Shades of purple

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

LAST MONTH, I demonstrated my approach to soloing over the song ”Hard Wired,” originally released on my 2023 self-titled album. We began with the breakdown section, over which I play simple lines over

IN THE LAST 25 years, Joe Bonamassa has dropped 16 studio records. That’s a lot of music, meaning it’s hard to keep things fresh — and his latest, Breakthrough, despite its title, doesn’t even try to

AFTER SLASH AND Duff McKagan exited Guns N’ Roses in the mid-Nineties, things went kinda sideways for a bit. The band kept rolling, but it was host to a cavalcade of guitar players, from Buckethead to

LARRY MCCRAY WAS one of the great new-generation blues guitarists of the Nineties, emerging out of Saginaw, Michigan, with 1993’s excellent Delta Hurricane. He was a regular at blues festivals and clu

THOUGH NOT OBVIOUSLY thought of in this way, the Gibson ES-350 is a great instrument to use for rock rhythm guitar playing. With its hollow body and two-pickup design, it’s similar to the Gretsch 6120