Brian Setzer is set to release a new album of instrumental material, called Setzer Goes Instru-MENTAL, this week. I think this sounds like a pretty interesting album, featuring Setzer’s trademark rockabilly style on all instrumental tracks.

The track listing for the album is:

1. Blue Moon Of Kentucky
2. Cherokee
3. Be-Bop-A-Lula
4. Earl’s Breakdown
5. Far Noir East
6. Intermission
7. Go-Go Godzilla
8. Lonesome Road
9. Hillbilly Jazz Meltdown
10. Hot Love
11. Pickpocket

After hearing about this album and checking out Setzer’s site, I saw that he has a page dedicated to his guitars. As you would expect, he has quite a collection of Gretsch guitars. Check them out here.

I am excited to announce that I have two copies of Jeff Beck’s latest album, Rock ‘N Roll Party (Honoring Les Paul), to give away to two lucky winners. The rules are as follows:

- Add a comment to this post to let me know that you want to enter; please, only one entry per person. You must include a valid e-mail address so that I can contact the winners.

- Sorry, but entrants must reside within the US or be willing to pay any additional postage fees to ship outside of the US.

- Winners will be randomly selected on Monday, April 25, 2011.

That’s it. Good luck!

UPDATE: Congratulations to Scott and Pappy for winning the CDs! Thanks to all who participated.

Premier Guitar recently posted this video review of the new Fender Pawn Shop Series of guitars that were released earlier this month:

I find these to be fairly interesting, as they’re nothing like anything Fender currently produces. There’s a Pawn Shop ’51, which has a Strat body with a Tele neck and Tele-like appointments, aside from a humbucker in the bridge position. There’s a Pawn Shop ’72, which has a Thinline Strat body with a wide-range humbucker in the neck and a regular humbucker in the bridge position. It also has a Tele neck. Finally, there’s the Pawn Shop Mustang Special, which has a Mustang body, a 24″ scale neck and dual Enforcer humbuckers.

I haven’t had a chance to play one yet, but the ’72 looks like the most interesting model to me. If you’ve played one of the Pawn Shop Series, let me know what you think of them.

A new double-album of unreleased Rory Gallagher material, called Notes from San Francisco, will be released on May 17 in the US. The double-album will consist of an unreleased studio album recorded in 1977 in San Francisco:

In November 1977, after completing a 6 month world tour, Rory Gallagher and his band flew straight from their last show in Japan to San Francisco to begin working on a new album, with famed American producer Elliot Mazer (Neil Young – ‘Harvest’, Janis Joplin – ‘Cheap Thrills’, The Band – ‘The Last Waltz’). Mazer recalls that the sessions grew “tense”, as Gallagher wasn’t happy with the mixing process, describing them as “too complicated”, and by the end of January 1978 he shelved the whole record and broke up his band of the past 5 years.

Fast forward to 2010 and Rory’s brother and manager, Dбnal, allowed his son & Rory’s nephew, Daniel, to recover the album from the Gallagher archive and begin the process of mixing it with his engineer. Rory said in 1992 he hoped the album would surface one day but only if it were remixed and now we finally get to hear this never before issued studio album from a key period of Gallagher’s career, an album that would have been released between ‘Calling Card’ and ‘Photo Finish’. This is truly a ‘Holy Grail’ release for Rory’s fans.

The second part of the album is a live show recorded at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco in December of 1979. Unlike the band that recorded the studio album, the live album features Gallagher performing as a trio with Gerry McAvoy on bass and Ted McKenna on drums.

The track listing for the double-album is:

Disc 1
1. Rue The Day
2. Persuasion
3. B Girl
4. Mississippi Sheiks
5. Wheels Within Wheels
6. Overnight Bag
7. Cruise On Out
8. Brute Force & Ignorance
9. Fuel To The Fire
BONUS TRACKS
10. Wheels Within Wheels (Alt version)
11. Cut A Dash
12. Out On The Tiles

Disc 2
1. Follow Me
2. Shinkicker
3. Off The Handle
4. Bought And Sold
5. I’m Leavin’
6. Tattoo’d Lady
7. Do You Read Me
8. Country Mile
10. Shadow Play
11. Bullfrog Blues
12. Sea Cruise

Joe Bonamassa’s promotional team have been touring with Joe to record a glimpse into what it’s like to be on tour. In episode 1, shown below, you get to see what it’s like on Joe’s bus.

The Marshall Class 5 Head and updated combo that I mentioned in January has finally been officially announced. Marshall has recorded a demo of the amps that you can see below:

I played the first version of the combo last year, and, while I liked the sound, it was too loud for home use, which is what I was interested in. The new low-power mode on the combo looks like it’ll solve that problem and enable you to get the classic Marshall Plexi-style distorted tone at very low volumes. The head also looks really cool, but it doesn’t have the low-power mode if that is important to you.

This is a video of Joe Bonamassa sharing some of his warmup routine.

One of the things that I like about Bonamassa is how seriously he takes his job. In his 20s, he says that he didn’t need to warm up before a show; he could just grab a guitar and go. But, now he realizes that he can better prepare himself by warming up, so he does so. He understands that people spend a lot of money to see him play, and he doesn’t take that for granted. He’s also extremely open about everything, such as sharing these types of tips.

(via The Guitar Buzz)

Rich from The Guitar Channel found this video of Oz Noy discussing how he broke into the New York jazz scene:

I’ve been getting more into jazz lately, and I’m really digging Noy’s playing, which you get a taste of in the video above. Check out Rich’s post about the video and you can see another video of Noy talking about his gear.