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.

By the mid-’80s, Jimmie Vaughan had been hammering away with the Fabulous Thunderbirds for four under-the-radar albums, garnering a cult following.

This, along with the fact that Robert Cray and Alligator Records artists Johnny Winter, Roy Buchanan and Albert Collins (not to mention Jimmie’s little brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan) were enjoying success, meant that blues and blues-rock were on the rise in an otherwise sparkling metal- and synth-laden era.

This leads us to 1986’s Tuff Enuff, the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ fifth long-player, produced by Dave Edmunds, recorded in London. It’s the album that took Vaughan and his cohorts in a decidedly more commercial direction.

Proof of this comes by way of the title track, which was featured in two 1986 films, Gung Ho and Tough Guys, as was its follow-up single, a cover of Sam & Dave’s Wrap It Up. But wait, there’s more! Tuff Enuff even made a few appearances in Married… with Children. What could be better than the Al Bundy seal of approval?

Pop culture crossovers aside, Tuff Enuff remains the Thunderbirds’ only Top 40 hit, cementing the album’s mainstream status. Vaughan dialed in with Guitar World to briefly discuss the record.

What was it like working with Dave Edmunds?

We had a good time! We rented an apartment in London, and we went to the studio every day. It was a lot of trial and error with Dave – a lot of just trying to find out what worked, fine-tune it and then do it again.

Dave is quite the guitar player himself. Did that impact your approach?

Dave is a fabulous guitar player. He plays more fingerstyle than I do, though. I just play with a pick and my fingers sometimes, but Dave is fabulous. He was also fabulous at mixing. But it’s been 40 years, so it’s really tough to remember all of it!

What gear did you use while recording Tuff Enuff?

Fender Bassmans and Super Reverbs. That’s what I’ve always used – except for a Marshall every once in a while – because the Fenders sounded great. But back then I didn’t use flatwound strings; I converted to those about 10 years ago.

How did the title track come together?

That was Dave Edmunds. He was into the six-string bass, which he used on a lot of his records. That’s part of what the sound there is, and it’s overdubbed three or four times.

When you look back on Tuff Enuff, which is a big favorite among T-Birds fans, how do you feel about it?

I think it sounds great – it still sounds good. Once we figured out the mix, and we liked it, I thought it was fabulous. It sounds silly, but if you mix something the way you like it, you’ll always like it. I don’t know what else to say other than that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe Bonamassa and his band had already cut the instrumental track of Watch Yourself, so I just brought my horn section into the studio and played it how I felt.

I mean, you can play B.B.’s licks, but it would be silly to mimic him, even if you could. So I didn’t play a Gibson semi-hollow, either, because what would that get me? Instead, I took my white Strat, and for my amp I played two of the new Fender Bassmans.

Watch Yourself [1968] is just one of B.B.’s many beautiful songs. I had all his ’60s albums as a teenager and he was a giant influence. The first one I bought was Easy Listening Blues [1962] and I basically learnt guitar from playing along to Live At The Regal [1965].

He was all over the guitar. I loved the way he would trill and vibrato the note – I’ve read interviews where he said he learnt that from Django Reinhardt. Later, I remember listening to The Thrill Is Gone when I was working as a garbage man in the city of Irving, Texas.

I was 13 when I saw B.B. for the first time, at the Central Forest Club in Texas, which was an old movie theatre. He was playing there all weekend. So I’m standing out front and the Sunday matinee show had already started, but I was too young to get in.

But then T-Bone Walker walked by with two little girls – his granddaughters, I suppose – and said, “Well, let me talk to ’em, son, see if we can get you in the side door.” So that was my first time seeing B.B. and he was absolutely fabulous that night.

I went on tour with him several times, and when we did the Austin City Limits tribute to my brother Stevie [in 1995], we had B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy. And just to watch B.B. playing close up was amazing.

I’ll always remember how nice he was, too. He was a fabulous guitar player and a great singer, but he was never stuck up. He would always go the extra mile. He would always talk to you, ask you what was going on.

Does it feel strange that B.B. King has been gone for a decade now? Well, he’s not gone to me. I still listen to him, all the time. He was my hero, y’know?

• B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Eric Clapton has announced a run of US tour dates, which will take place later this year.

The six-show run is set to kick off on September 6 at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, and will see Slowhand visit Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, before wrapping things up in Kansas City on September 17.

Fellow blues electric guitar hero Jimmie Vaughan will serve as the special guest at each show. Clapton’s band will feature Doyle Bramhall II and Nathan East, as well as drummer Sonny Emory, and keyboardists Chris Stainton and Tim Carmon.

The upcoming tour will commence almost a year to the date that Clapton last played in the US, after shows in New York and Uncasville in September 2025. The news follows the announcement that Clapton will be performing across a run of dates in Europe.

This will see Clapton perform in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland Spain, Germany and more, with a headline show at the Sandringham Royal Estate completing the run on August 23.

Artist pre-sale for the US dates goes live today (March 3), with a Live Nation pre-sale scheduled for March 5. General sale tickets for the shows will go on sale March 6 at 10am local time.

Head over to Eric Clapton’s website to find out more. A full list of dates can be found below.

• September 6 – Detroit, MI, Little Caesars Arena
• September 8 – Cincinnati, OH, Heritage Bank Center
• September 11 – Chicago, IL, United Center
• September 13 – Milwaukee, WI, Fiserv Forum
• September 15 – St. Paul, MN, Grand Casino Arena
• September 17 – Kansas City, MO, T-Mobile Center

Jimmie Vaughan has looked back on the time T-Bone Walker miraculously came to his rescue when he was trying to get into his first-ever B.B King gig.

Sneaking into gigs is a rite of passage for countless aspiring musicians – but to experience an evening in the company the King, a young Vaughan needed the help of another blues legend.

Like his brother, Stevie Ray, Vaughan is a prolific bluesman in his own right, having spent much of his life rubbing shoulders with blues guitar legends and learning plenty of tricks along the way. He’s also benefited from those friendships in other ways, too.

“I was 13 when I saw B.B. [King] for the first time, at the Central Forest Club in Texas, which was an old movie theatre,” Vaughan says in the new issue of Guitarist. “He was playing there all weekend. So I'm standing out front, and the Sunday matinee show had already started, but I was too young to get in.

“Then T-Bone Walker walked by with two little girls – his granddaughters, I suppose – and said, ‘Well, let me talk to 'em, son, see if we can get you in the side door.’”

Walker’s influence was enough to get him in, and Vaughan was able to witness a legendary guitarist he would later call a friend.

“He was absolutely fabulous that night,” Vaughan remembers. “I went on tour with him several times, and when we did the Austin City Limits tribute to my brother Stevie [in 1995], we had BB King, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray Buddy Guy.

“Just to watch B.B. playing close up was amazing. He was a fabulous guitar player and a great singer, but he was never stuck-up. He would always go the extra mile. He would always talk to you, ask you what was going on.”

King passed away at the ripe old age of 89 in 2015. He left behind an expansive back catalogue of 40+ studio records and a legacy as a man who always supported the next generation. Just ask Joe Bonamassa, who was 13 when he first opened for him.

“Does it feel strange that BB King has been gone for a decade now?” Vaughan asks. “Well, he's not gone to me. I still listen to him, all the time. He was my hero, y'know?”

The new issue of Guitarist is out now. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

In related news, Jimmie Vaughan recently discussed longevity, Strats, and recording the Porky’s Revenge soundtrack with a Beatle in a new Guitar World interview.

B.B. King, meanwhile, is to have his legendary life, legacy, and his main guitar, Lucille, chronicled in a forthcoming biopic. It's entitled Lucille, and its got some key figures involved.

Jimmie Vaughan is still kicking at 74, but he’s endured a few setbacks along the way, mostly in the form of three recent heart attacks. After the third of these – which happened in 2022 – the Texas blues guitar slinger underwent successful quadruple bypass surgery.

Two years later, Vaughan was diagnosed with “a curable form of cancer.” But this also seems to be at bay, as he just wrapped a rippin’ tour beside fellow guitar legend Bonnie Raitt.

“I’m feeling great,” Vaughan tells GW when asked about his health. “I just did a tour with Bonnie – 30-something shows – and I went to Europe before that. We had a great time.”

Meanwhile, Vaughan is preparing to revisit his iconic – and undeniably influential – days with his old band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, via a new box set, The Jimmie Vaughan Years: Studio Records 1978-1989.

“I’m really proud of the Thunderbirds and my participation with them,” Vaughan says. “And the new box set has the Doc Pomus recordings from before we signed with Takoma Records; nobody has ever heard those. And there’s also all the stuff on Takoma, like Girls Go Wild, What’s the Word, T-Bird Rhythm, Butt Rockin’, Tuff Enuff, Hot Number and Powerful Stuff. So there you go!”

Vaughan has come a long way since his Fab T-Birds days, dropping nearly a dozen solo offerings, which netted him four Grammys and one Blues Music Award even before we take into account 1990’s Family Style, the album he recorded with his late brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan. Regardless, his approach to guitar remains as simple as it was in the earliest days of the T-Birds.

“It sounds silly, but if you mix it the way you want it, you’re always gonna like it,” he says. “Just play what you want to hear. That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. If all of my favorite guitar players were in the same room, and it got to me, I’d think, ‘What am I gonna do? Play what I want to hear’!”

Vaughan seems to have plenty more music that he wants to hear – and that he wants us to hear, too. “I’m working on my new album,” he says. “I’m always looking forward and trying to figure out what I’m gonna do next. It’s totally exciting.”

Though he’s not ready to offer up any details just yet, mostly because he doesn’t know himself, he does give us a few crumbs to nibble on. “I can’t say what it’s gonna be called,” he says. “I’m not gonna tell you! I don’t want it to get out. But I also haven’t made it yet. I’m working on it, and I’m excited and looking forward to doing it.”

When you look back on how you played guitar across that era, did you have a developed approach that you worked on, or did you just do what came naturally?

I’ve been playing, or trying to play, since 1962. I was playing when I was 12, 13 or 14, and I’ve been working on it since then. When we recorded, they just put the mic right on the soaker, you know?

I always had a room sound, and it was Kim [Wilson, Fabulous Thunderbirds singer/harpist] and I that came up with that room sound. We found that if you move the mic away from the amp and just put it in the right place, it sounds better. That’s what we were into.

It was mainly Fender gear to go along with that, right?

Yeah, we pretty much always used Fender amps. We had a Marshall back then, too, but it was mostly Fender. I had a Fender amp from when I was 12 that I bought at Barry’s Music in downtown Jefferson [Texas]; when you turned up the presence, it just came alive. At the beginning of the T-Birds, I was still trying to get that same sound – and I still look to get that sound.

Was there a moment during your time with the T-Birds when you felt you came into your own as a player?

I didn’t think about it that way. We were just always working on it, and I was always working on my tone and sound. I was just trying to make it happen. We loved it. We were on the road a lot, in the van, going all over the country, and didn’t come home for a long time. I was always working on all of it.

All that work led to you and Stevie Ray giving the ’80s blues scene a real shot in the arm.

It was a club that there weren’t very many members of. We just went around, the people showed up, they liked it and wanted to hear more. [Laughs] But as far as importance, I don’t wanna think about that. We always liked the blues. We were there, we played and we just had a good time, you know?

Circling back to the new box set, you mentioned the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ 1978 sessions with songwriter/producer Doc Pomus – which not too many people know about.

Yeah, that was before Girls Go Wild [1979]. We met Doc Pomus while we were playing over the place, and he basically had a room full of horns, and we did all the songs we’d been doing live. Of course, a lot of the songs ended up on the albums that came [later]. After that, we played a lot of blues festivals, and we got a pretty good buzz going.

How would you say that session with Doc impacted you as a young player?

We learned about room mic’ing. If you go to engineering school, you learn that they want to put the mic right next to the speaker. All of the blues records we’d been listening to had that perfect sound – and that was partly because of the room mics. So we looked for that – particularly when we went and tried out a studio and found out that Doc Pomus was into that same room sound! It’s just a way of recording where you put your amps in a room.

Have you ever been to a club [where live music] sounds great going through the PA?

Yes. It’s a sound you get when things are mic’d properly in a small room. That’s the method, and that’s what the Chess brothers figured out with a lot of guys back in the ’40s and ’50s. So we experimented with Doc and figured out how to do it.

It’s been about 40 years since you participated in the recording of Bob Dylan’s I Don’t Wanna Do It with George Harrison, which ended up on the Porky’s Revenge soundtrack. What was that like?

George was fabulous. It’s been a long time – 40 fucking years ago! I’m still trying to figure out what I’m gonna do tomorrow. [Laughs] But it was great to meet George, one of my heroes. I mean, I had all the Beatles albums in the ’60s. I couldn’t believe I was actually in the same room with him.

I don’t really remember what George said at the time; I just couldn’t believe I was gonna be on a George Harrison record. Actually, he did say he’d been listening to what the T-Birds had been doing, so it was kudos back and forth. [Laughs]

There are rumors that you’re working on a yet-to-be-titled new album, your first proper studio album since 2019’s Baby, Please Come Home. What inspires you to press on with new music these days?

I just forget about everybody else – forget about what the trends are. I don’t even know what the trends are! [Laughs] I just make records that flip my switch. That’s the goal. I have to get in the recording mindset. You write a song – you make it up when you have a little bit, and then you go into the studio. Sometimes, it turns out that you don’t have to analyze it too much, and then you have to mix it. And that’s sort of the final say, if that makes sense. After that, you go on to the next one.

What flips your switch these days?

I don’t differentiate between albums and periods and things like that. I just keep going. I guess I don’t really think about all that. If somebody writes me a song and sends it to me, like the one we just did with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, who we’re going on tour with, I’ll listen and maybe do a bunch more stuff. You just take it one day at a time.

What’s the latest on your rig?

I’m still using two Fender Bassmans with a Strymon Flint tremolo/reverb. It’s a great little pedal that does both. It’s got a little toggle switch on it, and you can go back and forth between tremolo and reverb. And I’m still playing my Jimmie Vaughan Fender Custom Shop Strat. I keep wearing out the frets, but it’s still doing it. [Laughs]

If the building were burning down, and you could rescue only one guitar, which would you choose, and why?

I would grab the two I had while I was on tour with Bonnie. That’s my white Strat, which has a Mexican-made body and custom-wired pickups.

And then the Fender Custom Shop came out with a copy of my old guitar from my Fabulous Thunderbirds days, which you can still buy… unless they discontinued it! [Laughs] But that guitar sounds good. Once you figure out the mix, it sounds fabulous, and it’ll sound good from there on.

• The Jimmie Vaughan Years: Complete Studio Recordings 1978-1989 is out now via The Last Music Company
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Guitar World's December 1990 issue was dedicated to Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was tragically killed on August 27 of that year in a helicopter crash.

The accident came just as Vaughan was in the midst of a new ascendancy. Having kicked the substance abuse problems that dogged him throughout the mid-'80s, the guitar hero had returned to the limelight in grand style in 1989 with the classic In Step album.

At the time of his death, Vaughan was preparing for the release of Family Style, a long-planned collaboration with his brother, fellow Strat-slinger Jimmie Vaughan. Manning the boards for that album was another Strat legend, Nile Rodgers.

Rodgers first encountered Vaughan in 1983, when the latter was hired to lend some Texas blues attitude to what would become David Bowie's most commercially successful album, Let's Dance.

A number of circumstances led to the eventual souring of Vaughan's relationship with Bowie, but he remained fond of the funk guitar legend, and indeed the two worked well together on Family Style.

Rodgers was one of many guitar greats who Guitar World reached out to after Vaughan's death to share their memories of the guitar hero, and the magic of his playing.

The Chic man recalled the fun times he had working with the Vaughan brothers on Family Style, and looked back with some wonder on Stevie Ray's final session.

“Doing the record with Jimmie and Stevie was such a joy because the three of us felt so connected,” Rodgers told Guitar World. “I wanted the record to reflect how we were enjoying being together, so I asked them to keep the themes of the songs light and fun.

“I had to stress that to Stevie a couple of times: ‘Don't write anything too heavy, Stevie, save that for later.’ So what happens? Jimmie and I go and write Tick Tock, which is a pretty heavy song. And then on top of that we gave that to Stevie to sing! He thought that was pretty funny.

“As he was singing Tick Tock, I became so thrilled at hearing his warmth and compassion come through him as a vocalist,” Rodgers continued. “He was very shy about that, because that meant putting his guitar down and letting his voice do all the emoting.”

That said, after reviewing the tune with fresh ears as the album was just about complete, Rodgers felt that it needed more than just Stevie Ray's vocals.

“Weeks later, I listened to the song and became concerned that we didn't have his guitar on it, so I called him and said, ‘Uh, Stevie, I think we need a little guitar from you on the song. Maybe just play little spots of notes like B.B. King,’” he recounted.

“Stevie hopped on a plane and flew in to do literally 20 seconds of notes. What he played was so concise and dramatic, well, it just blew me away. That was the last thing he recorded for the record.”

Tyrone Vaughan was 17 when his uncle, Stevie Ray Vaughan, died in 1990. “Texas shut down for a couple of months, if not a whole year,” he tells Guitar World. “It was just hanging your head, trying to figure out what happened.”

Tyrone’s father, Jimmie Vaughan, even stopped playing guitar for a time. “It took him a year or two to get things together and get back out there – but he did with the Strange Pleasure record.”

That was also when Tyrone got things together, joining his father on tour, picking up blues licks and an itch of his own for six-strings. Now in his early 50s, he has gathered a following of his own. He’s straddled the line between blues and country, but lately he’s leaned hard into straight-up Texas blues.

His upcoming album is what you’d expect from a Vaughan.

“I like a very clean tone,” he says. “I like to hear the hands. My dad told me a long time ago, ‘With a Twin and a Tube Screamer, you can take over the world.”

Carrying Stevie and Jimmie’s legacy isn’t easy, but Tyrone is up for it.

“Right now, it’s just a blues thing for me. I’m building some good stuff and I’ve got some yet to build.”

You’re Jimmie’s son and Stevie’s nephew. Can you measure their impact on you early on?

“They had everything to do with it. I was also influenced by Muddy Waters, who, when I was three, gave me a harmonica. My dad was good friends with Muddy; he told my dad, ‘Jimmie, when I’m gone, teach everybody how to play like that.’ He liked the way Jimmie played slide.”

Were you aware that Jimmie and Stevie were doing something special?

“When you look back, you see the significance of that blues movement in Texas. From Dallas to Austin, you can see how it developed – but growing up in it, you didn’t think much of it.

“Stevie would play on a Sunday night with the Cobras [in the mid/late-'70s], and there’d be 10 people in the crowd as he’d be playing blistering blues for two and a half hours straight. Before he was ever playing Albert King-type licks, Stevie was just trying to follow Jimmie.”

Is it true that Stevie bought you your first two guitars?

“He came to my fifth birthday and gave me a pawnshop Harmony guitar. He saved up money for it, and it didn’t have a gig bag; it was like two paper grocery bags on either end, and he was like, ‘Here you go.’ Then he bought me a Fender Musicmaster, which was another pawnshop guitar.

“Stevie came over one night and told my mom, ‘Jimmie’s boy is going to be a player.’ He was excited. The fact that his favorite player – his brother – had a kid who was going to play too, he just thought the world of it. Stevie was a kid at heart. That’s always stuck with me.”

Can you remember his passing?

“Thank goodness he got sober. He was really busy, in a good way. He was pouring his heart and soul into every note, every night. He was going to take a break and come back after that tour, and we were going to hang out and really soak each other up.

“Stevie was my main guy, you know? After he died, my dad really made an effort. He got sober too. He scooped me up and said, ‘Hey, let’s do this,’ and I went on tour with him for the Strange Pleasure album.”

Jimmie and Stevie had just done the Family Style record in 1990.

“It was such an impactful record on everybody. It won a couple of Grammys; it was incredible and it was commercial. It was ahead of its time, and very impactful. After Stevie died, it was devastating – if they’d been able to tour for that record…”

Did traveling with your dad on his Strange Pleasure tour give you the push you needed?

“It was a sick tour. I was about 19 or 20 when it went down. I didn't get to actually play with him onstage, but I traveled with him. I wasn't a roadie, but I did a lot of things backstage.

“My dad showed me some Magic Sam licks and leads. We were going through some old cassettes, and he really got me going on the blues. Coming off that tour is when I really started to dig in and play guitar.”

Do you regret not getting the chance to play with Jimmie and Stevie together?

“Yeah – I always think about how that would be. I think if Stevie were alive right now, I’d probably be in his band. I wish I’d gotten to really play with him. He played in front of me a couple of times, but we didn’t trade licks.”

Is carrying the weight and expectations of the Vaughan name difficult?

“I think so. But it’s difficult for any artist to get out there, right? Everybody is trying to fill the hole. Just to be a real artist is tough enough. But with the Vaughan thing, man, I think I’ve gotten enough nods from enough people.

“I could have bowed out a long time ago, but I’m such a fan of music that I got addicted to playing guitar a long time ago. I love the electricity of the electric guitar. And I love to play Strats. I love that tone thing, you know?

“I’m representing Texas with my tone and how I’m playing out there. But the pressure… I don’t think you can think about it too much. It’s like Stevie – he just put his head down, and one day he woke up on top of the mountain.”

What’s your biggest takeaway from Stevie and Jimmie?

“My dad and Stevie were the best builders in the world. Stevie built the Taj Mahal and Jimmie built the Empire State Building. But I’m a builder, too. I’ve got a knack for it.”

What are you building next?

“I’ve got a new blues record – it’s like the Vaughan brothers’ next record. My friend Doyle Bramhall Jr. was like, ‘Man, it’s hard to write a good blues song; it’s all been done,’ but I think there’s more out there.

“I’ve stumbled on some really good songs lately. I’m getting to the point of finishing up my demo, and I’m going to be shopping it. Hopefully, it’ll put me on the map as a really good blues player.”

• Keep up with Tyrone Vaughan on Instagram.

Texas blues veteran Jimmie Vaughan has been on the road for the best part of 60 years. It took two major health scares to temporarily derail his schedule at the start of 2024, but within months he was back on stage, opening for Eric Clapton.

Speaking to GW from his home in Texas, with the sound of his chickens in the background, Vaughan was upbeat about the state of his health. “I feel fabulous – I’m doing really good, and I’m planning my next album now that I’ve got a little time off the road.”

Vaughan’s most recent albums have seen him cover obscure blues classics, but that seems set to change.

“I’m always thinking about cutting a record of original material. I get up every day, think of ideas and write them down. I’ll probably still throw in a few of my old favorites. In the end I just want to play what I like and what flicks my switch.”

Vaughan still has most of the guitars he’s ever owned way back from when he started, and he had no hesitation in nailing down the three most important guitars in his collection.

Gibson ES-125T ¾ (1957)

“This was my first electric, so I guess that makes it pretty special. My dad bought this for me for 50 bucks from one of my relatives. I don’t know whether he factored in the fact that it was a three-quarter-sized model when he bought it, but it was a little easier to get around on as a kid.

“My dad knew a lot of guitar players, and they’d come around to our house on a Saturday night and plug into amps. That was what made me want to play. I don’t know what I would have picked myself, given a choice, but I was happy to get this guitar.

“Although it was smaller than the full-sized version, the body depth was about the same, which was quite slim. It had a fantastic single P90 in the neck position. It was made in 1957, though I got it in 1964 when I was 12.”

“After this guitar, my dad bought me a sunburst Gibson ES-330 from Arnold & Morgan, which was a great music store in Dallas. I used that when I started to play shows six nights a week at the Hob Nob Room in Dallas. At that point Stevie started playing the ES-125.

“A friend of mine’s dad had a Tele that he’d loan to me, so that made me want to get one myself. I got a ’51 Nocaster from Arnold & Morgan for $175. I did use that for quite some time before I got my first Strat, a sunburst ’57. I used that for a lot of the first Fabulous Thunderbirds album.

“I gave the Nocaster to Stevie; at first I’d catch him playing it, even though I’d told him not to, and then I realized I wasn’t really playing it anymore. He played it for a year or two, then he sold it; years later it turned up at an auction and someone paid a million dollars or something for it.”

Fender Stratocaster (1963)

“I bought this off Bill Campbell [An Austin, Texas blues scene fixture in the Seventies] for about $150. The body is from a ’63 Strat, but the neck is one Bill gave to me, so I guess it’s kind of a ‘parts’ guitar. It was really put together by Charley’s Guitar Shop in Dallas and René Martinez, who was a fantastic guitar tech.

“I’d wanted a white Strat for years; it felt like it was unobtainable when I was a kid. I remember seeing Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps in an old movie, and they all had white Strats with the maple neck. I just thought it looked better than the dark rosewood, so I replaced it.

“I know there are people who think it makes a big difference to the sound, but I really don’t think it does. I know Stevie always sounded the same whether it was a rosewood or maple neck.”

“This guitar spent a lot of time on the road. René was a fantastic tech, and he did a ton of maintenance on this guitar. He worked with Stevie a lot. When the T-Birds and Stevie were on tour together, there were a couple of occasions where he re-fretted my guitar and Stevie’s Strat between the soundcheck and the show.

“I used this on every T-Birds album after the first one, and I guess it’s the one people probably most associate me with. It’s in the Grammy Museum touring exhibition, along with Stevie’s Number One Strat. I hope they’re taking good care of it. [Laughs]

“No – they’ve always been careful with things I’ve loaned them. I’ve never had a guitar stolen, or sold one that I regretted, which is a fortunate position to be in when you’ve spent as long on the road as I have. I’ve got everything I’ve ever had that I was bothered about – they’re all safe.

“Fender made some Custom Shop models based on this one. They’re so accurate that I can’t tell them apart, even down to the pin-up girl on the back. People wonder why she’s upside down, but when I play the guitar behind my head, she’s the right way up.”

Fender Custom Shop Signature Strat (2022)

“I have three Custom Shop Strats that I take on the road. The Olympic White is my favorite, but I also take a two-tone sunburst and a gold one on the road; that’s the three colors they make them in, and they are actually my three favorite colors for a Strat.

“I had them modify the wiring from a regular Strat; the middle pickup is reverse-wound, which gives a kinda different tone. Mike Lewis from the Fender Custom Shop – who sadly passed away in March last year – used to send me a bunch of different necks and I’d switch them around on the guitar to see what worked. He was real collaborative and would make sure every detail was exactly as I wanted it.

“Basically, though, the necks are patterned after the one on my old white Strat. I used to happily play my regular [signature Fender] Tex-Mex Strats on tour, but these new custom shop models pretty much nail down everything I’m looking for in a Strat, so I guess it’s even more a case of where I could just pick one up in a store and go do a show.”

“I guess the only difference is that I would put flatwounds on them, which people often think is a strange thing to do on a Strat, but as I always say, the first Telecasters came with flatwounds. They don’t buzz like roundwounds, they last forever and actually seem to sound better the older they get. I started using them in the Nineties; I have my own gauge custom wound with a 10.5 on the top E.

“As much as I love Strats, the way they sound, the way they look, and the whole cool vibe, if I’m sitting at home watching TV or something, the guitar I’m most likely to grab is one of my old Gibson ES-5s.

“I have a few early Fifties models in sunburst, but my favorite is a blonde model from 1951 that looks like the one T-Bone Walker used to play. With the signature Strats and the ES-5s, I guess I’ve got all I need; if I go in the studio, I know what I’m going to use.”

The family tree of Tyrone Vaughan is absolutely steeped in the blues, and as someone who shares a lineage with two of the finest Texan blues greats of all time – Jimmie is his father, Stevie Ray was his uncle – it will come as no surprise to learn that Tyrone himself started his own musical journey at a very young age.

In fact, he received his first electric guitar for his fifth birthday – and it was gifted to him by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose haphazard wrapping skills left a lot to be desired.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Tyrone Vaughan reflects on his own blues journey, from the pressures of inheriting the Vaughan surname and touring with his father, to following in the footsteps of his illustrious relatives.

He also takes a look back at one of his earliest guitar memories, when Uncle Stevie turned up with a rather on-the-nose gift.

“Stevie came to my fifth birthday and gave me a pawn shop Harmony guitar,” Tyrone recalls. “He saved up money for it, and it didn’t have a gig bag; it was like two paper grocery bags on either end.

“He was like, ‘Here you go.’ [laughs]. And then he bought me another guitar, a [Fender] Musicmaster, which was another pawnshop guitar.”

A guitar from SRV may have seemed like a token gift, but the gesture went far beyond keeping young Tyrone’s present within the theme of the family. Indeed, both Jimmie and Stevie supported the aspiring guitar player when he showed interest in following the family trade.

In fact, Stevie even once approached Tyrone’s mother to voice his support and enthusiasm for the fact there was another Vaughan guitar player in the pipeline.

“He [Stevie] basically came over one night and told my mom, ‘Hey, Jimmie’s boy is going to be a player,’” he continues. “He was excited. Stevie’s favorite guitar player was his brother Jimmie, and the fact that Jimmie had a kid who was going to be playing, you know, he just thought the world of it.

“Stevie was a kid at heart, and he was excited that I was in play. That stuck with me – that’s always stuck with me.”

The full interview with Tyrone Vaughan will be published on GuitarWorld.com in the coming weeks.

The difference that the choice of fretboard material actually makes is a hotly contested debate among guitar circles. While it's widely accepted that rosewood is softer and maple is snappier, there are others who believe the difference is negligible.

Jimmie Vaughan sits firmly in the latter camp, and in a new interview with Guitar World, the blues guitar ace claims that your choice of fingerboard material makes no difference whatsoever because they all sound the same.

He has some strong supporting evidence to draw on in support of his argument, too: his brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

During a discussion of the three most important guitars in his collection, Vaughan turns attention to one of his prized Fender Stratocasters – a 1963 model, to be precise, which originally came with a rosewood fretboard neck.

However, Vaughan promptly swapped the rosewood for a maple alternative because he preferred the aesthetic, and he found the difference in tone to be imperceptible.

“The body is from a ’63 Strat, but the neck is one Bill gave to me, so I guess it’s kind of a ‘parts’ guitar,” Vaughan remembers. “It was really put together by Charley’s Guitar Shop in Dallas and René Martinez, who was a fantastic guitar tech.

“I’d wanted a white Strat for years; it felt like it was unobtainable when I was a kid. I remember seeing Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps in an old movie, and they all had white Strats with the maple neck. I just thought it looked better than the dark rosewood, so I replaced it.”

While some swap their Strat necks for an alternative fretboard because they prefer the feel and tone of a specific wood, Vaughan did it purely for cosmetic reasons – and as far as he’s concerned, it made no difference. That was further made clear every time Stevie Ray Vaughan would flip-flop between the two.

“I know there are people who think it makes a big difference to the sound, but I really don’t think it does,” he adds. “I know Stevie always sounded the same whether it was a rosewood or maple neck.”

There will be those who disagree with Vaughan’s school of thought. For example, Joe Bonamassa has previously said he prefers Strats with maple fretboards, and even noted that “a rosewood ’board results in more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan-type sound”.

“Personally, I’m more of a maple-fretboard Strat player,” he said. “To my ears, the notes jump off it in a different way, as compared to a rosewood ’board.”

On the other hand, Jason Isbell has gone on record to reveal he prefers rosewood ’boards as they “soften things up a little”.

For the full interview with Jimmie Vaughan – as well as new features with Kiki Wong, Jim Babjak and more – visit Magazines Direct to pick up the newest issue of Guitar World.

In 1990, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan – two brothers who had both made an indelible mark on the wider world of blues guitar – joined together for the first time in their respective careers under the ‘Vaughan Brothers’ umbrella to release Family Style.

Released mere weeks after SRV died, Family Style was the only record the pair worked on together, and was the last album that Stevie himself worked on in his life.

Family Style marked a full circle moment, though, and as Jimmie Vaughan notes in a new interview with Guitar Player, it harkened back to the pair’s earliest memories when they were both budding guitar players finding their feet on the fretboard.

While discussing the guitar highlights from his career, Vaughan reflects on the making of Family Style, and recalls how the prospect of him and Stevie recording an album together had been mooted long before their solo careers took off.

“Ever since we were little kids our dad would say, ‘Okay, boys, go get your guitars and play something in the living room for our guests,’” Jimmie remembers. “And someone would always say, ‘That’s really great boys, maybe someday you can make a record together.’ It was a long time coming.”

Reflecting further on Family Style – and specifically of the track Tick Tock – Jimmie says, “Recording the Vaughan Brothers’ Family Style with Stevie was one of the highlights for me. I wrote the music and the chorus, with the words ‘Tick Tock.’

“Nile Rogers, who was producing, wrote the lyrics. When I turned up, I had a recording of what I had, played it to Nile and he took about 10 minutes to write the words. [laughs]

"I couldn’t pick a particular favorite from this album – it was all real serious and heavy to me as we were working on it. And then Stevie got killed. We were together for three months making that record and had a real great time doing it.”

The album was released September 25 1990, weeks after Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash on August 27. Last year, a documentary that centered on the relationship between Jimmie and SRV was released.

Head over to Guitar Player to read the full interview with Jimmie Vaughan.

Jimmie Vaughan is a true blues guitar legend. With over 40 years of touring experience and a plethora of albums to his name, Jimmie’s sound has served to be a foundational source of inspiration for those in the know. Jimmie is of course the older brother of the late and great Stevie Ray Vaughan, and is perhaps unfairly overshadowed by his older brother’s success. 

Despite this, Jimmie has paved his own way and defined his own sound and approach while keeping the rich heritage of the blues alive throughout his career.

Like most rock and roll legends of old, he started out playing in bands with friends in high school, first performing at just the age of 14 in 1965. In his late teens when he was just 19, he had the opportunity to open for The Jimi Hendrix Experience when the band played in Texas during 1968.

Jimmie went on to form The Fabulous Thunderbirds, releasing four studio albums between 1979 and 1983. Despite being considered as some of the most important albums for that era, they didn’t succeed commercially and Jimmie found himself without a record deal for a number of years. It was during this time that his younger brother Stevie would achieve commercial fame and success, when David Bowie recruited him on his album, Let’s Dance.

Eventually, the Thunderbirds gained a new record deal in the early ’80s, but in the early ’90s Jimmie left the band to pursue a solo career. It was at this point that he recorded the legendary The Vaughan Brothers record, just before Stevie was tragically killed in a helicopter crash.

Vaughan went on to record numerous albums and tour over the next two decades, releasing his most recent album in 2019. Jimmie describes this album as his personal greatest achievement, finally arriving ‘home’ with his own voice and style in one of the most challenging genres in which to sound unique and distinctive.

He won a number of Grammy awards in the 1990s for his co-effort with Stevie on The Vaughan Brothers, winning Best Contemporary Album and Rock Instrumental Performance, and in 2001 winning Best Traditional Blues Album for his record, Do You Get The Blues?.

Jimmie has always kept a traditional and authentic voice within the blues, and our two studies this month focus on the sound of much of his early blues-rock playing. 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 5, Bass 6, Middle 4, Treble 7, Reverb 6

Jimmie plays Fender Stratocasters and has had a signature Tex-Mex Strat with Fender since 1997. His tone is clear and crisp for the most part, so a clean amplifier tone just before the edge of break-up is ideal. If you have a modeler, try a Fender Twin or similar. For his overdriven sound, a Tube Screamer clone will work best. Add light reverb and you’re done!

Study 1. Traditional major blues

This study focuses on Jimmie’s traditional blues phrasing with mostly major pentatonic inspired ideas and a clean, direct guitar tone. Give the notes plenty of oomph from the picking hand to get the ideas to project.

Study 2. Mixing Dorian and minor pentatonic

This study is a great example of Jimmie’s use of the Dorian tonality within his minor pentatonic licks. Make note of how the phrasing and lines don’t sound like scale practice, and how the bonus major 6th note on the 7th fret of the second string is sparingly used to create that splash of colour at the key moment.

A new documentary on the remarkable careers of blues guitar legends (and brothers) Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan is now available to watch on streaming.

Brothers In Blues covers the brothers' story from their origins in Oak Cliff, Texas to Stevie Ray Vaughan's tragic death in a helicopter crash in 1990. It was directed by Kirby Warnock, who previously directed the Dallas-centric music documentary, When Dallas Rocked. 

Along the way, Brothers In Blues features interviews with electric guitar luminaries like Jackson Browne, Billy Gibbons, Nile Rodgers, and Eric Clapton, who once said that Stevie Ray Vaughan "commanded" his respect like no other guitar player.

“The first time I heard Stevie Ray, I thought, ‘Whoever this is, he is going to shake the world’,“ Clapton once said of Vaughan. “I was in my car and I remember thinking, I have to find out, before the day is over, who that guitar player is. That doesn’t happen to me very often. 

“I remember being fascinated by the fact that he never, ever seemed to be lost in any way… It was as though he never took a breather or took a pause to think where he was gonna go next, it just flowed out of him. It’s going to be a long time before anyone that brilliant will come along again.” 

In an interview with Louder earlier this year, Jimmie Vaughan spoke frankly about his deep connection to his brother, and his struggle to move on after the crash that claimed his life. 

“I was pretty lost,“ the elder Vaughan recalled. “It took me some time to realize that I had to move on and live my life. It was hard, though. Still is. A big part of me was gone in an instant. Life isn’t supposed to be like that.“

Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues can be viewed now on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and YouTube Movies.

For more info on the film, visit its website.

Jimmie Vaughan is the sound of Texas blues guitar. Long before he burst onto the national and international scene with the Fabulous Thunderbirds in the early ’80s, Jimmie was playing juke joints, bars and clubs all over Texas from the age of 15, sharing stages and playing with Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Jimi Hendrix and many others. 

No guitarist is better equipped to lay down the law on the most essential Texas blues guitarists in history, and below, he picks out 12 of the greatest, most legendary players that originate from the Lone Star State. 

In Jimmie’s words, “This is a serious list.”

1. Oscar Moore

Oscar Moore (1915-1981) is well known as the effortlessly swinging guitarist in the Nat King Cole Trio, with whom he recorded for a decade, from 1937 to 1947, cutting classic solos for the essential Cole tracks Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You, Moonlight in Vermont, Sweet Lorraine and many others.

“Oscar was originally from Austin,” Jimmie says. “He moved to L.A. to find his fame, as did many other guitarists, like T-Bone Walker. To me, the quintessential Oscar Moore track is, Nature Boy, live with Nat King Cole. Top that! He’s incredible. He was a great jazz guitar player and a great blues guitar player.”

2. T-Bone Walker

“T-Bone was the first guy cutting electric blues solos on the guitar, going back to the very early ’40s. And you can listen to his records all the way from then till the end of his career in the ’70s, and he always pretty much played the same, with the same tone and the same level of virtuosity. 

“He had his own tone, and was picking out single-note solos, bending strings and all that, like no one ever had before. He had that descending ninth chord thing that he did as an intro on so many tunes, and I’ve never heard anyone else do that. 

“I’d heard that T-Bone and Charlie Christian, who were friends, worked the street together back in their hometown in Oklahoma.” [Note: Christian was born in Bonham, Texas, but moved to Oklahoma when he was very young.]

3. Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown

“There is no denying that, real early on, Gatemouth was blazing some new trails. I heard that when T-Bone started getting more hit records and would go out on the road, one of the people that replaced him in his residency in L.A. was Gatemouth. That was way back there in the early ’40s. He had the capo and did everything with fingerpicking, like, Okie Dokie Stomp. Just great guitar playing.”

4. Albert Collins

“Albert had a completely original style. His F minor tuning [F C F Ab C F] , combined with the clamp [capo] helped him get that original sound. Everybody saw Gatemouth with the clamp, and Guitar Slim over there in Louisiana and Albert were disciples of Gatemouth. 

“I don’t know where he got the tuning, but it could have been a hand-me-down thing, as it often is. John Lee Hooker tuned to open G, which is called ‘Sebastopol’ or ‘Spanish tuning,’ and he got some very distinctive sounds and chords out of that tuning.”

5. Pee Wee Crayton

Though certainly not as well known as the legendary blues guitarists B.B. King and T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton (1914-1985) is a giant of blues guitar that, in his day, was a star. His song Blues After Hours reached Number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1948. 

“Pee Wee’s got to be in there with Albert Collins and Gatemouth,” Jimmie states. “Blues After Hours, Texas Hop and many more. Pee Wee was another incredible player. I got turned on to him and loved him immediately, and he became an influence. But if we were around back in 1948, we would have been well aware of him. He’s from the Round Rock/Rockdale area, which is right near Austin. He’s another guy that went out to California to make it big.

“I have the 78 of Pee Wee doing Country Boy, the same song that was cut by Dave Bartholomew [Bartholomew co-wrote many of Fats Domino’s biggest hits, such as Ain’t That a Shame, Blue Monday and I Hear You Knockin’], and Pee Wee’s version is so great. It’s a fabulous record with a great guitar solo.” 

6. Lightnin’ Hopkins

“I love Lightnin’ Hopkins – he was just fantastic! I got to know Lightnin’ a little bit, from the shows he came to play in Dallas and Austin. He was mesmerizing to watch. I saw him play on Valentine’s Day, just him by himself, at this club in Austin one night, and he changed up all of the songs. 

“He said, 'It’s Valentine’s Day, so this whole night, it’s all for the women,' and he changed the lyrics and made them up as he went along. All his songs would be good for Valentine’s Day, really, if you think about it. But he’d put a woman’s name in there and switch it up for the occasion. 

“There are songs that are known as being associated with other artists that very well may have originated with Lightnin’, but if he did someone else’s song, he owned it – he made it his. He would talk about another Texas guitar player that he learned a lot from – Texas Alexander.”

7. Hop Wilson

“I have to include Hop Wilson, even though he played steel guitar,” Jimmie says. Harding “Hop” Wilson (1921-1975) was born in Grapeland, Texas, and was nicknamed “Hop” as a devolution of the word, “harp,” for harmonica, which was his first instrument. He moved over to the steel guitar as an early teen and began recording for Goldband Records in 1957.  

“Chicken Stuff, Black Cat Bone, I Done Got Over, I’m a Stranger – all great tunes. Chicken Stuff – is that wild, or what? When you think about the records people make now, not to be mean, but there’s no comparison now to records like those for feel, attitude, sound, everything. Like anything, I guess you have to have a taste for it, but I do. I mean, how can you not like that if you like blues?”

8. Lil’ Son Jackson

Melvin “Lil’ Son” Jackson (1915-1976) is from Tyler, Texas, and was signed to Gold Star Records, releasing Freedom Train Blues in 1948. It became a hit nationwide. 

“What a pioneer Lil’ Son Jackson was,” Jimmie says. “He wrote Rock Me Baby, except he called it Rockin’ and Rollin, released back in 1950. It’s basically the same lyrics as B.B. King’s Rock Me Baby [released by B.B. in 1964]. And also, Slim Harpo took the same basic guitar riff from Rockin’ and Rollin’ and turned it into, I’m a King Bee [released in 1957]. He played in Sebastopol tuning and in standard tuning, using the capo sometimes, too.” 

9. David Schwartz of the Nightcaps

Though virtually unknown nationally, Dallas’ own Nightcaps became one of the most popular bands in Texas following the 1958 release of their first single, Wine, Wine, Wine, backed with Nightcap Rock, the latter of which was based on the hit song, Night Train. 

The band consisted of four high school students, lead by vocalist/songwriter Billy Joe Shine and powered by the explosive lead guitar playing of David Schwartz (sometimes spelled Swartz). They released their second single, the hugely popular, Thunderbird, in 1961. Legendary Texas blues/rockers ZZ Top recorded Thunderbird as the opening track for their Fandango! album, and Stevie Ray Vaughan recorded his cover version of Thunderbird early in his career. 

“The Nightcaps had some really great songs, like Wine, Wine, Wine and Thunderbird, which Stevie and I grew up listening to and eventually learned to play,” Jimmie says. “The very first album I ever bought was Wine, Wine, Wine! David Schwartz was the lead guitar player, and right after I got that album, I tried my best to copy his leads, and I learned all the rhythm parts too, as well as the bass parts, and I even tried to play the drum parts too! So it’s safe to say I really loved that record!”

10. Freddie King

“I could talk about Freddie King for hours,” Jimmie says. “Freddie learned a lot about guitar playing from Eddie Taylor, who played so brilliantly with Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker, and from the great Jimmy Rogers. You can tell, when he plays some of the instrumentals and some of the stuff he recorded backing up Smokey Smothers, he’s basically taking the ‘Eddie Taylor’ role. 

“Also, Jimmy Rogers and Eddie Taylor used thumb picks and fingerpicks, which Freddie picked up on. Then B.B. King came along, and everybody tried to play like B.B., and Freddie used elements of all of this stuff in developing his own signature sound and style. That’s what was so great about Freddie – he was like a walking blues encyclopedia.

“When I was a kid, about 12 or 13, I had his Bonanza of Instrumentals album. There were three songs in Dallas that you had to know how to play regardless if you were in a country band or a rock ’n’ roll band – Hold It and Honky Tonk by Bill Doggett, and Freddie King’s Hide Away. The thing in Dallas was, everyone kind of had their own version, their own take, on those songs.”

Freddie moved back to Texas from Chicago in 1963, and in the latter half of the decade, Jimmie met his hero. 

“I played a place called the Three Thieves on Lover’s Lane, and someone told me that he’d moved back to town and lived a couple of streets over, behind the club,” Jimmie says. “One night, I was playing at a place nearby called Mother Blues, and he came in and sat at the bar, pretty much right in front of us, and watched us play. Sometimes he would sit in with us, play a couple songs and floor everybody, and then go back to the bar!”

“He used to call me ‘Ron,’ and one night he said, ‘Come with me!,’ and I got in his Cadillac with him and we drove around to his house. He went into his house, and I don’t know what he did, because I just stayed in the car! And then we went back to the club.”

11. Johnny “Guitar” Watson

“Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson was fabulous – fantastic!” Jimmie says. “He was as good as anybody. He also played piano and sax and was an incredible singer and writer. He played sax in high school. Never met him, and, sadly, never saw him play live. Later on, in the ’70s, he came back with all those big hits, like Real Mother for Ya, which was real cool. He died onstage – top that. Lonely, Lonely Nights was great too, but that was originally Earl King’s tune.

“His first single, Motor Head Baby, from 1953, is killer – he played piano on that, too. And Space Guitar is probably the wildest guitar song ever recorded! To think that was 1954 – that was like Jimi Hendrix, over a decade earlier. Three Hours Past Midnight, Cuttin’ In, all really great records. It’s still exciting to hear that stuff.”

12. Mance Lipscomb

Mance Lipscomb (1895-1976) was born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, between Austin and Houston. As a young man, he took on the name Mance as an abbreviation for “emancipation.” 

Following his discovery in 1960 by Mack McCormick and Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, Lipscomb became an important artist in the folk revival of the early ’60s and was a regular performer at folk festivals and folk-blues clubs around the U.S., most notably the Ash Grove in L.A.

“In the early ’60s, Mance Lipscomb records were released on the Arhoolie label, which is how I discovered him. Mance did some great covers, like Baby Please Don’t Go and Jimmy Reed’s Big Boss Man. When I first came down to Austin in 1969, Mance would play the Armadillo and places like that, and I got to see him a few times. Great acoustic fingerpicker and singer.”  

He’s the Texas tornado who braved the honky tonks, traded gear with Hendrix and cut heads with his blues heroes. 

As Jimmie Vaughan releases a new career-spanning boxset, we take a walk with the 70-year-old through first guitars, broken bones and the agony of losing his kid brother...

The blues came calling

“I was a total blues nut. I had all the Chess records. I’d save my lunch money at school and go buy Chuck Berry’s new hit. Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, Freddie King – I had all those records.

“We had great radio stations at the time, too. Like, there was a station in Dallas called WRR, and they would play blues from 10 till midnight. Then there was Wolfman Jack, WLAC out of Nashville… and that wasn’t even the local stations. Popular music was amazing back then.”

Lucky break

“This friend at school said, ‘If you want a girlfriend, you’re gonna have  to play football.’ I really didn’t want to. I remember, the football coach said to me, ‘Okay, run up for a pass and let’s see what you can do.’ I caught the pass, the other players tackled me, all piled onto me and broke my collarbone. 

“So for the next three months, I didn’t have to go to school. So I was glad about that. My father said, ‘I don’t know what we’re gonna do with you, so, here, just take this guitar and stay out of trouble.’ And I’ve been playing ever since.”

Four play

“My first guitar was an acoustic with four strings. I finally got all six then I started learning Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, things like that. Everybody had to be able to play Hide Away by Freddie King. Everybody did that song. The hillbillies did it, the country guys did it, the black radio stations played it. Learning Hide Away was just something you had to do.”

Home schooling

“When I started out, there was guitar players everywhere. My father was an asbestos worker and a lot of musicians did that job because it was easy to come back to it if you needed money. So they would come over to our house, play dominoes, bring their wives, and there was a couple of guys who’d sit in the living room and play guitar, everything from country and western to blues and rock ’n’ roll. 

“There was one guy named Leonard: he had a big blonde Gibson with his name in the neck, in pearl. He’d show me how to play Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker. He’d say, ‘Sit down, kid. What do ya like?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, I like blues.’ And he’d go, ‘You mean like this?’ And he’d play Jimmy Reed and everyone. He pretty much laid it out. So that was one of my biggest lessons, just watching that guy.”

Finding God

“American music is where I grew up, but I’ll always remember hearing Eric Clapton when he first came out. A friend of mine called me up and told me his dad had gone to England, and he’d brought back a Clapton record. So my friend played it for me down the phone, and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s like BB King on acid or something.’ It’s always great to play with Eric. 

“I still can’t believe that I ever got to meet him, but he’s actually a friend now and it’s a trip. If you had been a hillbilly kid from Fort Worth, you would have never dreamed that you would meet all your heroes and make records and go tour. The whole thing is a fantasy come true.”

Gearing up

“I have a lot of ES-350s. I have several big-box jazz guitars. I have one of those T-Bone Walker blonde Gibsons with three pickups. I love all that stuff. But there’s nothing as cool as a Stratocaster. You don’t know if it’s a rocket ship or a lamp, y’know? It’s like the coolest car you’ve ever seen. 

“As for amps, when I started, my dad bought me a Silvertone piggyback with six 10-inch speakers. For the time, it was really big, and I liked that. I was in a band from about 12, and my dad used to take me to my first gigs. He’d put our amps in the back of the pickup and take us down there. Then he would hang out.” 

Austin power

“Soon after that, I got into a band called The Chessmen. They were all 21 and I was only 14, but I got in the van. We used to play at fraternity parties over in Austin, and it was incredibly exciting to go out at the weekend and not have to come home. 

“Y’know, just to be a kid, feeling like you’re getting away with something. You didn’t even care about if you had a record deal, or a career, or anything like that. I just remember being a young guitar player and how happy I was. My parents didn’t like it at first, but I was making pretty good money. 

“When I got into The Chessmen, I got two Superbeetles, then I got some Marshalls, and I would hook up different stuff. Like, I would get a Bassman and hook it up with the Superbeetles. We tried everything.”

Feet first

“What makes a great guitar part? Oh man, that’s a deep question. It’s very mysterious, but it’s like a paragraph. You have a beginning, a middle and an end, and then you have a punchline somewhere. 

“It’s like, if you throw a cat off the roof, it’s gonna land on its feet, probably. So you can play a lot of weird stuff in the middle, but you gotta land on your feet somehow. The reason why the blues is so great is because, in the middle, you can do anything you can get away with. So, in that way, it’s almost like jazz.”

Mob rules

“When you’re 18, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just feeling everything out. There was a drag between Fort Worth and Dallas called Jacksboro Highway that had about 20 honky tonks in a row. You just went out and played in them, every day.

“But you had to be careful. There was one place where they would let us in and out the back. It was easy to get your ass kicked if you weren’t careful. There’d be a line of motorcycle guys outside…”

In at the deep end

“If you listen back to some of the live stuff from early on, you can tell when you drank too much, or you were playing good, or you were playing calm, or you were playing a little frantic and pushing it. Y’know, all that stuff happens.

“Playing live as a young guitar player is like jumping in a big swimming pool when you don’t know how to swim, right? That’s the way it still is, but you just keep trying.”

Good company

“My band backed up Freddie King in Austin when he came back in the '60s with a new record deal. I played rhythm guitar for him. And I used to play in one place in Dallas where he lived a couple of streets over, and he’d come up on Sundays and sit in, stand there at the bar and watch you play. He was a huge guy, y’know? That was a real trip. 

“Another time, we opened for Jimi Hendrix. I had a brand-new Vox wah and his old DeArmond pedal didn’t work very good. It was Saturday night and you couldn’t go to the music store – so he bought my pedal for 50 bucks and gave me his old one. No problem, y’know? And I’ve still got that DeArmond pedal today.”

Taking flight

“I was playing in another band when Kim Wilson came through town on the day we had a jam session. He came and sat in, we talked and I said, ‘Okay, well, here’s my number.’ Next thing, we started a new band called The Fabulous Thunderbirds and I was with them for 15 years. 

“We had four people in the band, but Kim sang and played harmonica – so it was really more like a power trio, with bass, guitar and drums. We were doing the trio thing where you can play any song with different arrangements. Our first records didn’t sell much, but we were on the road in a van, playing 300 shows a year, living the dream.”

Find your voice

“As a guitar player, you have to play what you feel. You gotta figure out what that is and you gotta boil it down, right? It’s easy to learn a bunch of licks and throw them all in there, like Scrabble or something. But that doesn’t sound right. You have to make it into something. 

“The goal is to talk. It’s really about trying to have your own voice, so they can tell you from the other ones, y’know, and you’re not just copying people. But you can’t really think about all that when you’re playing. You just have to play the guitar, right?”

Riding with the king

“I used to get in a cab and ride over to see BB King long before I ever knew him. Later, he was always super nice to me, and very encouraging – all the things that you wouldn’t expect from a great star like that.

“We appeared together in the Blues Brothers 2000 movie, but that wasn’t really my favourite thing. It wasn’t the real deal. It was a spoof, wasn’t it? That doesn’t fall into the serious music category. But it was a good chance to go see a lot of your friends and have a party.”

Brothers in arms

“We have some stuff on the new boxset from the Family Style album that I made with my brother Stevie in 1990. I mean, Stevie was such a huge part of the whole thing. I’m four years older. He was my little brother. When we used to go to school, it was my job to get him there and back. 

“It was my job to get him to the bus stop, to get him home and make sure he was okay. I started playing guitar and he watched me learn then I’d put it down and he’d pick it up. He died 31 years ago. What in the world do you say about that?”

New generation

“Gary Clark Jr is fantastic. He’s a great songwriter, a fabulous singer; he can play so many things. I first met him when he was 14. He came down to the Antone’s club in Austin – his parents brought him there, got him in – and then Clifford [Antone, owner] said, ‘There’s this kid here, he’s supposed to be really good.’ We were like, ‘Get him up!’ And that was Gary Clark, before he got tall, y’know? You heard it immediately. You just knew – this kid’s got it.”

Getting better all the time

“I think you get better and better with your approach on guitar. You learn the technique when you’re young and muscular, but the best thing is just to keep doing it. Play every day. I think your overall approach to ad-libbing gets better as you get older. That’s just life.” 

My back pages

“I’m really happy this new boxset is coming out. Records are neat, aren’t they? That’s what I started out with and I still have a jukebox in my living room. There’s just something about having music that’s not digital. I don’t know how to explain it.

“It’s like, I love cars from the '30s, '40s and '50s. I’m 70 years old and I’m fortunate that I just do what I want. A lot of times, I don’t pay a lot of attention to what everyone else is doing.”

The next chapter

“There’s so much music on this boxset that I haven’t had a chance to absorb it yet. It’s just a trip to sit back and listen to all that stuff. But what I’ve got going on right now is what I’m thinking about. 

“I’ve got some gigs coming up and I’ve got a great band. I just want to play and play and play. I want to make more albums and I want to write more songs. I don’t see any reason to slow down. I’m going to keep playing until I can’t play any more, I guess.”

• The Jimmie Vaughan Story is available now on Last Music Co.

At a time when many artists are calling into question the validity of the album format, Jimmie Vaughan remains a staunch advocate of long-form recordings.

“I still love albums,” the veteran blues guitarist states. “I know there are changes in the way records are being delivered, but that’s just progress. Albums are still important, and I don’t see that changing. You give me a well-played, well-recorded album, and it’s like I’ve got a new friend. I’ll listen to that thing forever.”

Even so, Vaughan admits the process of recording albums can be stressful and exhausting, but he’s come up with a workaround to keep the experience fresh.

“I just pretend we’re cutting some 45s,” he says. “That’s how they did them in the old days - you go in and cut a couple of tunes, and everybody has a great time. So I’ll do two songs, maybe three, and then we’ll take a break.

“I do that every few weeks, and that cuts down on the stress factor. I’ve sat in studios for weeks and weeks, and I’ve seen spirits drag. Keep it short, keep it fun - in the end you’ll have a great album.”

Which is more or less how Vaughan went about recording his new album, Baby, Please Come Home, working with members of his long-standing 'A team' (drummer George Rains, guitarist Billy Pitman, bassist Ronnie James, keyboardist Mike Flanigan, and sax players Doug James and Greg Piccolo, among others) for concentrated, two-and-three-song sessions at the Fire Station Studio in San Marcos, Texas, over the past year.

The disc is the third in what has now become an anthology series that Vaughan began with 2010’s Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites and followed with 2011’s Jimmie Vaughan Plays More Blues, Ballads & Favorites on which the guitarist (who handles the lion’s share of vocals but sometimes steps back and lets guests Georgia Bramhall and Emily Gimble take over) digs deep to uncover rare gems from artists that he holds dear.

The new set features fiery renditions of little-known tracks once recorded by the likes of Lloyd Price, Jimmy Donley, Lefty Frizzell, T-Bone Walker, Bill Doggett and Jimmy Reed, the latter of whom has been a particular source of fascination for Vaughan, who in 2007 teamed with singer Omar Kent Dykes for a full-album reading of the late bluesman’s work called On the Jimmy Reed Highway.

“I love all these artists and the songs they did,” Vaughan says, “but you take a guy like Jimmy Reed, and you’re talking about one of my main inspirations. He’s like the cornerstone for me. His stuff belongs in the Great American Songbook.”

Fans of Vaughan’s distinctive guitar work will find that Baby, Please Come Home offers an embarrassment of riches: On every track, he peels off memorable, punchy and tasteful leads characterized by his instantly recognizable crystal-clear tone. But the album also demonstrates Vaughan’s growing strength as a vocalist, a talent he’s become more comfortable in exploring.

“I was a little shy about singing in the past, but as time goes by I think I’ve found my lane,” he admits.

“There were a couple of songs I wanted to try on this album, but I thought that the vocal acrobatics might be a little out of my range. So I listened to the tracks and said, ‘OK, I could do my own version of this,’ and I put my own little spin on it. The bottom line was, ‘Can I have fun with this and do the material justice?’ All things considered, I think we pulled it off.”

In your early days, how did you go about developing your own style of guitar playing?

"In the beginning, everything was a mystery to me. The main thing I worked on was getting from point A to point B. How do these people that I’m listening to know what they’re going to play?

"If you listen to San-Ho-Zay by Freddie King, after he gets through the head, how does he know what to do next? That was one of the questions I asked myself early on, and it became my mission to figure that out. So what I did was, I started to imagine myself in a room with my favorite guitar players. In my mind we’d be doing a roundy roundy, and when it got to me I had to play something. 'OK, now what?' I’d be thinking. Eventually, my brain and my heart gave me that answer."

Sounds like you were really trying to figure out improvisation.

"That’s what I’m talking about. You may have a vocal tune, but when it comes to the guitar solo, you have to improvise. The goal is to play what you feel, and so you have to ask yourself that. Once you figure that out, it all comes naturally."

You used to imagine yourself in a room with your favorite players, but at a certain point in your life, you actually got to experience that. How different was the reality from the dream?

"Oh, it was crazy! [Laughs] When you play with BB King or Eric Clapton or Robert Cray, it’s like you’re trippin’. Later, when you get back home, you’re like, 'Oh, man, did that really happen?'

"It’s like you come out of a dream state or something. But when you’re in that moment, when you’re actually going toe to toe with these guys, you have to not let your shield go up. You have to just allow yourself to be free. And that’s hard to do, because guitar players get nerves just like anybody else."

Your tone is very distinctive; it’s clean, clear and percussive. When did you start crafting that?

"Right away. I listened to Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Mack and Freddie King - a ton of other guys, too. But what I noticed about them was, they not only had a certain way of playing, but they also sounded like themselves.

"It was their signature thing. So it’s a process. You start emulating the people you admire, but eventually you have to develop your own thing. Once you do that, you can’t do anything else, ’cause it’s yours."

When you and Stevie were teenagers, did you two discuss tone?

"Oh, of course! I’m four years older than Stevie, so I was the one with the electric guitar and amp; I had the record player and records. He would watch me learning how to play, and then when I put the guitar down, he would pick it up. He learned all the same lessons just by being around me."

I asked that question because his tone was sometimes very different from yours - more overdriven and dirty.

"It was different, but I don’t think it was completely different. If he ever got in a situation where there was a hot guitar player in the room, Stevie would start playing Hendrix licks. He knew nobody else could do that."

So that was Stevie’s way of shutting people down?

"Yes, but in the in the nicest way possible."

I’ve talked to a number of younger guitar players who cite you a mentor. Who mentored you back in the day?

"Some of the people I mentioned already, but there were a couple of my uncles, too. They played guitar in country and western swing bands - they played Merle Travis and Chet Atkins and things like that. So I kind of absorbed all of that.

"If you listen to Merle Travis’s old records, and then you listen to Jimmy Reed or Hank Williams, you start to understand that it’s kind of the same thing. I just think of it as American music. Record companies and radio stations came up with the different categories, trying to sell it to different groups of people. But I heard that stuff early on from my uncles."

You and the Fabulous Thunderbirds were the house band at Antone’s in Austin. What do you think it was about that club that made it such a breeding ground for blues guitar players?

"It became our place to play. [Singer] Kim Wilson and I had a band, and we played the kind of music that we loved - Little Walter, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy. So it was half-harmonica, half-guitar. Clifford Antone came to us and said, 'We’re going to open a club called Antone’s, and we’re going to have nothing but blues. No country bands, no music from all these other categories - all blues. And I want you to be the house band.' We said, 'OK', because we knew this would be our guaranteed place to play.

"So we became the house band, and whenever Clifford would hire somebody to play - whether they were from Chicago, Mississippi, Tennessee, California or wherever - we had to learn how to back them up. That became our business. It was like we were in blues college."

How did you do actually go about selecting material for the new album? Did you just comb through your record collection and pick out cuts?

"Well, that’s really it. I listen to this music all the time, but I still make discoveries. There’s new artists and old tracks. I go to record stores and find them - I love going to record stores. And YouTube is fabulous. I’ll get on it to look at one thing, and before you know it I’ve found five songs I’ve never heard before. The internet is incredible, man."

Beyond your ability to sing a song, were there any tracks you didn’t want to touch because you considered the guitar playing on the original sacrosanct?

"There is a little of that, yes. I enjoy doing more obscure-type stuff. I could do a good job with Hide Away, but what’s the point? Freddie King did it, and so did 50 other people. Who cares if I do that one? So it’s not so much that something’s sacrosanct; it’s more like, 'Do I wanna do something you’ve heard a billion times?'"

Let me ask you about the title song, Baby, Please Come Home. It’s a really old song, written in 1919. Which version did you first hear?

"I heard Lloyd Price’s version. That’s the great thing about this stuff - you can trace a lot of this music to the beginnings of recordings. There’s some great versions of this song, but I like what Lloyd Price did.

"Now, when I listened to it, I thought, 'How can I make this my own song?' I took a lot of stuff out and put the guitar in there. If you listen to Lloyd Price, he shouts. I didn’t do that. I just played guitar."

In the solo of Just a Game, you play a sequence of notes, and then you kind of end it with a trill. It’s like a form of punctuation. Where does that come from?

"That’s a cool sound, isn’t it? I call that 'buzzing'. I don’t know where it comes from, but I just like it, so I do it. I guess it’s a trill, if you want to get technical. If you imagine dropping a BB off the stairs, and it goes 'bing-bing-bing-bing-bing' when it hits the bottom, that’s the sound I try to make. I guess it ends a phrase well. It’s a form of punctuation, sure."

No One to Talk to But the Blues is interesting. It’s by Lefty Frizzell, one of the pioneers of country, but it’s a straight-up blues song. Could you explain more?

"Absolutely! That’s exactly my point. Country guys and blues guys are the same. Record companies tried to put them into different bags, but that wasn’t coming from the artists.

"If you listen to Ray Price or Buddy Emmons or Little Milton or B.B. King, it’s all blues and jazz, and then you’ve got country in there, too. It all molds together in my book."

On Jimmy Reed’s Baby, What’s Wrong? there are moments in which you refer to his simple, one-string soloing. Did you consciously stick to parts that he played?

"I don’t know if I thought about it - it just came out that way. Listen, I’ve studied all his stuff because I dug it so much. I wanted to be like him. If I do some things like him, it’s because I revere him. He’s a hero of mine.

"I would tell a young person today, 'If you don’t listen to Jimmy Reed, you’re gonna miss out.' His music is so American. It’s like, you can put Hank Williams and Jimmy Reed together - in my book, they’re the same thing."

Which guitars did you use on this album?

"I used my new signature guitars that Fender made for me, my new model. These ones are made by the Custom Shop. The first version was made in Mexico, and they were 700 or 800 bucks. Really, the only difference is the materials.

"The new guitars that I have out from the Custom Shop are the best that they can do with the best materials they can get. We can sit around and argue about which one’s best - they’re both very good. But those are the ones I used on the album, the new models."

How about amps?

"I used Fender Bassmans and a boutique amp made by John Grammatico. He does an amp called a Kingsville that’s like a classic Bassman. The Fenders are reissues. I love vintage amps, but there’s so much toil and stress finding them and worrying about them. With the reissues, you can just go out and buy one."

You’re not a big effects guy, right?

"Not too much. I like tremolo and some reverb. I use a Strymon [Flint] pedal that gives me both effects. That’s really all I bother with. Everything else is from the way I set up the amp and how I play."

Do you still cut up plastic hotel room keys and turn them into picks?

"I do. I cut them up to make the kind of point that I like. I travel so much, so I’ve always got hotel room keys. One day I imagined to myself, 'What if the world ended and there were no more guitar picks?' So that’s why I use hotel room keys."

Of course, if the world ended, there wouldn’t be hotels.

"Yeah, that could be a problem, but we’ll worry about that when we get there."

An incredible piece of blues—and music—history surfaced online awhile back. Below, check out a rare video of Stevie Ray Vaughan performing "The Sky Is Crying" at an Austin, Texas, club circa 1980—before Montreux, before "Let's Dance," before his cowboy hats—before anyone in New Jersey or Ohio or Paris had any idea who he was.

It's so early, in fact, that he's still called "Stevie Vaughan" at this point. In the clip, Vaughan—who is seen here with bassist Jackie Newhouse and drummer Chris Layton—are performing at the Rome Inn, a legendary Austin club that closed its doors in April 1980 (Note: Several sources say this video was filmed April 20, 1980).

The video starts off with Jimmie Vaughan's band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, finishing up a rocking instrumental number (It sounds a lot like "Jumpin' Bad" from 1980's What's the Word?). This is interesting on its own, since it shows the late Keith Ferguson on bass. At the :48 mark, an unseen announcer says, "We've got a little surprise for you. Stevie Vaughan is gonna come up here and play something with his band."

After that, there's a whole lot of square-shaped nothingness, until around 1:31, when Stevie starts playing his fireworks-packed take on Albert King's version of Elmore James' "The Sky Is Crying." You get to watch him play the entire song, guitar solos and all. He's even using his "Number One" Strat.

As Vaughan fans know, a live album called In the Beginning captures a full "Stevie Vaughan" set from this period. The album, which was released in 1992, was recorded April 1, 1980, at Austin's Steamboat 1874. However, that album doesn't include "The Sky Is Crying."

Again, this is an incredible piece of footage—possibly the most-sought-after Vaughan footage in existence. Enjoy it while you can! By the way, if you can't get enough of this early Stevie/Jimmie/Austin stuff, be sure to read this 2014 story by the Austin Chronicle. It adds some background info to this GuitarWorld.com story.

Eric Clapton has announced the fifth installment of his Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Set to take place at the American Airlines Center in Dallas from September 20-21, the festival will gather together a jaw-dropping list of blues-guitar greats for two nights of music. All proceeds from the event will go towards The Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a substance-abuse rehabilitation facility founded by Clapton.

In addition to the concerts, the Guitar Center Festival Village will be featured on Victory Plaza adjacent to the arena. Ernie Ball, Fender, Gibson, Martin, PRS and more will host interactive exhibits where electric guitar enthusiasts can plug in and play new products and classic favorites. In addition, the Guitar Center Festival Village Stage Presented by Ernie Ball will host master guitar clinics and solo performances by main stage artists, next generation guitar virtuosos and special surprise guests. The Guitar Center Festival Village will be open from 12pm to 8pm each day and is free to all ticket holders.

This year's installment is the fifth for the festival, following those in 2004, 2007, 2010 and the most recent edition in 2013. You can check out the full lineup below. 

For more info on the festival, head on over to crossroadsguitarfestival.com.

2019 Crossroads Festival lineup (in alphabetical order):

Alan Darby, Albert Lee, Andy Fairweather Low, Billy Gibbons, Bonnie Raitt, Bradley Walker, Buddy Guy Band, Daniel Santiago, Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Eric Clapton, Gary Clark Jr., Gustavo Santaolalla, James Bay, Jeff Beck, Jerry Douglas, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Walsh, Jonny Lang, Keb Mo, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Los Lobos, Pedro Martins, Peter Frampton, Robert Cray, Robert Randolph, Sheryl Crow, Sonny Landreth, Susan Tedeschi, Tom Misch, Vince Gill

A few years ago, Shout! Factory released a very cool DVD called A Celebration of Blues and Soul: The 1989 Presidential Inaugural Concert.

The disc documents a rarely seen 1989 Washington Convention Center concert celebrating the inauguration of George H.W. Bush.

The video on the DVD is so rare that it was considered lost for more 20 years before being rediscovered eight years ago.

To put it simply, the DVD shows an all-star lineup of blues and R&B greats having what looks like an awesome time at the end of a decade that was very kind to the blues. Names include Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Bo Diddley, Dr. John, Sam Moore, Billy Preston, Albert Collins, Percy Sledge, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Eddie Floyd, Joe Louis Walker and Ronnie Wood.

Above, check out a clip of Albert Collins and Jimmie Vaughan joining Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble for a kickass performance of "Frosty," Collins' signature song, which he originally recorded in 1964.

As is often the case during this period of his brief career, Stevie Ray is in top form. Dressed in a tux with a wide-brim hat, Vaughan digs into a blistering solo before Jimmie takes over. Of course, the true star—at least for this particular performance—is Collins, who lays into this three-chord masterpiece, a holdover from the days when upbeat blues instrumentals (such as Freddie King's "Hideaway") could be minor hits and get some radio airplay.

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s distinctive playing style is earmarked by equal parts pure power, intensity of focus, razor-sharp precision and deeply emotional conviction. And then there’s his tone—probably the best Stratocaster-derived sound ever evoked from the instrument.

Stevie tuned his guitar down one half step (low to high, Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb), a move inspired by one of his biggest influences, Jimi Hendrix. He also preferred heavy gauge strings: high to low, .013, .015, .019, .028, .038, .058, occasionally switching the high E string to either a .012 or .011. To facilitate the use of such heavy strings, Stevie’s guitars were re-fretted with large Dunlop 6100 or Stewart-MacDonald 150 fretwire.

Let’s begin this lesson with a look at the title track from Stevie’s second album, Couldn’t Stand the Weather. The song begins in “free time” (no strict tempo).

While brother Jimmie Vaughan tremolo-strums the opening chords—Bm-A7-G7-F#7—Stevie adds improvised solo lines (see transcription bars 1-8): over Bm, Stevie sticks with the B blues scale (B D E F F# A), over A7 he utilizes the A blues scale (A C D Eb E G) and over G7 he uses G blues (G Bb C Db D F). Strive to recreate Stevie’s precision when it comes to his articulation.

Over Jimmie’s F#7 chord, Stevie plays a first inversion F#7#9, which places the third of the chord, A#, in the bass (as the lowest note). (Stevie employed this same unusual voicing for E7#9 in “Cold Shot.”)

A four-bar, R&B/soul-style single-note riff follows, doubled in octaves by guitar and bass (see bars 9-17). Played four times, two extra beats of rest are added the third time through. This is shown as a bar of 6/4 in bar 13 of the transcription.

In bars 18-23, Stevie adds a very Hendrix-y rhythm guitar part, played in 10th position and beginning on beat two with an F octave fretted on the G and high E strings, strummed in 16th notes. Stevie maintains the rhythmic push of steady 16ths through most of the riff by consistently strumming in a down-up-down-up “one-ee-and-a” pattern.

At the end of bar 18, barre your middle finger across the top three strings at the 12th fret, and then bend and release the G and B strings one half step. As the notes are held into the next bar, add subtle finger vibrato. Keep your fret-hand thumb wrapped over the top of the fretboard throughout the riff, using it to fret the D root note on the low E string’s 10th fret. Stevie intersperses this low root note into the lick in a few essential spots, akin to Hendrix on his songs “Freedom” and “Izabella.”

Stevie displays his true brilliance as an improviser when playing over a slow blues. All of the following examples are played in the key of G, utilizing the G blues scale (G Bb C Db D F) as a basis. Across the first two bars of FIGURE 1, I play two- and three-note chord figures against the low G and C root notes, fretted with the thumb. On beat three of both bars, I play a trill by barring the index finger across the D and G strings and then quickly hammering on and pulling off with the middle finger one fret higher on the G string.

When playing bar 3, keep your index finger barred across the top two strings at the third fret while bending notes on the G and B strings. On beat two, quickly hammer on and pull off to the fourth fret on the high E string. This G-Ab-G hammer/pull is a staple for Stevie, used in myriad different and creative ways.

Another essential element of Stevie’s slow-blues lead playing approach is the use of Albert King–style multiple-string bends. As shown in FIGURE 2a, I bend the high E string up one whole step at the eighth fret using the ring finger (supported by the middle) and simultaneously catch the B string under the fingertip and bend it up a whole step as well so that it “goes along for the ride.” In FIGURE 2b, I catch the top three strings under the fingertip. It will take practice to build up the strength and “finger traction” to execute these bends properly.

FIGURES 3a and 3b illustrate another way to add pull-offs on the high E string, this time fretting A and then pulling back from Ab to G. This is followed by repeated pull-offs on the B string, illustrated more clearly in FIGURE 3c. FIGURES 4a and 4b offer two more permutations of this idea.

Another nod to Albert is the use of fingerpicking to accent notes on the high E string. I use my middle finger to pick and snap the string back against the fretboard, as illustrated in FIGURES 5a–5f. Notice in FIGURES 5b, 5c and 5e the use of a half-step bend at the seventh fret on the high E string. Albert was a master of microtonal bending, a technique learned well by Stevie.

Stevie devised some unique position shifts, utilizing bends and slides on the G string. FIGURES 6a–c present three examples.

The use of the notes A, Ab and G on the high E string allude to the V (five) chord, D, and the D blues scale (D F G Gb A C). FIGURE 8a illustrates the scale, and FIGURES 7 and 8b–d offer examples played over the V chord. Another staple of Stevie’s style is the use of slides on the G string, exemplified in FIGURES 9a–c.

Below, check out a pro-shot clip of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble — with Jimmie Vaughan — performing "Texas Flood" at a 1989 concert celebrating the inauguration of George H.W. Bush.

The performance is from a DVD from Shout! Factory, A Celebration of Blues and Soul: The 1989 Presidential Inaugural Concert, which will be released May 6.

Vaughan was part of an all-star lineup that also featured Bo Diddley, Dr. John, Sam Moore, Billy Preston, Albert Collins, Percy Sledge, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Joe Louis Walker, Ronnie Wood and SRV's older brother, Jimmie Vaughan.

Video of the show was considered lost for more 20 years before it was rediscovered 10 years ago.

As is often the case during this period of his brief career, Vaughan is in top form in this video. Dressed in a tux with a wide-brim hat, Vaughan "roars" the lyrics and digs into a blistering solo, parts of which he plays behind his back and at the edge of the stage.

“Texas Flood” is part of 25 minutes of Vaughan songs on the new DVD. You can see the complete track list—and pre-order the DVD—right here.

Sue Foley named her 11th studio recording The Ice Queen, but the Texas blues guitarist insists that the title in no way references her personality. “No, not at all. I think I’m a nice person,” she says with a laugh. “The title is a celebration of my Canadian heritage—I come from the north, where it’s cold all the time. But it’s also about my love of Albert Collins. He was the ‘Ice Man’ with the Telecaster, and he was a huge influence on me. I base a lot of my guitar style on what he did.”

Since she left her native Vancouver at age 21, Foley has spent the majority of her time immersed in the Austin blues scene. She cut her teeth on the stage of the famous Antone’s nightclub while studying and befriending some of the town’s legendary guitarists, two of whom, Jimmie Vaughan and Charlie Sexton, turn up as guests on The Ice Queen.

Sexton powers up a mean slide guitar performance on the sexy blues grinder “Come to Me,” while Vaughan turns up on a pair of cuts, trading vocal and guitar lines with Foley on the sassy shuffle “The Lucky Ones,” and firing off emotive and elegant leads on the soulful torch ballad “If I Have Forsaken You.” “There’s no way I would give those guys direction,” Foley notes. “You ask people to play with you because you want what they do, not what you tell them to.”

The pink paisley Telecaster-totin’ Foley is no slouch herself on the guitar. ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons is such a fan of her tasteful, minimalist manner of playing that when he came to the studio to guest on the low-down, Jimmy Reed–style blues number “Fools Gold,” he insisted that Foley take the solo. “I would have let him do a guitar solo if he wanted,” Foley says, “but he was content with hittin’ the rhythm and playing harmonica. It’s funny, though, he plays harp just like he plays guitar. You hear that sound and you just know, ‘Yep, that’s gotta be Billy Gibbons.’ ”

AXOLOGY

● GUITARS 1987 stock Fender Telecaster, 1995 Epiphone Sorrento, Francisco Navarro Garcia nylon-strong Concert Classical
● AMP Fender Bassman ’59 Reissue
● EFFECTS Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, Xotic EP Boost

Eric Clapton has announced two shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. The concerts—set for October 6 and October 7—are the first North American shows Clapton has announced for 2018.

For the concerts—which will feature guest appearances by Gary Clark Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan—Clapton will be joined by bassist Nathan East, drummer Sonny Emory, guitarist Doyle Bramhall II, keyboardist Chris Stainton, Paul Carrack on organ and keyboards and Sharon White and Sharlotte Gibson on vocals.

This will be Clapton's third two-night stand at the famed New York City arena in two years. The guitarist did two two-night stands at the venue in 2017—one in March and another in September.

Back in January, Clapton revealed on an interview with the BBC Radio 2 program Steve Wright in the Afternoon that he is going deaf, saying—in response to a question about his plans for 2018—"The only thing I'm concerned with now is being in my seventies and being able to be proficient." The guitarist also said in the program of his 70th-birthday tour (2015) that he would be retiring soon, writing, "I swear this is it, no more.”

Tickets for Clapton's Madison Square Garden performances are set to go on sale this Friday, March 16.

For tickets and more information, head on over to ericclapton.com.

Today's your lucky day. Guitar World has teamed up with Canadian guitar ace Sue Foley to premiere a new song, "The Lucky Ones," a magnetic, guitar-packed shuffle that features Texas blues-rock legend Jimmie Vaughan on guitar and vocals.

The tune is from Foley's new album, The Ice Queen, which'll be released March 2 via Stony Plain Records. Besides Vaughan, who appears on two tracks, The Ice Queen features ZZ Top's Billy F. Gibbons, plus Charlie Sexton (Bob Dylan, Arc Angels), drummers Chris "Whipper" Layton (Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble) and George Rains (Jimmie Vaughan), Texas guitar mainstay Derek O'Brien, the Texas Horns and keyboardist extraordinaire Mike Flanigin, who also produced the disc (and is heavily featured on the Jimmie Vaughan Trio's 2017 release, Live at C-Boy's).

"When I was a teenager, I idolized Jimmie Vaughan and Billy F. Gibbons," Foley says. "They're both legends now, so this feels like an historical event—at least it does for me."

Foley has been working professionally since she was 16. When she was 21, she relocated to Austin—home of some of her six-string heroes—and began recording for Antone's, the blues label and nightclub that helped launch the career of Stevie Ray Vaughan and many others. In 2001, she won the Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy) and holds the record for the most Maple Blues awards in Canada (She's also won three Trophees de Blues de France).

These days, Foley is busy touring and recording steadily, and The Ice Queen is a perfect snapshot "the Foley experience" circa 2018—emotional vocal delivery, bottomless conviction, accessible yet inspired lyrics and intrepid guitar playing. The album was recorded—essentially live—at Fire Station Studios in San Marcos, Texas.

By the way, Foley has her own line of signature Telecaster pickups, courtesy of Planet Tone. You can check out the Sue Foley Ice Queen Tele Pickup Set right here.

For more about Foley and The Ice Queen, visit suefoley.com.

This spring, Heritage Auctions in Dallas will auction off a 1951 Fender Broadcaster that once belonged to Texas blues master Jimmie Vaughan and his famous little brother, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.

According to the November 2006 issue of Guitar World, Jimmie gave the guitar to Stevie in 1966 at the request of their mutual friend, Doyle Bramhall. Apparently, Stevie was in the habit of "borrowing" the guitar without asking Jimmie. Bramhall's brilliant solution? Give the ax to Stevie so he'd hopefully leave Jimmie's other guitars alone. Jimmie saw the wisdom of the idea—and that's how Stevie came to own his first professional-quality guitar.

According to legend, Jimmie carved the word "Jimbo" into the back of the guitar before giving it to his brother—back when both guitarists were still teenagers. You can see the "Jimbo" carving in this 360-degree image of the guitar right here.

The "Jimbo" guitar—a 1951 Fender "Nocaster" (serial number 0964) that might've even started its life as an Esquire—has a maple body (it originally sported a natural finish that was removed by Stevie), a black pickguard, a fixed bridge and two single-coil pickups (Some sources say it has two volume pots—another SRV modification). "Jimbo" was displayed in the Grammy Museum beside Stevie's iconic Stratocaster, and it's the guitar on which Stevie paid his dues, developing his signature style on stages in the late Sixties through the early Seventies. It's been noted that, during this period, Stevie and "Jimbo" were inseparable, with the young SRV even sleeping with the guitar.

Stevie, who played the guitar with his early bands—Southern Distributor, Liberation and Lincoln—wound up trading it to North Texas music teacher Geoff Appold for a red 1963 Epiphone Riviera in the early Seventies. Years later, Stevie asked Appold about the guitar, and Appold broke that news that it had been traded away. Stevie was disappointed, and he searched for the guitar until his death in 1990.

The guitar is slated for an entertainment auction March 24 at Heritage Auction Galleries (even though there's no mention of the guitar on the auction house's website). Mike Gutierrez, a consignment director for HA, says bidding will begin at $200,000 with no reserve. He estimates the final price will surpass $400,000. Gutierrez recently oversaw the sale of Bob Dylan’s Martin acoustic, which went for nearly $400,000.

“We have collectors all through Texas that may be interested,” Gutierrez told the Dallas Observer in December. “But we’ll have to wait and see. At that value level, the winner of this may be out of state.”

Stay tuned for more information from Heritage. In the meantime, check out this 2014 video featuring Norman Harris of Norman's Rare Guitars, who visited the ax while it was on display at the Grammy Museum.

Rootsy American music—for lack of a better name (although some people are calling it Americana or Ameripolitan)—is pretty much all I listen to these days. It calms me down, keeps me going when things get unsavory and streams out of my guitar (and/or iPhone) every time I pick it up.

In its seeming simplicity, I hear countless nuances, bottomless sadness and joy, winks to the past and nods to the future. I hear new and old pickup sounds and effects that often send me sprinting to eBay, not to mention guitar riffs and solos that sometimes send me back to the drawing board (especially when it comes to Cousin Harley's new album).

Anyway, if you've spent your year listening to, well, something other than "rootsy American music," and if you'd like to catch up on what you've been missing, you'll find 10 solid recommendations below. Enjoy!

JD McPherson, Undivided Heart & Soul

The Oklahoma-bred retro rocker branches out a bit on his third album, Undivided Heart & Soul. “I love rock and roll all the way through Rockpile, through T. Rex and the Stooges," McPherson told us. "All those things are fair game to soak up into what we do.” Highlights include the Radiohead-meets-Duane-Eddy shimmy of “On the Lips,” the angular “Lucky Penny” and the simply brilliant “Hunting for Sugar,” but the entire disc is full of surprises. Check out my 2017 interview with JD right here. (New West Records)

Marty Stuart, Way Out West

Way Out West, Stuart's ode to the American West, is packed with engaging tunes and fine guitar playing, courtesy of Stuart and Kenny Vaughan. Best of all, Stuart gives his Clarence White Tele a workout throughout. Highlights include the mesmerizing title track (below), "Whole Lotta Highway (with a Million Miles to Go)" and "Wait for the Morning." If you're heading to Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley or Twentynine Palms, be sure to bring this one along. P.S.: Way Out West was produced by the Heartbreakers' Mike Campbell. You can find our 2017 Marty Stuart interview in this general direction. (Superlatone)

Kim Wilson, Blues and Boogie, Vol. 1

Whether you realize it or not, Kim Wilson is one of the world's—that's right, the world's—most talented, devoted and committed blues artists, and this brilliant throwback (and awesomely monophonic) album proves it. The longtime Fabulous Thunderbirds frontman shines on everything, but in terms of highlights, check out "Same Old Blues," "Searched All Over" and "Worried Life Blues." It's Wilson's finest release since 1993's Tigerman (which you need to own, by the way). (Severn Records)

Chris Hillman, Bidin' My Time

This was a great year for Byrds fans. First we got to hear Clarence White's Telecaster all over Marty Stuart's Way Out West (see above), then we got this—a masterful album by Byrds cofounder Chris Hillman. The disc features three original Byrds (Hillman, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby), re-workings of three Byrds tunes and, best of all, the first-ever studio recording of the very Byrds-like "Here She Comes Again," a song Hillman and McGuinn wrote nearly 40 years ago. It's also worth noting that this was one of the late Tom Petty's final projects; the album was produced by Petty and executive produced by Herb Pedersen, who's been performing and recording with Hillman for decades. Check out my 2017 interview with Hillman right here. (Rounder)

Nikki Lane, Highway Queen

Nikki Lane is a Nashville-based songstress who straddles that gritty, pedal-steelin' line betwixt country, Americana and roots rock. She and her crew are also heavily into the fading art of the music video, and we suggest you check out "Jackpot" (below), "Send the Sun" and "Highway Queen." Blending witty lyrics, bluesy guitars and Sixties country-pop swagger, Highway Queen resonates as easily with Black Keys and Tom Petty fans as it does with those trillions of rabid Pete Drake fans out there. (New West Records)

Cousin Harley, Blue Smoke: The Music of Merle Travis

Rockabilly guitar master Paul Pigat was in the process of recording a solo album when he realized Merle Travis would've turned 100 this year. "When I discovered his birthday was November 29, 1917, I put my solo record on hold and did a [Travis-themed] Cousin Harley album instead," Pigat said. "I'm a firm believer that most guitar players are somehow influenced by Merle—they just don't realize it." Check out Pigat's "great Gretsch sound" on "Deep South" below—but be aware that the entire disc is packed with jaw-dropping guitar playing. For more about this album, step right this way. (Little Pig Records)

Son Volt, Notes of Blue

After two solid albums packed with alt-country (2009's American Central Dust) and earthy country (2013's Honky Tonk), the 10 songs on Notes of Blue are inspired by the blues, but not the standard blues as most of us know it. The unique and haunting tunings of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James and Nick Drake were all points of exploration for frontman Jay Farrar. That said, "Back Against the Wall" (below) is a fine piece of Son Volt-style alt-country with a wiry, growly (dare we say bluesy?) guitar solo. (Thirty Tigers)

Jimmie Vaughan Trio, Live at C-Boy's

The musicianship on this moody live disc is top-notch all around, from Mike Flanigin's magnetic Baby Face Willette-style Hammond organ magic to Frosty Smith's thunderous drumming to Jimmie Vaughan's steady-as-a-rock rhythm and lead playing. Jimmie is the Ringo Starr of blues guitar: not too flashy but super steady and blessed with a distinctive, often-imitated style. It doesn't hurt that there are two (purely accidental) Ringo tie-ins on the album—covers of the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" and Bruce Channel's "Hey! Baby," which Starr recorded in 1976. The album was recorded at C-Boy’s Heart & Soul, an atmospheric club on South Congress Street in Austin. Both the album and the venue are dripping with late-night-club mojo. For more about this album, head here. (Proper Records)

Legendary Shack Shakers, After You've Gone

This latest album by JD Wilkes and his groundbreaking Southern Gothic band, the Legendary Shack Shakers, is truly rockin', truly weird and truly enjoyable. These guys will throw together blues, carnival music, rockabilly and the swampiest swamp rock this side of Paducah, Kentucky, and it will—somehow—suck you in, time and time again. If you need a visual/audio aid, simply check out their just-released "Sing a Worried Song" music video; for something on the rockier side, aim your peepers and ears at the album's title track. (Last Chance Records)

Hayes McMullan, Everyday Seem Like Murder Here

Although it hasn't shaken the music world like Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers did in 1961, this sprawling, 31-track posthumous release by Hayes McMullen was certainly one of this year's blues highlights. McMullen—who died in 1986 at age 84—was a bluesman, sharecropper, church deacon and civil rights activist who was "discovered" by American roots scholar, collector and documentarian Gayle Dean Wardlow in the late Sixties. That's also when these engaging, stripped-down acoustic-blues pieces (music and spoken word) were recorded. I'd like to keep these individual album profiles brief, but if you're intrigued by this album, be sure to read Pop Matters' album review right here. For even more information, step right this way. (Light in the Attic Records)

Three Honorable Mentions

Also, be sure to check out Jenni Lyn's Burn Another Candle, Larkin Poe's Peach and "Slide Off of Your Satin Sheets," a new single by country artist Craig Gerdes. It's a Johnny Paycheck cover that sounds like it's straight out of 1977 (it also sounds a bit like Whitey Morgan, not that there's anything wrong with that). Gerdes' new album, Smokin' Drinkin' and Gamblin', will be available in early 2018. Below, check out Larkin Poe's powerful cover of Son House's "Preachin' Blues." For more about Larkin Poe—aka Rebecca and Megan Lovell—be sure to read "Larkin Poe Are Preachin' the Blues and Convertin' the Masses."

damian@guitarworld.com @DamianFanelli @damianfanelligw #damianfanelli

Fabulous Thunderbirds cofounder Jimmie Vaughan released a new live album on October 20, and it's worth mentioning for a few reasons.

First of all, I—a self-declared Vaughan brothers geek (not to mention an editor at a guitar magazine)—didn't even know about it until a photo of the album cover turned up on my Instagram feed the day it was released. Second, it's the first full-length release by the Jimmie Vaughan Trio, which stars the mighty Mike Flanigin on Hammond B3 organ and Frosty Smith on drums. Third, it features some of Vaughan's finest guitar playing in years.

In fact, the level of musicianship is top-notch all around, from Flanigin's magnetic Baby Face Willette-style Hammond magic to Smith's thunderous drumming to Vaughan's steady-as-a-rock rhythm and lead playing.

The album, Live at C-Boy's (Proper Records), was recorded at C-Boy’s Heart & Soul, an atmospheric club on South Congress Street in Austin, Jimmie's hometown. Both the album and the venue are dripping with late-night-club mojo.

Its eight mostly instrumental songs are reminders of Vaughan's built-in ability to play in the pocket, to maintain the steady pace in a potentially all-over-the-place setting. (I'm reminded of the time my band tried to record "Robbin' Me Blind," a shuffle from 2001's Do You Get the Blues? It was a sloppy affair.)

Jimmie's son, the Fender Strat-wielding Tyrone Vaughan, underscored this during a recent Guitar World interview: "Jimmie showed me how to shuffle on guitar and to be steady," he said. "He also said to have a beginning, a middle and an end to your solos."

Jimmie's six-string approach is angular, raw, uncluttered and heart-felt; most importantly, it sounds as though it's straight into the amp—free of effects—which serves the album's stripped-down arrangements.

Jimmie is the Ringo Starr of blues guitar: not too flashy but super steady and blessed with an incredibly distinctive, often-imitated style. It doesn't hurt that there are two (purely accidental) Ringo tie-ins on the album—covers of the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" and Bruce Channel's "Hey! Baby," which Starr recorded in 1976.

"Can't Buy Me Love" and the rollicking opener, the aptly titled "You Can't Sit Down" (a 1963 hit for the Dovells), find Vaughan handily filling in the bass-guitar-free gaps in an upbeat, jazzy setting. Of course, there's plenty of blues to go around; Vaughan shines on "Dirty Work at the Crossroads," "Frame for the Blues" and the swanky "Cleo's Mood," a Junior Walker tune that reads like a minor-key version of Slim Harpo's "Scratch My Back" (which Vaughan recorded with the Fabulous Thunderbirds in 1979).

The spine-tingling "Saint James Infirmary" and a tight cover of Smokey Smothers' "Come On Rock Little Girl" round out the proceedings.

Live at C-Boy's is available via Amazon and iTunes.

P.S.: For a taste of how this setup sounds in a studio setting, check out "All Nite Long" (below), a track from Flanigin's latest album, 2015's The Drifter. It features Vaughan on vocals and guitar.

Damian Fanelli | damian@guitarworld.com | @damianfanelligw

In 1994, a young British band called the Hoax released a reasonably successful album called Sound Like This. You might even remember it.

For me, the album's strongest selling point—and the reason I played it over and over again back in the day—was the undeniable skills of the band's guitarists, Jesse Davey and Jon Amor, who convincingly nailed the late Stevie Ray Vaughan's playing style and tone.

And, yes, I know that was "a thing" in the early to mid-Nineties (I did it too), but Davey—in particular—took it to mesmerizing new heights.

As Amor told The Guitar Magazine in 2015, "Stevie Ray was our hero…to an unhealthy extent. Anything he did, we decided we were going to do as well." This meant the whole SRV deal, from guitar choices (Fender Strats, obviously) to the thickest strings their fingers could possibly cope with.

Let's take a moment so you can see/hear what I'm talking about. Here's a clip of Davey performing in 1998:

If you need more examples, check out the guitar solo from the Hoax's "Scaramouche" and this bonus clip of Davey in action.

Davey has stayed busy since those ancient times. Besides periodically touring and recording with the Hoax (voted Britain’s best blues band for five years and inducted into the British Blues Hall of Fame), not to mention the Davey Brothers and several other blues-centric projects, his impressive playing and/or writing can be heard on a host of feature-film soundtracks and releases by Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr and Dave Stewart. He also shoots music videos—hey, he's a multi-talented gent.

At some point, Davey—who always enjoyed tinkering with his gear—launched King Tone Guitar, a company through which he designs, builds and sells his own effect pedals (heavy on the fuzz and drive), pickups and a tiny secret weapon called the King Tone Switch.

The four-position switch, which is shown in the photo at the top of this story, replaces your guitar's lower tone knob (the one we don't use all that often) and offers several useful sonic options.

“I had been searching for a particular tone for more than 15 years," Davey told Guitar World. "It was that edgy, singing quality I heard on so many Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan recordings. No matter what I tried, I couldn't quite get it. Finally, I was experimenting with using actual guitar pickups as components in circuits and discovered something that would lead me to develop the King Tone Switch."

"[The switch] basically makes a single-coil sound a bit more like a humbucker as you roll it back," Davey told The Guitar Magazine in 2015. "[It offers] a slightly deeper tone but still with the edge. There’s a sort of tubey feel to it. I use it all the time. The first one was built into a guitar pedal, but it made more sense to have it on a guitar. It’s a fairly basic passive circuit. I do sell them, and a lot of people say they leave it on all the time because when you turn it off it sounds really thin."

Davey adds the following comments on the King Tone Switch product page: "100 percent Vaughan, tubey bite, lots of attack, warm—extremely fat and thick but still has top-end bite."

Below, check out some King Tone Switch factoids, followed by two more videos (the bottom clip is from the King Tone Switch product page, so we assume Davey is using the switch in the video). You can expect a brief video from me soon-ish.

Things to know:
• Fits inside your guitar
• Four tone positions
• True bypass, so it won’t affect your normal tone
• Replaces the often-unused lower tone control
• Opens up a wide range of tones
• 100 percent passive, so you don’t need a battery
• Fully encapsulated to protect against moisture
• Easy to install
• $99.99 plus shipping from California.

Check out the demos (there are more on YouTube) and form your own opinion. Here's mine: If a respected, tech-savvy guitarist—someone who has absorbed SRV's playing habits and tone secrets as profoundly as Davey has—is putting out his own line of gear, I'm intrigued.

For more information on Davey's pedals, pickups and accessories, visit kingtoneguitar.com (There's a "contact us" link on their site if you have questions). For more about the Hoax, Amor and Davey, check out the rest of that 2015 interview.

damian fanelli ... damian@guitarworld.com ... yeah!

The Milligan Vaughan Project—an Austin-based band featuring singer Malford Milligan and guitarist Tyrone Vaughan—released their debut album, MVP, August 4 via Mark One Records. Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of "Soul Satisfaction," the band's new music video.

The song, which packs a punch, features plenty of tasty Fender-fueled guitar work by Vaughan, who happens to be Jimmie Vaughan's son and Stevie Ray Vaughan's nephew. SRV even gave Tyrone his first real guitar (but more on that later).

MVP—a powerful mix of blues, soul, rock and funk—features nine studio tracks recorded at Austin's Arlyn Studios and 512 Studios, plus two tracks from the band's live debut at Austin's One 2 One club during SXSW.

The studio tracks include originals by Milligan, Vaughan and producer David Grissom, plus Buddy Guy’s “Leave My Girl Alone,” “Compared to What”—popularized by Les McCann—and Rev. James Cleveland’s “Two Wings.” Live tracks include the Grissom-penned “What Passes for Love” and Freddie King's signature tune, “Palace of the King.”

As you can imagine, the great Texas guitar-slinging tradition has been in Tyrone's blood since, well, before he was born. Muddy Waters gave him one of his harmonicas. He found himself sleeping in Boz Skaggs’ guitar case. Stevie Ray gave Tyrone his first real guitar when he turned 5 years old; it was an old Harmony from a local pawn shop. A bit later, Stevie Ray, singer Lou Ann Barton and guitarist W.C. Clark pitched in to buy Tyrone a Fender Musicmaster.

Stevie Ray was proud of that small-neck guitar and was delighted that his nephew was following in his and Jimmie’s footsteps. Since those early years, he has performed with Billy Gibbons, Doyle Bramhall, Doyle Bramhall II, (Little) Jimmy King, Double Trouble, Pinetop Perkins, John Popper and Eric Gales.

Milligan was born in Taylor, Texas. In 1994, he helped form the Texas super group, Storyville, with Grissom, David Holt and the rhythm section from Double Trouble—bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris "Whipper" Layton. Storyville released two albums on Atlantic Records, along with the independently released Live at Antone’s.

Enjoy the driving kick of “Soul Satisfaction” below, plus a "making of" video—and the band's current live dates.

For more about the band, check out milliganvaughanproject.com.

Milligan Vaughan Project's Texas Tour Dates
10/7 Backstage @ El Mercado Austin, TX
10/21 One 2 One Austin, TX
10/28 SUN Radio – Hill Country Galleria Austin, TX
11/18 Granada Theater w/Jackie Venson Dallas, TX
11/29 Sam’s Burger Joint San Antonio, TX
11/30 The Backyard Waco, TX

The spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan has never left Austin, Texas. Now, almost 27 years after his death, some of his most treasured and iconic possessions are on display in his adopted hometown for all to see.

Pride and Joy, The Texas Blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan, an exhibit curated by the Grammy Museum in cooperation with Vaughan’s estate, headed by his brother Jimmie, is on display at the Bullock Museum in Austin through July 23.

The exhibit includes several guitars, including Vaughan's "Number One" Fender Stratocaster, as well as stage outfits, including his iconic hat and Indian headdress, family photographs, original concert posters, handwritten lyrics and exclusive archival concert footage.

“This was a great way to share Stevie’s things with the public, who love him so much and are such great fans and want to get close to him,” Jimmie Vaughan says. “I understand that and I’m glad we can do this for them—and I’m sorry it took me so long, but I really needed that much time to be able to handle it.”

Vaughan says he was pushed toward action several years ago when he discovered someone was breaking into the storage space where he keeps Stevie’s belongings and slowly stealing items. He adds that Grammy Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli’s gentle but persistent prodding was a great asset, as was the subsequent work by museum staff and his wife Robin. Their support and effort assured that the exhibition came together even as he at times struggled with the emotions of choosing what of his brother’s mementos told the right story.

“I just couldn’t bear to do it before,” Vaughan says. “I’d go look at his stuff and want to organize it and let people see it, but it was too hurtful. That probably seems crazy to everyone, but when he died the way he did, I just couldn’t deal with it and I didn’t know what to do. I eventually decided it was important for me to try and live my life. He’s my little brother and I think if you look at it like that it makes more sense. It just took me this long to be able to go through and do something like this.”

Pride and Joy opened at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2014 and has also been shown at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The Bullock exhibit has an added section covering some of Stevie’s musical heroes, including the guitars of Lonnie Mack and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. This was just the latest example of Jimmie celebrating the history of the music and musicians who inspired him and his brother.

“This is the Texas State Museum, so school kids come in every day and I wanted them to see where Stevie came from and to understand the importance of these great musicians who inspired us,” Vaughan says.

For more information, visit thestoryoftexas.com, and be sure to check out our opening-day photos below (courtesy of Elizabeth Page/Bullock Creative).

Alan Paul is the author of One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band.

In 2015, Eric Clapton said he would not tour any more, even writing in the program for his 70th birthday tour, "I swear this is it, no more.”

Happily, he changed his mind and decided to play a limited number of shows this year in New York, Los Angeles and London. On Monday, March 20, he played the second of two nights at Madison Square Garden, where he will return for two shows in September.

There has been some grumbling from longtime fans about a relatively short 90-minute set that didn’t really include any deep tracks and was heavy on pop hits like “Tears in Heaven,” “Wonderful Tonight” and “I Shot the Sheriff.” Fair enough, and anyone who paid (a lot) for tickets is to free to complain if they want. But it’s all a matter of managing expectations and being realistic.

Jimmie Vaughan, who opened the night with a too-short 30-minute set, was celebrating his 66th birthday, and it was Clapton who inspired him when he was a teen. It’s easy to take people for granted, but Clapton is the same guy who debuted with the Yardbirds in 1964—53 years ago. The man is 72, apparently suffers from a neurological disorder that threatens his ability to play guitar—and he sounds pretty damn good.

I found it thrilling to be in the room with Eric sounding like… Eric. If that sounds flippant or dismissive, it’s not. Clapton’s touch and tone are completely distinct, and they were very much present throughout the night, from the opener, “Somebody's Knocking,” the only song from 2016’s I Still Do, to the closer, “Before You Accuse Me,” during which he was joined by openers Vaughan and Gary Clark Jr.

He may have missed some notes, but he also was playing without a second guitarist, and it was great to hear his rhythm playing throughout. His singing was also excellent, as was the overall sound. How far we’ve come in arena sound systems! His acoustic playing, during a four-song mini-set, was particularly excellent, especially on “Driftin’ Blues” and its gorgeous intro.

Clapton’s performance was extremely professional, if at times perfunctory. He barely spoke, not even to introduce his very solid band, which included drummer Steve Gadd, bassist Nathan East, keyboardists Chris Stainton and Walt Richmond and singers Sharon White and Sharlotte Gibson. They back him ably but rarely challenge or push him, and Clapton certainly does not ooze spontaneity: the setlists for the two MSG performances were the same in a slightly different order, and he didn’t give Vaughan or Clark a lot of space or interaction on their sit-in, when a musical conversation would have been exciting.

Heck, Clapton didn’t even add a Chuck Berry song or acknowledge the passing of one of his heroes, who died the day before the first Garden show. This is hard to understand, and it would be welcome if he approached any of these things differently, but no one should take these performances for granted.

Gregg Allman and Willie Nelson have recently cancelled shows for health reasons, we are losing beloved musical figures at an alarming rate, and I celebrate Clapton for reversing his retirement and giving us at least a few more shows. Long may he run.

Eric Clapton & His Band, March 20, 2017
01. Somebody's Knocking
02. Key to the Highway
03. Hoochie Coochie Man
04. I Shot the Sheriff
05. Driftin' Blues
06. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
07. Layla
08. Tears in Heaven
09. Badge
10. Wonderful Tonight
11. Crossroads
12. Little Queen of Spades
13. Cocaine
14. Sunshine of Your Love (encore)
15. Before You Accuse Me (encore) with Jimmie Vaughan and Gary Clark Jr.

Alan Paul is the author of One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. Follow him on Twitter: @AlPaul

Last night, Eric Clapton kicked off a two-night stand at New York City's Madison Square Garden.

Although we'll have a complete concert review for you soon, you might want to check out a few clips from the show, which also featured appearances by Jimmie Vaughan (who turns 66 today) and Gary Clark Jr., Guitar World's current cover star.

In the top clip, Clapton performs Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love," launching into a blistering solo at 2:26. He tackles Cream's cover of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" in the middle video, with his guitar solo getting off the ground around 1:11.

Below that, you'll find a performance of Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" (which Clapton recorded for Journeyman in 1989) with plenty of fretwork fireworks from Vaughan and Clark.

Clapton still has another 10 live dates scheduled for 2017. You can see them all below.

Eric Clapton's 2017 Live Dates
March 20 - New York @ Madison Square Garden
March 25 - Los Angeles @ The Forum
March 26 - Los Angeles @ The Forum
May 22 - London @ Royal Albert Hall
May 24 - London @ Royal Albert Hall
May 25 - London @ Royal Albert Hall
September 7 - New York @ Madison Square Garden
September 8 - New York @ Madison Square Garden
September 15 - Los Angeles @ The Forum
September 16 - Los Angeles @ The Forum

Die-hard Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan fans—myself included—have already seen this video 49.677777 times. However, that doesn't make it any less appealing.

And, since it wound up in my crowded inbox this morning (probably because it's Jimmie's birthday), I thought I'd share it with the masses.

The clip, which was shot aboard the S.S. Presidente in New Orleans in February 1987, shows Stevie Ray and his big brother, then-Fabulous Thunderbirds guitarist Jimmie, playing a double-neck guitar—at the same time. They start with an upbeat I-IV-V tune along the lines of Stevie Ray's "Rude Mood" before shifting into "Pipeline," the Chantays' 1962 surf-rock classic, around the 2:49 mark. They also switch necks along the way.

The guitar, which was built by Robin Guitars of Houston, has two maple necks, each with a different-scale length and a pointy "drooped"-style reversed headstock with locking machine heads. It also had (or has, assuming it's still around) Rio Grande single-coil pickups. This guitar was dubbed the "Family Guitar," which foreshadowed the title of the Vaughan Brothers' only album as a bona-fide duo, 1990's Family Style.

Blues guitarist Sue Foley has announced she’ll return to her musical roots in Austin, where the blues magic began, to record her new album, Ice Queen.

Foley’s seminal first record for Antone’s, Young Girl Blues, brought her to the forefront of the blues scene, playing with heavy hitters like Albert “Ice Man” Collins. Her homage to Collins, the “Master of the Telecaster,” is reflected in the title of Ice Queen, which is set to be recorded in December. Texas B3 organ virtuoso Mike Flanigin (ZZ Top, Jimmie Vaughan and Steve Miller) will produce the record and perform on it.

To fund Ice Queen, Foley has launched a Kickstarter campaign. Fans can be part of the effort by offering a pledge by December 4. As a token of Foley’s thanks, supporters will receive rewards and goodies, including signed CDs, a personal Skype guitar lesson, a brand-new Fender Squier Telecaster autographed by Foley, a solo house concert with Foley, and—the ultimate prize – a new black Fender standard Telecaster signed by Billy Gibbons, Jimmie Vaughan, Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton, Flanigin and Foley.

Foley will perform with Gibbons, Flanigin, Layton and special guest Jimmie Vaughan at the Austin City Limits Live venue December 29. In the video below, you can witness the band’s substantial chemistry during a show last October at Antone’s. We’ve also included the video announcing Foley’s Kickstarter campaign, shown at bottom.

You can contribute to Foley’s campaign by clicking here. The deadline is December 4.

The great state of Texas launched its now-iconic "Don’t Mess with Texas" ad campaign exactly 30 years ago.

The campaign, which evolved from an extensive public-education program conducted by the Texas Highway Commission, aims to keep Texas beautiful, often hosting massive clean-up events, partnering with litter-prevention programs and more.

One of the reasons "Don't Mess with Texas" continues to thrive is its always-imaginative TV commercials, which, from the very start, have featured appearances from well-known Texans. In fact, the campaign's very first commercial from 1986 featured Stevie Ray Vaughan.

In the clip, which you can check out below (top video), a decked-out Vaughan plays a quick slide-guitar version of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" on his Strat before admonishing viewers with a simple, "Don't mess with Texas." Vaughan rarely played slide in the first place, and it's particularly unusual to see him do it in a video, even one that's only 30 seconds long.

Other commercials over the years (all of which are available to view here) have featured Willie Nelson, Matthew McConaughey, Lyle Lovett, LeAnn Rimes, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kevin Fowler and Jack Ingram. In fact, SRV's big brother, Jimmie Vaughan, appeared in a 1986 commercial with his band at the time, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. In the clip, we see that the band has changed the lyrics to their biggest hit, "Tuff Enuff," to fit the theme of the campaign. You can watch it below (bottom video).

For more about "Don't Mess with Texas," visit dontmesswithtexas.org.

Luckily, Stevie Ray Vaughan got around in the Eighties, jamming with pretty much everyone from Jeff Beck to Eric Clapton to B.B. King to Albert King to ...

OK, maybe not everyone. But he certainly played with a host of blues and classic-rock legends, including Carlos Santana.

Below, check out some pro-shot—and just plain enjoyable—footage of Santana jamming with Stevie; Stevie's big brother, Jimmie Vaughan of the Fabulous Thunderbirds; and lefty guitarist Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos in early October 1988.

The show, which is available on a bootleg DVD (or so I'm told), took place at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa, California.

You'll want to jump ahead to the 14:23 mark in the top video, which is when Santana's guests take the stage.

They kick things off with "Everybody's Everything," a rollicking track with blues changes from Santana's 1971 self-titled album, during which SRV goes to town on a doubleneck Danelectro (the bottom neck sounds like a baritone).

But it only gets better from there. We see Santana exchange solos with Stevie, Jimmie and Cesar, all of whom were in great form that night. The medley of songs continues into the second video, where there are more closeups of SRV and his doubleneck guitar in action. This is also some of the best late-Eighties playing by Jimmie that I've ever seen. Enjoy!

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado. His New York-based band, the Blue Meanies, has toured the world and elsewhere. Fanelli, a former member of Brooklyn jump-blues/swing/rockabilly band the Gas House Gorillas and New York City instrumental surf-rock band Mister Neutron, also composes and records film soundtracks. He writes GuitarWorld.com's The Next Bend column, which is dedicated to B-bender guitars and guitarists. His latest liner notes can be found in Sony/Legacy's Stevie Ray Vaughan: The Complete Epic Recordings Collection. Follow him on Facebook,Twitter and/or Instagram.

Assuming they read liner notes, even mildly devoted Stevie Ray Vaughan fans will be familiar with the name Doyle Bramhall.

Bramhall, an Austin-based singer and drummer who died in 2011, wrote several classic SRV tracks, including "Lookin' Out the Window," "Life By the Drop" and "Change It." He also co-wrote several killer songs with Vaughan, including "Dirty Pool," "The House Is Rockin'" and "Tightrope."

What a lot of Vaughan fans might not know is that Bramhall and SRV co-wrote a hard-charging funk/jazz instrumental number called “Chateau Strut,” which never appeared on a Vaughan album. In fact, Bramhall didn't decide to record it until 2006 or 2007, 15-plus years after Vaughan's tragic death in 1990. It's one of the highlights of Bramhall's third and final solo album, 2007's Is It News (Yep Roc).

Be sure to check out Bramhall's version of “Chateau Strut” below (top video). In a sense, it can be considered a "lost" SRV track, an original song that might've fit perfectly on an SRV album that will, of course, never exist. To hear Vaughan play the track, check out the bottom YouTube clip (below), which is labeled "Ultra-Rare Stevie Vaughan 'Chateau Strut' Live Instrumental." We're not sure where or when it's from, or even if it's truly SRV, but it sure as hell sounds like him.

According to Brahmall, who was the father of singer/lefty guitarist Doyle Bramhall II, “Chateau Strut” was written around 1974, when Vaughan, Bramhall and keyboardist Billy Etheridge were warming up at an East Texas club called the Club Chateau. This rendition, featuring Mike Keller on guitar, Etheridge on piano and Bramhall on drums, was recorded in one take, because, Bramhall joked, “my arms couldn’t do any more.”

According to AllMusic.com, the tasty, song-propelling bass line is played by Scott Nelson.

As a singer, songwriter and drummer, Bramhall was an integral part of the extended Texas music scene for 40 years, not to mention one of the founding fathers of the blues/roots resurgence that was synonymous with the Lone Star State and the blues/roots migration from Dallas to Austin.

Growing up in Dallas, Bramhall's Chessmen opened for Jimi Hendrix in 1968, when Bramhall was in his teens. Moving to Austin with the band’s guitarist, Jimmie Vaughan, the two formed Storm, which Bramhall eventually left to form the Nightcrawlers, this time with Vaughan’s little brother, Stevie Ray.

Jimmie Vaughan plays on Is It News, by the way. His distinctive Strat picking can be heard on the bluesy "Little Star (The Moon Is Shining)."

For more about Bramhall's background and Is It News, visit yeproc.com.

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado. His New York-based band, the Blue Meanies, has toured the world and elsewhere. Fanelli, a former member of Brooklyn jump-blues/swing/rockabilly band the Gas House Gorillas and New York City instrumental surf-rock band Mister Neutron, also composes and records film soundtracks. He writes GuitarWorld.com's The Next Bend column, which is dedicated to B-bender guitars and guitarists. His latest liner notes can be found in Sony/Legacy's Stevie Ray Vaughan: The Complete Epic Recordings Collection. Follow him on Facebook,Twitter and/or Instagram.

Shortly before Stevie Ray Vaughan's tragic death in August 1990, he and his big brother, Jimmie Vaughan, recorded Family Style, their first (and only) album together.

Below, you can see the Vaughan Brothers—as the duo was called—in the studio together during the making of the album, which was released later that year.

Although the video is mostly an opportunity for Jimmie and SRV to discuss their Texas upbringing and their influences, we also get to see them grab their Strats at various points, like at 3:37, when they (supposedly) run through "DFW," one of many guitar showpieces from the album, and at 4:44, when SRV breaks a string during a bend high on the neck. As SRV bites on the broken string, Jimmie exclaims, "One more time!"

The Vaughan boys are also joined by the album's producer, Nile Rodgers, who describes the duo as "pretty particular when it comes to their guitar sound and what they want to hear."

SRV sums up the album-making experience at the very end of the clip:

"We've probably gotten closer making this record than we've been since we were little kids at home. And, um, I needed it."

Guitarist Dan Hicks died on February 6 following a two-year battle with cancer. He was 74.

Hicks, who founded Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, was diagnosed with throat and liver cancer in 2014. His death was announced on his website by his wife, Claire.

“My darling darling husband left this earth early this morning. He was true blue, one of a kind, and did it all his own way always,” she wrote.

“To all who loved him, know that he will live forever in the words, songs, and art that he spent his life creating. He worked so hard on each and every detail—they are all pure Dan.”

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on December 9, 1941, Hicks held a unique place in the pop world, performing an acoustic form of the “hot jazz” swing music popularized from the Twenties through the Forties. Into this, he drew disparate styles, calling on country, pop and gypsy music, and often infusing his songs with humor, evident in titles like “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?”

• After picking up the guitar in 1959, Hicks moved to San Francisco, where he became part of the Bay Area’s emerging folk scene, which included Paul Kantner, the Jefferson Airplane founding guitarist who died on January 28.
• After a stint as drummer for San Francisco psychedelic pioneers the Charlatans, Hicks moved in the opposite musical direction when he formed Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks in 1967 with violinist David LaFlamme. When LaFlamme left to form It’s a Beautiful Day, he was replaced by jazz violinist Sid Page. Hicks and Page were supported by singers Sherry Snow and Christine Gancher, guitarist Jon Weber and bassist Jaime Leopold. The group featured no drummer.
• A 1969 contract with Epic led to the recording of their debut album, Original Recordings, produced by Bob Johnston, who helmed classic Sixties albums by Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and Johnny Cash. The Hot Licks disbanded in 1971, but Hicks reformed the group with a revised line-up and released three more albums before dissolving the band again in 1974. The decision came at an odd time. Hicks had just landed on the cover of Rolling Stone, giving the group a chance at broader appeal in the diversified music climate of the times.
• “I didn’t want to be a bandleader anymore,” Hicks said at the time, explaining his decision. “It was a load and a load I didn’t want. I’m basically a loner.... My role as leader started diminishing, but it was my fault because I let it happen; I cared less as the thing went on.”
• The group reunited in 1989 for an Austin City Limits taping, and in the early Nineties Hicks formed the Acoustic Warriors, which played in a style like that of the Hot Licks. Hicks began using the Hot Licks name again in 2000.

With his idiosyncratic musical style, Hicks was unlikely to become a hit maker, but he had many fans among more popular musicians. In 1984, Thomas Dolby covered Hicks’ “I Scare Myself” on his hit album The Flat Earth. Released as a single, the song reach Number 46 on the U.K. Singles Chart.

Hicks made a “comeback” in 2000 with the album Beatin’ the Heat, which featured assistance from fans that include Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Brian Setzer, Rickie Lee Jones and Bette Midler. Reviewing the album on InsiderOne.net, Michael Goldberg wrote, “When he first appeared on the scene in the ’60s, Hicks was a young guy playing old sounds. But there was something fresh, even original about his approach then, and he hasn’t lost his special touch. His voice and his sly, humorous point of view set him apart from any crowd. Now that he’s an old-timer, his music seems even more solid and substantial.”

The album revived Hicks’ career and led to subsequent releases. In recent years he could occasionally be seen performing jazz standards in San Francisco, backed by the Hot Licks, Acoustic Warriors and others.

Hicks announced his cancer diagnosis on his website in March 2015.

Though no one ever came up with a simple way to describe his music, they were in good company. Hicks himself found his style hard to explain.

“My music is kind of a blending,” he said in a video interview that took place on July 3, 2007. “It starts out with kind of a folk music sound, and we add a jazz beat and solos and singing. We have the two girls that sing, and jazz violin, and all that, so it’s kind of light in nature, it’s not loud, and it’s sort of, in a way, kinda carefree. Most of the songs are, I wouldn’t say funny, but kinda maybe a little humorous. We all like jazz, so we like to play in a jazzy way, with a swing sound, you know, so I call it ‘folk swing.’”

Whatever you called it, it was the sound of Dan Hicks.

On Thanksgiving Day, Jimmie Vaughan performed "Texas Flood" with the University of Texas (at Austin) Longhorn Band.

The performance, which you can check out below via some fan-shot footage, took place at the 50-yard line during halftime at the University of Texas Vs. Texas Tech University football game at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium/Jamail Field in Austin.

Best of all, it started raining during Vaughan's performance, and the crowd burst into cheers when the former Fabulous Thunderbirds guitarist sang the line "I'm standin' out in the rain."

"[It was] perfect weather to be singing 'Texas Flood' in," wrote Vaughan on his Facebook page. "I was definitely 'standin' out in the rain!' What a blast!"

Jimmie's younger brother, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, famously covered the song, which was written by Larry Davis and Joseph Scott, on his debut 1983 album, Texas Flood. Jimmie has been playing it regularly since the mid-Nineties. By the way, the final score was 48 to 45, in favor of Texas Tech. Way to go, defense!

Jimmie Vaughan will perform with the University of Texas at Austin Longhorn Band during halftime at the Texas vs. Texas Tech football game this Thanksgiving Day.

“We are excited beyond words about this opportunity to perform with Jimmie Vaughan,” said Band Director Scott Hanna. “For our students, this is an incredible opportunity to connect with their Texas musical heritage through a living legend."

The performance marks the first time a popular musician has played with the band during a halftime performance. The Longhorn Band will perform a medley of Vaughan’s songs before Jimmie and his Fender Stratocaster join them on the field.

“I’ve been asked to perform with a lot of great bands in my life, but this is definitely the biggest, and probably one of the most exciting,” Vaughan said. “It doesn’t get any more Texas than this.”

The recognition of one of Austin’s hometown musical heroes caps an extraordinary year for Vaughan, who was honored by the Texas House and Senate when he was named the Texas State Musician for 2015.

Vaughan also accepted the honor of induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on behalf of his late brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan. During the musical portion of the induction ceremony, Vaughan lead a blistering guitar-slinger’s set and was joined onstage by John Mayer, Doyle Bramhall II, Gary Clark Jr. and Stevie’s Double Trouble bandmates.

Me to Jimmie Vaughan back in 2011: “I’ve been stealing one of your solos for years; it’s your solo on 'The Crawl' from [the Fabulous Thunderbirds' 1980 album] What’s The Word? I steal it from you about once a week."

Jimmie to me: “Well, good. I can’t remember, but I think I stole that from Guitar Junior. So don’t feel bad!”

Below, check out a—let's face it—professionally shot yet horrible-quality video of the Fabulous Thunderbirds performing "The Crawl" in what I call the good ol' days of Texas rock and blues—1984—with Jimmie's little brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan, sitting in.

What's particularly cool is that SRV is playing a Fender Telecaster in this clip—which is certainly something of a rarity.

Be sure to stick around for the extended solo at the end of the video. In case it isn't clear, that's Jimmie with the white Strat and Stevie Ray with the Tele. Kim Wilson sings. Note that both Jimmie and Stevie Ray play the guitar behind their head at various points. Ah, yes, the good ol' days. Enjoy!

Although HBO won't broadcast Saturday night's 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony till May 30, we Stevie Ray Vaughan fans are in luck.

You can now watch the entire Hall of Fame performance by Jimmie Vaughan, Gary Clark Jr., Doyle Bramhall II and John Mayer, plus all of Double Trouble—Chris "Whipper" Layton, Tommy Shannon and Reese Wynans.

The band kicks things off with SRV's "Pride and Joy," which is followed by "Texas Flood" and "Six Strings Down," a song Jimmie wrote in honor of the late Stevie. It appears on Jimmie's first solo album, 1994's Strange Pleasure.

This past Saturday night, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Following John Mayer's induction speech, during which he called the late SRV “the ultimate guitar hero,” Mayer joined Gary Clark Jr., Jimmie Vaughan, lefty Doyle Bramhall II and Double Trouble—drummer Chris Layton, bassist Tommy Shannon and keyboard player Reese Wynans—for a performance of "Texas Flood," the title track from SRV's debut 1983 album.

“Stevie used his guitar to lead him out of town,” Mayer said. “He gave me hope because heroes give you hope. While Jimi Hendrix came down from outer space, Stevie came up from below the ground.”

You can check out some high-quality fan-filmed footage below.

Other inductees Saturday night included former Beatle Ringo Starr (as a solo artist), Green Day, underground-icon Lou Reed, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, soul singer-songwriter Bill Withers, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the “5” Royales.

HBO will broadcast the event May 30.

It seems like only yesterday that the Fabulous Thunderbirds, an upstart rocking-blues band from Austin, Texas, released their debut album, Girls Go Wild.

It was, in fact, more than three decades ago.

Since that time, Jimmie Vaughan, the T-birds’ founder and guitarist from 1976 to 1989, has gone from being a skinny kid with a Strat and a perm to one of today’s elder statesmen of the blues.

Whether or not he knows it or accepts it, he’s approaching the “sacred trad-blues strata,” which includes Buddy Guy, B.B. King and, well, not too many other living players (Although, you really need to check out Ronnie Earl).

His approach to soloing has always involved economy—saying a lot with just the right combination of notes and bends—and that’s still the case with his latest solo release, Plays More Blues, Ballads & Favorites, which came out in 2011.

“Texas Flood”
(Jimmie Vaughan with Double Trouble, Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, 1996)

Vaughan organized a tribute to his late brother, Stevie Ray, at Austin City Limits on May 11, 1995. He chose a tough tune to cover, but—backed by his brother’s old bandmates—he totally owned it, stamping it with his own brand of fire and passion, not to mention a biting tone. Check out the unusual note choices and phrasing at 4:08.

“Extra Jimmies”
(The Fabulous Thunderbirds, What’s The Word?, 1980)

“Extra Jimmies,” a pared-down jump-blues masterpiece in the key of B, is Vaughan’s signature tune.

This song—with its catchy riffs, tasteful bends and flawless timing—is indicative of the sound and quality of the Thunderbirds’ early albums on Chrysalis Records, namely Girls Go Wild, What’s the Word, Butt Rockin’ and T-Bird Rhythm.

Here's a toned-down, recent-ish live version by Vaughan.

“Full-Time Lover”
(The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Girls Go Wild, 1979)

Of course, there’s the classic studio version of this tune, but then there was the epic live version. T-birds singer Kim Wilson would leave the stage to let Jimmie do his thing, as I witnessed when I caught the band’s Wallkill, New York, show in July 1989. This video is from another show (and year), but you get the idea.

“The Crawl”
(The Fabulous Thunderbirds, What’s The Word?, 1979)

Me to Jimmie: “I’ve been stealing one of your solos for years; it’s your solo on 'The Crawl' from What’s The Word? I steal that solo from you about once a week. Jimmie to me: “Well, good. I can’t remember, but I think I stole that from Guitar Junior. So don’t feel bad!”

Here’s a live version featuring Jimmie and Stevie Ray, who’s playing a Telecaster. Be sure to check out the extended solo at the end:

For the rest of this playlist, check out the full story at guitaraficionado.com.

Yesterday, RollingStone.com premiered two videos from Foo Fighters' upcoming episode of Austin City Limits, which airs tomorrow, February 7, on PBS.

Below, you can check out a clip of the Foo Fighters performing the Fabulous Thunderbirds' 1986 hit, "Tuff Enuff," with Jimmie Vaughan sitting in on guitar. Vaughan, who left the Thunderbirds in 1989, was one of that band's founding members.

The clip also features guitarist Gary Clark Jr., another Austin local.

For more on this topic, plus two more videos (including some behind-the-scenes footage) from the Foo Fighters' Austin City Limits episode, visit RollingStone.com.

While not as well known as Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Museum, located in downtown Los Angeles, is a must-see for music fanatics visiting the West Coast.

From last year’s Golden Gods: The History of Heavy Metal to recent shows celebrating the musical legacies of Bob Marley and Ringo Starr, it has been consistently impressive in its scope and range.

The museum has again shown its excellent taste by presenting a tip-of-the-hat to modern blues great Stevie Ray Vaughan. Among the artifacts presented is one of the holiest of all blues guitars, SRV’s “Number One” 1962 Fender Stratocaster.

The museum is also presenting a rare glimpse at Stevie’s 1984 Hamiltone guitar, featured with Vaughan on Guitar World’s November 1985 cover, which you can see below. He regularly used the guitar, a gift from ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, onstage for “Couldn’t Stand the Weather,” “Cold Shot” and others.

Among other items on display are handwritten song lyrics, a collection of SRV’s guitar straps, his Cry Baby and Uni-Vibe pedals, an assortment of stage outfits and his four Grammy awards. The exhibit, Pride & Joy: The Texas Blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan, was guest-curated by Stevie’s brother, Jimmie Vaughan, and will run through July 2015 on the Grammy Museum’s fourth floor.

“I’m excited to partner with the Grammy Museum to honor my brother and his music,” Jimmie said. “I know Stevie’s many fans will enjoy this exhibit, as many of his personal, never-before-seen items will be on display. I hope by doing this, it will remind people of the incredible musician he was and all the music and love he gave to the world. I miss him every day.”

For more about the Grammy Museum, visit grammymuseum.org. To help get Vaughan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, vote here.

Photo (above): Jeremy Danger

Stevie Ray Vaughan, the guitarist who has had the greatest influence on me as a player, died 23 years ago today on August 27, 1990.

Basically, everything changed for the very young version of me the first time I saw him play live. It was March 1984 at Kean College in Union, New Jersey. After that night, I tore up, stomped on and burned the book on what I thought being a blues guitarist was all about — and started all over again.

For me, that same excitement about Vaughan lasted until about six or seven years ago, when I decided I wasn't letting enough new influences into my playing, wasn't giving other — you know, living — guitarists a chance to wow me or have that same, life-changing effect on me. Plus I started to feel weird telling people that my favorite guitarist was a guy who'd been dead for 17 years.

But I've been feeling a little guilty about that decision lately, and I've been intentionally going back for my daily doses of SRV's music, discovering things I might've missed as a spindly kid. It's been a bit like getting reacquainted with an old friend.

But as I re-evaluate Vaughan's work with a new (or is it old?) eye, one thing hasn't changed: my favorite favorite SRV performance. It is, and always has been, his live rendition of Buddy Guy's "Leave My Girl Alone" as performed at Austin City Limits in 1989.

As I used to say 20 years ago, it's got everything that was awesome about SRV: the intensity, the passion, the timing, the speed (Did I mention the intensity? Check out how he literally growls his way into the ridiculously awesome solo at 2:06). Check it out below.

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World,.