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

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

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

IF YOU SPEND just 10 minutes listening to the music of the whacked-out, Los Angeles-based psych-punk rockers Frankie and the Witch Fingers, you’ll undoubtedly think, “How on earth does that guitarist

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