High water mark

With her diverse new album full of amazing playing, there are changes afoot for the Grammy Award-winning acoustic-guitar virtuoso as she takes a few steps away from her bluegrass roots

WHILE MOST DUAL-GUITAR bands tend to have designated roles in terms of what kind of sonic space their members occupy, Momma six-stringers Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten enjoy being unrestricted,

LAST YEAR, IN the middle of a solo on stage, Ally Venable had a revelation. “I was playing so many shows that it started to become kind of a monotonous blur,” she says. “I noticed I was playing to my

AL JARDINE WILL be the first to tell you he didn’t play much guitar for the Beach Boys in the Sixties. Early Beach Boys albums — like Surfin’ Safari (1962) and Surfin’ U.S.A. (1963) — feature plenty o

ON MY LATEST album, One Guitar Woman, I pay tribute to many of the female pioneers of the guitar, all of whom are among the biggest influences on my approach to playing the instrument. On the album, I

THERE ARE VARYING degrees of guitar hero, but Carlos Santana is a name you’d expect to find near the top of any list. Like Jimi Hendrix, Brian May or Slash, Santana has transcended guitar music and pe