I’ve featured Jake Shimabukuro on this site before, but it’s been a while. Jake has been continuing to do amazing things on his ukulele. Last year he performed Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the TED Conference:

(Thanks to Darren for letting me know about this video!)

The 4 Amigos Nashville Guitar Show is scheduled for February 19 and February 20, 2011 and will be held at The Factory in Franklin, TN. The 4 Amigos put on popular guitar shows in Austin, Arlington, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago, and Nashville.

I went to last year’s show in Nashville and enjoyed looking around at the vintage and unique instruments that are featured in shows like this. Vendors travel from all over to buy, sell, and trade, so there’s usually a great selection of interesting instruments to look at.

Maybe I’ll see you there!

Anthony over at StevieSnacks.com is running a great contest and is giving away his Kenny Wayne Shepherd Strat to one of his viewers. You don’t even have to be a paying customer to win. Click here for all the contest details. Good luck!

This is a photo of Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys playing at last year’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Dan has some of the coolest vintage guitars. The one he’s playing below is a Harmony H76 Thinline. The photo was taken by Jeff Christensen/Associated Press.

The Ottawa Citizen recently featured an article about Alex Golota, who collects guitar picks used by famous guitarists. He has collected over 700 picks, including picks from Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and the Rolling Stones, among many others.

Here he is talking about how he got a pick from Jeff Beck:

“I recently got Jeff Beck,” says Golota, 51, “which is really hard to get because he doesn’t use a guitar pick. But I managed to catch up to his road manager on stage, and he has a bag of guitar picks that Jeff had 30 years ago, and he keeps them for real true fans. It actually says ‘This pick was stolen from Jeff Beck’ on it.”

Read the full article on the Ottawa Citizen website.

(thanks to friend of the site Darren M. for alerting me about this article)

Details of Joe Bonamassa’s next album, titled Dust Bowl, have been released:

Multi-talented blues-rock guitar hero, singer-songwriter, and member of Black Country Communion, Joe Bonamassa will release his twelfth full-length solo album, Dust Bowl, on March 22, 2011. This is Bonamassa’s ninth studio release on his own J&R Adventures label, which he created with longtime manager Roy Weisman.  Dust Bowl was produced by Kevin “Caveman” Shirley (Black Crowes, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin) making it their sixth collaboration in five years.  Shirley most recently produced Bonamassa’s 2010 release Black Rock, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Blues Chart and #39 on the Top 200, and the 2010 debut album from Black Country Communion, Bonamassa’s English-American rock band with Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple), Jason Bonham (Led Zeppelin, Foreigner) and Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater, Billy Idol).

Dust Bowl was recorded in sessions at Black Rock Studios in Santorini, Greece, Ben’s Studio in Nashville, TN, The Cave in Malibu, CA and The Village in Los Angeles, CA. It combines the gritty, blues-based tones of Bonamassa’s first albums with the fluid, genre-defying sounds he’s mastered in the years since and adds a dash of country from Joe’s collaborations with the best of Nashville including legends Vince Gill and John Hiatt.

“Dust Bowl,” Shirley explains, “is very firmly rooted in the Blues, but definitely explores the outer reaches of the genre and showcases Joe’s amazing virtuosity as he digs deep into his psyche in some lengthy and blistering guitar solos.”

“This is the best album we’ve ever done,” adds Bonamassa. “I’m finding more inspiration in storytelling in my 30s, in writing songs that are about something more profound than ‘my baby left me.’ I like albums that are made with the right intentions and sound organic and a little rough around the edges, like a great band playing live in the room, and that’s what we accomplished with Dust Bowl.”

On the John Hiatt/John Porter-penned “Tennessee Plates,” Hiatt duets with Bonamassa and Vince Gill lends his signature guitar stylings. Gill also plays on “Sweet Rowena,” a song he composed with frequent writing partner Pete Wasner. Arlan Scheirbaum, Beth Hart and Blondie Chaplin play on the Michael Kamen/Tim Curry track “No Love On The Street,” and Glenn Hughes sings on the Paul Rodgers-penned “Heartbreaker.”

The album opens with Bonamassa originals “Slow Train,” an old-style British Blues song, and title track “Dust Bowl,” the album’s first single. “The title track of the album just describes my life. It really fits my voice, it fits me as a solo artist and just has a really nice feel to it.” Other standout originals include “Black Lung Heartache,” “The Last Matador of Bayonne,” and “The Whale That Swallowed Jonah.”

The next Black Country Communion album is scheduled to be released in the summer, so 2011 is looking to be another big year for Joe Bonamassa.

Cowboys and Indians magazine recently featured a profile and interview with Jimmie Vaughan where he talks about his early days of playing the guitar, playing with guitar legends, and why he enjoys the 50s so much:

“I grew up in a beautiful time in the ’50s, so I got to see all those wild cars that were brand-new and hear all that music that was coming out, and I just never got over it,” he says. “I just wanted to be like that. I’ve been accused of living in the past. Whatever you want to call it, that’s okay. But that’s what I love — American stuff. Music, cars, whatever it is. You know, happy type stuff.”

Read the article on the Cowboys and Indians site. Vaughan also gave Cowboys and Indians a list of 10 of his favorite albums of all time.

(via www.srvofficial.com)

This is a photo of Rory Gallagher playing his well-worn Stratocaster around the time of his Irish Tour ’74 album release:

Photo credit: www.rorygallagher.com

Most people understandably associate Nashville with country music and country musicians. Nashville has done an excellent job of marketing itself as “Music City.” But it’s not just country artists who are attracted to Nashville. Jazz and blues guitar great Larry Carlton calls Nashville home, and he was recently featured in Nashville Arts magazine. In one aspect of the article, Carlton discusses the difference between his early motivations and young guitarists today:

“I was motivated by the music,” he says. “I played because I was looking for emotional fulfillment. Once a person has experienced a special moment, you want to experience it again if you can. Once you become consequent enough in the instrument to start feeling what chord you want to play on a certain song, then you strive for that because it feels so good. That was my process.

“I get a sense that over the last twenty years many of the young guitar players want to be stars. That’s different from wanting to be a guitar player or a musician for the passion of the music. And if the motivation isn’t pure, then the truth isn’t spoken through your music.”

I touched on this topic a few years ago. I would actually say becoming a star became more of a motivating force than playing music about 30 years ago in the 80s when hair metal and MTV became popular. That being said, I’m actually encouraged by some of the young musicians making music today. While American Idol and Guitar Hero have certainly encouraged the star mentality, I think there are still a lot of young musicians making music today because they love music.

Below is a video of a Harmony Central interview with Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz at the NAMM show. In the interview, Juszkiewicz discusses the Firebird X, the flooding in Nashville last year that affected the Gibson plant, and a little bit about what the future holds for Gibson: