi Trucks Band’s online store to order I Am The Moon.

Tedeschi Trucks Band have just announced the most ambitious album of 2022, and indeed of recent memory, I Am the Moon. 

A quadruple album and film project, comprising over two hours of music, I Am the Moon is inspired by Persian mythology and the poetry of Nizami Ganjavi, the disconnection of the pandemic, and immersive classic rock albums such as Jimi Hendrix Axis: Bold As Love.

With Trucks and Tedeschi’s names on it, I Am the Moon is sure to be a feast of electric guitar, with songs taking the scenic route through blues, soul, rock and whatever style fits best.

The 12-strong band led by husband-and-wife duo Derek Trucks (guitar) and Susan Tedeschi (guitar/vocals) will release each portion of the record with an accompanying film directed by Alix Lambert. Screened on the TTB YouTube channel, the films will combine studio footage with photography and performance footage to set the mood and draw the audience deeper into the arrangements.

There will be a lot of music to sink into. The album’s concept came from vocalist Mike Mattison, but it draws upon familiar inspirations for the band. Nizami Ganjavi’s poetry informed the Derek and the Dominos’ seminal 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, a record TTB have performed in its entirety, releasing it as Layla Revisited (Live at LOCKN’) in 2021.

Written collectively, I Am the Moon journeys back to the poem and reinterprets it, giving it the sort of expansive musical treatment it deserves, and offering TTB a freedom to cut loose musically, and exploring themes of “romantic relationships, collective struggle, faith, and the human experience”.

Trucks says the album came together quickly, and certain themes and motifs would naturally reappear, connecting the material.

“There are even chord changes that mirror other tunes on the albums – themes and variations, lyrical allusions, that pop back up,” says Trucks. “You always want to do something bigger and thematic. This is the first time it happened naturally.”

I Am the Moon was recorded in January 2021 at Swamp Raga, Tedeschi and Trucks’ home studio in Jacksonville, Florida. It was produced by Trucks with Bobby Tis recording and mixing.

The first of the albums, I Am the Moon: I. Crescent will be released on May 31st, when the film goes live on YouTube. The album will be available to buy on June 3rd.

That will be followed by I Am the Moon: II. Ascension on June 28th (film) / July 1st (album), I Am the Moon: III. The Fall on July 26th (film) / July 29th (album), with the final installment, I Am the Moon: IV. Farewell arriving on August 23rd (film) / August 26th (album).

A deluxe four-LP vinyl box-set will be released on September 9th exclusively through the TTB and Fantasy Recordings online stores.

Preorder I Am the Moon.

Led Zeppelin bass guitar legend John Paul Jones has taken part in an all-star cover of his band's classic song, When the Levee Breaks, that aims to raise money for charity.

Convened by Playing For Change, the lineup for the recording features – in addition to Jones – electric guitar aces like Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and Buffalo Nichols, among others.

You can give the cover – and its globe-trekking video – a spin below.

The lineup for the recording also features Jane's Addiction's Stephen Perkins on drums; Keith Secola, Pete Sands, and Sebastian Robertson providing additional guitar work; Ben Lee and Mermans Mosengo on harmonica; Jason Tamba on banjo; and Davey Chegwidden, Drums of the Pacific, Nakeiltha Campbell, and Sikiru Adepoju on percussion.

Tedeschi, Nichols, Elle Márjá Eira and Mihirangi provide vocals, while Alfredo Arce rounds out the ensemble on Siku flute.

“It seems that little has changed since 1927, or even 2005 with [Hurricane] Katrina," Jones said of the song, which was written by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929 in response to the devastating Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. "It’s still a really powerful track, both musically and lyrically.”

According to Playing For Change, net proceeds from the cover will be split between environmentally-minded organizations such as Conservation International, American Rivers, the World Wildlife Fund, REVERB and its own Playing For Change (PFC) Foundation, with additional funds earmarked for education programs led by the PFC Foundation.

For more on Playing For Change, visit the organization's website.

Buddy Guy’s dedication to his role as a mentor and torchbearer for blues musicians is being celebrated in a documentary, The Torch, which is set for theatrical release on March 18.

Guy is renowned as an iconic blues guitarist and inspiration to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, yet his role in supporting young musicians has often been overlooked. Guitar World has lost count of the many players we’ve encountered over the years who got their break when they were given the chance to perform onstage with Guy. 

This has not happened by accident. As one of the last surviving Chicago bluesmen and contemporaries of the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, Guy was tasked with passing the torch by his own late peers and mentors. As Waters put it to him, “Last man standing, don’t let the blues die.” 

Now The Torch, directed by Jim Farrell, aims to showcase this side of Guy’s musical journey, focusing on the guitarist’s recent efforts to support new players like Quinn Sullivan and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram. 

“Our aim in The Torch was to showcase Buddy’s brilliance and collaborative generosity onstage, while also achieving a fly on the wall intimacy for those backstage moments where he shares his vast life experiences,” Farrell told Rolling Stone.

“Like Derek Trucks says, ‘I always look forward to getting just whatever time we can with him because you walk away and you feel like there’s been this amazing knowledge dropped on you.’ The Torch shows how both onstage and off, Buddy’s dedication to young talent is truly unprecedented.”

The film includes footage and interviews from a wide variety of players, including Sullivan and Ingram, plus Carlos Santana, Joe Bonamassa, Jonny Lang, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. Sullivan’s story, in particular, is highlighted in the trailer above. 

“He never told Quinn what to play or how to play it,” observes Farrell, for Rolling Stone. “He simply shared his stage and audience and gave Quinn enough leash to figure it out on his own. A lot of artists promote the younger generation, and Buddy has done it with other artists, but I’d never heard of anyone doing it to this level. He brought Quinn around the world for more than 10 years and put him on some of the biggest stages, without any expectation of payback.”

In addition to tracking the stories and progress of these young players alongside Guy’s own incredible journey with the guitar, the film also reportedly documents the creation of a new Guy song, The Long, Hard Road – and you can hear a snippet in the trailer.

The Torch is released in selected theaters and on-demand on March 18, 2022. Head to IFC Films for more information. 

60 years ago, Gibson introduced the SG as a new alternative to the company’s Les Paul models. Early examples still bore the Les Paul signature, until Les himself expressed a disdain for its radical design and the instrument was renamed SG (short for Solid Guitar). 

The SG is a thinner, narrower and lighter guitar than the Les Paul, with easier access to the higher frets, and, though long sitting in the shadows of its esteemed sibling, the SG has inspired an army of loyal users – and it’s a versatile beast... 

While legendary rockers like AC/DC’s Angus Young and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi chose it for its stinging leads and powerful rhythm tones, the SG is equally comfortable filling out The Roots’ layered hip-hop tracks courtesy of Captain Kirk Douglas and helping Brittany Howard provide soulful grooves for Alabama Shakes. 

It goes without saying that you don’t need an SG to play these examples. Any humbucker-equipped guitar will be fine. Alternatively, if your guitar has single coils, roll off a little treble, boost the bass, and experiment with neck and middle pickup positions. 

Example 1. Angus Young

This lick is typical of how SG-lifer Angus Young would play over a song’s final chorus. We’ve used screaming bends combined with rhythmic doublestops that complement the rhythm guitar. Be sure to employ trademark Angus-style fast, wide vibrato for an authentic AC/DC sound.

Example 2. Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Sister Rosetta spent a lot of her time hammering an acoustic guitar, and this transferred to her super-aggressive SG playing. Her leads often follow the songs’ chord progressions closely, using chromatic notes to lead into chord tones. Remember, fretting the right notes is only half the battle – hit every note hard! 

Example 3. Brittany Howard

Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard runs her SG through an Orange amp to produce a beautiful, warm tone which is perfect for her soul-inspired chordal embellishments. Make sure you play on your fingertips to ensure the notes ring into each other.

Example 4. Tony Iommi

Godfather of metal Tony Iommi gets his trademark riffing sound by relying heavily on the fifth and sixth strings. Because he rarely moves to the lighter-gauge strings, this creates a thick, consistent sound.

You’ll need to move quickly, so lock your fingers in the powerchord shape and move your hand while holding your fingers in place.

Example 5. Brent Hinds

A diehard Gibson fan, Brent Hinds has been smashing out riffs on Les Pauls, Flying Vs and, of course, SGs for over 20 years with influential prog-metallers, Mastodon.

We’re using one of the band’s preferred tunings, D standard (DGCFAD) here. Aim for a consistent attack throughout and use all downstrokes if you can. 

Example 6. Robby Krieger

The Doors’ fingerpicking, SG-wielding guitarist is difficult to sum up in a single example – throughout his career, he’s drawn from styles as wide ranging as blues and flamenco.

This example shows how he blends classic blues licks with jazzier legato lines. Pick with your thumb and index finger in true Krieger style. 

Example 7. Jake Kiszka

Jake Kiska’s biting, classic rock-influenced riffing shows off the SG’s raw power. The key to this riff is to ensure you cut the staccato notes (the ones with dots over/under them) short. Play close attention to the audio track to make sure you nail the phrasing. 

Example 8. Captain Kirk Douglas

‘Captain’ Kirk Douglas is the resident SG expert for hip-hop heavyweights, The Roots. The guitar doesn’t sit up front often on their tracks, but when it does you can hear Douglas driving things along with staccato chords like those in our example. To get the choppy sound, release pressure on the strings just after you hit the chord. 

Example 9. Derek Trucks

Derek Trucks’ masterful slide guitar work is so expressive you could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to a vocalist. His unique sound comes from the way he approaches and embellishes notes with quick movements to mimic the way a singer would approach a melody. We’ve tabbed the lick as we’ve played it, but the fluid sound of slide guitar invites experimentation. 

Example 10. Eric Clapton

Clapton has used Fender Strats almost exclusively for over 50 years, but earlier in his career, most notably with Cream, SGs were a mainstay of his arsenal – and a key part of his patented 'Woman Tone'.

Play our example with a light picking attack. Try not to create accents in the hammer-ons and pull-offs by hammering on too hard or pulling-off too aggressively.

Johnny Winter, one of the all-time giants of blues guitar, passed away back in 2014.

Now, his brother, Edgar Winter, has assembled a jaw-dropping all-star cast to pay tribute to his brother's musical legacy in the form of a tribute album, Brother Johnny.

Featuring 17 tracks hand-picked by Edgar and producer Ross Hogarth – including two new Edgar Winter originals – the album is set for an April 15 release via Quarto Valley Records. 

About that all-star cast, though. For Brother Johnny, Edgar Winter recruited a simply astonishing guest list that includes Joe Bonamassa, Doyle Bramhall II, Ringo Starr, Derek Trucks, Robben Ford, Billy Gibbons, David Grissom, Joe Walsh, Phil X, Taylor Hawkins, Warren Haynes, Steve Lukather, Michael McDonald, Keb' Mo', John McFee, Doug Rappoport, Bobby Rush, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Waddy Wachtel.

The album's first single – a cover of Chuck Berry's rock 'n' roll standard, Johnny B. Goode, featuring some red-hot electric guitar work from David Grissom and vocals from Winter and Joe Walsh – can be heard below. 

Edgar chose Johnny B. Goode due to its significance in his and Johnny's story. As children (Johnny was 14 or 15, according to Edgar) the Winters won their first talent contest in Beaumont, Texas with a cover of the Berry classic. The prize? A chance to make their own record, an opportunity that led to the recording of the duo's first single, the Johnny-penned School Day Blues.

Edgar was first approached about making a tribute album for his brother almost immediately following Johnny's passing on July 16, 2014 in Zurich, Switzerland.

“Many people immediately started trying to convince me to do a Johnny Winter tribute album," he said. "But I was totally devastated, and the timing just didn't feel right to me. It wasn’t until after I completed the Rock ‘N’ Blues Fest, a tour we were meant to do together with our respective bands, that the idea of a tribute record started to take form.”

“I had naturally expected the whole thing to be cancelled," Edgar continued. "But much to my surprise, the promoters begged me to go on with the tour as planned, asking me to headline. The first night, after playing Frankenstein, I closed the show with Johnny B. Goode, Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo, and Jumpin' Jack Flash, dedicating the end of the set to Johnny.

“I had anticipated the tour to be very emotional, perhaps sad, and possibly difficult, but playing those songs turned out to be a great source of strength and comfort to me. Everyone on the tour was so kind and supportive, getting up to jam, and it became a kind of tradition. 

"There was such an overwhelming outpouring of love and respect for Johnny, I began to realize it was not just business people sensing an opportunity here; it was Johnny's true, loyal, and devoted fans and our fellow musicians, many of whom are on this record, who wanted to see this happen as well.

“After the tour, and over the following years as talk of a tribute album continued, my wife Monique, whose intuition I trust more than my own, said, 'I think you have to make this album, both for Johnny, for yourself, and for the world. You owe that acknowledgement to your older brother. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be where you are today. There’s no need to worry about it. If it’s meant to happen, it will.'" 

For more info on the album, head on over to Edgar Winter's website.

It’s been the year of collaborations thus far for Carlos Santana, who recently teamed up with a number of electric guitar players for his most recent album, Blessings and Miracles, which features Chris Stapleton, Steve Winwood, Kirk Hammett and more.

If his recent comments are anything to go by, though, the 15-track album – which also reserved guest spots for Rob Thomas, American Authors, Ally Brooke, Diane Warren, Mark Osegueda and Avi Snow – is only the start of Santana’s plans. To continue his collaborative form, the PRS-playing guitar powerhouse has now teased an instrumental project with Eric Clapton and Derek Trucks.

And, judging by what’s been hinted at, it could be one of Santana’s most intriguing – and certainly most eclectic – offerings to date.

Santana spilled some tentative details in this month’s holiday issue of Guitar World, teasing the trio have a very particular sonic niche they hope to occupy.

When asked about his future projects, Santana commented, “I believe it’s important to constantly expand, expand and expand – by always creating and challenging myself. I’m looking forward, at the moment, to creating an album that is purely instrumental.

“Nothing will be geared up to radio or radio-friendly commerciality,” he continued. “In a way, I’m picturing something like a soundtrack, perhaps in the vein of an Ennio Morricone score for an imaginary spaghetti western – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, that kind of thing, you know? 

“I talked about this with Eric Clapton and Derek Trucks, and that is something we will be working on together in the near future. We aren’t going to be concerned about songs; it will be more about moods.”

No other details were given, though if the final product sounds anything like we imagine, count us in.

Elsewhere in the interview, Santana touched upon the philosophy and secrets behind his trademark tone, commenting, “If there is such a thing as a secret, I guess it would be to not think about what you are doing.”

Name-dropping Peter Green and B.B. King as the inspirations behind his approach, he continued, “Emotion, passion and feelings are what we all have, and if you keep yourself open, you can let these things express themselves through your playing. I grew up on Peter Green and B.B. King and, of course, those two players have very different individual styles. 

“The essence of that is that they let themselves honestly express what they were feeling through their instrument. B.B. King was originally the template for how I wanted to create my voice on the guitar, but after that period that players go through when they try to sound like their heroes, they have to find out who they are. 

“I am very grateful that I’ve found something that is uniquely my own style.”

Blessings and Miracles, Santana’s 26th studio LP and his first-ever to be recorded without the aid of a Mesa/Boogie amp, was released on October 15 and is available now via BMG.

Head over to Magazines Direct to scoop the year-end legends issue of Guitar World, featuring the full Santana interview, a cover feature with The Edge and a previously unpublished conversation with the Cramps’ Poison Ivy.

Virginia's LOCKN’ Festival is famous for putting together one-of-a-kind collaborations. In 2019, that included Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio joining the Tedeschi Trucks Band to perform Derek and the Dominos’ only studio album – 1970’s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs – in its entirety. 

Frequent TTB collaborator Doyle Bramhall II, who has played with Eric Clapton off and on for 20 years, also joined the band. The performance ended up being so strong that Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi decided to release it as an album, Layla Revisited (Live at LOCKN'), which concludes with an acoustic studio version of Thorn Tree in the Garden, performed as a duet by Tedeschi and Trucks. It was the only song they didn’t perform on stage. 

“We skipped the song because we were playing the record in order, and I couldn't imagine following the massive crescendo of Layla with an acoustic guitar and the least-known tune on the record,” says Trucks with a laugh. 

“When we decided to release this thing, it just seemed right to add it – and it’s such an interesting tune; the tuning and the feel are great, and there are a few bars of weird harmonic overdubs. And Sue just sang her ass off. It was one of the first things we did after not working for a while, so her voice is completely rested, and there's something really, really beautiful about it.”

Thorn Tree wraps up the album beautifully, but the focus of the disc remains the blistering electric guitar interplay between Trucks, Anastasio and Bramhall. The performance was so strong that it jumped to the front of TTB’s archival pile, ahead of the 2015 performance of Mad Dogs & Englishmen [Joe Cocker’s 1970 live album] the band did with Leon Russell and other survivors of the original tour. 

Layla has always had a special resonance for Trucks; he was actually named after the band – and the album was propelled by guitar greats Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, who have loomed large in his life and career. Trucks’ uncle, Butch Trucks, was a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, with whom Derek played from 1999 to 2014. He also toured the world with Clapton in 2006 and 2007. 

“By the time I started playing guitar, the sound of Duane Allman’s slide was almost an obsession,” Trucks says. “My dad would play Layla for me and my brother to fall asleep to and further sear it into my DNA.”

A lot of us were expecting Mad Dogs & Englishmen to come out, but you surprised us with Layla Revisited. What went into that?

“At the beginning of the lockdown, we had rare time in our studio. We had two projects we've been wanting to get to work on: the Mad Dogs show with Leon and this Layla project. 

“We really just started working to see what they sounded like, if they held up. We spent two or three weeks finishing Mad Dogs, even getting the vinyl acetates cut. 

“Then we pulled up the Layla stuff and immediately the sound was even more focused; we had honed in our recording more and the sound was really incredible, so we just dug into it. It was a good place to put our energy during a time when there was nothing happening live. The further we dug into it, the more we realized there's some pretty extraordinary stuff on there.”

Once it was decided that you were going to play with Trey, who came up with the idea of playing Layla? 

“We had one call early on, and I had the idea of leaning into a handful of Dominos tunes. We were at Red Rocks and I was about to call Trey back to discuss this. I mentioned some of the tunes we were thinking about to my friend Julie, and she said, ‘You should just do the whole fuckin' record.’ 

“That was immediately the most obviously correct thing in the world. [Laughs] As soon as I mentioned it, Trey talked about how important that record was to him and that he's never learned all those tunes and he’d love to. 

“There's so many connections that we all have to that record – including that it was released on the day that Sue was born – but for me, it goes right back to the very genesis of even playing music and my family. 

“Since the Allman Brothers Band ended, this almost felt like one undone thing. It didn’t even fully hit me how important that record was to what I do until we really got into it.”

You were named after the band! Was that because the album was so important to your parents? 

“Basically. The Duane connection made it more mythical because it connected my dad to Eric and a whole other musical world that he loved but didn’t have a direct connection to. Like, Eric's connected to Hendrix, who my dad saw and loved. 

“One of the first images I remember as a kid is Layla, along with a BB King record, At Fillmore East and a Joni Mitchell record leaning up against the peach crates that held their records. My parents had a daughter named Jessica after the song; she was born before me but didn't make it, because she had a rare genetic disorder. The music is my dad's religion.”

Once you decided to do this, did you immediately hone in on the Duane parts? Was there a straight split of Trey playing Eric and you playing Duane?

“No. Being slightly unsure of how Trey worked, I learned all the guitar parts myself, just so I could bob and weave, but we didn’t really discuss it. When we got to the first rehearsal, it turned out Trey had done the same thing!”

That’s great. You were like middle linebackers who know every defensive assignment.

“Yeah – it's a game changer when somebody can take on the different parts. A lot of times, people show up having done the bare minimum, but everyone drilled down with this project. Certainly Trey did his homework and then some. It made the thing so much more fun because once you have the material locked in, you can move on to the next phase: making it your own thing and deviating from the script. 

“It's one thing to branch off and improvise if you don't know the stuff, but it's a totally different thing if you know what the variation means. And Doyle also knew the songs inside out after playing with Eric for so long, and when his parts fell in, it was perfect. 

“We had one day of rehearsal before Doyle arrived and it felt good, but Layla seemed a little undercooked next to the other tunes, but as soon as he took that role, it was off to the races. He was the ringer.”

Do you anticipate working with Trey again in the future? 

“I would imagine so because it was so much fun, but when a one-off like this goes so well, there's a part of me that wants to just let it live in that space. [Laughs] Like, we talked about redoing the Mad Dogs thing, but there was something that felt so special about it that I didn't want to dilute it at all. 

“It’s kind of the same with this. There’s something beautiful and powerful about something actually existing once... but I'm sure we'll end up playing together again somehow.”

Have you discussed this project with Eric?

“No. We stay in contact and I thought about bringing it up to him, but I felt like I would just leave it alone. Maybe he’ll hear it and enjoy it. [Laughs]”

You’ve been recording a new album. What is the timing looking like?

“I have a feeling it'll be early next year. I don't know exactly how it's gonna play out, but it feels more like it's going to be a project in four parts, because we ended up with so much material. 

“It was rejuvenating for everyone to not have a clock ticking. It was a luxury to be able to spend that much time writing and recording and just creating without knowing we have to be on the road in three or four days. Having the time to create for the first time was the one huge upside of not touring. No one has that luxury these days. 

“The days when there was enough money that you could take six months off and make a record just don't exist in our world. This was the first time we've ever been able to just be creative in the studio together and not worry about what it was going to be until we get to the end.”

That’s also made possible because you have a studio in your backyard, right?

“Absolutely. We certainly wouldn't have been able to pony up cash for all that studio time. Before the end of the year, we'll be spending all of our free time finishing that up and figuring out the best way to present it, but it's exciting. 

“Everyone was really creative, there’s a lot of inspired writing and it's a different feel and different sound and it feels like a new band – which it is! It's the first real thing we've done, since Kofi [Burbridge, keyboardist] passed and JJ [Johnson, drums] and Tim [Lefebvre, bass] left, so it's a new feeling. 

“It would be disingenuous to try to keep the sound the same; you have to change and grow and everyone's been really open to that. So that's been refreshing and rejuvenating.”

• Tedeschi Trucks Band's Layla Revisited (Live at LOCKN') is out now via Swamp Family Music LLC. 

The Tedeschi Trucks Band have unveiled yet another taste of their forthcoming Layla Revisited (Live at Lockn’) release, with a clip of Derek and the Dominos classic Tell the Truth, featuring Phish's Trey Anastasio.

Derek Trucks' world-beating slide skills are out in full force during the performance, with Susan Tedeschi laying down thick Les Paul rhythm tones, while Anastasio closes out the track with a bend-rich, vocal solo.

This is the third preview of Layla Revisited following the release of Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?, and Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out. 

The full concert was recorded in August 2019 at the Lock’n Festival in Arrington, VA, during the second of two sets from the band, where they performed Derek and the Dominos' only album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, in its entirety, with Anastasio guesting for the whole set.

Initially, there was no mention of the Layla set to the audience – the evening was simply billed as “Tedeschi Trucks Band featuring Trey Anastasio”, leaving the crowd completely unaware when the band started ripping into the classic record.

“By the time that I started playing guitar, the sound of Duane Allman’s slide was almost an obsession,” said Trucks in a statement. 

“His playing on Layla is still one of the high-water marks for me. The spirit, the joy, the recklessness, and the inevitability of it. My dad would play that record for me and my brother to fall asleep to and further sear it into my DNA.”

Layla Revisited (Live at Lockn’) will be released July 16 via Fantasy Records and is available for preorder now.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band are also hitting the road through the US this summer for a mix of drive-in shows, reduced capacity outdoor amphitheaters and pod setups. Full dates can be found on the band's website. 

A cadre of guitar heroes was on hand at the BB King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Mississippi, on Saturday (June 5) to help christen the center’s new 4,500-square-foot wing, and the first exhibits added to the museum since King passed away in 2015.

Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Gary Clark Jr. and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram headlined a tribute concert that followed the ceremony on Second Street in front of the complex, playing selections from King’s songbook to an estimated 1,500 attendees.

In the spirit of the dozens of free homecoming concerts King played in Indianola during his lifetime, the performance brought together musicians who played with and were influenced by King to perform a free show in his honor. 

Longtime King drummer Tony “TC” Coleman served as bandleader for a revolving cast of guest guitar players – most of whom used variations of the Gibson ES-335 and ES-355 models King himself played – including Mississippi bluesmen Ingram, Vasti Jackson and Mr. Sipp, as well as Lil’ Ray Neal and D.K. Harrell, who played in the house band.

The new expansion covers the final years of King’s life and tells the story of how he made his living on the road by averaging more than 300 concerts a year for three decades. Whereas other displays in the permanent collection show some of King’s tour ledgers and a mess kit that belonged to one of his band members (segregation forbade them from dining-in at many towns they played in the early days), now visitors can see a few of his actual rides for themselves. 

The collection includes his customized Rolls Royce and El Camino cars, as well as a tour bus he purchased new in 1987 and traveled more than 12 million miles in – enough for 25 round trips to the moon.

Here are five other cool things we saw in Indianola at the BB King Museum celebration.

1. BB King now rests in bronze

While his namesake museum tells his incredible life story and the shared experiences of many of his relatives and neighbors who lived in the Delta, his final resting place at the museum was simple and unadorned. No more, though. 

A pavilion and garden now surround his grave, with the names of his songs engraved into slats along the walls. The centerpiece – a life-size King rendered in bronze – keeps eternal watch from a nearby bench.

2. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram got personal with his fans

One of the best-known members of the Mississippi guitar contingent, 22-year-old Clarksdale native Christone "Kingfish" Ingram played a set of originals with his own band during the afternoon, then returned after nightfall to take on King’s 1953 single Woke Up This Morning (My Baby She Was Gone) with the all-star backing band. 

During his own set, though, Ingram hopped off the stage and brought his greasy Delta licks to the streets – and even serenaded one lucky young fan.

3. Gary Clark Jr. was as impressed with the band as they were with him

Gary Clark Jr. mingled with fans along Second Street during the casual afternoon sets, stopping to chat, pose for photos and even sign a young boy’s bottle-cap guitar replica. 

That goodwill followed him to the stage, inspiring a crowd chant [GAR-Y! GAR-Y!] after his rousing version of Whole Lotta Love. He followed with a slow-burning, 11-minute take on 3 O’Clock Blues, and gave the spotlight to house-band guitarists Lil’ Ray Neal and D.K. Harrell between his mesmerizing solos.

4. Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks brought down the house

After stepping onstage to a warm birthday greeting from the crowd, Trucks strapped on one of King’s personal Lucille guitars and joined Tedeschi, who was playing a borrowed Fender Stratocaster. 

The band tore right into You Don’t Know with support from a horn section and keys, plus a slide solo from Trucks. How Blue Can You Get also included Trucks, and featured an extended Tedeschi solo. 

5. 10 guitarists took part in the concert’s finale

Every guitarist returned to the stage for the final two songs. On Everybody Wants to Know Why I Sing the Blues, bassist Michael Doster, a 17-year veteran of King’s band, anchored the groove, while Coleman sang lead and played drums, giving the guitar players space to lay down their King-inspired licks. 

Tedeschi led the 'guit-army' through the finale, The Thrill is Gone – King’s 1970 Grammy Award-winning hit and his most enduring signature song.

Tedeschi Trucks Band, led by slide and electric guitar wizard Derek Trucks and guitarist and vocalist Susan Tedeschi have announced the release of Layla Revisited (Live At LOCKN'), a one-off live recording of the seminal Derek & the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, performed in its entirety at the LOCKN' Festival in Arrington, Virginia on August 24, 2019.

The set also finds TTB joined by Phish leader Trey Anastasio, as well as frequent collaborator Doyle Bramhall II.

You can check out a performance of Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad, featuring dual Trucks and Anastasio solos, above.

The Layla performance came as a surprise to fans in attendance at LOCKN' that night, with the set initially billed only as “Tedeschi Trucks Band featuring Trey Anastasio,” with no mention made of the album.

But Tedeschi and Trucks’ connection to Layla, which saw Clapton joined by Allman Brothers Band slide guitar great Duane Allman, ran deep: it was initially released on November 9, 1970, the same day Susan Tedeschi was born; Trucks’ parents were such fans of the record that they named Derek after the band; and Trucks spent 15 years as a member of the Allman Brothers Band and has toured extensively with Clapton.

“By the time that I started playing guitar, the sound of Duane Allman’s slide was almost an obsession,” Trucks said in a statement. “His playing on Layla is still one of the high-water marks for me. The spirit, the joy, the recklessness, and the inevitability of it. My dad would play that record for me and my brother to fall asleep to and further sear it into my DNA.”

Layla Revisited (Live At LOCKN') will be released July 16 via Fantasy Records. It’s available for preorder now.

Tedeschi Trucks Band are also hitting the road for limited capacity shows as part of their Fireside LIVE tour. You can check out all the upcoming dates here.

Not content with the status quo, industrious young guitar players have endeavored over the decades to make things more difficult for themselves.

Some have tried playing the guitar behind their back, over their head, with their teeth, with their friends' teeth, etc. And then there was the inventive guitarist who, many decades ago, decided to slip a bottle over his finger and slide it along his guitar's strings to produce a magical sound (He probably emptied the bottle himself, if you know what I mean).

While playing the guitar with your teeth is, was and always shall be a novelty, slide guitar - and slide guitarists - is and are here to stay. They actually started digging in their heels long before Robert Johnson made his haunting Delta blues recordings in Texas in the 1930s. 

Since Johnson's time, players - including guys like George Thorogood, Derek Trucks, Ry Cooder, Jerry Douglas and Roy Rogers - have built entire careers around slide guitar and its many stylistic varieties.

Below, we present 10 tracks that represent essential listening in the world of slide guitar. Please note that we're sticking with regular ol' six-string guitar - no lap steel, sacred steel, pedal steel, etc. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) These songs are presented in no particular order. I repeat: These songs are presented in no particular order.

• For more slide goodness, check out the latest issue of Guitar World, where Slide Rules!

1. The Allman Brothers Band - Statesboro Blues

Guitarist: Duane Allman

A generation of blues-influenced rockers toyed with slide guitar for several years, slowly bringing it into mainstream music (Check out Jeff Beck's performance on Evil Hearted You by the Yardbirds), but no one dragged it into the modern era quite like Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. 

He used the slide to imitate the sound of a blues harp - not to mention mesmerize countless concert goers who were knocked out by his dexterity and intensity. Perhaps his quintessential slide performance is the Allmans' At Fillmore East version of Blind Willie McTell's Statesboro Blues. 

As Rolling Stone put it, it features the sort of playing that gives people chills. Of course, be sure to seek out other live versions of the song, including the one on the band's recently released SUNY at Stonybrook album.

2. Sonny Landreth - Überesso

Guitarist: Sonny Landreth

Respected Louisiana-based slide player Sonny Landreth started appearing on music fans' radar in earnest after the release of the 2007 Crossroads Blues Festival DVD. It features a few tracks by Landreth (jamming with Eric Clapton and such), including the uber-exciting instrumental, Überesso.

Landreth's unique slide technique lets him fret notes and play chords and chord fragments behind the slide. He plays with the slide on his little finger, so his other fingers have more room to fret. Check out his performance of Überesso from the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival below. Yes, he's awesome.

3. Steve Miller Band - The Joker

Guitarist: Steve Miller

Although not primarily known as a slide player, Steve Miller put the slide to fun and creative use on his 1973 hit single, The Joker, playing a hummable, tasteful slide solo for the masses (and imitating a whistle a few times in the process). 

Although it's no Überesso (See above), it shows that slide guitar has been invited to the chart-success party, especially in the early '70s, much like our next selection ...

4. George Harrison - Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

Guitarist: George Harrison

You'll read it in other roundups of great slide guitar songs - comments like, "Although he wasn't a virtuoso like these other players..." Yeah, whatever. OK, he wasn't Jeff Beck, Steve Howe or Ritchie Blackmore, but George Harrison, who, as a member of the Beatles, influenced millions of humans to play guitar, suddenly started playing slide guitar in 1969, inventing an entirely new guitar persona for himself. 

What he came up with was a distinctive, non-blues-based style that incorporated hints of Indian music, some pointers he picked up while learning sitar and other Beatles-esque odds and ends. 

While My Sweet Lord and Badfinger's Day After Day (featuring Harrison on slide) are better known, 1973's Give Me Love perfectly displays his new-found style. For some quality later work, check out Cheer Down from 1989 and "Any Road" from 2002.

5. Foghat - Slow Ride

Guitarist: Rod Price

Staying in the '70s for a moment, let us consider Foghat's Slow Ride, another slide-based song that topped the charts. Perhaps the polar slide opposite of George Harrison, the heavily blues-influenced Rod "The Bottle" Price (Yes, they called him "The Bottle") let it all hang out in his solo near the fadeout of Foghat's signature track. Be sure to also check out Foghat's Drivin' Wheel and Stone Blue. Price, a product of the UK, died in 2005.

6. Led Zeppelin - In My Time of Dying

Guitarist: Jimmy Page

Although the "big three" guitarists who emerged from the '60s rock scene in England - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page - flirted with slide guitar at different points in their careers, none took it as far, or used it with as much success, as Page. 

For proof, just listen to In My Time of Dying from Physical Graffiti. The recording (the most popular version of a song Josh White recorded in the mid-'40s), features Page sliding away in open A (E-A-E-A-C#-E). 

Although Page also played slide on When the Levee Breaks, Traveling Riverside Blues and What Is and What Should Never Be, his distinctive slide style simply defines the powerful and dark In My Time of Dying.

7. Elmore James - Dust My Broom

Guitarist: Elmore James

We've mentioned a few "blues-influenced" players, which is basically another way of saying "players who were influenced by Elmore James." James - who was actually dubbed the "King of the Slide Guitar" - is best known for his 1951 version of Dust My Broom (I Believe My Time Ain't Long). 

The song's opening riff is one of the best-known and most influential slide guitar parts ever. Yes, it sounds a lot like what Robert Johnson played on his I Believe I'll Dust My Broom several years earlier, but James played his riff on an electric guitar, pretty much claiming it for himself in the process and sending chills down the spine of a new generation.

8. Johnny Winter - Highway 61 Revisited

Guitarist: Johnny Winter

The lanky Texan (and former Brit) simply burns it up in his legendary cover of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited from Second Winter, his second album. Be sure to investigate the acoustic Dallas from Winter's self-titled 1969 album. If you can convincingly play these two songs, it's time to hang up your T-square and/or apron and look for session work!

9. Derek Trucks Band - Sahib Teri Bandi/Maki Madni

Guitarist: Derek Trucks

The list takes an exotic turn with this middle-eastern-flavored track by Derek Trucks. With his deep Allman Brothers Band lineage, we know Trucks (and Warren Haynes, of course) can tackle roots rock, extended blues jams and more, but this 10-minute instrumental track from his 2006 album, Songlines, steps way out of those boundaries and truly shows what Trucks is capable of. 

He makes the guitar sound like an exotic instrument from a distant land and time. Check out this live performance from 2008, below.

10. Rory Gallagher - Want Ad Blues/Wanted Blues

Guitarist: Rory Gallagher

For our official acoustic guitar entry, let's not forget the late, great Rory Gallagher, shown here playing a version of John Lee Hooker's Wanted Blues. It's hard to believe this Irish master of the Stratocaster was also a ridiculously accomplished traditional blues slide player.

Best of 2019: Sure, 'Blues the vote!' doesn’t have quite the same ring as 'Rock the vote!' But that didn’t keep GuitarWorld.com readers from voicing their valuable opinions in one of our most popular electric guitar polls in recent history - best blues guitarist - which ruled the site in June and early July.

In fact, it racked up more than 60,000 votes (60,429, to be exact) from readers around the world. The results are in, and the winner, as you probably know by now, is the one, the only Joe Bonamassa, who bested the rest of the top five - Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks, Buddy Guy and John Mayer - to land at the top of Bluesville.

Below, we’ll shine a light on some of the guitarists who scored handsomely in our Top 30 (yes, we’re listing only the top 30 here), including Bonamassa, Buddy Guy, Samantha Fish and newcomer Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram.

The poll included a whopping 73 choices, and readers also were encouraged to suggest their own candidates (and they pretty much only voted for guitarists who have been dead for several decades - but thanks anyway, gang!).

With that in mind, we encourage you to explore the work of the top vote-getters (Eric Gales, anyone?), including guitarists who didn’t make the top 30, such as Ronnie Earl, Ana Popovic, Chris Duarte, Kirk Fletcher, Sue Foley, Tommy Castro, Duke Robillard and Junior Watson.

So, without further ado, we present the best blues guitarists in the world today, according to you...

1. Joe Bonamassa

The world’s most high-profile blues guitarist has spent 2019 packing out pretty much every large, red-plush seated theater he can find in support of last year’s masterly Redemption. It’s little wonder his chops are always on-point.

But it’s not just his performances that make him so influential; his championing of his fellow blues players elevate the genre, bringing a little more light and heat to the fast-rising blues cats such as Eric Gales (his number one blues-rock player in the world, and your number 12).

Other highlights include jamming with Journey at Caesar’s Palace and returning the favor to Neal Schon, and, as an inveterate gear collector, taking receipt of a see-through Lucite Fender Twin and a pristine 1958 Gibson Flying V, aka “Donnie J.” has to be up there, too.

2. Eric Clapton

For a player who made his bones in the ‘60s with Cream and Blind Faith, back when the color TV was still novel, Slowhand made a respectable attempt at breaking the internet when he played While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Peter Frampton at this year’s Crossroads Guitar Festival. It brought the house down.

It remains to be seen if we will see a follow-up to 2018’s Happy Xmas. But with super-limited custom shop models from Fender, Gibson and Martin minted in his name to coincide with the Crossroads festival, he remains the lodestar for contemporary blues culture.

Pointless trivia: as a child Clapton had an imaginary pet horse nicknamed Bush Branch. Less pointless: GW’s lesson in Clapton’s jaw-dropping off-the-cuff phrasing. He was the master. He is the master.

3. Derek Trucks

Is there a better slide player in the world right now? Trucks is the highest slide specialist in our voters’ list, and perhaps that is because his sensibility is such that he never overpowers the jam, often positioning his Gibson Artist Series Dickey Betts SG somewhere in the uncharted frequencies shared by vocals and guitar, and as an enigmatic counterpoint to his wife Susan Tedeschi’s Strat or Les Paul.

Of course, when absolutely necessary, he can pin the audience to the floor, dialing in more bite on his volume control to hit the front end of his Alessandro custom head harder. The Tedeschi Trucks Band’s latest album, Signs, is poignant, life-affirming, and full of soul. Blues for our times.

4. Buddy Guy

Profiled in the New Yorker as “the last of the bluesmen,” Buddy Guy might be 83 years young but he has more than plenty sap in the tree, and can presently be found, Strat in hand, at venues up and down the length and breadth of the United States.

Whether he’s playing his cover of Willie Dixon’s I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man or Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, Buddy’s playing is still off-the-charts, hold-the-bus genius - as his showmanship, gleaned from one of his all-time heroes Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones).

5. John Mayer

That Mayer can still be pocketed in the blues tradition says much for his chameleon style. If ever there was a contemporary player who could shift through genre and feel without causing a ripple, it’s Mayer.

His tone, subject of several terabytes of online discussion and out-of-focus images of his pedalboard and backline from live shows, is just so dynamic. Lush but lithe and spanky, and perfect for his pop sensibility, which never quite seems at odds with the blues. It’s quite the sleight of hand Mayer’s performing with that PRS Silver Sky of his.

6. Kenny Wayne Shepherd

As a disciple of SRV, KWS shares that unpredictable quality to his phrasing, where he will be playing something traditional, say, in-the-pocket Albert King, before flipping the script on it and taking it some place new.

He released The Traveler in May, and of course the songwriting is super-tight, but the playing is unimpeachable, always inventive.

• Got the blues? Check out the best blues guitars 

7. Samantha Fish

Fish is taking the blues forward, where it needs to go, and her latest album, Kill or Be Kind, has moments when octave, pitch shifters, fuzz and delay pedals take blues guitar tone into another dimension.

All the while Fish retains the blues’ storytelling power, rooting her sound in the blues tradition while imagining it anew.

8. Gary Clark Jr.

Gary Clark Jr. is another player who incorporates ostensibly alien elements into the mix and yet it’s still the blues.

This Land, his third studio album, is a work of searing passion and righteous indignation, its title track appropriating some of Guthrie’s original composition and transforming it out of sight.

But hip-hop, rock, whatever; when it spills out of Clark it goes all the way back to Johnson, Walker, et al.

9. Tab Benoit

The Louisiana Delta blues maestro is a man of simple pleasures, namely a ’72 Fender Thinline Telecaster that he bought for less than half a grand when cutting his debut in the ‘90s, and Category 5 amps.

And when you find something that works for you like that, well, it becomes an extension of the self, and the sky’s the limit. This year saw Benoit inducted into the Louisiana Folklife Center Hall of Master Folk Artists, and launch his own label, Whiskey Bayou Records.

10. Billy Gibbons

The bearded bastion of boogie’s most intriguing moment of the year came when Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme invited him out to perform on his Desert Sessions Vol.11/12 recording, with Gibbons opening proceedings in half falsetto on Move Together.

But those looking for something to put some Texas heat into their drive time commute would have found this year’s Goin’ 50 compilation a worthy reminder of ZZ Top’s inimitable style.

11. Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram

The Clarksdale, Mississippi, phenom is only 20 years old but already has a sense for feel, phrasing and vibrato that helps him shake the very soul out of his instrument.

This year saw the release of his debut, Kingfish, and having already played in the company of Eric Gales and Buddy Guy, the best is yet to come. This here is the future.

12. Eric Gales

The comparisons to Jimi Hendrix don’t begin and end with Gales’ preference for the right-handed Fender used southpaw, but perhaps there’s some SRV in there, too, especially in that super-juicy tone.

But the Raw Dawg’s cover of Little Wing is proof positive he can stamp his identity on anyone’s material - on the blues itself. Check out Resolution from his latest album, Bookends, for a novel blues-rock application of the DigiTech Whammy pedal.

13. Warren Haynes

Founding member of Gov’t Mule and with a long association with the Allman Brothers, Haynes has a spent much of 2019 on tour, and is currently in the bus with John Medeski, Lukas Nelson and others on The Last Waltz Tour 2019, playing a mammoth set each night in tribute to the Band’s 1976 farewell concert.

He remains one of guitar’s most improvisational mavericks, whose solos are essential material on any blues syllabus.

14. Erja Lyytinen

Finnish singer-songwriter Erja Lyytinen is one of Europe’s leading blues players and her latest album, Another World, features guest spots from Jennifer Batten and Sonny Landreth, in what is another showcase for her awesome voice and ear for progressive, melodic rock.

Not to mention the eminently vocal qualities of her immaculate slide playing.

15. Chris Buck

There are all kinds of floral endorsements we could make to this prodigious south Wales talent, about a melodic sensibility that’s write large through Buck & Evans’ work, and how their latest, Write a Better Day, was recorded live to retain that spontaneous feel that keeps Buck’s on the right side of his instincts.

Or we could co-sign Slash’s thoughts, who, upon jamming on a number of occasions with Buck describes him as “a fucking amazing guitar player.” Right on, Slash!

16. Josh Smith

Smith started playing at six, an age where he, like many others, might have struggled to tie his shoelaces, yet nonetheless he developed a preternatural disposition for the blues.

His 2019 has been spent on the road in support of last year’s Born to Grow, which, well check out the talky guitar that moves around the vocal line in That for You Too for an example of how good Smith’s phrasing is.

17. Dan Patlansky

The South African player will see out the year touring his home country as the run for Perfection Kills comes to an end. Expect some new music next year.

Don’t expect Patlansky to go easy on his gear, though, for he likes to play hard, boost his signal and drive the tubes has hard as possible.

18. Marcus King

This will be the last time you see this name so far down a list like this. King’s tone is so hot that you could cook a 12oz steak just by waving it in front of his speaker cabinet.

King’s played all kinds of stages this year, his set at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival a particular highlight, and we eagerly await his debut solo album, out February 2020, which was produced by Dan Auerbach.

It’s not just his tone, though. King has a novelist’s sensibility for story in song. He’s got a signature Gibson ES-345 incoming, too.

19. Walter Trout

Trout got the idea for Survivor Blues while driving around and listening to blues on FM radio. Why didn’t he just take on a dozen classic or slept-on tracks and put his own stamp on them?

That’s exactly what he did, heading on down to Los Angeles to track the album at the Doors guitarist’s Robby Krieger’s private studio.

“It’s songs that haven’t been covered much but are worthy of attention and worthy of being heard,” says Trout. Too right. Check out Trout’s take on Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Going Down to the River, featuring Krieger.

20. Robert Cray

One of only a few players to be name-checked by Buddy Guy in his New Yorker article (Trucks, Clark Jr., Kingfish, and Keb’ Mo’ also got props), Robert Cray is a blues institution in his own right.

His 2019 is much like that of any other, heavy schedules, sold out shows, and repeat. The blues don’t quit. Not does his tone, which, via his Strat through a Matchless Clubman 35 and Fender Vibro King has never sounded better.

21. Jared James Nichols

The most muscular style in the blues’ contemporary canon, Nichols excels whenever given a Les Paul and a tube amp pushed to the limit. His signature Epiphone Les Paul is a straight-up rock machine.

Nichols scores highly for blues face, too, which, on the anguish scale, sits somewhere between passing kidney stones and stubbed pinky toe.

22. Robben Ford

Ford can do it all and has played with everyone. George Harrison, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan... Miles Davis!

This year has been spent touring in support of 2018’s Purple House, an album that sees Robben play infectious blues-rock such as the sour strut of Somebody’s Fool, but also take some chances and roll the dice with acoustic-led compositions such as Break in the Chain and the experimental balladry of Empty Handed.

23. Peter Green

Green hasn’t released any new music but you can be sure he remains on heavy rotation on record decks and phones worldwide.

Mick Fleetwood has just announced a concert in tribute to the Green and the early days of Fleetwood Mac, which will take place in February 2020 at the London Palladium, and see performances from the likes of Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Jonny Lang, John Mayall, Christine McVie, Zak Starkey, Steven Tyler and Bill Wyman.

24. Jimmie Vaughan

The Texas blues shuffle remains strong in Jimmie Vaughan, and it will never leave him. Baby, Please Come Home is one of the year’s strongest blues releases and sees Vaughan take on old blues standards, tracks that need only a few bars before rolling the clock back to an era when the internet would be sci-fi and you’d have to get up off your chair every 20-odd minutes to turn the record over.

As with Trout, a blues legend tackling overlooked tracks is always essential listening, and an education.

25. Robin Trower

Trower might have a formidable back catalog but his appetite to create shows no signs of slowing.

At 74, if anything, Trower is accelerating. Coming Closer to The Day is a masterclass of tone and restraint, and sees Trower in a wry, philosophical mood, with tracks such as Lonesome Road coming to terms with ageing and the fact that one day the curtain falls for good.

26. Jonny Lang

Whether he is shouldering his Fender Custom Thinline Tele, complete with Bill Lawrence blade humbuckers, or a Gibson ’58 Les Paul Reissue, Lang’s tone is always heavy on the hot sauce.

We will be hoping a follow-up to 2017’s superlative riff-heavy Signs in 2020, but Lang’s 2019 highlights were earned on stages across the world delivering sets such as his jaw-dropping performance at the Holland International Blues Festival.

27. Anthony Gomes

Gomes is another power player who is at his best when his gear is in the scorched earth between blues and rock. After all, it’s the electric guitar; sometimes tickling it is not enough.

Gomes is still touring on the back of Peace, Love & Loud Guitars - words we can all live by - and shall be right through into 2020. No rest for the wicked.

28. Keb’ Mo’

Oklahoma was another album that confirmed Keb’ Mo’ as a blues player who can trace its lineage all the way back to the Delta and then revitalize it for the ages. As Keb’ Mo’ sees it, the blues is folk, the folk is blues, and he’s using it all to tell his stories about America’s dark history and difficult present.

29. Buddy Whittington

Anyone who caught the Texan six-string Svengali live this year will be able to attest to his undiminished ability to wring the most soulful and improvisational licks from his instrument. And, crucially, he keeps it playful.

Sure, all great players can tell a story within the blues scale, but Whittington tells those stories with no shortage of wit.

30. Matt Schofield

Schofield’s iconoclastic sound sees him loosen up that right hand on command for funk and play with the precision that jazz demands.

You can hear the Robben Ford influence, for sure, but Schofield has a sound of his own design, and a lyrical melodic sensibility that works gangbusters when playing off organist Jonny Henderson.

Many of the lyrics on the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s fourth studio album, Signs, address loss, grief, shock and the spark and joy of life that prompt us to carry on in the face of tragedy and adversity. The songs grew out of an extremely difficult period for guitarists Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. In the first few months of 2017, the husband-and-wife bandleaders were rocked by the loss of three musical giants with whom they were personally and professionally very close. In January, Derek’s uncle, Butch Trucks, founding drummer of the Allman Brothers Band, committed suicide. On May 1, guitarist and Hampton Grease Band founder Col. Bruce Hampton collapsed on stage in the midst of his own 70th birthday celebration at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre, surrounded by friends including Trucks, Tedeschi and Warren Haynes. On May 27, Gregg Allman succumbed to liver cancer. The losses rocked the couple to their core.

“These were guys in the center of our musical and personal lives,” Trucks says. “It was jarring to imagine and confront the reality of a world without those characters in it — and you can include Leon Russell, who died in November [2016], and B.B. King, whose [2015] death was the first one that changed the whole scene.”

As they began recording, the Tedeschi Trucks Band were rocked again when keyboardist/flautist Kofi Burbridge suffered a massive cardiac event that almost killed him in June 2017. Burbridge wasn’t just a band member; he was Trucks’ dear friend and longest-running collaborator, having joined the Derek Trucks Band in 1999.

“Kofi’s situation was touch and go,” Trucks says. “The blows seemed to be nonstop. Every day we felt a looming question hanging over us: ‘What’s next?’”

Burbridge’s slow return to health was a massive relief to the band, and his contributions to Signs were musical and personal highlights. As the band launched a tour in the weeks before the album’s release, they announced that Burbridge had had a health setback and was back in the hospital. Then in an awful twist of fate, Burbridge died on February 15, the day Signs was released. A stunned, grief-stricken band continued their tour with heightened passion, placing huge bouquets of flowers in front of the keyboards and a painting of Burbridge on Trucks’ amp. Songs of loss and redemption took on more urgent, deeper meaning, as did declarations of carrying on like “Strengthen What Remains” and “I’m Gonna Be There” as well as fiery declarations of the joy of just being alive, such as the Stones-y “Hard Case.”

Before Burbridge’s death, Trucks reflected on the deaths of Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks and Bruce Hampton and spoke with what became eerie prescience: “Losing such key people made me think about what Gregg and Butch and the other members of the Allman Brothers had to confront with the deaths of Duane [Allman] and Berry [Oakley] when they were in their 20s. They were faced with an impossible situation and they had no choice but to carry on. It’s what we had to do.”

Given all this, it’s no surprise then that Signs is infused with a sense of melancholy and mortality, but also bolstered by a determination to carry on, heads held high, voices singing proud. This is most obvious on “Strengthen What Remains,” a song whose title speaks for itself. The music is stripped down, absent the horn section, yet lush, with a string quartet and Burbridge’s flute bolstering Tedeschi’s yearning, romantic vocal. Burbridge also arranged the strings, and Trucks says that seeing his friend, whose health had been so fragile, making the tune his own was as inspiring as the song’s theme of hanging tough together. It’s a feeling that, of course, became only more pronounced after his death.

“The words ‘Strengthen What Remains’ resonated so much to me,” Trucks says. “You have to keep charging. You think back to what was important to these musical inspirations we lost. What were the lessons they taught you? What were the musical things they really believed? That’s what you try to capture and move on with. The spirit of the whole record is wrapped up in processing what it means to lose these people who were pillars in our lives. That was very much in the air. No one can ever occupy the spaces they did, but you try to do your part. How their passing affected me was wanting to do this thing right, to carry on whatever I learned from them.”

One aspect of the Allman Brothers approach that the band hasn’t adopted is the approach to dual lead guitars. But Tedeschi has been stepping to the fore more and more, usually with great, in-the-pocket rhythm playing that finds a place to nestle between the keys, two drums, bass and horns, but also with complementary lines to Trucks and with biting, well-constructed, vocally phrased blues solos.

“I’ve always been fascinated by amazing guitar players who are also amazing singers,” Tedeschi says. “The guys who made me want to play guitar — B.B. and Freddie King, Otis Rush, Magic Sam — are the most incredible players and at the same time incredible singers with gorgeous, big beautiful voices with great phrasing and dynamics. Their ability to do both is amazing and inspiring. They all filled me with so much awe and inspiration that I didn’t even start soloing on stage until I was 25. Since I’m a vocalist I try to sing a melody on the guitar. I don’t try to play guitar riffs; I like it better when someone is saying something. My husband is one of the most melodic soloists. I can’t do what Derek does, but I have my own version; I want my playing to be an extension of my voice, in a way similar to B.B. King, whose playing was his personality.

“I’ll lay out altogether if I don’t hear a guitar part to add or just want to really focus on the vocals. On this album, I didn’t play on ‘Shame’ and ‘All the World’ but did both on ‘When Will I Begin’ and ‘They Don’t Shine,’ for instance. But I’m gaining confidence in my playing and enjoying it more. And it sure helps to be playing with my husband every night. People, of course, focus on his solos, but his rhythm playing is ridiculously wonderful and people don’t often realize how he supports a singer or soloist. It’s very inspiring.”

Lately, Tedeschi also has been getting inspiration from her stage guitar. After years primarily playing a Tele, she favored a D’Angelico, then a 1970 Strat that Trucks brought her as a present. But over the last year, she’s been playing a Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul that belongs to Trucks — and that she basically stumbled onto.

“We were rehearsing, and all my guitars were on the band truck,” she recalls. “Derek has hundreds of guitars upstairs and he told me to go pick one. I saw a Gibson Custom case with Eric Clapton’s signature, opened it up and it was a replica of the Beano guitar he played with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. There were only a few made and Eric gave one to Derek. It’s a remarkable instrument, and as soon as I played it, I fell in love and started playing it a ton.”

Trucks played with the Allman Brothers Band from 1999 to 2014, becoming a part of the band’s 45-year Hall of Fame career. Observing them up close helped him fully grasp elements of what made them so special. He still speaks with awe of the passion and drive his uncle Butch brought to every show he played.

“He aired it out and let it rip every time he got on stage,” Trucks says. “And Gregg just dripped with mojo. We’re not trying to replicate them, but we always want to tap into that spirit.”

In the years after the Allman Brothers’ final show in October 2014, the Tedeschi Trucks Band stopped their annual performances at two ABB-run festivals, Wanee and Peach, leaving some fans longing and wondering where they were. Trucks says it was an intentional decision to create a bit of distance.

“The Allman Brothers had an amazing ending, and I wanted to let it lie,” he says. “I know how these things work and didn’t want to be in the same place and have pressure from a promoter to do a half-assed reunion, especially six months or a year after the final show. If we were going to play together again, it had to be special and done right.

“And I feel a bit the same way about playing with Warren. He contributed to this record, and every time we share a stage together is magical, as exciting for us as it is for the audience. I want to keep it that way and let it be a special occasion every time. It feels like it means more that way.”

Even as they keep moving forward, Trucks and company took a step back to the past with the recording of Signs; it was the first time the Tedeschi Trucks Band recorded an album completely on tape, eschewing digital technology almost entirely. The band recorded live to two-inch analog tape, using their original Neve console combined with a Seventies Studer tape machine at Raga Swamp, the studio at their Florida home. It was co-produced by Trucks, Jim Scott (Rolling Stones, Tom Petty) and studio engineer Bobby Tis, who also serves as the band’s stage manager and guitar tech.

“Jim has been making records for decades and he was excited to get back to razor blades cutting tapes,” Trucks says. “We all were, but once the band was there and we started tracking, it was scary at first. We had times where the gear just stopped working in the middle of a great take and we worried if everything was going to melt down. But as soon as we got the first real solid take down and went into the control room and hear what that type of recording does… and it’s so much better.”

Trucks adds that recording straight to tape rather than onto a digital hard drive has a huge impact not only on the sound of the music, but on the actual content. “It added a different depth to the whole approach,” he says.

Modern recording techniques give an artist the sense that everything can be changed, that there are unlimited takes and endless possibilities. Recording live to tape, on the other hand, adds a certain amount of pressure — pressure that was welcomed by Trucks as an excellent focusing device.

“When you’re recording to Pro Tools, you just throw everything at the wall and see what works,” he says. “You’re not sitting around thinking about what you’re doing as much. The tape, I felt, focused everyone in a very different way.”

Tis saw the same thing from his perch in the control room and felt a certain amount of pressure to always be ready. “Once you put the band on the floor, you’d better be ready to go,” he says. “Because they’re going to put out some fire and you have to be ready to capture it.”

Trucks describes the increased focus in simple terms: “When you go to work, you’re going to work. It really focuses your mind. If a take is great, you keep it and if not, you do it again and stuff goes away. When you record over something, it’s gone! It’s a braver process.”

This was a good time for such bravery. With three studio and two live albums and hundreds of shows under their belt since their 2010 debut, the Tedeschi Trucks Band has crafted a fully formed, distinct sound, and it can be heard throughout Signs, starting with the first notes of the opening track, “Signs High Times.” The song kicks off with a burst of Trucks’ slide guitar before kicking into a galloping rhythm. Tedeschi’s impassioned vocal comes in, followed by alternating lines with singers Mike Mattison, Mark Rivers and Alecia Chakour. The horn section comes in to push the song to a new height, pushed by Burbridge’s soaring organ, which gives way to Trucks’ cutting slide solo. It’s a single song that really encapsulates the band’s development of their own distinct sound.

“The core of the band logged a lot of miles and lived a lot of life before we recorded this one, and that allows things to take on a life of their own,” Trucks says. “We’re still mining and pushing and figuring out what this thing is, but tunes like ‘Signs High Times’ and ‘Hard Case’ present themselves and immediately sound like the band. Without much discussion everyone knows what to do. The cohesiveness and formation of a band sound feels more and more like a real thing all the time.”

As with previous albums, Trucks, Tedeschi and Mattison wrote the bulk of the material on Signs with one another and some close friends, including Doyle Bramhall II, with whom Trucks became close when they played together in Eric Clapton’s band, and Haynes, Trucks’ longtime Allman Brothers bandmate. The final song on the album, the acoustic “The Ending,” was written with their friend Oliver Wood of the Wood Brothers. He was on stage with them when Hampton collapsed, and the song tells the story of that strange, celebratory, tragic night. The recording was their songwriting demo, featuring just Wood’s strummed acoustic, Trucks’ stinging Dobro playing and Tedeschi’s voice.

"That’s the only tune that wasn’t recorded properly on tape,” Trucks says. “We had a laptop out and were just writing with a microphone or two. We sat there for an hour and probably wrote 30 verses about the Colonel, then distilled it down to what we ended up with. I don’t know if we’ll ever play that song again. It is what it is, and I didn’t want to touch it. We were all together that night in Atlanta, which was a pretty traumatic thing for everyone involved. I don’t think anyone’s fully unpacked it yet, but that song tries to and it’s real and raw, just like the Colonel, who was as close or closer to us as any family member. He was one of those people who changed the orbit of our lives. You don’t fully recover from losing someone like that.”

Trucks pauses and thinks for a while, trying to put into words what it feels like to live in a world without his uncle, without Gregg Allman, without Leon Russell, B.B. King or Bruce Hampton. What it feels like to have grown up from being a child prodigy into a full-on adult with teen children fronting a band that is now a standard bearer in its own right.

“All of these guys were like a musical safety blanket,” he says. “It was like, no matter how bad shit gets, B.B.’s still out there somewhere holding it down. It’s hard to deal with their losses, but at some point, you have to take responsibility and carry on. There’s never anyone else who occupies those spaces, but you try to do your part and that’s what we’re doing. There’s so much just BS out there, so when you hear something that reminds you of how people used to go about their business, you tether yourself to it.”

The other overriding environmental impact on the writing and recording of Signs was the general atmosphere of the United States over the last few years: a time of intense turmoil, political dissension and social polarization.

“I think everyone is just emotionally drained because the world is sideways and supercharged,” Trucks says. “I don’t think you can do anything right now without feeling that. It’s everywhere. One of the last conversations I had with the Colonel, he said, ‘Well, music’s important again.’ We’re all looking for things where the intention is clean and pure — things that matter.

“The current state of the world makes you drill down a little deeper. I think now is not the time to be super abstract. Sometimes you just need things that are good, solid and pure, and to hear a beautiful voice sing a beautiful song that’s written by somebody who cared about it. It seems like a simple and straightforward thing, and I think people are really craving to hear someone swinging for the fences. They want to hear people just going for it, dedicating their lives to their art and trying to do something great.”

Tedeschi Trucks Band, featuring Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, stopped by the Jimmy Kimmel Live! outdoor stage on May 15 to perform “Shame,” from their new album, Signs. You can check out their performance above.

Signs was written with input from all 12 band members and recorded in Tedeschi and Trucks’ backyard studio, Swamp Raga, with additional contributions from Warren Haynes, Oliver Wood and Doyle Bramhall II. 

Trucks shared production and engineering duties with Jim Scott (The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty) and Bobby Tis (Eric Clapton, Rosanne Cash), and the band recorded live to two-inch analog tape, using their vintage Neve console combined with a Seventies Studer tape machine.

The band is currently out on the road in support of Signs. You can check out their full itinerary below.

Tedeschi Trucks Band 2019 tour dates:

5/21/19 - Sacramento, CA - Memorial Auditorium of Sacramento +

5/23/19 - Seattle, WA - Paramount Theater of Seattle

5/24/19 - Seattle, WA - Paramount Theater of Seattle 

5/25/19 - Salem, OR - LB Day Comcast Amphitheatre +

6/11/19 - Osaka, Japan - Osaka Archaic Hall

6/12/19 - Nagoya, Japan - Zepp Nagoya

6/14/19 - Tokyo, Japan - Tokyo Dome City Hall

6/15/19 - Tokyo, Japan - Tokyo Dome City Hall

6/16/19 - Tokyo, Japan - Tokyo Dome City Hall

6/28/19 - Jacksonville, FL - Daily’s Place *

6/29/19 - Boca Raton, FL - Mizner Park Amphitheater *

6/30/19 - St. Petersburg, FL - Al Lang Stadium *

7/03/19 - Orange Beach, AL - Wharf Amphitheater *

7/05/19 - Charleston, SC - Volvo Car Stadium *

7/06/19 - Simpsonville, SC - Heritage Park Amphitheater *

7/07/19 - Charlotte, NC - PNC Music Pavilion *

7/09/19 - Raleigh, NC - Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek *

7/10/19 - Philadelphia, PA - The Mann Center *

7/12/19 - Marshfield, MA - Levitate Music Festival *

7/13/19 - Gilford, NH - Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion *

7/14/19 - Saratoga Springs, NY - Saratoga Performing Arts Center *

7/16/19 - Canandaigua, NY - CMAC *

7/17/19 - Vienna, VA - Wolf Trap *

7/19/19 - Cincinnati, OH - PNC Pavilion *

7/20/19 - Huber Heights, OH - Rose Music Center at the Heights *

7/21/19 - Aurora, IL - RiverEdge Park *

7/23/19 - Rochester Hills, MI - Meadow Brook Amphitheatre *

7/24/19 - Indianapolis, IN - Farm Bureau Insurance Lawn at White River State Park *

7/26/19 - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks *

7/27/19 - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks * 

7/30/19 - St. Louis, MO - Fox Theatre *

7/31/19 - Brandon, MS - Brandon Amphitheater *

8/02/19 - Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre *

8/03/19 - Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre *

8/22/19 - Selbyville, DE - The Freeman Stage at Bayside

8/24/19 - Arrington, VA - LOCKN' Music Festival

9/27/19 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre 

9/28/19 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre 

10/1/19 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre #

10/2/19 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre %

10/4/19 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre 

10/5/19 - New York, NY - Beacon Theatre 

11/6/19 – Houston, TX – Hobby Center for the Performing Arts #

11/7/19 – Dallas, TX – Majestic Theatre

11/8/19 – Dallas, TX – Majestic Theatre #

11/12/19 - Tulsa, OK - Brady Theatre #

11/14/19 - San Antonio, TX - Tobin Center for the Performing Arts #

11/15/19 - Austin, TX - Bass Concert Hall 

11/16/19 - Little Rock, AR - Robinson Center Music Hall #

+ w/ Los Lobos

* 5th Annual Wheels of Soul tour with Blackberry Smoke and Shovels & Rope

# w/ Capital Sun Rays with Luther Dickinson, Amy Helm, Birds of Chicago and Grahame Lesh

% w/ John Moreland

# w/ Southern Avenue

Tedeschi Trucks Band, led by husband and wife Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, recently announced their new album, Signs, out February 15.

In advance of the album’s release, the band has shared the second single from the effort, "They Don’t Shine.”

“It is pretty much a straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll song, no frills, short and sweet, which is a little uncharacteristic for us,” said Trucks of "They Don't Shine." “But it shows another facet of the band. Some mean guitar-soloing from Susan! Shine, shine, shine!”

Signs was written with input from all 12 band members and recorded in Tedeschi and Trucks’ backyard studio, Swamp Raga, with additional contributions from Warren Haynes, Oliver Wood and Doyle Bramhall II. 

Trucks shared production and engineering duties with Jim Scott (The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty) and Bobby Tis (Eric Clapton, Rosanne Cash), and the band recorded live to two-inch analog tape, using their vintage Neve console combined with a Seventies Studer tape machine.

Check out the cover art and track list for Signs below, and pre-order the album here.

Signs track list:

1. Signs (High Times)

2. I’m Gonna Be There

3. When Will I Begin

4. Walk Through This Life

5. Strengthen What Remains

6. Still Your Mind

7. Hard Case

8. Shame

9. All The World

10. They Don’t Shine

11. The Ending