I’m excited to announce that I have three (3) copies of the Blu-Ray version of Jeff Beck’s recently released video Performing This Week…Live at Ronnie Scott’s to give away!

To Enter The Contest:

Send me your e-mail address by filling out the contact form using the subject “Jeff Beck”, and indicate in the message that you want to be entered into the contest.* That’s all you have to do! I’ll randomly select the winners and notify them via e-mail. All entries must be received by May 17, 2009. I’ll pick and notify the winners on May 18, 2009. Unfortunately, with apologies to my International friends, the contest is limited to only readers in the United States.

* NOTE: Your e-mail address will be used only to notify you if you are the winner. I will not use your e-mail address for any other purpose.

Information About Performing This Week…Live at Ronnie Scott’s:

Performing This Week…Live at Ronnie Scott’s is a compilation of a series of concerts that Beck performed in 2007 with his band at Ronnie Scott’s club in London. Beck’s band for these shows included Tal Wilkenfeld on bass, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, and Jason Rebello on piano. Beck invited several guests to perform with his band, including Eric Clapton, Imogene Heap, and Joss Stone. The track list for the Blu-Ray is:

1. Beck’s Bolero
2. Eternity’s Breath
3. Stratus
4. Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers
5. Behind The Veil
6. You Never Know
7. Nadia
8. Blast From The East
9. Led Boots
10. Angel (Footsteps)
11. People Get Ready – with JOSS STONE
12. Scatterbrain
13. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat / Brush With The Blues
14. Space Boogie
15. Blanket – with IMOGEN HEAP
16. Big Block
17. A Day In The Life
18. Little Brown Bird – with ERIC CLAPTON
19. You Need Love – with ERIC CLAPTON
20. Rollin’ And Tumblin’ – with IMOGEN HEAP
21. Where Were You

Bonus Material:
Jeff Beck Interview: rare in depth interview talking about Ronnie Scott’s, his band, the setlist and his guest performers. Interviews with the band members.

Blu-ray Exclusive Material: 7 Track rockabilly set with the Big Town Playboys exclusively available on the Blu-ray version:
1. Race With The Devil
2. Crazy Legs
3. Train Kept A Rollin’
4. My Baby Left Me
5. Matchbox
6. Baby Blue
7. Honky Tonk.

This is a great collection of songs by Beck and his group. Beck’s playing is really inspired, and his band provides a solid foundation for his guitar pyrotechnics. They play pretty much all of Beck’s hits, as well as several covers. Particularly noteworthy is Beck’s cover of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” which is probably my favorite track from the video.

Given Mark Tremonti’s statements in the past this is an unlikely scenario, but Tremonti, drummer Scott Phillips, and original bassist Brian Marshall have apparently decided to team back up with Scott Stapp in a Creed reunion. They are touring this summer and will be recording a new album.

This will probably out me as being unhip, but I actually liked Creed back in the day. I saw them a few times live and they put on a good show. Tremonti’s been doing good work in Alter Bridge, but I think he and Stapp wrote better songs. It’ll be interesting to see if the magic is still there.

Joe Bonamassa was recently featured on Later with Jools Holland playing his song “Lonesome Road Blues.” After the performance, Jools did a short interview with Bonamassa about Joe’s early British blues influences. This is just another great highlight for Joe as he ramps up to his May 4 performance at Royal Albert Hall.

Signature series guitars. All major guitar manufacturers make them. Some people love them, and some people hate them. Personally, I fall into the “love them” camp. The ironic thing is that many of the people who claim that they hate them would not hesitate to play a Les Paul, which is perhaps the prototype for signature series guitars.

What I like about signature series guitars is that they either take inspiration or direct feedback from the artists that inspired the guitars, resulting in a guitar that is different from the standard fare. Additionally, most signature guitars have unique features not available on the standard production guitars. For example, taking cues from his famous “Number One” guitar, the Stevie Ray Vaughan Stratocaster has the vibrato arm on the top of the bridge rather than the bottom. The newly released Rosewood Eric Johnson Stratocaster has unique colors and a bound fretboard, which no other current product model Stratocaster has.

One trend I’ve noticed in some signature series guitars is that the identifying marks, such as the artist’s signature, have been moved from obvious spots on the guitar to the back of the guitar or other hidden areas. For example, the Stevie Ray Vaughan model has the signature on the front of the instrument, whereas the recent John Mayer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd Stratocasters have the signature on the back of the headstock. I think this is likely in response to the resistance that some players have to playing an instrument with another player’s name on it.

Even though I’m a fan of signature guitars, some guitar manufacturers have taken the signature guitar concept a little too far. For example, Dean Guitars have over 30 guitars inspired by or attributed to Dimebag Darrell. Fortunately, other manufacturer’s have taken a less is more approach to signature guitars.

That being said, I think signature series guitars provide a great way for fans to pay tribute to their guitar heroes. Additionally, I think signature series guitars provide an opportunity for guitar manufacturers to work directly with artists to create unique and innovative instruments. Gibson’s Les Paul is an example of a manufacturer working directly with an artist to create a unique instrument that has stood the test of time. And, it’s provided a platform for other artists to create their own unique guitar.

What do you think about signature series guitars?

Not long after I started playing guitar, I was fortunate to have a friend show me the basics of how to straighten my guitar’s neck and adjust the guitar’s action. Ever since then, I’ve been doing my own setups. However, even with that help I still didn’t have a full grasp of the basics of guitar setup. Enter the Fret MD: Electric Guitar and Bass Setup and Maintenance DVD.

Fret MD, which features luthier Al Malarsky, provides an outline for and illustrates the basics of guitar setup and maintenance. Malarsky lays out a five-step plan for maintaining your guitar. He also gives tips and tricks that he has learned through his years of guitar lutherie.

1) Neck adjustment
2) Nut adjustment
3) Action adjustment
4) Bridge adjustment
5) Pickup adjustment

For each step, Malarksy explains and illustrates the adjustment. He gives just enough detail for each step to teach you what you need to do to adjust the guitar. It would be easy to overwhelm the viewer with too much information, but Fret MD avoids that while still providing an excellent amount of information.

The DVD also features some extra features, such as how to clean a dirty fretboard and how to clean potentiometers. Additionally, Malarsky provides some bass-specific pointers for adjusting bass guitars.

Even though I knew a fair amount about guitar setup, I learned quite a bit from watching Fret MD. If you’re interested in learning how to set up your guitar, the Fret MD DVD is an excellent starting point.

GuitarGuitar and Guitarist Magazine recently spent some time with Suhr Guitars and interviewed cofounder John Suhr. John Suhr used to work with Rudy Pensa of Rudy’s Guitars in New York and also with Fender in their custom shop. He left Fender and started his own guitar manufacturing company. In the interview, he briefly discusses the legal battle he and other manufacturers recently had with Fender (who ended up losing the battle):

But funnily enough we started off doing [the Standard] shape as our only shape here at Suhr — it was the one I knew the most. As time went on people started asking about what became the Classic and I went to Fender and asked their permission. I said do you have an issue? I was still friends with them and still did some work for them. They said, no we don’t have an issue [with the body shape], just stay away from the headstock. So the way I look at it is that Fender told me it was okay. Unfortunately the people that told me it was okay are either retired or have passed on so now I’m dealing with a whole new set of rules. There’s a lot of people fighting it. I think Gibson is involved, Peavey is involved and a lot of other companies. The main thing is that if I had known from the beginning that it wasn’t okay I probably would have come up with something more original or out there. But then we started doing the Classics — I mean it’s pretty 50:50 in terms of sales with the Classics and the Standard so I would lose 50 percent of my market if I didn’t run the Classic.

The bottom line is that I’ve never seen an original guitar that has not fallen on its face. Steinberger, Parker… they’ve all been bought and sold a few times.

Suhr also discusses aspects of their manufacturing process and different aspects of guitar making.

Below is a video of acoustic guitarist Monte Montgomery playing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Tightrope”. The performance is from the 1999 Oyster Bake Festival. This is an interesting cover of one of my favorite SRV tunes:

In August 2007, Vintage Guitar magazine featured Joe Bonamassa as the cover story. A few months ago they posted the interview online. In the interview, Bonamassa discusses his guitar collection (with pictures!), his early career, and his experiences with guitar legends:

Asked why his experiences with such legends have been so positive, Bonamassa chuckled, “I listened to old records… I should have been born in 1950. I’m into old guitars, I’ve owned an old car, and for a large portion of my life, I didn’t listen to anything that was made after 1974. When I met all of those guys, they liked the fact that I could kinda talk the language in the sense that I knew a lot of the ins and outs of older recordings. And to be honest, a lot of the people I’ve opened for tend to draw a bigger crowd, so I’d tempered my act to fit that type of audience.”

Below is a video of John Mayer playing an 8-string Novax guitar while jamming with Steve Jordan in Mayer’s new studio/house:

(via Jon @ Guitar Noize)

Guitar Center recently posted to YouTube some videos from Joe Bonamassa’s recent guitar clinic in Hollywood, CA. In the clinic, Joe discussed a variety of topics, including his influences, his time with Danny Gatton, his signature Gibson Les Paul, his amps, his slide playing, and his chosen style of music.

One of the things that I respect about Joe Bonamassa is the fact that he’s willing to share his knowledge and experience with others. Through his 20 years as a professional musician, Joe has seen a lot and learned a lot, and he’s got a lot of information to share.

One of my favorite clips from the clinic is his discussion of his slide technique and how he really got interested in slide when he heard Ry Cooder’s playing in the movie Crossroads. That was a somewhat cheesy movie, but the guitar playing was top notch. Check out Joe discussing his slide technique:

Also, check out the following videos: (thanks to Patty on Joe’s forums)

Gibson Signature Series
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sgMlH-53WU

Amp, Rig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyubyd68 … re=channel

Influences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X4dFuqD … re=channel

Learning From Danny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd8sTiTW … re=channel

Practicing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfRvZcos … re=channel

Blues Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6r9SPUv … re=channel

Building A Following
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLtS0YSW … re=channel