During their recent European tour, Black Country Communion recorded footage for a DVD titled Live Over Europe that will be released later this year. They have released a trailer for the DVD today, which you can view below:

I’ve heard a lot of good reports from the tour, so I’m looking forward to checking out the DVD.

UPDATE: Some new details about the release have been announced. Live Over Europe will be released as a two-DVD set on October 24, 2011. The track listing for the set is:

1. Revolution of the Machine
2. Black Country
3. One Last Soul
4. Crossfire
5. Save Me
6. The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall
7. Beggarman
8. Faithless
9. Song of Yesterday
10. I Can See Your Spirit
11. Cold
12. The Ballad of John Henry
13. The Outsider
14. The Great Divide
15. Sista Jane
16. Man In The Middle
17. Burn
18. Smokestack Woman

Bonus Features

-Forging BCC – The Making of Live Over Europe
-Photo Collection – Live On Tour
-Photo Collection – Behind The Scenes

PRS Guitars have announced a new line of SE-series amplifiers that will be shipping later this year. The new line includes three amps: the PRS SE 20, the PRS SE 30, and the PRS SE 50:

Modeled after the acclaimed PRS SE line of guitars, this new amp line continues the concept of providing affordable musical instruments and equipment without sacrificing tone, usability, or quality. The lineup, scheduled to start shipping in the fall of 2011, includes the PRS SE 20 featuring 6V6 tubes, PRS SE 30 featuring 5881’s, and PRS SE 50 featuring EL34’s– all of which are offered as closed back 1×12 combos or as heads. The clean and lead channel gain stages are driven by 12AX7 preamp tubes. Loop, verb, and phase inverter utilize 12AT7s. These are all tube amps with all pots, jacks, and switches chassis mounted and tube sockets board mounted, offering incredible quality and value. A PRS SE 2×12 cabinet is available as well. All the amps in this family feature two channels with separate EQ, an effects loop, and reverb (all newer features for PRS –introduced on the 2 Channel “H” and “C”). Each amp also boasts custom wound transformers, 0.090 aluminum chassis, high-end “on-on-on” selector switches, only the best NNS tubes, custom-voiced speakers, custom knobs, and more.

I’ve owned several of the Korean-made PRS SE guitars, and they were all very well-made for the price point. I would expect the amps to be of the same quality. Elderly Instruments has some preliminary pricing for the amps on their website, although I don’t know if the final pricing has been determined yet.

Below is a demo video of the PRS SE 20. This video highlights the flexibility of the clean channel. Hopefully, there will be some more demos soon highlighting more features of the amps. For now, check out the demo below:

Anthony Stauffer of StevieSnacks.com has been providing free blues guitar lessons in the style of Stevie Ray Vaughan since 2007. He started out by providing free lessons on YouTube and later progressed to providing premium guitar lessons that cover a number of specific topics related to playing Texas-style electric blues. For example, his most recently released premium lesson series covers the techniques employed by one of Stevie’s greatest influences, Albert King. Some of Anthony’s other lesson series include Essential Fretboard, Essential Theory, The 5 Essential Blues Boxes, 5 Boxes Essential Licks, Essential Techniques, among others.

A hallmark of each of these lesson series is Anthony’s attention to detail and quality. It’s clear that he has put a lot of time into designing and creating these lessons. I don’t know about you, but I’ve purchased a number of lesson DVDs that appear to be nothing more than an artist sitting in a room playing while someone else comes in later to transcribe it with no real thought to how the lessons are laid out. Watching the artist play can be fun, and maybe you can get some licks out of it, but it really doesn’t qualify as instruction, in my opinion. Anthony’s lessons are the opposite of that. They are clearly thought out to cover the topics within each series without a whole lot of unnecessary fluff.

The series I want to focus on in this review is Essential Fretboard. In this series, Anthony provides a roadmap for beginning blues guitarists learning the fretboard. Basically, this series provides a fretboard map that illustrates the essential chords and soloing shapes for playing blues and blues-based music. If you’ve been playing blues-based music for a while, then much of what’s included here will be review; this lesson series is intended for beginning-to-intermediate-level guitarists. However, I think this lesson series includes a lot of great information for those new to playing blues music.

The Essential Fretboard series includes thirteen separate video lessons, broken down as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Building the Fretboard Map
3. E Form Bar Chords
4. A Form Bar Chords
5. Partial G Form Chords
6. The 5 Essential Boxes
7. Backdoor Pattern
8. Sliding Box 1
9. Triangles
10. 7th Chords
11. 9th Chords
12. Shuffle Patterns
13. Putting It All Together

The lessons are, for the most part, delivered in three distinct sections: theoretical illustration, practical demonstration, and exercises. In the beginning of each lesson, Anthony discusses the theoretical application of the concepts, but this doesn’t mean that he introduces a lot of music theory (this is a good thing). After illustrating what the lesson is about, he shows you what he is talking about by demonstrating the concepts on the guitar. He follows this in most lessons with some exercises that you can follow to apply the principles that he has taught in the lesson.

In addition to the video lessons, there are several supplemental materials. Backing tracks are included so that you can play along with the examples. Additionally, Anthony has included PDF files containing tabbed exercises and diagrams of the fretboard.

I really like Anthony’s teaching style. He is thorough enough to cover the concepts that he is teaching, but does not get mired down in the technical details like some other teachers can do. And, because Anthony plays and enjoys the style of music that he’s teaching, you can get a real sense that he’s enjoying himself in the videos, which makes for a more relaxed and enjoyable video.

I’d also like to point out a little something that isn’t necessarily related to the lessons directly, but which I think is almost equally important. You’ve probably seen other online teachers that try to sell you the “secrets of the pros” or some snake oil that will magically make you a better player. I’ve visited those types of sites before, and I always feel like I need a shower afterwards. Anthony doesn’t do that, and I appreciate that. Instead, Anthony’s site is geared simply towards providing information about his lessons and highlighting the latest free lessons. He even provides a flowchart to help you figure out which lesson series is right for you.

Over the years, I’ve taken a number of different types of lessons, including in-person lessons, lessons from books, and video-based lessons. While in-person lessons will give you the most feedback, I’m coming around to really liking video-based lessons. I’m more of a visual learner, and it’s nice to be able to rewind a lesson to revisit a particularly tough section. Fortunately, we live in an age where video-based instruction is as easy as opening up YouTube and typing “guitar lesson.”

Of the myriad online guitar lessons that are available, Anthony’s lessons at StevieSnacks.com are some of my favorite due to his approachable teaching style and well-thought-out lessons. If you’re looking to learn SRV-style blues guitar, I highly recommend Anthony’s lessons. If you’re just getting started with learning blues guitar, then I can specifically recommend Anthony’s Essential Fretboard series. You can view details about the Essential Fretboard series on StevieSnacks.com, as well as view some sample videos to see if the lesson series is right for you.

Gibson have announced a new semi-hollow guitar model: the Midtown Standard with Bigsby. The Midtown model appears to be sized similarly to the ES-339 model, which is smaller than an ES-335 but slightly larger than a Les Paul.

The Midtown Standard features a chambered mahogany body and a maple top. Unlike some of Gibson’s other semi-hollow guitars, the Midtown features all solid woods rather than laminated woods. The guitar also features two ’57 Classic pickups, which are some of my favorite pickups in Gibson semi-hollow body guitars. The neck is bound and has a thinner ’60s carve. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece rounds out the features.

The USA-made Midtown Standard with Bigsby has a street price of about $1399 with a case. According to the online retail sites, the guitar will start shipping in September. It is available in Faded Red or Ebony.

This past weekend I attended the Nashville Amp Expo. It was a great time checking out a bunch of new gear and chatting about guitars with some great people, including Anthony Stauffer of StevieSnacks.com. He and I spent a good amount of time speaking with Sam Timberlake, creator of the Samamp line of amps.

I first heard about Samamp through Anthony’s demo of the VAC 23 and have been curious to learn more about them ever since. Sam has developed a system of using appliance lights to lower the wattage of his amps without negatively affecting the tone like other attenuation methods. He calls this feature Variable Amplitude Clipping (VAC). By using this feature he is able to provide multiple wattage options in one amp. For example, the VAC 23 amp has the following wattage options: 3, 5, 11, 18, and 23. These power options make the amp suitable for both home hobbyists and gigging musicians.

I was really looking forward to hearing this amp in person. However, when I visited Sam’s room at the show, I saw that he has released a new model called the VAC 40 Series II, which builds upon the VAC 23. As its name implies, the VAC 40 can go up to 40 watts, but it can also go down to 4 watts. Like the VAC 23, the VAC 40 clean tone is similar to Fender amps. In addition to the clean channel, the VAC 40 adds a second, gain channel. The gain channel is really smooth. Sam has developed a foot pedal to use with the amp to switch channels that also has a configurable volume roll-back knob for use with the gain channel, so you effectively get two levels of gain out of the gain channel.

Check out Anthony’s review of the VAC 40 for a little more detail about the features of the amp. Additionally, in his review he has posted a video that I shot of him playing through the amp. Note that the video was shot using his iPhone, so the sound quality suffers a little, and I’m apparently a shaky camera operator.

I really liked the Samamp VAC 40 Series II amp. The amp is really versatile, and the features are well thought-out. If you’re looking for a hand-made boutique amp, then I recommend checking out the Samamp line of amps. The VAC 40 starts out at about $1600, so they aren’t the cheapest amps around, but they are very well-made and sound great.

Mesa/Boogie have announced the Mini Rectifier Twenty Five, a lightweight, 25-watt version of their high-gain rectifier series of amps. The amp uses two EL-84 power tubes and five 12AX7 preamp tubes. It has two switchable power modes: 10 watts and 25 watts. Additionally, the amp has two channels and four operating modes. Channel 1 features Clean and Pushed modes, and Channel 2 features Vintage and Modern gain modes. A nice addition to the amp is an all tube, fully buffered effects loop that you can bypass if it’s not in use.

Based on reports I’ve heard, the Mini Rectifier Twenty Five will retail for about $999. You can check out sound samples on the Mesa/Boogie website.

I don’t listen to much metal these days, but Mastodon is one of the few metal bands that I still like, primarily because of their imaginative riffs and groove-oriented songs. Their new single “Curl of the Burl” from their forthcoming album The Hunter definitely falls within those parameters. I really dig the riffs in this track.

There are few, if any, modern guitar makers with the history of C.F. Martin & Co. Fewer still that remain family owned. Fortunately for those of us that enjoy learning about the history of the guitar and guitar making, the Martin family have maintained a lot of historical information regarding the early days of the company in Nazareth, PA.

In the video below, Chris Martin provides a little historical information, and company archivist Dick Boak provides a tour of some of the Nazareth factory where guitars were made from 1859 through 1964:

Friend to the blog Darren M. pointed me to this story on Imelda May on Spinner.ca, where she talks a little about how she met Jeff Beck, and how their collaboration came about:

How did you meet Jeff Beck?

Well, Darrel had already worked with Jeff before, through the Big Town Playboys. They did an album together. But Jeff didn’t know that we were together. Do you want to hear the full story?

Absolutely.

Well, I was walking through the park one day and I found a tiny little baby crow. And nobody would take it in, nobody would rescue it. I was ringing all these animal rescue centers and they said, “A crow?! No.” I didn’t know what to do, so I brought it home. And we fed him, Darrel and I. Darrel named him Dave. And we fed Dave by hand, fed him bread. It took me two hours to find out what to feed him. Darrel was online trying to find out. He eventually grew from a little bruised, little baldy thing into this beautiful grown crow. He used to sit on my shoulder and we’d bring him to gigs, because you can get someone to mind a dog, but you can’t get someone to mind a crow when you go on tour.

So we’d bring the crow with us and he’d sit on my shoulder and we had a little cat box for him, for in the car. We’d let him out and he’d fly around the gigs. I was trying to get him to fly. I wanted to release him back to the wild, because he was healthy. He started to get very tamed, though. He’d fly up into a tree, wait through the gig, fly back down. I’d go “Dave!” and then he’d fly back down to me. He wouldn’t go to anybody else. So he was pretty safe.

So then we had a gig and Jeff and his wife Sandra were there, a Jools Holland gig. And then it came about, Sandra his wife — this is a weird story, I know, but it’s weird how life works — Sandra rescues animals. And I didn’t know what to do with Dave, because he was getting too big. People would say, “Put him into a zoo or something,” and I’d say, “No way, I wouldn’t,” though he was getting huge. So she said, “I’ll take this crow, I’ll take him off you.” And then we got to chatting, and Jeff goes, “Oh, you two are together?” And then she said, “Come back to the house, I just happen to have an aviary free, if you want to have a look at it.” And then we went back to the house and had brandy and a little jam session and Jeff said we need to work together, that we should record and go on tour. [Laughs] I don’t know how to get around that full story!

So, if wasn’t for Dave the crow, we probably never would have worked together. It’s weird how life goes.

I love it. Also, if you’re into Imelda May’s music, she has recently released a new album, titled Mayhem.

Eric Johnson is a newly featured artist in the iPad app On the Path, an app that provides lessons in various styles taught by some of the greatest players in world. In addition to Eric Johnson, you can watch lessons taught by ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro, Jackson Browne, Scott Tennant, and blues guitarist Kenny Sultan, among others.

Johnson’s contribution is a 68-minute master class lesson teaching you how to play “Cliffs of Dover.” In the lesson, Johnson provides insight into his techniques, and there are 25 play-along sessions within the lesson. This looks like a unique opportunity to learn the song from Johnson himself. The On the Path app and the lesson (which costs $14.99) are available from the iTunes App Store.

The following video is a promo video for the app. In it, Johnson plays the piece with no bass or drum accompaniment.