Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i Guitar Player

SUBSCRIPTIONS Email: contact@myfavoritemagazines.com Phone: 800-289-9839 Mail: Guitar Player Subscriptions P.O. Box 2029, Langhorne, PA 19047 GUITARPLAYER.COM JACKSON MAXWELL Online and Social Media Managing Editor jackson.maxwell@futurenet.com WEBSITE & SOCIAL FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG TWITTER.COM/GUITARPLAYERNOW GUITARPLAYER.COM THE MAGAZINE CHRISTOPHER SCAPELLITI Editor-in-Chief chris.scapelliti@futurenet.com ART THOMPSON Senior Editor arthur.thompson@futurenet.com ROSIE WEBBER Art Editor rosie.webber@futurenet.com JUDE GOLD Los Angeles Editor judegold@gmail.com JIMMY LESLIE Frets Editor j@jimmyleslie.com DAVE HUNTER Gear Section & Video Contributor dhunterwordsmusic@yahoo.com…

“I LITER ALLY PLAY WITH THE HAND I’VE BEEN DEALT” WALTER TROUT IS the ultimate blues survivor. At the time that he received his liver transplant in 2014, he was literally days from death, having spent eight months in the hospital waiting for a donor organ. He dwelled a further six months in recuperation before returning home 120 pounds lighter and realizing he had no memory whatsoever of how to play the guitar. Relearning to play from scratch was a huge undertaking, further hindered by the muscle-wasting effects of his illness that left him unable to press a string against the neck. Six years and five albums down the line, Trout has recorded Ordinary Madness (Provogue), a career-best collection of songs that broadens his blues-rock palette with hints of Tom…

MICHAEL LEONARD MANN, a.k.a. Hollywood Fats, was born in Los Angeles in 1954 and died of a heart attack in 1986 at the young age of 32. A reckless lifestyle shouldn’t define him, because Hollywood Fats was an accomplished and evolved blues guitarist who left behind a beautiful musical legacy. Fats, who started playing guitar at 10, exhibited an obvious knowledge of the blues encyclopedia and, seemingly, a debt to players like T-Bone Walker, Charlie Christian and Gatemouth Brown. He worked with James Harmon, Muddy Waters (at the age of 19), Canned Heat, Kid Ramos, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, the Paladins and the Blasters, to name a few. Despite having an unofficial masters degree in the blues, he had his own wonderful thing, as can be heard on Hollywood…

ROBERT JOHNSON’S MASTERFUL guitar technique is the stuff of legend, and his haunting vocal delivery was once described by Eric Clapton as “the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Terraplane Blues,” “Love in Vain Blues,” “Hellhound on My Trail” and “Traveling Riverside Blues” are just a few of his songs that have become classic rock standards, covered by Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones, Clapton, Lucinda Williams and Larkin Poe, to name a few. Such covers would receive far more attention than their creator did in his short lifetime — he was born in 1911 and died at age 27 — but Johnson’s originals are conserved in the seminal 1990 compilation The Complete…

1970 WAS TO be B.B. King’s year. As his 1969 studio album Completely Well continued to gain momentum, its groundbreaking single, “The Thrill Is Gone,” made the top three on the Billboard Best Selling Soul Singles chart and number 5 on the Billboard Top 100. A reworking of the 1951 Roy Hawkins hit, its brooding arrangement helped King win that year’s Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. “The Thrill Is Gone” is notable for its orchestral strings, a wash of ear candy that was commonplace on country and pop records in the 1960s but a real game changer for blues. A crossover hit, it changed King’s life too, and became his signature tune. After almost 30 years of overnight success, the King of the Blues had made the…

IN THE RUN-UP to his latest album, 2018’s game-changing Please Don’t Be Dead, Fantastic Negrito had a Chuck Berry moment. He wanted to write a song with the same irresistible impact of Berry’s indomitable classic “Johnny B. Goode” and came up with “Plastic Hamburgers.” Ostensibly, the two songs are very different — the latter fuses plantation-era Mississippi and cuttingedge Oakland, California, in a way that would have been unavailable to Berry. But as Fantastic Negrito explains, they have in common something central to all the most enduring, irresistible treasures of rock and roll. “The riff!” the man born Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz says with a smile. “Man, that riff comes from the blues tradition. That’s something you just can’t deny, no matter who you are. I remember being in Norway [for…

The Gibson and Kalamazoo models Gibson squeezed out during the 1930s were pretty similar. There were some compromises — cheaper timber and less body binding on the Kalamazoo guitars, for instance — but the big difference was the internal bracing. Gibson flat-tops featured X-bracing, easily the most popular style, and associated with a balanced tonal palette. The Kalamazoo models made do with ladder bracing, a simple, cheaper-to-install layout that offered structural support but a different tone. As Bill Collings explains, “Ladder bracing is more responsive and somewhat more articulate, yet it also has a wildness about it that makes it really interesting. You also get strong midrange and a nice thump out of the bass notes.”…

LAST MONTH’S COLUMN focused on different ways to use the thumb in acoustic guitar playing. This month we’ll focus on the fingers. But before we address full-on fingerstyle, let’s consider the fact that many players, especially those who play electric guitar, may never entirely give up using a pick. For that reason, we’ll start by focusing on rudimentary chordal hybrid picking techniques that will hopefully lead players to more advanced hybrid techniques, and perhaps set some of you along the path to freedom from the plectrum altogether. START SMALL For those who feel more comfortable using some sort of standard pick, try a small one. Eric Johnson influenced legions of guitarists, including me, to play in a hybrid style. Use a small pick with a pointy tip, such as Johnson’s…

FURCH (PRONOUNCED “FURK”) is a well-known European manufacturer that’s been making inroads into the stateside market since 2003. Last summer, the company made a major commitment by opening its own distribution and service center on American soil. So instead of arriving from the Czech Republic, as did the Red Plus OMc-SW reviewed in GP’s Holiday 2018 issue, the new Green Master’s Choice shipped from Tennessee with a First Edition U.S.A. emblem emblazoned inside. Furch uses seven color designations to differentiate the body styles and features in the solid-wood production models that make up the Master’s Choice line: Among them, red represents the top, blue is the most affordable, and green is in the middle. The Green Master’s Choice on review here indicates a dreadnought cutaway body with solid Sitka spruce…

I’m about six months behind on my reading of Guitar Player, but when the July issue arrived, I immediately jumped on that and the great story about the making of Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominoes. All the backstory that led to the band coming together was greatly appreciated. I consider that album to be one of the best ever by anyone. I’ve read Clapton’s autobiography and books about the Allman Brothers, and this feature added more depth to the history of how Duane Allman came to participate in the making of Layla. I ate it all up! And not to mention the fine features on Joe Bonamassa, Robby Krieger and on and on. —JACK KLINE, BRENTWOOD, CALIFORNIA I have always had the feeling (and…

IT MIGHT SEEM an odd juxtaposition of standards that a luthier known for his fine hand-made flat-top, archtop, Hawaiian and resonator acoustic guitars and mandolins would select a down-market, catalog-grade instrument as inspiration for his signature electric guitar model. Yet, as rendered by Ontario-based Joe Yanuziello, the erstwhile pawnshop prize becomes a gorgeous but utilitarian work of art. Yanuziello was born in Toronto in 1952 and grew up in an ethnically diverse urban community, a child fascinated with the hand-hewn work of his own father, a sheet metal fabricator, carpenter and house builder. “EVERY ARTIST AND CRAFTSPERSON’S INTENTION IS TO PRODUCE SOMETHING MEANINGFUL, WITH INTEGRITY” After graduating from art college in 1975, Yanuziello took a job making custom cabinetry before his own playing drove him to build an acoustic guitar…

THROUGHOUT HIS REMARKABLY sturdy 50-plus-year career, Robin Trower has often been pegged as a “psychedelic blues guitarist.” As it turns out, the man himself takes issue with that description. “The psychedelic thing is a flavor I’ve used from time to time,” he admits. “But I really consider myself a rock and roll player who’s heavily influenced by the blues.” He thinks for a moment, then elaborates further. “Of course, I would say that the blues is really the alphabet for the language of rock and roll, but I can’t call myself a blues player. A guitarist like B.B. King is the blues. Obviously, I’m not B.B. King, so I can’t lay claim to being a true blues player.” He laughs. “But I do my best with what I’ve got.” Tracing his…

ROBERT JOHNSON, Son House, Lead Belly, Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf… History has a way of deifying names such as these, ensuring that they’re spoken about in awed, reverent tones because of their innovative musical inspiration. In one respect, this reverence is completely justified. These blues guitarists are among the founders of rock and roll, and of popular music as a whole. Without them there would be no Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman, Samantha Fish or Gary Clark Jr., to name a handful of guitarists influenced by their music. And so they are revered, not only for their music, guitar talents or songwriting abilities but also for the hard lives they led, which were more often than not painted…

YOU CAN’T TALK about the leading lights of blues without mentioning Memphis Minnie. An extremely prolific, confessional recording artist and a no-bullshit character, Minnie had a tough life, which she skillfully poured into her music. Noted American blues guitar slide master Homesick James, “She chewed tobacco all the time, even while singing or playing the guitar, and always had a cup at hand in case she wanted to spit.” Born Lizzie Douglas, in Louisiana in 1897, she ran away while in her teens to Memphis, where she played guitar and sang on street corners, supplementing her income with prostitution when she had to. For a stint from 1916 to 1920, she toured the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus. But it was when she started performing with her first husband,…

“THE BLUES HAD a baby,” goes the old Muddy Waters line, “and they named it rock and roll.” By the early 1960s, though, the family tree had started to get incestuous, as the scratchy, haunting Delta porch songs of yore were hijacked on both sides of the Atlantic by a new strain of blues that applied speed, attitude, volume and chest hair. Blues had met rock. And it was the start of a beautiful relationship. Conventional wisdom tells us that blues rock peaked in the mid to late ’60s, and it’s a watertight argument. From that five-year period alone came world-shaking albums from icons including Cream, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Peter Green’s original Fleetwood Mac. If you don’t remember the 1960s, then you probably…

IF EVER A man let the music do the talking, it was Rory Gallagher. Onstage he wore the same old shirts and denims that he’d wear to the pub. His favorite guitar, a battered 1961 Stratocaster, looked like something he’d picked up from a flea market, its sunburst finish erased by all the sweat and wear and tear. To Gallagher, what mattered was not how you looked but how you played. And he was simply one of the greatest guitar players that ever lived. He was so good that the Rolling Stones offered him a job in 1975, before Ronnie Wood was eventually chosen to replace Mick Taylor. But Gallagher was never cut out for playing second banana to Jagger and Richards — he was a born leader, a virtuoso…

THE WORD LEGEND is one of the most overused terms in music journalism, but it’s a fair word to describe Dion DiMucci, one of rock and roll’s original celebrated artists. He started out as the lead singer for the late-’50s doo-wop group Dion and the Belmonts before breaking off on his own to launch a career in rock and roll and folk. There is perhaps no other artist from that era who has continued to enjoy artistic and commercial success. From his early signature hits like “The Wanderer,” “Runaround Sue” and “Teenager in Love” through to his civil rights–era smash “Abraham, Martin and John,” and continuing through to the present day, Dion has consistently created great records that make good on his lifetime mission statement: “to be able to communicate…

AS ROCK AND ROLL provenance goes, it’s pretty hard to top Megan and Rebecca Lovell, the sisters behind the folk duo Larkin Poe. The Lovells are fourthgeneration descendants of the master of macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. “We grew up reading his work, and we found out in our teens that we were related to him,” Megan explains. “We were huge fans, so it was a revelation.” “And it does play into the band name,” sister Rebecca adds. “Larkin Poe was our four-greats grandfather, and he was a cousin of Edgar Allan. So we thought the name was a good way to harken back to southern gothic roots — and also to family.” On the sullen, grey March afternoon that we meet the sisters at the east Nashville house Rebecca shares…

FOR A GENRE so deeply and tragically entrenched in history, stretching back one and a half centuries, the blues finds itself in a defiantly rude state of health in 2020. The world is a very different place now, and still far from perfect, but the potency of pentatonic scales, 12-bars and b5s to the human ear has never waned, thanks to the musicians keeping this form of expression alive. For this issue, we wanted to celebrate the players who have been doing precisely that, whether by dedicating their lives to faithful recreations of the sounds of the past or finding new ways to reinvent a very classic formula by introducing country, jazz or hip-hop elements. As an art form, the blues has never been more diverse and musically rich, which…

IT’S INTERESTING HOW similar yet different the worlds of nylon-string and steel-string players can be. After all, it’s the same acoustic guitar universe. Many guitarists play both instruments, and it’s always a great idea for players of all stripes to have a nylon-string guitar in their arsenal. One acoustic champion who continues to bridge not only the two instruments but also their respective cultures is Peppino D’Agostino. Many Americana players have admiration for and draw inspiration from European classical maestros, but the Italian-born transplant to California is a rare breed: a steel-string dreadnought player respected by, and comfortable playing with, virtuosos from the global nylon-string community. D’Agostino has won numerous honors, including Best Acoustic Guitarist in the 2007 Guitar Player Reader’s Poll, and was included in our August 2017 acoustic…

IN 1959, FENDER switched from tweed to a brown Tolex covering for its combo amps. The Hombre is John Suhr’s take on the brownface Deluxe and the tones that have inspired him since his early days as a guitarist. The amp sports a 20-watt 6V6 power section and features a lightweight pine cabinet with finger-joint corners loaded with a 12-inch Celestion V-Type speaker. The original brownface amps were point-to-point wired, and the Hombre comes close with quite a bit of hand soldering on double-sided PCB two-ounce copper circuit boards. The amp also uses carbon-film 1W resistors, silver mica tone caps, Belton tube sockets, Mallory 150 capacitors, and an American-made custom Heyboer transformer. The Hombre features Normal and Bright channels, each with volume and tone controls. I found input 1 of…

MANY POPULAR 12-INCH guitar speakers are based on classics made by Celestion in the ’60s and early ’70s. Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise the hallowed British manufacturer has been less known through the years for 10-inch speakers, which just didn’t figure much in its vintage catalog. However, the company has gone to great lengths to change that in recent years. Celestion’s G10 Greenback delivered that classic crunchy flavor in a smaller driver more than a decade ago. The G10 Gold has won many fans, and the G10 Vintage has long been considered a great-sounding sleeper by many guitarists. Now the new G10 Creamback and VT Jr. are here, offering two new flavors and price points for fans of that special something only 10s can deliver. I tested each speaker…

LESLIE WEST IS decidedly modest when it comes to “Mississippi Queen,” the rock behemoth that put his band Mountain on the map when it was released in 1970. “The song’s got three chords,” he says. “Any idiot can play it.” He chuckles, then adds rather immodestly, “I just happen to play it better than anybody.” West admits that the track “has just everything you need to make it a winner. You’ve got the cowbell, the riff is pretty damn good, and it sounds incredible. It feels like it wants to jump out of your car radio. To me, it sounds like a big, thick milkshake. It’s rich and chocolatey. Who doesn’t love that?” “Mississippi Queen” was the opening track on Climbing!, the debut album from the four-piece, which included West,…

Summer’s here, and that means it’s time once again for our annual Ultimate Gear Guide. Presented by Guitar Player, Guitar World, Bass Player and Electronic Musician, the Ultimate Gear Guide brings together the top new musical equipment releases for 2020. This year’s guide offers hundreds of entries for electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitars, guitar and bass amps, ukuleles, effect pedals, strings, pickups, accessories, keyboards, and live and studio gear. Each entry is illustrated and includes all the relevant details to help you decide which piece of gear is right for you. Go check out the Ultimate Gear Guide, available on newsstands now!…

“I’M A FAN of guitar playing, but I am more a fan of the diversity of guitar playing and different styles,” Joe Louis Walker says of his latest release, Blues Comin’ On (Provogue/Mascot). Diversity is the key word, and Walker has built his reputation for pushing the boundaries of blues with his powerful playing and soulful vocals during a career that has spanned more than 50 years. He picked up the guitar at 14 and within two years was performing in and around his hometown of San Francisco, where he befriended blues icon Mike Bloomfield, who introduced him to Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead. But in 1975, Walker exited the blues scene and for the next 10 years sang in a gospel group called the Spiritual Corinthians. When the…

FENDER FIRST CONCEIVED a fancied-up version of the stalwart Telecaster in 1958, and released it as the Telecaster Custom at the 1959 NAMM show. For more than two decades, the new model was offered alongside the original Telecaster, and while it brought body binding and a sunburst finish as standard to Fender’s seminal original cutaway, it otherwise wasn’t different. The model also received a rosewood fingerboard, which made it look a little more like traditional electric guitars produced by other makers, but the standard Tele received that too around the same time. By the early 1970s, however, the Telecaster Custom was primed to become something quite different, taking an evolutionary leap forward in Fender terms, while arguably lurching further away from future collectability status relative to the boundbodied Customs of…

OF ALL THE characters that feature in tales of blues from the early 1900s, singer and guitarist Son House is one of those most regularly cited by present-day enthusiasts. In some ways he’s not an obvious choice. He wasn’t the most skilled purveyor of this music, or even the first, but he remains a quietly popular touchstone. Jack White even named House’s sparse, bewitching a capella number “Grinnin’ in Your Face” as his favorite song. “By the time I was 18, somebody played me Son House,” White said in the 2008 rock music documentary It Might Get Loud. “That was it for me. This spoke to me in a thousand different ways. I didn’t know that you could do that, just singing and clapping. It meant everything about rock and…

AS SURELY AS Robert Johnson lived the blues, Johnny Winter spent his life in them. Born albino, Winter discovered early in life that some cultures considered albinos gods, while others abused and ostracized them. It was between these two extremes that Winter found himself throughout his life. Blessed with talent, he blew minds with his fiery guitar work and had major labels falling over themselves to sign him. He helped advance electric blues into arenas in the late 1960s and early ’70s. But his career, while marked by flashes of brilliance, was marred by greedy managers, drug addiction and an industry that came to view him as an oddity. What remained through it all was his worship of blues. Born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1944, Winter began playing guitar at…

THE GREAT DEPRESSION of early 1930s America spared no one. Things were so bleak that the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, reduced guitar production to make wooden toys or anything else that could keep its workers employed. Ironically, at a time when the guitar was eclipsing the piano, accordion and banjo in popularity, few could afford to buy a quality Gibson instrument. The fact that the company survived the country’s toughest decade at all is down to Gibson president Guy Hart, who held the position from 1924 to 1948. Hart’s legacy has been obscured by later president Ted McCarty (of Les Paul, SG, ES-335, Explorer and Flying V fame), and only true vintage geeks know the man’s name. Yet, his decision to pull together a new range of budget archtop…

AT THE TENDER age of 15, Marcus King attempted to sneak into the Orange Peel, a concert venue in Asheville, North Carolina, to deliver his demo to Warren Haynes. A decade later, King has grown into the real deal and established himself as one of the most celebrated young lions on the modern blues-rock scene. The gifted musical prodigy is brimming with creativity, inspiration and chops, bundled with a soulful touch, earthy, organic tone and confident and gritty, yet smooth vocal style that brings to mind that of Gregg Allman, as well as Haynes. While King’s vocals are impressive and appealing, as is his mature songwriting, it’s the exciting and emotive licks and solos coming from his fingers that are the highlight of his musicality for guitar players. King’s adventurous…

THE LATEST ADDITION to the SE Hollowbody II line features a piezo-equipped adjustable stoptail bridge that gives what is already a sweet electric guitar more tonal dimension by combining the magnetic and piezo signals. The concept isn’t new, of course, but PRS’s stealthy design has no additional switches or controls to give away the technology involved. In fact, all that outwardly differentiates this model from other SE Hollowbody II guitars is the Piezo inscription on the truss rod cover. A closer look reveals dual output jacks (mix/piezo and mag), a hatch for the nine-volt battery, and a small connector under the adjustable stoptail bridge that links the six piezo saddles to the electronics inside the body, but it’s all so well integrated on this guitar that nothing gets in the…

RECORDING STRICTLY WITHIN the digital realm can be a real drag, While digital audio workstations (DAWs) have made pro-quality multitrack recording affordable for the home studio, there’s nothing like having a dedicated hardware interface to put tactile control at your fingertips. Control surfaces can improve your precision for setting levels and mixing, as well as streamline your workflow and make recording music, videos and podcasts more pleasurable. While many controllers will interface with a DAW’s faders and various switches, traditionally you’ve had to shell out big bucks if you want that kind of integration in a full-blown mixer. Tascam’s new Model 12 multitrack recording console gives you exactly that, for about the price of a budget guitar. The Model 12 is an analog front-end for DAWs, offering a 12-in/10-out USB…