Blues music lost one of its founding fathers when Pinetop Perkins passed away at his home in Austin, Texas on March 21, 2011. Perkins was the oldest musician to ever win a Grammy when he won the Lifetime Achievement award in 2005. While my blog is generally limited to guitarists, blues music is such an…
If you play guitar, at some point someone has come up to you and said something like, "Oh, you play guitar? Can you play me a song?" At which point a lot of us do one of 2 things: A) We play them some riff to a song we know or B) We try to…
The other night I was playing Rock Band with my wife and kids... it's our version of "family time" these days. It's addictive... and what makes it work for me is I'm a "wannabe" drummer. I always wanted to play drums as a kid, but I couldn't because they were "too loud" or something similar.…
So in yesterday's post I was talking about increasing your skill and technique so that you can lean on it "in the head of battle" so to speak. Often in music, and particularly in blues music, technique almost becomes a dirty word. But if we are truly students of our instrument, we need to take…
Stop for a minute and think about some of the coolest concerts you've ever seen... The roar of the crowd... even in a small venue (even more so really) the energy is totally off the charts. Now think about the guy up on that stage giving it all he's got... do you think he's got…
