Table of contents for April 2024 in Guitar Player

SOME MUSICAL artists capture the zeitgeist. Others do their own thing and tap into something deeper than prevailing trends, threading their creativity to the wires of memory deep within our temporal lobes. Lenny Kravitz is that other artist: a songwriter, guitarist and cultural force who delivers another blast of his singular musical vision every few years to remind us that music can be rocking, soulful, modern, vintage and magnificently original, and connect with us more deeply than the current vogue. I recall when his breakthrough track “Are You Gonna Go My Way” began blasting out of radios, and I can vividly remember its music video, which was in regular rotation on MTV. The year was 1993, and grunge was at its height. Another young artist looking for a career-changing hit might…

THERE WAS A time in the late ’70s and early ’80s when the softer, rounder guitar shapes that were developed in the 1950s and ’60s seemed not only old hat but utterly uncool. Sharp, pointy, axe-like and aggressively weapon-esque shapes defined the electric guitar’s future, at least for anything rock or metal. And as of about 1976, that meant not Gibson or Fender but B.C. Rich. The radically styled and appointed guitars of this California maker looked, felt and sounded rock. And for a good part of the era when hair was big and trousers were tight, B.C. Rich’s guitars appeared on about as many arena stages as those of the big-name guitar makers that had come before. But if you take the story back a couple decades further, the…

IT’S A BOLD claim, but one that we’re prepared to make: There is no guitarist in the U.K. right now who sounds quite like Rosie Frater-Taylor. Brought up in a musical household, with a jazz drummer father and a jazz singer mother, the rapidly rising young Londoner specializes in combining accessible songcraft with wicked jazz-infused guitar chops as she blurs the boundaries between rock, alt-pop, neo-soul, new-school jazz and folk. Having first picked up a guitar at a very young age, Rosie possesses an innate kind of connection to her instrument that often manifests itself as a tendency to sing or scat along in unison with the improvised melodies that come flowing out of her fingertips. A technique originally born out of necessity (she used to need to hum lines…

“IT’S KIND OF MIND-BLOWING TO KNOW I WAS A HUGE INFLUENCE ON A NEW CROP OF GUITAR PLAYERS” Apparently, even the Space Ace needs an occasional boost. When Ace Frehley began work on his latest solo record, the results, he admits, didn’t exactly put him over the moon. “I REMEMBER COMING out of the studio, which is in my basement,” Ace tells Guitar Player. “And I said to my fiancée, Lara, ‘The stuff that I’m recording is not knocking me out.’” Fortunately for Ace, she had a suggestion at the ready: Call Steve Brown, former guitarist for Trixter and a huge Frehley fan. “She had been after me to work with Steve because she was a big fan of Trixter and was good friends with him,” Ace relates. “So she goes,…

AT A RECENT show in San Francisco promoted by Guitar Player Presents, Julian Lage reminded us that he is to be counted among the premiere acoustic guitar players on the planet. That refresher can also be had by listening to his new Blue Note album, Speak to Me. Although Lage is widely recognized as an electricguitar jazz wunderkind (because that’s been his primary instrument), Speak to Me finds him playing both electric and, mostly, acoustic, delivering a treat we don’t hear from him very often. On it, the guitarist performs unbridled steel-string acoustic in myriad settings, from solo to sextet, and covers every aspect — rhythm and lead, structured and improvised — effortlessly. “Hymnal,” the pensive opener, is like a sunrise, while “Myself Around You” is a stellar solo acoustic…

GUITARISTS CAN BE a notoriously conservative bunch when it comes to the instruments they choose to play. But when you push the envelope far enough, it eventually breaks through to an entirely new standard that many innovative musicians can’t help but appreciate. Modern German guitar makers like Nik Huber, Frank Hartung, Deimel and Teuffel have exported their blend of craftsmanship and Vorsprung durch Technik to the acclaim of American players. Now EBG-Instruments of Dusslingen, Germany, is applying its own post-modern twist to the movement to make its eclectic rock machines something strikingly different. The EBG-6 Jigsaw Crook we’re exploring here marries tradition and innovation in several obvious ways, while applying elevated build techniques that aren’t fully apparent at first glance. EBG-Instruments is the creation of Marc Locher, a trained and certified…

IN THE LATE 1960s, Davey Johnstone was a 17-year-old folk-based guitarist when he left his hometown of Edinburgh to try his hand at the London rock and roll session scene. What he lacked in experience, he made up for in confidence and tenacity. “I was entering a whole new world, but I was convinced that I belonged there,” he says. “If I walked into a recording studio and somebody asked me if I could play something, I immediately said, ‘Of course I can.’ I didn’t say no to anything.” Give the man his due: The 72-year-old guitarist knows a thing or two about getting — and keeping — a gig. Last year, he wrapped Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, bringing an end to his tenure in the singer’s…

WHEN I MOVED to New York City from California 21 years ago, I was frustrated by how differently I communicated in my new environs. I felt like a fish flopping around in the desert. One very difficult NYC day, I thought I’d console myself by going to Joe’s Busy Corner Deli, in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. Great food, no frills. “I’d like something like a meatball sandwich,” I told the guy behind the counter. Without looking up, he asked, “Do you want a meatball sandwich or do you want something like a meatball sandwich?” I was chagrined. “Yes,” I muttered, “I want exactly a meatball sandwich.” Why was the language I spoke misunderstood? And why was everyone picking on me? Months later, as an acclimated New Yorker, I ordered a slice…

LENNY KRAVITZ HAS been curating his own unique blend of rock, soul, funk and R&B since the appearance of his debut album, Let Love Rule, way back in 1989. Unafraid to mix and match genres, he has an impeccable sense of taste and an encyclopedic knowledge of the music that came before him. Since that first album, it has served as the glue that holds everything together, informing and influencing his own creations without ever slavishly resorting to mimicry. Given all the above, it comes as no surprise that Kravitz is a supreme tonehound, relentlessly chasing down vintage gear in his pursuit of the ultimate sonic experience. “I’ve been doing this for so long now, even from the first record,” he confirms. “I was already on this kick, you know?”…

WHEN CHRIS AND Rich Robinson announced in 2019 that they were reuniting as the Black Crowes, it seemed that the endeavor might function strictly as a look back at the past. In short order, the brothers — with Chris on vocals and Rich on guitar, and flanked by an entirely new group of musicians — announced a long tour to celebrate Shake Your Money Maker, the 1990 debut that catapulted the Georgia group to stardom roughly 30 years earlier on the strength of hits like “Jealous Again,” “Twice As Hard,” “She Talks to Angels” and their cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle.” “We thought the idea of playing the record that launched everything for us would be a cool thing to do, because we had never done anything like…

GENERALLY, WHEN WE rock guitarists ponder adding a new technique to our arsenal, we find ourselves gravitating toward tackling a new and challenging way to negotiate the fretboard, or woodshedding a new picking technique. By the same token, when we have a hankering for new textures, we’ll often head over to YouTube to enter a rabbit hole of pedal demos. There’s nothing wrong with exploring any of those options, but there’s a whole different palette of techniques and textures literally at your fingertips that you may have yet to explore. All you need to do is lay down your pick and visit the surprisingly ready-to-rock world of fingerstyle guitar. But wait, you’re probably thinking: Isn’t fingerstyle for acoustic guitarists? Yes, acoustic players most often find their way to fingerstyle at…

FOR A LONG TIME, aside from buying pre-owned, the only way to get a coveted U.S.-built Jackson was to order one from Jackson USA, and then wait. And wait. Essentially a custom shop, busy Jackson USA has been known to take as long 18 months to fill orders. That all changed a year and a half ago when Jackson introduced the American Series Soloist SL3 [reviewed in December ’22], the first U.S.-built production model Soloist available. Now that guitar has a baby brother: the new Jackson American Series Virtuoso. As is the case with many siblings, both of these U.S.-built Jacksons come from the same “womb” — the Jackson wing of Fender’s Corona manufacturing facility. And yes, as you’d expect with two brothers, the Virtuoso and the Soloist have several…

WHEN J MASCIS HUNKERED down at his own Bisquiteen Studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, to begin work on his new and fourth studio solo album, it was with the intention of approaching it much like he had the previous three — as a largely acoustic affair, with unplugged guitars functioning as the primary support to his lead vocals. But something happened during the making of what became his latest release, What Do We Do Now (Sub Pop): Mascis found himself, as usual, strumming plenty of acoustics, but he also added drums, keys, pedal steel and electric guitars — lots of electric guitars, in fact. What sparked the change? As Mascis explains in his characteristically blunt manner, nothing, really. “I was trying to do just acoustic,” he says over Zoom late one…

CHRIS SPEDDING’S LONG career has seen him move from first-call session musician for 1960s pop producers to solo chart success at the height of the U.K. glam-pop scene, in 1975. In later years, his most visible role for U.S. audiences has been as Robert Gordon’s longest-standing collaborator. Along the way, he contributed to many of the biggest-selling solo albums by Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry. For someone with such an extensive catalog, Spedding makes a surprising admission. “I don’t really listen to anything that I’ve played on,” he says. “For about 99 percent of it, there’s always something I wish I’d done better. I did record ‘It’s So Easy to Fall In Love’ a few years ago for a tribute to Buddy Holly, where I played an extended solo that…

EVER SINCE I can remember having my own money, I have collected two things; guitars and radios (records don’t count). So you can imagine my glee when I first saw Jon Trickey’s radio-guitars! I immediately bought his radio-themed Bass and Tenor models. But guitar number three — the radio-guitar shown here — was made for me. Jon and I share a love for weirdo guitars, so when he was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area from his studio/gallery in Sonora, California, he circled over to check out my whack jobs, as well as my radio collection. When I asked if he could make a guitar body from a blue-and-gold 1950 Crosley E-15TN tube radio that’s been in my collection for about 30 years, he quickly said yes. A few months…

“MR. CAB DRIVER” LET LOVE RULE (1990) “This was a crunchy riff idea I had — very simple. I was trying to get to the studio one day, and I couldn’t get a cab to pick me up, because a lot of times, if you’re Black and you’re hailing a cab, and you’re going uptown to Harlem, or Brooklyn or whatever, they don’t want to take you. “Anyway, I got to the studio after an hour of trying to get there, and I was just pissed off. I picked up the guitar and this song is what came out. I was kind of going for a New York, late-’60s or early ’70s grunge kind of sound, maybe some Velvet Underground or something, you know? A real simple thing. The tone…

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