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Two Notes has launched a 2.0 update for its GENOME platform, providing a “major evolution” that introduces iPad compatibility, a free intro trial for new users, and new capture technology.

GENOME was first teased in 2022 during NAMM, and was later awarded a 9/10 in our review for its focused set of virtual amps, cabs and pedals, making it a sturdy option for an affordable “full signal chain” plugin. Now, the platform is getting a much broader glow up by expanding beyond the desktop and bringing in new features and modern enhancements.

• READ MORE: Two Notes Reload II review: is this the new king of amp-top attenuators?

The GENOME 2.0 launch on iPad is described as “full scale”, meaning no watered-down mobile version features. Instead, the software has been “rebuilt for touch from the ground up”, with all the same capabilities as normal.

The launch of GENOME Intro also means new users can try the platform for free through desktop and iOS. Again, Two Notes stresses that this isn’t a basic version, but that it rather “delivers a complete rig-building experience with a curated selection of Amplifiers, Pedals, DynIR Virtual Cabinets and Studio FX”.

A key addition to the update is the Two Notes Capture Studio, a free standalone capture environment built to bring your own gear into your GENOME rig. Users can create static NAM captures for CODEX, or build multi-parametric AmpNet captures for an all-new PARADEX component, preserving how your amp responds across its full control range.

In response to demand, there’s also a new generation of stock TSM-Ai amplifiers on board, bringing “decades of legendary amplifier design” inside GENOME’s hybrid modelling engine. Global Transpose also unlocks full-system pitch control across an entire rig in real time.

Take a look at the video below to find out more:

“Since day one, GENOME has moved fast, each release pushing the boundaries of what the platform can be. With 2.0, we’re not just continuing that momentum – we’re redefining it. This is a new line in the sand…” says Guillaume Pille, CEO of Two Notes Audio Engineering.

“GENOME 2.0 is about innovation, effortless control, and precision – putting a truly uncompromised, next-generation rig-building experience into the hands of every player, wherever they are.”

To learn more about GENOME 2.0, visit Two Notes.

The post Two Notes’ GENOME software gets a “full-bore” 2.0 upgrade – here’s everything you need to know appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Winzz Guitars has launched the WCG 370, an electro-acoustic model with nylon strings that unites classical warm tone with modern playability.

The model is said to blend a familiar electric guitar feel with the expressive character of nylon strings “to answer a growing need” among today’s guitarists. Its body shape certainly resembles modern electric guitars, but its headstock retains classical guitar character.

• READ MORE: Sick of tuning issues on the road? These new guitar cases from D’Addario feature integrated humidity control

The WCG 370 has a thin profile African mahogany body paired with a spruce top and flame maple veneer. It has a gloss polyester finish, available in Honey Burst, Vintage Sunburst, and Red Tiger Special colours. As Winzz is a budget-friendly brand, the model is also priced under $500.

The African mahogany neck, constructed with a 4-bolt joint with a satin finish, offers a comfortable C-shape profile and a 25.5” scale length. The neck is completed by a rosewood fingerboard with a 16” radius, 22 medium nickel silver frets, white position inlays, and Luminlay side dots. Its 1.89” bone nut, narrower than traditional classical dimensions, is tailored to players accustomed to steel-string and electric neck widths.

The WCG 370 also utilises an under-saddle piezo pickup powered by an onboard, 9-volt battery, and comes with controls for Master Volume, Bass Control, and Treble Control.

The model is finished with a rosewood bridge and bone saddle for “enhanced tone and improved transfer of string vibration to the top of the guitar”, and 18:1 tuning machines for “reliable tuning stability”.

Winzz was founded in 2006 through a partnership between guitar builders from Germany’s village of Winz and Aileen Music in China. It believes music should be accessible to everyone, and says the WGS150 embodies that mission by offering “a professional instrument that welcomes beginners, creators, and seasoned musicians alike”.

The WCG 370 is available now for $399.99 USD. Find out more via Winzz Guitars.

The post This nylon electro-acoustic guitar is designed for “crossover musicians” seeking classical tone with “modern playability” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

There are only two things that really help you deal with a heatwave – powerful AC, and saving big on some great gear. Thomann has launched its summer Music Days deals, and there are some awesome discounts to be had on amps, guitars and pedals as part of its big summer savings event. Let’s dive into our favourite deals across the huge deal event Thomann has just launched.

Best electric guitar deals

D’Angelico Premiere Mini DC and SS in Sky Blue – over 50% off each

These two excellent semi-hollow guitars have had their pricetags cut by over half – a huge saving for fans of D’Angelico’s gorgeous design.

The SS version is a single-cut, also available in that lovely Sky Blue finish:

Epiphone Bonehead Riviera – 19% off

This signature guitar for Oasis guitarist Bonehead is a tidy 19% off, meaning you won’t need to look back in anger about this purchase…

ESP LTD EC-401 – 44% off

Almost 50% one of the best heavy-focused single-cut guitars out there? This EC-401 is loaded with all that you need for bone-crushing riffs – and is only £489.

ESP E-II Horizon NT-II – €1,100 off

There’s a saving of 34% to be had on this high-spec’d S-style shredder from ESP. With 24 extra jumbo frets and an eye-catching purple finish, this premium riff machine might be the last guitar you need.

Best acoustic deals

D’Angelico Premier Gramercy – 60% off

This great acoustic from D’Angelico is a whopping 60% off, meaning that for under £200 you’re getting a solid sitka spruce top, high-quality electronics, and a unique look thanks to the Black Cherry finish and antique bronze hardware.

Martin Guitar 00-18 – 29% off

This classic Martin Grand Concert guitar is almost £900 off for the Music Days event, neaning that now would be a great time to commit to getting that high-end acoustic you always dreamed of.

Martin Guitar 000-16 StreetMaster – 29% off

For something a little less traditional, this Auditorium guitar in a darker, aged finish with vintage-style hardware is a real enticing guitar at only £1,555.

Taylor GT811E Grand Theater – 30% off

This classic Taylor acoustic is over £800 off for the Music Days event, and features classic Taylor appointments and a timeless look.

Best deals on effects pedals

EarthQuaker Devices Ledges Glaciers Reverberation – 26% off

This is a fantastic little reverb pedal that doesn’t do anything too fancy, instead it just offers some brilliant takes on Room, Hall and Plate reverb modes, with preset save/recall and expression control to boot.

Eventide H9 Max Harmonizer – £40 off

This pedal is famously powerful, offering over 50 effects algorithms, all which sound utterly phenomenal, particularly if you’re of a more ambient persuasion.

KHDK Night Of The Living Shred

Get half off this limited-edition version Zacky Vengeance’s signature preamp. The Avenged Sevenfold player has crafted a high-gain fuzz and preamp alongside KHDK, and there’s some gloriously retro zombie art to go with it.

Marshall Drivemaster – 47% off

The Marshall Drivemaster may not the most famous of Marshall’s original overdrive lineup from the 1990s, but this authentic recreation has just as much of a cool saturated distortion sound, albeit a little heavier than its Bluesbreaker sibling. A discount of almost 50% has brought the price down to a nice £69 for the Music Days event.

Best deals on amps

Mesa Boogie Mark Five:25 – 12% off

Save on this compact but powerful head from Mesa Boogie. An integrated load and cab sim lets you record it direct – while a 25 watt power section still lets you bring the volume on stage.

PRS Archon Classic 50 Head – £43 off

This vintage-style amplifier head from PRS is a no-nonsense 50-watt monster – and it can be acquired for an excellent price right now.

Blackstar Debut 30E – 29% off

Looking for a great starter amplifier? The Blackstar Debut is a great amp for the price anyway, but for Music Days its been discounted by almost 30%. Clean-sounding and loud, this is a great starting point for new players who want to move some air for the first time.

The post Thomann Music Days deals are here: guitars, pedals, amps and accessories we’d actually buy appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

“When I pick up this guitar, it makes me play the way I play and come up with the ideas I come up with that are different to when I play any other type of guitar.”

Muse’s Matt Bellamy is one of the most influential guitarists of the last two decades, but the way he approaches the construction of the instrument is as vital and interesting as the actual notes he plays. This is because for the majority of Muse’s career Bellamy has used custom instruments created by UK luthier Manson Guitar Works – but the 007, also known as “Black Ed”, is perhaps his most iconic and famous. It’s the guitar that can be seen in the video for Time Is Running Out, it’s the guitar one you hear on New Born, Stockholm Syndrome, Uprising and Starlight. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s the most often-heard guitar in the entire Muse canon.

“I would say that on every album Muse has made since this guitar was built it has been featured on about 50 per cent of every song we’ve ever recorded,” Bellamy explained to Manson MD Adrian Ashton. “It’s the number one, most go-to recording guitar for me. I did use it on stage a lot as well, and it took a bit of a beating! And I won’t say it was the only one, but it was pretty much the only one that was always getting recorded consistently on Muse albums.”

Plug In, Baby

Back in the early 2000s, Bellamy came to Manson founder Hugh Manson with a plan. He’d already been getting Hugh Manson to install various pedal circuits into the T-style guitars Bellamy had been using, enabling him to tweak his sound on the fly without having to mess with a pedalboard. But now he wanted to squeeze the much more involved gubbins of a DigiTech Whammy pedal into one of the customised T-type guitars Bellamy had been using in Muse.

Rather than load the guitar with a bunch of heavy electronics and batteries, Manson suggested that a more elegant solution would be to: install a touch-sensitive strip that could control the pedal via MIDI, and achieve the same results. The idea spurred Matt Bellamy to take the idea further – just how much could you squeeze into one conventionally-proportioned instrument? A lot, it transpires.

The finished guitar ended up with a Fernandez Sustainer pickup to offer crazy infinitely sustaining notes, a killswitch for stuttering effects, a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory for distortion and perhaps most uniquely of all, a Z.Vex Wah Probe. The Wah Probe is a bizarre, unique creation that uses a theremin-like copper plate to alter the sound of the effect depending on where your finger sits. Naturally, Manson built the plate into the guitar’s pickguard with a specific purpose.

“Whenever we went to Japan, we used to always go and buy weird pedals, basically,” Bellamy recalls. “That was just a thing that we did. A lot of [bassist Chris Wolstenholme]’s synth pedals come from Japan. There were certain shops we used to know in Tokyo, and they had all the best collections and stuff. And I remember seeing a Z-Vex Wah Probe over there for the first time. I bought one and played it and said, ‘Let’s do this!’

“The idea behind it was to try to get this theremin vibe going – with a sustainer holding the note, but just trying to get the note to have some movement.”

And as if that wasn’t enough, the fretboard also lights up with LEDs, kicking off Muse’s longstanding practice of making their instruments just as part of the visual spectacle of a show as everything else.

Back In Black

Fitting it wasn’t a problem, said Hugh, but the resulting guitar would weigh a huge amount purely because of the number of batteries you’d have to squeeze in there to run the tech.
A better solution, Hugh suggested, would be to install a MIDI controller in the guitar. MIDI is the standardised means of digital communication for music technology, and Hugh reasoned that Matt could use it to control an outboard Whammy just as effectively.

The resulting guitar sported a touch-sensitive MIDI control strip above the pickups to control said Whammy, but Matt wasn’t done there. Manson had already been building various other pedals into Matt’s guitars, and with 007 he kicked it into high gear. The guitar features internal circuitry and controls for a Z.Vex Wah Probe (the theremin-like control plate takes the place of a scratchplate on the bottom horn), a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory, and an MXR Phase 90, as well as the addition of a Fernandes Sustainer pickup above the Seymour Duncan hot P-90 neck pickup. Oh, and the fretboard also lights up with LEDs, kicking off Muse’s longstanding practice of making their instruments just as part of the visual spectacle of a show as everything else.

Bellamy first began using this unique and remarkable instrument Black Ed in 2001, and it quickly became his go-to guitar. As you can see from Guitar.com’s photos, the guitar had taken some serious punishment over its time as a stage instrument, and around 2011 Matt decided to retire it from the stage for practical reasons. “It has a very specific tone, but it was a bit heavy for me on stage,” he reveals. “Some of my latest guitars, I’ve had them made deliberately from lighter woods, sometimes with hollowed-out bodies to be extra light. And that’s one of the reasons why I stopped touring with it so much: because it was heavy. But it had the best tone of all the guitars.”

You might start to spot it again soon, however… sort of. Last year Manson (which Bellamy took ownership of in 2020) released the Matthew Bellamy Signature Black Edition – an identical replica of the 007 guitar down to every scratch, chip and repair, while exactly replicating the guitar’s truly unique internals. “If I could only have one guitar in the world, the Black Edition would be it,” Bellamy explains. That’s how important this guitar is to him, and why Manson spared no expense to ensure he can continue using a version of it for years to come.

The post The Close Up: Muse guitarist Matt Bellamy’s most iconic and beloved guitar, the Manson 007 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Smiths legend Johnny Marr is having a clear our, with plans to auction off nearly 100 pieces from his personal collection later this year. Consisting of almost 80 instruments, as well as amps and other bits of gear, the collection will be a chance to take home a piece of Marr’s diverse and colourful musical back catalogue.

The auction will be held in collaboration with Christie’s auction house, with prices ranging from £1,000 to £80,000. One of the higher ticket items could potentially go for up to £150,000 though – namely his 1960 Cherry Red Gibson ES-355, a gift Marr received from Seymour Stein when signing to Sire Records. The guitar is a pivotal piece of Smiths history, featuring on the iconic Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.

• READ MORE: Be aware – AI deepfake scammers of women guitar influencers are on the rise

Another notable guitar up for grabs is Marr’s iconic black and white 1982 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo, which was another staple instrument of his Smiths era. Featuring on the band’s self-titled 1984 debut, the guitar can be heard throughout, including on cuts like This Charming Man and What Difference Does It Make?

The Manchester-born Marr also leant this guitar to fellow Mancunian Noel Gallagher during the recording of Oasis’ Definitely Maybe, so that’s some extra Northern spirit contained within this axe. Oasis even gave a little nod to the Rickenbacker’s influence by featuring it on the cover of 1994 single Supersonic.

Other highlights include Marr’s Martin D-28 (famously featuring on the timeless There Is A Light That Will Never Go Out), as well as a one‑of‑a‑kind Roger Giffin Korina Custom ‘Tele’ (an engagement gift from his now-wife), and a 1984 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which Marr apparently claims has been used on more recordings than any other guitar up for auction.

One of the most modern guitars available is Marr’s 2018 Fender Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar. But that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in experience – the guitar was used to record on Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for the 2021 James Bond instalment, No Time To Die. It features on both the film’s instrumental theme, as well as Billie Eilish’s Oscar‑winning theme song.

Speaking about the upcoming auction, Marr explains: “I have loved guitars for as long as I can remember, since the first one I got at the age of five. Each guitar I have acquired over the past 50 years or so has helped me evolve as a musician, bringing new songs, new sounds and techniques.”

He notes that writing his 2023 book, Marr’s Guitars, gave him some perspective on his collection. In his mind, it’s time to set these instruments free so they can go forth and make some more memories. “The book turned out to be a cathartic experience and when it was time for these beautiful instruments to go back into storage, I couldn’t imagine them being put away and left unplayed,” he writes.

“It’s bittersweet to be parting with these guitars but I want them to go to new homes and new people who will love them as much as I have,” he concludes. “I hope they bring as much joy, inspiration and fun – and new songs – as they have given me.”

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Marr is promising to donate 100% of the profits from 10 lots to a pair of charities: The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and The National Autistic Society.

The public will be able to view a selection of collection highlights prior to the auction. New York will have a chance from June 25th to July 1st, before returning to Christie’s headquarters in London. Then, the public will be able to view the collection from September 9th to 16th.

Following the grand clear out, Johnny Marr will surely be able to focus on his new album The Age of Everything. The record is due to drop October 2nd, with latest single Spin serving as a taste of what to expect.

For more information, head to Chirstie’s auction house.

The post “I couldn’t imagine them being left unplayed”: Johnny Marr is auctioning off nearly 100 bits of gear, including pivotal Smiths guitars appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

There’s no denying that Kirk Hammett is a masterful, coordinated guitarist – but he can be pretty clumsy on his feet. What with the Metallica axeman injuring his leg onstage back in 2023, he took his antics up a notch last weekend in Ireland, taking a tumble right into the crowd.

The fall happened at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on Friday 19 June during Seek & Destroy. In an effort to treat front-row fans to a clear view of his fretwork, the heavy metal legend stood right on the edge of the stage – and things got a little more up-close and personal than he’d intended.

• READ MORE: Be aware – AI deepfake scammers of women guitar influencers are on the rise

In a video of the fall, you can see Hammett moving closer to the eager fans. Everyone looks delighted – before he slips and falls down onto their heads, that is. Thankfully, the crowd all reacted accordingly, helping Hammett back up and on his feet without much of a hitch.

Despite the head-first dive, Hammett was easily able to continue on with the show. He’s seemingly not got any injuries from it either, if we consider his joke-y response on Instagram hours after the show: a simple “SLIP AND DESTROY!!!!” over a video of the incident.

Again, Hammett has been known to be clumsy. The internet is full of videos of him slipping on his wah pedal, slipping on thin air, and even a few of him just collapsing to the ground.

Hammett’s plunge isn’t the first onstage antic that’s gained him attention on this leg of Metallica’s M72 world tour. On 13 June, Hammett’s choice of attire raised a few eyebrows, with the guitarist opting to wear a comedic shirt reading “Taylor Swift Is A CIA Psyop”.

Moving forward, Metallica’s M72 tour will continue with their two-night stops in each city, with the promise of no repeats across the pair of shows. They’ll be hitting the rest of the UK throughout the end of June and into July, with dates schedules in for Cardiff, Glasgow, and London.

View the full list of tour dates at the Metallica website.

Kirk Hammett wears t-shirt that says "Taylor Swift is a CIA Psyop," mocking conspiracy theorists during a show in Budapest.

This satirical shirt humorously critiques and mocks the absurdity of the real-world conspiracy theories that assert Swift is a government asset.

The…

— BBQ Chiefs (@BBQChiefs) June 19, 2026

The post “Slip and destroy!”: Kirk Hammett took a tumble offstage during Metallica’s Dublin show appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Thomann is suing Fender over its recent campaign of cease-and-desist regarding alleged infringement on the Stratocaster body shape. The retailer has also confirmed that its sub-brand Harley Benton has received a letter over its own guitars.

• READ MORE: Fender CEO responds to cease-and-desist backlash, says company is “not suing anybody”

Per a statement published by Thomann, the brand said it has been following the development of Fender’s cease-and-desist campaign “with great concern,” and noted that the original legal decision that empowered the letters was a default judgement, delivered when the defendant did not appear in court. The statement continues: “On this basis, Fender is now attempting to enforce a fundamental copyright claim to the body shape of the Stratocaster and is simultaneously taking action against European dealers and manufacturers. American manufacturers who sell their instruments in Europe, however, are also affected.”

“After careful consideration, we have decided to take legal action. We have done so because we are convinced that the questions raised here go far beyond a mere legal dispute and affect the future of diversity, innovation and competition in our industry.”

Until now, it was known that the letters were fairly widespread, however PRS and LSL were the only two brands to publicly confirm that they had received them. Thomann’s statement confirms what many commentators suspected – Harley Benton was one of the brands to receive a letter.

The statement as a whole asserts that Thomann wants to see the matter resolved in unbiased court proceedings. As the initial decision was simply a default judgement, legal proceedings were limited – discovery relating to the usage of the S-style body shape didn’t take place, and so it is possible that a more involved case could come to a different conclusion to the copyright and/or trademark status of the body shape.

While the letters have inspired furor and backlash on social media and YouTube for weeks – particularly due to the size disparity between Fender and LSL – LSL only recently confirmed it was gearing up for a legal fight, hiring experienced guitar lawyer Ron Bienstock. Thomann’s lawsuit is the first legal rebuttal to the campaign from an affected brand that goes on the offence rather than the defence.

CEO Hans Thomann echoes this David-and-Goliath within Thomann’s statement: “We used to be a small music store ourselves and know exactly where we have come from,” he says. “Diversity, fairness and respectfully dealing with each other have always been part of our philosophy. Many of those affected do not have the financial and legal means to conduct such a legal dispute. We therefore see it as our responsibility to have this matter clarified in court not only for our own company, but for all parties involved.”

The full nature of the lawsuit and Thomann’s actual legal arguments are not yet public, however the existence of the suit itself is a notable shift in temperature for Fender. Thomann is the biggest musical instrument retailer in Europe, and doubtless one of Fender’s own biggest dealers. The fact that Thomann is initiating its own legal action, rather than waiting for Fender to follow-through on the threats within the cease-and-desist, indicates a certain level of confidence regarding the issue, and that strength of feeling around Fender’s campaign is not limited to just social media and YouTube commentators.

Fender has been contacted for comment.

The post Thomann sues Fender over Stratocaster cease and desist letters appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Blues ace Jared James Nichols has commented on becoming an official Marshall Endorsing Artist, after announcing he was parting ways with Blackstar last month.

JJN released a number of signature amplifiers with Blackstar during a long partnership with the British amp brand, but he’s now pivoted to Marshall – arguably the leading amp manufacturer for rock music of the past few decades.

• READ MORE: Be aware – AI deepfake scammers of women guitar influencers are on the rise
  

“I’ve always associated Marshall with the sound that made me want to play guitar in the first place,” the guitarist says.

“Those amps are part of the DNA of rock music. To now be part of that family genuinely means a lot.”

“Jared represents everything we look for in a Marshall artist – feel, power, and a real connection to the instrument,” adds Hugh Gilmartin, Artist Relations & Marketing Manager at Marshall.

“His approach to tone and performance reflects the spirit that has driven Marshall for over 60 years.”

During a recent conversation with Tyler Larson (Music Is Win), Nichols recalled trying out a number of new amps for his rig.

“About a year ago, I started supplementing my rig with different amps. I was trying everything: Fenders, Supros, even some old-school Sunn and EVH amps,” he said [via Guitar World].

“But a friend of mine gave me a 1968 Plexi on permanent loan, and that was the sound. When I played, it was almost like I made every note count even more. It was rejuvenating; I could still feel my fingers, no matter how much gain I stacked on top of it. Marshalls are the heartbeat of rock n’ roll and the sound that I love.”

The new Marshall partnership arrives following the release of Nichols’ latest album Louder Than Fate, which was recorded in part at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 in LA.

Jared James Nichols has a number of tour dates lined up for 2026. View a full list at Ticketmaster.

The post “Those amps are part of the DNA of rock music”: Jared James Nichols on becoming a Marshall endorsee appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

From plagiarism to miming, the online guitar space has been rife with controversy in recent years. Unfortunately, things might have just gotten even worse; guitarist Sophie Burrell has discovered that an AI ‘influencer’ is regularly generating deepfake replicas of her content.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Burrell recalls the first time she encountered one of her AI counterparts. “I was scrolling on TikTok and got recommended a video of a ‘girl’ playing guitar,” she says. “It was identical to my setup. Same camera angle, same room, same guitar, same movements. It took me less than a second to realise it was literally my video, except I’d been replaced by an AI-generated character.”

• READ MORE: “I patently refuse to use AI in my music creation”: Billy Corgan calls AI “a deal with the devil” that could “wipe out” generations of songwriters

Around the time, Burrell shared her discovery with her followers by comparing her own video with the AI replica. Just as she explains to Guitar World, everything is a perfect parallel, right down to her facial expressions. Though, there are a few tell-tale signs of it being AI – namely the finger placement, with AI infamously having issues with consistently generating fingers.

“She is so good that she can even do bends without putting her fingers on the fretboard – why didn’t I think of that!” Burrell joked.

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Despite the uncanny performance and slightly bodged fretwork, the AI influencer has steadily gained traction. “It honestly feels like a Black Mirror episode,” Burrell tells Guitar World. “It blows my mind that instead of learning an instrument or developing a skill, people would rather steal someone else’s work, slightly alter it with AI, and then take credit for it themselves.

“I’m angry that people can steal my content without my consent, replace me entirely using AI, repost it without crediting me, gain attention from it, and then use the engagement to funnel people towards whatever they’re selling – which is usually something inappropriate,” she adds.

To add insult to injury, Burrell has had to defend herself against AI accusations in the past. A video of her trying to make her riffs sound like Beethoven got a particularly high influx of “fake!!” claims, with Burrell having to post a stripped back version. In it, she only performs with a metronome.

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“I don’t want you to ever think of me as someone who fakes my playing,” she later commented on the Instagram post. “I’d rather show you my stuff with mistakes and me sounding sloppy, than deliver something inauthentic. So this is me and this is what it sounds like.”

The stripped back performance video is serving as one of the only ways to prove your genuine skill – even viral shredder Ichika Nito was forced to post a one-take, no edits performance back in February to prove his innocence against “fake” performance accusations.

Elsewhere in the Guitar World interview, Machine Gun Kelly guitarist Sophie Lloyd also spoke out about her own experience with AI cloning her work and using her likeness. “I’ve received dozens of emails from people claiming they’ve been speaking with me over video calls for months – clearly scammers using AI impersonation,” she says. “Some of the situations are genuinely devastating, with people being scammed out of large amounts of money.”

“The idea that our music and content can be stolen so easily is really disheartening,” she continues. “We rely on interactions with our content for visibility, monetisation, and opportunities. It’s literally our livelihood being stolen, and platforms need to start treating it that way.”

Back in 2025, Joe Bonamassa shared his own fears of generative AI scamming his fans. The guitarist shared a deepfake based on an old 2021 clip of himself, which, though slightly robotic, felt unnervingly uncanny. “This is so fucked up,” Bonamassa wrote at the time. “An AI generated designed to mislead and scam people. Please be aware… 2025 is a scary time my friends.”

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The post Be aware – AI deepfake scammers of women guitar influencers are on the rise appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$599/£599, danelectro.com

Danelectro’s place in the history of electric guitars is as unique as it is impactful. When Nathan Daniel started producing no-frills, low-cost guitars made of Masonite and tape in the late 1940s, you wouldn’t have imagined he expected his creations would end up in the hands of some of the most influential musicians of the next seven decades.

• READ MORE: Heritage Standard II H-575 review: “a hell of a lot of guitar for the money”

But whether it’s Jimmy Page and Bob Dylan or Phoebe Bridgers and Mac DeMarco, the unique sound and vibe of a Danelectro guitar (or very similar examples sold under the Silvertone brand) has remained captivating for guitarists of every stripe.

The original US Danelectro brand disappeared in 1969, but since the late 90s, the brand has been reborn (now made in China) and has set about producing a steady stream of instruments mainly based on the company’s early designs.
Now though, the brand has changed the recipe somewhat – introducing a new model that pulls together various parts of Dano history and makes something a bit different…

Danelectro Dan O. Cool – what is it?

Everything about the Dan O. Cool has a touchstone with the company’s 1950s heyday. So, that distinctive ‘full bell’ headstock shape is from 1954, the ‘skate key’ tuners are from 1958, while the rosewood-saddle bridge is from 1958. The body shape is of course Dano’s classic ’59 design, while the pickguard is a rare textured type from a 1955 U3.

The five colours – including this very fetching shade of Aqua – are also pulled from Danelectro’s 50s locker, and of course you get that most impactful and unique Nathan Daniel innovation from this decade, the lipstick pickup.

In this case, the lipstick pickups are hotter than ones seen on previous models – offering around 20 per cent more volume in the neck and 30 more from the bridge pickup. Construction is also very classic Dano – a solid spruce frame with Masonite (aka hardboard) panels for the top and back.

So why then, are Dano purists up in arms about it? Well, in part it’s because of that headstock – compared to the elegance of the classic ‘Coke bottle’, most of the other pegheads in the Dano range are something of an acquired taste, to say the least.

But mainly, it’s not the shape but what’s on it that has gotten the Dano faithful worked up – because instead of the classic Danelectro box logo, we have a new and rather stark “DANO” word mark.

On the one hand, it should be no big deal – after all, most musicians will call the guitar a Dano anyway – but there is something a little off about the execution. In a guitar that tries so hard to signal its 1950s credentials, it’s hard to imagine a 1950s guitar leaving any factory with such a modern minimalist logo on the headstock.

Danelectro Dan O. Cool – build quality and playability

There’s a weird tension whenever you pick up a Danelectro guitar – and I should know as I own both an original US-made model and a modern Chinese reproduction. The fundamental truth is that these are not made like other electric guitars, and there’s a certain level of inherent jankiness about them that you have to be willing to embrace as part of its unique charm.

You might argue that this is a polite way of saying that Danelectro guitars are not made as well as other Asian guitars at this price point, but again, to compare this to a solidbody guitar made in more traditional fashion is somewhat missing the point.

This is for all intents and purposes a guitar made of board held together by tolex tape – that doesn’t make it flimsy, but it does mean you have to approach it differently than you would a normal instrument.

And by the standards of Danelectro guitars old and new, the Dan O. Cool is a pretty solid example – the finishing of the body and neck is decent, the body tape is evenly and neatly applied.

The frets are a little duller than I’d like, but they are perfectly smooth in operation, and so are the new tuners, with a rosewood bridge providing solid resonance and decent tuning stability. Personally, I can take or leave the rosewood bridge and its intonation compromises – Danelectro also produces an adjustable six-saddle bridge that drops in, and I’d swap it out in a heartbeat.

The C-shaped neck isn’t going to win any awards for character, but it’s plenty comfortable – a nice palmful that remains an easy player all the way up the fingerboard.

Danelectro Guitars Dan O. Cool – sounds

The lipstick pickup sound is the primary reason why generations of musicians have been drawn to Danelectro guitars, and they are wonderfully unique. Nathan Daniel’s decision to wrap a crude bar magnet in wire and shove it inside a lipstick tube might have been done mainly for cost, but it gives the pickups a jangly, chiming, clear, and detailed sound that is unlike anything else.

This type of pickup on vintage guitars can be somewhat anaemic and brittle in use, however – you often need a pedal or a cranked amp to boost them enough to really make them usable. The Dan O. Cool has none of these drawbacks – the extra output offered from these new pickups makes this a much more muscular experience than I’m used to. It’s plenty loud in all positions, while the middle position – with both pickups engaged – is the real cream of the crop, offering an almost mini-humbucker-like tonality.

Danelectro Guitars Dan O. Cool – should I buy one?

I understand a little of why the purists are freaking out about this Dan O. Cool, but I think the reservations about that new headstock logo have distracted from what is a very Dano-coded instrument that retains much of the vintage mojo we know and love, just put together slightly differently.

The Dan O. Cool looks like a good time before you even pick it up, but with its comfortable playing experience, improved tuning stability and most of all, those upscaled pickups, it takes that mojo and makes it more usable in the real world.

The lack of a gigbag is a drawback given the guitar’s unique shape, but otherwise it takes much of the temperamental nature and fragility of vintage Danos and banishes them without losing the unique sonic and visual qualities that make the brand’s guitars so iconic. It’s two thumbs up from me, Daddy-O.

Danelectro Guitars Dan O. Cool – alternatives

There’s nothing really like a Dano out there, but if you want something that’s more of a faithful recreation of a classic model, the 59M ($569) is a wonderfully fun instrument. The reborn Silvertone offers a bunch of the brand’s classic guitars, including the Dano-in-another-name 1303 ($399). For more esoteric catalogue-style recreations, Airline’s Jetsons Jr 2P ($799) offers the classic Res-O-Glass look with more normal construction, while if you want a US-made alternative, Harmony’s Juno ($1,499) is a compact, US-made single-cut with gold foil humbuckers.

The post Danelectro Dan O. Cool review: is this the most polarising Dano ever? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Press Release

Source: Prospect PR

Joe Bonamassa has officially released The Spirit Of Rory Live From Cork, a powerful live album and concert film celebrating the music and enduring legacy of Irish guitar legend Rory Gallagher. Available now via J&R Adventures, the project captures Bonamassa’s sold-out tribute performances in Cork, Ireland, where Gallagher’s influence remains woven into the fabric of the city itself. Alongside the album release, Bonamassa has also unveiled the epic live performance video for the project’s emotional centerpiece, “A Million Miles Away (Live).”

Recorded with the blessing of Gallagher’s family and performed before passionate hometown audiences, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Corkdocuments what many in attendance described as a once-in-a-lifetime musical event. A lifelong admirer of Gallagher, Bonamassa approached the material with deep reverence, bringing together a band capable of honoring the fire, spontaneity, and emotional honesty that defined Gallagher’s work while allowing the performances to breathe with their own energy.

Rory Gallagher remains one of Ireland’s most beloved musical figures, revered worldwide for a style that fused traditional electric blues with hard rock intensity, Celtic influences, and fearless improvisation. His distinctive guitar tone, expressive slide work, and deeply emotional performances inspired generations of players, including Bonamassa himself. Together, the album and film capture both the scale of Gallagher’s influence and the deep personal connection his music continues to inspire among musicians and fans around the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the heart of the release is “A Million Miles Away,” one of Gallagher’s most beloved and emotionally resonant compositions. Originally released on 1973’s Tattoo and a legendary extended rendition on his Irish Tour ‘74, the song captures themes of loneliness, longing, and emotional distance, pairing poetic imagery with one of Gallagher’s most vulnerable vocal performances. Joe’s DVD bonus features include a special interview with Rory’s brother, Donal, who recounts the story behind the song’s creation and visits the dramatic Irish cliffs whose rugged beauty helped inspire its emotional power.

Bonamassa’s interpretation embraces that emotional core. Filmed in front of a packed Cork audience, the performance unfolds with patience and restraint before building into a soaring guitar statement that reflects both Gallagher’s influence and Bonamassa’s own musical voice. The result serves as a fitting centerpiece for a project built on admiration, respect, and a shared love of the blues.

What began as a single tribute concert ultimately grew into a three-night sold-out run in Gallagher’s hometown, with fans traveling from around the world to celebrate the music. The atmosphere throughout the performances was electric, creating what Bonamassa describes as one of the most meaningful experiences of his career.

Early praise has already begun to reflect the significance of the project. Guitarist Magazine praised the release, writing, “Joe does his hero proud…a very fitting affectionate tribute to one of the most notable blues guitarists of our age.” Blues Matters hailed The Spirit Of Rory “one of the finest live albums ever produced,” while Powerplay awarded the project a perfect 10/10, writing that “Bonamassa has captured Gallagher’s genre-defining influence and honored it with flawless perfection.”

Joe Performing at Live At The Marquee – Photo Credit: Marcus Bird

Across fourteen carefully selected songs, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Corkexplores the full breadth of Gallagher’s catalog, from explosive live staples like “Walk On Hot Coals,” “Bullfrog Blues,” and “Bad Penny” to deeply personal performances including “Tattoo’d Lady” and “I Fall Apart.” The broader setlist was also inspired in part by the spirit of Gallagher’s legendary Irish Tour ‘74 era, which first introduced many listeners, including Bonamassa, to Gallagher’s singular live power.

The project also includes several moments of special historical significance, including Bonamassa’s performance of “As The Crow Flies” on Gallagher’s own 1930 National Triolian resonator guitar, generously loaned by the Cork Public Museum. Additional DVD and Blu-ray bonus features include The Inspiration of Rory, featuring conversations with Brian May and Slash, along with Rory’sAcoustic Guitar and Ballycotton – A Million Miles Away.

In celebration of the album’s release, European fans can now enter a special raffle benefiting the Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation, with the chance to win a one-of-a-kind signed Rory tribute guitar.

Joe Bonamassa with Rory’s brother Donal Gallagher and Irish Promoter Peter Aiken

The raffle runs from June 19th through July 20th, with donations supporting KTBA’s ongoing mission of funding music education and assisting musicians in need. The centerpiece of the raffle is a Classic Series ‘60s Fender Stratocaster personally purchased by Bonamassa at Cork’s legendary Crowley’s Music Centre and was subsequently signed backstage by Bonamassa, members of the band, Rory Gallagher’s family and others involved in the historic event. The prize package also includes a Joe signed copy of the Red Marble Double Vinyl, a CD/DVD or CD/Blu-ray package, and a $100 merchandise credit to the Joe Bonamassa online store.

Ultimately, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Cork stands as both a celebration and a thank-you letter – from one guitarist to another, from one generation of blues musicians to the next, and from a devoted fan to an artist whose influence continues to resonate decades after his passing.

As Bonamassa wrote in the project’s liner notes: “What you hear on these recordings is our best effort to pay tribute to Rory Gallagher, a man I never met, but admire so deeply. His music is part of me and I’m grateful that we were able to contribute in some small way to his ongoing legacy.”

CD Track Listing
1. Cradle Rock (Live)
2. Walk On Hot Coals (Live)
3. Tattoo’d Lady (Live)
4. I Wonder Who (Live)
5. Calling Card (Live)
6. Who’s That Coming? (Live)
7. Messin’ With The Kid (Live)
8. Bullfrog Blues (Live)
9. Treat Her Right (Live)
10. Bad Penny (Live)
11. I Fall Apart (Live)
12. A Million Miles Away (Live)
13. As The Crow Flies (Live)
14. Back On My Stompin’ Ground (Live)

DVD / Blu-Ray
1. The Spirit Of Rory (Opening Scene)
2. Cradle Rock
3. Walk On Hot Coals
4. Tattoo’d Lady
5. I Wonder Who
6. Calling Card
7. Who’s That Coming?
8. Messin’ With The Kid
9. Band Introductions
10. Bullfrog Blues
11. Treat Her Right
12. Bad Penny
13. I Fall Apart
14. A Million Miles Away
15. As The Crow Flies
16. Back On My Stompin’ Ground
17. Ballycotton (End Credits)

DVD / Blu-Ray Bonus Features:

• Ballycotton – A Million Miles Away
• Rory’s Acoustic Guitar
• The Inspiration of Rory (A Conversation with Brian May & Slash)

Vinyl  (180 gram Red Marble Double LP)

Side A
1. Cradle Rock (Live)
2. Walk On Hot Coals (Live)
3. Tattoo’d Lady (Live)
4. I Wonder Who (Live)

Side B
5. Calling Card (Live)
6. Who’s That Coming? (Live)
7. Messin’ With The Kid (Live)
8. Bullfrog Blues (Live)

Side C
9. Treat Her Right (Live)
10. Bad Penny (Live)
11. I Fall Apart (Live)

Side D
12. A Million Miles Away (Live)
13. As The Crow Flies (Live)
14. Back On My Stompin’ Ground (Live)

U.S. SUMMER TOUR 2026
June 26 – Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts w/ JJ Grey & Mofro & D.K. Harrell
June 27 – Atlantic City, NJ – Ocean Casino Resort
June 28 – Newark, NJ – New Jersey Performing Arts Center
July 4 –  Sioux City, IA – Saturday in the Park
July 29 – Vienna, VA – Wolf Trap w/ Gov’t Mule
July 31 – Bangor, ME – Maine Savings Amphitheater w/ Gov’t Mule
August 1 – Gilford, NH – BankNH Pavilion w/ Gov’t Mule
August 3 – Hyannis, MA – Cape Cod Melody Tent
August 5 – Bridgeport, CT – Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater w/ JJ Grey & Mofro
August 7 – Selbyville, DE – Freeman Arts Pavilion
August 8 – Baltimore, MD – Pier Six Pavilion w/ Gov’t Mule
August 9 – Youngstown, OH – The Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre w/ Gov’t Mule
August 11 – Huber Heights, OH – Rose Music Center at The Heights
August 12 – Highland Park, IL – Ravinia Festival
August 14 – Interlochen, MI – Kresge Auditorium w/ Gov’t Mule
August 15 – Welch, MN – Treasure Island Resort & Casino w/ Gov’t Mule
August 16 – Lincoln, NE – Pinewood Bowl Theater w/ Gov’t Mule
August 19 – Cheyenne, WY – Cheyenne Civic Center
August 20 – Salt Lake City, UT – Eccles Theater
August 22 – Albuquerque, NM – Sandia Resort & Casino
August 23 – Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre
September 26-27 – Austin, TX – Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival @ Moody Center

EU FALL TOUR 2026
October 21 – Helsinki, FL – Veikkaus Arena
October 23 – Stockholm, SE – Stockholm Avicii Arena
October 24 – Oslo, NO – Oslo Spektrum
October 25 – Gothenburg, SE – Göteborg Partille Arena
October 27 – Copenhagen, DK – K.B. Hallen København
October 29 – Rostock, DE – Stadthalle Rostock
October 30 – Berlin, DE – Uber Arena
October 31 – Dortmund, DE – Westfalenhalle
November 4 – Milan, IT – Unipol Forum
November 6 – Toulouse,FR – Zenith Toulouse Metropole
November 7 – Barcelona, ES – Barcelona Sant Jordi Club
November 8 – Madrid, ES – Madrid Palacio Vistalegre
November 11 – Wroclaw, Poland – Ethno Festival

ABOUT JOE BONAMASSA
Blues-rock superstar Joe Bonamassa is one of the most celebrated performing musicians of his generation. A five-time GRAMMY-nominated artist and 15-time Blues Music Award nominee – with four wins – he recently notched his 30th No. 1 album on the Billboard Blues Chart with B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100, extending his record for the most No. 1 albums in the chart’s history. With more than 50 releases spanning studio and live recordings, he has built a far-reaching, multi-genre catalog.

Beyond performing, Bonamassa plays a central role in today’s blues landscape as a producer and curator. Working closely with Josh Smith, he has produced albums for artists including Joanne Shaw Taylor, Marc Broussard, Larry McCray, and Jimmy Hall through his Journeyman and KTBA labels. He also curates and headlines sold-out destination events like Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea and Sound Wave Beach Weekend, while his Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation has funded hundreds of music education projects across the country.

A dedicated student of the instrument, Bonamassa is also known as one of the world’s leading guitar collectors and historians, with a deep connection to the lineage of blues and rock. For more information, visit http://www.jbonamassa.com.

June 19, 2026 A bit of my personal philosophy and thoughts on teaching technique and strategy was on the agenda today. The approach, sometimes referred to as The Hogan Guitar Method around here, is based on using songs to teach techniques and skills. Most people pick up the guitar because they want to play songs […]

The post Totally Guitars Weekly Update June 19, 2026 appeared first on On The Beat with Totally Guitars.

June 12, 2026 This week I had a couple students working with 3-string triads on the top strings (1st, 2nd & 3rd), and I thought to combine ideas on the three families (E, A & D), and how they can be used for progressions using chords I, IV & V. It turns out the key […]

The post Totally Guitars Weekly Update June 12, 2026 appeared first on On The Beat with Totally Guitars.

By: Rick Landers

Guitar International and the masterful singer-songwriter, producer, author and music historian-presenter, Rod MacDonald, continue our conversation about Rod’s music career, including challenges, songwriting, memorable performances, and the quiet times of creating and situational flexibility to change to meet audience dynamics.

If you missed the beginning of our conversation, please go to PART 1 HERE! and PART 2 HERE!

“A keen sense of humor, an ingratiating way with romantic songs, and just enough recklessness to keep an audience wondering.” 

Buffalo Daily News

“Rod MacDonald is a brilliant folk singer and composer. His melodic songs possess words that go straight into your heart and soul.” Atlantic City

(NJ) Press

“One of the most highly regarded singer-songwriters working in North America today” 

Fast Folk Musical Magazine

CHECK OUT ROD’S 2026 CALENDAR! 

Rod MacDonald

Rick: It seems to me that based on what you’ve done, the amount of things that you’ve done, it takes a certain amount of discipline and some resilience not only to start a project, which is always kind of fun, but getting to be the finish line seems to be probably the last 5% of a project is the hardest part of the project. So, it sounds like you’re a finisher, you like to get things done and you do that last 5% and get it right.

Rod MacDonald: I do like to get things done. I’ll even do things that I know I’m not going use just to finish them and then put ’em aside and say, “Well, okay, but at least this is done if I ever want to come back to it.”

That’s definitely part of my personality, no doubt about it. I like to finish things and I like to finish them to the degree that I think that they’re where they belong, that they’re as good as they can be. I don’t like to leave things unfinished very much, unless I feel like every once in a while you come to a place where you think, “Well, I don’t think this is going to get any better no matter what I do, but I still don’t think it’s good enough to release.”

Andt then you have to let go of it. The song will occasionally end up that way. And then sometimes I’ll put it on my website as an archival recording later on and say, “Because it’s the only recording of this song. And every once in a while somebody will write me a letter or an email or say, “Hey, have you ever recorded such and such a song? I heard you do it at a gig and I loved it and I’d love to get a copy of it.” And then that’s what I’ll send them, that kind of thing.

But, yes, I am definitely a finisher.

Dan and I work very well together. I’d have to give Mark a lot of credit as leading me through a lot of the processes of recording and finishing work, but I’m finicky about the details. I’ll send a mix back and have him correct it just because I hear something going in the background at some point in the mix, I’ll make run, another one without that in it, that kind of thing. I’m very finicky about details, but I do finished work.

Rick: When you’re writing your songs, other than with Mark writing your own books, when you write your workshop stuff and your seminar stuff, that’s kind of a loner type of a world. And then you go out and you perform, which is more of an extrovert situation. So, how would you define yourself?

Rod MacDonald: I’m a little bit of both. I don’t think I’m naturally an ebullient person. I’ve come across artists who say,”The stage is my home.” I definitely don’t feel that way. I have to get up on stage and work my way through it.

I even had a woman once offered to pay for me to take lessons and how to smile more on stage. And I asked a friend of mine who’s in theater who teaches acting to teach me how to smile more on stage. And he’s a guy that’s come to a lot of my shows and he thought about it for a second and he said, “No, I won’t do it.”

“I said, really? Why not?” And he said, “Because, one of the things I like about watching you perform is watching you wrestle with it. And I don’t want to teach you how to be slick. I don’t want to see you be slick.”

And so I guess that’s a good analysis of the fact that I do have to wrestle with it a little bit. Years ago, back in the 1990s, I was traveling in the Midwest and I was holed up for a couple of days between shows and this woman who was affiliated with the club that I was there to play, very nice lady, asked me if I would like her to read my horoscope chart.

I said, “Well, I dunno, that’s kind of a personal thing.” And she said, “I’m really quite good at it and I rely on real material, real fixed material. I don’t just make it up. So, we had an afternoon hanging around, we were drinking coffee, and I said, “Okay, go for it.”

And one of the things that she said to me, I’m not sure if I have this exactly right, was that because I’m a Leo as a sun sign, but my moon sign or my birth sign rising sign, one of those is in Saturn. She said that I’m an unusual combination of a person who has both the ability to jump to the forefront of a situation and really be a leader of it, or alternately sit at the back of the room and very quietly observe everybody else. She said, there are very few people who have this dual ability, but you do. I absolutely understood what she meant right off the top. I had no problem. I didn’t at all go “Really? I never thought of that.”

I had never thought of it consciously, but I instinctively knew that it was true. I do have those two abilities. I often get put in leadership situations. In fact, almost every situation I’ve ever been involved in, people have put me in a leadership position without my even asking them to.

And then I sort of direct traffic. I think that one of the reasons that I’m good at it is that I don’t do it from a very egotistical point of view. I don’t sit there and go like, “Oh, I’m so important or anything like that. I kind of do it from a very pragmatic point of view, where I try to get the best out of everybody involved and let everybody do what they want to do and somehow make it make sense.

I’ve been the band leader of almost every band I’ve ever been in, even though I’m almost never the best musician in the band. In fact, I don’t even want to be the best musician in the band. I like to surround myself with better musicians than myself and then kind of direct traffic and get everybody to maximize what they do, without them having to think about telling everybody else what to do. So that is one reason why I think I’ve worked well with other musicians, probably a personality thing.

And then at the same time, I do have the ability to sit at the back of the room and listen and just kind of take it all in. And maybe this has allowed me to be a bit of a producer of my own recordings, but also of other people. I’ve produced a few recordings for people. I’ve directed a little bit of traffic. Sometimes people have invited me to their sessions and they’ll ask me what I think and I’ll diplomatically tell them and they’ll sometimes even do what I suggest. So I think that’s true. That’s something I can do both ways. So, I do find that the introspective part of it can be very rewarding.

When I feel really tuned into the writing, which isn’t always but does happen, and that’s when I write, is when I feel connected to it. And it’s an irregular thing. It’s something I can cultivate, but it’s also something that just kind of springs on me sometimes when I feel connected to the writing. It feels great when you have something that comes through and you are able to get it down in such a way that you feel makes sense. I really love that feeling. And it’s a solitary thing, absolutely.

It’s just you and the bull and you end up working your way through it. And sometimes it can be draining. I’ve burst into tears, fortunately, nobody else is around to see me feel like I’m embarrassing myself when that happens. But I’ve had that feeling in the writing process, and then you have to kind of try to take that out to the public.

The funny thing is that I didn’t understand that dynamic when I was young. I think I actually learned it from the process, specifically. This isn’t the only time it’s happened. When I was younger, I used to write songs that I think I thought people would like; happy, upbeat, kind of funny type stuff. And people liked them, okay, but they weren’t the songs that they were blown away by. They weren’t the memorable songs for people.

When I wrote “Cross Country Waltz”, which is one of my earliest songs on the White Buffalo album, and when I wrote American Jerusalem in 1978 or so, I played it for a songwriting workshop that I was going to with my peers in the Village. And everybody listened to it, and nobody said a word after I played it. Nobody said a word to me except my roommate, Tom Inandi, who was a former English teacher in high school who had become a singer-songwriter in the Village. And he was my roommate. And he was a great influence to be around because he didn’t really write words himself, but he really understood lyric writing on a listener level. And he looked at me after that song and he said, “I’m going to learn that.

And then Shawn Colvin said, “Can you teach me that song?” She learned it away right after I wrote it. Didn’t record it until 2015 or something, but she learned it right away and sang it all these years. And then I was playing a gig at Folk City one night and I was opening for somebody and I was playing some, what I thought the audience favorites were supposed to be.

Lucy Lansky, who’s a pretty good singer and writer herself, was the bartender. And she yelled from behind the bar, “Aren’t you going to play American Jerusalem?” And then everybody in the crowd who’d never heard the song kind of went, “What’s that?” And so I played it, and of course, it’s six minutes long and it’s very quiet, it’s very personal, and they really loved it. And everybody started asking me to play this song.

And somewhere in that process I realized that it’s okay to really externalize your inner self in song, that that’s to a great extent, what people actually most want from you.

So, if you can get to that place where you’re really kind of expressing your most inner feelings about things, and that’s what people are mostly going to remember, most of those songs come about spontaneously. They might get triggered by hearing a phrase or thinking, “I’d like to address this kind of situation,” or whatever it is. But most of those songs as songwriters often say, they kind of write themselves. It’s like they’re passing by and they choose you to download. And that’s often the most memorable songs in your repertoire. I think for most songwriters,

Rick: Well, maybe they resonate because they align more closely with your core values.

Rod MacDonald: Well, and maybe they also resonate because that’s probably true, even if you’re expressing them poetically. And I think also it’s probably true that when people see you sing those songs, they think that’s the real you. Oh, this is the real guy here.

Rick: True.

Rod MacDonald: This isn’t the guy who’s put on some happy mask. For my sake, this is the real guy. And people are drawn to that. I mean, we all loved The Beatles, and John Lennon said he never wrote a song that meant a thing to him until “In My Life”, which is what, their fourth or fifth album. So there is a place in music, especially popular music for well constructed songs, you might say. But I think that at the end of the day, what people really want is the real deal, and that’s you, something that you have to work at, but it’s kind of a gift when it comes to you.

Rick: Yeah. So do you have a favorite setting where you maybe prefer to perform? Concerts, small venues, festivals, and do you have any favorite or humorous performance moments?

Rod MacDonald: Oh, geeze. Well, everybody who’s done as many gigs as I have has humorous performance moments. But I don’t know. I like a lot of it. When I moved to Florida was playing in bars. I’d never done much of that when I was living in the village. I never really liked it because I didn’t like subjecting my own songs to the noise.

But I found that playing in the Irish Trio in West Palm Beach on weekends, for years, that I became a much better musician. And I got a lot of satisfaction out of that. And in fact, a friend of mine who’s maybe my oldest real good musician friend came down and visited me during that time. He’s in the traditional music world, he’s a mandolinist. And he sat in with us and he said, “You’re really getting better. This is a good thing for you to be doing. You’re going to become a much better guitar player from doing this on a regular basis.”

So I like that. I like anything that I feel is a fun experience and I of course love any fun experience when the audience really responds and gets it, that’s great. And they get it a lot of the time in almost any real listening situation. I think audiences like my songwriting and singing, and I play a fair amount of gigs where they’re unfamiliar with me because frankly, I’ve not been marketed by anybody.

So, I can show up in a city somewhere in another part of the country that I’ve never been before. And the audience that’s there is largely going to be, you might say, speculative. They’re going to be there because the promoter of the gig told them, “Hey, this guy’s really good. You should check him out.” Or there’s an article in the newspaper, or they heard one song on the local folk radio station and they’re deciding, “Okay, I like that song. I’ll go see this guy. I like this series. I am a regular member of this series, so I guess I’ll go see this guy.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

I play a fair amount of shows like that, and they’re usually very good. I think that I do well with those audiences. I like those kind of shows. I like the challenge. And then there are some places that I play. I play The People’s Voice Cafe in New York City every February. And the Turning Point in Piermont, I do that almost every year. And in fact, I’ve done the People’s Voice Cafe now for 15 years in a row. Really the same weekend every year. And a lot of those people that come are my long, loyal, longtime fans, and they could tell you or probably request songs that I do that I haven’t played in years.

And I’ll try to accommodate one or two of those requests. I like to challenge myself almost every show. I do one song that I haven’t played in a while, that I haven’t played for an audience so that each audience gets something special and unique out of me.

I love festivals. I just played Falcon Ridge this past summer, and that was really great. That was fun. I was on the main stage twice. One of the times was solo, and one of the times was with Joe Jenks and Pete and Maura Kennedy, and those were really fun. I do some Dylan Fests where everybody plays Bob Dylan songs. I’ve done a lot of those with Pete and Maura. Those are really fun. I suppose my least favorite gig is places where people really aren’t there for the music. They’re just okay. I mean, you do your best with those, but they’re not as much fun as playing for a crowd that’s really there to hear your music.

Rick: Like listening rooms are pretty good.

Rod MacDonald: But okay, let me off the top of my head, let me see if I can free associate some memorable, bizarre situations.

I played in Zagreb, Croatia, twice, once in about 1997 and once in 2024 for the same promoter both times. And the first time we went there, the first gig was in a gymnasium that would’ve easily held 5,000 people. And we were on the stage at one end of it and about a hundred feet away, collected in the middle of the basketball floor were about a hundred chairs where people were sitting when we started to play.

I could not make a thing out on stage. I mean, we had monitors, but the volume that it took to project out to the audience and the emptiness of the room created so much echo that it was like that psych experiment where they put your headphones on you and then delay your voice while you talk until you can’t talk anymore , because you just can’t separate the reflection from the real thing. And it was so weird. And we played one song and we finished the song and it was just total soup on stage. We played one song and the entire audience stood up and started cheering and clapping, and we kind of looked at each other and went, “I guess it sounds okay to them.”

So we just slugged our way through it, and they absolutely loved it. They thought it was a brilliant concert. So there’s an example of where you really have to know what you’re doing on stage. You have to be able to execute your music even when the situation that you’re listening to is just awful.

Then the very next night, we played a huge dance club for about a thousand people, and there were actually a thousand people in the club. And the speakers, they had these subwoofers under the stage because they were blasting disco music in between. And every note that Mark hit on the bass made my teeth rattle. I mean, it was unbelievably loud on stage, and I couldn’t function, and we didn’t get to do a soundcheck. They put us up in front of a thousand people with no soundcheck. So I plugged in my guitar and he plugged in his bass, and the next thing I know, it’s like, “Oh God, this is painful.” And the sound man doesn’t speak any English. So I’m pointing at the bass and to the floor. And he thinks I’m meaning, turn it up, turn up what’s underneath me. And I’m going like, “No, please turn it down, turn it down.”

And finally somebody went over to the guy and I guess understood English and said to him, “He means turn the bass down.”

And we finally got it down to where it was possible to stand on stage and play. And so we started off with a song of mine called “The Aliens Came in Business Suits”, which is from White Buffalo back in 1986 or so. And it’s the very first song that I wrote that was a spoken word piece, but it’s a real guitar extravaganza. There’s a lot of instrumental work in it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And they were yelling and dancing and jumping around like crazy, all right in front of the stage, like a big rock arena type show. And we’re cranked up and we’re just acoustic guitar and bass. And we got through it and they went nuts. And so I turned to Mark and I said, “We’re just going to play all of my loudest and fastest songs here. That’s what we’re going to do.” And so that’s what we did, and we ended up having a pretty fun time with the crowd loving it and stuff. But I mean, you have to be able to react to the moment sometimes, particularly because we’re not one of those acts that arrives in a bus with our own sound crew. We’re getting up and playing.

You have to be able to tell the sound guys what you need, and you have to know what that is in each situation. And then on the same tour in rural Italy, at one of those places that’s like on a farm somewhere where they make all their own salami and wine and bread and cheese, and they’re hoping that people from the town will drive out.

And so we are in this restaurant with about 20 people in the audience and the sound system and a kind of a vacuum cleaner. It’s like this hose that you put in front of you and you sing into, and it sounds like you have to force your vocal into this tunnel. And then it comes out the other end of this device that’s sitting next to you on the stage going so loud that it’s drowning out everything you’re doing.

And I looked at the guy that was, and he was very proud of his P.A. I said, “We can’t use that.” And he goes, “What do you mean? And I got him to shut the thing off, and we just sang and played. Fortunately, I can play and sing loud enough into a small room, they can hear it. So we just did the concert with no sound at all. So again, it’s a situation where you have to be prepared. I remember talking about this recently, I was playing Easter Sunday at Folk City with a five piece band.

My piano player, a guy named Bernie Shanahan, who was a very good rock and roll piano player and a good guy…was kind of religious, Catholic. And we were playing on Easter Sunday, and he wanted to watch Jesus of Nazareth, which was being broadcast as a special on some TV network. So we watched Jesus of Nazareth before going over to do the gig, and then we got there and he said, “We shouldn’t do this show.” I said, “Why is that?” And he said, “It’s sacrilegious to be playing our music on a night after watching something like that.” I said, “There’s nothing sacrilegious about our show.”

Well, we did have one song called “All of the Same Old Saviors” that was kind of a not very religious type song. And so we got up on stage and I was playing electric guitar and Folk City in those days had a pretty primitive P.A., probably had the same P.A. he’d had for 25 years. And we started into the first song and the sound man flipped the ground switch like 30 seconds into the first song and sent a bolt of lightning through the microphone into my nose!

Knocked me flat backwards into the drum set, knocked over the drums, and of course the music came to a grinding stop and the audience was horrified. Well, we had done a soundcheck, and then he flipped the ground switch during the first actual song. So we got back up and Bernie looks at me and he goes, “I told you, I told you.”

And then the sound man waves at me. And he goes, “It’s okay. I got it fixed. But I did the rest of that night, really keeping my distance from the microphone, which of course is pretty tough to do because you’re singing in front of a band and it’s loud on stage. I mean, there are those things, and then there are other things. Sometimes stuff happens that’s just, I don’t know, kind of crazy. And sometimes it’s a happy accident when something happens.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was playing one time at the Florida Folk Festival. There’s this pavilion down by the Suwanee River that’s kind of a legendary venue run by a longtime guy who’s no longer with us. And they didn’t use a P.A. It was like a gazebo on the river, and there’d be 50 people there and you’d just sing to ’em.

And there was a Chinese couple and they had their little daughter with them. And she was very young, very, very pretty little girl, two, three years old, whatever it was. And I started singing a song called “I’m Your Dad,” that I wrote for my daughter when she was first born. And this little girl wearing this really pretty little blue dress, started dancing around in front of me, holding her arms up to the sky. She was creating wings for herself and just dancing around in a circle. And she danced around in front of me for the whole song. And the audience was just spellbound, me included. I mean, could barely, it was so beautiful. I almost forgot where I was several times in the song. And it was just a really beautiful moment. And then when it was over, she went back and sat with her parents for the rest of the set, and I just went on.

Afterwards everybody came up to me and said, “Oh God, that was so incredible!” And it really was, was just a beautiful thing. But then on the other hand, here’s another one. When my rock and roll band was playing in Hartford back in the late Seventies, we used to play a song called, “I Don’t Believe You Don’t Want To Dance”. I never released it commercially, but it’s actually on this USB drive that I just released this past year. It’s an older song and it’s a very uptempo song, a real dance number. And there was a dance floor at the club that we were playing, and people got up and danced a lot if we played anything that was fun to dance to.

And so we started playing that song, and I think it was the end of the night. It was the very last song of the night. And we started playing that song. There was this guy who was kind of short and there was this very tall six foot blonde woman, very slender, very pretty, and for some reason they ended up on the dance floor together. I don’t know if they were a couple. And he started dancing really vigorously trying to get her attention.

And she just looked at him like, who are you? And he didn’t quit. He did this for the entire song. He danced, rings around her, he just chugged around her in this circle. And then everybody else on the dance floor backed off and started clapping and watching him. And this guy put on this amazing show dancing in a circle around this girl who clearly didn’t want anything to do with him, but didn’t know what to do. And she was kind of looking out across the crowd for one of her friends to come bail her out. And wherever her friends were, they were probably clapping along for this too and maybe didn’t realize, but we could see from the stage that she was really not very comfortable with this.We kept playing this song, and one of the members of my band was a woman, Peggy Atwood, and she kind of looked at me, raised her eyebrows, “Are you going to wrap this song up to this Poor girl Can get away?” But the song had a real fixed arrangement, and there was a lengthy guitar solo that was part of the arrangement, and we weren’t going to tell the guitar player that he couldn’t play his solo. So we played the entire song, and this went on for five full minutes of this guy dancing in rings around this girl. And finally we ended this song and the lights came on, I think while we were still playing the song, which the restaurant had a very strict policy when the lights came on, stop playing, get it over with. So we were done and the girl walked away and just turned her back on the guy, and everybody walked away and everybody kind of applauded for the guy what he’d just done. He’d really done this amazing dance.

Was like a meeting dance. I couldn’t describe it any other way, but it obviously didn’t work. And then in that same club on another night, we were playing, I think in about 19, the spring of 1980, and it was right after the Iranian hostages had been released,

And somebody walked up to me while we were on stage and said, “Do you know that there’s one of the Iranian hostages is in the audience? And I said, “No kidding. Ask him if he’d like to come up and say a few words. And we played another song and the guy came back up to me and he said, “Yeah” that he would be glad to do that. So I said, “Okay”.

Well, we got a couple more songs to do this set and then I’ll invite him up. So we did. And then I said, and the audience, it was a big dance club, and so there were people drinking and partying, and it wasn’t like a quiet crowd, but it was a responsive crowd. They would clap and cheer at the end of songs, a noisy crowd. I walked up to the mic and I said, we have one of the hostages recently back from Iran here tonight, and it was the most amazing transformation. Everybody jumped to their feet and started cheering and clapping. Up until that moment, I wouldn’t have believed that everybody was paying that much attention to anything I said.

But they jumped to their feet and started cheering and clapping immediately, like everybody in the place all the way to the far end of the room had heard what I said. I thought, “Holy smoke!” And then they clapped and the guy walked up through the crowd and he got up on the crowd to the microphone and we stepped back, and I guess I stayed on stage. I didn’t want to abandon him up there. Well, I figured what I would do would be when he was done that there’d be a big round of applause, and we’d say, “We’re going to take a break. We’ll be right back.” We stayed on stage and he said to the crowd, “Thank you for that welcome.” And then he paused for a moment and he said, “I have to tell you that for quite some time, we thought that people had completely forgotten about us. And the mood in the room suddenly turned unbelievably ugly. I looked out at the crowd and I thought they were going to walk up on stage and beat us all to a pulp.  Really, you could see the anger rising in people. And I thought, “Oh my God.”

I remember the lead guitar player Bill turning to me with his eyes wide, we got to get out of here. And then the guy said, “But you’ve just shown me that that wasn’t true. Thank you so very much.”

And he walked off the stage and then there was this kind of half-hearted applause, but everybody chilled. And I said, “Okay, thanks everybody. We’ll be right back.” And we got the hell out of there as fast as we could. And you learn a basic lesson from that, that if you do that, you better be prepared for whatever reaction you might get.

I mean, those are some of the magic moments I’ve been thinking lately about a song of mine called,”The Minstrel Boy” that I want to record that I’ve wrote 30 or 40 years ago and recorded a couple of times, but never released.

And it has a line in there. “You sat out on the highway looking for a living, trying to remember the people are listening with an ear or two though they may sleep through your finest lines. You walk along the shore, you sleep out in the dirt, you used to know the score, but now you’re really searching to one night they’re quiet and you feel it all light up before your eyes. It makes the man a minstrel boy.”

And I was trying to remember the first time that really happened. I think that it was probably me at Folk City in the 1970s that I had really been yearning to really get over to an audience that I was really motivated to play and sing my songs, but that I really kind of needed to have that happen.  I know that it happened at Folk City one time I was playing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I played two of my quietest and longest songs, “American Jerusalem” and “Sandcastles” at the end of my set back to back and got this really amazing encore from the audience, and it was like a really beautiful moment. And then I went back up on stage and played another song and everybody really loved it. And I just thought, “Wow, it was really magical. But I was the opening act and the headlining act, instead of taking a break, rushed up on stage and said to the crowd, “Thank you for staying through all of that.” What? A couple people booed her.

Rick: Wow.

Rod MacDonald: A couple people booed her for her lack of grace. It was kind of weird.

Rick: Yeah, it was weird. Jealous. Sounds like it’s jealousy,

Rod MacDonald: Insecurity, insecurity.

Rick: Your competition.

Rod MacDonald: You can’t think of opening acts that way. I’ve opened for a lot of people and the best of them always walk up and say something nice about you, even if you didn’t have that great a set. They’re just smart enough to say that and move on. I remember opening for Tom Rush and having a really great set once and getting an encore, and he walked up on stage and he goes, “How about that Rod McDonald?” That’s all he did. Everybody gets to clap a little more. And he goes “Okay! And then he goes into his thing and I thought, “Class act.” Exactly the way you want it handled. Really nice man and a gracious person. It’s part of his DNA and that’s a good thing.

I mean that’s something actually that I strive to emulate when you witness something like that, you think I want to be like that. I have guys open for me all the time too, guys and women in groups and whoever, and you always want to say something nice about ’em.

Rick: Yeah, it’s honorable to do that as well, I think.

Rod MacDonald: It’s honorable, but it’s also that everybody who gets up on stage is putting themselves on the line. It takes a certain amount of courage, even if you’re naive, even if you’re blind, even if you’re a maniac, it still takes a certain amount of courage to get up there and do that.

But anyway, when I sang those two really quiet songs and realized the most personal stuff sometimes is the most magical thing, and the people just lit up before my eyes. It’s what happens. And that’s kind of what you want to have. And as you get better and better, that happens more and more as you get more, I mean, I started out without a lot of experience doing this. Some people start playing when they’re 12 years old, but I did not, I never really faced an audience with a guitar in my hands till I was in my twenties. So, I had to really kind of figure it out.

BONUS VIDEO!

Click here to view the embedded video.



LA-based singer-songwriter/composer/guitarist Micah Preite joins us this week!

https://micahpreite.bandcamp.com

Though his lo-fi/indie songs have millions of streams on Spotify, Preite’s background includes time with SoCal jazz legend Bruce Forman, a visit as a teenager to the OG 2015 Fretboard Summit in California, and studying music at CalArts. He’s now working on his first full-length movie score and more songs. It’s a great chat with a young musician who can seemingly do it all.

Be like young Micah and join us at our 2026 Fretboard Summit in Chicago (August 20-22, 2026) for three days of guitar demos, concerts, workshops and live podcasts with some of our favorite artists.

This year’s Summit has over 80 luthiers and brands, performances by Hand Habits, Deep Sea Diver, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Shane Parish, Michael Daves and Antoine Boyer!

Register here: www.fretboardsummit.org.

We are brought to you by Peghead Nation: https://www.pegheadnation.com
(Get your first month free or $20 off any annual subscription with the promo code FRETBOARD at checkout).

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The post Podcast 555: Micah Preite first appeared on Fretboard Journal.

Thinking of upgrading your guitar rig, but with the insanely large amount of gear on the market, don’t know where to look? Following the masses is never a bad idea…

Generally, when a particular piece of guitar gear is flying off the shelves, it’s because guitarists are trying it for themselves, having a great experience and recommending others do the same.

So if you’ve got a bit of coin and don’t know where to spend it, online gear marketplace Reverb has just released a list of its best-selling guitar gear of the last month. It is as follows…

Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai

If you’re looking for a delay pedal that’ll get the job done, plus a looper on the side, the Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man w/ Hazarai is just the ticket. Described by EHX as “one of the most creative instruments you will ever own” – a sentiment clearly echoed by the throngs of people who have picked one up for themselves, the Memory Man boasts a looper with 30 seconds of loop time, plus a cornucopia of delay and modulation options for bending your guitar signal to your will and coming up with some of your best tones yet.

Way Huge WHE900 Atreides Analog Weirding Module

Okay, you’ve got your standard distortion, reverb, and delay, but you need a pedal on your ‘board for the real experimental. The Way Huge WHE900 is a synth-inspired guitar pedal that blends fuzz, an envelope filter, sub-octave, and phaser into a single unit. Weird by name, weird by nature – so get ready to make some of your downright strangest sounds yet.

Positive Grid Spark 40

In the world of portable smart practice amps, the Spark 40 makes a strong play for the crown. Boasting 40 watts of room-filling sound, intuitive on-board controls – plus a companion app for browsing and crafting tones – as well as smart features like Smart Jam Live, Auto Chords and a plethora of onboard tone profiles, the Spark 40 might just be the practice amp of your dreams.

Darkglass Electronics Anagram

One for the bass guitarists now: the Darkglass Electronics Anagram is a compact multi-effects processor and amp modeller for bassists, powered by six-core DSP architecture, with a seven-inch high-brightness touchscreen for clear and intuitive control, and able to add up to 24 simultaneous effects blocks for complex signal chains. This one’s perfect for both live, studio and practice environments, so it could be the perfect new heart of your bass rig.

JHS The Fumble

The result of the “biggest mistake in JHS history”, the Fumble was born when the company accidentally put the wrong circuit into a run of 15,000 pedals. The mistake was publicly acknowledged and the remaining units sold through, but it turned out pedalheads actually loved the mistakenly put-together clean circuit. JHS originally sought to recreate the rare A Box Later clean circuit used and loved by John Mayer, but instead accidentally used a Dumble BBC-1 circuit. The Fumble is its faithful reproduction.

The post This is the best-selling guitar gear on Reverb this month appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ever since 2011, Taylor Guitars’ Bob Taylor has been on a mission of tonewood sustainability. However, while Taylor has been replanting ebony trees in Cameroon for 15 years, he’s now urging the rest of the guitar industry to become more environmentally conscious – because wood isn’t an endless resource.

In an essay originally published in The Washington Post, Taylor insists: “if your business depends on a natural resource, stewardship isn’t optional – it’s part of the job”. With trees taking hundreds of years to grow back, Taylor explains that big guitar manufacturers need to consider how sustainable their business practices are.

• READ MORE: 50 Years Young – how Taylor Guitars became the world’s most innovative guitar brand

As Taylor explains, his company first began giving back to the environment in 2011. “We became co-owners of an ebony mill there, seeing it as an opportunity to take greater responsibility for our wood in a complicated region of the world,” he writes. “Ebony has long been prized for stringed musical instruments, but basic questions about it – how much exists, how it grows, how it reproduces – were surprisingly hard to answer.”

After working with scientists at the Congo Basin Institute, Taylor worked to support a long-term research and reforestation initiative known as the Ebony Project. As he explains, “the work has planted tens of thousands of ebony and fruit trees on community-controlled lands bordering protected forest areas”.

While Taylor sought to discover more about where he was sourcing his ebony from, plenty of other manufacturers remain in the dark. It’s an issue that is seemingly rooted in complacency: “The species [companies once] relied on – spruce, maple, mahogany, rosewood, ebony – [have] been used for generations and [at a certain time] seemed abundant, locally available and affordable.”

“Over five decades, I’ve seen the materials we use become more expensive, like everything else,” he later continues. “I’ve also watched available trees get younger and smaller, and, if you’re not careful, less predictable in quality. But perhaps the biggest change has been the paperwork: There is now an ever-growing list of requirements tied to national laws and international agreements.”

And it’s not simply a case of planting trees for your own usage – trees can take up to 100 years to grow to a sufficient level for crafting instruments. So the focus shouldn’t be on the self, but on the future of the environment.

He also notes that ebony trees are also seeing a decline due to the mass poaching of elephants. As elephants tend to snack on the fruit of the ebony tree, they pass on seeds in their faeces – but, without as many elephants, the ebony tree isn’t getting replanted as much as it used to.

“The future of a material used to make guitars is tied to the fate of a critically endangered animal…” Taylor says. “In 1974, I was a kid from San Diego who wanted to build guitars. I could never have imagined it would one day lead to me supporting elephant dung research in Africa. But you can’t unknow what you know.”

“It’s a reminder that supply chains don’t begin in factories,” he says. “They often begin in ecosystems, which are complex, interdependent and often poorly understood.”

To round off, Taylor ends on a very serious final note, emphasising just how important it is for manufacturers to consider their environmental impact: “The question isn’t whether businesses should help sustain the resources they use – it’s whether they can afford not to.”

The post “Sustainability isn’t someone else’s job”: Bob Taylor on why the guitar industry has a responsibility to take care of the environment appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Since the passing of his father Eddie Van Halen in 2020, Wolfgang Van Halen has, on numerous occasions, explained why he doesn’t want to make a career out of playing classic Van Halen songs, and instead carve his own musical path.

He has largely stuck to his guns on that one, to date releasing three albums of original material with his band Mammoth: Mammoth WVH (2021), Mammoth II (2023), and The End (2025), and supporting some of rock’s most revered names live including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Foo Fighters.

But despite mostly charting his own musical journey, Wolfgang made an exception back in 2022, when he performed a selection of classic Van Halen tracks during two concerts paying tribute to late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.

• READ MORE: Player Fusion: metal-ready takes on classic Fender blueprints – including a Floyd Rose Tele and a Baritone Jaguar

Specifically, the multi-instrumentalist and bandleader played three of Van Halen’s biggest tracks: On Fire, Hot For Teacher and Panama.

Speaking in a recent interview with Andy Guitar at last week’s Download Festival, Wolfgang elaborated on his decision to perform Van Halen songs, saying “it was like closing a book”.

“It was my way of being able to not only honour Taylor, but honour my dad by playing some of his material… And so it was definitely a do-or-die thing for me,” he says [via Blabbermouth].

Wolfgang also recounts the severe anxiety he experienced prior to the show, as the weight of what he was about to do became more and more apparent.

“I was losing it that day,” he says. “‘Cause to me, it was, ‘If I don’t do this right, if I don’t serve this justice, then my life will be over.’ [laughs].

“I ended up playing it pretty all right. I still made mistakes, but it was just all live and in the heat of the moment. But it was really special. Being able to have Dave and Justin and Josh there supporting me, being able to play with three idols of mine supporting such an emotional and difficult thing for me to do was really special, and I don’t think I could’ve done it without them. Yeah, that was a day of catharsis, for sure.”

Since 2022, Wolfgang has remained adamant that he won’t revisit his father’s catalogue during live shows, but he’s taken pleasure in teasing fans who are hungry for him to do so.

Indeed, during a recent show in Cincinnati, he ‘rickrolled’ the crowd by pretending to gear up to play a Van Halen song, only to perform a cover of Rick Astley’s now-memified classic, Never Gonna Give You Up.

The post “If I don’t do this right, my life will be over”: Wolfgang Van Halen on the extreme anxiety he felt performing Van Halen songs during Taylor Hawkins tribute shows appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.