Blogging » Guitars, blues, rock, jazz and the music biz
This week our roundup of new tunes focuses on new releases from: a renewed and mostly instrumental Santana, top-draw and rising blues star super busy Joe Bonamassa who released something like four discs in the past year, and indie blues guitar slinger Albert Cummings puts out another biting, blustery working man’s blues rocker.
Santana
Shape Shifter
2012 StarFaith Records
Download: Nomad, Canela, Never the Same Again
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Albert Cummings
No Regrets
2012 Ivy Music Company
Download: Your Day Will Come, Drink Party and Dance, Glass House
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Joe Bonamassa
Driving Towards Daylight
2012 J&R Adventures
Download: Stones in My Passway, Who’s Been Talking, Lonely Town Lonely Street
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
This week we have a spangly new release from gifted guitarist Jimmy Herring, available a week before its iTunes debut from independent label and distributor Abstract Logix. “Subject To Change WIthout Notice” is Herring’s second solo release and is all instrumental like his debut recording. Jazz, rock, blues, fusion and deep jams are all tightly in the pocket for this American guitarist from North Carolina who has been steadily gaining deserved accolades since he hit the jam band scene in the early ’90s.
Jimmy Herring
Subject to Change without Notice
2012 Abstract Logix
Jimmy Herring first came to my attention many years ago as a member of Jazz is Dead, an excellent ensemble featuring keys wiz T. Lavitz, master drummer Billy Cobham and the talented Alphonso Johnson playing fusion jazz-rock, instrumental cover interpretations of classic Grateful Dead songs! Herring played with Phil Lesh and The Dead (post-Jerry, of course) was also a founding member of jam band Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit, and in 2006 Herring took over the lead Guitarist role for Widespread Panic.
Herring in the recording studio
His first solo work, 2008′s Lifeboat, is a terrific record, showcasing his fierce playing, soulful and melodic and at times blazingly beautiful. His playing on the 2008 studio collaboration with John Bell and Widespread Panic was revelatory — fusion meets rock and folk and great songs/lyrics while jamming hard — making this writer a new Panic fan.
The Jimmy Herring Band, 2012
Ten songs, ten different musical explorations. And along the way, Jimmy Herring’s guitar work offers tremendous tone and expressive emotional nuance in every solo. He has an incredible ability to play leads that are silky and smooth, guttural and graceful; and he can also rip long lyrical explosions of speed, never once sounding rushed or simply shredding the keyboard. His solos are tuneful and each one sings, eliciting evocative sonic exclamations.
This new release was aided and abetted by Atlanta-based record producer and pedal steel guitarist, John Keane. Keane is known more for his pop work with R.E.M., Widespread Panic and The Indigo Girls, and here he brings a musical sensibility to the project, helping Herring craft a finely honed musical experience.
Download: Miss Poopie, Kaleidoscope Carousel, Hope, Red Wing Special
I’m in London for two weeks, living in a great corporate apartment in Kensington High Street neighborhood, just across the road from posh South Ken. So my first spot of tourism was to hightail it over to the guitar stores on Denmark Street, not far from Piccadilly Circus and next to Tin Pan Alley. This unassuming and small street is the analog to our 48th Street in NYC.
I hopped out of a taxi at one end of Denmark Street and walked from store to store. My window shopping spree included looking around the following stores:
Not surprisingly, I found many of them to be simple and decent shops, small and mainly stocked with inexpensively to mid-range priced guitars. I really did not see many guitars that were compelling except for the stock in two stores, Vintage and Rare Guitars and Westside M.I.
I also had a blast walking into Rockers, and watching a portly, balding, pasty-faced, business-attired Brit wailing with a Strat and a Marshall stack! The staff and I were duly impressed with the playing ability and the visual image of this guy attacking the axe with his large belly and working stiff demeanor.
With no proof other than personal experience, I’ve found that if the guitar store stocks an expensive or vintage range of guitars in addition to decent inexpensive guitars, then the staff is knowledgeable and treats you like a fellow guitar player versus potential client.
Before I even walked into Vintage and Rare Guitars, I was eyeing the beautiful tweed-style amp in the window (note it at lower left of store window above and pictured to the right). American-made, hand-built, tube amp from Swart Amplifiers based in North Carolina. Inside I was greeted with a raft of sweet, vintage guitars. Custom Strats and Teles, vintage axes from every decade; and that’s just the Fender collection; they were awash with all the great brand names. What specifically caught my eye, in addition to the amp, was beautiful 1969 Thinline Fender Telecaster, only 8,900 British Pounds. 
Well, not wanting to walk that beast home, I instead bought a second-hand pedal, a sweet-sounding overdrive from T-Rex, the Mudhoney. Hah, and they let me try the box on the $1300 Swart amp with the $15K Thinline Tele. Way nice.
The other store that caught my eye, Westside, had a collection of Tom Anderson guitars, and I’ve had my eye on these for a while. They currently carry about five of his unique and near-custom guitars. I’ll be going back there to try those out soon.
All in all, fun was had. The guitars and their siren calls will sing to me again this week, and I’ll take another quick fly through.
New tunes this Friday rather than Tunage Tuesday, blame the delay on band practice. (That has a nice ring to it!) This week we have Blues/Rock artists times three. Hard-hitting Albert Castiglia, known for his work with Junior Wells, newcomer Chris Watson from the D/FW area in Texas cuts his sophomore release, and Devon Allman, Cyril Neville and Mike Zito form a new band.
Royal Southern Brotherhood
Renaissance Man
2012 Ruf Records GmbH
Download: Brotherhood, Moonlight Over Mississippi, Fire on the Mountain
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Albert Castiglia
Living the Dream
2012 Blues Leaf Records
Download: Living the Dream, Fat Cat, Walk the Backstreets
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Chris Watson
Pleasure and Pain
2012 Gator Music
Download: Pleasure and Pain, Going Home, Check it Out
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
This week, in advance of traveling for nearly a month, I plunked down $699 for my first Gibson axe in my guitar collection. It’s a stripped down, natural finish, sweet-sounding and smooth-playing SG. The Gibson SG Special Faded. Here’s a picture of my new one.
I’ve been trying some of these SGs at Guitar Center, and I loved the neck profile (rounded) and the playability. The ones at the two GC’s I visited had been played many times, and they had only the one guitar at each store. I’ve ordered from Sweetwater.com before, and loved their personalized service. I have a “sales engineer” assigned to me, very nice, knowledgeable guy names Alan Miller. So went online, found the guitar, noted that they had two in stock and sent an email to Alan.
Here’s what he did, he pulled the brown and the cherry models from his inventory and sent me an email appraisal. I’d been jonesing for the brown finish, but was not sure. He confirmed to me that the cherry finish was not as nice. He also found out from a friend that many of the Gibson workers love this model and get it for themselves. Alan is a guitar player himself and has been a teacher for many years, so the personalized service made a huge difference. Bravo Sweetwater.
Getting it in the mail is sooo much fun. I can track the package so I know where it is, and once it is here it is a huge kick to pull out a factory inspected, not really touched-before guitar. And Sweetwater sends candy in every shipment with your invoice in a Thank You folder. Easy peasy Lemony Squeezy (an inside joke for our friends across the pond).
Second installment of our new music roundup. Four great new releases: one from a dead guitarist (with the help of some “friends”), one from a shredding jazz fusioneer but with vocals on all tracks, one from a band formed by two renowned studio and solo guitarists, and one from the Allman Brothers drummer who sits on the left side of the stage (from the audience’s perspective) and is nicknamed J.J. And you can listen to tunage from these albums through the player at the top of each page here.
Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band
Renaissance Man
2011 Lil’ Johnieboy Records
Download: Leaving Trunk, Laurie Ann Blue, I Believe I’ll Make a Change
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Frank Gambale
Soulmine (feat. Boca)
2012 Frank Gambale
Download: Forbidden Kiss, Keep Leadin’ Me On, Sun Will Shine
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Renegade Creation
Bullet
2012 Esoteric Antenna
Download: All Over Again, Bullet, Greedy Life
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Tommy Bolin & Friends
Great Gypsy Soul
2012 Esoteric Antenna
Download: Smooth Fandango, Crazed Fandango, Flying Fingers
Not long ago, this year, it was my 20th anniversary of marriage to my wonderful partner and wife. In celebration, and recognizing that we each know what we wanted best, we bought our own presents. She got a rock, I got a steampunk guitar!
I think I must have seen one in my surfing online, and got a Jones for it. Found the wonderfully talented Tony Cochran and his wacky art. He is a syndicated cartoonist and artist who came to love modifying electric guitars with a steampunk twist. Each guitar has a name and a short history. I bought The Aladdincaster!
The Aladdincaster
This electric guitar was modified in the early 60s by a young lady who inherited a spiral brass Spirit Cylinder from her Father. Spirit Cylinders are containers for “thoughts left behind” by souls who have departed and no longer need them. At least that’s what merchants told her Father in the Moroccan bazaar where he purchased it. He perished a short time later. The daughter was a struggling musician in Southern California and paid some electric guitar tech guru $100 to hook the Spirit Cylinder to her bridge pickup. She then pawned the guitar and ran away with an AWOL sailor to live with gypsies in Hungary. It’s not known if she ever had nerve enough to play the guitar after the modification. I won’t do it . . . perhaps you’d like to try.
Tunage Tuesdays is a new feature where we roundup the best and most eclectic blues, jazz and rock music releases and downloads for your viewing pleasure.
This week is rich with discoveries, new players, new releases from established players, new bands, and new tunage.
Mitch Laddie
Burning Bridges
2012 Mystic Records
Download: Mr. Johnson Revisited, Paper in Your Pocket, Inner City Blues
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Sonny Landreth
Elemental Journey
2012 Landfall Records
Download: Gaia Tribe, Passionola, Brave New Girl
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Squackett
Squackett
2012 Esoteric Antenna
Download: A Life Within a Day, Divided Self
My unmodded Epiphone ES-339
Band practice has taken priority over blogging last few weeks, need to rectify that, starting now.
It’s not easy to find info about modding specific guitars, and I recall searching for info on what pups to use from a forum thread on 335s and 339s. And my original post generated comments from others searching for info (thanks for commenting, btw!!).
Well, the experiment worked very well. As noted in the earlier post, here are the mods:
What a difference in tone — creamy, strong, edgy when you need it, especially with two volume knobs, you can crank the treble and the volume does not go up to much if the bass stays where it was, sweet.
Not sure what difference the bridge makes, but the techs say it is huge. Same with the nut. Then two weeks ago, in a fit of laziness, and because I’m inept at changing strings, I had Guitar Center take the Grover tuners out and put in self-locking tunes from Planet Waves. Whew, a relief.
Overall, I’m loving the Epi 339 with the mods. Makes it feel like a unique guitar of sorts.
Not sure how much was spent on all the mods, but I think it was an extra grand so it tripled the cost of the ES 339. The guitar has now become a part of my new band’s act. Easier to bring two guitars than try to change tunings, so I use the red 339 for one song only, tune it to open G, use a capo at the fourth fret and wail on Thorn in My Pride (Black Crowes)!
New Gotoh bridge
My good friend, Roy, is having a guitar made by a young new luthier from New Paltz, who is not yet known, but is breaking in at night and weekends by designing and building guitars for his friends. We shall keep him nameless as this passion is being executed while he holds his day job.
Roy is a flat picking acoustic jazz guitar player, when not on his day job. He got me re-started on my playing career when we became close friends four to five years ago. He’s been looking for a new acoustic, for many months. He did decide on buying a great Taylor, not surprising to me as he loves the Taylor neck design. But wanted more — and by chance knew this luthier who was willing to work for cost.
Roy met this luthier through his family. He’s an advertising agency type, in his early 30′s with a passion for woodworking and guitars. Together, Roy and he picked out the woods, body type neck shape, style, etc. The gallery above shows a multitude of build photos. The luthier lives near this vantage point, and regularly climbs near New Paltz, so his headstock logo takes the shape from the local out-jutting rock.
