Guitar Mag Gossip: Personal and Practical

I’d like to call out several items of interest in the November issue or Premier Guitar. The first one is personal: As head honcho Shawn Hammond mentions in his monthly editor’s letter, I’m changing roles at the magazine. After two years as a part-time senior editor, I’m going part-part-time as a contributing editor.

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Solo Guitar Shows: L.A. Confidential & Furtive Frisco

Psst…this week I embark on a grueling two-city solo guitar tour.

I’m playing my first ever L.A. solo show next Tuesday, the 12th, with one of my favorite players on the planet: the brilliant Mark Goldenberg. I’d previously know his pop work, but only became aware of his amazing solo playing last year when […]

Odds & Ends & Pixies

Oh man — the gods have been generous this week.

I just received from Warmoth all the parts for my next DIY guitar. I loved testing eight sets of P-90 pickups for Premier Guitar, but I don’t own any P-90-eqipped guitars.I will soon, though!

This one will be a bit of a platypus — […]

I’m Performing Solo. Yikes.

Seriously, dude — where’s my band?

Anyone have much experience playing solo instrumental guitar gigs?

Even though I’ve been playing since the Pleistocene, I’ve only performed solo once since I was a teenaged classical guitarist. But I’ll be making the stumble leap this Wednesday, Sept. 11th, when I perform north of San Francisco […]

The Jon Herington Interview

Soloist, Sideman & Steely Dan’s Guitarist of Choice

One unexpected pleasure of my recent Marianne Faithful mini-tour was getting to hear guitarist Jon Herington at the Kate Wolf Music Festival.

Jon Herington with his Gibson ES-336. [Photo: Tony Kukulich.]

Since 1999, Herington has been best known to audiences as Steely Dan’s touring […]

Well, THAT Was Quite a Week!

Wow, what a week!

On Thursday I met Marianne Faithfull for the first time at rehearsal, and then played two shows with her this weekend. It was intense. It was musically challenging. It was amazing.

Ten facts about Marianne Faithfull:

She’s written countless great songs, including the Stones’ “Sister Morphine.” Her songwriting collaborators have […]

Tonefiend Book Week is Coming!

Next week at tonefiend we’ll be talking about our favorite guitar/music books. I’ll write about some of the titles I find especially useful, inspiring, or entertaining, and I hope you’ll chime in with some of your recommended reading.

Since there’s so much potential material here, I suggest we focus on a different book category […]

The Future of Wishful Thinking

Coming soon to a star system near you!

Last week I dared all incautious chumps you to prognosticate about our guitaristic future. I knew the resulting comments thread would be fun, but I didn’t expect it to be that fun!

And also oddly uplifting. Future predictions just seem to skew in an optimistic […]

The Effect-Order Follies

This effect order ALWAYS works great!

Weird, isn’t it? You can explain the rules of thumb for ordering your guitar effects in about ten seconds, but you can still get stumped after years of experimentation.

You probably know the conventional effect-order advice, which goes something like this (in order of appearance):

Distortion effects […]

Who Dares Predict Our Fretboard Future?

“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” — Criswell, Plan 9 from Outer Space

UPDATE: Wow, I can’t believe all the cool stuff folks have been posting to comments. I find myself feeling quite inspired about the […]