If you took blues and jazz and put them in a blender you'd end up with something that resembles Robben Ford. Robben is one of my all time favorite guitar players (and singers), and for whatever reason he's relatively obscure. He actually has quite an impressive resume playing with Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, George Harrison, Bonnie Raitt, and Michael McDonald to name a few. On top of being a great backup / session artist he has an equally impressive solo career. If you're interested in picking up a Robben Ford album, my personal favorite is called "Robben Ford & The Blue Line" which features his blues trio. I got the chance to see Robben play with that band (promoting that album) in Nashville several years ago and it was one of the more memorable shows I've seen.

Here's a video I came across on YouTube showing him playing "Nothin But The Blues" - great song, great playing!

Back in the mid / late nineties I was living in Memphis and being a big fan of blues guitar you can imagine the Euphoria I was experiencing regarding the local music scene. Great music, great food, although not necessarily a great place to live... at least not the area I was living in. Any way, I went out on a mission to find a decent band to listen to and stumbled into Young Avenue Deli (great place for music) and Bill Kirchen happened to be playing that night. At that time, I hadn't heard of him so I had no idea what to expect, but he completely blew me away with his guitar playing. His band was a little trio and they sounded so good that I went out and bought everything I could of his. It wasn't until later that I found out that he was in the band Commander Cody - so of course I had to get all of their material too, if I hear something I like I have to have EVERYTHING, I can't just settle on an album or two (I'm kind of OCD like that). He calls his style of playing "diesel billy" - and writes a lot of truck driving music. Also, if you're a fan of twang, he's about as good as it gets.

So anyway, if you aren't familiar with Bill Kirchen I highly recommend visiting his website and seeing if he is playing in your area any time soon, you won't regret it.

Here's a clip of him playing (without a band) his big hit with Commander Cody, "Hot Rod Lincoln". Great guitar impersonations in this one.

Eric Clapton recently visited the Manhattan Guitar Center store to do an interview and plug his upcoming Crossroads Guitar Festival, while there they presented him with his old Stratocaster “Blackie”.  You can read the interview here.  Also be sure to check out the photo shoot from the interview, there are a few shots of Eric playing on Blackie as well as some of him checking out other guitars in the store. 

Wow, and to think some people give up on playing guitar because their fingers get too sore. You've got to wonder how many times he's dropped that pick into the sound hole.

I'm currently working through the process of offering real one-on-one guitar lessons via Skype for free and recording those sessions and making those archives available on this site. It's just a concept right now, but I keep thinking that it would be very beneficial to be able to see real, one-on-one video of someone interacting with their instructor (me) and watch them learn to play. So conceptually, every time I finish a new mini lesson (the ones that I put up on YouTube and on my site here), I would then schedule a series of Skype lessons with willing participants for free, the only catch would be that our session would be archived and put up for all to watch (don't worry - I can edit parts out if need be). So is there anyone that would be interested in some free guitar lessons via Skype with me preferably the session would cover one of the lessons I have up on this site? You'll need to have a high-speed internet connection and a laptop ... oh and a guitar of course. Let me know if you're interested by shooting me an email to brian (at) activemelody.com

In preparing the Mark Knopfler guitar lesson that I just launched the other day, I was looking through a few clips on YouTube for inspiration and I came across Mark Knopfler playing "Brothers In Arms" at the Montserrat concert in London back in the mid to late 90s. I remember buying this DVD when it came out and being blown away when he plays Brothers In Arms (this sounds incredible in surround sound by the way) - so I was happy to see that some generous soul out there posted this. I've always loved this approach to playing in which you sing a line, then play a line - kind of a call and response thing between the vocal and guitar, and Mark does a great job in this video. The licks he uses are subtle but powerful and there's one in particular that still remains one of my all time favorites of his, you can hear it at 1:28 in this video, right after he finishes singing "mist covered mountains". I'm not 100% sure what you'd classify that lick as, it's somewhere between a pedal steel country sound, with a little jazz and blues thrown in - but it's always exciting to find little gems like that and learn them. Even though that lick sounds very simple, there's more to it than meets the eye, and for whatever reason, that one jumps off the page at me every time i hear it.

If there are guitar licks out there that jump out at you like that, please share them. It's always interesting to see what catches another persons ear.