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Artists
Joey Molland
The word “underrated” is belabored in music journalism, but Joey Molland was just that. As co-guitarist in Badfinger, he was part of a quartet signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records, yielding glorious AM hits like “Come and Get It,” “Day After Day,” and “No Matter What.” The foursome fell into obscurity and tragedy a few
Dom Martin
More Than a Feeling
From the first fingerpicked notes of “Hello in There,” a gentle, inviting 98-second acoustic instrumental that opens Dom Martin’s Buried in The Hail, it’s clear the Belfast bluesman’s musical vision…
Good Times In Bad
The Origin of Fender’s Vintage Series
The years leading up to CBS Musical Instruments’ 1985 sale of the Fender brand were fluid times at the instrument maker’s headquarters in Fullerton. Faltering in a market death struggle…
Toronzo Cannon
Blues The Chicago Way
“I’m not trying to be a starving artist at 48 years old,” says blues man Toronzo Cannon when asked if he’d consider playing blues full-time. A bus driver for the…
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Duke Robillard – Lowdown
Vintage Guitar is happy to offer the premier of the new music video by Grammy nominee Duke Robillard. “Lowdown” is the first single from his upcoming album, Blast Off!, set for release February 20 on Nola Blue Records. “When thinking about a powerful song to launch the album, I chose a hard-rocking Tom Waits tune
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David Bowie’s Young Americans
David Bowie was always creatively restless. The English musician decided to step away from the glam rock he’d recorded for a few albums concluding with 1974’s Diamond Dogs, which included a few songs with tinges of soul, R&B, and funk. On tour promoting the album, he played a handful of soul covers. Bowie had long
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Fretprints: Cream’s Disraeli Gears
Supergroup Alpha
Jack Bruce claimed Cream was two bands – live trio and studio group. Live, bassist Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker were renowned for their highly improvisatory, powerful performance that was unprecedented in rock. Moreover, they were actually a jazz group (“…we just didn’t tell Eric,” Bruce said), as exemplified by their excursions
Hall and Hoppen
Ongoing with Orleans
In the ’70s, the guitar-driven melodic rock of Orleans was all over the radio, with hits such as “Dance With Me,” “Still The One,” and “Love Takes Time” carried by…
Alvin Young-blood Hart
Highly Motivated
Alvin YoungBlood Hart brings the rock! His new album, Motivational Speaker, is a tough, guitar-driven blend of ’70s blues-rock, classic country, and sumptuous slide guitar. Moving beyond the core audience…
Fretprints: Van Halen
Birth of the Brown Sound
In the late 1970s, hard rock was on the ropes. Always a guitar-dominated form of music, it had been diluted to the point of near extinction. But with the 1978…
A Guitar for Mr. Richards
The Saga of Ted Newman Jones
For anyone who visited the tiny workshop inhabited by guitar builder Ted Newman Jones in the 1970s and ’80s, two things were obvious – his appreciation for the fine tonewoods…
Hilton Valentine
1943-2021
“The first song I learned on guitar was ‘House of the Rising Sun’ by the Animals.” The statement could have come from literally thousands of fledgling guitarists in ’64, when…
Six-Strings, 60 Years Ago
A Likely First
Had he survived to this day, Elvis Presley – cultural icon extraordinaire – would be 80 years old. The man who would rise from very modest means to become arguably…
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Check This Action: Up Jumped Elmore
When someone recently asked me to recommend the most essential Elmore James album, I answered, “Any and all.” I’ve never heard a bad Elmore cut, and I’ve heard nearly everything he recorded. Everybody knows that he set the standard for slide guitar in electric blues, but he was also a fantastic singer and wrote some
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Javier Batiz
Mexican guitarist Javier Batiz, a teacher and inspiration to Carlos Santana and other musicians, passed away December 14 at his home in Tijuana, Baja California. He was 80. Known as the “Godfather of Mexican Rock,” “La Layenda” (The Legend) and other sobriquets, Batiz came to appreciate American blues guitarists such as B.B. King and John
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Josh Meader
Jazz Evolution
Josh Meader is a jazz and fusion player who breaks ground with virtuosity that’s never flashy for its own sake. On his new album, Tide of Times, the young Aussie ace blends styles on a dime, hybridizing music before our eyes; videos online include an especially stunning non-album rendition of “Misty.” It’s fascinating, seeing Meader
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Chris Walz
Debut, Long Time Coming
Chris Walz has done his share of performing. He played young Woody in the stage production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song. From the late ’90s to 2001, Walz toured and recorded with banjo player Greg Cahill’s Special Consensus bluegrass band. And for 10 years he took the role of guitarist Fred Hellerman in Weavermania, a
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Greg Koch
Way Of The Gristle
On Blues, Greg Koch reaches the outskirts of infinity with an album that showcases his wicked guitar skills and love for Muddy Waters. Flying V blues master Larry McCray drops by with the Memphis Horns, and the result is a passionate pentatonic party with soul and fireworks. How did this album come about?Devon Allman had
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Rik Emmett
Canadian Custom
Rik Emmett is a master of many guitar styles and other artistic endeavors. As co-lead vocalist/guitarist in the hard-rock trio Triumph from 1975 to ’88, he experienced life as a rock star, then released a string of solo albums, a book of poetry, and an autobiography. His latest project, Ten Telecaster Tales, is a book
Steve Earle
Guitar Talk
Photos by John Peden. Though bandied about haphazardly and almost always inappropriate, when applied to the life and times of Steve Earle, the adjective “extreme” is not hyperbole. The acclaimed…
Ken Fischer
1945-2006
Although by most estimates he produced fewer than 100 Trainwreck amps, Ken Fischer – tech, designer, and amp-maker – will be remembered as one of the most authoritative and intuitive…
Mike Campbell
Little Movies
Longtime Tom Petty right-hand man Mike Campbell’s new album, Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, is a cinematic, guitar-heavy offering with irresistible hooks, gritty tales, and special guests. His third album as…
Fretprints: Stevie Ray Vaughan
Texas Flood
Stevie Ray Vaughan was unknown when he premiered at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. Born and bred in Dallas, he’d played the Texas bar circuit as sideman in Blackbird, the…
Buck Dharma
Regarding the Reaper and Other Recollections
During the hard rock decade of the ’70s, Long Island’s Blue Oyster Cult proffered a decidedly different approach to loud, guitar-based music. The combo’s dark ruminations garnered it a controversial…
John Abercrombie
1944-2017
After a lengthy illness, jazz guitarist John Abercrombie died August 22 at a hospital outside Peekskill, New York. He was 72. Abercrombie was part of the first wave of jazz-rock,…
Have Guitar Will Travel 104 – Pete Sears and Roger McNamee (Moonalice)
In episode 104 of “Have Guitar Will Travel”, presented by Vintage Guitar Magazine, host, James Patrick Regan. is at BottleRock and he’s speaking with the legendary bassist Pete Sears &…
Roy Treviño
Joining the Conversation
With his new self-titled album, South-Texas-based guitarist Roy Treviño accomplished his goals by simply being himself and letting the music flow. “I’d made a couple records before, but I’d put…
Darryl Jones
Stones’ Side Man, Ron Wood Fan
“Unofficial” Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones, who replaced Bill Wyman in 1994, readily admits that playing with the carousing rockers has been a revelation compared to working with stern jazz…
Jeff Pilson
Definitive Diversity
Jeff Pilson’s career has included many notable facets. He rose to acclaim in the classic lineup of the hair-metal band Dokken, and since 2004 he has the bassist for classic-rockers…
Dweezil Zappa
Sustaining the Zappa Legacy
As the eldest son of the legendary Frank Zappa, Dweezil Zappa followed in his father’s footsteps by developing into a talented guitarist and songwriter. The Zappa son has released several…
Greg Koch: Gristly “Blues”
Greg Koch: Gristly “Blues” Greg Koch fearlessly wrings the sort of vibrato that only a Tele will tolerate from his ’53 to play this exclusive version of Freddie King’s “The…
Frank Gambale
Soulmine
Frank Gambale has had an amazing career playing the music he loves. From being the go-to guy for sweep-picking, and later replacing Al DiMeola in Return To Forever, Gambale drops…
Blooming, In Progress
Larkin Poe
Released in January of 2025, Larkin Poe’s Bloom has Rebecca and Megan Lovell weaving powerful philosophies into strong songwriting and visceral musicianship. Bold lap-steel lines merge with phat Strat tones,…
The Magical Philosophy Of Slide
Time, Touch, and Reverence
In ancient Africa, when early man first dragged a flat rock across a string tied to a stick, he couldn’t have known that the sound it produced would become part…
Philip Sayce
Proactive Perseverance
Philip Sayce is a living, breathing, godmonster beast on the Stratocaster. But his chops, tone, feel, and great songs don’t come out of thin air. The man works hard. His…
Tommy Castro
'Guilty' of Paying His dues
Tommy Castro is a charismatic singing gunslinger who has developed a sound featuring stinging blues leads floating atop hard-charging, old-school R&B. And he is one of a handful of artists…
Sebastian Nagel
Meditations in Funk
Germany’s Sebastian Nagel is a producer, composer, session guitarist, performer, and fan of the funk. His latest project finds him joining Colemine Records for an odyssey into the groovy world…
Pop ’N Hiss: Hawkwind’s Space Ritual
Primal Cosmic Rock
Among the evolutionary tangents of London’s pop-music scene in the late ’60s were the original stylings of progressive rock, psychedelia, and what came to be known as “space rock.” Bands…
Bill Kirchen
Seeds, Stems, and a Tele-fied Legacy
There’s ample revisiting in Seeds and Stems, Telecaster slinger Bill Kirchen’s third album for Proper America. Five of the 13 songs hearken back to his late-’60s/mid-’70s days with pioneer country-rockers…
Johnny A.
On the fast track
When VG first caught up with guitarist Johnny A. in 2001, his instrumental release, Sometime Tuesday Morning, was perking ears all over the place. Before he signed to Steve Vai’s…
