The mighty shredder Buckethead (so named for his habit of wearing an inverted KFC bucket as a hat onstage and perhaps off as well) has posted a beautiful tribute to Michael Jackson on his home page named The Landing Beacon. The tune might also be named The Homing Beacon–if you believe the picture and not [...]

Rolling Stone caught up with great Yes/Asia guitarist, Steve Howe, who is now touring with Yes and Asia: How did you decide to do this double tour? I had this summer pretty much booked up [with Asia], and Yes were disappointed about not getting a chance to play this summer, so I put my thinking [...]

When Michael Jackson died, I wondered how it would affect the musicians in his employ, such as Orianthi Panagaris, his latest guitarist (a post previously held by guitar-great Jennifer Batten). Turns out, Orianthi is as disturbed by the whole thing as the rest of us: “Seeing how happy he was, excited, singing and dancing, it’s shocking. But I’m [...]

Speaking of Steve Vai… He offered a tribute of sorts to the late-great Michael Jackson on June 27 at the Meinl Guitar Festival in Germany. Here is Steve Vai  with Andy Timmons covering Beat It: (via musicradar.com)

Great long interview with Ed over at Spinner.com in which Ed talks about his sobriety and how it has affected his playing. Booze worked on him to the point where it became the necessary rocket sauce that allowed him to visit that place where he felt most comfortable playing: It takes me a good hour [...]

Jack Thammarat of Bangkok, Thailand has won the 2009 Guitar Idol competition (how those guys avoid lawsuits from Fox, I’ll never understand). Born in 1979, Jack began playing at 13. He says his style is a combination of rock, blues, jazz and progressive. He works as a guitarist, composer, studio musician, and guitar teacher. I [...]

In support of his new CD, United States, Paul Gilbert sat down with Clay Howard at YesWeekly.com: Well, I had just done a couple of instrumental records. Those actually did great for me. Especially in America and Europe. When I did my first instrumental record, Get Out of My Yard, Joe Satriani took notice and [...]

Les Paul turned 94 yesterday, June 9. Les Paul is credited with innovating many recording techniques we think of as commonplace today, such as multi-track recording and overdubbing. He also built and owned one of the first electric guitars, the first of which was named The Log. In addition to his technology innovations, Les Paul [...]

Gibson.com has posted an interview with one of rock’s guitar legends: Leslie West. One thing that always strikes me about Leslie West is the fact that he became a legend with one tune. True, it just so happens to be one of the coolest guitar tunes ever, Mississippi Queen. I can’t think of any other [...]

Jimmy Bruno is not only a fantastic jazz player but also a renowned jazz teacher. His approach to learning jazz improvisation is a completely practical one. He simplifies chord scales by basically doing away with the traditional approach, which is to assign a chord scale to every chord (E.g. A ii-V in C is C [...]

Last night I happened to run across a Tommy Emmanuel performance on PBS, which they’ll hopefully play again so I can tape it. They were hawking his Center Stage CD in exchange for a donation. He’s a great performer. He appeals to me because he’s not the tiniest bit self indulgent and seems like a [...]

Matt Warnock at ModernGuitars.com has a great analysis posted of Jimmy Page’s Heartbreaker solo, one of the greatest rock guitar solos from one of the greatest rock albums, Led Zeppelin II: With the song recorded and headed for mixing, along with the rest of the bands second album, a 25-year-old Jimmy Page decided to re-listen [...]

Steve Vai has done a very cool thing and released a 7-CD box set named Naked Tracks, which consists of nothing but backing tracks. What a great idea! “Through the years, whenever I would mix my records I would usually do a mix of specific songs without the lead guitar. This allowed me to play [...]

Guitarbalooga favorite Pat Metheny appears on vibraphonist Gary Burton’s new CD, Quartet Live, along with Steve Swallow on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums. These guys have a long history together. The origins began in 1967, when bassist Steve Swallow hooked up with vibes player Gary Burton. A few years later, in the early 70′s, [...]

Michael Manring is an incredibly talented bass player who has been recording for almost 30 years. Democratherald.com posted an interview with Michael yesterday: You’re known for the innovative things you do with guitars, such as de-tuning strings while playing. When did you decide to start messing with the bass? MM: Well, the cool thing about [...]