Love is blues

WHEN PUTTING THE tracks together for B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 — my band’s two-disc, 32-track tribute to B.B. King in celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 16, 2025 —

With Joe Bonamassa having gathered the cream of the scene for the B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 tribute album – and written the intro to this feature – we take an alphabetised look back at the blues legend’s classic tracks, hotel bombings, car crashes, conspiracy theories, towering infernos and more…

Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues player – with full audio examples and backing tracks

LAST MONTH, I discussed some of the advantages of playing in a power trio, such as the open harmonic canvas that it affords me as a guitar player. “Threw Me to the Wolves” is a song of mine that prese

ONE OF THE coolest and most badass-sounding things a guitarist can do is double a long, complex bass line an octave higher. This was my approach for the song “Dean Town,” which I recorded with Vulfpec

B.B. KING was the gracious, perma-gigging ambassador of the blues, but his seeming serenity glossed a rollercoaster career, struggles with racism and gambling, audiences lost and found. As a new tribute album reinforces his legacy, MAT SNOW goes to bat for arguably the most underrated legend of the form, starting with the gig that turned everything around...