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The Latest Breaking News from Ry Cooder

“Sometimes I try to pretend that someone threw mud on the fretboard of my guitar, or thick syrup! It’s a funny thing to imagine but it changes the way you play”: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's Sadler Vaden reveals his approach to slide guitar

Don't sweat the action, keep it in standard tuning and just pretend you're a trapeze artist with syrup on the fingerboard... Wait, what!?

MusicRadar

Taj Mahal: ‘Wherever the Rolling Stones went, it was happening’

INTERVIEW: The veteran bluesman has inspired everyone from Bob Marley to John Belushi. Backstage in Los Angeles, he tells Kevin E G Perry about recording a lost Bill Withers tune, visiting London in the Swinging Sixties, and why the blues will never die

The Independent UK

“People would hate us, bully us, throw stuff at us and threaten to beat us up, but they wouldn’t leave. We thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got something’”: Devo’s Bob Mothersbaugh on accidental hits, audience provocations and the de-evolution of guitar

Devo's uncontrollable urge to make new noise sired a new-wave sound with a puckish punk energy. The ’70s wasn't ready for them. Are we not ready now?

Guitar World

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

“My 1956 ES-225 was my only opportunity to get into that world at an acceptable price. The P-90s from that period are wild – it’s like trying to tame a beast”: How Georgie Hume’s “surf exotica” is taking instrumental guitar into a whole new world

Starting out in a London pub, Georgie Hume and the Pity Party are taking a wayfaring approach to jazz, soul, and surf guitar, and Hume has some help from a left-field “secret weapon” pedal

Guitar World

Flaco Jiménez obituary

Virtuoso accordion player who collaborated with Ry Cooder and worked with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones

The Guardian - UK

'The Accordion Just Fell Silent': Tejano Icon Flaco Jiménez Dies at 86, Fans Say a Legend Has Left the Stage

Tejano music legend Flaco Jiménez has died at 86, leaving behind a decades-long legacy that helped define the sound of Tex-Mex. Fans and fellow musicians are mourning the loss of the accordion icon, saying simply: 'A legend has left the stage.'

International Business Times UK

“You can take the back of this guitar off and the thing stays in tune as well as if it had the back on”: How L.R. Baggs reinvented the acoustic electric guitar

Delivering convincing amplified acoustic guitar tone is one of the hardest feats for guitar makers – but somehow L.R. Baggs cracked it. Lloyd Baggs shares its story of radical innovation

Guitar World

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"For all the madcap genius of Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, Bev Bevan sounds like the star of the show": The Move's Looking On signposts better things further down the road

What happened to Jeff Lynne in between the Idle Race and the Electric Light Orchestra

Louder

“I wanted to play more, and it was inappropriate with Eric or Roger. I was not the lead guitarist, and I wanted to be”: Clapton, Waters, Satriani and me – Andy Fairweather Low on his greatest collaborations and finally taking center stage

As pop idol, hit-making solo artist, and with the most star-studded CV of any sideman, the affable Welshman offers up his latest release, The Invisible Bluesman, and reflects on his storied career

Guitar World

“The most convincing acoustic tone from an acoustic electric that we’ve yet heard”: LR Baggs AEG-1 review

This cutting-edge electro from LR Baggs has a plywood body frame, torrefied spruce top, rosewood back and studio-quality electrics – and we can’t wait to plug it in…

Guitar World

“It had to capture that vintage clarity – the clean, expressive tone that lives in Ry Cooder’s slide work”: Manson unveils a Matt Bellamy Verona signature after an exhaustive pickup design process

The build offers the “exact and detailed specification” of the guitar that the Muse frontman has been playing on tour in recent years

Guitar World

“George gets up and says, ‘Andy was not the first choice. There were seven guitarists and he was the seventh choice’”: Before Andy Fairweather Low joined George Harrison’s band, the Beatle was eyeing up Gary Moore and Alvin Lee

The prolific session player joined Harrison for his 1991 tour of Japan, but it turns out he was rather low on the pecking order when the Beatles legend came to assembling his band

Guitar World

“One night after the Albert Hall he said, ‘Put it away and get a proper guitar!’”: Andy Fairweather Low on playing with Eric Clapton and how Slowhand was unimpressed by his oddball Teisco

Low got the Teisco Spectrum V bug after seeing Ry Cooder with one. Eddie Van Halen loved them too. Clapton? Not so much...

MusicRadar

“The interviewer asked Joe Satriani, ‘Why Andy Fairweather Low?’ And that’s exactly the question I would’ve asked, too”: He's played with Eric Clapton, George Harrison and David Gilmour, but now, this rhythm guitar hero is ready to take center stage

‘The Invisible Bluesman’ on why he probably won’t write any more songs, the ignored art of rhythm guitar, why he always thinks, ‘Why me?’ – and trying to persuade an amp expert to build a deliberately inefficient model

Guitar World

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Guitar World

“Clapton’s manager says, ‘George Harrison wants you to do the tour and play all the slide parts – he doesn’t want to do it’”: When rhythm guitar hero Andy Fairweather Low was recruited by a Beatle to play slide – even though he’d never played slide before

Harrison and Fairweather Low had a mutual love for Ry Cooder’s slide guitar playing, and the Beatle convinced the Eric Clapton rhythm guitarist to develop his own slide chops for a Japanese tour

Guitar World

“When Guitar Player made its debut in 1967, it marked a new era for guitar”: Guitar Player magazine to cease print publication

The world's oldest continuously published magazine devoted to guitarists, guitar gear, and instruction, Guitar Player was instrumental to the careers of Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, and Yngwie Malmsteen, to name just a few examples

Louder

"A lot of squawking that overshadows everything else": Sir Lord Baltimore conjure up the right sounds on Kingdom Come, but about those vocals...

Hailed as a proto-metal classic, Sir Lord Baltimore's debut album is perhaps more 60s than 70s

Louder

A beginner's guide to Taj Mahal in 10 essential videos

Highlights from the career of the man formerly known as Henry Saint Clair Fredericks

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Guitar World

“Now that the years have passed, I can admit that we did make liberal use of Ry Cooder’s amps without his knowledge”: Kid Congo Powers is the journeyman guitarist who fused jazz and punk with the Bad Seeds, the Cramps and Gun Club

Powers reveals how drugs, jazz and lessons from the Cramps’ Poison Ivy were all brought to bear on Gun Club’s seminal 1984 album, The Las Vegas Story

Guitar World

“There isn’t much guitar at all for the first three tracks. Nobody gave me the memo about what a record should sound like”: How Steve Vai revolutionized guitar with his debut album, Flex-Able

Flex-Able was the sound of a young Steve Vai following his musical obsessions. That it changed everything for guitar – and Vai's career – was just a happy accident

Guitar World

“Three of those were made. I had one. Ry Cooder had one. Edward Van Halen had one”: Dweezil Zappa on the high-tech custom model that EVH dubbed “The Super Pluto Guitar”

The tale of a truly distinctive instrument that was custom-made for a trio of rock’s most innovative players in the 1980s

Guitar World

“The guitar duel scene with Ry Cooder wasn’t working. Ry called up Guitar Player and asked who the new hotshot on the block was”: Steve Vai on how he got the career-defining Crossroads gig

Vai's portrayal of Jack Butler in the iconic 1986 film inspired a generation of players – now, Vai has detailed how he came to be the guitar hotshot the film's producers were looking for to widen its appeal

Guitar World

“Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Ry Cooder, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey and Buddy Guy... I naturally gravitated towards a Strat because my main influences were all playing them”: Philip Sayce on why the best studio magic is live

Returning with new solo LP The Wolves Are Coming, the blues ace discusses big studio energy during downtime for the world, his enduring guitar heroes, and his exacting standards for the Strat

Guitar World

“I strived to get an electric guitar to respond like a fingerpicked, open-tuned acoustic for decades. I went about it wrong”: Ex-Black Crowes guitarist Luther Dickinson on why he never dug his first signature Gibson – and how its followup went MIA

The North Mississippi Allstars man has led a storied career. He discusses his surprising jams with Rich Robinson and co, recording with The Replacements at the age of 13, and how his dad (via Bo Diddley) set him on a lifelong open-tuned path

Guitar World

“Eric came in, played great, just one tasty lick after another. Jeff Beck’s contribution was spellbinding”: Mark Knopfler enlists Clapton, Townshend, Iommi, Slash and dozens more for all-star charity single

Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes raise funds for teenage cancer charities with an epic version of his Local Hero theme, featuring Jeff Beck’s final recording, and over 50 guitar legends – including David Gilmour, Joan Armatrading and Brian May

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