Back in March, Fender announced Tele Town, a star-studded concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster.

The vision of the show, which took place Monday night (May 4), was to bring Tele titans of every generation and genre together under one roof, with an emphasis – understandably, given the location – on the pioneering solidbody electric's massive role in the development of country music.

As announced, the lineup was already surely one of the greatest gatherings of country guitar virtuosity we've ever seen: Brad Paisley, Brent Mason, Brothers Osborne, Derek Wells, Guthrie Trapp, James Burton, Luke McQueary, Ricky Skaggs... Nashville Mount Rushmore, but you need room for a bunch more heads.

But the Tele has always been about much more than country, and the jaw-loosening caravan of special, unannounced guests that made their way onto the stage Monday night was a testament to that.

And most of these vaunted names all came together to close the show out with what we're confident in declaring as the greatest Tele jam of all time.

Of course, the concert made sure to highlight those who've been carrying the Tele torch for decades, but Fender also included on the bill a number of incendiary talents poised to bring the instrument into the future.

One of these, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, was reluctant to adopt the Tele at first, but now he's got two signature variations of the model. The reason he did take to the Telecaster at the end of the day was Prince, who he saluted with a funky cover of Cream.

First-call Nashville session titans like Guthrie Trapp and Brent Mason got some well-earned time in the spotlight during the show's middle section.

The household names in the building that were in the building that evening might have more Instagram followers, but it's players like Trapp and Mason whose Tele twang has reached the most ears – with appearances on thousands of records between the two of them – even if listeners didn't realize it.

Then came those marquee names. Billy Gibbons, for one, joined the sisters Lovell (Larkin Poe) to guide the proceedings into soulful territory with a salute to Steve Cropper in the form of a spirited take on Sam & Dave's classic shouter, Hold On, I'm Comin'.

Tommy Emmanuel, meanwhile, gave a lesson to those who didn't know already that he's just as much of a beast plugged in as he is on one of his signature Maton acoustics, with a stunningly lyrical version of his tune, Hearts Grow Fonder.

Jack White got a lot of attention, but country giga-star Brad Paisley was the show's anchor, reminding everyone that aside from his stadium-filling hooks, he's one of the greatest Tele slingers to ever walk the earth. He highlighted his brief solo set with some absolutely scorching, high-wire licks – just look at him go.

“75 years ago, Leo Fender had a pretty simple idea, and that idea was to build a guitar that worked for players – great tone, reliable, zero fuss,” Fender CEO Edward ‘Bud’ Cole said by way of an onstage introduction. “What came out of that was the Fender Telecaster, and it ended up shaping the sound of modern music.

“From James Burton to George Harrison to Sheryl Crow and to the incredible artists on this stage tonight, generations have picked it up and made it their own, and there's no better place to celebrate that than right here in Nashville. This city didn't just embrace the Telecaster. It helped define it.”

The concert is just the latest of the company's celebrations of the 75th birthday of its first marquee model. One of the most recent of these was the March release of five new Teles, including the return of a cult classic and some Tele firsts.

The nominations for the 2026 Grammys are in and there is heaps of guitar talent shortlisted – albeit in the specialist categories.

Hey, it was ever thus, but take a look at the shortlist for year’s Best Rock Performance and you’ll find Australian punk-rock alive and kicking, with Amyl and the Sniffers up for U Should Not Be Doing That, and the Yungblud-led supergroup from Black Sabbath's farewell show, Back to the Beginning, nominated for their take on Changes.

Nuno Bettencourt might have to look out for his tux after all. Purple socks optional.

Yungblud’s crazy big year sees Idols nominated for Best Rock Album, and Zombie for Best Rock Song. We’d say that’s where the smart money lies but who can say with the judges?

If Yungblud is the tip of the spear for rock’s next superstar generation then the Best Rock Album category still has a bit of the ‘90s about it, with Deftones’ immaculate Private Music and Linkin Park’s blockbuster comeback LP, From Zero, both in the running.

They’ll all be up against Gibson SG-toting sister act HAIM, who are nominated for I Quit, and new-school hardcore champs Turnstile, nominated for Never Enough – the title-track is in contention for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. Open up that pit, yo.

Okay, heavy metal. Not that it is particularly metal to get excited about the Best Metal Performance award – well, not unless you’re actually nominated, then it might be kinda cool – but this year’s nominees include Dream Theater for Night Terror, the venerable John Petrucci’s extraterrestrial chops doing a number on the voters, while Mike Stringer’s Spiritbox are in the mix for Best Metal Performance.

There’s Sleep Token for Emergence and Ghost’s Lachryma, and, in a twist we did not see coming, Turnstile have turned metal with a nomination for BIRDS.

And then making a turn into Best Alternative Music Performance, where Seein’ Stars is in competition with Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers’ Wet Leg, who are up for mangetout. Representing Shecter guitars and Boss pedals (spiritually, if not in an official capacity), The Cure are nominated for Alone. Bon Iver and Hayley Williams will be keeping them company.

Wet Leg are proving that see-through neon B.C. Rich electric guitars are a charm. Moisturizer is deservedly up for Best Alternative Music Album. Can it pip The Cure’s Songs of a Lost World? Depends on what mood the voters were in.

Taking the fuzz and overdrive pedals out of the signal chain, let’s check in on Planet Bluegrass. Yessiree, Billy Strings is up for his superlative Highway Prayers. Not to editorialize or anything but he should be up for Best Metal Performance alongside Cryptopsy for their collaboration on the Blasphemy Made Flesh anniversary edition but there you go, there is no justice in this world – maybe there is if Gibson signature artist Sierra Hull wins for A Tip Toe High Wire.

Who knows. We will be happy if Buddy Guy gets his flowers for Ain’t Done With the Blues. If it was anyone other than the world’s greatest living blues guitarist, we’d say the Best Traditional Blues Album category would be keenly contested, what with the Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ collab, Room on the Porch, Charlie Musselwhite’s Look Out Highway, and Young Fashioned Ways from Kenny Wayne Shepherd & Bobby Rush all in the envelope.

We’ll wrap this up soon but can a list like this be truly complete without at least one former GW columnist among the nominations? Of course not. Well, we’ve got two this year.

First, step on up, Molly Tuttle, whose So Long Little Miss Sunshine is nominated alongside Larkin Poe’s Bloom and Willie Nelson’s Last Leaf On The Tree for Best Americana Album.

And among the Contemporary Blues Album category we have current GW columnist and all-round blues guitar superstar Joe Bonamassa, who is up for Breakthrough, and up against an album he co-produced, Eric Gales’ A Tribute to LJK, on which Gales pays tribute to his big brother and mentor Emmanuel Lynn Gales, aka Little Jimmy King. Samantha Fish is also in the running for Paper Doll. Don’t rule out pedal-steel virtuoso Robert Randolph for Preacher Kids.

You can check out the full nominations over at the Grammys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Larkin Poe's Megan and Rebecca Lovell pack their blues repertoire with wide-ranging solos, as Megan and Rebecca trade leads on lap steel and electric guitar – typically a Strat – respectively.

Their approach to soloing, however, is far from minutely orchestrating every note and slide; it's more about applying the core guitar vocabulary and then running away with it.

“For all of us players, that's why you run scales and try to keep your fingers on your instruments, such that when inspiration and instinct kicks in, you're able to keep up with it,” Rebecca Lovell tells Chris Shiflett on his Shred with Shifty podcast.

“That's kind of been my goal in recent years as a guitarist: to just have to have enough chops to hopefully follow my intuition.”

Rebecca points to her sister, Megan, as the epitome of “really intuitive playing.”

“Megan is the kind of player where if we're in the studio or we're on stage, and I'll sing a melody at her, she can play it right back to me. And that's something that I think I want to embody as a player – that ability to just limit the connection time between your brain and your fingers.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Rebecca also touches on whether music theory informs her playing – if at all – and her dilemma when it comes to breathing new life into well-worn scales.

“I don't know if I'm alone or if I'm of the group, [but] when I'm playing, I'm very rarely thinking of the changes, and I'm very rarely thinking of shapes,” she admits. “I'm truly just trying to hunt and peck and fulfill the melodies that I'm hearing, but none of it [is] informed by theory in the slightest.”

“That's something that I kind of go back and forth on with myself – like, well, do I really need to buckle down and learn more or what? What is more important? What's the goal? Do we want to be like unique individuals and just hunt and peck our way into our own unique sound?”

In celebration of their latest album, Bloom, Megan and Rebecca discussed their dynamic as siblings in a creative space – and the importance of established artists pulling their weight in making sure women are equally represented in the guitar scene.

Tyler Bryant and Rebecca Lovell are one of the electric guitar's most impressive power couples. So it's little surprise that they announced their first child with a Stratocaster-themed gender reveal party.

Bryant, leader of Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown, and Lovell, one half of roots-rockers Larkin Poe, released footage of the event on social media.

The couple received a new Fender Stratocaster for the event, with the color of the guitar coded for the gender of their new baby.

Video shows a jubilant Tyler holding aloft a Miami Blue Stratocaster, cheering, "It's a boy!" and briefly performing a blues lick on the guitar.

An equally joyous Lovell appears to mouth "It's a boy!" to her husband before the two embrace, Strat still in hand.

"We got us a baby boy coming late summer – we can’t wait to meet him 💙💙⚡️⚡️" wrote the couple on Instagram.

The comments were filled with excitement from their guitar-playing friends.

"❤️❤️❤️❤️ Boy club!!!!" wrote Jared James Nichols.

"Aww congrats !!! Much love to you both 🎶🎶" added Orianthi.

Billy Strings chimed in with "Yeeesssss!!! ❤️❤️❤️"

Mike Campbell, Lindsay Ell, Andy Wood, Chris Buck, and Sophie Burrell were among the other high-profile pickers offering their congratulations.

Bryant was presumably most pleased because he already has plenty of pink Stratocasters.

Last year he revealed the details of how his most treasured pink Strat was lost and returned to him, and of the replica he played in the meantime.

Rebecca Lovell, meanwhile, recently discussed the time she borrowed Elvis Costello's Jazzmaster.

14 years into their career making bluesy roots rock as Larkin Poe, sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell had their biggest 12 months yet in 2024. Coming off an album cycle that saw their sixth full-length studio release, 2022’s Blood Harmony, earn their first Grammy and third Number 1 on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart, the Lovells walked away with confidence and swagger to spare.

“It does give you a little bit of a confidence boost to say, ‘Okay, my opinions are valid,’ so then the next time you go in the studio, you hold that in your head a little bit,” Megan says.

For Rebecca, the takeaway from those experiences – plus a world tour, a plum spot on Slash’s S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival and winning the Americana Music Award for Duo/Group of the Year – was that the confidence was there all along. “You realize the stuff that actually makes you feel fulfilled as an artist has been there the whole time,” she says.

All the while, the old-time and bluegrass music scene the Lovells left behind to form Larkin Poe in 2010 has officially gone mainstream. Bluegrass revivalist and picker Billy Strings regularly sells out multiple nights at hockey arenas and amphitheaters. Molly Tuttle has reached top billing at festivals across the U.S., and not just those associated with Americana music. Rootsy singer-songwriter Zach Bryan even sells out stadiums. So, during their downtime, Rebecca and Megan reacquainted themselves with the bluegrass scene.

Rebecca, who won a MerleFest mandolin contest at 15, set aside her Strat and dusted off her old instrument for their run of dates with T Bone Burnett. Megan dipped back to her Dobro-slide days for their work on Ringo Starr’s new country album, Look Up, which also happens to feature Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle.

The duo rode those waves of success and inspiration into recording sessions for Bloom, their new album. While they’re still deeply rooted in the blues – particularly the loose, hypnotic strain native to Mississippi’s Hill Country – the Lovells have steadily sharpened their songwriting chops and sense of melody.

Backed by their muscular live band again on Bloom, they’ve doubled down on their excursions beyond the traditional blues-rock idiom. Of course, the feverish guitar fretwork listeners expect is there, like the thunderous riffing of Bluephoria, the Black Crowes-inspired slide on Mockingbird and the R.L. Burnside nods on If God Is a Woman. But the success of Blood Harmony led them to dream bigger and build their bulletproof riffs into massive crescendos and choruses.

GW recently caught up with the Lovell sisters to talk about their evolving approach to guitar and songwriting, and how it led them to Bloom.

Blood Harmony marked a transition in terms of how you record. Was the approach similar here, or did you take another left turn?

Rebecca: “We definitely stuck the landing with Bloom in keeping the ethos that we’ve been developing the last few years in our self-production, trying to maintain as much of the humanity as possible while also recording in our home studio. Some of our capabilities in terms of tracking straight-up live are limited, just due to space; it’s a very cozy little space in which we’ve been making records.

“But I’m really proud of some of the songwriting and lyrical advances that were made on this record. I think a lot of the status quo was maintained in terms of not doing a ton of overdubs, not a ton of bells and whistles as per Blood Harmony, which clearly served us so well. But I think we made some new leaps in the artistic message.”

How did you carry out the theme of Bloom in your guitar work?

Rebecca: “Bloom is all about acceptance of situations and allowing yourself to bloom within those parameters. I think that carries over into playing, because as the years go by, we’re becoming more and more comfortable with what we offer when it comes to playing, singing and writing, and you can kind of relax into yourself and your own sound and be the best version of yourself as a player.

“So, on this record, I was a lot more comfortable in the creation of solos and being able to focus more on the emotion that was coming through in the playing, as opposed to how fast are the notes or how much am I shredding – and feeling maybe uncomfortable and a lot of tension around that – instead of relaxing into it and trying to create something I liked.”

The confidence around self-acceptance turned into confidence all around.

Rebecca: “Confidence is a universal theme for the majority of people. Trying to find and then maintain that confidence is probably one of the hardest things any of us do. Especially today, on social media; being able to create highlight reels of our own life experiences and then post it, and then check on all of your friends and what the highlights of their life experience are… It’s so easy to get disillusioned.

“I don’t feel like I’ve arrived at that total of where I’m at as a player, as a songwriter, as a person, as a performer, but it’s like trying to write the mantra to remind yourself, to train yourself, to get back to that headspace of, you deserve to enjoy your life, to relax into your experience.

“You shouldn’t always be at war with yourself and your surroundings. Sometimes enough is actually enough. Just relax, let it go. It’s important to try and habituate seeking out the joy and the moments where you have peace. We don’t need to throw ourselves into chaos or strife.”

A lot has been said about your Hill Country blues influence, but what contemporary music inspires you as guitar players?

Megan: “We grew up playing bluegrass, and it’s really cool to see it coming back around in our lives. Seeing Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle and Sierra Ferrell – that’s been inspiring us to revisit our past and bring some of those acoustic moments into our show.

“Being willing to go out and play some of these bluegrass festivals harkened back to our past in a way that’s been very fun for us. Picking up the Dobro again and delving back in has been really great.”

Rebecca: “We feel like we can re-embrace those parts of ourselves that – for quite a while – sat dormant. In the mid-2000s, we were touring as an Americana string band and we couldn’t pay our bills. Sort of out of necessity, we did pivot and find new vistas in ourselves. It was like, ‘Cool, this can inform who we are now as well.’

“But [it’s great] to be able to re-embrace that and have it be something that can be married back into our sound with these newer records.”

Megan: “I’m inspired by a lot of classic rock. Just using tone as a way to inspire is a little new for me, because I’ve always found my tone and then stuck with it and not played around too much. With this record, we were actually really inspired by trying to seek out David Lindley’s tone, specifically that Running on Empty guitar solo tone.

“We were like, ‘Well, we should try out some Dumble-clone stuff,’ and that was really inspiring because there were a couple of moments where I was like, ‘This is it. I hear it.’ I found that inspiring with some of my solos, specifically Fool Outta Me. I feel like I was channeling a little bit of Lindley in it. It’s probably my favorite solo on the record.”

This is the second album you’ve recorded with your live band. What have those live experiences taught you?

Rebecca: “I think the live experience of a musician is the arena in which I probably learned the most about myself, because there are so many factors that are beyond your control. It’s like a hyperrealism version of reality, because you’re on stage and things are going wrong.”

“Maybe you look out in the audience and you make eye contact with somebody who’s looking at you like, I’m so not entertained by you. There’s a lot of things that are trying to throw you off your game. And it is sort of like a trial by fire to continue to recenter yourself, stay in the moment, don’t think too far ahead. There’s that constant distraction that’s pulling you away from the music and the art and being in that flow with your instrument.

“I think I have learned so much about my musicianship and the power of really being in the present through performing. I think, honestly, being on stage with a musician like my sister – because Megan is very fearless in the improvisation she will engage in on stage, specifically during her solos – and being able to have her showing me what’s possible as a player is like, go for it. And I’m like, ‘Let’s go for it together. Let’s try to do something new.’

“Even if it goes wrong, who really cares? It’s just a little bobble. It’s a wrong note that lasts for a millisecond. Let’s move on. So trying to be courageous [is important]. And then, of course, being off the road and learning covers and having that also inform the playing, to shake up our own perspective.”

Megan: “I’m an overthinker. So for me, if I’m thinking, I’m stinking. The less I can be in my own head, the better. And in that way, live shows are a bit like meditation. I try to just be aligned and keep in that zen moment. It’s fun; we learn a lot, and we take a ton of mental notes about our stage show and how to transfer that to the studio.”

An offshoot of the confidence theme throughout the album – especially in songs like Mockingbird and Bluephoria – is being honest as a songwriter.

Megan: “I think it is hard to be completely honest in songwriting. I think some people come by it very easily, but I think for Rebecca and me, it has been harder to be vulnerable in songwriting. I think we’re both introverted in ways, but we have a little bit of a shell that’s tough to crack. So, when we were writing these songs, we were really particular about line-by-line trying to make sure that what we were saying was honest, and at the very least, something real.

“We haven’t completely gotten there – maybe we never will – but I do think there’s a lot of vulnerability in these songs, and I’m very proud of that. You can really put yourself into the lyrics, and you can look into somebody else’s eyes and know that what you’re saying is real.”

• Bloom is out now via Tricki-Woo.

There are few bands that combine roots rock, classic rock, Americana and bluegrass with the blissful ease of Larkin Poe. As far as the guitars go, sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell were born to do it. They’re dyed-in-the-wool lovers of all things timeless, which shows in their music – especially their latest record, Bloom.

When reflecting on their approach to the guitars on Bloom, Rebecca keeps it short, telling Guitarist: “It’s just guitar served up neat.” But, of course, there’s more beneath the surface. Megan adds: “When flowers bloom, they don’t stay around forever; they die, wilt, fall off the vine and then another one grows. That’s how we view our process.

“We’re always looking toward the next mountain we’re going to climb,” she adds, “and we find a lot of joy in that. We do that instead of being like, ‘Oh, well, look, I have to climb up this hill.’ Instead, it’s, ‘I get to climb this hill and see what’s around the bend.’”

Fierce guitars and an array of vintage amps aside, Bloom is about growth, empowerment and knowing oneself after a long, arduous journey – which isn’t remotely over. In other words, art is never easy.

But Rebecca wouldn’t have it any other way: “It’s the artist’s responsibility to dig deep and find what’s meaningful to them,” she says. “But you’ve got to do it without the fear of judgment that we’ll inevitably receive. So it’s the artist’s responsibility to put that out into the world and find resonance with other people who feel similarly…”

What inspired your latest record, Bloom?

Rebecca Lovell: “Bloom represents a cool moment for Larkin Poe. It’s the culmination of the efforts we’ve had underway for years. The preeminent focus is the songwriting process, and this album is one of the first projects that Megan and I have truly collaborated on from the ground up.

“As a result, you can hear a new moment of evolution in time for us as songwriters and players. We’re super proud of this newest chapter. It’s great to get into your 30s and let it all hang out.”

Megan Lovell: “We had a lot of success with Blood Harmony [2022], learned a lot from that process, and made a lot of strides. We came into Bloom with a good idea of what we wanted to create.

“We were writing for the live stage and thinking about touring while writing, and what might feel good to sing with people on the road. We’re a touring band, that’s our big focus, and we bring that spark to the studio with us.”

What gear did you bring to the table while searching for tones? Do you intentionally choose things that will contrast one another, rather than mirror?

Megan: “We’re classic-rock lovers; that’s the focus in tones. We like warm vintage-sounding tones, [and there’s] a lot of classic tones going into the process.

“For this record, I was listening to a lot of records, trying to find inspiration for new tones for myself. I was listening to David Lindley. I play lap steel and he’s one of the preeminent lap steel players of all time. Specifically, I listened to his tone on Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty.

“And Tyler Bryant co-produced this record with us and was instrumental in helping us find tones as we were recording. We’d be talking about tone, and he was like, ‘Well, let’s just look up David Lindley’s rig and try to put you through something similar.’

“We had a Dumble clone with such a cool tone – it was something I’d been searching for. We plugged straight into that and were like, ‘This is it.’ With every song, we tried to beat that tone with something different and we never could.”

Rebecca: “For our recording process, since there are two of us as guitarists, we’re not interested in having a whole tonne of overdubs. Not once on the record did we double the guitar or try to fatten up the choruses.

“It’s a pretty rock ’n’ roll outfit, so for my guitar sounds I’m typically plugging into – somewhat unexpectedly, to get a bigger tone – some really small amps to be a bit of a foil to Megan’s big, fat, sort of wide lap-steel tone.

“She always comes straight down the middle, and I was playing through a [Fender] Champ and a Princeton. There’s a cool manufacturer called Square Amps, who retrofits old radios and puts tube circuitry into the cool little vintage housings. I played a lot of guitar through that, but we didn’t use a lot of effects. Maybe some here and there, like a Space Echo or a rack-mounted stereo, to create some cool, slappy tones.”

Being siblings in a creative space must create a dynamic atmosphere. What’s that like?

Megan: “We’ve known each other since the womb, so we’ve always been a package deal. Even as toddlers; we’ve always had projects together all through childhood. It’s very natural that we ended up running alongside each other in life. There have been some tense moments throughout our relationship, but we have a really good working relationship.

“We put a lot of time, effort and communication into our relationship because that’s what it takes. Anyone with siblings can appreciate that. It can be a fraught relationship if you don’t treat it with kid gloves. But we also have Tyler Bryant, Rebecca’s husband, so it’s just the three of us, and that’s an interesting addition to the relationship, too – but in a wonderful way.

“It makes for a safe, cosy recording process. We really know each other and love each other. We also have similar views on music and what we want our music to do. We are very much on the same page musically, which helps the process a lot. It’s really quite special.”

Rebecca: “Clearly, Megan and I, having grown up in the same household, have memory recall to the same classic records that shaped our lives from being toddlers strapped in car seats in the family minivan, listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, to our parents spinning The Carpenters, The Beatles, Elvis Costello, Fleetwood Mac and Black Sabbath, and then edging into classic rock and bluegrass.

“We grew up in a household that celebrated all genres. Sharing that experience with one another in terms of the genres that inform how we write and arrange our songs and riffs, and having Tyler Bryant co-produce, feels so special. [With Tyler] it feels like we have found such a kindred spirit in terms of musical interest. That really was one of the big reasons that he and I fell in love.

“We became buddies after realising that we loved the same kind of music. Our relationship with art, music, live shows, songwriting and guitar and gear acquisition syndrome is like walking on parallel paths. Leaning into that synergy as a family and digging deep to try to create the best songs and recordings is just second nature.”

One of Bloom’s standout tracks is If God Is a Woman, which feels more poignant than ever, given the current state of the world.

Rebecca: “Having grown up in the guitar music space, we remember a time when it was very rare to be on the festival circuit and see other women booked. We definitely have been the recipients of the experience of women with guitars being treated as a novelty. You can’t help but respond to that experience – but not with a bad attitude but an attitude of empowerment to be the change we wish to see in the industry.

“When your run-of-the-mill, random guitar dude tries to instruct you on how to tune your guitar, you kindly let them know that you’re aware of how a guitar should be tuned. You do your best to just rip on a solo and let them know that women are also here to play, that women can also do rock ’n’ roll, and that we need a little bit of space with which to do it.”

“It’s cool to feel like a droplet in a wave crashing down on rock ’n’ roll music. So many of my favourite bands are female-fronted. To be able to celebrate that journey and be a part of the change and to be able to say, ‘Hey, girls can do anything that guys can do,’ is amazing.

“By that token, perhaps the white male Jesus is actually a black woman. Perhaps that is the kind of future we need to envision for ourselves and to allow space for women to continue to expand and bring and share their creativity at the table.”

Given the climate we find ourselves in today, are those issues getting better, stagnating or something else?

Megan: “We have to give some credit. Around five to 10 years ago, there was an outcry to festival promoters, complaining that the percentages of women on the bills were so small. There was a big response from a lot of promoters trying to rectify that, and we’ve seen a resurgence of women on festival bills.

“That’s really important because festivals are where a lot of bands find a foothold and are where people discover music. We are now travelling a lot and seeing a lot of women on bills along with us. Whereas before, there might have been only one or two female-fronted acts. Now, I think we’re creeping up there… I think women are finding a lot more support in music.”

Rebecca: “I also would speak to the idea that it takes two to tango. Actually, it takes everyone to tango. That’s not being sexist in either direction; we’ve had incredible male mentorship. Some of our biggest heroes who have put their faith in our abilities and go on tour with them are men like Bob Seger.

“To be in your 20s and have an artist say, ‘You know what? I want you to come and expose your music to my fandom. Come on tour with me…’ To be on stage with Keith Urban, Elvis Costello and all these guys who are really pulling their weight in the belief of equal representation for women in the music space is cool to see. It’s cool to see the temperature shifting in the music industry.

“There’s a lot more space and a lot less judging books by covers. We’re allowing artists to speak and write songs the way they want to write. Having a space of acceptance feels really fabulous. We’re continuing to climb the mountain together, and it feels great.”

Themes of growth, finding yourself and knowing yourself are prevalent throughout Bloom. How have those themes extended to your guitar playing and what conclusions can you draw about yourselves as artists?

Megan: “There were lots of conversations between Rebecca and I because it can be tense to be an artist – especially with these platforms where you can very easily compare yourself to other artists in a way that maybe we shouldn’t. Art isn’t something you can quantify with numbers, but here we are. We can look at someone else’s Spotify plays and map it out for ourselves.

“That can be hard because you can get in your own head pretty easily and tear yourself down block by block until there isn’t anything left. We’ve been aware of this and speaking to each other about it, trying to work our way through that tangled mess. There’s strength in self‑acceptance, knowing what you bring to the table, and finding your power within that. It’s an ever‑evolving process.”

Has that process freed you from any expectations thrust upon you? And to that end, what are your expectations as you move forward?

Rebecca: “It’s very tempting to believe there is a right and wrong way to do things. Realistically, it’s all on a spectrum. It boils down to the individual expression. With Bloom, just as Megan said, it’s about finding power and letting it hang out. This record feels like we’re not trying to be anything other than what we are.

“For me, especially as a guitarist, it’s taken me many years to embrace my identity. I grew up playing a lot of bluegrass guitar; that was my introduction. That’s hard to shake, and whenever I’m playing electric, you know, it’s taken me years to lighten up my right hand to where I’m not breaking strings every 30 seconds.

“At times, I’ve felt the temptation to be judgmental of how I play and describe myself as ‘not a true electric guitarist’ because I came from a unique perspective. But in reality, that’s the bag I carry. That’s the hand I was dealt. If I accept those angles of myself, I can share that unique, quirky, left-of-centre side of guitarmanship with the world. That’s what I’m able to give people.”

At the top of the conversation, Megan mentioned that Larkin Poe is a live band at its core. How does playing live add to your growth as guitarists?

Megan: “We’ll be doing a lot of touring in ’25. I’m very much looking forward to it, especially considering we have a couple of months to go into rehearsals and work these songs up. I think anybody who tours a lot and consistently, and rarely takes long breaks from touring, can attest to finding yourself in ruts, where you’re like, ‘Whoa, it’s another show…’

“It can feel like déjà vu. It’s your responsibility as an artist to break yourself down and get yourself out of that rut. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time over the next few months working on not thinking too much while on stage.

“I do find myself not enjoying when I’m playing; I have to get into this meditative space where I’m not in my own way, which is easy to do if you get stuck. I’m looking forward to getting into that space next year.”

• Bloom is out now via Tricki-Woo.

The Larkin Poe and Elvis Costello lore runs deep. After Rebecca and Megan Lovell met the famed UK singer-songwriter in 2007 at a festival in North Carolina and serendipitously wound up singing harmonies for him, an immediate friendship was struck, and Costello took the sisters under his wing. Countless tours, shows, and onstage collaborations ensued, as Costello and Larkin Poe traversed the world.

One highlight for Rebecca Lovell was the moment Costello let her use his famed Jazzmaster – the model he’s been heavily associated with throughout his career. Though she prefers Strats these days, playing her icon’s guitar felt nothing short of surreal.

“I haven't played a Jazzmaster on stage for years, but that was actually the first electric guitar that I ever bought, because I'm a huge fan of Elvis Costello, and just the silhouette that he cuts with his Jazzmaster, and like the red [pickguard], the engraving in the fretboard and everything, is just so sick,” she tells Reverb.

“He let me borrow it when we were on tour with him a few years back. He'd be like, ‘Yeah, when you're sitting in, you can just use mine.’ I was like, ‘I can?!’ I got to play his Jazzmaster. And that has always registered as a sacred experience.”

Costello's influence on Larkin Poe has shaped the way the Lovell sisters approach the music industry, inspiring them to not let genre pigeonholing affect them.

“When we were touring with Elvis Costello, we were eating lunch and he was expounding on the importance of not putting yourself in a box. He is the perfect example of an artist who has had an incredibly diverse career,” she recalled in a 2022 Total Guitar interview.

“He does whatever he wants to do and the thread that connects it all is that it’s Elvis Costello. He was telling us, ‘People will try to attach specific genre tags to you. Keep them guessing. Just go where your heart tells you to go. Let your fans trust that you’re going to curate something that they will love regardless of genre.’”

Larkin Poe's Rebecca Lovell is known for getting great tones out of her Stratocaster. From full-on blues riffs to heavier rock, Lovell has undoubtedly developed a distinct approach and sound. So, what's the secret to getting a great Strat tone?

“It’s all in the right hand – and that’s coming from someone who started out as an acoustic player,” she says in the new issue of Guitarist. “It’s taken me a long time to understand the appropriate amount of force to use on a Strat. Because watching a player like Stevie [Ray Vaughan] play, you begin to understand how much violence the guitar can actually take.”

“You can draw a lot of dynamics out of your instrument if you’re willing to muscle in but also lighten up. I’ve broken thousands of strings on my blessed guitar… poor thing.”

Lovell's determination to master the Strat tone goes back to Stevie Ray Vaughan, particularly his 1991 Live At The El Mocambo concert film. “[It's] probably one of the most inspirational exhibitions of a Stratocaster from where I sit.

“Also, we played Doheny Blues Festival in California five or six years ago and watching Jimmie Vaughan play his Strat on stage was like raising hair on the back of the neck. When you see somebody playing with that authority, that is a connective moment where you understand the instrument’s power.”

And the best amp and pedal to accompany the Strat tone? “On a track called Bad Spell I used a Fender Deluxe with a Royal Jelly by Beetronics. It’s like a really overblown fuzz pedal that gives a kiss of an octave sound to it. It’s got a little bit of a slap on it and sounds really sick.”

For more new interviews celebrating 70 years of the Fender Strat, pick up issue 511 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Slash unveiled his new blues album, Orgy of the Damned, last Friday and today has announced that its release will be followed by a 27-date traveling “blues festival” tour.

The dates kick off on July 5 in Bonner, MT and run until August 17 in Grand Prairie, TX. While not every artist will feature at every date, the tour is set to include a rotating cast of killer blues players, including Warren Haynes, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe, Christone ‘Kingish’ Ingram, Samantha Fish, ZZ Ward, Robert Randolph, Eric Gales, and Jackie Venson. 

And then of course, Slash himself will be performing at every date, alongside his Orgy of the Damned Blues Band, which includes guitarist/vocalist Tash Neal. 

The name S.E.R.P.E.N.T. is reportedly an anagram for ‘Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance’ and a portion of the proceeds from every ticket sold will go towards supporting a host of charities, including The Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, The Greenlining Institute, and War Child.

“The S.E.R.P.E.N.T. tour is a celebration of blues and rock ‘n’ roll music, and a celebration of unity and togetherness in these uncertain and divisive times,” says Slash. 

“S.E.R.P.E.N.T is a vehicle to help support and uplift people and communities suffering from the injustices of racism and equal rights violations, as well as to support children adversely affected by war and poverty across the world. 

“So, we are contributing a portion of every ticket and VIP package sold from the tour to those ends. S.E.R.P.E.N.T. will also provide an environment where folks can get together for a day of great music and hang out and have a good time.”

Slash debuted the first single from Orgy of the Damned – a romping take on Howlin' Wolf’s Killing Floor, featuring AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson and harmonica from Steven Tyler – alongside the album announcement last week.

It came accompanied by a video clip in which Slash changed up his usual Gibson Les Paul for an ES-335. The rest of the album reportedly features plenty of new company, too, with guest slots from Gary Clark Jr., Billy Gibbons, Demi Lovato, Beth Hart, and Paul Rodgers.

For more information, on the festival dates, head to the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. site.

GUITAR SHOWCASE 2023: Just because Larkin Poe’s Rebecca and Megan Lovell have long moved to in-ear monitors on stage doesn’t mean tone – the very epicurean quality of it – has been downgraded in their list of priorities. If anything, it’s more important now that they take a direct feed each night.

Here, the roots rock sister duo check in with Total Guitar to share their thoughts on guitar tone and what we can do to improve ours.

Start with the sound that inspires you most

Megan: “Tone is really important to me. As a slide player, it’s such a big part in harnessing that vocal quality of the style – which is actually what drew me to it in the first place. I have been searching for the ultimate tone for a very long time! I started out on Dobro and then picked up a 1940s Rickenbacker lap steel in my mid-teens. I was so struck by the tone of the Rickenbacker because it was so beautiful and mellow. 

“I’m really glad I found that guitar early on, because it determined my sound through the years. I’m definitely the kind of person who finds something tried and true, and then likes to stick with it and build on it. 

“So I found a tone I liked early on and it helped me zero in on what I was looking for. Just recently I have been developing my own signature with Beard Guitars inspired by that Rickenbacker with a custom Lollar Horseshoe pickup. I think we got close to that vintage sound, which is great because no one wants to bring a 70-year-old instrument out with them on tour!”

Amp modelers shouldn’t be sniffed at

Rebecca: “My main tone right now is a Stratocaster going into the MXR Sugar Drive, which is a Klon clone. It’s so itty-bitty but it sounds huge and has become my favourite overdrive, going into my Fender Deluxe. But another thing that I’ve been amazed by is the Iridium by Strymon. 

“We do so much overseas touring that being able to have a level of consistency is really important to us, especially when we can’t rely on the quality of the backline. It’s basically an amp modeler in the form of a pedal. 

“It sounds unbelievable! We use in-ears and I know a lot of players find it to be a diminutive experience – it can make you feel a lot smaller than stood next to a cranked amp. But honestly having the Iridium running into our in-ears is not disappointing at all.”

Learn from the masters

Megan: “Tone has such a huge impact on what I come up with, especially in terms of sustain. If I plug in and don’t have that grit, I find things very difficult. I wish I was the kind of person who could plug into any amp and just go, but I need some sort of drive in order to play how I play. 

“Some people can really rock a clean lap steel and it will have more of that Hawaiian country sound, but that’s never been me. I live on the more rock ’n’ roll side of lap steel! I think David Lindley is one of the greatest lap steel players of all-time. Everyone should check out his solo on Running On Empty, it’s as iconic as it gets. I also think The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd has some of the best lap steel tones ever recorded.

Rebecca: “In terms of my favourite tones ever recorded, I think Brian May is really high up there. Even though I don’t feel like I emulate his playing very much, on songs like Killer Queen he really drew me into the melodic nature and texture of guitar tones. We listened to a lot of rock records as kids. 

“There was always something really unique and vocal about Brian’s tone – it ignited my imagination about the capability of a guitar. It’s an instrument that could be like the human voice and play lines that are incredibly singable. His tone is like toothpaste! Every guitarist should be in search of their toothpaste tone!”

Context is key

Megan: “There’s a lot to consider in terms of the context of our tones. The two of us have definitely impacted each other because our band basically has two lead guitarists – we have to make sure our sounds don’t cancel each other out. So we try to find some different tones and ranges to coexist in. 

“I could probably be more full-blown when it comes to overdrive but I try not to because Rebecca tends to occupy that space. I have to stay a hair cleaner to lay off of her tone. I tend to plug into my TB Drive pedal by Rodenberg, which is Tyler Bryant’s signature and kinda like two Tube Screamers stacked. 

“It’s a really great pedal and has such a warm drive… because as a slide player, there’s so much metal on metal on metal, I’m always looking to bring in those low mids. This pedal does a great job with that. I run that pedal into a Fender Deluxe and that’s all I need.” 

Rebecca: “That’s why it’s good to think of your tone in the context of the other players in your band. Try to make sure you have the whole spectrum covered rather than beating a dead horse of one singular vibe. Sometimes I’ll use different pedals to cover different spaces. 

“I have to shout out the Royal Jelly overdrive/fuzz blender by Beetronics. That’s been really a cool pedal for me to experiment with. It’s very versatile, you can do so much with it thanks to the EQ sweeps. 

“It’s funny, a lot of people think it’s an octave sound when I kick it on for a solo, but it’s not. It just has such a broad range, especially on the low end, that it gives that you that feeling of things being extra beefy and fat. It’s a very inspiring pedal to solo on!”

Hello, and welcome to Essential Guitar Tracks. As you may well know, every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Our goal is to give you an overview of the biggest tracks, our editor’s picks and anything you may have missed. We’re pushing horizons and taking you out of your comfort zone – because, as guitarists, that’s something we should all be striving for in our playing. 

So, here are our highlights from the past seven days – now with a Spotify playlist…

Unprocessed – Thrash

“The ultimate composite of everything Unprocessed has ever created,” and “a moment for modern guitar playing and the innovation of new playing styles” are just some of the phrases that have been attached to Thrash, the newest single from boundary-pushing German prog metal outfit, Unprocessed. 

The band talks the talk, but can they walk the walk? Well… yes, they most definitely can. Manuel Gardner Fernandes’ percussive slap-esque style, which is part Tim Henson and part Ichika Nito, somehow reaches new heights with a jaw-dropping display of sheer technicality. That whole palm-muted clean thrash passage from 2:10 onwards needs to be heard to be believed. (MO)

Wargasm – Bang Ya Head feat. Fred Durst

Whether you like it or not, the noughties are very much back – and after receiving praise from “nu metal daddies” like Jonathan Davis and Limp Bizkit, London duo Wargasm have secured a guest spot from Fred Durst himself. The fist-pumping chorus riff is pure RATM fury, but given the band’s ethos that “genre is dead”, there are plenty of electronic elements at play, too. It’s nu metal brought bang up to date. (MAB)

Big Thief – Born for Loving You 

Born For Loving You, the second standalone single from indie favorites Big Thief in 2023, is a somewhat restrained offering from the band, channelling late-’60s/early-’70s Dylan with a breezy country/folk gait. Both of the band’s guitarists, Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek, are capable of shredding like no one’s business, but here, the money’s in the melody, with a gorgeous lead refrain that swoons as much as the lovestruck Lenker does in the song’s lyrics. (JM)

'68 – Removed Their Hats

Forget your Black Keys, your White Stripes, your Royal Blood: ’68 are the heaviest blues-rock duo to ever plug in an octave pedal. Well, we say blues-rock, but while these riffs are indebted to the pentatonic scale, they’re delivered with all the frenzied energy of post-hardcore, and a sonic nastiness that goes far beyond vintage Fender amps – which makes them all the more exhilarating. (MAB)

Meet Me @ the Altar – Strangers 

Meet Me @ the Altar guitarist Téa Campbell told Guitar World earlier this year that she's a frequent user of “Dave Grohl’s Kemper tone” and, indeed, Strangers’ dynamite riffs have the same catchy simplicity and steamrolling energy of the Foo Fighters’ best offerings in that category. With one of the band’s trademark bulls-eye mall-punk choruses, Strangers is another gem from one of punk’s most talented up-and-coming groups. (JM)

Ryujin – Raijin & Fujin (feat. Matthew K. Heafy)

First there was pirate metal. Now, of course, there is samurai metal. Blending traditional Japanese instrumentation and melodic themes, Ryujin channel the kind of power-metal precision you might hear in your typical DragonForce track – thank you to that tapped and alternate-picked sky-rocket of a solo – but with added Shamisen, Dragon Flute, Erhu and Taiko… oh, and some epic Matt Heafy guest vocals. (MAB)

Joel Culpepper - Free (feat. Tom Misch)

Tom Misch has been preoccupied with his dance side-project Supershy in recent months, but he’s dusted off the Fender Stratocaster for a super-sultry guest spot on the new single from R&B singer-songwriter Joel Culpepper. Misch’s effortless grooves are out in full force on this one, which has done absolutely nothing to tame our impatient desires for his next solo album. It must be coming soon, surely?! (MO)

Smut – 18 Tons

18 Tons, a new track from Chicago alt-rockers Smut, is truly one of those songs you can get lost in. There are textures aplenty to be found here, but it’s those chiming, U2-like guitar layers we keep coming back to – especially the ringing, sliiightly overdriven echoes that lead the song out. (JM)

While She Sleeps – Self Hell

You might remember While She Sleeps’ guitarist Sean Long having something of a viral moment with his awe-inspiring double Whammy pedal technique earlier this year – not to mention his eye-popping signature Charvels. Well, Long proves all the attention is well deserved, with a mind-bending chorus riff that makes use of his dextrous fretboard and treadle skills, bookended by some of this year’s most crushing breakdowns. (MAB)

Derek Smalls – Must Crush Barbie

Following a summer of hype, the Barbie era is set to enter its next stage as the move hits streaming platforms – and Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls has apparently had enough, returning with “a much-needed antidote to the ubiquitous pinkness that has spilled out of movie theaters this summer”. The antidote (aka Must Crush Barbie) is quintessential Smalls – loud, loaded with bass and entirely unapologetic. (MO)

Also on this week’s playlist...

• TesseracT – Legion
• DragonForce – Doomsday Party
• L7 – Cooler Than Mars
• Erja Lyytinen – Diamonds on the Road
• Polar Son – Youth
• The Cadillac Three – Young & Hungry
• Micki Free – We Are One
• Cherry Glazerr – Sugar
• Larkin Poe – Bad Spell (Acoustic)
• Jesse Dayton – Talkin' Country Man Blues
• Chris Shiflett – Overboard
• Wilco – Cousin

“My current touring pedalboard is a workhorse! Designed and executed by the wizards at XAct Tone Solutions in Nashville, the brain of the board is a Line 6 HX Effects [multi-effects processor]. 

“I use the HX Effects library to cue up patches for a fast tremolo, slow tremolo, noise gate, slap echo and boost – and also as a switcher for the rest of the pedals on my ’board.

“My main overdrive pedals are the MXR Sugar Drive and the TB Drive [Tyler Bryant Signature Shakedown Special] by Rodenberg Amplification. 

“My only fuzz is the Royal Jelly [Overdrive/Fuzz Blender] by Beetronics; we recently performed our song Bad Spell on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, and the tone for that song is the Royal Jelly with a slap echo. It’s a ferocious and versatile pedal. 

“As a redundancy, and to provide sonic options for our front-of-house engineer, I also have a Strymon Iridium wired into the chain. The Iridium is an amp/cab simulator – and it sounds absolutely amazing. We’ve been touring nonstop for the past year, and this ’board has stood the test of time!”

• Blood Harmony is out now via Tricki-woo.

Billy Gibbons is known for his wild custom guitars and wall of Magnatone amps, but as it turns out, his pedalboard is populated by some serious cheap stompboxes – all available from Amazon.

The revelation comes from Larkin Poe, who recently revealed what they learned on tour with Gibbons – and his unlikely gear choices. The band, led by sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, recorded with Gibbons for his 2021 solo album Hardware, and toured with him in 2022 for the Outlaw Music Festival dates.

We confirmed their story with Gibbons’ old tech, and found that his pedal choices were far less exotic than we expected.

“Billy is one of the more gear-obsessed people that we’ve ever crossed paths with,” laughs guitarist Rebecca Lovell.

“Every time we see him, he’s always got some new pedal or some new system that he’s preaching the gospel of. Most recently it was these mini pedals connected by these adorable mini jumper cables. He’s like [does gruff Gibbons impression] ‘Girls, I’m gonna send you a link. Check your emails! I’m gonna have my tech send you one. I tell you what: shorter signal path, purer tone! Cleaner tone!’”

We at Guitar World were intrigued, so we contacted Gibbons’ former tech for comment. We assumed the guitarist would be rocking some boutique exotica for this “purer tone”, but it turns out his gear choices are much more down to Earth.

The tech told us Billy’s favorite pedals were made by Rowin, Mosky and Mimidi, all ultra-cheap budget brands. Mimidi pedals are mainly available from Amazon, and their initial offering was a mini fuzz for just $15. Mimidi’s current lineup starts around $35, while Mosky are best known for a DOD 250 clone that sells for $18.93 on AliExpress. Rowin offer a range of analog and digital mini pedals, starting at $31.99.

Megan Lovell, Larkin Poe’s lap steel wizard, was amused seeing Gibbons do battle with the micro-pedals in his cowboy boots.

“The one I loved was this mini pedal, like this big [makes a rectangle with her thumbs and index fingers], and then he was like ‘but they’ve got an even tinier one!’ He pulls out another box and it’s the size of a postage stamp! He said, ‘This is my fuzz and this is my slap echo.’ It’s like, ‘How do you find this stuff?’ I don’t know, he must have some really pointy-ass shoes.”

Despite her amusement at Gibbons’ gear, Rebecca says she’s learned some lessons from his approach.

“I appreciate Billy because even at this point in his career where it would be very easy and tempting to just skate and tune out, he really gets into the mechanics and the nuts and the bolts of his performance,” she smiles.

“Typically, our conversations hang in the gear domain. He’s still just as ever zoomed-in on his guitar playing and his rig. It’s really sweet. I think what we can take from it is that you’ve got to constantly reinvent yourself. Reinventing your playing, reinventing the tones you’re getting. It’s really inspirational staying out of the rut.”

Rebecca and Megan Lovell aka Larkin Poe appeared on Jimmy Kimmel the other night for a barnstorming performance of their track Bad Spell.

The track was debuted back in May 2022, alongside the announcement of their recent album Blood Harmony and was pitched as a response to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put A Spell On You.

“[Since I heard it] the first time I’ve wanted to write a female response to it,” Rebecca Lovell said upon its release. “I’d had the title Bad Spell in my journal for years, and it was so fun to create a song where the riffs and guitar tones have that singular purpose of nastiness and swagger.”

We liked the studio version, but in the Kimmel appearance you can really hear that swagger. The four-piece band sounds monstrous in the clip and Rebecca’s HSS Strat is particularly potent.

Lovell also does that thing where you ping the strings on the headstock right before the riff drops. There should be a term for this – please send your suggestions.

The song’s centerpiece, however, comes in the solo section, which sees the Lovell sisters sparring between Strat and slide guitar, before it bleeds into some killer, hooky lead licks and Megan’s slide hits histrionic pitch.

Their recent record, Blood Harmony, was partly named so as a reference to the unique effect of related vocalists performing together (a la the Beach Boys) – and there’s something to be said about that in the Lovells’ unique chemistry as guitarists, too.

Either way, the band looks to be in great shape to resume their world tour at the end of the month, kicking things off in Nashville on March 31, before they head to Australia and New Zealand in April.

For more information and tour dates, head to Larkin Poe’s site.

Larkin Poe were joined by two very special guests onstage on Saturday February 11 during their set at the Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles, when former Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Steve Ferrone jammed Tom Petty’s Runnin’ Down a Dream with the Nashville-based roots band.

The track was co-written by Campbell with Jeff Lynne and Petty, and featured on Petty’s 1989 debut solo album, Full Moon Fever. The perfect vehicle for Rebecca Lovell on her Fender Stratocaster, Campbell on his Gibson Firebird, with Megan Lovell on lap steel, it has lost little of its hard-riffing power over the years. And Ferrone can sure hit ‘em.

The Lovell Sisters have cut plenty of covers over the years, particularly on YouTube where they have their own channel dedicated to performances of classic Scorpions, Chris Isaak and Rolling Stones tracks. They have covered Petty before, taking on the 1978 Heartbreakers’ cut Listen to Her Heart, and Wildflowers, from Petty's album of the same name, but never Runnin’ Down a Dream.

Larkin Poe are presently touring the US on the Blood Harmony tour. They typically work a couple of covers into the set, with Link Wray’s Rumble and Son House’s Preachin’ Blues a regular feature of their shows. At the Fonda, it looked like a case of the stars aligning with Campbell and Ferrone in town.

On Instagram, the Poe said the performance was a “lifetime memory made”.

“We’re honored to not only call these fine gentlemen our friends, but also to have had them grace the stage with us last night,” they wrote. “Mike Campbell, Steve Ferrone, we love y’all so much and can’t thank you enough for melting our faces off with your rock.” 

Campbell and Rebecca Lovell took the verses, with Megan – Bakelite Rickenbacker lap steel in hand – joining both for the chorus. That Firebird Campbell is playing there is one of his ‘desert island guitars’ and is presently his number one with the Dirty Knobs. Speaking to Guitar Center for a YouTube segment in 2021, Campbell explained how it came into his possession, and how, “supposedly”, it has Johnny Winters’ signature on it.

“This guitar I bought in Philadelphia,” he said. “I was on tour with Fleetwood Mac on a day off and my wife and I went walking and we passed a pawnshop. And I have Firebirds but I don’t have a white one. I put it in the show that night and it was my main guitar the rest of the tour. It just sounded perfect. And it’s also become my main guitar in the Dirty Knobs.”

Larkin Poe’s tour continues tomorrow night when they hit The Commonwealth Room in Salt Lake City, Utah. See Larkin Poe for the dates.

Blues has always been a part of Larkin Poe’s roots rock ’n’ roll approach, but for new release Blood Harmony the blues element is unmissable. And it hasn’t happened by accident. 

It’s the result of careful planning by the two sisters and multi-instrumentalists who lead the band, Rebecca and Megan Lovell – Rebecca the guitarist and lead singer, Megan the harmony vocalist and lap‑steel specialist.

“In making this album, I think the blues organically found its way into the writing process,” Rebecca says. “In the last six years, Megan and I have actively deepened our understanding of the blues. 

“We’ve really tried to go back and with a student’s energy study the artists that have come before and figure out how to authentically incorporate blues stylings into what we do. That’s been by learning tunes by Skip James and Muddy and B.B., really trying to walk the walk. I’m really proud of this album. I think it coalesces a lot of our loves into a single thing.”

As the sisters told Total Guitar last year, Larkin Poe found their sound by arranging cover versions in their own style, and early blues was central from the beginning. Their breakthrough came with a version of a Son House classic from 1930. 

“Preaching Blues was one of the one of the first blues covers we ever learned and it also was the first video that ever went viral for us, so it did feel like there was a connection there,” Megan recalls.

“It was a very authentic thing that we just kind of stumbled into. Since then we’ve really delved deeper in picking up blues songs and kind of bringing them into this century, having a deep respect for those who have come before and created the foundation of all of rock ’n’ roll. We have a great respect for the music but don’t shy away from changing it to fit us, because it should be a living art form.”

That synthesis of early blues and the Lovells’ own personality brings us to the new album’s first single, Bad Spell. Driven by an irresistible grind, it’s an unabashed homage to a vintage blues standard. 

As Rebecca admits: “They’re completely different songs in terms of the feel and the vocal performance, but Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put A Spell On You was the direct inspiration. Even just having ‘spell’ in the title, I was like, ‘We’re gonna skate pretty close to the edge here,’ but I really I did write Bad Spell as a response to that type of song, where it’s a bit swaggy, it obliquely threatens violence, and has this kinetic energy. 

“So I piggybacked on that, and I think that is our way in which we engage with keeping the blues alive. I’m gonna learn the form and then I’m gonna free myself to colour outside the lines and trust that people are gonna come along with us.”

The guitar tone in Bad Spell also marks new territory for Larkin Poe, coming courtesy of the Beetronics Royal Jelly overdrive/fuzz blender. “It is such a cool pedal,’ Rebecca says. “It’s really versatile and there’s a range of tonal control that’s really fun.” 

Bad Spell sees Larkin Poe rocking as hard as they ever have, a direction they can afford having cultivated an audience that expects diversity. 

“We started calling ourselves ‘roots rock ’n’ roll’ around the time that we started our own record label,” Rebecca explains. “We embraced the biggest umbrella that we could in order to allow ourselves the most freedom, and I think that people have been really supportive of that.” 

Creating roots music can be a minefield: too derivative and you’re dismissed as a tribute act, too original and you’re accused of betraying the genre. It’s a fine line that Larkin Poe tread admirably, digging into history without being restrained by it. Rebecca says it’s a lesson they learned in a previous life as session musicians. 

“When we were touring with Elvis Costello, we were eating lunch and he was expounding on the importance of not putting yourself in a box. He is the perfect example of an artist who has had an incredibly diverse career. 

“He does whatever he wants to do and the thread that connects it all is that it’s Elvis Costello. He was telling us, ‘People will try to attach specific genre tags to you. Keep them guessing. Just go where your heart tells you to go. Let your fans trust that you’re going to curate something that they will love regardless of genre.’”

There is another thread that connects the songs on Blood Harmony, as Megan observes: “Every song has to have a riff! We are crazy about riffs! And we wanted to write songs that could stand alone, that didn’t need production in order to be played. We didn’t really produce as we went along; we didn’t lay down parts and then layer as we were writing. If they worked with just the two of us, they went on to the next step.”

Larkin Poe’s sound is defined by Rebecca’s voice and Megan’s lap steel, and on Blood Harmony, both turn in some of their most emotional performances yet.

As Megan says, “It’s been a work in progress for many years to figure out how Rebecca and I really sing together, and now I mean sing as far as her vocal and my lap steel meshing together. It’s something that happens very naturally now we know how to intertwine our ranges. I stay out of her way.

“It’s a really fun puzzle to figure out because lap-steel is such a vocal instrument. I think the tone of my lap-steel does feel at times like a vocal or even like a cello. When Derek Trucks is playing it almost sounds like an opera singer to me. I think that’s why people connect with it so much, it’s such an emotional instrument.”

Emotion is the primary driver for Megan’s playing. “I always wanted to write riffs that feel like singing. I don’t care too much about shredding. I think it’s I think it’s amazing to hear people who are such technical players but I love to play very melodically and try and tap into the feeling behind what I’m playing.

“If I can take out the thought ‘Is this impressive enough? Is this technical enough? What are people thinking when they’re hearing my playing?’ If I can take all that thought out and just connect with an emotion, that’s when I feel happiest playing.”

Most Larkin Poe songs are written around riffs, but Blood Harmony saw the band shaking things up with last minute changes. 

Rebecca: “You can sometimes get ‘demo-itis’. If you make a demo you can get stuck with ‘this is how the song should be’. We’ve been trying to challenge that in ourselves, letting the best ideas win and embracing the adage that writing is rewriting. 

“You know, being able to dig back into the framework of a song and try to make each element better. Trying not to be precious about your ideas. On Kick The Blues, Megan came into the studio one morning like, ‘All right, roll me! I wrote a new riff for it.’ I was like, ‘Oh! Cool... let’s go!’ And the riff is so badass.”

Megan interrupts, laughing: “Admit it, you hated it at first didn’t you?”

Rebecca thinks for a moment. “I didn’t hate it, no, but it’s still really uncomfortable to listen to because it was so blindsiding. I was used to hearing it a different way and I loved that. It was really a great exercise to listen with open ears and letting it hit you afresh.” 

Album opener Deep Stays Down was another song that was reinvented thanks to a last-minute riff from Megan. “I think the riff is really hypnotic,” Rebecca enthuses. “It’s just Megan on her little 1920s or 30s National lap steel. We were wrestling with that for weeks. 

“We went through probably five different iterations of arranging that song, where it was like a hoedown and then it was a cinematic slow, spacey moment. We couldn’t quite get it to sink into what it was supposed to be until Megan started playing that riff.”

If reimagining a song as everything from a hootenanny to a film soundtrack sounds like fun, it should.

“Creative tension exists when you’re trying to make something and you don’t know,” Rebecca says. “The unknowing creates a lot of stress. You have to find ways to try and dispel the pressure. You want people to like the song. We have a finite amount of time on this Earth and we need to make a difference, come on dammit! All this stuff starts to tornado itself into ‘Oh my god, what are we doing?’”

She reconsidered after watching the Beatles documentary Get Back: “Those guys were obviously serious, but the ways in which they were all goofy and they played with their music – they held it very lightly. That was a little bit of a revelatory moment. It can be hard keep that energy. 

“It’s something that you have to learn, ‘We’re not gonna kill the joy out of this!’ Yes, this is how I make my living and yes there’s a lot of stuff riding on this, but being playful ultimately means there is more room for it to fully blossom. We want records that are authentic, unique, quirky and human.”

Megan credits their co-producer Tyler Bryant – Rebecca’s husband – with helping the sisters keep things light. “It was fun to have that energy in the studio. Rebecca and I have such a non-verbal communication and we can be very serious. It was great to have that third person in the room who is full of energy and very playful. It was really fun to experience more of that, ‘This might be weird but let’s try it!’”

Tracking at Tyler and Rebecca’s home studio also helped to relieve the pressure. “The studio can be an intimidating place when you’re stepping up in front of the mic and you want to be great,” Rebecca confesses. “Sometimes you’re not great and it’s okay to not be great. I think having our home studio vibes where it just felt like an extension of our home and we were able to be vulnerable and be kind of crappy and have it not matter as much, that was a really great facilitating angle for us to tap into something a bit more authentic and true.”

Bryant also introduced a staple of the Lovell’s guitar tone, his signature overdrive pedal: the Rodenberg TB Drive Shakedown Special. It’s essentially two Screamer-style drives in one box, one with a gain boost and both with switchable bass boosts. 

“It’s a great pedal!” both sisters say at once. Their pedalboards had another new addition. “What’s that really crazy pedal we used?” asks Megan. Rebecca lights up. 

“Oh, bro! The [Gamechanger Audio] Light Pedal. It’s three springs that are hit with light to make the springs vibrate. It creates these otherworldly weird reverb artifacts that will spiral and spiral. On the song Lips As Cold As Diamond, that’s what Megan is using for a lot of the howling, ‘verbed-out lap steel.”

Rebecca brought in a 1969 Gibson SG for some songs, but otherwise their rigs remain unchanged: Rebecca’s Strats and Megan’s Rickenbacker lap steel go through Fender Deluxe Reverb and Bassman guitar amps. 

Megan, though, ends by casually dropping an exclusive new gear announcement: “I played my old Rickenbacker all over the record and I love touring with it. It has a unique holder so that I can stand and play it. I have been having some back issues because it’s really heavy, so I wanted to come up with a lap steel that was meant for standing. 

“I worked with Beard Guitars and we have a new lap steel coming out that’s called the Electro-liege. It’s going to be announced very, very soon. It sounds a lot like a Rickenbacker. It’s got a Lollar horseshoe pickup in it, and it sounds beautiful. It’s very light and it looks cool, too!”

• Blood Harmony is out now via Tricki-Woo.

The exclusion of women in the guitar industry has not gone unnoticed – more recently, it’s an issue that companies and ambassadors have worked tirelessly to address.

The true founders of guitar music were not just men. Trailblazers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mary Kaye birthed and molded rock guitar in the '30s and '40s – today, non-male players are helping find new ways to improve it. After a long, bleak period of forgotten female legends, ignorance is fizzling out: guitarists want representation.

The cultural lineage from Hendrix to St. Vincent proves a level of progression that wasn’t there before. In a nutshell, women are role models to young players. That’s a huge milestone in our endeavor to reach equality.

Brands and influencers have been putting in the legwork. Fender has done a lot of research into diversity and inclusion – of all aspiring guitarists in 2018, the company found at least 50 percent were women, and there are countless distinctive players who are encouraging them to pick up the instrument.

Chrissie Hynde has been rocking out for the past 40 years, Megan and Rebecca Lovell are revitalizing roots-rock as Larkin Poe and Nita Strauss recently joined Demi Lovato’s new all-female rock band. Hopefully, the rock ‘n’ roll ‘boys club’ mentality can be left in the past.

Inclusivity and support is at the heart of Fender’s main targets, says Matt Watts, Senior Vice President of Marketing: “We aim to serve players at every stage in their career, and that includes everything from onboarding a new player – nurturing them as they begin their journey – to equipping seasoned players and artists with the best gear and content around to support their needs.

“It’s more important than anything to understand our consumers,”  he adds. “That means listening to them and ensuring we’re speaking to them in a way that resonates, while also representing them in our marketing.” 

Fender has a range of signature artists. Several are female, who have had the opportunity to shine brighter with their own signature guitar. Fender releases from the past couple of decades include the Bonnie Raitt Stratocaster in 2001, Avril Lavigne Squier Telecaster in 2012 and the Chrome Glow Stratocaster for Grammy Award-winning R&B artist H.E.R. in 2020. Non-binary player Tash Sultana received their own signature model that same year.

Justin Norvell, Executive Vice President of Product at Fender, notes that signature models enhance product innovation, and help the instrument evolve to meet the needs of all players.

“Signature models are interesting, because they can speak to generational demographics – whether it’s Jimi Hendrix or something from the '60s that’s classic rock to something very today,” he explains. “It can speak to genre. So, people see a blues artist and think that’s their thing, or they see a punk rock artist and get interested in the product. 

“It also speaks to gender in the same way. It’s all of these things – ethnic diversity, too – because music is such a personal thing: an expression of oneself.”

The guitar is continually evolving to become younger and more diverse. 45 percent of guitars sold by Fender go to first-time players – half of them are female.

“We want to make sure we’re catering to as many players as possible,” Watts continues. “We acknowledge that when players see themselves in our marketing, it inspires them to keep playing.”

Norvell echoes, “If you look back through our marketing campaign, even over the last five years or so, you’ll see we’ve featured at least one female artist in every campaign that we’ve run.”

“We feature a lot of women in our marketing, and we don’t box different people – they’re guitar players," he adds. “They’re musicians. And it’s the same thing that drives everybody equally.”

And it’s not just guitar manufacturers who are working to enact change. Kristen Cho, Chief Marketing Officer of online gear retailer Reverb echoes these sentiments, outlining the online retail giant’s mission on inclusivity.

“At Reverb, we want music-makers from all backgrounds and all levels to feel welcome,” Cho says. “When we launched nearly 10 years ago, the vision was to create an online community where anyone in the world could buy and sell music gear easily and affordably. 

“We quickly realized that to truly fulfill that vision, we needed to be intentional about fostering that type of inclusive community. We dug in, examining our brand, the content we produced and our social media channels. We also spent a lot of time listening to diverse voices in the musical instruments community, the musician community and our team. 

“I’m incredibly proud of the early Reverbers who were champions for diversity and created a welcoming community for all music-makers everywhere.”

Cho continued to develop the Reverb brand on one principle: that people are much more likely to engage with a brand or a community when they see themselves represented, whether that’s at a guitar store, on an e-commerce website, in a YouTube video or in an online comments section.

As such, Reverb makes sure to represent players equally in its content, covering everything from interviews and educational deep dives to gear demos. It even includes partnerships, such as Reverb's collaboration with the She Rocks Awards, which recognizes female trailblazers in the industry who sometimes get ignored by the wider media. 

It means performers get recognized for personal achievements – something particularly beneficial to young girls looking up to the industry. Sarah Lipstate, for example, was amplified for her cinematic pedalboard, while Laura Jane Grace’s extensive Rickenbacker collection was also put under the spotlight.

There ought to be tangible changes from the efforts put in by industry giants. For such a large amount of thought and effort that goes into eliminating sexism, are we seeing much difference? 

“Building and supporting an inclusive community is an ongoing journey,” continues Cho. “So far, the response from our buyers and sellers has been overwhelmingly positive. I love hearing stories from music-makers who feel seen, safe and supported when they buy, sell and geek out about music gear on Reverb.”

You can see a new attitude creeping through online, too, particularly on platforms such as TikTok. A noteworthy example is Reverb's #SheSetTheTone TikTok challenge, which was launched during Women’s History Month.

“The challenge featured musical creators from around the world, each highlighting a woman in music who inspired them,” recalls Cho. “From Mia Madden talking about the first time she heard St. Vincent’s Cruel, to Clover-Lynn celebrating Mother Maybelle Carter’s influence on country and bluegrass music, the challenge celebrated how the increasing presence of women on stage and throughout the industry has driven more women to continue to pick up instruments.”

Although change isn’t instant, there are contributing factors that help to slowly improve representation.

“Players like H.E.R and Japanese Breakfast – they’re all pushing their respective genres and art forward as guitar players and bass players,” notes Watts. “But they’re all inviting new players into the space and making it safe, which is exciting.

“Ultimately, industry leaders need to hold themselves accountable to make a difference,” he goes on to say. “That means pushing themselves to showcase gender parity and diversity in marketing, products and whoever they work with. And that’s how things begin to look up.”

“A lot of niche things have that exclusivity to them,” continues Norvell. “Like, it’s hard to get in the club if you’re not in the club. But in the last decade or so, we’ve really tried to make sure that there’s tons of genres, no matter what the dominant one is, and there are tons of different types of players, too. 

“You really want to look at the brand you’re seeing and say, ‘Is this me?’ And if you don’t see anything like yourself, then you’re going to think it’s not for you.”

Fender has also introduced an app – Fender Play – to help teach people guitar from all backgrounds in an accessible way, aiming to reduce the friction for new players entering the industry. 

Sometimes, particularly with social media, technology exacerbates any problems with equality and representation. Trolls see an opportunity to bully, and the world seems more hostile than it is.

“It pains me, but unfortunately you still hear stories from women who were asked if they were looking for a gift for boyfriend or husband while shopping in a guitar store,” says Cho. “Preconceived notions of what a guitarist should look like still exist, but destinations like Reverb can go a long way in creating friendly and accessible customer experiences – both for shopping and learning.”

Reverb works hard to feature female and non-binary guitarists in unboxing videos and other content in an effort to show that everyone can interact with the guitar-playing community.

It has a series online called Tones of the Unknown, partnered with She Shreds Media. “We featured female and non-binary guitarists unboxing different guitar pedals and using them to create different soundscapes,” explains Cho. “Content like this is intended to not only be informative and accessible, but also meant to be a fun way for music-makers to learn more about gear and build confidence as they experiment in their music-making, too.”

Fender knows how much guitar evolves and changes – it’s why it remains one of the most dominant instruments in music. Alongside innovation in pedals and plugins, its applications are limitless, ranging from shredding and textural solos to effects-laden background ambiance.

“That ability – which makes the guitar continue to evolve – we embrace,” notes Norvell. “We call it a sonic paintbrush, because if it’s in someone’s hands, they can do whatever they want with it.”

It’s a gift, Fender says, that belongs to no single gender. So, where are we headed with this new attitude to accompany inclusivity? Do we still have a long way to go until the field is level?

“As a community, we are definitely making progress on inclusivity,” observes Cho. “And yet, we still have a long way to go. Real, meaningful change takes time, and brands have a responsibility to be a driving force for inclusivity.”

Similarly, Norvell says, “I think the best we can do is always evolve and improve ourselves and lead by example. Us, along with other brands, are trying our best to be so much more inclusive, and I think it’s a thing that happens in concentric circles. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s doing a really good job so far.

“Everything’s always better when it’s open,” he concludes. “Positive. Inclusive. More always comes of it. And the more we stick with trying to make the guitar less daunting – demystifying the journey of navigating the instrument and figuring out your own path – the more evolution in the market we’ll have.”

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Red Hot Chili Peppers  – Tippa My Tongue

What is it? Earlier this year, John Frusciante told us his first rehearsals back with the Red Hot Chili Peppers were primarily made up of tracks from their first three albums. You’d be hard-pressed to hear the influence on Unlimited Love, but this first cut from their second double record of 2022, Return of the Dream Canteen, has a sublime laid-back groove that, for our money, harks way back to The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.

Standout guitar moment: Frusciante’s guitar is pushed to the fore throughout, all slapback delay funk vamps and driven pentatonic riffs. Those psychedelic oscillations in the middle eight are mighty fun, too.

For fans of: Red Hot Chili Peppers, basically

– Michael Astley-Brown

Larkin Poe – Georgia Off My Mind 

What is it? We’re still three months away from Larkin Poe’s highly anticipated upcoming album Blood Harmony, but the Lovell sisters’ latest single – a play on popular jazz standard Georgia On My Mind – has done nothing to make the wait seem any less unbearable. It’s quintessential Poe, with Rebecca and Megan delivering a devastating dual guitar line that marries roots-y riffing, blues-y licks and some sensational slide/six-string interplay.

Standout guitar moment: The opening riff, hands down. It’s got the balance of tremolo and gain nailed to a T, with Megan’s textural slides fleshing out Rebecca’s growling Strat rather nicely indeed.

For fans of: Samantha Fish, Marcus King, Joanne Shaw Taylor

– Matthew Owen

Botch – One Twenty Two

What is it? Of all the new music to land in 2022, fresh material from influential mathcore outfit Botch ranked pretty close to the last thing we’d expect. Yet, impossibly, here we are: One Twenty Two is about as ferocious as anything we could have hoped for – the only downside is that it’s a one-off, accompanying the eagerly anticipated vinyl reissue of the seminal We Are the Romans.

Standout guitar moment: Those wild pitch bends take Dave Knudson’s sleazy riff into the stratosphere. It’s good to hear the Minus the Bear mastermind lend his hand to something altogether heavier again.

For fans of: Converge, Minus the Bear, Russian Circles

– Michael Astley-Brown

Electric Callboy – Hurrikan

What is it? “But I thought this was a roundup of the week’s best guitar tracks!” we hear you mutter. Fear not, and stick with it, because despite the cheesy Euro-esque dance beat that drives the track’s first minute, a savage breakdown – which couldn’t be further removed from the musical material that precedes it – asserts itself in its closing 30 seconds, chaotically shaped with gut-punching drop-tuned guitars, head-spinning blast beats, and stomach-churning vocals.

Standout guitar moment: Daniel "Danskimo" Haniß and Pascal Schillo’s dissonant chugs and chord strums from the 1:11 mark in the video above are some of the heaviest sounds you can conjure from a guitar.

For fans of: We Came As Romans, Fit For a King, Motionless in White

– Sam Roche

Mdou Moctar – Imouhar 

What is it? Back in 2021, the Mdou Moctar mixtape series began to take shape, and since blossomed into Niger EP Vol. 1, a new EP that unleashes an epic 13-minute guitar/drum machine jam titled Imouhar. Moctar has proved time and time again that he’s one of today’s most thrilling players, and Imouhar is no exception. Soloing stamina, inventive lines, fierce technique… this track has got it all in spades.

Standout guitar moment: Does six minutes count as a “moment”? Well, it does now. We don’t think it would be possible to select a highlight from the opening 360 seconds of soloing and we wouldn’t want to either – it’s all excellent.

For fans of: Tinariwen, Bombino 

– Matthew Owen

LØLØ – u turn me on (but u give me depression)

What is it? The latest single from Canadian singer-songwriter LØLØ’s forthcoming EP, debbie downer. After building a following on TikTok reimagining classic music hits – including Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 hit Dancing in the Dark – LØLØ signed with Hopeless Records late last year, and has her sights firmly fixed on pop-punk domination. And with the resurgence of the genre spearheaded by the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, Demi Lovato, Willow Smith and more, she’s chosen a fantastic time to stake her claim.

Standout guitar moment: The track’s opening guitar riff is gloriously simple, and instantly evokes both a sense of nostalgia for early-noughties pop-punk, and excitement for where the genre is headed.

For fans of: State Champs, Maggie Lindemann, Machine Gun Kelly

– Sam Roche

Death Cab For Cutie – Foxglove Through the Clearcut

What is it? Ben Gibbard and co go full post-rock on the latest effort from next month’s 10th studio album, Asphalt Meadows, and the result is a five-minute epic as emotive as any of the Seattle indie institution’s biggest heart-wrenchers.

Standout guitar moment: The guitar orchestration on Foxglove is sublime throughout, but that eruption of tremolo picking and tremulous single-note lead lines at the track’s apex is a real gut-punch.

For fans of: Slint, Explosions in the Sky, Pinback

– Michael Astley-Brown

Madison Cunningham – Life According to Raechel

What is it? A track taken from the latest EP of folk rock singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham, who uses Life According To Raechel to flex her devastating vocal, compositional and six-string skills. The emotionally charged chord progression – filled with swampy strums – immediately sets the scene for the song, which introduces more emotion and instrumental intrigue as it dreamily weaves its way along to its finale.

Standout guitar moment: The way Cunningham makes the guitar’s strings bend to her will as she strums away is a marvel to listen to. The dynamics of the progression truly tug at the heartstrings, and nicely complement the hard hitting lyrics of the track.

For fans of: Julia Jacklin, Madi Diaz, The Dip

– Matthew Owen 

Five Finger Death Punch – The End

What is it? The closing track of Five Finger Death Punch’s new album, AfterLife. With a vibe similar to the band’s previous softer tracks including Wrong Side of Heaven and Far From Home, The End rounds out the Las Vegas troupe’s blistering ninth studio album with triumphant compositional maturity, with an arrangement of pristine-sounding acoustic guitars, and fuller instrumental sections in which Ivan Moody’s powerful voice really shines.

Standout guitar moment: The gorgeously recorded acoustic guitars provide a much-welcome sonic respite after an album filled to the brim with aggressive guitar riffs.

For fans of: Stone Sour, Trivium, Disturbed

– Sam Roche

Larkin Poe have shared Georgia Off My Mind, the latest release from the duo’s upcoming album, Blood Harmony.

It’s the third Blood Harmony single sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell have dropped thus far, and it’s perhaps the one that strikes closest to home: the track itself is a sentimental love song to the “stretch of I-24 that connects Atlanta and Nashville” – a drive Rebecca has completed thousands of times.

Georgia Off My Mind flips the script on popular jazz standard Georgia On My Mind, and swaps smooth sounds for gritty electric guitar action that marries drop-tuned rumbles, swinging blues riffs and upper register licks into one tremolo-tinged main hook.

In the accompanying music video – see below – Rebecca dons a Fender HSS Stratocaster, and receives the reliable support of Megan’s lap steel, which supplies a bounty of decorative slides and a foot-tapping guitar solo at the 2:26 mark.

“Like 99 percent of my songs, that song came into being at my kitchen table late in the evening,” recalled Rebecca. “My husband and I stumbled into that line at the chorus – ‘Tennessee keep Georgia off my mind’ – and it turned into a love song for the stretch of I-24 that connects Atlanta and Nashville, which is a drive we’ve made thousands of times now.”

Georgia Off My Mind joins the hard-riffing lead single Bad Spell and soulful title track on the Blood Harmony tracklist, which was recorded with the help of drummer Kevin McGowan and bassist Tarka Layman.

The album was co-produced by Larkin Poe and Tyler Bryant – the duo's longtime collaborator and Rebecca’s husband – and was recorded mainly at the pair’s home studio.

Of the upcoming effort, Larkin Poe commented, “When steering by your own stars, you never quite know where you’re going to wind up.

“Our true north is unique to us, and in following our true north without compromise, we have been out freewheeling this world on the ride of our lives,” they continued. “And it still feels like just the beginning. 

“Blood Harmony is a creative step we are proud to have taken together as sisters. We grew these songs in a sweet part of our hearts and we hope they bring beauty.”

The album will arrive November 11 via Larkin Poe's own label Tricki-Woo Records, and will be available in a variety of physical and digital formats.

You can check out the tracklist for Blood Harmony below.

1. Deep Stays Down
2. Bad Spell
3. Georgia Off My Mind
4. Strike Gold
5. Southern Comfort
6. Bolt Cutters & The Family Name
7. Blood Harmony 
8. Kick The Blues
9. Might As Well Be Me
10. Summertime Sunset
11. Lips As Cold As Diamond

In other Larkin Poe news, the duo recently released a roots-y reinvention of the Scorpions' Wind of Change.

• Bloody Harmony is available to preorder now.

Nashville’s roots duo Larkin Poe, AKA sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, have posted their latest YouTube cover – an earthy, slide-laden take on the Scorpions’ 1990 hit Wind of Change.

The band are currently preparing for the release of their new album Blood Harmony – the title a reference to their shared musical experience and deep bonds as a family outfit. 

And while Wind of Change does not feature on the album, it has been selected as the latest installment of their long-running series of YouTube cover clips, which are intended to keep a public record of the songs they are listening to and learning. 

Penned by German rock behemoths the Scorpions, Wind Of Change anticipated a new era of unity in Eastern Europe, following the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Larkin Poe’s version gives the hard rock power ballad a folksy reimagining, which seems odd on paper, but works surprisingly well. 

Matthias Jabs’ haunting clean guitar lines sound entirely at home on Megan Lovell’s lap steel, while Rebecca Lovell’s big bodied acoustic guitar (a Gibson Hummingbird) and earnest vocal calls to mind the sort of picket line singalongs of '60s protest heroes, like Joan Baez. 

Essentially, it feels a bit like a Marvel multiverse moment for pan-Atlantic rock history.

If this has whetted your appetite for the new album, you can check out Larkin Poe’s  singles Bad Spell and the title-track, Blood Harmony, which premiered right here on Guitar World. Likewise, the Scorpions released their own new album Rock Believer, earlier this year.

To preorder the album, visit Larkin Poe's website.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Larkin Poe – Blood Harmony 

What is it? The second single of 2022 to arrive courtesy of sisters Megan and Rebecca Lovell, and the latest preview of Larkin Poe’s forthcoming sixth studio album, Blood Harmony. As always, Rebecca is in charge of six-string duties, conjuring up a wealth of swampy riffs, while Megan is on hand to flesh things out with a smattering of lap steel action. It’s a masterclass in dynamic arrangement, with the track building and building towards its head sway-inducing finale. It’s got a rad video, too, which premiered exclusively on Guitar World this week.

Standout guitar moment: By the end, Blood Harmony is a mosaic of soulful sound, but at its core is the intro riff, which, despite being fairly simple, is strong enough to carry the entire track on its shoulders.

For fans of: Samantha Fish, Susan Tedeschi, Marcus King

– Matt Owen

Kirk Fletcher – Heartache By The Pound 

What is it? The latest single and title track from blues titan Kirk Fletcher’s upcoming album, which will be arriving later this month. Put simply, it’s Fletcher through-and-through, recruiting some effortlessly cool lead embellishments that sporadically crop up throughout the track’s runtime and introducing arguably one of Kirk’s catchiest melody hooks to date. Plus, the tone is quite something here, too – it’s just clean, but it’s clean done right, and is probably the result of Fletcher’s stunning new Murphy Lab ES-345, which he affectionately dubs OgieRea.

Standout guitar moment: Fletcher is known for his proficient phrasing and for having a robust internal compass when it comes to working his way round the fretboard, but sometimes less is more – a sentiment epitomized by that glorious intro hook, which gets our vote.

For fans of: Josh Smith, Matt Schofield, Robben Ford

– Matt Owen

Disturbed – Hey You

What is it? After guitarist Dan Donegan unveiled his “Fuck cancel culture” guitar last week, fighting what they call “outrage addiction” appears to remain the Chicago metal titans’ MO. On Hey You, over weighty guitar riffs and a few of his trademark “Ah”s, frontman David Draiman rails against “hyper-tribalism”, and critiques the “dangerous status quo we are living in”.

Standout guitar moment: Nearly 30 years in the game have done nothing to quell the formidable riff writing ability of Dan Donegan. Hey You’s main guitar hook is straight-talking, but monumental sounding as a result.

For fans of: Stone Sour, Drowning Pool, Godsmack

– Sam Roche

Marcus Mumford – Cannibal

What is it? The man who – with the help of his "sons" – brought the sounds and look of the Depression era back into style with his stomping, anthemic take on folk has gone solo. Cannibal is the introspective–yet-soaring lead single from (self-titled), Marcus Mumford's debut solo album, and – sarcasm aside – it shows the songwriting skill behind the seismic impact Mumford & Sons had on music.

Standout guitar moment: Of course, Cannibal eventually explodes in its final minute, but the stark, muted and fingerpicked acoustic progression of the track's first three minutes is the perfect vehicle for its vulnerable, piercing lyrics.

For fans of: The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Radical Face

– Jackson Maxwell

Imperial Triumphant – Tower of Glory, City of Shame

What is it? Super-gnarly metal that’s augmented out of sight with a sense of adventurism that brackets the New York extremists as one of the most daringly avant-garde bands the underground has produced in recent years. There’s a jazz pedigree to the personnel that is writ large on the elastic compositions. 

No one writes and performs metal like this – kind of death metal, kind of black metal, but really off the charts. Most bands are just too rigid. But the improvisational internal logic of the band allied to the vision of guitarist/vocalist Zachary Ezrin makes it work.

Standout guitar moment: Guitar riffs are usually something that stick with us. That’s the point. The verse riff here – as far as it is a motif – resists all that. It sounds like the guitar is choking, spluttering out of the ether. And it serves a different purpose; it tells us that, stylistically, all bets are off. This black metal, death metal hybrid is not operating on the same spectrum as the rest of us.

For fans of: Schammasch, Portal, Deathspell Omega

– Jonathan Horsley

Electric Callboy – FCKBOI (feat. Conquer Divide)

What is it? Pop-punk is well and truly back in style, and Electric Callboy, a German outfit known principally for their metalcore/electronicore musical leanings, have jumped firmly on the bandwagon on their latest single, FCKBOI. The track – which also features Conquer Divide – bears all the hallmarks of classic pop-punk (feathery arpeggios, chunky powerchords, light-hearted lyrics et al), but includes metalcore-esque drop-tuned guitars, and even a trap-style section in the middle eight.

Standout guitar moment: Not a moment, as such, but those guitars that run the length of the song are both chunky and infectious.

For fans of: Machine Gun Kelly, WILLOW

– Sam Roche

Regressor – Moonlight Chief (feat. Sam Rapley) 

What is it? A new single from up-and-coming instrumental extraordinaire Regressor – aka Joseph Stevenson – who has recruited saxophone star Sam Rapley for a four-and-a-half-minute jolly round some of the tastiest prog rock licks we’ve heard all year. From the introduction of the delay-drenched intro melody all the way to atmospheric outro of six-string soundscapes, Moonlight Chief provides guitar ear candy of the highest order, complete with time signature-shifting runs and key-altering turnarounds.

Standout guitar moment: The sax and six-string each get their time to shine via extended solo efforts, but the track reaches its goosebump-inducing peak when they both converge at the 2:40 mark for a reprise of the original motif. Having said that, Stevenson’s display of his insane prog rock chops straight after isn’t too shabby, either.

For fans of: Plini, Jack Gardiner, Owane

– Matt Owen

Russian Circles – Betrayal

What is it? This is the sound of the Chicago instrumentalists operating at the bleakest frontier of their post-rock sound, and it finds Mike Sullivan’s guitar sculpting a brutalist panorama, blurring the line between the hideous and the beautiful. Betrayal is taken from the band’s forthcoming album, Gnosis, which is released through Sargent House on August 19th. 

Best guitar moment: Those downtuned riffs that saw the composition in two. It’s as though the aerated noise of what has gone before coalesces, turns to concrete. It’s brutal and ugly and therapeutic all at once, and anyone with a penchant for guitar noise who has spent too long in the city will appreciate its unforgiving density.

For fans of: Pelican, Jesu, Botch

– Jonathan Horsley

Larkin Poe have revealed the latest single and title track from their forthcoming sixth studio album, Blood Harmony. 

Making its world premiere via Guitar World – right up there in that YouTube clip above – the video finds sisters Megan and Rebecca Lovell on the tour bus, tumbling out of their bunks, into a jam and onto the stage.

For the Grammy-nominated duo, this is the natural rhythm of life. But life doesn’t always follow the beat. Look at how the past two years has thrown the touring musician’s schedule out of whack. And in life, there’s always something out of reach. Maybe this was something that Rebecca Lovell is referencing in Blood Harmony – that in such uncertainty, family can be the anchor. 

“I wrote this song after having a really meaningful conversation on the phone with my Mother about the strangeness and beauty of the human experience,” she says. “Of all the songs I’ve ever written, I’m particularly proud of this one.”

The track features Rebecca on guitar and lead vocals, with Megan on harmonies and lap steel, and it builds and builds. It assembles itself with acoustic, lap steel and electric guitar parking a relaxed southern rock vibe over a kick. It speaks of music running in the family. 

The family angle is always key with Larkin Poe – as a bona fide sister act, that’s unavoidable. But even still, Larkin Poe kept the production of Blood Harmony in-house, with Rebecca’s husband and regular collaborator Tyler Bryant co-producing the album with the band. 

The record was tracked at Lovell and Bryant’s home studio. The Larkin Poe live players – Kevin McGowan on drums, Tarka Layman on bass guitar – laid down parts in the studio.

“When steering by your own stars, you never quite know where you’re going to wind up,” says the band in a statement. “Our true north is unique to us, and in following our true north without compromise, we have been out freewheeling this world on the ride of our lives. 

“And it still feels like just the beginning. Blood Harmony is a creative step we are proud to have taken together as sisters. We grew these songs in a sweet part of our hearts and we hope they bring beauty.”

• Blood Harmony is out on November 11 via Tricki-Woo Records and is available to pre-order now.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Standards – Smile

What is it? Fresh off its live debut during the band’s recent UK tour, Smile sees Aristides-toting two-hand tapping wizard Marcos Mena and drummer Cam Mitchell, erm, tap into the poppier side of their progressive repertoire. Consistent with the rest of Standards’ output, it’s hooky as hell – and we’re always down for virtuosity you can dance to.

Standout guitar moment: Mena’s nifty over-the-fretboard chord hammer-on and pull-offs, freeing up his right hand to tap out that irresistable chorus melody.

For fans of: Hikes, Covet, Giraffes? Giraffes!

– Michael Astley-Brown

Larkin Poe – Bad Spell

What is it? The swaggering lead single from Blood Harmony, the sixth studio album from the always-exciting Nashville-based blues-rock duo featuring sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell. A “female response” to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell on You, Bad Spell simply explodes out of the speakers.

Standout guitar moment: Armed with one of her beloved HSS Stratocasters and a dimed-out fuzz pedal, Rebecca Lovell delivers a catchy, instant-impact sledgehammer of a blues-rock riff that never wears out its welcome. It’s the sort of unstoppable refrain that’s taken plenty of other groups in the genre from clubs and small theaters to arenas, and listening to it, we can’t help but wonder if Larkin Poe will be next to make that jump…  

For fans of: The Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys, Tedeschi Trucks Band

– Jackson Maxwell

Thrice – Dead Wake

What is it? Devastating fresh material from the California alt-rock innovators following last year’s Horizons/East. A song of two halves, Dead Wake starts as a Vheissu-flavored post-hardcore anthem, traverses a brief keyboard interlude and ends up a slice of altogether apocalyptic alt-rock. Although Dead Wake is being billed as a standalone release, the band told us a Horizons/West companion record was in the works, so we wouldn’t be surprised to hear more in the coming months…

Standout guitar moment: The way Dustin Kensrue’s climactic chiming overdriven sounds play off against Teppei Teranishi’s raw unison bends is magic.

For fans of: Touché Amoré, Circa Survive, Radiohead

– Michael Astley-Brown

Malevolence – Salvation (feat. Matthew K. Heafy)

What is it? A standout track on the Sheffield, UK metalcore stalwarts’ new album, Malicious Intent. A masterclass in unbridled sonic ferocity, Salvation is brimming with pummeling mid-tempo guitar riffs, texture-laden melodic chorus sections and both a solo and some guest vocals from Trivium leader Matt Heafy.

Standout guitar moment: Heafy never misses with his leads, and this one is no exception. From the 1:42 mark, the Trivium man offers up a bounty of winding melodies and two-handed tapping wizardry, proving once again that he’s one of the best in the biz.

For fans of: Trivium, Stray From the Path, Venom Prison

– Sam Roche

Foals – 2001 

What is it? A funk-fueled, disco-charged bop from veteran hit-makers Foals, who are gearing up to release their new album, Life Is Yours, later this year. It’s everything you’d expect from a Foals track but more, with the band fully embracing their evolution into a disco guitar group by decking out space-y synths with gargling low-ends, snappy guitar licks and arguably the funkiest guitar drone of their whole repertoire.

Standout guitar moment: That infectious intro guitar riff is an absolute joy to listen to, and sounds as though it’s emanated straight from the fretboard of funk king Cory Wong himself.

For fans of: Royal Blood, Bloc Party, Cory Wong

– Matt Owen 

Roosevelt feat. Nile Rodgers – Passion

What is it? By enlisting the talents of a certain Mr. Nile Rodgers, German synth-pop maestro Roosevelt fulfills a longtime dream on this floor-filling new single. The result is, unsurprisingly, a disco-infused pop banger that proves Rodgers’ eternal midas touch.

Standout guitar moment: While Nile’s unmistakable syncopated Hitmaker strums drive Passion’s monster chorus, that cheeky palm-muted middle eight gives a glimpse at his underrated riff chops, too.

For fans of: Chic, Cory Wong, Daft Punk

– Michael Astley-Brown

Horsegirl – Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty)

What is it? We’ve had our eyes on this Chicago trio – whose members are barely out of high school – for awhile now. They make twisty, catchy and angular guitar-driven songs that have folks who grew up in alt-rock’s heyday going ‘well, thank god some kids these days make real music.' Unlike other buzzy young bands that have merely served as a vehicle for boomer/early millennial nostalgia and projection though, Horsegirl have talent and vision to go along with the hype, as a listen to their new single, Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty), proves in spades.

Standout guitar moment: The song’s main chord progression is highlighted by woozy bends that add a ton of color and personality to this quietly charming rocker.

For fans of: Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Pavement

– Jackson Maxwell

Coheed and Cambria – Comatose

What is it? The fourth single from Coheed and Cambria’s highly-anticipated 10th album, Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind. Like previously released singles The Liars Club and Rise, Naianasha (Cut the Cord), Comatose boasts a light rock feel, driven by an instantly infectious major-key guitar riff.

Standout guitar moment: The track features an abundance of harmonized leads, which weave themselves around one another underneath Claudio Sanchez’s ever-catchy vocal hooks.

For fans of: Dance Gavin Dance, Billy Talent

– Sam Roche

Everything Everything – Kevin’s Car  

What is it? A track lifted from UK art rock group Everything Everything’s new album, Raw Data Feel, which dropped today (May 20). Kevin’s Car is quintessential Everything Everything, and arrives from a band whose sound is deeply rooted in unorthodox six-string sonic experimentation. It’s a textural tapestry of the highest order, from the glass-like intro guitars and electro-tinged verse stabs to the extended chorus melody that pins the mix together.

Standout guitar moment: Multiple listens will reveal more and more nuanced guitar activity, but the vocal-mirroring line of the chorus is the best of the bunch, effortlessly gluing the entire track together and bringing it to life.

For fans of: Alt-J, Radiohead, Dutch Uncles 

– Matt Owen

The Fierce & the Dead – Wonderful

What is it? A fresh psych-fuzz freakout from one of the UK’s trickiest-to-pin-down instrumental rockers – except their first new music in four years isn’t actually instrumental, featuring vocal contributions from Kevin Feazey for the first time. It doesn’t dilute the band’s serrated prog edge, however, and the addition of saxophone among the sludge lends the track a certain King Crimson esoterica.

Standout guitar moment: That peak grunge-channeling chorus riff, which takes equal billing with the verse’s shoegaze-worthy washed-out chords.

For fans of: King Crimson, Haken, Steven Wilson

– Michael Astley-Brown

Def Leppard – Fire It Up

What is it? A bouncy new number from the veteran English rock outfit’s forthcoming album, Diamond Star Halos. Fire It Up finds guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell in fine form, as they serve up a bounty of swaggering and feel-good guitar riffs, and a selection of tasty leads, to boot.

Standout guitar moment: The solo from the 2:28 mark is a textbook passage of classic rock-inspired shred, featuring sky-high bends and tastefully placed alternate picking blitzes.

For fans of: Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Scorpions

– Sam Roche

Caius – Care for Me (Iamalex & Felty remix) 

What is it? The latest laid-back remix from Horace Bray’s lo-fi side project, which sees him treat producer Caius' sultry beats to his smooth six-string soundscapes. Harnessing every ounce of his formal jazz education, Bray brings his A-game, souping-up the beat with some aquatic progressions, sizzling improv lines and tasty chromatic embellishments.

Standout guitar moment: A host of extended chords build up to the subtle, easy-listening solo at the 1:21 mark, which is littered with jazzy slides, colorful turnarounds and some upper-fret harmonies.

For fans of: Horace Bray, Tom Misch, Charlie Allen

– Matt Owen

Larkin Poe – the dynamic, Nashville-based blues-rock duo comprised of sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell – have announced a new album, Blood Harmony.

In tandem with the news, the Lovells also premiered the album's first single, the ferocious Bad Spell, which you can hear below.

Wielding one of her favored HSS Stratocasters, Rebecca delivers some monumental riffage on the tune, with her sister adding some singeing lap steel statements to the picture here and there.

“Ever since I heard I Put a Spell on You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins for the first time I’ve wanted to write a female response to it,” Rebecca Lovell said of the song in a press release. “I’d had the title Bad Spell in my journal for years, and it was so fun to create a song where the riffs and guitar tones have that singular purpose of nastiness and swagger.”

Set for a November 11 release via the duo's own Tricki-Woo Records, Blood Harmony is the duo's sixth studio effort. The LP was co-produced by the band with up-and-coming electric guitar player Tyler Bryant (who also happens to be Rebecca's husband), and also features the band's live rhythm section – drummer Kevin McGowan and bass guitar player Tarka Layman.

“When steering by your own stars, you never quite know where you’re going to wind up,” Larkin Poe said in a joint statement about the LP. “Our true north is unique to us, and in following our true north without compromise, we have been out freewheeling this world on the ride of our lives. And it still feels like just the beginning. 

"Blood Harmony is a creative step we are proud to have taken together as sisters. We grew these songs in a sweet part of our hearts and we hope they bring beauty.” 

You can check out Blood Harmony's cover art and track list below.

To preorder the album, visit Larkin Poe's website.

Larkin Poe – Blood Harmony:

1. Deep Stays Down
2. Bad Spell
3. Georgia Off My Mind
4. Strike Gold
5. Southern Comfort
6. Bolt Cutters & The Family Name
7. Blood Harmony 
8. Kick The Blues
9. Might As Well Be Me
10. Summertime Sunset
11. Lips As Cold As Diamond

SoCal rock 'n' roll crew Rival Sons have been kicking out the jams ever since they formed in 2009. So how, after six albums and a decade-plus in existence, did the four-piece find themselves entering 2021 as one of the forerunners of a new, surging musical movement dubbed the “New Wave of Classic Rock”?

“This type of sound is finding popularity as a kind of backlash to what we’ve been fed over the last 10 years,” says Rival Sons guitarist Scott Holiday. “Things move in cycles, and new rock ‘n’ roll – not alternative or metal, like a real rock ‘n’ roll sound – has been very hard to find over the last decade.”

Befitting the NWOCR (New Wave of Classic Rock) moniker, Rival Sons – along with other bands included in this bud-ding genre like Greta Van Fleet, the Struts, Dirty Honey, Dorothy and more – perform music that harkens back to the seminal work of icons like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Cream and others. 

Like the masters, this new class of per-formers are creating hard-hitting, swaggering, riff-driven rock ‘n’ roll built around a core vocal-guitar-bass-drum configuration. Unlike these originals, as Holiday points out, the musical and cultural landscape the up-and-comers are entering hasn’t exactly been welcoming.

But the fickle nature of music trends – and rock’s shifting position in pop culture – is nothing new. Since rock ‘n’ roll first reared its dangerous, distorted grooves in the '50s, the genre’s stature has risen and fallen repeatedly. And “Rock Is Dead” has been proclaimed by many critics, many times over the decades.

But, generation after generation, there’s always a fresh class of kids picking up electric guitars and making an exciting racket – and new rock acts continue to fill clubs (in normal times), rise up the ranks and push the form forward.

What makes this current renaissance particularly interesting is that these bands are starting to experience mainstream crossover success and taking over prime cultural real estate that – for the better part of the last decade or two – has been largely occupied by hip-hop and radio pop.

NWOCR bands are inking major-label deals, soundtracking superhero TV shows and Levi’s campaigns, performing at fashion shows and playing Coachella, topping the Billboard charts, receiving Grammy nods, earning millions of digital streams, attracting legions of world-wide fans and galvanizing a strong grass-roots online community (many of whom congregate on the popular New Wave of Classic Rock Facebook group).

The bands that make up the NWOCR scene are also a diverse bunch, both musically and philosophically. They’re exploring a range of styles – from bluesy and rootsy to glam, progressive and straight-up speaker-rattling rock – and tackling distinctly personal lyrical themes unique to their own experiences and world views. But one unify-ing thread unites them: their sound is built on a firm foundation of guitar-based rock ‘n’ roll that’s full of big riffs, intoxicating grooves, spine-tingling vocals and stadium-sized ambitions.

“Much like the '90s when bands were penned ‘grunge,’ you had a group of bands that honestly didn’t sound very similar or maybe didn’t even really share the same ethos, but they all were under that umbrella,” Holiday says. “It was probably frustrating and weird for all of them to be labeled under this one thing together, but they were better off for it in the end. It became a movement.”

“We embrace it,” says the Struts’ guitarist Adam Slack of the New Wave of Classic Rock label. “We do, however, stand by that we want to push the production of our music into the 21st century, not be carbon copies of the past.”

“Honestly, I don’t know where we fit in or don’t fit in!” says Dirty Honey’s John Notto. “But I do hope we’re carrying the torch of the rock ‘n’ roll that was fun, catchy, soulful, but still grimy and uncompromising. We don’t pressure ourselves to sound like any genre; we just want to add something to the conversation that our heroes started.”

In that spirit, we present 15 rising New Wave of Classic Rock acts that aspire to the great guitar heights of their forebears – bands that are offering up fresh takes on tried-and-true formulas, carrying the classic flame and illuminating the path forward for rock ‘n’ roll.

Rival Sons

Since emerging out of Long Beach, California, in 2009, Rival Sons have become one of the frontrunners of the classic-rock-revival scene. 

Led by guitarist Scott Holiday’s searing riffs and singer/guitarist Jay Buchanan’s bluesy vocals, Rival Sons have cultivated a growing international fanbase and the respect of some top-tier classic acts: Deep Purple, Aerosmith and Black Sabbath have all tapped them as openers.

Their sixth and latest full-length, 2019’s dynamic Feral Roots, was a level-up moment for the crew. The Grammy-nominated album was their first for Atlantic Records imprint Low Country Sound and featured the banging single Do Your Worst — which secured the Number One spot on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart.

“Plenty of folks the world over… definitely are aching for new rock ‘n’ roll: not active rock, not metal, not alternative rock… rock ‘n’ roll. We’ve been here to give them just that,” Holiday says. “Don’t get me wrong – I love all those offshoots, and at any moment we may give you some of that in this band. But at the heart of Rival Sons is that soul- and blues-based dirty garage-y rock ‘n’ roll. And we’re really good at delivering it.”

Crown Lands

This Canadian duo, featuring singer/drummer Cody Bowles and guitarist Kevin Comeau, exude '70s hard-rock energy: from vintage clothes and shaggy hair to speaker-shaking blues riffs, Zep-esque loud/soft dynamics and a healthy dose of psychedelic vibes. 

They’ve released just one full-length, 2020’s Crown Lands, but the band has already gained some high-profile fans: Jack White and Primus have enlisted the young musicians as openers. Crown Lands are also using their platform for change. Bowles is half Mi’kmaq, an indigenous tribe from Nova Scotia, and the duo is committed to raising awareness about the marginalization of First Nations peoples, as heard on songs like End of the Road.

“We want to be a bit more fluid with the way we express our music,” Comeau says. “We have dynamics. We have a softer side we’re not afraid to embrace, and we have a weirder side.”

Dirty Honey

In 2019, Los Angeles four-piece Dirty Honey made history with the release of their self-titled, self-released EP. When its anthemic, riff-filled single When I’m Gone hit Number One on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs airplay chart, it marked the first time that pinnacle had been reached by an unsigned band. 

That achievement was the culmination of a whirlwind few years for the band that also saw Dirty Honey opening for Slash, The Who and Guns N’ Roses. But as far as Les Paul–wielding guitarist John Notto is concerned, the fun is just getting started. The band is readying a new record for 2021 that amplifies the statement they put forth on the debut EP and sees the crew “venturing [into] some new, exciting areas.”

“I think our combination of blues-based riffs, mixed with big choruses, and an overall atmosphere of a party going off the rails gives us a unique sound in today’s music,” Notto says. “There just aren’t many bands out there playing and writing the way we do. A lot of rock now is tight, heavily produced and dark in its mood. We are cavalier, fun, uplifting and unapologetic about it.”

Larkin Poe

Nashville-based outfit Larkin Poe, founded by multi-instrumentalist sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, have refined their rootsy Southern musical style since first bursting onto the scene with 2014’s Kin.

The pair might be best known in blues circles (2018’s Venom & Faith received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album), but they’ve also got some classic-rock-worthy chops (aptly, CSNY, Queen and the Allman Brothers Band are among their formative influences).

One listen to the huge riffs, burning slide licks and gospel-tinged harmonies of 2020’s hit single She’s a Self Made Man and you’ll get the picture.

“The guitar has been a journey of its own. It’s fascinating as a musician to approach the different ranges of an instrument,” says singer/guitarist Rebecca Lovell. “I find it fascinating to listen to Megan play slide and the way she expresses its vocal qualities. That’s something I’ve been really moved by on the guitar – it has such an extensive range...”

Stonefield

Hailing from Australia, Stonefield is the psychedelic, stoner-rock vehicle for the Findlay sisters: Amy (vocals/drums), Hannah (guitar), Holly (bass) and Sarah (keyboards/vocals). The group’s haunting, heady jams – like Sleep from 2019’s Bent – recall the Sabbath-y, Deep Purple end of the classic-rock spectrum: full of deep fuzz, lush keys and riffs for days. 

Stonefield aren’t just conjuring intense musical moments; they’re also confronting some heavy subject matter drawn from the Findlay sisters’ own lives.

“[Bent] is about our own experiences …” Amy says. “Songs about the fear of walking home alone at night, stories of what it’s like being an all-female band and the power of supporting one another. With that being the lyrical subject, the music that came out is definitely our heaviest.”

Nick Perri & the Underground Thieves

Nick Perri is no stranger to the music game. After getting his start in Philadelphia rockers Silvertide, the guitarist moved to Los Angeles, where he became an in-demand support player (for Perry Farrell, Shinedown and many others) and successful composer for commercials, soundtracks and more. (He also launched his own guitar company – Perri Ink Custom Guitars, makers of the Gypsy – along the way).

But the guitarist/singer, who Guitar World last covered in our November 2019 issue, is poised to make his biggest move yet with new band the Underground Thieves, whose 2020 debut, Sun Via, showcased Perri flexing his well-honed skills on everything from funky blues rock (Feeling Good) to emotional, Pink Floyd–esque psychedelia (Fall) and more.

“Most of what you’re hearing me play through these days is a Les Paul, a Marshall JTM45 with Celestion Greenbacks, and a Dunlop Fuzz Face Distortion pedal,” says Perri of his simple, classic setup. “With that combo, I’m more satisfied with my tone than ever before.”

Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown

Texas-born, Nashville-based guitarist Tyler Bryant has been shaking up the guitar world since his teens – when his preternatural blues skills earned him spots opening for icons including Jeff Beck, B.B. King and AC/DC. And Bryant’s hard-charging grooves, big riffs and bigger solos keep getting better with age – as heard on his group’s latest album, 2020’s Pressure. 

Fun facts: Bryant’s co-guitarist Graham Whitford is the son of Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford, and Pressure features a guest spot from Larkin Poe’s Rebecca Lovell – who also happens to be Bryant’s wife.

“Real rock ‘n’ roll, and roots music has always been there, but I think we’re moving back toward the mainstream with it,” says Bryant, last covered in the Slipknot-fronted September 2019 Guitar World. “We’re not changing anything we’re doing. We’ve been doing this since we started the band and we’ve been doing it regardless of what anybody tells us to do. The truth is, we just love real rock ‘n’ roll.”

Dorothy

Singed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, Dorothy are a Los Angeles rock act built around singer/namesake Dorothy Martin. Dorothy’s 2016 debut ROCKISDEAD most definitely made the case that it wasn’t (see gritty, catchy foot stompers Raise Hell and Wicked Ones) and its follow-up, 2018’s 28 Days in the Valley, showcased the band adding even more classic-rock theatrics to the proceedings. 

Martin has collaborated with a number of guitarists over the years (including Nick Perri) and got a songwriting assist on 28 Days from ex–4 Non Blondes singer/hitmaker Linda Perry (Cheap Trick, Dolly Parton). The Martin-Perry pairing resulted in a more diverse sound a la Jefferson Air-plane and the Doors – filled with rich textures, howling guitars and Martin’s undeniable, soaring vocals. Dorothy’s third record, Gifts From the Holy Ghost, is due out later this year.

“We’re not trying to fit into a box,” Martin says. “We’re not trying to write songs we think should be on the radio. We just want to write good music. For me, the challenge is to be as honest as possible.”

The Struts

Since forming in 2012, England’s the Struts have gained worldwide notoriety from their raucous live shows, hip-shaking grooves, propulsive riffs and catchy-as-hell glam-worthy choruses. 

Guitarist Adam Slack comes by the style honestly, as his formative six-string years were spent studying '90s chart-toppers like Green Day and Oasis before getting “hooked” on the '70s sounds of Slade, T. Rex and Mott the Hoople. 

The Struts’ stadium-ready songs have already earned them prime spots opening for the Rolling Stones, the Who and Guns N’ Roses. But the crew upped the ante with their third and latest album, 2020’s Strange Days – a bombastic mix of rockers that pays homage to the hard-partying '80s scene of their adopted home of L.A. and features all-star assists from guest guitarists Phil Collen of Def Leppard and Tom Morello.

“I think music is cyclical and I think it’s about time people just went back to basics,” Slack says. “I think music has been pushed to its boundaries of late and sometimes it’s just good to come back to a few guys or gals in a garage turning amps on and making noise.”

Joyous Wolf

Orange County, California's Joyous Wolf have come a long way since 2014, when vocalist Nick Reese first met guitar-ist Blake Allard in the acoustic room at Guitar Center (where they would jam CCR’s Born on the Bayou). 

In four short years, the group, rounded out by bassist Greg Braccio and drummer Robert Sodaro, dialed in their high-energy, hard-rocking sound (dig their killer 2018 cover of Mississippi Queen) enough to ink a deal with Roadrun-ner Records. 

The Warner Music subsidiary promptly released 2019’s Place in Time – a grunge-infused guitar workout featuring the indisputable jam Mother Rebel – and got them enviable bookings opening for Slash and Deep Purple.

“I’m definitely not reinventing the wheel plugging a Gibson into a Marshall,” Allard says with a laugh. “But I will say the number one thing that I work toward and try to get better at every day is creating music that might give people a different feeling from a rock-influenced band … or at the very least give them a great, fresh listening experience!”

Thunderpussy

Founded by ex-Deerhunter guitarist Whitney Petty, Thunderpussy are a Seattle-based four-piece – also featuring vocalist Molly Sides, bassist Leah Julius and drummer Ruby Dunphy – with a classic-rock spirit… and an unapologetic wild streak. 

Appropriately, their music recalls some OG rabble-rousers, from AC/DC and Led Zeppelin (Never Know and Speed Queen from their 2018 self-titled debut) to Jefferson Airplane (behold their pitch-perfect 2019 cover of Somebody to Love). 

Thunderpussy also boast one legit rock legend in their corner: not only did Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready produce and play on debut single, Velvet Noose, he also gave Petty her main axe: a Gibson McCready edition 1959 Les Paul.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is 100 percent in my bloodstream,” Petty says, “and I have loved and digested so much classic rock over the years, there’s just no way that my writing and sound are not influenced by it. I think we have tried to bring back some of that feel and style for sure. If it ain’t broke – don’t fix it. We are proud to keep the tradition alive.”

Revival Black

Watching Slash's performance in Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction music videos may have first inspired a young Alan Rimmer to take up lead guitar, but it was late, great AC/DC rhythm ace Malcolm Young that led him to choose his current go-to axe: a Gretsch G5230T Electromatic Jet. 

Rimmer channels both of his heroes in Revival Black – the raucous English five-piece in which he shares six-string duties with Adam Kerbache. The crew are currently sequestered at Liverpool’s esteemed Motor Museum Studio (Oasis’ Definitely Maybe, the 1975) track-ing the follow-up to their 2019 debut Step in Line, which Rimmer says is shaping up to be a “hard-hitting,” “grown-up” update to their already high-impact sound.

“We are a live band through and through,” Rimmer says, “so playing live is what we do best. We track all our songs live in the studio, which gives them life and the raw energy that we are after and I think that comes across in our studio albums.”

Station

Founded by guitarist Chris Lane and vocalist Patrick Kearney, Station are a New York City outfit that channel the winning formula of melodic riffs, earworm vocal hooks and soaring solos of '80s hitmakers: from Kiss and Van Halen to Whitesnake and Winger. 

Fittingly, guitarist Chris Lane’s axe of choice is a Jackson SL1 shred machine, which allows him to “go from driving rock to power ballad pretty quick”. Since forming in 2011, Station have released two full-lengths – 2018’s More Than the Moon and 2019’s Stained Glass – and landed spots at big-draw events like Rocklahoma and warming up crowds for Y&T, Pat Benatar, Lynch Mob and more. The band is on track to release their third “spectrum-expanding” record this summer.

“We are very influenced by a lot of bands from the '60s, '70s and '80s, and I think that comes out in our taste in both production and songwriting,” Lane says. “We are always looking to try something new and expand upon the ‘classic sounds,’ but our roots come from a big power chord and a stack of amplifiers behind us.”

The Standstills

Guitarist Jonny Fox caught the classic-rock bug early when he discovered his brother’s Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin collections. The “power and groove” of those bands sent him down a musical path that he still explores to this day with drummer/singer Renee Couture in the Standstills. 

The Canadian duo’s fiery riffs and thundering drums may also evoke modern-day heavies like the White Stripes and Queens of the Stone Age, but Fox isn’t shy about the Standstills’ deep desire to pay tribute to the “really fucking good and timeless” classics of his youth – which is apparent in the “guitar driven, outlaw rock ‘n’ roll” of their latest effort, 2019’s Badlands. 

The Standstills are currently recording their fourth album, which Fox describes as “next level on all fronts.”

“We spend a lot of time jamming on grooves with explosive hooks,” Fox says. “That is most of the foundation in which we built our sound off.  What also sets us apart from the pack is that Renee and I are a duo – our creative energy is uniquely shared, and we feel that tells a different story onstage and in the studio.”

Black Pistol Fire

Guitarist/vocalist Kevin McKeown and drummer Eric Owen seem to have a preternatural musical connection – which makes sense when you learn the two have been friends since kindergarten. 

Since forming Black Pistol Fire in 2011, the Austin-via-Toronto duo has refined its sound through rigorous touring and multiple full-lengths – resulting in a particularly fervent blend of dynamic rock ‘n’ roll, epitomized on infectious cuts like the Black Sabbath-meets-White Stripes burner Suffocation Blues and the garage-y surf guitar of Queens of the Stone Age–esque Lost Cause. 

In January, Black Pistol Fire dropped their new and sixth record, Look Alive, the debut single for which, Hope in Hell, has already surpassed a million streams on Spotify. 

“Every time we hit the stage to play, no matter if it’s a sold-out show or not, we remember why we started doing this,” McKeown says. “And our live show is where we cut our teeth and where we honed our craft. It’s a rollercoaster ride, and the stage is where we come alive.”

We’ve seen Jimi Hendrix do it. Metallica do it for the San Francisco Giants every year. Even Japan's Consul General to the United States, Kanji Yamanouchi has taken it on.

Now Larkin Poe, consisting of sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, have added to the guitar-centric canon of cover versions of The Star-Spangled Banner with an impressive performance filmed on a Nashville rooftop.

The duo taped their rendition as part of FS1’s NASCAR Race Hub on April 21, with Rebecca on Fender Tele electric guitar and Megan on lap steel. You can check it out above.

Additionally, Larkin Poe will appear at the upcoming America Salutes You Presents: A Tribute to Billy Gibbons benefit concert supporting the military, veterans and first responder charities. The duo will perform alongside Brad Paisley, Dennis Quaid, Eric Church, Jimmie Vaughan, Lucinda Williams, Ronnie Milsap, Travis Tritt and others on May 16 at the Grand Ole Opry. Tickets are available for purchase here.

They also recently launched LPTV, a livestreaming and video-on-demand platform that offers multiple channels providing exclusive concerts and other original content.

And for more Larkin Poe, check out Guitar World’s deep dive with the sisters into gear, tone, telepathy and their 2020 covers album, Kindred Spirits.

Over the last 10 or so years, sibling duo Larkin Poe have become one of the most exciting prospects in guitar music, thanks to their tasteful musicianship and heavenly harmonies. 

Latest release Kindred Spirits sees them return to the “covers” format that originally got them noticed, giving us their take on classic hits by Elton John, Neil Young and Elvis Presley, as well as more contemporary cuts by Lenny Kravitz and Post Malone.

“The beauty of the song selection for this was in how organically it all came together,” says Rebecca Lovell, who sings lead and plays guitars, banjos and mandolins in the group while her sister Megan usually sticks with lap steel and harmonies. 

“And though it might not seem apparent on the surface, there’s definitely a thread that connects all of these songs. When we first heard the Post Malone song, which features Ozzy Osbourne, I just thought that melody was so cool. And though it’s super modern, Megan and I stripped it back and started playing around with singing it ourselves, trying to nip and tuck the verse parts into more Larkin Poe land.”

“And it really came together,” agrees Megan. “We thought it would be fun to use our approach with a newer song, just to see what would happen. I think it fits in with the classic songs, it kinda has the same feel to it.”

Megan, what can you tell us about your main lap steel guitar? 

Megan Lovell: “I first picked up a Rickenbacker. A family friend said they’d seen this really cool vintage one at Gruhn’s Guitars in Nashville, which is an iconic guitar shop, and suggested I go and get it. They felt I would love the tone of the instrument and it wouldn’t steer me wrong. 

“At the time I was playing Dobro 100 percent of the time, so this was my first foray into electric instruments. I went with their suggestion and bought the Rickenbacker. I feel like I really lucked into it because this is my sound. I fell in love with it and set the Dobro aside because I felt the lap steel could tap into the sounds I was searching for. 

“Growing up listening to a lot of classic rock and electric stuff, the lap steel married my love of slide and those fat tones I’d been listening to for so long. That instrument lasted me a number of years until there was an unfortunate accident in a taxi cab in New York City. The driver slammed on the brakes and the instrument went flying; the neck broke off, unfortunately.

“That was my first love! I knew I needed an identical model to replace it, or one as close as I could find. I ended up looking all over the country and – surprise, an identical model popped up at a Guitar Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. So that’s where my number one ax came from!“

What else do you know about the specs?

Megan: “It’s a B6 model from the early '50s. Nothing has been changed – it’s all original down to the tuners, which are really bent! I’ve wanted to replace them for a while, but one thing about these vintage lap steels is that there aren’t many replacement parts; there’s not much of a demand for it. By default, things have to stay fairly original.“

Rebecca Lovell: “And knowing my sister, I find this quite humorous, she’s very much a tried-and-true individual once she finds something she digs. Her pedalboard has not changed in years. 

“She basically buys the same lap steel over and over again, to the point where all of our musical friends immediately send her links when they see a lap steel that’s even remotely similar on Reverb, Craigslist or eBay. And now as a result, Megan has these half-severed versions of this lap steel all over her house. Whenever parts give up, she tries to keep them rock ’n’ rolling.“

What kind of amps and pedals do you both tend to use?

Megan: “I’m a Fender tube amp junkie. I have an old Vibrolux, but most of the time I’m touring with a standard Deluxe Reverb. Pedal-wise, I’m pretty stripped back and don’t really tend to use a lot of stuff. 

“I do actually use [Rebecca’s husband] Tyler Bryant’s pedal, the TB Drive by Rodenberg, and it’s a custom one that was made for me. Tyler had “Slide Queen” engraved on it for me. I love that pedal; the tones are great. I was using a Tube Screamer before, and this is almost like having two stacked on top of each other. It’s so versatile.“

Rebecca: “Kindred Spirits was a bit of a twist and a turn for me because I don’t actually play any electric on the record. I actually used this Beard Guitars Sidecar acoustic. He’s an incredible builder in the north, I think around Virginia, predominantly focused on resophonic guitars – a lot of Dobros and square-necks [resonators] to an immaculate standard. 

“Over the last couple of years, he’s transitioned into making acoustics. My brother-in-law, Megan’s husband Mike Seal – an incredible guitarist in his own right – was given one of these Beard Deco Phonic Sidecar acoustics, which I became obsessed with. I was borrowing it all the time and realized I shouldn’t be stealing someone else’s.“ 

So, of course, you had to get your own.

Rebecca: “Yup, I got one for myself and fell in love with it. I actually have two now; I bought one to replace the first one because it was used for Kindred Spirits and we’re auctioning it off to raise proceeds for our one of favorite foundations, Reach Out and Read.

“It’s a very special guitar; I’ve written a lot on it. On the Lenny Kravitz track, I broke out Tyler’s pink resonator, which was built by Mule. He’s another phenom builder, making these really cool resonators.

“I think the actor Jason Momoa is one of his biggest clients and is always promoting Mule. That was about it for me. On more traditional Larkin Poe days, I’m all about the Strat – I have two that are in main rotation. One belonged to Tyler but I’ve taken it now. [Laughs] And recently I’ve started stepping into the Telecaster world.“

Rebecca, you’ve spoken of your electric influences in the past, but since it’s an acoustic record, which players do you think had the most impact on your style?

Rebecca: “I love this question because I’ve never been asked it before! We came up on bluegrass, so in our early teens that’s what we were playing. My main introduction to rhythm acoustic guitar was in that field, and there’s a very distinct style of the right hand with a lot of those players. 

“There’s this swagger that no matter how hard I try I can’t quite get out of my right hand. If you listen to any of the players from the Del McCoury Band or someone like Dan Tyminski – there’s this undeniable swagger, that’s definitely the best word to describe it. 

“When I accompany myself and Megan with an acoustic, that’s always at the forefront of my mind – providing a lot of the rhythm, covering the backbeat and downbeat with my right hand to keep it propelling and moving forward in time. As for major acoustic influences and the players I’d aspire to channel into my writing, there’s Skip James!

“He is the coolest acoustic guitar player. I find what he does so unusual, especially for a blues musician of that time period. Using all that cross-tuning, he really took it somewhere special. That’s someone I listen to on pretty much a daily basis. If I’m not doing anything else, I’ll have some Skip James going and slowly seeping into my own playing.

We couldn’t help but notice you’d twisted an Elvis hit – (You’re the) Devil in Disguise – from major into minor.

Rebecca: “When we set out to select songs for the album, we obviously had hundreds to pick from, and already so many that we’d covered online. We wanted to branch out and treat people to something new from us. 

“We love the idea of taking a happy song and turning it into minor, that feels very cinematic. We were scouring some of our favorite artists, and we hold Elvis in high esteem. Hearing those lyrics we immediately realized it would be so much fun to screw with and create this demonic dance…“

Megan: “Because those lyrics are crying out to be sinister!“

Rebecca: “We sat here in the kitchen and messed around. Megan cross-tuned her lap steel, which she doesn’t do very often. Usually it’s tuned to a major triad chord in G. This time it was minor.“

What else would you say are important things for slide and lap steel players to look out for? 

Megan: “First off, pitch is super-important. That’s something you don’t have to think as much about on guitar or any fretted instrument. That’s a major part of it. I started out on violin, so intonation has always been a huge part of playing for me. One thing I actually didn’t enjoy about playing fretted instruments is how it left me missing that part of it. 

“I love the fact that you have to be super cognizant of the pitch. Holding the bar, and using banjo picks, feels very awkward at first and very wrong. Just push through that. It won’t last long; if you push through the awkward phase it will start feeling natural pretty quickly.“

Rebecca: “From an outside perspective, having been around Megan’s entire lap steel career, what I think is super important is the character of the vibrato. And that’s something she does innately. 

“I recently watched a video where Mike Campbell was talking about the importance of developing the character of your vibrato. It says so much about who you are as a player and the emotional qualities you can express. When Megan plays, it sounds like she’s singing.“

Have you ever tried swapping instruments just to see what would happen?

Rebecca: “I did try to play lap steel and I couldn’t push through it. I didn’t have enough perseverance. But what’s important to note is that if you have the fortitude to get proficient and go through that awkwardness, it pays dividends. 

It’s such a unique instrument and it’s so emotional, there’s nothing else like it. I have directly benefited from the fact that Megan has become such a beautiful player, because there’s not many! I think people should stick with it…“

“I don’t know why it’s not a more common instrument. People need to push through the awkwardness of the mechanics, keeping that bar on the frets, playing in tune with both hands working well together. Once they’ve done that, the main thing will be the vibrato. That’s the absolute arrow and dagger to the heart of steel playing.

Megan: “Side B of that equation is that, because it has such a vocal quality, you really have to be cognizant of the range you’re playing with, especially if there’s a singer. It’s very easy to walk on the vocalist. 

“I’ve spent many years working with Rebecca on how to intertwine myself around her voice; especially as two female singers, we have similar ranges. I think sometimes the lap steel gets pegged into a corner as more of a country or Hawaiian thing, but it’s really versatile. I hope it becomes more popular. 

As teenagers you found out that your family was connected to Edgar Allan Poe, the tortured genius who wrote The Raven. That’s a pretty cool relative to have.

Rebecca: “This is true! And yeah, we actually didn’t know about it for many years. We had a family genealogist who went back and did the work when we were in our mid-teens. Our folks home-schooled us, so we were kinda free-range children in the bookshelves and we were huge Edgar Allan Poe fans. 

“To find that connection was special and carry that sense of family through our music, hoping there’s a trickle-down effect of at least some shred of literary propensity! It’s pretty exciting to be related to someone like that.“

Having grown up together, as well as sharing DNA, do you find it’s quite easy to finish each other’s musical sentences without really talking out loud?

Rebecca: “That is definitely the case. Longstanding musical relationships are built on trust. I’ve seen band members who have been together for years and years… it’s a bit like how owners start to look more like their dogs. Everyone starts to lump together – there’s a shared experience, shared memories and shared musical instincts. 

“Looking at footage of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you can see all of those guys can finish each other’s sentences musically. In that sense, that’s been earned by time. We’ve muscled through 15 years of playing together; what makes it special is that many sibling bands aren’t able to weather that through. 

“We are gifted with an extra je ne sais quoi in that we are sisters and our voices are similar and we are able to communicate on stage. There’s a very strong siblinghood there that’s undeniable. I find it tragic that, more often than not, a lot of sibling bands end up imploding because they cannot manage the weight being placed on the relationship of brother or sister.

“That’s something we’ve been able to kill, I think, working through issues, writing together, owning a business together and being sisters, sharing family. There’s a lot of trust and that’s the main basis.“

And does that ever feel hard to maintain? 

Megan: “Not really – though we’ve worked hard to maintain that trust. We’re together every day working, but we also do fun things together. Just the other day we made apple butter and canned it. We have a special relationship built on so many years of touring together but also the fact that we’re really close in age, less than two years apart, and were always a package deal from the very beginning!“

Rebecca: “I wish everyone could experience it. Hearing about sibling relationships that are fraught make me so sad… because it’s us against the world. If we weren’t making music together, I don’t think either of us would have taken a shot at it professionally. 

“It’s a very challenging field and there’s a lot of juggling that’s required, but we have it down between the two of us. We’re definitely a pack. It’s nice to have a pack – hell or high water we will stick together and will keep making records until we can’t walk anymore!“

By the way, Megan – did you ever get around to fixing that original Rickenbacker?

Megan: “I did actually find a lap steel body and put in that original pickup from that first one! The guts of that guitar found a new home and now that’s become my hallowed instrument; I don’t take it out on the road. It stays at the house and stays pristine. 

“I also have this lap steel holder that I use to stand up on stage, because I cannot abide sitting down – I have to run around! So I have this retrofitted holder that my guitars slot into, and that’s why they’re all so beaten up. They’re constantly sliding in and out of this holder and they get really scratched up. 

“You would see that on any of the lap steels I’ve brought out on the road. The worst point is always the part that rests against my body; there’s always a thick line of scratches on that side, which is weird!“

Rebecca: “It’s really cool, though, because it’s all worn away. Typically the lap steels are black and white, but now that’s worn away and you see this green underneath. It’s really crazy. We call the holder 'the Bedpan,' which is very unflattering, but it definitely looks like one…

“There’s only one of them in the world. We’ve had fans around the world who’ve tried creating replicas for Megan, because if she lost it she’d be up shit creek! It’s falling apart and is duct taped together, so she really needs a new one…

• Larkin Poe's new album, Kindred Spirits, is out now via Tricki Woo.

In a year beset by a global crisis, one of the most gratifying, triumphant pieces of music news came from, of all places, the Grammy awards. For the first time ever, the Best Rock Performance category was made up of all-female nominees, among them HAIM, Brittany Howard, Grace Potter, Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple and the Adrianne Lenker-fronted Big Thief.

It’s perhaps the most concrete example yet of the changing face of rock music, and by extension guitar playing, in popular culture.

And while we celebrate female players every day at GuitarWorld.com, in honor of International Women’s Day, we’d like to salute the guitarists who took the guitar in new directions, broke new ground and generally made the guitar world an exciting place to be over the past 12 months.

In truth, there is no limit to the number of artists we could include in such a list, but these are the players who we believe changed the game since the start of the pandemic.

1. H.E.R.

We could fill most of this article with the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter’s achievements over the past year – an Academy Award nomination, multiple Tonight Show appearances, a freaking Super Bowl performance – but becoming the first Black female artist to have a signature Fender guitar could prove to have the longest-lasting impact.

The H.E.R. Stratocaster is a stunning, spec’d-up take on Fender’s most iconic design, kitted out with a head-turning Chrome Glow finish and noiseless pickups, but the model’s significance goes far beyond good looks and great tones.

“The coolest thing about it all is being the first Black woman to have her own signature guitar with Fender,” H.E.R. told GW in an exclusive interview.

“I think it will inspire a lot of young Black girls – and actually a lot of young girls in general – to pick up the guitar, which is something we don’t see enough of.”

And it appears that change is already underway: searches for H.E.R.'s signature Fender Stratocaster doubled following that awe-inspiring Super Bowl performance back in February.

2. Jasmine Star

When you’re faced with just one minute to demonstrate your skills, you need to make every second count. And there are few guitarists who can match the pace of Jasmine Star, who at 17 years old, has become one of TikTok’s biggest guitarists, thanks to performance videos brimming with technique and creativity.

Star has covered everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Jason Becker, but it’s her videos shredding over the likes of Foo Fighters and Greta Van Fleet that won her headlines from the wider music press this month.

“One of my favorite things to do in the world is look for good music, no matter the genre,” Star told us last year. “I search and search and search for all the music that I can find.”

That thirst for new sounds and new skills ultimately landed Star a spot in the Young Guitarist of the Year 2020 finals with an original track and a dazzling display of technical expertise.

3. Carmen Vandenberg

There was no NAMM this year, but January 2021 still saw a raft of gear announcements, among them Blackstar’s all-new CV30, a sharp-looking, smartly appointed combo designed by Carmen Vandenberg – which makes her the first woman to have a signature guitar amp.

Vandenberg may have described the experience as “a dream that I have never even dreamed about”, but her pedigree as a player proceeds her: she not only played with one of the all-time greats in Jeff Beck, but also co-wrote his 2016 album, Loud Hailer, while rock duo Bones UK received a Grammy nod for their debut album.

A follow-up is currently in the works – while it was temporarily set back by writer’s block, Vandenberg is determined to solider on.

“The audience’s faces and joy is what fills my batteries and without that – I felt a bit lost last year,” Vandenberg told us. “I lost that incentive to write, and I am getting it back. [The amp] has been a huge inspiration and a push. You can dwell in self-pity for a little bit but then you have got to get out of it.”

4. Amy Love (Nova Twins)

With London-based duo Nova Twins, Amy Love is carving a new path in rock music – one that weaves the bass-heavy sonics of UK grime and hip-hop with the abrasiveness of punk and alt-rock into one of the most exhilarating genre mash-ups to feature six strings and a boatload of effects pedals.

But Nova Twins’ ambitions go far beyond changing rock; they’re on a cultural mission, too. To that end Love and bandmate Georgia South this year assembled a limited-edition compilation, Nova Twins Presents Voices For The Unheard , to showcase POC alternative artists.

“I am half-Iranian and half-Nigerian,” Love told Total Guitar. “I think when you are already from different cultures and backgrounds, you already don’t necessarily feel like you can fit in. You do feel on the outside sometimes, and I think when that happens you look elsewhere. There was no point where I thought, ‘This is where I belong.’

“I had the privilege to just walk around and take my pick. Obviously, the people who looked like me were in the hip-hop category, so I was looking at people like Missy Elliott and Destiny’s Child, and more R&B/hip-hop artists. I think that is why [Nova Twins have] quite a broad sound and it crosses over.”

5. Nandi Bushell

Throughout lockdown, this 11-year-old Londoner has communicated with more musicians than your average GW writer, with Tom Morello, Flea and Dave Grohl all lining up to sing the praises of the multi-instrumentalist wunderkind.

But it’s the performances, and the sheer joy Bushell exudes, that should fill guitarists with the kind of giddy sensation they had when they first plugged in, dialed up the gain and rung out that E chord.

But Bushell abilities go far beyond what most guitarists are capable of at 11 (and, indeed, when turned up to 11). It’s why Dave Grohl wrote songs about her, and why Tom Morello gifted her a guitar and commended her for “recogniz[ing] the purity and authenticity of holding a guitar in your hands, stepping on the distortion pedal and just rocking the f**k out”.

The rest of the world noticed, too: Nandi’s cover of Rage Against the Machine’s Guerrilla Radio, shared in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, was GuitarWorld.com’s single biggest news story of 2020.

Sidenote: we’ve spotted a nifty metallic blue HSS Strat with an angled bridge humbucker in Nandi’s latest clips. Can we get a Nandi Bushell Stratocaster sometime soon, pretty please, Fender?

6. Rebecca and Megan Lovell (Larkin Poe)

While much of 21st-century guitardom is focused on the pursuit of perfection, Larkin Poe’s Lovell sisters seek to keep the flame of roots Americana burning with a distinctly old-school recording approach: guitars are cut live and vocal takes are limited to just a few run-throughs to retain the humanity.

“We love roots American music, and not putting it behind glass, and giving it the opportunity to breathe, to go to new places, feels very important,” Rebecca told us last year.

“To keep that lifeblood kicking through the music and make sure it’s got a pulse, ‘cos the last thing we want to do is treat blues music, bluegrass, or America like a time capsule.”

Last year’s Self Made Man was filled with monster electric and lap-steel riffs rooted in the blues, but with hooks and production that nod towards contemporary pop. And with their progressive approach, Rebecca and Megan are bringing one of the genres most synonymous with guitar to a new generation.

7. Yvette Young

Yvette Young’s announcement as Ibanez’s second-ever female signature artist – following Nita Strauss – technically arrived just prior to the past year. But what she’s done with that model since continues to be an inspiration.

Last year’s Technicolor was an uplifting, technically astounding achievement for her math-rock outfit Covet, but Young has used the platform her abilities have given her to promote positivity and inclusivity on the instrument. After all, this is an artist for whom guitar saved her life.

The definition of a guitarist who carves their own path, Young has also espoused the importance of measuring success in your own way, and finding your own individuality on the instrument – something that landed her the cover of Total Guitar’s January 2021 issue.

8. Arielle

It’s one thing to be championed by Brian May – and with compliments like “Arielle’s playing reaches places I never knew existed”, no less – but it’s another to convince the Queen founder to create the first Brian May Guitars model that, well, isn’t for Brian May.

Yet the American singer-songwriter has made her dream a reality, with a signature model that splices an Explorer with Red Special DNA, and is all the cooler for it.

Similarly, Arielle’s musical leanings span the decades. Her forthcoming debut album, appropriately titled Analog Girl in a Digital World, is recorded half-digital, half-tape, with each track captured in a single take. The style may be rooted in the past, but the approach takes the best of classic and contemporary.

9. Diamond Rowe (Tetrarch)

Tetrarch are on the verge of world domination. Their anthemic brand of heavy – which draws deep from nu-metal and metalcore – has resonated on a colossal scale, with their most recent singles amassing well over a million views apiece. It’s no wonder new album, Unstable, was snapped up by Napalm Records for worldwide release at the end of April.

But it’s lead guitarist Diamond Rowe who really makes the Tetrarch sound shine. Her riffs span Trivium head-bangers to Gojira wrecking balls, while her leads team technical precision with the modulated eeriness of Head and Munky’s finest output.

A regular ESP demo artist and the first African-American female metal guitarist to be featured in major industry publications – GW included – Rowe is an inspiration to the next generation of metal players.

10. Helen Ibe

Helen Ibe is known for formidable jazz guitar playing in her home country of Nigeria, but her worldwide followers will be more familiar with her tasteful neo-soul electric licks, as showcased on her burgeoning YouTube channel.

2020 saw Ibe’s fanbase increase at an impressive rate thanks to a surge of new video output, from no-nonsense, tonesome guitar demos to masterful instrumental cover versions, and smart tips on topics such as how to teach yourself how to play guitar.

With original material in the works and a welcoming persona, Ibe serves as a refreshing reminder of the raw guitar talent that YouTube can unearth.

11. Lari Basilio

Ibanez shocked the gear world this year with the launch of its own Tele-inspired AZS range, and alongside Josh Smith, the Japanese guitar giant signed up Brazilian virtuoso Lari Basilio for its first signature models in the new body shape.

The LB1 is a model deserving of Basilio’s ability, equipped with signature Seymour Duncan pickups, Gotoh tremolo and a custom finish inspired by her signature shade of lipstick.

It also inspired her to write and record Sunny Days, her first new material since 2019’s exemplary Far More, which showcases the touch, dynamism and flair with which she’s made her name.

“It was challenging doing everything from a distance, but Ibanez nailed the LB1 in the first sample they sent me,” she told Guitarist magazine.

“I knew this was it. I felt at home immediately. I didn’t need any time to adapt to the guitar, which is the first time that’s happened.”

12. Phoebe Bridgers

Way back in the introduction to this piece, we mentioned those all-female Grammy nominations – and few artists have received quite so many awards nods as Phoebe Bridgers, who is up for Best New Artist, Best Alternative Album, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance.

Last year’s Punisher was truly a defining achievement for one of today’s premier singer-songwriters – lyrically devastating and swathed in must-learn chord progressions, it quickly shot up the ranks of album-of-the-year lists.

Yet, somehow, it was Bridgers’ performance of I Know the End on Saturday Night Live – you know, the one where she had the sheer audacity to smash a guitar on live television – that generated the most attention.

But guitar-playing Bridgers fans knew what’s up: this is a player who eschews conventions. Someone who made a Danelectro ’56 baritone – the victim of aforementioned smashing – her main performance partner, or who brings out a budget Bronze by B.C. Rich Warlock to play open-tuned rhythm guitar on a multiple Grammy-nominated indie-rock single.

Phoebe Bridgers is a reminder that there are no rules when it comes to guitar – a sentiment that holds true now more than ever.

They’re not a power couple in the Kim and Kanye sense, but Tyler Bryant and Rebecca Lovell are serious players with big reputations – Rebecca starring with her sister Megan in the acclaimed roots-rock duo Larkin Poe, and Tyler, with his band The Shakedown, having played on some of the world’s biggest stages as opening act for  AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses. 

So it made sense for the two of them to work together, and that’s what happened this year. Rebecca plays and sings on Pressure, the new album from Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown. And Tyler has had a hand in the making of Larkin Poe’s acoustic covers album Kindred Spirits.  

Speaking together from their home in Nashville, they talk TG through their musical dynamic as a married couple, as well as the sounds heard on their latest endeavours...  

What was it like working together for parts of this album? 

Tyler: “It was awesome to have Rebecca on Crazy Days. She sang a little bit on Misery and Hitchhiker too. Noah Denney left the band in February, so a lot of the higher harmonies we’ve had in the Shakedown were now missing. I asked myself, ‘Who are the best singers I know?’ and Rebecca was on top of that list.” 

Rebecca: “I don’t know if it was a case of something lacking, I was just excited to get in there and add some soulful BVs! I definitely heard a lot of the process... We have a house together and a home studio that Tyler set up with the band in the basement. So I was getting a healthy dose of rock and roll from the boys in the house!

“I was just excited to be a part of the process. They’re incredibly self-sufficient musicians, down there rocking! They didn’t need any help, but to be able to go in and contribute to the party was a real blast.”

As a married couple, how exactly do you play off and inspire each other? 

Rebecca: “The inspiration part is not hard at all. We’re both hard workers and very dedicated to the arts. Music is a large part of our everyday lives, if we’re not playing then we are listening to music or watching interviews on YouTube... So it tends to be a musical free-for-all! When we first got together, there was a lot of competitive spirit between the two of us...”

Tyler: “We’re both very much the leaders of our own respective bands!”

Rebecca: “We’re definitely alpha wolves! We’ve learned over time and with trust, and through all the shared time together, how to make music really fun. Tyler actually helped me write one of my favourite tracks on our most recent album Self Made Man called Back Down South. 

“Setting up gear and making music with someone I love so deeply but also respect is such a joy. Having the home studio here has been great and Tyler has taught himself how to engineer. Now we can record music as a family... It’s a pretty special connection and we are very fortunate.”

Tyler: “We recorded Kindred Spirits here at home. I had the privilege of engineering it. I didn’t have anything creative to say other than, ‘Maybe we should move that microphone...’ and it was cool to play a very different role to what I play in the Shakedown. I was more of a fly on the wall, experiencing their process of recording and how that goes instead of my own which is more chaotic [laughs]!”

Speaking of Kindred Spirits, it seems as if you are only playing acoustic guitar this time round, Rebecca...

Rebecca: “Yeah! It was all recorded live in about four or five days. That was a unique experience, because as children of the 80s and 90s, it’s always been a very isolated and pristine kind of thing. You track the vocals separately, everyone is in different rooms to eliminate bleed and so on. 

“For this project, we wanted to be a lot more rock – just sitting in a room together and capturing the recording similarly to how we do a lot of our cover videos on YouTube and Facebook. As a player and vocalist, I learned how to find the confidence to just go for it. Previously, I would have been too nervous to commit to vocals right off the bat with my sister at the same time. But playing live together, you have to give up that control of making it all incredibly perfect. 

“Instead of tweaking it like that, we decided to be a bit more raw. I feel very lucky to have blazed those trails in the room with Tyler as a support system as well. We’ve learned how to support each other as musicians, players and writers – as well as a married couple. Support is key to us and we don’t take it lightly.” 

Tyler: “We also like to make up classic country songs over a cup of coffee!”

So where exactly would you say your influences differ? 

Tyler: “Rebecca comes from more of a bluegrass background. She will comfortably go to that place while I tend to go back to being a teenage punk rocker! We have different influences in that regard. I’m more steeped in heavier blues and '90s grunge!” 

Rebecca: “Obviously these are rough approximations – both of our goals is to sound like unique and individual players. I definitely hear a lot of Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan in Tyler’s playing, whereas I might err more on the side of a Doc Watson or Bryan Sutton. Those are my roots as a bluegrass player. With my sister as an incredible slide player and Tyler as this consummate shredder... I’m just buckling up and trying to hang onto the reins, baby!” 

Tyler: “Yeah, but whenever I have friends over, I always try to get Rebecca to pick up a mandolin because they always freak out!”

There are some truly mouth-watering fuzz tones on Pressure. What exactly did you end up using, Tyler? 

Tyler: “One that ended up on every single song except for the acoustic tune was my signature pedal – the Rodenberg TB Drive. I grew up in Texas, so I was always a Tube Screamer guy. Every Texas blues player I liked had a Tube Screamer on the board. Some of them would even have two – one which was set clean and used more like a boost, then another for more gain. 

“I was struggling to find ones that sounded exactly how I wanted. My guitar tech was on a guitar forum one day and found out about Rodenberg. He went out on a limb and bought one of the pedals, it was a dual stage overdrive based on a Tube Screamer. 

“He brought it to me and I had a couple of thoughts on it. I reached out to Rodenberg after four years of using the pedal to say it was my favourite pedal and that I’d used it on every record, as well as potentially tweaking it out a little bit. That’s how this pedal came to be.”

And how did it end up being different to the drives you were using before?

Tyler: “It’s essentially two Tube Screamers, you have the option on one channel to kick in an extra gain stage – that’s the secret to how I get all the sustain and hold notes for so long. There’s a bass boost on each channel for extra fatness... That helps me out a lot, playing single-coils or resonators. It’s a pretty versatile pedal.

“When I first reached out I said there was something going on with Instagram, it’s where guitar players were hanging out. I said if we could make five or ten pedals, we could sell them pretty easily. They didn’t turn the pre-order off in time and we pre-sold a hundred. It just kept going from there, I think we’re at 600 pedals now, just through Instagram alone, with no advertising.”

Talk us through what else we’re hearing on the record...

Tyler: “For the fuzz tones where my speaker sounds like it’s actually dying it will have been a number of things – I have an amplifier made by Square Amps. It’s tiny little six-inch speaker thing that runs at four watts. That amp is basically a fuzz pedal, it seems! Dunlop sent one of those new Billy Gibbons Octave Fuzz pedals, the Siete Santos.

“I also had a Jext Telez Dizzy Tone and ZVEX Mastotron. For Coastin’ I used a new guitar made by Mule Resonators in Saginaw, Michigan. It’s a shell pink tricone resonator with a maple neck that’s heavy as hell but it sounds amazing for those Johnny Winter slide licks I like to copy. My two pink Strats are all over this record – the main one has the Shawbucker humbucker in the bridge.

“I have this other Custom Shop Strat called The Judge, with a Tele neck pickup and Eddie Van Halen humbucker in the bridge. It’s a really wacky guitar! I’ve also got my 1960 Strat which got used on a few things, plus a Duesenberg 59er for a couple of things and this Banker Flying V Goldtop.

“And for amps, it was mainly a Custom 50 handwired Orange head through a Universal Audio Ox Box while simultaneously running a ’59 handwired Marshall Plexi-style thing through a cabinet in the room with mics. Oh, and a Marshall Silver Jubilee too. So, all the usual suspects plus a few new welcome additions!”

You also make and sell backing tracks for guitar players...

Tyler: “Yeah, with all of our shows being cancelled this year, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to all those kids downloading my backing tracks. It’s a creative exercise for me to make them every day and I build them all from the ground up. As a guitar player, the feeling of playing over dead air is not as exciting as playing with a band or backing track. I like the structure to bounce around within.”

What do you think is the secret to great blues playing and how much do you think about moving from minor to major pentatonics and Mixolydian scales? 

Tyler: “To be honest, I don’t know any scales or theory. It’s funny – when you tell me what scales are in my songs I’m like, ‘Wow, this is news to me!’ What I would say is that anyone who wants to get into the heart of blues playing needs to hear Live Wire/Blues Power by Albert King.

“It was one of those pivotal records for me as a kid – less about the notes he was playing but rather how he was getting there, how he would bend into each note and the tension it would create. Play along to your favourite records, learn the licks and figure out how you would play them. Whenever I hit walls, I just take a break or go from shredding to playing cowboy songs... That helps it all feel fresh again!”

• Larkin Poe's new album, Kindred Spirits, is out now via Tricki-Woo.
• Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown's new album, Pressure, is out now via Spinefarm.

From the bandmates scattered into solitary lockdown, to the fans left wondering if they have felt the hot crush of the front row for the final time, these have been hard months for all who thrive on rock ’n’ roll’s fundamental push-and-pull. 

Larkin Poe have keenly felt the loss of live music. Since 2014’s debut album, Kin, the onstage telepathy between Rebecca and Megan Lovell has been something to behold, the Nashville-residing sisters switching up instruments as they stoke a setlist taking in rock, blues, soul and psychedelia. 

Thankfully, while the live scene revives, this year’s anthemic Self Made Man album is the closest thing to the shivers of a night out in their company.  

What’s the backstory to Self Made Man? 

Megan Lovell (lap steel/backing vocals): “We did a lot of touring in 2018 and 2019, leading up to making Self Made Man. It was an incredible experience, we felt such a groundswell beneath us. We were touring like we never had before – entire tours selling out, people knowing all the lyrics. For this album, we were trying to capture that live energy we were feeling at our shows, and writing songs we could imagine singing with the audience.”   

How did you settle on the album title? 

Rebecca Lovell (vocals/guitar/mandolin/banjo): “She’s A Self Made Man was one of the first songs we wrote, so titling the album after that felt like a natural decision. I was inspired to write the song based on my own relationship to that phrase, ‘self made man’. I’d found myself saying it with some regularity, y’know, about men in my family who’d had success. 

“It never occurred to me that I was actively gender-qualifying success by attaching the word ‘man’. I wanted to tear apart that sentiment in my own head and address the insidious nature of inequality in kind of a playful way. And we certainly do feel like self-made men. We’ve fought tooth and nail for 15 years to maintain a foothold in a competitive industry.”

Is there pressure on female artists to be the stereotypical ‘girl with acoustic?’ 

Rebecca: “I don’t know that there’s necessarily pressure placed on conformity. It’s more representation. Within the rock and blues world, it is absolutely a male-dominated genre. Even now, when you look at the US bands that have radio success, you can count the female groups on one hand.

“For a lot of genres outside pop, there’s a divide that is hard to explain – because it’s certainly not for a lack of ability. We need that representation. We need more Joan Jetts, Bonnie Raitts, Suzi Quatros, and then going back to the Koko Taylors and Sister Rosetta Tharpes. We need to make sure these really important cultural performers – who just so happen to be female – are acknowledged by the next generation of music-makers.”

Larkin Poe have played their part… 

Rebecca: “We’re happy to be part of that shift. We roll up to venues and I think people see our tour poster and expect they’re gonna get something, based on our picture. We’ve really enjoyed freaking people out a bit. And I think a lot of people can appreciate that experience, that a female band can be just as loud as the boys. 

“I do think it’s up to people in power [to help] – like Joe Bonamassa, who’s been incredibly inclusive of bands that certainly don’t fit into the mould of a blues band. I’ve looked at his line-ups consistently, and the artists he chooses to include across the board – it’s really inspiring.”

Megan, how did you approach your slide solos on the new album?

Megan: “It kinda varies. On Back Down South, I think I improvised that one. In the studio, we like to take things away in our production technique, leave things as raw as possible, kinda leave the humanity in it. For that song, I played a few solos through then we picked the best one.” 

Rebecca, you play instruments spanning from mandolin to banjo. How does that enrich your guitar work? 

Rebecca: “Music is definitely a language. You pick up some vocabulary that transcends across the instruments. Y’know, I spent many years working on mandolin, learning to improvise and move with fluidity. But in terms of the sheer mechanics, that’s really helped with picking up the guitar later in life. 

“The guitar has been a journey of its own. It’s fascinating as a musician to approach the different ranges of an instrument. Like, the cello is beautiful to the human ear because it mimics a human voice. And I find it fascinating to listen to Megan play slide and the way she expresses its vocal qualities. That’s something I’ve been really moved by on the guitar – it has such an extensive range, from low to high, that you can get into a lot of different territories.”

How do you stay out of each other’s way, sonically? 

Rebecca: “I think it’s fairly intuitive at this point – especially given that Megan and I have spent so much of our lives playing music, just the two of us. If I’m playing in a certain range, Megan will naturally riff somewhere else and vice versa. We kinda have that non-verbal communication most of the time, which is either an asset or a curse, depending on the day [laughs].” 

Megan: “It’s an interesting challenge. With the guitar being the main riff driver of the band, I have to find a way to not tread on that. I find I tend to stay in higher registers, away from the guitar. So I think I’m probably more proficient in the higher registers, simply because I tend to try to play higher than the guitar and also higher than Rebecca’s voice – because the lap steel is such a vocal instrument that I have to also be aware not to walk on her vocal.”

How different are your personal record collections at this point? 

Rebecca: “Given how much time we’ve spent together, I think the line between us has become more blurred than with usual band members or siblings. Having grown up in the same household, of course, we listened to the same records, from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, to Queen and the Allman Brothers. 

“There’s a lot of classic rock we both really connect on. I tend towards some heavier music. By the same token, Megan will sometimes tend towards more gentle music than I would, like Sufjan Stevens.” 

Megan: “I love a melodically written album. Like, I love so much of Pink Floyd. When we write together, our styles of writing melodies are fairly different. But then there’s a lot of broadening of horizons. Rebecca is a huge Chris Whitley fan. I just didn’t get it at first, but because she was playing it so much in the van, it got under my skin and I’m a big fan now. So I think our differences can be strengths, too, if you give it a chance.”

How do those differences come out in your songwriting? 

Rebecca: “It’s an interesting point: the things that divide us musically, they help us when we’re writing songs. Megan is so good at writing beautiful melodies, these songs that are cinematic and so pleasing to the ear. I, on the other hand, can write funky, riff-driven rock ’n’ roll.” 

Megan: “It’s been a work in progress, figuring out what the voice in Larkin Poe is. Because Rebecca is the lead singer, I’m aware that the melody and lyrics she’s singing have to be true to herself. So a lot of the time, those melodies and lyrics will come from Rebecca, just because I think that’s the most authentic to her. It’s about letting the good ideas win.” 

Rebecca: “Y’know, not being so precious about your ideas because that’s when conflict can really arise. Letting ideas go is the hardest thing because the ego is incredibly defensive. As a creative person, it’s learning when to give and take. Especially for me, that’s been such a hard-won lesson. That’s definitely resulted in some tears and heart-to-hearts between Megan and I. But, ultimately, I do think it’s absolutely for the betterment of the group.”

What’s the best advice you can give about songwriting?

Rebecca: “Be tenacious. Unless you are born as Tom Petty or Tom Waits, the rest of us mere mortals have to fight for that artistic voice. And as with most things in life, these things don’t happen by accident. If you really want to learn how to write good songs – which is something I’m perpetually in pursuit of – you gotta do it and do it again.

“Don’t be afraid to write bad songs. I’ve written so many bad songs. But that’s okay. It’s like a photoshoot where you have to take 30 pictures just to get one where all four eyes are open. The same applies to songwriting. And just as you are what you eat – you are what you listen to. So listen to a lot of music, and go back to the originals and the people from which everything else has sprung. Do your research, y’know?”

Is it a dilemma for roots artists whether to push for crossover success? 

Rebecca: “We’ve definitely not engineered any of our musical evolution towards wider appeal. Over the years, our experimentation has actually bent towards embracing our roots more than anything. 

“From the early records to now, when you boil it down to the lyrics and melody, all along, we’ve been playing with American music. It’s just shifted in the way we’ve dressed it up, with the drums, or the inclusion of synths, or experimenting with production.” 

Megan: “It’s all about finding your audience. If you aren’t playing something that’s very cookie-cutter and has a very obvious place at radio then it just takes time to find your audience. With roots music, you’re doing it for life.”

What advice would you give on choosing a resonator?

Megan: “As far as resonators, I have a Scheerhorn and that’s my baby. But mostly I think it’s just about playing around and seeing what’s comfortable for the individual. There are so many options, and there’s no right or wrong answer – because I first picked up a Rickenbacker lap steel from Gruhn Guitars here in Nashville and was just immediately hooked on the sound. And that’s the only lap steel that I’ve ever played. 

“Since then, I’ve just picked up more and more Rickenbackers and that’s become my thing because it feels right, y’know? So I don’t know that I ever particularly did research. I just went on gut feeling. I think, if you listen to guitars, they’ll tell you which one is right.”

Is there anything you used to do on guitar – but don’t any more?

Rebecca: “For me, having started out playing strictly acoustic, there’s a definite weight in the right hand you can develop in trying to pull a tone out of an acoustic instrument. So one of the biggest shifts I’ve wrestled with is not bashing my electric guitar. 

“Learning to rely on an amplifier for volume has been such an interesting process, because for many years on tour, I’d be playing my electric guitars so rigidly and with so much force, that I would be blowing all my instruments incessantly out of tune. So that’s something that I’ve absolutely dropped is having such a ridiculously dominant right hand.” 

Megan: “I think I’ve stopped trying to sound like other people. When I first started playing, I maybe had this assumption that the riffs and notes that I was playing that came very fast and natural to me might not be the right thing to play.

“But you’ve gotta have your own style, and not worry so much about it being right or wrong. Sounding like yourself is a really good thing, more than, ‘Is this the most impressive thing I could play?’ I think I respect people who play with heart even more than note choice.”

How do you think the pandemic will change the musical landscape?

Rebecca: “This is the biggest upset we’ve ever seen as artists who typically tour to make our living. For many years, we assumed it was up to us if we would go out and tour. Now, we’ve realised the tenuous grip we all had. I think it’s gonna change everything.

“Going to a club, watching an artist that you’re literally breathing on, jammed in right up by the stage… I think that’s something that people will think twice about. Is there a sadness at the loss of that innocence? Certainly. But I think it’s really important for artists to roll with the punches the universe throws.

“Both Megan and I have thrown ourselves into livestream concerts. It’s an experience that almost has nothing to do with a live show, with that human connection and everyone in the same place sharing a moment. Whereas a livestream concert, it’s so sterile, it can easily feel soul-crushing. But it’s not up to us to decide. We make music to entertain and to bring levity to people’s lives. We’re gonna do what we’ve got to do.”

• Larkin Poe's new album, Self Made Man, is out now via Tricki-Woo

Larkin Poe might play a rootsy mix of Americana, blues, rock, a soupçon of country in there too - hey, they live in Nashville, TN, it’s mandatory - but they’re so DIY they’d put the punks to shame.

The sisters Megan and Rebecca Lovell have the final cut on everything, and have built this Grammy-nominated force of nature from the ground up, with Megan on the lap steel, Rebecca shouldering a Strat, or maybe a Jazzmaster, both taking a kinetic approach to songwriting and putting their own spin on an art form that can sometimes be too deferential to its history.

Their new album, Self Made Man, speaks to this DIY ethos. Again, it’s self-produced, with the Lovells tracking with long-time engineer Roger Alan Nichols at Bell Tone Recording, in Nashville’s Berry Hill [pop. ~547]. And it compacts the legacy styles of southern roots music into something that’s fresh, vital, and iconoclastic in all the right ways.

As the Lovells explain here, their sound is about finding a new spin on that roots sound, giving it a pop sensibility, and perhaps most importantly, it is about taking the energy of the live show and trying to replicate it to tape. And new spin or not, tracking live with an old 50s Rickenbacker lap steel, Fender guitars through cranked, over-worked vintage Fender combos? That’s pretty darn old-school…

You took a trip to Graceland before making this record. What was that like?

Megan Lovell: “It was a fantastic trip. We had been wanting to go and visit Graceland for a while, and this was my first time. I was not expecting to be so moved by seeing the home of Elvis Presley, and getting to see how he lived, seeing his memorabilia, and seeing his books opened, the passages in the books that he had underlined.

“It was really very special to see that stuff. Also, Memphis is just a music city that has so much history. Playing blues music we love to get to visit Memphis and learn a lot about the blues musician as well. Memphis just has a special place in our heart.”

How different is the vibe to Nashville? 

Rebecca Lovell: “Yeah, there’s definitely a crossover. They are just a couple of hours apart, but musically there is a big difference in that Nashville is predominantly a country city. Memphis has always been a bit more turned towards the blues, but they are both incredible places.”

It’s great that these places have retained that bond with the music, because in the internet era those geographical bonds can vanish.

Rebecca: “Having grown up in the South, I do think that it feels very natural that we had tended towards loving roots American music. It definitely doesn’t get enough credit within the broader commercial field of music as what’s being played and presented on radio. 

“Having grown up here in Tennessee, the land of Dolly Parton, and then raised in northern Georgia, where there is a lot of great rock ’n’ roll coming out of Georgia and northern Florida - and even into South Carolina, all the soul singers who were coming out, James Brown, the R&B world - I do think historically it is embedded in the geography. 

“We feel so fortunate to identify so strongly with this southern culture, this southern music, and hopefully serving as a jumping off point for our generation to fall in love with this music as well.”

You are the custodians of this music now, and you are not afraid to have your own take on it. Which is only right, music shouldn’t be approached with silk gloves and too much reverence.

Rebecca: “We love roots American music, and not putting it behind glass, and giving it the opportunity to breathe, to go to new places, feels very important. To keep that lifeblood kicking through the music and make sure it’s got a pulse, ‘cos the last thing we want to do is treat blues music, bluegrass, or America like a time capsule. Certainly not.

“It has always been a focus of Megan and myself to take this music and hopefully give it some new twist or tweak with the production, and coming up with songs with more of a taste for pop-song structure and just trying to play around and experiment and make something that feels very authentic to us.”

Does being family help you make braver creative decisions?

Megan: “Our relationship as sisters is the axis upon which everything turns. We are sisters first. Our relationship is the most important thing. There is a lot of trust between us. That trust is so important for songwriting. Rebecca is the main songwriter. She brings the songs to me and I then add to the story. 

“But, yeah, our relationship as sisters is so important. It’s our relationship onstage. It’s the way that we connect with each other. There is so much non-verbal communication between the two of us. I think that’s what makes us work, especially in the studio when we are self-producing. We can move really quickly towards a shared goal, almost without speaking. We kind of know what each other is thinking.”

Rebecca: “Yeah, absolutely, that’s definitely something that we have learned through the years, to have faith and have trust in each other. And to not feel too precious about our ideas, and to let the best idea win. That takes putting away the ego, if possible. Which is certainly a hard thing to do on occasion!”

You two never look like you feel pressure at all. Whether you’re on a big stage or shooting video, you always seem at ease.

Rebecca: “I do think, as sisters performing together, that pressure is in someway doubled. I think it is quite understandable when you see a lot of sibling bands tearing each other apart or always at war, because you are placing a lot of stress on that relationship - a relationship that goes back to the same womb! - and with someone who knows you super-intimately, all the quirks and tweaks that make you who you are. 

“In our early 20s, we did a lot of work together on our relationship because we were fighting and having troubles, just in response to a lot of the pressure of performing. It could happen in a bar, or if you are playing the Islington Town Hall with 800 people in London, regardless of where you are, that pressure does exist. We’ve learned to deal with it.”

You can’t take it too seriously. It’s got to be fun.

Rebecca: “We really do want to have fun with what we are doing, and be joyful in the way that we approach music, and not take it so serious so that the pressure does not get in the way of being really vulnerable or being authentic. I think it’s something that takes commitment, committing to letting it be - what’s the word I’m looking for? 

"[Pauses] To not let it be our job. We have spent so much of our lives working towards and working for, and so [it’s about] letting ourselves really enjoy our music, not getting caught up in how many tickets have been sold or how many records are moving.”

There is a sense of communal expression in these songs. What have you learned from playing in front of people? How much of an influence is audience interaction?

Megan: “Audiences have certainly had an impact on the music and we had toured for two years straight leading into making Self Made Man, and it was really intense touring. We were touring in a way that we had never toured before, and having experiences that we had never had before like entire tours selling out, and having people showing up knowing the lyrics to the songs, and really belting them back at us from the audience. 

“That certainly had an impact on the way that we viewed songs. The community aspect of music is certainly important to us. Writing for this record, we were imagining these songs as not just our personal babies. They cease to belong only to us and belong to the people who listen, and somehow make the songs something bigger.”

…And help them evolve. Are the songs fully formed by the time you hit the studio?

Rebecca: “When we get into the studio, things work pretty seamlessly. We’re kinda like a lean, mean killin’ machine! We are big believers in demoing songs out before getting into the studio, typically because artists like us are recording on a shoestring budget and you don’t have a lot of time to mess around and stretch out. 

“Being able to have a strong sense of which song we are feeling pretty passionate about, that is usually the first step. Getting the best material together that feels cohesive, and feels like it’s got a story arc to the song. Once we get into the studio we are able to stretch out and expand the arrangements.”

It sounds really alive. Is that how you track?

Rebecca: “We try to keep everything that we are recording in the studio as live as possible. So typically we’ll come in with drums already programmed. We cut the guitars really live, really loud, and we limit the number of vocal takes that I am allowed to do to keep the humanity, and to make sure there is some spontaneity and life in the album.”

Again, that sounds fun…

Rebecca: “Yeah, it is typically a fun process! I do think the studio can bring out some really strong and heightened emotions because you are putting such a focus on yourself, and it is easy to want to pick yourself apart in the studio. 

"But that’s why it is really nice to have a trusting relationship, because we are able to move through the tough moments - especially as producers.  We are wearing a lot of hats in the studio. We are really proud how this album came out.”

Did it take you long?

Megan: “Really only a couple of weeks in the studio.”

Rebecca: “It took maybe two months from writing to a complete album sitting in our hands.”

That’s insanely quick.

Rebecca: “We wrote the record the last few weeks of October and then we were not able to get into the studio until December. During the winter I caught this really nasty cold that I couldn’t shake, and I wasn’t able to speak for a couple of weeks when we were meant to be recording. Looking back, we were really stressed because we were going to hit the road really hard. 

“We had a tour starting in April. We felt under the gun trying to get this record finished. We had to tweak and twist our schedules around my voice. It’s really funny to think of all that and now, here we are! [Laughs] In a room, and none of the touring that we had anticipated is actually happening, so we had all the time in the world!”

You produce yourselves. You are almost 100 per cent DIY. What do you look for from the engineer?

Rebecca: “We are so fortunate to work with Roger [Alan Nichols] because he is such a team player. He sits back, pushes record, gets great tones - he helps us chase after guitar tones. He is really patient with vocal takes if you need a moment in the studio just to breathe.

“He is probably one of the most supportive engineers we have ever crossed in our years of making records, and the biggest strength that Roger possesses is his ability to not proffer an opinion.

“That is one of the things that can water down an album. If you have too many cooks and if you have too many people who are trying to push the direction of the album, you end up with a woolly-headed thing that doesn’t really sound like anyone.”

That also helps when don’t have much time. Is there much experimenting with pedals?

Rebecca: “We don’t tend to play around with pedals in the studio. On the road it is a different beast. But in the studio we like to be very classic in our approach, and we depend a lot on Robert to get the tones we are imagining. 

"We will describe to him what we are looking for and he goes in and sets the mics and the amps to get it. But most of the time we are just looking for a classic, amp-driven vibe.”

Old Fender amps, crank it, and let it happen?

Rebecca: “Yeah, absolutely. Most of the tracks started out on a vintage Fender Bassman.”

There’s something pure in that. And very American, too. Did you have any gear epiphanies on this record?

Megan: “My old standby is my old Rickenbacker 1950s lap steel, but I also played a baritone lap steel on this record, on Every Bird That Flies, and that was something that I had never tried before. That was the only instrument that I played around on other than just some cool analog synths.”

Rebecca: “I pretty much stuck to my Fender Strat. I also played a Telecaster, and a couple of acoustic guitars. This album has the most acoustic guitar than any album we have ever done. 

“But we had this little Moog Sub Phatty synthesizer which was really fun to play with and get some nasty bass tones. It is a pretty basic process. We are so simple live as well. We’ll drive through the Fender amplifiers. We thought keeping true to our live representation in the studio, that was kind of the goal for us.”

Megan: “And I would like to give a shout out to one pedal. It is the [Rodenberg] TB Drive Shakedown Special. It is a really, really cool pedal that I have been using for the last year and a half. It’s great, like two Tube Screamers stacked, and I was using that on a couple of tracks. If we were adding any drive pedals it would be that Shakedown Special.”

Megan, did that baritone lap steel changed the way you approached the instrument, indeed, how you approach the vocals in the song?

Megan: “Yeah, I do feel like my lap steel is another vocal in the room, and so the range in which I am playing is so very important. I am either very high, or with the baritone, very, very low. That was really fun to play around with because I am really not used to having that low a note! I had to play it in a completely different way. 

“But I really love the solo in the middle section. We got to go off into the deep end and it is just two lap steels, the baritone at the bottom, and then I am playing a solo over the top, and that was so much fun. I definitely plan to play around with the baritone a lot more and see where I can go with it. But it’s just a huge instrument. Like the neck is so long! It’s almost as tall as I am.”

Sick Riffs #15: Rebecca Lovell, multi-instrumentalist of sister-fronted roots-rockers Larkin Poe joins GW to teach you the blues-driven main riff of P-R-O-B-L-E-M, from the band's 2016 album, Reskinned.

Lovell delivers the foot-stomping riff using a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar running through a Rodenberg Amplification TB Drive pedal. So plug in, turn up the gain and give it a go.

"Pre-coronavirus, my band was slated to burn through the months of March, April, and May on a world tour that would carry us through 20 different countries," Lovell says of the virus's impact on the band. 

"Post-coronavirus, I'll be spending the months of March, April, and May in Nashville, TN. Life can change on a dime! But what better way to spend this unexpected home time than by honing my guitar chops?"

Very well said, Rebecca. Now, let's get to it!

Larkin Poe's new album Self Made Man is out on June 12.

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Sick Riffs is a Guitar World video series designed to help guitarists affected by the coronavirus. Self-isolating players around the world have each filmed a lesson where they teach you one of their own guitar riffs, up close and personal. If you dig the lesson, we encourage you to buy music and merch from the artist or stream their music.

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the music industry have been incalculable. Entire countries remain on lockdown, derailing all touring plans, closing music stores and shutting billions of people into their homes indefinitely.

Fortunately though, this brutal pandemic and its cataclysmic effects on the world haven't stopped musicians from creating. Pandemic or not, guitarists of all kinds are still dropping terrific new tracks - whether they're new creations borne from self-isolation/quarantine, or pre-planned releases of material that's been in the works for much longer. 

Whether you need a high-octane thrash-metal assault or a lonesome, aching country ballad to soothe your nerves and keep you company in these nerve-wracking times, we've got you covered!

Give a listen to our favorites of this strange moment below. 

Larkin Poe - Holy Ghost Fire

From the second Rebecca Lovell's swaggering, bluesy opening riff proudly announces itself, you know that Larkin Poe mean business with their new song, Holy Ghost Fire.

The second single from the roots-rockers' forthcoming album, Self Made Man, this song turns everything - the hooks, choruses, riffs, solos and fuzzed-out bass - all the way up to 11. Not to say that we're complaining. (JM)

Theraphosa - Stigmata of the Purest Pain

You could forgive our scepticism when we received an email with the subject line, ‘Tired of waiting for new Gojira? This should fill that void nicely.’

Yet this trio of French brothers - ‘in blood and blood shed’ - channel the sound of their countrymen with aplomb, with ominous grooves, crushing tones and lyrical lead playing from Les Paul-wielding frontman Vincent Dubout.

Keep an eye out for debut album Transcendence next month. (MAB)

Jamie Lenman - The Future Is Dead

The UK’s alt-rock chameleon served up a surprise slice of rabble-rousing riff-rock this week, with the kind of main hook that wouldn’t sound out of place on RATM’s Evil Empire - those credentials further bolstered by the addition of rhymes from Penshui’s Illaman.

Recorded before the coronavirus pandemic struck, it’s terribly close to the bone now - but those riffs are just irresistible. (MAB)

As I Lay Dying - Destruction or Strength

Californian metallers As I Lay Dying have unveiled Destruction or Strength, a previously unreleased track recorded during the sessions for their 2019 album, Shaped by Fire. The band is donating all proceeds from the single to hometown charity Feeding San Diego and their road crew who, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, have had to deal with the economic impact of multiple show cancellations.

Musically, the track features some truly impressive fretwork from guitarists Phil Sgrosso and Nick Hipa, who trade harmonized riffs that guide the song seamlessly from heavy one minute to melodic the next. A blistering guitar solo (starting at 2:43) rounds this track off as one the week’s best six-string listening experiences. (SR)

Brutus - Sand

Celebrating a year since hugely accomplished sophomore release Nest, the Belgian post-metallers’ latest effort is awash with their trademark delay and reverb-drenched guitar tones, bonded to furious thrash rhythms from drumming vocalist Stefanie Mannaerts.

Whether you’re into punk, post-rock or hardcore, you’ll find something to like here. (MAB)

Havok - Post-Truth Era

Thrash metal four-piece Havok have released another single from their upcoming fifth studio album, V. Post-Truth Era contains guitar parts clearly inspired by the work of thrash forefathers Metallica, and showcases the impressive songwriting abilities of guitarists David Sanchez and Reece Scruggs.

The track is a high-octane audial assault (in the best possible sense) and indicates the forthcoming album to be one of the band’s best ever. (SR)

Picturesque - ATTN

American quartet Picturesque are experts in fusing pop melodies with a post-hardcore sound, and they’ve done it to perfection on ATTN:, a track which comes ahead of their upcoming album Do You Feel O.K?.

The track is rife with catchy drop-tuned riffs and even features a pretty jaw-dropping solo courtesy of guitarist Dylan Forrester. Well worthy of a mention on this week’s list. (SR)

Jason Isbell - Only Children

Few living singer/songwriters can hit you as hard with a single sentence as Jason Isbell. Only Children - the third single from his upcoming new album, Reunions - finds Isbell in top form, mournfully looking back at his memories with a friend who has since passed away.

The vocals, which Isbell shares with his wife and bandmate Amanda Shires, are stunning, but what really caps the song off is its solo, which vivdly evokes both the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia and profound melancholy out of nothing more than a handful of notes. (JM)

Overrider - Ansible

We can’t reveal a whole lot about the mastermind behind this anonymous project, other than to say they’re closely affiliated with Guitar World. What we can tell you is that this is the first track to be taken from the electronic-guitar outfit’s debut release cyc|er, and it crams a hell of a lot into three-and-a-half minutes.

Ansible starts all glitchy - closely channelling Nine Inch Nails and 65daysofstatic - but soon gives way to golden-era Smashing Pumpkins octave riffs and post-rock tremolo picking, all overlayed with “live coding experiments”. Terrifyingly clever stuff. (MAB)

Today we bring you the latest episode of String Theory, this time starring sister duo Larkin Poe. You can watch it above.

A web series created by Ernie Ball, String Theory explores the sonic origins of influential and innovative musicians. In the episode, Rebecca and Morgan Lovell discuss their beginnings with music and guitar, their love of playing, plus their relationship with Ernie Ball and much more. 

"I don't know if we could have done this individually for as long as we have," Megan says. "We kind of are puzzle pieces that fit together, and being able to go on that journey together has been amazing."

You can check out over 40 String Theory episodes featuring artists like Kirk Hammett, Steve Vai, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, J Mascis, Daron Malakian, Lzzy Hale, Dave Navarro, Mick Mars, Laura Jane Grace, Justin Chancellor, Robin Finck and more at ernieball.com/stringtheory. 

For the latest on Ernie Ball, head over to ernieball.com.

It’s become a universal rite of passage: kids revolt against their parents’ style of music by turning to rock and heavy metal. However, sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, who comprise the roots-rock duo Larkin Poe, turned that practice on its head. “Our dad would spin records by Queen, Fleetwood Mac and Black Sabbath,” Rebecca recalls. “Megan and I were into that stuff, but then we fell in love with bluegrass and Americana. That’s when we kind of came into our own.”

Megan tried her hand at the guitar and mandolin, but when she heard Dobro master Jerry Douglas, she realized the resonator-based instrument was calling her name. After becoming a proficient Dobro player, she took up the lap steel. “That’s where my classic rock upbringing came back,” she says. “I wanted to get a little bolder and louder. I loved what David Lindley did on the lap steel, and then I heard Derek Trucks playing slide. So I said, ‘Yep, that’s for me.’”

For her part, Rebecca proved to be a natural on the mandolin, and that was her main instrument while she, Megan and older sibling Jessica (on lead vocals and fiddle) performed as the traditional bluegrass outfit called the Lovell Sisters. In 2009, Jessica split, but Rebecca and Megan stayed together, rechristening themselves Larkin Poe (after their great-great-great grandfather) and adopting a grittier, more “anything goes” approach to Southern roots music. It was then that Rebecca, now assuming the lead singer role, picked up the electric guitar.

“I came to the guitar late, but I dug right in,” she says. “For rhythm playing, I’m very inspired by Jeff Buckley. He could play chords so melodically. And for leads, I can’t say enough about Stevie Ray Vaughan. His style was so aggressive and big. Lately, I’m obsessed with Skip James, who did more of a hill country blues thing. I try to mix it all up.”

Larkin Poe found early boosters in the likes of T Bone Burnett, Steven Tyler, Conor Oberst and Elvis Costello, all of whom tapped the sisters for album and touring projects. “We’ve had some powerhouse artists take us under their wings,” Megan says. “With the whole MeToo movement, it’s been great to be treated very gender neutrally. It’s never been about us being ‘chicks.’ People just see us as musicians who can really play.”

Over the course of five EPs and three albums, Rebecca and Megan started introducing modern textures and embellishments to their sound. Last year’s Peach wove electronic percussion throughout the sisters’ natural instrumentation, and on their latest release, Venom & Faith, the blend of old and new school makes for fascinating juxtapositions. “Fly Like an Eagle” is built on a jarring bed of cutting-edge, distorted rhythms over which Rebecca dispatches searing blues licks. Megan’s sultry lap steel playing is the centerpiece of “Good and Gone,” but it’s in stark contrast to the minimalist, unsettling backing tracks. And the walloping, avant-garde theatrics of “Ain’t Gonna Cry” sound more like PJ Harvey than, say, Alison Krauss.

“Without a doubt, we’re trying to sound less produced and more raw,” Rebecca says. “Most of the time, musicians go into the studio and they create these huge, larger-than-life versions of themselves. The emotions get lost with all the instruments and stuff they put on their tracks. Megan are I strip things down to the bare essentials, and I think that reveals our souls better.”

Adds Megan, “Producing ourselves has been essential to the process. Rebecca and I will light some candles in the studio, and we’ll get kind of spiritual. And we’ll ask ourselves, ‘Here’s the two of us, here’s how we sound. What do we need, and what don’t we need? And most of the time, that answer is, ‘We don’t need much — just us.’”

• Guitars: 1959 Fender Stratocaster reissue, Fender Jazzmaster (Rebecca); 1950s Rickenbacker lap steel, Scheerhorn Dobro (Megan) • Amps: Fender Twin and Vibro-King (Rebecca); Fender Deluxe and Vibrolux (Megan) • Effects: Electro-Harmonix delay, Roden-berg TB Drive Shakedown Special (Rebecca); Ibanez Tube Screamer, Ernie Ball volume pedal (Megan)

1 “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, Skip James

Rebecca: "Having grown up as a banjo player, I’m always intrigued by fingerstyle guitarists. Skip James is a legendary hill country blues artist, and his playing on this track is unbelievable." 

2 “Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You”, Sheryl Crow

Megan: "We had the pleasure of sharing stages with Sheryl on the festival circuit this year. She rocks and this song rocks. Really enjoy the production and love the feature of Annie Clark (St. Vincent)." 

3 “Best Seat in the House”, Blackberry Smoke

Rebecca: "Some genuine, Georgia-grown rock and roll. This is from their new record, Find a Light. We love these guys; Charlie Starr is the ultimate frontman." 

4 “Running on Empty”, Jackson Browne

Megan: "This list wouldn’t be complete without a slide feature — and what slide is more iconic than 'Running on Empty'? As a lap steel player, David Lindley’s solos here rip my heart out." 

5 “Little Martha”, The Allman Brothers Band

Both: "We covered this song as part of our 'Tip O’ the Hat' YouTube series. As a sister duo, we revere these brothers." 

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

We hereby direct your attention to Larkin Poe, a pair of badass Georgia-bred sisters who—we kid you not—are distantly related to 19th-century American writer, poet and critic Edgar Allen Poe, the tortured artist behind The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death and "The Raven."

OK, I majored in English (writing and literature), so, yeah, I think that's cool.

However, the fact that they're 20-something-year-old Southern sisters playing gritty, modern roots rock and blues on a Fender Jazzmaster and an ancient Rickenbacker lap steel makes them a hell of a lot cooler.

That's Rebecca Lovell on guitar, mandolin and vocals and Megan Lovell on lap steel and vocals. Rebecca and Megan (along with their older sister, Jessica) started performing together in 2005 as the Lovell Sisters. After a level of success that's definitely nothing to sneeze at (unless you happen to be coming down with something), they split up, eventually reforming—just Rebecca and Megan this time—in 2010 as Larkin Poe, the name of their great-great-great grandfather, a Civil War wagon driver (and good ol' Edgar Allen Poe's cousin).

Their 2017 album, Peach, is overflowing with hints of their Southern upbringing, not to mention lots of wiry guitar, strong songwriting, magnetic melodies, sweet harmonies and a comforting level of authenticity. They also bring an updated sense of pathos and grit to some incredibly ancient tunes, including Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen," Son House's "Preachin' Blues" and Blind Willie Johnson's "John the Revelator."

Mind you, this is not a "throwback" band (or album); some of the tracks from Peach would sound natural following an Ed Sheeran tune on the tinny speakers at the Veggie Grill in Pasadena. It is, however, commendable that they're blending vintage blues motifs with a modern sound.

Sometimes Megan's playing sounds like Derek Trucks, Hop Wilson, Jimmy Page or George Harrison—maybe even George's buddy, Eric Clapton. Most often, however, she sounds like herself, a new "voice" in blues-guitar land, which is refreshing.

"The first slide instrument I was introduced to was the dobro," Megan told us in 2014. "At that time, I was taking lessons in guitar and mandolin and I couldn't seem to make headway with either of them. As soon as I saw, heard and appreciated slide guitar, I knew I had found my calling. I was immediately taken with the sound, versatility and almost vocal quality of the instrument.

"Later on, with...Larkin Poe, I found the need for a grittier, electrified sound and picked up the lap steel. I'll always love the dobro, but my true passion lies in the lap steel. I love how multifaceted the lap steel can be; the sound can mimic anything from a roaring electric guitar to a whiny pedal steel. I play a 1940s bakelite Rickenbacker lap steel—and I couldn't be happier."

"My standby guitar is a Fender Jazzmaster," Rebecca told us in September. "Ever since I saw Elvis Costello pick one up when we were out on tour with him a few years ago it’s stolen my heart. I also have a Sixties Princeton Blackface that I love. I don’t take it out on the road much because it’s so fragile, but it’s my ideal combination."

You can check out a few of Larkin Poe's 2017 videos above, plus a lap-steel demo clip Megan shot for Guitar World's Acoustic Nation. Below, behold their cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."

Peach is featured as an honorable mention in Guitar World's guide to the 10 essential rootsy releases of 2017. For more information (plus tour dates), check out our 2017 interview with Rebecca and Megan and visit larkinpoe.com.

Damian Fanelli | damian@guitarworld.com | @damianfanelligw

What originally began as an album of all-original material from Larkin Poe (which consists of sisters Megan and Rebecca Lovell) quickly took a turn when they began recording and posting traditional blues covers on various social media outlets.

The result was millions of views and an overwhelming demand for an album of traditional American roots music. This prompted Larkin Poe to return to the studio for Peach, a compilation of blues covers and original material that shows off their Southern musical heritage.

Tasty covers of songs like “Preachin’ Blues” (Son House) and “Black Betty” demonstrate reverence for the original versions but are fused with the ladies’ unique style. The songs stand up equally against originals such as “Freedom,” “Wanted Woman” and “Pink & Red.”

The Lovell sisters are no strangers to musical attention having performed as part of the house band for the MusiCares 2017 “Person of the Year” event honoring Tom Petty and opening for Elvis Costello and Bob Seger. In short, they’re a force to be reckoned with.

I recently spoke with the duo about Peach, their songwriting process and their current setup.

Where did you draw inspiration for Peach?

Megan Lovell: We wanted to pay homage to music of the South and the Delta and make it into a very American roots rock record. It’s a culmination of all the Southern influences we’ve received over our lifetime.

Was there a certain theme you were going for when choosing covers for this album?

Megan Lovell: We’ve been making videos of covers for social media as a way to keep pushing ourselves, and people have really responded to it. When the time came to make this record, there was a great demand for them, so we decided to choose our favorites from the videos. That’s what you get on the album.

Rebecca Lovell: We cover Son House on the record [“Preachin’ Blues]. If you read the lyrics to the song written almost a century ago, they’re fantastic. It’s music that plays to a timeless human emotion, a raw questioning of soul and spirit.

What was the original songwriting process like?

Rebecca Lovell: For this record, it started predominantly with the music. It was about the two of us sitting down a room with our guitars and amps, just ripping off each other and trying to get to the soul of the issue. Some of the lyrics were a little slow to get aboard the train, but they all showed up eventually.

What can you tell me about the track “Wanted Woman”?

Megan Lovell: “Wanted Woman” was a song I wrote one afternoon. I was amazed by the concept of this naughty little person who was really full of themselves and thought the play on words and double entendre was clever.

“Pink & Red”?

Rebecca Lovell: That’s one of my favorites. The vocals were actually recorded using a USB microphone while I was in my bed under the covers [laughs]. I couldn’t sleep because the song was banging around in my head, so I sat there and held my laptop to my face and sang a rough draft of the lyrics. It was very stream-of-consciousness. I remember waking up the next day and listening to it and then brought it to Megan. Those wound up being the vocals we used on the record.

What’s your current setup like these days?

Rebecca Lovell: My standby guitar is a Fender Jazzmaster. Ever since I saw Elvis Costello pick one up when we were out on tour with him a few years ago it’s stolen my heart. I also have Sixties Princeton Blackface that I love. I don’t take it out on the road much because it’s so fragile, but it’s my ideal combination.

Megan Lovell: My old standby is my 1940s Rickenbacker lap steel. I’m also usually touring with a Fender Twin or a Vibrolux.

You performed as part of the house band for this year’s MusicCares event honoring Tom Petty. How did that come about?

Rebecca Lovell: We got a call from T. Bone Burnett, who told us he loved our music and wanted us to provide instrumentation and vocals for the house band honoring Tom. We both flipped out pretty hard core and then proceeded to learn about 40 Tom Petty tracks in preparation. Spending a week making music with people like Steve Ferroni and Booker T. was a surreal experience. Then being onstage supporting George Strait, Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones and Taj Mahal was mind boggling.

Megan Lovell: You get such a connection with a person when you start learning their music. You get inside their head in a way, which makes Tom’s recent passing even more heartbreaking. We didn’t get to meet him that night but he’s so wrapped in mystery and this enigma of being an epic songwriter and an American voice. There’s no one who will ever be like him again.

As a guitarist, is there any advice you can pass along?

Rebecca Lovell: Push yourself out of your comfort zone as much as possible. There’s always going to be that possibly of failure and making mistakes, but put yourself in that space and go out on a limb. Make yourself uncomfortable because you’ll learn so much faster. A second point would be to learn how to back people up. Meg and I progressed the most as musicians when we were in support of other artists and learning how to be the setting for the sound. When you have this beautiful diamond, the artist, you have to learn how to be the gold band that surrounds that diamond. That’s the mark of a really fine musician.

Megan Lovell: We feel thankful for Elvis Costello taking us out on the road with him for so many years, because we learned so much. He had the faith in us to go places on stage we had never gone before. I’m so thankful we were able to have that experience.

What excites you the most about this next phase of your career?

Megan Lovell: I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds. We pulled together a list of songs for this record and put it all together ourselves. It feels really fresh and we’re very excited.

Rebecca Lovell: We’ve always been fiercely independent and determined about what we want to achieve and the artistic message we want to put across, but with Peach it’s the first time that we self-produced a project and played every single sound. Everything that you hear was something we created and comes from a very real place. It’s taken us on a more authentic path. We hope people will check out the record and be a part of the journey as we continue to dig deeper into who we are.

James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.

I went to see a band play the other day. I had no expectations…just a fun night out. But hoo-yeah, this band kicked ass around the corner and back. It was Larkin Poe, a band that combines rock, blues, Americana, folk and a few other elements for a rollicking set of originals. Sentimental, sassy, sweet. Their stories were fun and full of life.

Lead by sisters Rebecca Lovell on mandolin, guitar and lead vocals and Megan Lovell joining in on lap steel and some pretty awesome vocals of her own, the band was also supported with bass and drums.

Their latest album, Kin, explores their rich family history and the impact it has had on their own psyches. The band takes its name from their great, great, great, great grandfather, Larkin Poe, who was a Civil War wagon driver turned historian and a distant cousin to Edgar Allen Poe.

I was so impressed by Megan’s kickass lap steel chops that I asked her to record some video for us. So check out this clip and then the live performance below. Then read our exclusive interview!

Here's Megan live!

What influenced you to play lap steel?

The first slide instrument I was introduced to was the dobro. At that time, I was taking lessons in guitar and mandolin and I couldn't seem to make headway with either of them. As soon as I saw, heard, and appreciated the slide guitar, I knew I had found my calling. I was immediately taken with the sound, versatility and almost vocal quality of the instrument. Later on, with the formations of our rock music with Larkin Poe, I found the need for a grittier, electrified sound and picked up the lap steel. I'll always love the dobro, but my true passion lies in the lap steel. I love how multifaceted the lap steel can be; the sound can mimic anything from a roaring electric guitar to a whiny pedal steel. I play a 1940s bakelite Rickenbacker lap steel and I couldn't be happier!

How did you start using that harness and playing standing up? It’s very cool.

Contrary to the name of the instrument, I knew I wanted to be able to stand and play the lap steel. I had performed a couple of shows sitting down and it felt limiting and energy draining to me. I started looking for a device or stand designed for lap steel, but couldn't find anything that fit the bill. A family friend owned a steel company, so I went to him and together we designed a holder for my Rickenbacker that allowed me to stand and play comfortably. Now I can run around on stage and interact with my band mates and the audience, although I can't tell you how many people come up to me after the show to ask why I'm holding the guitar like I do ("is it so you can see the frets?")!

You have backed several prominent musicians on tour. Do you have a favorite moment or two you could share?

2014 has been an especially wonderful year in terms of collaboration! We got to tour with Elvis Costello as his backing band in the U.S. and in Europe. Getting to sing "Alison" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" alongside one of the greatest legends in Rock history is a pretty amazing feeling. We got to perform with Conor Oberst (of Bright Eyes) on David Letterman and then with Kristian Bush (of Sugarland) on the Today show. We feel very fortunate to have met and forged strong allies with some truly incredible musicians.

Are you involved with the writing on the album? Give us some insight into your process.

My sister, Rebecca, and I wrote everything on Kin together. Before we recorded this album, it was always challenging for us to successfully write songs together as sisters. In retrospect, sibling rivalry probably had a lot to do with it. But leading up to Kin, we decided to buckle down and write together. Once we made the commitment, it was surprisingly easy! So much of our communication is wordless, so we can arrive at the same musical or lyrical conclusion almost simultaneously. It's effortless... Which is one of the greatest perks of being a musical collaborator with your sister. Our writing process is very much dependent on each other. I like to think of a duo writing team as a check and balance system… We perform quality control on each other's ideas.

How is it touring with your sister? Do you generally get along?

I'd be lying if we said we never fought... 'Cause we definitely do, but it's almost always over little and unimportant annoyances. We're a team in every sense of the word and, when it comes to the big stuff, we're completely on the same page. No one has my back like my sister and vice versa. It's truly amazing to travel the world and share all these incredible experiences with someone I'm so close to.

Do you have a touring tip you’d like to share?

One touring tip I have is to never trust a cabbie with your precious instrument. We were on tour with Conor Oberst this summer, actually on our way to play Letterman, and, against my better judgement, I let the cabbie put my lap steel in the trunk. He slammed on the brakes (New York City driving! Eek!), the lap steel went flying and came away in two pieces. Luckily, I was able to find a replacement in time, but I'll never forget that lesson. Trust yourself and no one else. Always keep the important stuff up front with you.

Have you ever come across challenges being a female musician?

I think the greatest thrill of being a female musician is also the greatest tragedy. It's the challenge of dispelling assumptions. There has always been an underlying assumption in my experiences that girls don't play, and, if they do, they don't play as well as the boys. There's nothing sadder than being tagged as "a good player… for a girl.” There are so many wonderful female vocalists in the music industry, but a lack of truly sensational female musicians. The Bonnie Raitts and Nancy Wilsons of the world are out there, but we need more of them. It's always been so important to Rebecca and me to be empowering women role models to young girls. There's nothing we love more than to have influenced young women and girls to pick up instruments and strive to be the best… not just "good… for a girl."

What's next for you guys?

For the foreseeable future, we're going to keep touring in support of Kin, our first full-length album. This year has been crazy busy and we've been touring almost non-stop... and we expect next year to be the same. However, we'll make time to write new songs, experiment with different musical directions, and always practice, practice, practice. It's a never-ending challenge, and that's probably the best thing about being a musician. Who knows what's next?

Find out more at larkinpoe.com.