Blues headlines

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

Amid the mayhem of his European tour, Joe takes time out to give us a guided tour around his 2025 live gear, delivers the lowdown on some of his more storied guitars, and tells us why his mighty multi-amp rig has to run at breaking point in order to make the earth move and those riffs resonate…

With their 2022 debut album, Cardinal Black showed the world how the budding guitar hero in their ranks could thrive in a band environment. Here, Chris Buck explains how its follow-up has taken his playing and songwriting to the next level

In the second part of this lesson, Richard Barrett asks you to lend your ears to the sounds of the silver screen for real-life context

Few guitarists are loved as equally for their acoustic work as their electric playing but such is the unique talent of Richard Thompson . We meet him to find out how he’s preparing to go head-to-head with Tommy Emmanuel, chat about the end of his touring days, and talk alternative tunings

Our pick of the month’s most delectable and wallet-bothering new gear