The right stuff

CRAFTING AN APPEALING guitar solo for a song is always a creative challenge. There are many different approaches one can take: Do I follow the chord changes so that the notes line up perfectly with th

A CHIEF CONSIDERATION when playing with a slide is the tuning. Many of our favorite slide players — Elmore James, Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Derek Trucks — play slide almost exclusively in an open t

AS I STATED last month, my favorite band line-up is the guitar-bass-drums power trio. With the guitar being the primary chordal and melodic instrument in the ensemble, there are challenges inherent in

WHEN LENNY KRAVITZ released Circus, his fourth album, in 1995, he was coming off the back of the career-defining, global success of 1993’s Are You Gonna Go My Way. That album — and the single of the s

SINCE FOUNDING BIG Wreck in the early Nineties, Ian Thornley has filled his band’s songbook with arena-conquering melodies, Led Zeppelin-hailing heft and some of the most super-heroically knuckle-bust

The unconventional instrumentation favoured by Tortoise is an indicator of how many different lineups have always jostled for space under the jazz umbrella. The national treasure that is The Pete Alle