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There is nothing quite a great two-guitar rock and roll band. By this, I don’t mean just any band where one guitar strums rhythm, while another player does the lead, but a band where the two guitars work together so symbiotically, they become almost a single great instrument in the band. When two guitar players are truly locked in, the give and take creates a tension that just doesn’t, can’t, happen when there’s only one guitar player.

There’s been buzz on the Web and an actual broo-ha-ha this week in anticipation of the announcement of Gibson’s “Jimi Hendrix Guitar” package. As even the most casual Hendrix fans know, his main axe was a Fender Stratocaster. Especially devoted followers are likely aware that Jimi occasionally played a Gibson Flying V. Gibson’s Custom Shop already offered a high-end tribute model Flying V of just 300 copies with a list of $12,300 in 2007, so this new model would surely be some variation on that, right?

Last year at NAMM, Eastwood grand poobah Mike Robinson and I were talking about hot rods and custom jobs. He’d said one of the truly fun things he dug about motorcycle riding was tripping out your bike with custom touches that made it your own. This led into talk about custom guitars and some of his favorite custom shots people had sent in to him with their modified Eastwoods and Airlines. He sent me a couple of cool pictures at one point of wild things people had done to their guitars, and it got me thinking about a long-neglected project of mine with an old Silvertone/Danelectro. Most of the mods I do are on amps—and they tend to be unseen, unless you look under the hood—but here was a guitar job that would be obvious to anyone who saw it.

Although I’m very passionate about my music, my guitar playing and blues, I don’t in any way consider myself an expert on any of these topics. I’m always open to new artists and a lot of artists that have received high praise from other musicians I simply haven’t had the chance to listen to yet. This will explain to some why I had never listened to Roy Buchanan till recently.

Continuing the busy summer concert schedule here, this time with a road trip to Detroit, MI. The New Cars played their last summer concert here on Sunday night where Elliot Easton was our gracious host. Here are some pictures.

When you talk about great authentic white blues guitar players, you are surely talking about some rarified company. The key word being authentic, and in my estimation authentic white blues guitar player means that when you listen to this person playing you think it’s a black man playing. Stevie Ray Vaughn a great blues guitar player always tried to get that real blues sound. When I saw Stevie Ray for the last time a few months before his death we spoke backstage at one of his shows and I told him “man you sounded like Albert King”, Stevie smiled and said that was the biggest compliment I could have ever given him. That is what we who strum the strings in the blues strive for, to sound like our idols, the great bluesmen. Johnny Winter did this as well as anyone, and proof of this is that he was accepted amongst the great bluesman as an equal, and shared the stage with many of them with great dignity and restraint.

Greetings my friend and fellow strummers in this months column I will discuss that in my opinion that Artist recognition is one of the most important aspect of guitar marketing. That is a statement I truly believe, and in this column I will trace the popularity of certain guitars and the artists that I believe are responsible for their success. I will also list some guitar players and the guitars I found to be intriguing. I will list the guitars first and the artists that were associated with it. Remember my friends knowing what guitars your favorite players play is part of getting a sound similar to them, but it is only a small part of it.

Hello to all out there in guitar dominion, this month’s column will I hope reveal some of the great secrets of some of our favorite guitar players as well as dispel some common misunderstandings. One of the greatest musicians of the 20th century was also a damn good guitar player, he stands alone as a composer, instrumentalist and satirist beyond compare. His name was Frank Zappa. Frank is still IMHO the most underrated musician in the rock and roll era.

With the magic of You Tube, this month in Notable we direct you to Andy Gill’s guitar playing on “He’d Send in the Army”, circa 1980. He turned my thinking upside-down when I saw The Gang of Four that year. Watch the video. Unbelievable. Recently Andy sent a “quote” to add to EastwoodGuitars.com, to which we are greatful.

On Antidepressant, English cult singer/songwriter Lloyd Cole’s fourth album for indie label One Little Indian, the suave, smooth tunesmith shucks off his velvet smoking jacket, pops a pill or two, and lets down his pompadour. Though there’s nothing here that strikes a listener quite as immediately and succinctly as Cole’s 1995 bubble-under pop hit Like Lovers Do, a few spins reveal another gem in the crown of this smart, funny, self-deprecating troubadour.