Music is the universal language
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” - Luke 2:14
Norse Guitar Feeds
This 64-pickup guitar records every string separately – and lets you decide the tone after you’ve played
A guitar with 64 pickups might sound like the product of some gearhead’s fever dream, but this one is as real as they come. Dreamed up by David Wieland of Dark Art Guitars as part of his master’s thesis in electrical engineering, the ‘Polymap’ system takes the idea of a pickup and pushes it to its absolute limit.
“I built a polyphonic guitar pickup system that can record 64 individual pickups simultaneously called Polymap,” Wieland explains.
The platform for all this experimentation is an eight-string, headless Alchemist model with a 26.5” scale length. The guitar pairs a swamp ash body with a striking maple burl top, though much of that wood has been carved out to make space for what Wieland describes as a “giant hole” of electronics.
And it’s what’s packed into that cavity that really sets this thing apart.
At its core, Polymap completely rethinks how a guitar signal is captured. Instead of blending string vibrations into a single output via two or three pickups, Wieland’s design captures each string – multiple times – as isolated data.
“The basic idea was to build a guitar that doesn’t record the kind of finished mixed output signal, but instead a lot of information about each one of the strings,” says the engineer. “Now, this is a very fancy way of saying that instead of two or three pickups, we have a few dozen that are only picking up one string each.”
The number didn’t land on 64 by accident either. Wieland opted for eight pickups per string across all eight strings, essentially creating multiple ‘listening points’ along each string’s length. Think of it as having a neck pickup, bridge pickup and everything in between… all at once, and all separately captured.
“Because we want to record all 64 pickups simultaneously without mixing them, the only real choice was to digitise them inside of the guitar,” he explains. “This means that we essentially built a 64-channel audio interface integrated into the guitar that then sends out one single digital signal to the computer.”
Those signals are handled via Cycfi Research pickup capsules, routed through a control board that buffers each signal before sending it to 64 individual analogue-to-digital converters. From there, everything lands in your DAW.
“Inside of the computer, we can take those 64 audio channels and get them into a DAW,” he continues. “In order to do anything useful with them, we wrote a VSSD plugin that allows you to mix all of these signals together, apply various effects, and then get a stereo output that you can listen to on just regular headphones.”
For guitarists, that’s where things start to get especially interesting. Instead of committing to pickup selection, tone and effects on the way in, you’re capturing raw string data, and deciding everything in post.
“Now, because we get the raw data into the DAW, this means we are actually recording the raw data and not the mixed output,” Wieland says. “So, all of the effects and the choice of which pickups are active can be made after it is recorded.”
In practice, that opens up a level of flexibility that conventional guitars simply don’t offer. You could track a part once, then audition different pickup positions after the fact, spread individual strings across the stereo field, or route low strings to a bass rig while sending the upper strings through a guitar amp. Multiple pickup positions per string can also be blended and delayed to create physically grounded spatial effects.
“This makes it a really powerful recording tool,” says Wieland.
And as the Polymap project puts it: “The guitar no longer has a single analogue output but becomes a spatially mapped instrument.”
Check out Wieland’s wild creation in action below.
Learn more at Dark Art Guitars.
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Paul McCartney reveals his rift with John Lennon was mended, in part, because they both got into baking bread: “It was nice that we had that in common”
1970 didn’t just see the end of the biggest band in the world – it also marked the fracture of one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of all time. As Beatles fans now know, the road to conciliation in the years that followed was a long one. Though as Paul McCartney now reveals, it didn’t hinge on music so much as something far more domestic.
In a new interview, McCartney shares how his rift with fellow Beatle John Lennon was mended in part by a shared love for – you guessed it – baking bread.
Speaking in the new Audible audiobook The Man on the Run, the bassist opens up about the messy aftermath of the Beatles’ split and the unraveling of his bond with Lennon.
“When we first broke up, good old John, he was like, slinging missiles at me,” says Macca. “He was just writing songs against me [like] How do you sleep at night?. You know, I was thinking ‘ok thanks.’”
“This is John, you know, if he doesn’t like someone, he’s going to sling arrows at you. And knowing that I can’t really effectively sling back stuff because I’m just not that good at that. It’s not my thing, you know?”
Beyond the musical back-and-forth, McCartney points to deeper tensions around business decisions as a key source of friction at the time.
“In the beginning, it was quite sort of hurtful, obviously. And it was the business thing. They were trying to stay with this guy who we knew was trying to rob the company. And it was like I was the only one who’d seen that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes,” he explains.
“But then they started to realise I was right about Klein, and they went off him. So it was healing itself, as you said. And eventually we were actually able to talk to each other, instead of ‘Ah, you…’”
With tensions cooling, the Lennon-McCartney pair gradually found their way back to each other – not through music, but through everyday life.
“John had had Sean, so he was now the father of a young baby. So, you know, I would bring him up and we’d talk about kids and domestic things,” says McCartney. “And I started making bread and it was getting pretty good, you know. And I started talking to him. He said ‘Oh yeah, I’m making bread’.”
As Macca explains, those small, ordinary connections proved surprisingly meaningful.
“The things we had in common were just ordinary little domestic things,” he says. “So somehow that was peaceful. And it was nice that we had that in common. And we weren’t fighting anymore.”
The post Paul McCartney reveals his rift with John Lennon was mended, in part, because they both got into baking bread: “It was nice that we had that in common” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante review – a dual dirt pedal that’s faster than the speed of light
€185/£185/$289, twilightpulseaudioworks.com / northernstomps.com
Guitar pedal makers are electronic engineers and therefore, by definition, nerds. So there’s a little clue to the inspiration behind the Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante in its name… but you’ll only get it if you’re a physics fan.
The most famous constant in science, as proposed by Einstein himself, is the speed of light (in a vacuum). This overdrive pedal from German indie maker Twilight Pulse, then, is a tribute to the Greer Amps Lightspeed. Not that it’s a mere clone, though – the presence of a second footswitch is enough to make it clear there’s something else going on inside this handsome blue box.
Image: Richard Purvis
Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante – what is it?
First of all, it’s not normally Pelham Blue: this is a limited-edition colourway for UK dealer Northern Stompboxes, the standard finish being white. On the inside, the Konstante is a two-in-one pedal, offering Lightspeed-style transparent overdrive – with the promise of more gain and more headroom than the original – alongside a separate Echoplex-style boost circuit.
Three of the controls are for the drive – output level, gain and tone – while the boost/preamp gets just a level knob. There’s a toggle switch in the middle for changing the order of the two circuits, and a pair of bypass switches that are about as far apart as they could be without falling off the edges of the enclosure. Mind you, this being a compact pedal, that’s still not very far – something to bear in mind if you don’t happen to have the feet of a ballerina.
Image: Richard Purvis
Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante – what does it sound like?
There’s a laid-back fluffiness to the overdrive side of the Konstante that reminds me of the Coggins Audio Dinosaural Hypoid Drive – and considering I gave that pedal 10/10, well, it’s safe to say we’re off to a decent start. But it’s slightly more tonally transparent than the Dinosaural, with only the merest hint of a sweetening effect in the mids, and it’s distinctly more fresh and zingy at the top end.
The gain range runs from virtually clean to moderately filthy, but the tone knob isn’t quite so transformative: it stays pretty crisp almost all the way round, with some extra upper-mids bite coming in as you push it past halfway. If you like your drive pedals on the dark side, you might find this one a bit too chimey. The key feature here, though, is that it has a truly organic sound and feel – which is exactly what the Lightspeed is famed for.
If anything, the boost side of the Konstante is even closer to transparency, giving a lift to the top and bottom ends of the spectrum that leaves the spiky mid frequencies fractionally softened by default. On its own it’s excellent, and teamed up with the other half of the pedal it offers two compelling options: an extra kick to the front end of the drive for added saturation, or a powerful loudness boost on the way out.
Image: Richard Purvis
Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante – should I buy it?
If you’re in Europe, this pedal is cheaper than the one that inspired it – and it has an added boost option that’s anything but an afterthought. That has to make it wildly tempting… as long as you’re not put off by the brightness of its core tone, or the potential for mishaps caused by having two footswitches barely an inch apart.
Either way, the Konstante is a superb little stompbox that marks out Twilight Pulse as a very classy boutique contender.
Image: Richard Purvis
Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante alternatives
For the sound of the Greer Amps Lightspeed, you might consider the Greer Amps Lightspeed ($249/£229). Other overdrive pedals with an independent boost circuit include the Keeley D&M Drive ($229/£229) and ThorpyFX The Dane MkII (£264.99/$319).
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Totally Guitars Weekly Update March 20, 2026
March 20, 2026 John Prine was on my mind this week, and on my recent playlists at home. Re-listening to a lot of his stuff, and a request from a student, led to a lesson on his last recorded song, I Remember Everything. It is a great example of his basic approach to fingerpicking and […]
The post Totally Guitars Weekly Update March 20, 2026 appeared first on On The Beat with Totally Guitars.
The Truth About Vintage Amps, Ep. 162
Episode 162 of the Truth About Vintage Amps Podcast, where amp tech Skip Simmons tackles all of your questions about guitar tube amps! This week, we go deep on Canadian amps, tremolo tweaks, and tech tips. Plus: Rumors of a possible TAVA meetup at Skip’s and a (very short) poetry slam!
Thank our sponsors: Grez Guitars; Emerald City Guitars; and Amplified Parts / Mod Electronics. Use the discount code TAVA10MOD for a one-time, 10% discount on Mod Electronics orders at https://www.modelectronics.com. Usable on speakers, amp kits, pedal kits, reverb tanks, etc. Offer ends April 11, 2026.
Some of the topics discussed this week:
:00 Skip has a cold
2:04 SF’s The Fab Mab (Wikipedia), 1971 Guitar Player magazine advice; changing the vibrato speed on a Fender Super Reverb
8:42 The answer to last episode’s baffler: The Canadian Standards Association; TAVA merch?
11:30 Caveat emptor: A UTC output transformer; why is my reverb not working?
26:12 Lead dress 101
31:40 An amp sale/TAVA gathering at Skip’s? (Follow our Instagram for updates/polls)
40:01 Harmony H410 and speaker impedance
44:10 Why is the tremolo on my 1969 Traynor YSR-1 Custom Reverb head not working and how can I slow it down?
50:38 Can you put variable capacitors in a guitar circuit?
53:11 Series filaments and a Berlant Concertone MCM-2; the Epiphone Rivoli EA-65 schematic
1:00:27 Gibson Falcon mods; whatever happened to the reissue Falcon?
1:07:24 Tech tip: Hammond 154M chokes (Amplified Parts link)
1:12:10 Guitarist Chuck Wayne
1:14:05 Spaghetti sauce with meat; getting Skip an iPhone; tremolo using bias modulation on the power tubes; the Ampeg Supereverb
1:22:21 Garnet amps and Kale; the Garnet Herzog
1:24:43 A listening room for Dynaco amps and Acoustic Research turntables
Above: Listener Bruce’s Berlant Concertone MCM-2, which he definitely shouldn’t mod
Want amp tech Skip Simmons’ advice on your DIY guitar amp projects? Want to share your top secret family recipe? Need relationship advice? Join us by sending your voice memo or written questions to podcast@fretboardjournal.com! Include a photo, too.
Want to support the show? Join our Patreon page to get to the front of the advice line, see exclusive pics, the occasional video and more.
Hosted by amp tech Skip Simmons and co-hosted/produced by Jason Verlinde of the Fretboard Journal.
The post The Truth About Vintage Amps, Ep. 162 first appeared on Fretboard Journal.
Warren Haynes on Bob Weir’s “childlike love” of music: “He was a real joy to play with”
![[L-R] Bob Weir and Warren Haynes](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Bob-Weir-Warren-Haynes-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
Warren Haynes has reflected on the musicianship of late Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who died in January this year.
The Gov’t Mule guitarist and Weir shared the stage on many, many occasions over the last few decades, with their first show together taking place at New York’s Wetlands Preserve in 2001. Since then and prior to Weir’s death, the pair shared a deep musical bond, regularly performing together.
Following the death of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia in 1995, surviving members – including Bob Weir – formed The Other Ones in 1998, later changing their name to The Dead in 2003. Warren Haynes joined The Dead’s lineup a year later in 2004, performing many shows alongside Bob Weir and co.
And in a new interview with All Alabama, Haynes reflects on the enduring impact Weir’s approach to music had on his own playing.
“Bob approached every performance and every song from a new, fresh perspective every time,” he says.
“He never wanted to repeat what he had done in the past. And he was just, after all those decades of playing music, still excited to play every time. It was. He had this childlike love for music that we all do in varying degrees.
“But to see someone like him hold on to that for that long a time and still be open to where the music might go at any given moment and encouraging of what could happen moment by moment, you know, he just was a real joy to play with and a sweet human being.”
Bob Weir’s death on 10 January, 2026 prompted a widespread outpouring of tributes from the guitar and wider music community.
“This guy was such a hero,” wrote Heart’s Nancy Wilson. “The world is a sadder place without him in it. He spread a lifetime of magic around and always had that twinkle of good nature in his eyes. His good vibrations will never end. He gave such a gift to us all.”
Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio paid his own heartfelt tribute: “Bobby was completely allergic to compliments in the most endearing way. I’d say, ‘Man, that guitar riff you were doing on that song sounded really killer’ and he’d respond, ‘Well, I’m sure I’ll fuck it up next time.’ I loved that about him.”
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Song of the Month: “Honolulu March”
AC/DC rhythm guitarist Stevie Young admitted to hospital in Argentina
Stevie Young – rhythm guitarist of rock titans AC/DC – has been admitted to hospital in Argentina ahead of the band’s upcoming show in Buenos Aires on Monday, 23 March.
According to a statement issued to Reuters, the 69-year-old guitarist still plans to perform with the band on Monday, and that his admission to hospital was “out of an abundance of caution”.
- READ MORE: Yamaha Chris Buck RS02CB review: one of the most compelling P-90-loaded electrics on the market
“Out of an abundance of caution, he [Stevie Young] was admitted to a local hospital where he is undergoing a full battery of tests,” reads the statement.
“Stevie is doing well and is in good spirits. He is looking forward to getting on stage on Monday.”
Stevie Young joined AC/DC in 2014, after his uncle Malcolm Young stepped back from his duties due to health issues. Malcolm sadly passed away in 2017. Stevie had performed with AC/DC before, notably during 1988’s Blow Up Your Video World Tour. His first recordings with the band came on 2014’s Rock or Bust.
AC/DC are currently in the midst of a South America tour, having already played shows in São Paulo, Brazil and Santiago, Chile. After three shows in Buenos Aires on 23, 27 and 31 March, the band will head to Mexico, before commencing a string of shows in the US from July through September 2026.
View AC/DC’s official website for tickets and a full list of dates.
The post AC/DC rhythm guitarist Stevie Young admitted to hospital in Argentina appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Mateus Asato blasts the “nonsense urge” to add music to our social media posts: “Music is becoming a wrong source of distraction”
Mateus Asato has long had a choppy relationship with social media. As someone who could be regarded as the quintessential Instagram guitarist (though he’s currently enjoying a successful career as an artist, too), he made waves in 2021 when he announced he was leaving social media, citing burnout and a lack of inspiration.
Though he’s now back on socials, he still appears to harbour some resentment towards the way platforms end up making us behave, as shown in a new Instagram Story.
In the Story, Asato complains about the current state of the Instagram algorithm, which sees posts from accounts you actually follow enjoying less and less real estate on your feed. Essentially, just because you follow an account, it doesn’t mean you’ll see their posts, and your home page is mostly full of accounts you don’t even follow anyway.
“I miss the old IG,” Asato says. “I really do. At this point, my following section is close to ‘useless’. Everything I see is based on what I searched or spoke previously with someone or myself. Or where I am.”
Asato also complains about the need to post at specific times of the day to maximise audience engagement.
“If you’re overseas, forget it,” he continues. “Or wait until 4am to post it so your content can get the ‘highest’ amount of reach because this is the RIGHT timing where your audience is ALIVE. BS.”
And finally, the guitarist laments the “nonsense urge” social media users now have to add music and a soundtrack to their content.
“I miss just seeing pictures and reading things here without a miserable soundtrack,” he says. “Music is becoming a stupid and wrong source of distraction because of this nonsense urge to add a freaking noise over ANYTHING right now. “I really miss the old ‘meaning’ of the ordinary.”
Credit: Mateus Asato/Instagram
In other news, Mateus Asato recently ended his decade-long partnership with Suhr Guitars, prompting fans to speculate as to where he was planning to go next. He was quick to dispel rumours that he was joining Fender, saying he was “single and happy where I am at this point”.
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Yamaha Chris Buck RS02CB review: one of the most compelling P-90-loaded electrics on the market
$1,299/£1,199, yamaha.com
When you’re a young guitar player trying to forge their own path, sometimes the weight of 60-plus years of history and baggage tied into classic instruments can weigh you down a little bit.
It was partly for this reason that Welsh guitar phenom and Cardinal Black member Chris Buck decided to swerve the usual suspects and opt for Yamaha’s Revstar guitar when he first burst onto the scene. “I feel like I’m stepping out of their shadows just by virtue of picking up a different guitar,” was Buck’s reasoning at the time.
It’s easy to forget that the Revstar itself is barely a decade old. Despite having carved itself out a niche as something of an underground modern classic thanks to its blend of high quality, affordability and timeless but unique looks, it’s still very much a new kid on the block compared to much of its competition.
It’s high time, then, for the first true Revstar signature model. And with Buck having established himself as the Revstar’s most consistent and beloved champion – having picked his first one up not long after they launched in 2015, and having since graduated to a premium guitar made by the Yamaha Artist Services (YASLA) custom shop in California – what better choice to be the debut honoree?
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Chris Buck Revstar RS02CB – what is it?
The launch of Buck’s signature Revstar was one of the biggest announcements of this year’s NAMM Show – and also one of the most intriguing new electrics of the year. This is because the RS02CB is a pretty faithful recreation of the YASLA guitar he’s been playing since 2020.
Ever since, this pro-ready instrument has accompanied Buck all around the world, playing countless shows, sessions, clinics and everything in between – this is a workhorse guitar for one of the hardest-working and most respected young players in the business. And if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for you… in theory.
Over the last year or two we’ve become used to seeing Yamaha electric guitars pushing the envelope price-wise. While traditionally Yamaha electrics have been priced at the beginner end of the market, there’s little doubt that the brand has some of the finest brains in the business, and are more than capable of turning that skill to making pro-spec guitars for higher-level musicians.
We saw this first with the reimagined Pacifica range that launched at NAMM – guitars that brought every bit of the company’s innovation and know-how to the party but with a four-figure price tag to match.
Image: Adam Gasson
Given that the similarly ballpark Revstar Professional guitars are made in Yamaha’s Japan HQ, you might expect that the Buck version would do likewise, but instead it’s made in Indonesia, just like the Pacifica Standard Plus guitars are.
A little disappointing? Maybe, but we should all know by now that the flag flying over the shop where a guitar is made doesn’t really matter if the craftspeople inside know what they’re doing and are working with great designs and quality materials.
And that’s certainly what you’ll find with the RS02CB. The guitar is built around a set of brand new custom-designed P-90 pickups with Alnico III magnets, which replicate the sound of that YASLA guitar he’s come to rely on so much. These pickups are wired for slightly lower output, meaning greater clarity when played at lower volumes – something that Chris requested himself.
The guitar also features a new one for a production Yamaha guitar, in the shape of an intonatable wrapover tailpiece – as opposed to the various tune-o-matics you usually see on Revstar guitars.
Otherwise it’s very much a case of sticking with the familiar mojo of a Revstar guitar – a chambered mahogany body and neck with carbon reinforcement. The maple top is finished in a classic goldtop shade, and it’s given an extra touch of the classic with a pair of retro-style witch-hat knobs, and split block inlays.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Chris Buck Revstar RS02CB – build quality and playability
It’s no secret that Yamaha makes some of the most reliable guitars in the business, and the RS02CB is no exception to that rule. Removing the guitar from its gigbag and giving it a very thorough going over, it’s hard to find fault anywhere, to be honest; every seam, every surface is entirely free of marks or other cosmetic quality control issues.
A goldtop with a dark back is a classic for a reason, and in Revstar clothes here it remains utterly stunning in the flesh – striking just the right balance between flair and restrained, classic refinement.
The worst thing about a signature guitar is when it won’t stop shouting about it, thus negating the potential market outside of that artist’s fanbase. The Buck has no such worries on the cosmetic front – the only hint that this is anyone’s signature guitar is a tiny ‘CB’ signature on the back of the headstock.
And that’s very good news, because there’s plenty for any guitarist to enjoy here, even if you’ve never heard a note of Chris Buck’s music. A big part of this is down to the impressively luxurious playing experience that invites you in from the very first strum.
The satin-finished neck feels truly effortless from the bottom of the fingerboard all the way up to the top, while the TonePros AVT2 wraparound bridge sets the strings up for a gloriously low action throughout. The fretwork also deserves special mention here – each of the frets is wonderfully set, beautifully polished and butter smooth. Not something that you can say for every manufacturer at this price point and beyond.
Add to this a relatively flat 12” fretboard radius, and you’ve got a real playground for your fingers – especially if like Buck you’re someone who doesn’t mind busting out a searing lead or two. Unlike a lot of mahogany-maple guitars, the chambering of the body means that this Revstar isn’t too heavy either – around 7lbs – meaning practice sessions are comfortable. Even long ones.
The combination of that wraparound bridge and the silky smooth tuning machines (with Kluson-style green buttons) mean that this guitar stays in tune very well, and any adjustments can be made easily and precisely.
This is a very well-sorted guitar that bypasses any of the adjustment period you normally expect when picking up a new instrument. It’s effortless to pick up, play and slide into the zone with.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Chris Buck Revstar RS02CB – sounds
As you’d expect from any guitar with a pair of P-90s, the RS02CB comes with all the midrange bite you’ll need for blues and rock riffs. But flip to the neck pickup and your amp’s clean channel and softer styles like jazz are a real treat to play, too.
Part of the reason that Buck and scores of players before him have been drawn to the P-90 is their ability to remain impressively versatile within a seemingly limited framework.
Like other Revstars, the Buck signature has a three-way selector switch, with singular volume and tone knobs, with no push-pull functionality for series wiring, for example. This puts a lot of pressure on the controls here to offer that versatility, and the tone pot especially has an impressive spread that allows you to dial in a broad range of sounds.
But as you’d expect from a player like Buck, the guitar really feels like it’s been designed to ensure that the tonal possibilities come primarily from the player and their picking dynamics. As a result, the pickups are highly responsive to dynamic passages feel truly expressive.
That doesn’t mean this thing isn’t ready to rock, and piling on the gain doesn’t seem to phase these pickups in the slightest.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Chris Buck Revstar RS02CB – should I buy one?
There’s no escaping the fact that $1,200 is a lot of money for a Revstar – it’s a curse of Yamaha’s own making that you can get a guitar that on first glance looks very similar to this for less than half the price, and that mental leap is something the company is clearly also grappling with in the Pacifica realm too.
But the magic is in the details, and while there’s undoubtedly a lot of competition for this guitar in this price bracket, you’re still getting an awful lot of guitar for the money here. It plays superbly, sounds fantastic and has killer looks that aren’t, as Buck points out, burdened by 70-odd years of history. A fitting milestone for a modern classic.
[products ids=”SC8JztJ5X8lk7WSuXvp20″]
Yamaha Chris Buck Revstar RS02CB – alternatives
A lot of the competition for the RE02CB comes from Yamaha’s own line, and if you’re not too wedded to the unique features of the Buck model, you can save yourself over $300 and grab a P-90-loaded Revstar Standard RSS02T ($829.99 / £649). If you’ve got a little more room in your budget, the Gibson SG Special ($1,599 / £1,399) is a tried and true twin P-90 classic, while the Epiphone Les Paul 1960 Double Cut Special ($999 / £999) is another timelessly cool option.
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Muse announce 10th album The WOW! Signal – listen to its lead single now
Muse have announced their 10th studio album The WOW! Signal, which is set to arrive 26 June via Warner Records.
The trio’s first full-length outing since 2022’s Will of the People, The WOW! Signal opens with the “opening salvo” of a lead single, Be With You, which starts with layered electronica and synth elements before Matt Bellamy enters the fray with some blistering high-gain guitar. Check it out below:
Per a press release, The WOW! Signal takes its name from a 72-second radio burst detected in 1977 “originating from the constellation Sagittarius with a bandwidth and intensity that suggested a possible extraterrestrial source”.
“The astronomer who discovered the anomaly famously circled the now-iconic sequence ‘6EQUJ5’ and wrote ‘WOW!’ on the printout beside it – giving the signal its name and cementing its place in scientific and pop-culture lore.”
As such, Muse’s new album seeks to explore “cosmic mystery, existential hope, and the exhilarating possibility of contact with something far greater than ourselves”.
See the full tracklist of The WOW! Signal below:
- The Dark Forest
- Nightshift Superstar
- Shimmering Scars
- Cryogen
- Be With You
- Hexagons
- The Sickness In You & I
- Unravelling
- Hush
- Space Debris
The WOW! Signal arrives 26 June. Pre-save and pre-order via the band’s website.
Credit: Muse
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“That was just a Tuesday and a lunch tab for Kirk Hammett”: Butch Walker reveals he had the opportunity to buy the legendary “Greeny” Les Paul – but couldn’t afford it
![[L-R] Butch Walker and Kirk Hammett](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Butch-Walker-Kirk-Hammett-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
As far as iconic guitars go, very few match up to Greeny. A 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard once owned by Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, and then by blues ace Gary Moore, it’s a six-string with an inarguably mythical status.
Nowadays, the guitar is under the custodianship of Metallica guitarist and keen guitar collector Kirk Hammett, who bought it in 2014 for an undisclosed sum.
But had fate gone a different way, Greeny could have ended up in the hands of singer-songwriter and producer Butch Walker, who tells Guitar World in a new interview that he was unable to come up with the cash when the opportunity presented itself.
“Gary Moore was one of my heroes,” Walker says. “I had an opportunity to buy Greeny before it was really making the rounds, and Kirk Hammett bought it. But I just wasn’t ready to spend $250,000 on a guitar at that stage in my life and my career.”
While also recognised for a successful solo career as an artist, Butch Walker has enjoyed success as a producer behind music by P!nk, Avril Lavigne, Taylor Swift and Fall Out Boy.
He continues: “My buddy was a guitar broker, and it started circulating that Gary was going to sell. It had belonged to Peter Green as well, which was cool, but I was actually more psyched that it was Gary Moore’s. I highly regret not coming up with the money somehow. Obviously, that was just a Tuesday and a lunch tab for Kirk Hammett.”
While Butch Walker clearly laments the missed opportunity to pick up a guitar owned by one of his heroes – not to mention one of the most legendary guitars to exist on Earth – it has found a responsible owner in Kirk Hammett, who regularly plays it onstage with Metallica, and has let a string of famous guitar players have a go, including Al Di Meola, Jack White and Jake E. Lee.
In March 2025, Hammett told The Telegraph about the numerous other guitar players who were offered the chance to buy Greeny before he got his hands on it, including his Metallica bandmate James Hetfield, no less.
“It’s been offered to other major players, and they passed on it for whatever reason, but when I saw Greeny, I knew in less than a minute that I was never gonna give it back!” he said. “I had such an instant connection to that guitar, it’s such an amazing source of inspiration and it’s my best-sounding guitar.”
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Freak From the Woods: King Tuff’s Triumphant Return to Tape
Back in 2007, Vermont’s Kyle Thomas recorded an album under his new moniker, King Tuff. It was called Was Dead—as in, King Tuff Was Dead—and Thomas cut it on a Tascam 388, an 8-track reel-to-reel recording and mixing machine. He’d traded in an Ibanez electric to buy the Tascam at a music store in Keene, New Hampshire, in 2003. (Thomas didn’t know it then, but at the same time, his garage-rock contemporaries Ty Segall and the Osees’ John Dwyer were experimenting with the same machines out on the west coast.) He stuck an SM57 on his amp, and hit record. No outboard gear, no processing. It was the heart of the lo-fi revival’s heyday.
Thomas moved to Los Angeles, the heart of the genre’s new American boom, signed to Sub Pop, and released 2012’s King Tuff and 2014’s Black Moon Spell, both collections of unrepentant, gnarly garage-rock music. Then came 2018’s The Other and, in 2023, Smalltown Stardust. These were more manicured, high-fidelity endeavors. The arrangements were softer and slower. Production was clearer and more considered. When it came time to take the albums on tour, Thomas faltered. “When I would play the older songs that were more straightforward rock, it was just so much more fun,” he says. “I wanted to make a record with that in mind: What’s going to be fun to play live?”
Moo, King Tuff’s seventh record, is what he came up with. Recorded before departing Los Angeles for good, Moo is Thomas’ return to the Tascam 388, and to the earworm musical dirt-baggery he first traded in. Opener “Twisted on a Train” announces this proudly. Its an A-major foot stomper, led by the perfectly muffled snap of Thomas’ guitar, that recounts a disturbed, weed-gummy-fueled train ride from Tucson to Los Angeles. The cheap-beers-on-the-beach groove of “Stairway to Nowhere” keeps the ball rolling while Thomas looks back on his years in L.A.: “I’m so tired of spinnin’ my wheels / Negative numbers, dead-end deals / Wined and dined in paradise.”
“I really just wanted to get back to how I used to do things, more DIY,” Thomas says of the recording and release plan (Moo is coming out on his own record label). “I just feel more connected to the work that way, and I feel more connected to the fans if I’m actually giving them something that I made personally.” Vermont is a good place to do things yourself, surrounded by weavers and woodworkers instead of influencers and industry dependents: “It’s nice to be somewhere where not everyone’s trying to make it. I think cities trick people into thinking that you have to be there for shit to happen in your life, and I don’t think it’s true.”
Kyle Thomas’ Gear
Guitars & Bass
1995 Gibson SG Standard (with bolt headstock repair by Reuben Cox)
Rickenbacker 660-12TP
1968 Fender P bass
Amps
Early-’60s brown-panel Fender Deluxe 6G3
Early-’80s Fender Super Champ
Effects
Ceriatone Centuria
Dunlop Cry Baby Q-Zone
Vintage Mu-Tron Phaser
Moog MF Delay
Recording Equipment
Tascam 388
Shure SM57
Reconnecting with the Tascam made Thomas realize how important the machine is to his work. Maybe it’s the tone the Tascam imparts that endears him to it, or maybe it’s the particular workflow it demands. Regardless, working with the 8-track device, Thomas felt like himself again. He didn’t sing his vocals a hundred times and comp the best bits together, or overwork his guitar performances until they were flawless. There’s noises—hissing and buzzing and popping—plus other peculiarities and variances from one riff to the next. “It’s all about the performance and just capturing something, and not doing it to death. You can get good results doing things the new-school way,” he admits. “But you might feel sadder at the end.”
So why did it take so long for Thomas to return to his beloved Tascam? “I finally got it fixed,” he shrugs. “That’s really all it was. It was broken.”
Given his recording philosophies, it probably isn’t a surprise to hear that Thomas doesn’t like players who are “too good”: “It’s boring. I don’t think rock music should be perfect. I think rock music suffers when people make it on the computer and fix everything.” Wipers’ Greg Sage and Dead Moon’s Fred Cole are key inspirations for Thomas, alongside imperfect shredders like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. “I like shittier guitar players better than really good ones, usually, or guitar players that are rough around the edges,” he says. “They can be good, but they fuck up a lot.” The continued pull toward imperfection is, of course, colored by Thomas’ estimation of his own playing. “I’m not a slick guitar player, I’m not smooth,” he explains, then grins. “My hands are shaky. They’re like bald eagle talons.” The influence of more polished players like Tom Petty and Mike Campbell are in frame on Moo, too, especially courtesy of a Rickenbacker 660-12TP—Petty’s signature model—that Thomas acquired just before making the record.
“I think rock music suffers when people make it on the computer and fix everything.”
Thomas is an SG player first and foremost, and he’s played his beloved late-’90s Gibson SG Standard, named Jazijoo, for more than two decades. It’s been thrashed and colorfully decorated over the years, and its cracked headstock kept breaking until Reuben Cox, of L.A.’s Old Style Guitar Shop, put the problem to rest—by driving a bolt through the headstock, Frankenstein’s-monster style, to secure it. Because of its fragility, Jazijoo doesn’t come out on the road these days, but teamed up with a Mu-Tron Phaser that Thomas scored in a thrift store for five bucks in the early ’90s, it’s created the King Tuff sound. To round out that pairing on Moo, Thomas borrowed a brown-panel Fender Deluxe 6G3, which handled most of the guitar tones on the record, along with a small Supro combo and an early-’80s Fender Super Champ.
Almost 20 years after Was Dead, Thomas is back living in the forests of Vermont. His neighbors don’t know or really give a shit about his music, and that’s a good thing. “It’s fucking paradise,” Thomas says, straight-faced, on a video call from a room in his home crammed with music gear. “Obviously L.A. is supposed to be paradise, and it is in some ways, but I don’t know. I really missed the seasons. I get ideas and feelings here that I just didn’t have out there. I do love L.A., but I’m a freak from the woods.”“It’s Kirk’s riff, it’s my lyrics”: Gary Holt jokes that he’s owed royalties for his part in writing this classic Metallica track
Gary Holt has joked that he’s owed some royalties for his part in writing Metallica’s megahit Creeping Death.
As the story goes, both Gary Holt and Kirk Hammett were bandmates in Exodus in the early ‘80s, before Hammett left to join Metallica in 1983, filling the slot left vacant by Dave Mustaine’s firing.
But before Hammett’s Exodus departure, the band recorded their 1983 demo Die By His Hand. And as Holt asserts, while Hammett wrote the song’s riff, he was behind its lyrics, which were later tweaked for the middle section of Creeping Death, which appeared on Metallica’s 1984 sophomore album, Ride the Lightning.
“It’s Kirk’s riff, it’s my lyrics,” Holt laughs in a new episode of the the Heavy Stories podcast [via Louder]. “I’ve never been credited, so yeah, that’ll tell you how I feel. I should get paid for that shit.”
He continues: “The song was ‘dying by his hand’ and they – James – changed the line to ‘die by my hand’.
“You know, I mean, I’m entitled to some money, James. I’ll send you my bank info! It’ll be a fat cheque! But those are Kirk’s riffs and he was more than welcome to them. They were his. I had zero ownership of any of that.”
Gary Holt has waxed lyrical on his appreciation of Kirk Hammett in the past. Back in 2024, he explained how he “owes it all to Kirk”.
He recalled meeting the Metallica guitarist in their teenage years: “We became immediate friends. One day, he just said, ‘Want to learn to play guitar?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’, because I always wanted to, but I’m the youngest of six.
“My parents had purchased pianos for my brother to take piano lessons. It ended up being a place to put family photos [on]. You know, there’d be a trumpet in the closet that someone played for six months, and I think my parents didn’t think I’d stick with it.”
“Six months later, I was in Exodus. So yeah, I owe it all to Kirk [laughs]. The first song he taught me was some Rolling Stone song; for some reason I can’t remember what it was – maybe Wild Horses, something like that.”
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“I sort of got off on that”: Ed O’Brien admits he was happy when Radiohead initially broke up – and didn’t expect the band to ever get back together
Radiohead’s return to the stage in 2025 marked the end of a seven-year hiatus – one that guitarist Ed O’Brien initially believed was permanent, and was, at the time, happy about.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, O’Brien looks back on the period following Radiohead’s 2018 tour, noting how he’d felt creatively and emotionally spent after decades in the band.
“I was done with Radiohead,” he says. “It had got to a place where I just wasn’t enjoying it. I just didn’t resonate with it anymore, and I wanted to do my own thing… I think we’d run out of road. We’d run out of inspiration.”
That sense of burnout had been building for a while. The sessions for Radiohead’s 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool were reportedly difficult, as was the tour that followed. While the rest of the band were keen to get back on the road, O’Brien admits he was reluctant.
“The others said they wanted to tour. I didn’t really want to tour, and they knew that,” the guitarist explains. “But I did it and I’m glad I did. I saw it through to the end.”
When that run finally came to a close, the band had stepped away – a move that, for O’Brien, felt both final and, in some ways, welcome.
“It was kind of scary at first,” he says. “I really thought that was it on Radiohead. Actually, I sort of got off on that. I was just, ‘I’m done with it. I want another life.’”
Thankfully for Radiohead fans, that feeling didn’t last forever. The band eventually regrouped, returning to the stage in 2025 for a limited run of shows across Europe, including Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin.
For O’Brien, being back onstage with the band has brought a new perspective: “That tour was very, very emotional, very profound. We all felt that. We’d look at one another on that stage, like, ‘This is amazing.’ I feel like I’m the luckiest person on the planet, and I’m not just saying that.”
Looking ahead, Radiohead are taking a more measured approach to touring. Rather than jumping straight back into a full schedule, the band intends to spread things out.
“It’s definitely happening,” O’Brien says of future live plans. “What we’re going to do is, every year we’re going to do a different continent, and we’re going to do 20 shows each year. No more, no less.”
He also confirms that 2026 will be a quiet year for the band, with plans to reconvene the following year: “We won’t do anything this year, but we’ll do something next year.”
The approach, he adds, is about making sure they can still give each show their full energy.
“We want to give absolutely everything each night,” says O’Brien. We do not ever want it to be like we’re going through the motions or we’re having to run on empty. We’ve got to be able to do it. And you know what? We’re not spring chickens anymore.”
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“I was afraid of silence, of having to feel”: Dave Grohl admits he used music as a “crutch” after Taylor Hawkins’ death
Dave Grohl has opened up about life after the death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, sharing how he used music as a “crutch” while processing his grief.
In a new interview with MOJO, Grohl reflects publicly for the first time on Hawkins’ death in 2022, calling it a moment that “threw our world upside down” and fundamentally altered his outlook.
“Losing Taylor was never meant to be,” says the guitarist. “That threw our world upside down and made me question everything about life, that it was so… It was so unfair. I still have a hard time making sense of it.”
Grohl, who threw himself into work in the immediate aftermath, admits that he turned to music as a way of avoiding difficult emotions.
“I think I was afraid of silence, afraid of having to feel,” he says. “I could have used a bit more of the silence, a bit more of digging deeper. I never want to say music is a distraction, but I was definitely using it as a crutch for some broken limb.”
The musician also reflects on his wider career and the motivations behind some of his past projects, suggesting that not everything he pursued came from a place of necessity.
“I’ve had to reexamine my ambition and intention,” he says. “A lot of those projects over the years were surface validation to prove that I could do it – not that I needed to do it. I was always the guy who couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t take a vacation. I needed the TV on to put me to sleep. It was the silence – the still – that scared me.”
Now, however, “my horizon is much different,” Grohl notes. “There will be plenty of things that we’ll do in the next few years that will remind everyone that Foo Fighters love to circle the planet playing rock shows. Before, I was running on fumes and unleaded gas. Now, I’m just burning fucking diesel.”
Foo Fighters are set to release their 12th studio album, Your Favorite Toy, on 24 April.
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“Pinnacle of the Electromatic collection”: Gretsch’s new Electromatic Premier Jet packs “premium appointments” and upgraded specs into a sub-$1k package
Gretsch has unveiled the Electromatic Premier Jet, a revamped take on its workhorse Jet platform that focuses on improved playability, stability and a wider range of tones.
Positioned as the “boldest evolution yet” of the Electromatic and Streamliner Jet lines, the Premier Jet keeps the brand’s familiar look and feel but updates the spec where it matters most for modern players.
At the core of each guitar is a chambered mahogany body with a carved maple top and sculpted contours for what Gretsch calls “exceptional acoustic balance” and playing comfort. It’s paired with a mahogany neck in a performance “C” profile and a 10”-14” compound-radius ebony fingerboard with 22 Medium Jumbo frets. Pearloid neo-classic thumbnail inlays and Luminlay side dots round things out, offering exceptional visibility even on dimly lit stages.
Credit: Gretsch
Electronics are where things get especially interesting. The newly developed Sphera Twin Six humbuckers, powered by Alnico 6 magnets, deliver everything from pristine clean tones to aggressive overdrive right at your fingertips. Aimed at balancing vintage warmth with a more modern edge, they’re voiced to be “beautifully dynamic, exceptionally expressive and addictively powerful”.
As Gretsch explains, “each pickup features twelve adjustable pole pieces for precise attack and unrestrained flexibility. In the neck position Alnico VI magnets pair with clear poly sol coated wire, while in the bridge Alnico VI magnets pair with plain enamel coated wire. Specially calibrated coil winds create the perfect marriage of brilliance and brute force, while vacuum wax-potting keeps noise and interference to a minimum.”
Controls wise, a master volume with treble bleed keeps the top end intact when rolling back, while a push-pull Lumen filter and dual no-load tone controls offer a wide range of usable tones without overcomplicating things.
The hardware takes a similarly practical approach. A Lockdown locking wraparound bridge, locking tuners, and a GraphTech NuBone nut all work to keep tuning stable so you don’t have to babysit your guitars mid-set.
“For years, the Electromatic and Streamliner Collections have offered Gretsch power and fidelity to a broad range of players,” says Gretsch VP Jason Barnes. “While Gretsch has always been renowned for its truly iconic tone and style, the Electromatic Premier Collection elevates the playing experience even further with incredible sonic punch and definition, effortless playability and of course, signature Gretsch style.”
The Electromatic Premier Jet is priced at $799.9/£709/€829 and is available in four finishes – Vintage Pearl, Robusto Burst, Onyx Storm and Clairvoyant.
Learn more at Gretsch.
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Why Taylor’s Next Generation Grand Auditorium is the ultimate player’s guitar
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The guitar secrets of Steely Dan: as revealed by Walter Becker: “All of our equipment was always broken”
The inner workings of Steely Dan have always remained under a cloak of mystery and intrigue. Known for their perfectionist streak in the recording studio, Steely Dan’s esteemed hipsters Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, were a world unto themselves.
While vocalist and keyboardist Fagen remains the sole surviving member of the pair – guitarist and bassist Becker passed away in 2017 – the duo etched a musical legacy that continues to both enthral fans of their music, and musicians alike.
With albums such as 1972’s Can’t Buy A Thrill, 1976’s The Royal Scam and 1977’s Aja, Steely Dan married their love of the absurd with unique sophisticated musical complexity.
Tales of their studio escapades have become legend, best exemplified by the duo’s fastidious approach in capturing the right guitar solo for Peg where they churned through a succession of studio guitar aces such as Robben Ford, Rick Derringer, Elliot Randall and Larry Carlton among others, before finally settling for Jay Graydon’s blistering six-string offering.
Keep It Brief
When it came to a Dan recording session, guitarists hired for the session were usually given a brief prior to the session. “There were cases where we had lines or we had particular rhythm parts in mind, but a lot was always left up to the individual with the guitar,” Walter Becker explained to this writer in a rare interview in 2010.
“Guitar players are so idiosyncratic in how they voice chords and how they approach chords and so on. You want to tell somebody the effect you want to create, and what you want to end up with, more than you want to tell them how to create that effect because if you have strong, interesting players, they already have developed their own personal techniques for doing that sort of thing.”
An aficionado of the blues, Becker always sought a particular kind of guitarist to lay to tape a blues-infused solo. Yet, many times at the eleventh hour, it was Becker himself who wound up being tasked with the performance.
“In some cases, we just couldn’t find anybody that really was the right combination of things that could play blues style electric guitar, and also play over changes,” he said. “There weren’t too many people that really could do that back in the 70s. Now of course, there are lots of people who could do it.”
Keep It Low
While Becker himself was also a competent bassist, he and Fagen would also employ the services of bass virtuoso Chuck Rainey whose contributions, according to Becker, were integral to the duo’s recordings.
“Chuck always liked to hear the demos and hear the bass parts that I had on demos because he got a certain amount of information out of it,” recalled Becker. “There were a few things that were written that Chuck played, but mostly Chuck just got the chord chart. He would hear things on the demos that he liked or that told him something about what the general approach was.
“He basically created the bass lines himself and of all the great bass players that we’ve had a chance to work with from time to time, he was by far the best at that, at creating a part that really worked with the song and worked with what the other players were doing.”
Keep It Jazz
Fagen and Becker were one of the very few songwriters who were able to successfully incorporate jazz harmonies within a pop framework. “I don’t think most people wanted to do that,” admitted Becker. “Very few people really. Jazz and jazz harmonies, especially in the 60s and 70s, for many people evoked the notion of the music that their parents danced to at the USO or something, or the band that played the theme music for the Ed Sullivan show and stuff like that.
“So, jazz harmony and jazz instrumentation had been co-opted into sort of less reputable forms of music that didn’t have any of the interesting, powerful elements of jazz that we love, such as improvisation and really driving rhythm sections and that kind of thing. So, most people just weren’t even interested in doing anything like that.
“And I think probably up until a certain point, we were the only people really and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to integrate. We experimented with a lot of writing and over a period of years, on how to integrate the different elements that were in our songs.
“In other words, how to integrate humour into the lyric of a song without them becoming novelty songs, and how to integrate jazz harmonies into rock band sounds, rock band combos and rock band rhythms and stuff like that without it sounding like half ass jazz or without it sounding like, without it evoking the sort of out of date, old generation.”
Their taste in adding those sophisticated jazz harmonies into their songwriting, saw the pair experiment with multiple chord voicings as a way to stamp their take on their music.
It was through this trial-and-error approach, that Becker and Fagen came up with the ‘Mu’ chord, which became an integral part of their signature sound. At its core, the ‘Mu’ chord is basically a major chord with an added 2nd, and due to the added 2nd being paired to the chord’s 3rd, it results in a mildly dissonant sounding chord.
“When we started writing, some of the songs that we wrote were sort of folk-ish types of songs,” explained Becker. “And so, we were looking for ways to make the triads sound better and richer and ways to add a little dissonance and colour to the chords. And that ‘Mu’ chord was one of the ways that we came up with doing that.”
Keep It Appropriate
While much of Steely Dan’s output has been noted for its production sheen, they made sure that polished veneer never replaced the music’s substance, of which was the primary goal for both Fagen and Becker. “First of all, the sense that from the beginning the substance of the song, is the substance of the song,” explained Becker cryptically.
“And that’s not always the case for everybody. I think a lot of pop music now is predicated on the idea that the style and the trappings are more important than the substance and that the substance shouldn’t interfere with the style and the trappings, which is just a completely different 180 degrees from the way that we look at it anyway.
“So, I think the thing is that the production has to be appropriate, has to advance the cause of the substance of the song. It has to add to the impact of the song rather than diminish it or obscure it or overwhelm it. There are times when you can create some interesting effects by having a very unlikely production combined with a particular song, but generally speaking, it’s very easy for things to be overproduced and over fussed with and over ornamented.”
Looking back over the group’s prolific 70s period, Becker admitted that both he and Fagen weren’t cut out to be touring musicians, preferring instead the studio environs where they thrived and could allow their creative spirit to run freely.
“In the 70s, we were completely wrapped up in the idea of writing songs and making records,” he expressed. “That’s what we really wanted to do, and the touring just seemed to detract from that; it burned up a lot of energy. All of our equipment was always broken and destroyed the flow of work as regards to writing and recording, so we stopped doing it.”
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Corey Davis, Alvin Youngblood Hart & Guy Davis New Album, Fight On!: True Blues Vol. 2 Release Date April 17, 2026
Press Release
Source: Mark Pucci PR
Corey Harris/Alvin Youngblood Hart/Guy Davis – new album, Fight On!: True Blues Vol. 2 (out April 17 on Yellow Dog Records), from three of today’s deepest, most decorated acoustic blues masters who reunite to summon ancestral spirits with songs both long remembered and newly created.
Advance music and album pre-orders HERE!
Even as they step back in time, Guy Davis, Corey Harris and Alvin Youngblood Hart—who won ardent acclaim for their first True Blues project in 2013—prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that African American blues remains as vital and vibrant as ever.
These three first met at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1996 and are now coming together nearly 30 years later for a powerful follow-up to their acclaimed first True Blues collaboration. The album features nine tracks blending traditional material (Charley Patton, Rev. Gary Davis, Virginia songsters) with original compositions.
“I have a photograph somewhere of Corey, Guy and myself at the Chicago Blues Festival, 1996,” remembers Alvin Youngblood Hart. “A time when we were being touted by the ‘Blues Establishment’ as ‘The New Saviors Of The Blues.’ So whatever man, it was destiny that we’d end up doing something like True Blues. This new album is a continuation, or reunion of the project we started over a decade ago.”
“The thematic tie of the record lies in the fact that we are three African-American bluesmen who are fighting to maintain our cultural legacy and heritage,” adds Corey Harris. “Each of these nine tracks represents a contemporary image of traditional Black lifeways.”
As for the album’s title, Guy Davis states: “The fight we are waging is to keep this precious music form alive. To us, there is not so much difference between our arrangements of blues classics and our newly created work. It’s all connected to the ancestral spirit.” Raw, heartfelt and sounding absolutely nothing like a dusty museum piece, Fight On!: True Blues Vol. 2 is a loving celebration of shared music and friendship, a long-dreamed-about project that now, countless tours and conversations later, finally arrives.
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