Innehållsförteckning för August 2023 från Guitar Player

WHEN DUANE ALLMAN died in a motorcycle accident on October 29, 1971, it seemed as if the Allman Brothers Band were history. In fact, their greatest days still lay ahead of them. Duane’s co-guitarist, Dickey Betts, stepped into the breach and took control. First he rallied the group to tour in support of 1972’s Eat a Peach, the follow-up to At Fillmore East, the 1971 double live album that brought the Allman Brothers the commercial and critical acclaim they so deserved. He then led them to create what would become their commercial breakthrough: the 1973 studio album Brothers and Sisters. Supported by such stellar Betts compositions as “Jessica” and the chart-topping hit “Ramblin’ Man,” Brothers and Sisters went on to sell seven million copies and established the Allmans as one of…

STEPHANE WREMBEL IS one of the primary contemporary purveyors of gypsy jazz, the style laid down by Django Reinhardt in the ’30s and ’40s that made him the first global guitar star. He remains popular with myriad “hot jazz” clubs and festivals dedicated to his enduring legacy. Wrembel curates the Django A Gogo Music Festival and Guitar Camp in Maplewood, New Jersey, New York City and Brooklyn, where he celebrated its 20th anniversary with the release of Django New Orleans on May 5 [watch the September 2023 issue of GP for our story]. The Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, California holds an annual soiree celebrating Django’s birthday, and GP Presents helped promote this year’s event. Wrembel performed and held a clinic. Here are a few introductory and core concepts in his…

“IT WAS MY attempt at gospel blues,” Dave Alvin says of his signature song, “Long White Cadillac.” “I was trying to write something for a recording session that never happened with Lightnin’ Hopkins and the Swan Silvertones. But then I started to write about the last night of Hank Williams’ life. I mixed up a lot of American music in my brain.” Alvin recorded the tune twice: as a rockabilly rave-up with his former band, the Blasters, on their 1983 album, Non Fiction, and again four years later as a slower blues number on his solo debut, Romeo’s Escape. Two years later, Dwight Yoakam recorded a harder-edged take for his album Just Lookin’ for a Hit. “It’s had several lives,” Alvin says. “Whichever version you like is up to you.”…

AS THE MOST comprehensive and flexible amplifier in Mesa/Boogie’s line, the new Mark VII expands on the Mark V’s impressive tonal capabilities to become what Mesa calls its simplest to navigate, most versatile and smallest Mark series 90-watt amp ever. The 1x12 combo version we received for this review (also available in head and rack-mount formats) is powered by four 6L6s running in Simul-Class and features a three-channel, nine-mode preamp that is intuitive to navigate via three identical sets of controls — gain, master, presence, treble, mid and bass — and a trio of mode switches: Clean, Fat and Crunch for channel one; Fat, Crunch and Mark VII for channel two; and Mark IIB, Mark IIC and Mark IV for channel three. Each channel also has a two-position switch labeled…

IT DOESN’T HAPPEN often, but every once in a while, Sadler Vaden feels like his guitar playing needs a bit of a recharge. Not that he’s ever at a loss for opportunities to play. Between his main gig as lead guitarist with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and a burgeoning solo career, the Grammy-winning musician happily notes that his dance card is usually full. Even so, he occasionally notices that some of his licks need a little sprucing up. “It happens to everybody,” Vaden says. “I was talking to Butch Walker the other day, and he was like, ‘I feel like I’m playing the same licks for years.’” One of Vaden’s tricks to shake off the cobwebs involves learning the solo of a song he loves but has never…

DEEP IN THE midst of the pandemic, with touring halted and no clear indication of when the road may open up again, Gov’t Mule guitarist Warren Haynes paced his New York state home like a caged tiger. He had to make some music. Haynes was tempted when his wife and manager, Stefani Scamardo, suggested it may be a good time to record that blues album he had been kicking around for years. But he had also written stacks of new songs he was anxious to record after channeling all his restless musical energy into songwriting during the pandemic. “I loved the idea of doing a blues album, but I was dying to record all these new Mule songs,” Haynes says. “So I proposed doing two records at the same time,…

THE 1970S CONSTITUTE classic rock’s grittiest and perhaps most prized decade. With the dawn of 2020, it also became a decade full of half-century milestones, with 1973 the current epoch du jour. In addition to herculean releases like Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon [see July 2023], Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy [see March 2023] and the Who’s Quadrophenia, the Allman Brothers Band’s Brothers and Sisters album ascended the charts, despite the band’s considerable personnel challenges. With the group still reeling from the tragic loss of bassist Berry Oakley during the recording process — his demise was eerily reminiscent of guitarist Duane Allman’s monumental passing only one year earlier — guitarist Dickey Betts took the reins and led the band into what would be its most commercially…

ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND fans of a certain age may remember Duane Betts as a teenager taking the stage to sit in with his father, Dickey, and the ABB in the mid ’90s. But 30 years later, the younger Betts has been around the block a few times, touring with his father for more than a decade, playing with California folk-rockers Dawes for a stretch, and forming the Allman Betts Band with Devon Allman. Together, they recorded two albums and toured extensively. But while Betts’ 2018 EP, Sketches of American Music, laid down a marker for him as a solo artist, the just-released Wild & Precious Life (Royal Potato Family) is his proper solo debut. Recorded to two-inch analog tape at Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks’ Swamp Raga Studio in Jacksonville,…

“KANSAS HAS A knack for distributing parts where they’re needed,” guitarist Rich Williams notes proudly, “rather than saying, ‘We’ve got to find something for everybody to do here!’ It’s just a process of getting everybody involved the right way, not stepping on toes, and serving the songs with only what they need.” Of course, you’d expect that to be the case after 50 years, but Kansas had their game plan in good shape largely from the get-go. The group was forged in Topeka by what Williams calls “the last man standing of our peer group that wanted to continue on with a musical life rather than get a straight job.” The original six members — Williams, guitarist-keyboardist Kerry Livgren, singer-keyboardist Steve Walsh, singer-violinist Robbie Steinhardt, bassist Dave Hope and drummer…

SECOND CHANCES IN music don’t come often, but Nashville-based singer-songwriter Peter One is living proof that lightning can strike twice. In the 1980s, in the West African country of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), One ascended to fame playing music inspired by regional Afrobeat artists, folk luminaries such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and classic country singers like Don Williams. Along with his collaborator, Jess Sah Bi, One played to thousands of fans at soccer stadiums and festivals, and entertained several presidents of African nations. In 1990, the duo’s song “African Chant” soundtracked media coverage of anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela’s release from a South African prison. Unfortunately, politics soon played an unwelcome role in One’s decadeslong exile from the music business. Later that same year, he founded the first musician’s…

BACK IN 1993, Johnny Van Zant wrote “The Last Rebel,” a song for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s album of the same name. Its lyrics paint a picture of a defiant but tired soldier left on a battlefield: “You can see the shadow of his past written in his eyes… His friends are all gone.” Coming from a band that sang about “Sweet Home Alabama” — and did so with a decidedly southern accent — the impetus seemed obvious. But in fact, “the boy with his old guitar” who’s “got a dream that will never die” was actually someone closer to home for the singer. “That one was about Gary,” Van Zant explains. Gary Rossington, Skynyrd’s mainstay guitarist, was the only founding member to be part of the group’s entire active career, until…

LYNYRD SKYNYRD’S ROAD to superstardom began in 1964, inside a small cabin at the end of a field in Jacksonville, Florida. They called it Hell House, which gives you a general idea of the accommodations — or lack thereof — afforded by the intense Florida heat. Nevertheless, in its confines, they spent years writing and rehearsing the songs that would be featured on their classic 1973 debut album, (Pronounced’Lĕh-’nérd’Skin-’nérd), and establish them as an iconic southern rock band. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the album’s release, and in this lesson, we’ll celebrate its enduring popularity and appeal by mining the musical gold found within each of its tracks, including the classic that would be a highlight of the band’s concerts for decades to come: “Free Bird.” Throughout its…