This Friday, August 27, marks 20 years since Stevie Ray Vaughan’s tragic death. Fender has posted a nice retrospective about SRV with quotes about Stevie from his family and friends, including this quote from Double Trouble drummer Chris “Whipper” Layton:

“I didn’t meet him that night, but the first time I heard him play was at a place called Soap Creek Saloon in Austin, Texas,” Layton said. “Drove up, got out of my car and I could hear the band playing, but I heard this piercing guitar. It was like outside, not even coming from inside; It was just like drilling right there in the walls of the building. I thought, ‘Wow, who is this guy?’ And, it was Stevie. I thought, ‘He’s remarkable.’ He just was.”

Read the full article here.

I recently received an e-mail letting me know about an upcoming guitar documentary called Electrified: The Guitar Revolution that will be showing on the Smithsonian Channel on August 15. Prior to the television airing, they are offering a streaming version of the documentary on their website, which I’ve embedded below. It’s a very interesting history of the electric guitar throughout the years.

Last year, I had the chance to see guitarist Andy Wood perform with his band Down From Up. They were performing at a small venue in town that was hosting a showcase of sorts for some local Nashville talent. I had not heard of Down From Up before the show, but I knew Wood was a serious gear hound when I saw him load in his Suhr guitars and his Diezel amps. I was doubly surprised when Wood started playing. He is a phenomenal talent.

However, because most people had come to see the local acts they knew and hadn’t heard of Down From Up, they were playing unfamiliar songs to most of the audience. After a few songs, they began losing the crowd. Upon seeing this, it looked like Wood went to each band member and suggested they switch to a Led Zeppelin medley they had obviously worked up in the past. It worked! The crowd got back into the show and seemed more receptive to the tracks that followed.

If you have  a band that plays original music, take a tip from Andy Wood and have a popular tune or two within your genre to fall back on in case you start to lose a crowd. It could help turn a bad gig into a good one, or at least a positive one!

How many people can say they’ve played basketball with Eddie Van Halen or spent a week on Santana’s tour bus? Jas Obrecht has done those things and much more throughout his career as a writer for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, Mojo, and Living Blues, among others. He now teaches creative writing at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, MI; the college ran a feature story on Obrecht last year. They’ve also posted a video interview with Obrecht on YouTube, where he talks about playing basketball with EVH and then interviewing him long before he became the guitar god he is today:

LickLibrary.com recently posted a nice interview with guitarist Davy Knowles from Back Door Slam. They have also posted a performance by Knowles and an overview of two of his songs: “Riverbed” and “Tear Down the Walls.”

Christopher Davis, who runs the Classical Guitar Blog and who is a graduate student at Austin Peay State University (APSU), let me know that APSU is hosting a Summer Guitar Workshop this summer from June 28-July 2. The workshop will offer classes in both classical and fingerstyle guitar styles.

The faculty of the workshop will be:

• Stanley Yates, Director
• Stephen Aron, Classical Guitar Workshop Co-director / Collegiate Competition Chair
• Mir Ali, Classical Guitar Workshop Co-Director / Pre-Collegiate Competition Chair
• Richard Smith, Fingerstyle Workshop Co-Director / Fingerstyle Competition Chair
• Roger Hudson, Fingerstyle Workshop Co-Director

In addition to the classes, the workshop will have competitions for collegiate/post-collegiate classical guitarists, pre-collegiate classical guitarists, and pre-collegiate fingerstyle guitarists. Additionally, there will be concerts each night.

The workshop sounds like a lot of fun. APSU is located about 45 minutes north of Nashville. Housing is available at the college, so if you’re not from this area you can still participate in the workshop.

JD Simo is an up-and-coming local Nashville guitarist. Since moving to Nashville in 2006, he’s become an in-demand session musician as well as a regular performer in the Don Kelly Band, which counts Redd Volkaert, Johnny Hiland, and Brent Mason as alumni.

I had a chance to see Simo this past weekend at Robert’s Western World in downtown Nashville. Although I was only able to catch a few minutes of his set, I can see why he’s been garnering great reviews. Apparently, the word has already gone around Nashville, because Robert’s was standing room only with wall-to-wall people. I’m looking forward to catching a longer set next time, hopefully with a little more room to move! Here’s a clip of Simo playing some blues with the Don Kelly Band:

Seattle-based guitar instructor and founder of Heartwood Guitar Instruction Rob Hampton has recently written a book titled Rob’s Totally Awesome Guitar Teaching Handbook. In the book, Hampton provides hard-earned insights into setting up and running a successful guitar teaching business.

I’ve thought several times about becoming a guitar teacher, but I’ve always had questions that have held me back. Rob’s book helps answer many of those questions. For example, one basic question I’ve always had is whether I was a good enough guitarist to start teaching others. Rob had this same question before he started, and he provides some good advice about how good you have to be. Furthermore, he learned that teaching made him play more, which helped him improve as a player himself. Another question he discusses is determining whether you’re a good enough teacher. He provides some good insight into helping you determine that for yourself.

Many people get into guitar teaching because they like playing guitar and they think it’s an easy way to make money. However, when you teach on your own, you also need to be aware of the business side of guitar teaching. Rob’s handbook breaks down many of the details about running a guitar-teaching business. For example, should you rent a studio or teach from your home? What kind of teaching space do you need? Should you make housecalls? Do you need insurance? These are just a few examples of the types of questions that Rob discusses in his book.

Another aspect of guitar teaching is marketing yourself. Rob talks about how to brand yourself and then advertise your services to your community. Rob has a unique perspective on how to market his business, as he’s been able to get his business on the first page of Google when searching for “seattle guitar lessons” and he has a five-year waiting list of students. Suffice it to say, he has some helpful strategies for marketing a guitar-teaching business.

If you’ve been able to answer all of these questions and you still want to be a guitar teacher, Rob provides some guidance on how to teach guitar. He helps you determine the type of teaching philosophy that will be successful for you and your students. He also provides advice on how to structure your lessons to get the maximum benefit for the student. The book even includes detailed information about how to teach a new concept to a beginning student. Rob really spends quite a bit of time in this section providing details and examples about teaching guitar concepts and how to approach lesson planning. He even provides a list of easy songs to teach beginning and intermediate players. This chapter is full of excellent content about the actual act of teaching.

At $30, Rob’s Totally Awesome Guitar Teaching Handbook is a treasure-trove of information for anyone thinking about teaching guitar. It’s really opened my eyes up to a lot of things I’ve never even considered and made me really think about whether or not I’m ready to teach guitar. I highly recommend Rob’s book to anyone thinking about teaching guitar.

Classical guitarist and composer Kevin Gallagher, from his recent article “Music First“:

We cannot excel at any style of music by simply putting our fingers in the correct place at the correct time. There are no excellent jazz guitarists that I know of who don’t have an understanding of jazz music. There are no great pop guitarists who don’t have an understanding of pop music. And consequently, there are no great classical guitarists who don’t understand how classical music is written on the guitar. Often, I think that students forget that they are studying classical music on the guitar – as if the classical guitar is more about the technique than the music. Let me be clear – if you are studying this style, you are studying classical music on the guitar.

Emon at Guitarkadia recently posted a review of It Might Get Loud, the new movie featuring Jimmie Page, The Edge, and Jack White. The movie was released in California and New York last Friday and will be released throughout the rest of the US over the next several months. I’ve been looking forward to the film since I first heard of it several months ago, so I’m looking forward to the September release here in Nashville.