Fender recently spoke with Eric Johnson about his latest album Up Close. There’s not a whole lot of new content, but he does give this tidbit about how he first got interested in the guitar:

“I remember going out to dinner with my folks when I was 10 years old, and there was this band in the corner of a restaurant and the guy was playing a white Fender Jaguar, and I just freaked out because that was just so rare to see,” Johnson shared. “I was totally coming unglued. This was, like, 1966, and he’s got this groovy Fender Jaguar. Nowadays, nobody would turn their head because everybody has seen a guitar. It’s in almost every home in the world. But at the time there was such a mystique and romance to the electric guitar. Clapton came out and then the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and then Jimi Hendrix, and there was an endless display of unique guitar sounds. And then to see this cool-looking guitar as a kid, it was just really dramatic and so that really inspired me to want to be a guitarist and do it for my life.”

Guitarist Jim Campilongo was recently a guest on Richard Julian’s music interview show Grooveable Feast. Check out the interview below:

Grooveable Feast – Jim Campilongo – Episode 4 from Grooveable Feast on Vimeo.

Music Radar recently asked readers to submit questions for Eric Johnson. He has answered the questions, and Music Radar has posted his responses. One really interesting question and response was about Gibson potentially creating an Eric Johnson signature ES-335:

“That’s a really good question…and an intriguing one. The truth is, I had wanted to do that very thing, and there were some people at Gibson who were into the whole idea. When it got to the higher-ups, however, they kind of nixed it. It was pretty strange. I tried to get something going with the company. I talked to some of the people there, and they were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. Call this guy at this number.’ So I’d call up and…I don’t know, they just sort of dropped the ball on everything.

“Eventually, I blew the whole thing off, which was a drag because I love the red 335 from 1964. I was looking forward to trying to work with Gibson on some pickups and get going on a model that was really cool and special. What can I say? I guess they weren’t interested in pursuing it with me. [laughs] It happens.”

I’m really surprised that Gibson wouldn’t want to create an Eric Johnson signature ES-335, considering how successful his signature Strats seem to have been. Read the rest of the questions and EJ’s responses here.

Writer Jas Obrecht has recently posted an interview he did with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1989. The interview was for a Jimi Hendrix cover story for Guitar Player magazine, so they discuss Hendrix as well as details about recording In Step. Here’s Stevie discussing why Jimi was becoming more popular at that time:

I think a lot of people need what he had to offer musically – there was a lot of honesty in it. Yeah, there was a lot of drugs and things, but people are looking back because they miss something that’s here. A lot of people tend to look somewhere else for something that they want to fix them. His music, though, is wonderful. It’s full of emotion. It’s full of fire. At different points it’s full of different things. It’s full of light and heavy things, you know, feelings. By “light feelings” I mean uplifting feelings, and “heavy” – well, you know what “heavy” means! It could mean anything from one day to the next, really. But I think a lot of people miss what his music was doing for them. A lot of new people are coming around to going, “What’s this?!” In very few instances has anybody surpassed what he did. And it should be popular! It’s a damn shame that he’s dead and gone, and now is when people are listening. But, at the same time, I’m glad they’re listening!

With SRV’s passing just a short year after the interview, I think much of what he said can now apply to his music.

Read the full interview here.

Premier Guitar recently interviewed Eric Johnson prior to a Guitar Masters acoustic show in Iowa City. In the interview, he talks about the acoustic tour, the guitars he’s using on the tour, his upcoming album, why he’s sold some of his vintage guitars, and the type of gear he’s using now. Check out the interview below:

Relix.com recently interviewed Warren Haynes about the upcoming Warren Haynes Band album that he recorded right after recording Gov’t Mule’s By a Thread. The album will be primarily soul music, which was the first musical style Haynes fell in love with:

This is a record I’ve waited my whole life to make because soul music was my first love. Before I ever heard rock and roll music, I was listening to soul music. Before I picked up a guitar, I was singing—and everything I was singing was soul music.

The soul influence is evident in a lot of Gov’t Mule’s music but it’s never been the primary sound. It’ll be interesting to hear how a full soul album by Haynes will sound. The album will be out next Spring. You can read the full interview on the Relix site.

Larry LeBlanc from CelebrityAccess.com recently profiled and interviewed Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. The interview covered how Mr. Juszkiewicz ended up taking over Gibson, how Guitar Hero has impacted the guitar industry, how the recent flooding in Nashville impacted the plant, how the foreign guitar markets are a larger portion of Gibson’s sales than the US market, and more. Read the full article and interview here.

Guitar Center recently interviewed Joe Bonamassa. As you’d expect, the interview covers Joe’s influences, his signature Gibson Les Paul, the future of the blues, and his approach to letting people tape his shows:

I don’t understand artists who don’t let people film their concerts and hire a bunch of goons to roam the audience and harass fans. These days people want to check you out before they buy a ticket to one of your shows, and YouTube lets them do that. If they like what they see, they tell their friends or they email it to their friends and it goes viral. It’s a great way to market your band, and it doesn’t cost you that much, if anything at all.”

Read the full interview on Guitar Center’s site. They’ve also provided video coverage from the interview, which I’ve embedded below:

All About the Fans:

American and British Influence:

Learning to Feel the Music:

Snapshots in Time:

Fretboard Journal, one of my favorite guitar magazines, conducted this interview with Harry Tuft, the owner of the Denver Folklore Center. I love the footage of the Monday night jams, and I love the story about Mississippi John Hurt’s Guild guitar.

Brian Williams recently interviewed New York-based guitarist Jim Campilongo for Virtual Woodshed. In the interview, Campilongo discusses, among other things, growing up in San Francisco, discovering Roy Buchanan, playing the Telecaster, working with Norah Jones, and he also offers advice for people trying to make it in the music business:

I would simply say “learn songs”. That’s the advice I always tell everybody, whether they want to become a better guitar player or this or that or whatever. The thing you can control is learning songs. We can’t control if clubs go out of business, but if you can play “Tico Tico” or a bossa nova, even if it’s just pretty good, there’s a chance you can go to a bus station in Europe and connect with people. And that’s the thing you can control. So many guitar players seem to focus on everything but that, I mean really knowing a genre. Like for instance, what are all the country instrumentals one needs to know, or what are the two hundred jazz standards one needs to know? Learn a Chet Atkins song. It’s not impossible! Learn two, so you can play at Christmastime and entertain your family. It’s something I work on and still have trouble with.

Read the full interview here.