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While responsible guitar journalists like my ol’ pal Art Thompson from Guitar Player and the fine young fellows from Premier Guitar scoured Musikmesse 2013 tirelessly and systematically, I did the opposite, randomly stumbling through the vast exhibition halls in a jet-lagged daze between my performances, aiming my iPhone at anything vaguely cool or weird. The […] 
Prolly the best artist demo I’ve heard at Frankfurt (partly because it has no goddamned soloing). This is real. They were playing out in the plaza at Musikmesse. I tried to shoot my own footage, but it was just too crowded. (Though I did score a thrilling video of the back of Craig […] If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed a recurring pattern: I attend some interesting event and promise to report on it, only to get subverted by work, crowds, jabbering with old acquaintances, and jetlag. True to form, I’ve spend the first two days either demoing TriplePlay, or staggering […] It’s wet. Will it be wild? Howdy from Frankfurt, where I arrived this afternoon to attend Musikmesse. United Airlines was its usual scuzzy self, though a nice flight attendant found a place for me to stow my guitar. And my pedalboard seems to have arrived in fine shape, even though I had to […] 
For the first Fishman TriplePlay demo I posted last month, I featured pretty, naturalistic acoustic sounds. This time around I went for something a little less polite. I’ve been having a blast — albeit a humbling blast — trying to play real-time drum parts from the guitar. I still suck if it’s much more […] Rockfinger’s Tommy Lamb graced the cover of Guitar Now! in 1977. Yet another sad anniversary: Believe it or not, it’s 20 years to the day since Tommy Lamb perished in a brawl at Indiana’s Plainfield Correctional Facility. Unlike so many rock-and-roll deaths, Tommy’s demise never seemed to inspire a renewed interest in his […] 
This is perfectly awesome: Luna Lee is playing a gayageum, a Korean zither related to the Japanese koto, Vietnamesese dàn tranh, and the Chinese guzheng. She’e got other fun blues and rock covers posted on her YouTube page. Lee’s version of “Voodoo Chile” is the internet hit, but I dig her “Bold as Love” […] Pinn Panelle’s Derek Song. A highlight of this year’s NAMM show was hanging out with Derek Song, a 23-year-old digital guitarist whose band, Pinn Panelle, has racked up an astonishing 12.5 million YouTube views with their realtime cover versions of electronic music hits, especially their version of Skrillex’s “Scary Monster and Nice Sprites” […] So smooth. So sexy. So frickin’ expensive! Hi. I’m Joe, and I’m a flatwound addict. It took me a long time admit it. “What wrong with a little recrational flatwound use?” I used to ask. “I can quit anytime I want.” Sure, I’d sometimes put flatwound strings on my Guild archtop. And sometimes […] |
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