Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i Guitar Player

BILL FRISELL IS a giant among giants of the jazz guitar world. A contemporary of such legends as Johnny Smith (from whom he received lessons) and Pat Metheny (who gave him his first major break), he has spent a lifetime in music honing his craft. Along the way, he’s picked up a thing or two. And while he acknowledges that learning and practice are essential, he says there is more to being a musician than many people think. Frisell is the subject of a new biography, Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music, by Philip Watson (Faber & Faber). Guitar Player caught up with Frisell to talk about the finer points of musicianship and learn his top 10 tips for guitarists. 1. LISTEN Listening is…

IT WAS A REALLY great time in our lives,” Steve Howe says, recalling the spring of 1972. His band, Yes, had hit the upper regions of the U.K. charts with their fourth album, Fragile, and much to their surprise, they did even better in the States. Tours were sold out, the venues were getting bigger, and FM stations were spinning the album tracks “Roundabout” and “Long Distance Runaround.” As their unbroken, six-month string of concert dates began to wind down and they considered their next recording, the group felt as if they had the wind at their backs. “Our spirits were very high,” Howe says. “We were young, enthusiastic and adventurous, and we had this incredible breakthrough success with Fragile. We saw our next album as a real opportunity to…

HIS MENTOR WAS Woody Guthrie. His protégé was Bob Dylan. Between the two of them, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has been the Johnny Appleseed of song, sowing the nation’s roots music in grounds both rural and urban. Although Dylan called him “the king of folk singers,” Elliott defies categorization and exemplifies genres such as cowboy, hillbilly, bluegrass, blues and rock. He has been equally comfortable performing with Pete Seeger, Tom Waits, Flea and Beck. Homages flow from adherents such as the Rolling Stones, former members of the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen. Among his accolades are two Grammys and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Johnny Cash observed of Elliott, “Nobody has covered more ground. He’s got a song and a friend for every mile behind him.”…

“WHAT SHOULD I practice?” It’s a question I can remember asking myself many times, always while sitting in silent frustration with a guitar in my lap. You likely have found yourself in the same predicament. And these days, with so much information out there, making good, worthwhile choices can be even more daunting. If only I could have asked great guitarists what they practiced… Well, that’s exactly what I did for this lesson! All the guitarists featured here are professional musicians who work in a variety of different roles and settings. Some you may have heard of, others you likely haven’t. But I approached them because they all know what it takes to be a successful working guitarist — most notably, the ability to be creative and musical. So I…

PAUL REED SMITH says listening to Jimi Hendrix’s Are you Experienced album inspired him to play guitar as a teenager, setting him on a path as a musician and a guitar maker. In that latter capacity, Smith has devoted himself to investigating all the elements of great electric guitar designs and invented ways to improve them. The PRS record speaks for itself. The same level of commitment extends to amplifiers, which PRS introduced in 2007 after bringing Texas amp builder Doug Sewell onboard to create a line that includes the Archon, DG Custom 30, MT 15 and the new HDRX. So it’s no surprise that Smith would focus his attention on an amplifier that was a mainstay for Hendrix — the circa-1967/68 Marshall Super Lead — and utilize his team’s…

IN A PARALLEL universe, Joe Ely is a household name, filling stadiums and being lauded as a master storyteller shoulder to shoulder with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Both of those guys have doffed their metaphorical cap to the Texan’s unique ability to fit a short story’s worth of emotional depth and breadth into a three-minute song. Ely’s take on that is simple: “I like to tell in a song where the location is, paint the background, and then bring it into a rhythmic world and try to find something that doesn’t take away from it, but adds to it,” he says. When reminded that he once quipped, “I chase songs and I catch one of them every once in a while,” the Lubbock, Texas, native laughs. “I’ve got a…

STEVEN WILSON BRISTLES at the use of the term prog rock to describe his music, both as a member of Porcupine Tree and as a solo artist. But in fact, all that genre’s familiar tropes are present: complex time signatures, wide-ranging stylistic shifts within songs, intricate riffing and a high degree of technical ability. Regardless of categorization, the new Porcupine Tree album, Closure/Continuation (Music for Nations) is as strong a record as you’ll hear all year, whether it’s considered from the perspective of classic rock, pop or, indeed, progressive rock. “I PLAY BASS LIKE I WOULD PLAY THE GUITAR: I PLAY MELODIC STUFF AND I PLAY A LOT OF CHORDS AS WELL, THE THINGS A ‘PROPER’ BASS PLAYER PROBABLY WOULDN’T DO” Thirteen years have passed since Porcupine Tree issued their…

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“IT WAS IMPORTANT TO KEEP IT OLD-SCHOOL LIVE. KENNY BURRELL DIDN’T FIX HIS SOLOS, SO I WASN’T TEMPTED” FORMER FLORIDIAN JOSH SMITH has carved out his place in the guitar firmament through his high-powered, hybrid-picked, heavy-stringed mixture of blues bends and jazz sophistication. He was already playing professionally at age 13, touring the same circuit as contemporary prodigies Derek Trucks and Joe Bonamassa. By the end of the century, Smith, just turned 30, already had two decades of touring and four records under his own name. Looking to broaden his horizons, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, where he began plying his trade as a sideman. Major gigs followed, including tours with 2006 American Idol winner Taylor Hicks and Raphael Saadiq, and backing Mick Jagger at the 2011…

“I DISCOVERED PROG THREE OR FOUR YEARS AGO. I CAN’T BELIEVE I MISSED OUT ON SO MANY GREAT ALBUMS!” AS LEAD GUITARIST of one of the biggest-selling bands in history, Kirk Hammett needs little in the way of an introduction. While Metallica have been teasing fans with the promise of a new album since last summer, Hammett has emerged as the first band member to step from the mothership and fly solo with his new four-track horror movie-influenced EP, Portals. Originally conceived as background music to accompany his It’s Alive! exhibition of horror-flick posters and memorabilia, the self-produced Portals, as Hammett explains, evolved to become a collection of “soundtracks to the movies in your mind.” The EP contains four high-concept instrumental tracks: “Maiden and the Monster,” “The Jinn,” “High Plains…

THOUGH SOME MIGHT consider it an enviable job, Steven Wilson says remixing rock masterpieces is “the equivalent of polishing the Sistine Chapel — that’s what I feel I’m doing sometimes with these classic records.” To date, he has applied his sonic elbow grease to records by King Crimson, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull, Tears for Fears, XTC and even this month’s cover star, the Yes album Close to the Edge. Here, he reveals what happens when you’re given the chance to dig into the master tapes of your favorite album for weeks. It turns out the job might not be so enviable. You’ve become the go-to guy for a lot of remixes of classic rock albums. Given that it’s such a huge undertaking, could you ever do it for an album that…

FOR THE FIRST time since 2020, the music industry descended upon Mickey Mouse Land to get its NAMM dance on, and from jump street it was — well…weird. We may have been in the right place — the Anaheim Convention Center — but it was the “wrong” time. NAMM took place on the first weekend in June, whereas Anaheim traditionally hosts the huge Winter NAMM Show in January, and Nashville presents a smaller Summer NAMM Show in July. While a scaled-back event was held in Nashville in 2021, this year’s bash was intended to be the extra-large experience the Anaheim show usually is. The turnout, however, was extra small. If the Anaheim show is a primary litmus test for the state of the musical instrument biz, what does it say…

THE INVENTIVE MINDS at Positive Grid have been busy dreaming up new gadgets to make guitarists’ lives productive, fun and filled with great tone. Last month I looked at the company’s new RIFF guitar audio interface and app. This issue, I’m checking out the new Spark MINI practice combo and Bluetooth speaker. It’s a more compact version of the desktop Spark smart guitar amp and app I reviewed in our July 2020 issue, but don’t be fooled by its size — it packs all the same features into a handsome cube measuring a mere 5.76 x 4.84 x 6.49 inches and weighing just over three pounds. In a nutshell, Spark MINI is a 10-watt stereo combo with 33 amp models and 43 useful guitar effects (including delay, reverb, modulation, compressor,…

GO AHEAD AND call “Close My Eyes Forever” a power ballad. Singer/guitarist Lita Ford won’t mind. In fact, she enthusiastically embraces the term. “I don’t know why power ballads have such a bad rap,” she says. “I think they’re badass. And ‘Close My Eyes Forever’ is as badass as it gets.” Ford’s dark and dramatic duet with Ozzy Osbourne was a career high — chart-wise, that is — for both artists, hitting number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989. “That’s pretty incredible,” Ford says. “For all the success that Ozzy had in Black Sabbath and as a solo star, he’d never had a Top 10 single. And in terms of my career, it put me on a new level entirely. For so many reasons, it’s a very special…