Source: Nick Loss-Eaton PR

Jad Tariq

Precious Company slated for September release Memphis-based guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Jad Tariq made an unforgettable first impression in early 2025 with his debut release, Jad Tariq Sings.

Effortlessly blending feel-good swing with the raw emotional power of the blues, the album quickly captured the attention of audiences and critics alike.

As one reviewer observed, “Jad Tariq leaves no doubt that he has arrived, and that we will be enjoying his artistry for years to come.”

That prediction has proven remarkably accurate. For his highly anticipated sophomore release, Precious Company, Tariq has crafted ten compelling original songs that showcase both his growth as a songwriter and his musical maturity.

Throughout the album, Tariq delivers his well-crafted lyrics and melodies with a rich tone, and his electric guitar dazzles as his playing moves between intimacy and intensity. Backed by some of Memphis’ finest players, Precious Company captures an artist fully stepping into his own, delivering a sound that is both timeless and unmistakably original.

Originally from Trumbull, Connecticut, Tariq began performing professionally at just twelve years old, honing his craft in bars and clubs throughout the tri-state area. At eighteen, he relocated to Memphis, immersing himself in the city’s rich blues tradition.

Since then, he has become a fixture on the Memphis musicscene, performing regularly with his own band while also serving as a sought-after sideman for many of the city’s most respected artists.

Jad has garnered national attention through collaborations with multiple Blues Music Award-winner, John Németh, renowned musician Tony Holiday, and legendary harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Most recently, he earned the prestigious honor of being invited to join Bob Dylan’s touring band for a series of dates. One writer noted: “His instant chemistry with his new bandmates rendered a familiar setlist into something novel and exhilarating. It was easily one of the best Dylan shows I’ve seen over the last 20 years” – fitting praise for one of the most exciting young artists to emerge from today’s blues scene.

“It’s a blessing to see such a talented young artist establish himself and flourish in such a short time,” says MoMojo label manager Debra Clark. “Jad is the complete package. His musicianship speaks for itself, but what impresses me just as much is his professional-ism, humility, and work ethic. Those qualities have earned him the respect of everyone around him and are the basis for what I believe will be a long and remarkable career.”

Jad adds, “I’m so excited to share these 10 new tunes with you all! We recorded these tunes live in my living room studio right here in Memphis. The songs are raw and honest, and I hope you enjoy listening to this record as much as I enjoyed making it!”

Pre-orders will begin August 21; two singles will be released (August 21, September 4) prior to the release date of September 18, 2026.

Source: SKH Music

One of the world’s most captivating guitarists, Yngwie Malmsteen has announced his new studio album, Hell or High Water, which will be released on November 13 via Music Theories Recordings / Artone Label Group. To whet your appetite, he has also revealed the first single from the album, ‘Now or Never,’ which you can listen to HERE.

When we think of the greatest guitar players of all-time, specifically the crème de la crème musicians who invented a whole new style and sound on the instrument, Yngwie J. Malmsteen is a name that sits comfortably alongside game-changers like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Edward Van Halen.

The nine tracks that make up his latest triumph were crafted meticulously and purposefully, away from the distractions that stall the creative process in the modern age. This is something he first tried with 2021’s Parabellum – mainly because of the state of the world at that time – and the results were so strong, he decided to stick with this as his modus operandi moving forward.

Pre-Order/Stream HERE.

“When I started making records, I would just take the songs I had lying around,” he admits. “Later on, I fell into a schedule – make a record, tour the record and then write the next record. Over the pandemic, I realised it was better to focus completely uninterrupted, so I stayed at home to write this album over the course of eight months. I had around 80 or 90 tracks finished, and then I had to decide which ones were the strongest.”

For a man born with a gift to conjure up overtures “out of nowhere”, the science behind writing a song is something that’s hard to explain. But, in any case, he’s grateful for the abundance of gold-standard ideas that do arrive – the kind that would take other musicians months or even years to realise into actuality. For Yngwie J. Malmsteen, this is simply what he was born to do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Even without a guitar in my hands, the music just comes to me,” he reasons. “It’s like that movie Amadeus. Mozart was getting music given to him in complete form. I understand the building blocks and can therefore build you anything you like. If you asked me to write you a death metal song, call me back in five minutes, and I’d have it ready for you. You want country and western or reggae? No problem. I can give you whatever you want. The language of music is simple. There are certain notes that belong together in whatever stylistic direction and sound pleasant to the ear. The ideas don’t come all the time, but when they do, it’s like an avalanche. The pieces I choose for my records are like gifts that I capture because they amaze me. I’m very lucky in that sense.”

Lead single ‘Now Or Never’ is a perfect storm of palm-muted riffing, baroque counterpart melodies, soaring vocals and mind-blowing dexterity. If you’re looking for Yngwie in a nutshell, this is very much it, and similar things could be said of the second track and instrumental pièce de résistance ‘Am Caprice/Hell Or High Water.’

‘(On The) Battlefield’ and ‘Eye For An Eye’ feature some of the singer/guitarist’s strongest vocal performances to date, alongside the stunning instrumentals ‘Antikythera’ and ‘Beyond Zeta Reticuli’ – which were both named after important scientific breakthroughs and discoveries.

Hell Or High Water is an album that’s bursting with emotion from all corners, but the closing track ‘Father’ is undoubtedly the most spirited of them all, written in tribute to the guitar legend’s dad, who passed away last year.

“He was an amazing man,” remembers Yngwie. “I was proud to have him as a father, and I loved him. I wanted to dedicate all of this to him, and that one particular track is for him. I wanted others to feel what I felt when they hear it. Nicola Paganini once said, ‘One must feel strongly in order to make others feel strongly’. It’s one thing to be a typewriter and another thing to be someone who writes stories that can touch people. That was always the point.”

All these years on, Yngwie J. Malmsteen looks and sounds more determined than ever. If the music feels good to him, that’s enough – anyone else liking it is a bonus. And this is precisely the creative fortitude and single-mindedness that turned him into a household name among the guitar community. There is no such thing as half measures or compromise in his world. Here is an artist who will be forever bound to authenticity and creative honesty.

Tour Dates

Tickets available HERE

September 4 – Beijing, China @ East Third Live House

September 6 – Shanghai, China @ Phase Live House

September 11 – Tokyo, Japan @ Toyosu Pit

September 13 – Yokohama, Japan @ Pacifico Yokohama

Yngwie Malmsteen Online

https://www.yngwiemalmsteen.com/

www.facebook.com/officialyngwiemalmsteen

www.instagram.com/yngwiemalmsteen_official

/www.tiktok.com/@yngwiemalmsteen_official

https://www.youtube.com/@officialyngwiemalmsteen622

https://x.com/officialyjm 

Source: Hello Wendy PR

Bruce Cockburn – Image by Daniel Keebler

The album gathers material written by others, tracing a musical lineage that stretches from the gospel and blues records he heard as a child in Ottawa to the folk clubs and coffeehouses where he first found his voice. “What began back in the eighties as a vague notion grew over time into a strong desire to put together a collection of material, written by others, that I found sticking to the edges of my musical landscape,” Cockburn explains. “The accumulation of these songs started in the sixties, before I’d even begun to try to create my own.”

The album’s title comes from an unexpected literary source, Simone de Beauvoir’s novel of the same name, written during the Nazi occupation of France.  “Among other things it deals with personal responsibility in the face of scary oppression, and the kinds of choices people make,” he says. “I have borrowed the title because it seems perfect for an album of songs I didn’t write.”

The Blood of Others opens with “Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down,” a Robert Wilkins gospel number Cockburn first encountered on an early ‘70s compilation. “Wilkins’ powerful bottle neck guitar and passionate singing made this conversation with God instantly memorable,” he says, noting he reworked the arrangement using the angular harmonies of his DADGAD tuning. From there, the album moves into “As Time Goes By,” the Herman Hupfeld standard forever tied to the Casablanca film. “Who doesn’t love the scene in Casablanca in which Dooley Wilson plays this song, Ingrid Bergman at his side?” Cockburn says. “I thought I should include the original preamble, which gives the familiar part of the song a context, but it seemed to want an update. Hopefully Herman approves.”

The album also traces Cockburn’s early fascination with jazz and ragtime through “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” a song he learned not from a record but from a book. “My friends were singing country blues and old timey music,” he recalls. “I was drawn to the somewhat more sophisticated style of ragtime and early jazz.”  That thread continues on “You Belong to Me,” a song Jo Stafford’s voice carried into his childhood home. “Jo Stafford’s gorgeously true voice was all over the radio with this when I was five,” Cockburn says. “The geographical references were exciting, awakening the travel bug in me years before “On the Road” lit a fire under it.”

Elvis Presley’s influence looms large on The Blood of Others as well, most directly on “That’s Alright.” “Elvis Presley hit the radio in Ottawa right when I was hitting adolescence,” Cockburn says. “He was captivatingly charismatic of course, but the guitar. Scotty Moore’s leads, by turns raucous and tender, bred a burning desire to play the instrument.” Cockburn notes his own version leans closer to Arthur Crudup’s original recording than to Presley’s.

A hometown connection surfaces on “Four Strong Winds,” the youngest song on the record. Cockburn credits Le Hibou, the Ottawa coffeehouse he calls his spiritual home, for introducing him to the song’s writers, Ian and Sylvia, who played the venue regularly through the sixties. “We were all very excited when their song showed up on the radio,” he says.

The album’s emotional core runs through several songs tied to formative personal memories. “God Bless the Child,” the Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog standard, dates back to a record Cockburn bought with his Sunday collection money as a teen. “A couple of years later I got to hear Billie Holiday’s original version,” he says. “Theologically a bit off base, but a deeply moving expression of disappointment with the human species.” “Louis Collins,” the Mississippi John Hurt classic, arrived through an afternoon Cockburn still remembers in vivid detail. “Barbie Luther invited me to her parents’ house to listen to music,” he recalls. “She opened a bottle of Mateus wine and put on Mississippi John Hurt’s rediscovery album. I was blown away by the sweetness, the idiosyncratic phrasing and the way he put voice and fingerpicked guitar together.”

Cockburn also revisits “Yellow Dog Blues,” a song he first heard on a Bessie Smith collection as a youth boy. “Right away I fell in love with the lyrics,” he says, tracing the song’s origins to WC Handy’s time in Clarksdale, Mississippi. “Fare Thee Well” carries its own full circle story, one that connects Cockburn’s earliest musical memories to a career highlight decades later. “It came back to mind when I got to perform it with the McGarrigle sisters at Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday event in NYC,” he says.

Few songs on the record carry the personal resonance of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Cockburn describes hearing a version on the radio in the nineties, in the aftermath of what he calls “a brief but heart opening relationship,” and mishearing a lyric that reshaped how he understood the song. “I thought that version ended with the line, I’ll be looking at someone, but I’ll be seeing you,” he says. “That’s not in the original lyrics. They only refer to the moon, but it hit me in a powerful way.” That memory led him to give the song a rhythmic treatment inspired by “I Only Have Eyes for You.”

The album also carries a story about the road not taken. Cockburn recounts a night in Ottawa when he and friends dressed up to see blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson, whose 1964 Paris recordings had captivated him years earlier, and requested “Laplegged Drunk Again” from the stage. “He shook his head and smiled, and said, Oh, I can’t play that song in a place like this,” Cockburn remembers. The record closes out its story arc with “One for My Baby,” a Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen standard Cockburn traces to Frank Sinatra’s 1958 recording, “Les Feuilles Mortes,” the French original of “Autumn Leaves” that Cockburn discovered through the poetry of Jacques Prévert, and “Peace in the Valley,” a Thomas A. Dorsey gospel song Cockburn first heard through Elvis Presley.

The Blood of Others marks Cockburn’s 39th album, a milestone that speaks to the remarkable consistency of a career that began in 1970. Along the way, he has earned 13 Juno Awards, been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, named an Officer of the Order of Canada, and awarded 9 Honorary Doctorates including the Berklee School of Music. His songs, including “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” remain touchstones of Canadian songwriting, covered by artists from the Barenaked Ladies to Jimmy Buffett to Jerry Garcia.

That legacy was still growing as recently as his previous studio release, O Sun O Moon, recorded in Nashville with longtime producer Colin Linden. “Time takes its toll, but in my soul I’m on a roll,” Cockburn sang on that album’s opening track, a line that could just as easily describe the restless curiosity behind The Blood of Others.  Speaking about his songwriting at the time, Cockburn put it simply: “I just don’t want to ever keep doing the same thing.” With this new record, he proves that philosophy extends even to the songs he didn’t write himself, each one chosen and reshaped with the same care and instinct that has defined his catalogue since 1970.

Cockburn will bring these songs to audiences across North America on an extensive run of tour dates.

TOUR DATES:

Aug 7 — Los Angeles, CA — Ford Theatre **

Aug 26 — Iowa City, IA — Englert Theatre **

Aug 27 — Des Moines, IA — Hoyt Sherman Place **

Sep 8 — Omaha, NE — Astro Theater **

Sep 9 — Lawrence, KS — Liberty Hall **

Oct 3 — Eugene, OR — McDonald Theatre **

Oct 15 — Kitchener, ON — Centre in the Square

Oct 16 — Ottawa, ON — National Arts Centre

Oct 17 — Toronto, ON — Massey Hall

Oct 18 — Montréal, QC — Gesù Salle

Oct 20 — Plymouth, NH — Flying Monkey&

Oct 21 — Portland, ME — State Theatre&

Oct 23 — Boston, MA — Chevalier Theatre&

Oct 24 — New York, NY — Town Hall&

Oct 25 — Philadelphia, PA — Keswick Theatre&

Oct 27 — Washington, DC — Warner Theatre&

Oct 29 — Durham, NC — Fletcher Hall&

Oct 30 — Charlotte, NC — Carolina Theatre&

Nov 1 — Nashville, TN — CMA Theatre&

Nov 2 — Knoxville, TN — Bijou Theatre&

Nov 4 — Atlanta, GA — Variety Playhouse&

Nov 6 — Ponte Vedra, FL — Ponte Vedra Concert Hall&

Nov 7 — Fort Lauderdale, FL — Amaturo Theatre&

Nov 8 — Key West, FL — Key West Theatre&

** With Judy Collins

& With Livingston Taylor

Source: SKH Music

Coast To Coast Run of Forty Confirmed Appearances Begins on October 9 in Santa Cruz with

The Final Performance To Be Staged in Riverside on December 3 

Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, alongside Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio approach the next chapter of BEAT. The quartet has announced a tour of the U.S. that will stage 40 appearances.

The general on-sale is set for Friday, August 7 at 10 AM local time. Tickets and VIP experiences will be available here: https://beat-official.com/tour.  The artist pre-sale goes live on Tuesday, August 4 at Noon Eastern time with the password BEATTOUR. Fans can access the ticketing page and simply enter the code at checkout. All pre-sales will end at 10am local time Thursday, August 6. 

Adrian Belew shares, “For those of you who’ve seen BEAT live, it’s important to note we’ll be adding some material from ‘90s Crim to our U.S. tour. Along with the addition of superman drummer Terry Bozzio, we feel this will result in a new experience for our audience.  We’re very excited to play for you again.  Don’t miss it!”

The global audience has celebrated the existence of BEAT, responding to the music, chemistry, spirit and respect this collective of esteemed musicians has brought to one of the most remarkable catalogs in progressive rock. BEAT continues to evolve whole remaining true to the music and the spirit that inspired it.

As Adrian, Tony and Steve approach the band’s upcoming activity, Terry Bozzio enters the fold behind the kit. Danny Carey remains an important part of the BEAT family, and simply his Tool commitments prevent him from being available for this upcoming run in the Fall. Steve Vai offers, “Terry is one of the truly legendary drummers of our time, whose remarkable career and unique musical voice make him the perfect artist to join us for this tour. He brings his own extraordinary artistry to BEAT, and that’s something worth celebrating.”

Adrian Belew shares, “Our deepest appreciation goes to our brother Danny Carey—a true BEAT-Poet. His extraordinary musicianship, generosity, humor, and explosive creativity helped establish BEAT as something far beyond a tribute. He helped create its identity. While Tool commitments keep him from joining us this fall, he remains an essential part of our family.

When the ensemble’s existence was first made public on April 2, 2024, the vision was simply to present a creative reinterpretation of the three iconic ’80s King Crimson albums – Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair. Just over forty appearances were announced across the U.S., triggering a majority of those planned appearances reaching sold-out status in days. Additional performances were added, creating an inaugural run which staged 65 concerts across the U.S. Appearances in Mexico, South America and Tokyo’s legendary Budokan followed, most recently staging an extensive run of the U.K. and Europe performing in 31 cities this year.

When the band heads back out in the Fall, fans should anticipate some exciting additions to the repertoire being performed, with several songs rotating out while other classic King Crimson pieces emerging in to the set. Those details will come to light once the tour begins.

The itinerary kicks off on October 9 at the Quarry Amphitheater in Santa Cruz, CA, with a final appearance planned in at Riverside, CA’s Municipal Auditorium on December 3.  

 In front of the 2024 tour, guitarist Adrian Belew reflected, “The 1981 through 1984 King Crimson created a music all its own. Timeless. Beautiful. Complex. Fierce.  For the fans who lived through it then, and the ones who never got to witness it, our aim is to bring it to life again. A monumental task but we’re going for it!  There are not enough exclamation points to express my excitement!”

Guitarist Steve Vai stated, “Being a part of this ensemble is an extraordinary privilege and opportunity to perform some of the most beloved, timeless, and monumental music of the 80’s (and beyond) with truly inspired musicians. This music resonates deeply with me. Father Robert Fripp is one of our historical geniuses. His highly specific and exceptionally brilliant guitar technique is studied and revered. His contribution to the quality of my musical life, and so many others is supreme.”

Bassist Tony Levin offered, “Revisiting some of my favorite music is a treat in itself. It’s also great that we’re not just playing a few shows, we’re hitting it hard. So, Road Dogs are coming to your area soon.”

Drummer Terry Bozzio shares, “All of these guys are my friends and excellent musicians who l’ve played with before! When l was asked to join this tour, l was honored & very grateful to do it!”An exclusive meet & greet with Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, Tony Levin and Terry Bozzio will be staged at each appearance planned. There are three tiers available with limited availability. First, the “BEAT On-stage Experience” features one premium reserved ticket, the rare opportunity to watch the show from an exclusive on-stage VIP viewing area, early entry in to the venue, a pre-show meet & greet and a group photo opportunity with all four members of the band, access to a pre-show soundcheck, a limited edition autographed BEAT tour poster, commemorative BEAT ticket magnet, a specially designed BEAT record bag, an exclusive VIP merchandise item, and an official side-stage laminate and lanyard. This top tier has very limited availability. The second tier is the “BEAT Meet & Greet / Soundcheck Experience.”

It features one premium reserved ticket located in the first five rows, early entry in to the venue, a pre-show meet & greet and group photo opportunity with all four members of the band, access to a pre-show soundcheck, a limited-edition autographed BEAT tour poster, commemorative BEAT ticket magnet, a specially designed BEAT record bag, an exclusive VIP merchandise item, and a Meet & Greet laminate and lanyard. The final tier is the “BEAT VIP Tour Package.” It features one premium reserved ticket located in the first 15 rows, a limited-edition autographed BEAT tour poster, commemorative BEAT ticket magnet, a specially designed BEAT record bag, an exclusive VIP merchandise item, and a commemorative laminate and lanyard. There is limited availability for each of these packages, which are available for purchase at https://beat-official.com/tour.

Tour Dates (confirmed): 

10/09   Santa Cruz, CA                     Quarry Amphitheater

10/10   Napa, CA                               Blue Note Napa Summer Sessions at Meritage Resort

10/11   San Diego, CA                       Civic Theatre

10/13   Las Vegas, NV                       Theater at Virgin Hotel

10/14   Phoenix, AZ                           Celebrity Theatre

10/16   Denver, CO                            Bellco Theatre

10/17   Omaha, NE                            Orpheum Theater

10/18   Waukee, IA                            Vibrant Music Hall

10/19   Milwaukee, WI                      The Riverside Theater

10/21   Chicago, IL                             Copernicus Center

10/22   Madison, WI                          Orpheum Theater

10/23   Saint Charles, MO                The Family Arena

10/24   Prior Lake, MN                     Mystic Lake Casino Showroom

10/26   Cincinnati, OH                      Taft Theatre

10/28   Columbus, OH                      Palace Theatre

10/29   Detroit, MI                            Masonic Temple Theatre

10/30   Cleveland, OH                      Agora Theatre

11/01   Toronto, ON                           The Theatre at Great Canadian Toronto

11/02   Montreal, QC                         Theatre St-Denis

11/04   Huntington, NY                     The Paramount

11/05   Uncasville, CT                       Mohegan Sun Arena

11/06   Boston, MA                           Boch Center Wang Theatre

11/07   Hampton Beach, NH           Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom

11/09   Newark, NJ                            Prudential Hall at NJPAC

11/10   Washington, DC                    MGM National Harbor

11/11   Rochester, NY                        Kodak Center

11/13   Virginia Beach, VA                Sandler Center

11/14   Reading, PA                            Santander Performing Arts Center

11/15   Philadelphia, PA                     Academy of Music

11/17   Durham, NC                           DPAC

11/18   Nashville, TN                         Grand Ole Opry House

11/21   Charlotte, NC                         Ovens Auditorium

11/22   Daytona Beach, FL                Peabody Auditorium

11/24   St. Petersburg, FL                  Mahaffey Theater

11/25   Atlanta, GA                             Cobb Energy Center

11/28   Houston, TX                           713 Music Hall

11/29   Austin, TX                              ACL Live

11/30   Dallas, TX                              Music Hall at Fair Park

12/02   Inglewood, CA                      YouTube Theater

12/03   Riverside, CA                        Riverside Municipal Auditorium

]]> https://guitarinternational.com/2026/08/04/adrian-belew-steve-vai-tony-levin-terry-bozzio-aka-beat-tour-usa-later-2026/feed/ 0 https://guitarinternational.com/2026/07/25/nashvilles-stacy-hogan-launches-his-newest-creative-chapter-with-gallows-west/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nashvilles-stacy-hogan-launches-his-newest-creative-chapter-with-gallows-west https://guitarinternational.com/2026/07/25/nashvilles-stacy-hogan-launches-his-newest-creative-chapter-with-gallows-west/#respond Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:00:12 +0000 https://guitarinternational.com/?p=101906 Press Release

Source: Gallows West PR

Gallows West – Lauren & Stacy Hogan

Stacy Hogan is a Nashville-based producer, mixer, songwriter, and artist with more than 20 years of experience in the music industry. As the founder and owner of A Writer’s Paradise, Hogan has built a career helping artists develop songs from the ground up — from writing and production to mixing, mastering, release strategy, promotion, and sync placement.

As an artist, Hogan is best known for Sin Shake Sin, a politically charged alternative rock project that has earned more than 300 million streams, a #1 Amazon single with “Misinformation,” and placements across more than 100 film, television, sports, and video game projects.

Stacy’s music and production work have been connected to major platforms and shows including Cobra Kai, The Voice, American Idol, Call of Duty, The Vampire Diaries, The Daily Show, NFL programming, WWE, Locke & Key, and more. Hogan’s work has also received coverage or recognition from outlets and organizations including: SPIN, Loudwire, Guitar World, BMI, and MUSO.AI, where he has ranked among the top percentage of producers and songwriters.

In addition to his artist career, Hogan has spent years producing and developing independent artists through A Writer’s Paradise, helping clients shape songs, records, branding, and release campaigns with a full-service Nashville-based approach. His work has crossed rock, country, pop, Christian, Americana, cinematic, and alternative genres, with an emphasis on songs that feel emotionally direct, commercially usable, and sonically finished.

His newest creative chapter is Gallows West, a vocal duo featuring Hogan and his wife, Lauren Hogan. The project grew out of a unique intersection between music, fiction, and cinematic storytelling.

Gallows West is shaped by a creative partnership between Stacy and Lauren Hogan: Stacy produces and builds the musical world, while Lauren brings that world to life visually as the director and editor of the project’s videos. Vocally, Stacy and Lauren operate as a duo, with her harmonies and layered vocal parts helping define the Gallows West sound. She also plays a central on-screen role, helping shape the project’s visual identity and giving its cinematic world a recognizable presence.

Gallows West began during the creation of music connected to the novel, Cadillac Wheels, by Scott Saxberg. The project was originally developed as the musical identity behind the book’s fictional world and characters, especially the character Tanner Banks. Hogan created a collection of songs that could feel like they existed inside that story — songs with an old-soul, western, haunted Americana quality, but still shaped with the weight and production instincts of modern alternative rock.

That creative experiment eventually became something larger than a book companion. Gallows West developed into its own full artistic world: part dusty outlaw folk, part gothic western, part cinematic alt-rock, and part ghost story. The sound leans into imagery of desert highways, blood-red rivers, old sins, forgotten towns, worn leather, and voices from another century — but with the polish, impact, and atmosphere of a modern record.

The first official Gallows West single is “Where the River Turns Red.” While Gallows West was born from the Cadillac Wheels universe and the project is tied to that larger creative world, “Where the River Turns Red” stands as the first proper public statement from the band.

“Where the River Turns Red” Video!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song captures the tone Hogan is building around Gallows West: dark, visual, and cinematic, with a sense of American folklore and old-west mythology filtered through modern production. It feels like a story you can hear — murder ballad energy, frontier imagery, and a haunted atmosphere, but with enough rock weight and melodic focus to sit naturally beside Hogan’s broader catalog.

For Hogan, Gallows West also represents a creative shift. After years of writing politically charged music with Sin Shake Sin, Gallows West offers a different kind of expression — less about the daily fight of modern culture and more about timeless stories, atmosphere, character, place, and myth. It allows him to build a world instead of simply react to one.

The project also gives Hogan a way to connect several parts of his career: songwriting, production, sync-minded storytelling, artist development, visual branding, and literary collaboration. Gallows West is not just a band name; it is a world with a sound, a setting, and a mythology.

At its core, Gallows West is Stacy and Lauren Hogan stepping into a darker, more cinematic version of Americana — one that carries the grit of the Old West, the shadow of southern gothic storytelling, and the scale of modern alternative rock.

Gallows West – Nashville, TN
GallowsWest.com

Facebook:  www.Facebook.com/gallowswest

Tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@gallowswest

Instagram: www.instagram.com/gallowswestmusic

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@gallowswestmusic

GALLOWS WEST PHOTO GALLERY

Dave Kline

Dave Kline, four strings, plucking and a bow; electrified. These are the ingredients that Kline brings to the stage and into the studio. Pull in some more world-class musicians and they stir a cauldron of some of the best music you’ll ever hear.

Moving to the States from his native England in the Seventies, Dave brought with him experiences he gathered at music gatherings where artists, now legendary, influenced and inspired him.

Rather than mention them here and now, it’s better to hear the story behind the names directly from him.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Mr.Kline rolls out stunning riffs on his violins, guitars and piano. And “stunning” isn’t limited to his musical fireworks, but includes some of the most emotionally stirring instrumentals in his songwriting quiver. And, at times, he occasionally reaches back to songs composed by some of his music heroes.

Besides being the bandleader of his own Dave Kline Band, Dave’s weighed in with others, including: Veronneau, Chick Corea, Dwight Yoakam and more.

“Great music man! Great tunes and such warm renditions. I love your musical universe … it’s so fresh and creative …And keep the music fires burning bright. You know why? Simply because you can! And do it so well.” Chick Corea

In the studio, along with adding session work on others albums, Dave’s rolled out several of his own releases, including: Eclectricity, Life’s Little Mysteries, and Shifting Borders. And, he’s got a stack of more compositions he’s written that his fans can anticipate hearing on future albums.

Now home-based in Northern Virginia, he lays down tracks in his own studio and has played at some of the finest music venues in the area, including the legendary Blues Alley, The Music Center at Strathmore, the Creative Cauldron, Earp’s Ordinary, Gypsy Sally’s, along with other venues and festivals.

Whether Dave’s punching our fiery licks on his violin or venturing into some of the most refined, polished romantic tunes you’ll ever hear, he’ll tug on your heartstrings or get you revved up in a most perfect way.

Guitar International is honored to present violinist extraordinaire, Dave Kline, to our readers.

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Dave Kline

Rick Landers:  Occasionally, we’ll interview people who aren’t specifically known as guitarists. But, I know you also play guitar.

Dave Kline: Well, I’m actually, if I say so myself, a pretty good fingerpicking guitarist. In fact, on most of my albums, I play all the acoustic guitar on them.

Rick: Oh, really? Okay.

Dave Kline: Yeah. And every now and again, I’ll pull out a guitar and play a guitar piece. In fact, I’m playing a guitar piece next week; a piece that I just recently wrote, and I grew up in that English folk, rock folk blues tradition of guitarists. I’m sure you’re familiar.

Rick: Sure. Davy Graham and others.

Dave Kline: My first live appearance on stage as a musician was with guitar, as a matter of fact. And I played at an open mic that was run by David Bowie. David Bowie had an open mic night that he did once a week down at the Three Tons pub in Beckenham, Kent. And it was the first time I ever got up on stage, and I played a tune written by Davy Graham, a fingerpicking tune called “Angie”.

Rick: I know it.

Dave Kline: Okay. Took me freaking forever to learn how to play that, because its got this synchopated part where you’re playing a baseline, and then you’ve the lick on top of it. I must’ve put a hundred hours into that thing, but I actually learned how to play it.

Rick: David. Bowie, that’s wild. Yeah, I guess he wasn’t famous at that point.

Dave Kline: He was just on the cusp. I don’t think his first album had been released yet. It’s funny, I seem to hook up with these guys who were just about making it, and then they make it, and I’m not around, but the pub probably had 300 people in it.

Rick: Packed?

Dave Kline: To the gills, so he was seriously popular, and he got up there and he did his own tunes, as well.

Rick: What year was that?

Dave Kline: That was 1966.

Rick: Oh, so it was well before he came out with Hunky Dory and stuff like that. In the early Seventies when I first heard him, I was living in England, and when I came back home, nobody knew who he was. Yeah, ’74.

Dave Kline: Well, he was big in Beckenham, Kent.

Rick: I bet he was a character. So what came first? You’re saying you played guitar. Did you learn that first, before violin?

Dave Kline: No, violin was first. Actually, piano was first.

Rick: Oh, well, let’s talk about all three of those then.

Dave Kline: Okay. So in 1955, when I was five, my brother and I and my mom all went to the same school. She was a teacher. That was a horror story, but she was my teacher at one point.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: Oh boy…

Dave Kline: Heaven help me! And my brother and I went to the same school and down the road from the school was a piano teacher. And my mom hooked us up, and we both did a piano lesson at the same time. I really wanted to do the lesson. My brother couldn’t care less, or so it seemed, and we fought like cats and dogs anyway, and he just baited me .Well, I probably baited him just as much. So, the piano teacher put up with it for about a year, and then she said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

And quit on us. So, I learned the basics of piano, and I know how to write on piano. I come up with some very creative stuff on piano, but it’s not a performance instrument for me. The instrument I really wanted to learn was violin. And when I was a kid, my mom had a classical music long playing record collection, some of them 78’s, actually.

She had several records by a Russian violinist named, David Oistrakh, who’s considered by many in the top 10 ever violinists. And when I was between the age of two and four, I did nothing but listen to those albums. I was glued to those albums. So, I wanted to learn violin, and they picked me up a half-size violin when I was seven.

And unfortunately, the lessons were incredibly disappointing to me because I wanted to learn Mendelssohn’s violin concerto. And the teacher wanted me to learn, “Twinkle Little Star” and it just did not go over well. And she was not friendly in the least.

Anyway, I hated the lessons and I refused to practice, which I regret that because I consider myself pretty good today. And if I had put the work in that I needed to, I could have ended up playing Mendelssohn’s violin concert, but partly I was too lazy and partly just a rejection of the way it was taught.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: What about guitar?

Dave Kline: Guitar, okay. So, then I learned violin and I took lessons from one teacher or another. I was in the school orchestra in the second violins, and then when I was 12, my brother, my parents bought my brother a guitar, a real cheap, terrible guitar. And I’m the one who started playing it.

He played a little bit, but not much. And then my parents decided to buy me one, and they actually bought me a nice little Oscar Teller, German nylon string guitar, which I have to this day, as a matter of fact. Great little guitars. And I got that when I was 15.

I just spent a lot of time playing and learning and teaching myself how to play fingerpicking style. And I was really into Bert Jansch. And I used to go see Bert Jansch and John Renbourn in Pentangle playing at a hotel on Tottenham Court Road in London on Sunday nights. They played in this hotel. I used to go out there regularly, and there was nobody in there. There’d be half a dozen people in the audience. The band was amazing

Rick: Yeah, I’ve seen them. I saw ’em in Warwickshire. Was Danny Thompson with them?

Dave Kline: Danny Thompson was on Upright Bass. Yeah. Danny Thompson. They had the gal, Sandy Denny singing, and then John Renbourn and Bert Jansch.

I sort of emulated their style of playing as much as I could. I had actually taken one year of classical guitar lessons, which was very good for technique and that gave me the facility on the right hand, I think, to be able to play fingerstyle. Yeah, I was into those guys.

I was also into flamenco. There was a flamenco guitarist named Manitas De Plata. I don’t know if you’re familiar.You’ve got to listen to Manitas De Plata. He, in my opinion, no invalidation of Paco de Lucía, but Manitas De Plata was just amazing.

If you can actually get some long playing records of his, absolutely amazing. My parents took me to see him playing live in Royal Festival Hall in London, and he came on stage. He didn’t have a guitar strap, he just held the guitar like this, and he played nonstop for an hour playing flamenco, the most incredible thing you ever heard.

And he had no mic, and you could hear him clear as a bell. It was just amazing. So I’m a huge fan of Manitas De Plata, from the Camargue, which is an area in southern France. A lot of gypsy guitarists are from that area. In fact, his nephew was the lead singer for the Gypsy Kings. Came from the same area.

Rick: So, did you listen to folks like John Martyn and Nick Drake back in the late Sixties, early Seventies?

Dave Kline: Not a lot, A little bit. John Martyn, a little bit. Nick Drake. I didn’t really know. No, I did listen to folks like Rory Gallagher, the great Irish guitarist, saw him at the Marquee, and I listened to a lot of American rock, the West Coast rock, Airplane, all that sort of stuff. The Doors, Janis Joplin…

Rick: San Francisco. Great stuff. Yeah. Scott McKenzie…

Dave Kline: Actually ended up there in 1971, ’72 in San Francisco.

Rick:  Let’s move to violin. And when you were playing violin, what were kind of the challenges? I think its probably more complex than playing guitar, from what I can tell.

Dave Kline

Dave Kline: Well, the challenge with playing violin is you’ve got to get over that initial hump, when it sounds like a cat being killed.

But once you get past that point, you’re not driving everybody nuts.

It is not that difficult an instrument to play, but it’s a difficult instrument to play really well. And what it takes is it takes a lot of dedication and practice. And like I said, I didn’t do that.

The top classical solo violinists practice 10 hours a day for 15, 20 years, and then they get to the point where they almost don’t need to do that anymore.

But, that’s the level of intensity of playing. It’s like an Olympic gymnast type thing. You have to just do it and do it, and do it and do it. And it’s just tremendous amount of work. I didn’t go that route. But, what I did do was when I went up to college, I had to quit it.

The final straw for me was the school orchestra and the most boring pieces of music on the entire planet. I love classical music, but this guy chose the worst pieces, and it just was utterly boring. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

And that’s the point where I started taking up guitar. So, I went up to college, and I decided within a few weeks that the subject I was studying at college was absolutely useless. So, I didn’t even bother to do it anymore. And instead, I spent hours a day jamming on guitar, probably somewhere between five and eight hours a day, jamming the second semester.

I said, “Why don’t I bring up the violin and see what happens with that?” There were 20 guitarists and nobody else. So, I brought the fiddle up there, and I soon basically taught myself again from scratch, but with just figuring out how to improvise. And that’s where I got my chops. I spent three years playing violin for probably five hours a day, jamming. And that was the source of my abilities on the instrument.

Rick: Did you focus then on violin and just set aside the guitar? Or were you just sort of playing with whatever song came up? You decided to play one or the other?

Dave Kline: No, I was still playing guitar, and I was writing on guitar, but I would say I was primarily playing violin. I got a real resurgence on playing it of my goal to play it. And so I concentrated on that and everybody loved it.

Rick:  Were you playing mostly open mics, and were you getting gigs, paid gigs when you were in England, or?

Dave Kline: No, I just jammed around and I stayed in college because in England, the government pays for your college, and once you are in, it’s hard for them to get you out, and you basically got guaranteed for three years. And so that’s what I did. And I just jammed around at the college and played there, but I didn’t really do too much in the way of open mics, but I saw a lot of guys playing.

I was also really into a cat named Stefan Grossman, ragtime stuff, and he played at a little place called Bunjies (Coffee House & Folk Cellar), which was a little folk club coffee house in a basement off of Tottenham Court. And so I used to see him a whole bunch, and I kind of figured out some of what he was doing, and I can play ragtime style guitar, as well.

Dave Kline

Rick: Before you get on stage, do you do exercises ahead of time to warm up your wrist and your fingers? I would think that your wrist, you’re moving that around a little bit more on a violin than a guitar. Plus you’ve got the bow that you’ve got to deal with.

Dave Kline: Yeah. No, I don’t really do any warmup. I probably should. I mean, well I do a little warmup usually because we do a soundcheck. Sometimes we need to do a rehearsal before a gig. But I don’t specifically do warmup exercises.

I rarely practice scales. I definitely don’t go the normal route. Which, it’s funny because there’s holes in my musical education; I can read, but I’m not a sight reader. There’s cats that can come on stage. They’ve never heard the music. They’ve never seen the music. They come on stage and they just start playing Coltrane off a chart.

And I’m like, “screw you”. It’s like, I can’t do that. I can’t even hardly write charts and things like that are sort of, they’re a little bit of a hole. And some of my musical theory, sometimes I’ll be with some musicians, they’re really into the niceties of this chord, is, it’s a G6 + 13/11th going to….I’m like, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Rick: That’s where I’m at too.

Dave Kline: And there was a point where a good friend of mine, sax player, his uncle is actually the musical director for the Bolshoi Ballet, and he’s really up there in theory, actually learned saxophone as a classical instrument, but also plays jazz. And I said to him, “I want you to teach me, fill it in for me. All the things that I don’t understand on music.” He says, “You don’t want to do that.” It was interesting. He says, “You don’t want to do that. I said, “Why not?” He says, “You’ll lose what you have.”

Rick: I agree.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dave Kline: And which brings up another interesting story, which I don’t know if I’ve told this, but Yehudi Menuhin, he’s a British violinist, top of the league, top of the heap, was very famous back in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties. And he actually did a couple of albums with Stéphane Grappelli.

Rick: Wow.

Dave Kline: Where they did duets. But Stéphane had to write out every word, every note that Yehudi played. And I heard an interview with Yehudi the way he was being asked about this, and he said the biggest regret he had as a musician was that he could not improvise. He simply couldn’t do it.

And that’s what classical music, classical musicians, there’s maybe one in 500 or a thousand that can improvise because you are taught to not play anything unless you see it written on the page. It’s a very stultifying method of teaching. And luckily, because I was so undisciplined as a kid, I didn’t have that problem. And so I never ran into that barrier. And my friend was saying, you’ll lose your spontaneity as a musician.

Rick: And I think some musicians that are terrific musicians don’t know how to read music. And John Martyn, who was one of my favorite guitar players, and I think he was absolutely brilliant, was asked in an interview  if he read music and if knew the circle of fifths and all that. He said, I don’t want to know that stuff. But, he was absolutely brilliant.  I think working outside  the lines is what some do, because they don’t know any better. You don’t…

Dave Kline: Know any better. That’s right. It works.

Rick: But it works.

Dave Kline: But it works, exactly.Yeah. I mean, Béla Fleck doesn’t know how to read music.

Rick: And friends are saying, I wasn’t expecting you to go there, but it works. And so I think there’s a certain creativity that you feel, when you’re not bound by that structure or that paradigm.

Dave Kline

Dave Kline: And I heard, and I’m not sure if this is true or not, that Segovia didn’t know how to read music.

Rick: I think that’s true. I think I read that recently. I was reading last night about  violins, and how those made by Stradivarius are the Holy Grail. Have you ever played anything like a Stradivarius?

Dave Kline: I have not. And, in fact, there was a point where I almost was able to borrow a Stradivarius for an album, but it didn’t work out, unfortunately. And we have a friend that has access to one, but somehow we just never hooked up.

And that’s a good reminder. I need to do that. ‘Cause I really want to get to play that. And I know they also have some, I believe, at the Library of Congress. Yeah. One of these days I’m going to try to get myself in to play one of those.

Rick: Get in there and grab one.

Dave Kline: Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, about 12, 13 years old, my violin teacher sold it to another student, a Stradivarius violin for the grand sum of 1000 pounds Sterling.

Rick: A lot of money back then.

Dave Kline: But oh my God, now you can’t get one for less than three million,

Rick: I would think it’s like the old ’58, ’59 Les Pauls that were 200 bucks back in the Seventies, they were just old used guitars, and now they’re like half a million bucks. They’ve gone up and down a little bit. They’re right around half a million bucks, plus. So what are you playing now?

Dave Kline: I’ve got a couple of violins. The main instrument that I have was actually made by a local maker, McCluskey. And I like it. I think it’s a decent violin. It’s not high level, but I didn’t pay a high level price for it. But the prices on violins are insane. I also have another violin, which is an 1890 Bailly violin, which is a well-known French maker. And that’s a higher level violin. Nowhere up there near a Strad, but it’s a nice violin.

Rick:  And so how many do you have?

Dave Kline: Well, okay, I’ve got those two violins. I’ve got two electrics. I’ve got another couple of acoustic violins, cheap ones, old ones, or one that I had since the Seventies, late Seventies. But, I grew accustomed to it. I can make it sound good, but I wouldn’t say it’s any great shakes as a violin.

Rick: What do you look for when you’re buying a violin? Or has it been a while since you bought any?

Dave Kline: Yeah, just the sound really. I really don’t know enough to really make a very educated decision on ’em. But the one I got to buy, I wasn’t really interested in the fact that it was a well-known maker. I just wanted the sound, but the value of that violin has increased considerably since I bought it, which is just a perk.

Rick: You’ve played with a lot of groups, and I know you played with Chick Corea and Dwight Yoakam, but what about the Dave Kline Band? Tell me about the group, how it got pulled together, and a little bit about the members and what they bring, not just the instrumentation they bring, but what they bring as far as personality traits that really help you congeal, as a group.

Dave Kline: Alright, so the first instrument that I wrote music on was actually guitar. And I did quite a bit of guitar writing of one kind or another, and actually recorded an album on cassette, believe it or not, in about 1989. And that was all guitar music.

And then I had a collaboration that I created an album with a guy in about 1995, mostly his stuff, but some of it I wrote. And that was my first writing of music in my current style. And then in around 2000, I started writing prolifically and decided to do an album.

In fact, I did the album at BIAS Recording Studios (Springfield, Virginia). Bob Dawson was the engineer. And since then, I’ve had various iterations of musicians that I play with, but I’m really, really happy with the current band. Are you going to have a chance to come and see any of the shows at Blues Alley this month?

Rick: I’m going to try. I did see you when you got your most recent bass player. That was his first night I think he played with you. He was brilliant.

Dave Kline: Brilliant. C.J. Turman. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If you get a chance, and I’m happy to put you on the guest list, Rick, for this coming Tuesday, if you can make it. We’ll have Buddy Spier. Do you know Buddy?

Rick: I know the name, but I don’t know him offhand.

Dave Kline: Buddy Spier owns a studio called, I think three-nineteen something. It’s right in the same complex that Q Recording is in Falls Church (Virginia). He’s a producer and he splits his time between here and Nashville, and he does a lot of recording sessions.

He is a phenomenal guitarist, and he and I are just a really, really in sync. So we play off one another, and it’s a real juggernaut that gets created. I’d been wanting to play with Buddy for ages, and I finally roped him into a gig with me, which he loved, down at that barbecue joint in Northeast, D.C..

Anyway, I played there with him, and one lady in the audience just came rushing up towards the stage and she was like, just freaking out, like having a religious experience. It really was that kind of, just out there. So the band, this coming Tuesday is going to be Buddy,T.J. on bass, Olaolu Ajibade on drums, who you saw playing also. And then there’s a keyboard player named Dan Paul, who used to be in this area. And I played with him a few times.

He moved up to New Jersey, but he’s coming down for a couple of these gigs with me. He’s great. I love him. He’s excellent, excellent keyboard player. So, we’re going to do a lot of originals, some stuff that we’ve rarely played because it’s on the more difficult end of things, and some brand new material. So, really thrilled with what’s going to happen there.

Last week I played with D.D. Jackson, who’s a New York Emmy winning composer and keyboard player. And David Murray, who was founder, co-founder of the World Saxophone Quartet. And so we played a gig, some of D.D.’s material and a bunch of mine, and we had a two minute standing ovation. It was just amazing. Incredible. Completely blew the place apart. Yeah, that’s true.

Many people saying, “That was my all time favorite gig ever.” That best show ever that they’ve been to. Yeah. Cool. So really, really happy. And a lot of what made that gig is the rhythm section of Olaolu and T.J., and Buddy was basically playing a rhythm guitar on that gig. So, that rhythm section was just amazing. And it allowed me and D.D. and David Murray just to wail. So now we’re going to do all of my material and seldom heard or never heard material of mine this coming Tuesday.

Ken Avis, Lynn Veronneau and Dave Kline

Rick: Blues Alley. Right?

Dave Kline: Blues Alley. And I also have Lynn Veronneau and Ken Avis. My band generally includes Ken, who is also excellent on guitar and vocals, Lynn on vocals, Olaolu, and T.J. or another bass player, essentially and myself. But for these gigs, Ken and Lynn are going to be special guests for it on top of those guys. So it’s going to be amazing. And then the 21st, I’m doing a violin summit with Zach Brock from Snarky Puppy.

He’s the violinist with, I don’t know how familiar you are with Snarky Puppy.

Rick: I’ve heard the name. That’s about it. I’ll look ’em up.

Dave Kline: Yeah, check him out. They’re really a great funk, jazz band, and they sell out the Anthem. It’s a 5,000 seat venue, very, very, very popular. So excited to do the violin summit with Zach. And then later, we are going to team up with Senator Tim Kaine on harmonica and vocals.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve seen him.

Dave Kline: And we’re going to do a Western swing, Eastern jazz night. So we’re going to do a whole bunch of Western swing tunes, which Ken’s going to sing a bunch of ’em. Tim’s going to sing some. Lynn will sing some stuff. And we’ve got Susan Alcorn. I don’t know if you know her. She’s an out there pedal steel player, but she used to play with Asleep At The Wheel.

So she’s done a lot of Western swing, so that should be a really fun gig too. So I’m just really thrilled with where it’s going. Pretty much sold it out last week. I think the last show is going to be sold out for sure. It’s going to be less filled for the other two shows. And Harry Schnipper at Blues Alley is really pushing me a lot of power. He loves what I do, and he’s really trying to help me move forward and hook up with different collaborators and get a name.

It’s a tough business. It is. You’ve got to keep banging your head against that wall, man, and don’t stop. You can’t say it hurts. You just have to keep banging the head and you bust through the wall. So, that’s the name of the game.

Dave Kline: And that’s one of the things that you have to have as an artist, f you’re going to get somewhere. You certainly have to have your own voice and not try to sound like anyone else. Now, there’s nothing wrong with learning other people’s stuff. Now, I always resisted that. I never wanted to play anybody else’s stuff, really.

But there’s nothing wrong with that. But what is wrong is if you do that because you want to try to sound like them, as opposed to you’re going to assimilate by osmosis, what is it they’re doing? And then you add that to your own brew.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s your own voice that counts. It’s your own creativity. That’s important, because that’s what inspires people. I mean, it’s all about, to me, inspiring other people by giving them something that’s aesthetic, creative and innovating, exhilarating and inspiring them to themselves, increase their own imagination and creativity. That’s what I want to do with people.

Rick: Just to sing along.

Dave Kline: Yes, sing along. I mean, I always say the audience is the most important part of the show because not only are they there, and if they’re not there, if a tree falls in the forest, no one’s there. Right? Yeah. But it’s also if an audience is sitting there and they’re listening too and they’re getting your music, they are creating your music with you.

Rick: That’s true.

Dave Kline: They are themselves creating at that point in time. And I always like to remind the audience of that, because they don’t necessarily think of themselves as musicians, but actually they are. If they’re in an audience and they’re being at a show with musicians, they are being musicians in their own way. They’re being creators in their own way.

And to me, that’s what it’s about. Because there’s so much about this world which creates things for you or forces you into being created by something else. Life’s running you. And if you can inspire people to start running more of their own life by just enhancing their creativity or their own imagination, then you make a better world. And that’s where it’s at for me.

Rick: Good. You’ve played a lot of different venues, but you also play on the street and you busk, and I’ve seen at least one video of you busking, and you’re having a great time. And so tell me about some of your favorite venues, and then what do you get when you’re out there and you’ve got passersby coming, listening, some of them ignoring you, others stopping and being wowed by you?

Dave Kline: Yeah. Well, I’ve done several of those types of gigs recently. They have, actually, none of ’em have been strictly busking, not putting the mug out there for the money type thing. They’ve all been paid in one way or another, but they’ve been that type of a gig.

We just did a gig in Georgetown. They had some three stores open on the street, so the local people put on a little show, and they hired Veronneau. And I was playing with them to perform that thing you probably saw with me and Ken Avis, which looked like busking on the street, but was actually a paid gig, but we were doing it right on the street.

And yeah, it’s great because people will just walk by and they get it, and you are giving ’em something they don’t normally get, and it actually changes their life. It makes ’em think about things. It makes ’em look at things. It makes ’em stop for a second and not just continue on with the mundane, but go beyond that. And I love that. So I love doing those types of venues.

I love playing places like Blues Alley. I prefer to play in intimate clubs with about 150 people in them because you’ve got a great good size audience, but it’s intimate enough where you feel that you are really communicating with the audience.

I told the sound guy to not turn the lights all the way down at the gig the other night, because I like to see the audience and engage with them. You might feel safer with all the lights down, you can’t see anyone. But that’s not the purpose; to feel safe for the artist. It’s to engage. And so I really like the intimate type venues.

Rick: So, more that they’re listening rooms, rather than a loud bar.

Dave Kline:  If I know that it’s going to be a bar situation or a background music situation, most of the time I will refuse to do it. I will not take the gig, because to me, what’s the point? You might as well put your jukebox on.

Rick: I was going to say, you might as well be a jukebox, especially straight cover songs. You’re better off with a jukebox. It’s actually probably cheaper for the venue. Like you say, even if it’s a cover, you can change covers enough so people can figure out it’s a cover, but it’s got a different angle or various angles come into it.

Dave Kline: Yeah, that’s right.

Rick: Do you have any albums coming out, or do you have one recently that you can you talk about how that came together?

Dave Kline: Well, the last album, Shifting Borders, was 2017, which by the way, went to the top of the Roots music charts. Both the fusion and the jazz charts, and stayed there for 16 weeks. So, I was really happy about that.

But I keep threatening to bring out another album. I’ve recorded several things at Blues Alley gigs, but there’s always, and I’ve worked at them, to mix ’em, but it is very difficult to mix live music because you get so much bleed on the tracks. I’m hoping that this last gig was recorded, which if that comes out good, that will be a fantastic album with D.D. Jackson and David Murray on it.

I think that’s something that will be really worth releasing. But yeah, I’m planning on doing some recording with the current band with Buddy Spiers and T.J. and Olaolu, and probably doing it over at Buddy’s studio. And then we can, Dan Paul has a fantastic full size grand piano up in where he is, so he can do tracks remotely and we can mix ’em in.

I want do some recording there and do some tracks also with Ken and Lynn. So yeah, I’ve got a bunch of material that has not been recorded that I want to record. So, definitely looking to do that and to produce it a little bit differently to really make it just have a certain impact by production.

I usually produce my own albums, and it’s a little hard to do that actually. I want to get input from the guys, particularly Buddy on the next album. I think we can take it somewhere really great.

Rick: So when you’re on stage, what are some of the key elements that for you, makes a gig exciting? And I don’t mean exciting like rah rah, but maybe internally. It’s so satisfying. Those elements come together and it’s almost like a perfect gig.

Dave Kline: It’s funny. As I said, I tend to be quite introverted in many ways, but when I’m on stage, a really great gig starts with me being completely extroverted. And most of the time I am, and I start out with the attitude of just, I’m just going to, I almost have the attitude of a prize fighter, and I’m going to knock the audience out, and by the impact of the music.

What I found is if you can do that with the first tune, that from there on out, the audience is with you. They’re no longer spectators, but they’re involved. And it’s that interaction between the audience and the band. And if the band is doing the same within the band, if you have that connection within the band where the players are at a level musically and energy wise, where they’re playing off of one another, then that creates a juggernaut. So you get this juggernaut going inside the band, and then you get a juggernaut going between the band and the audience. And if you get that happening and the music’s good, you have a complete blowout gig.

Rick:  I’m sure you’ve had a lot of wonderful experiences while you’ve been on stage performing. Is there a gig that you’ve played recently that always brings a smile to you? Or maybe one, maybe years ago, but you did talk about working with Spiers in that last gig, and it sounds like that was one of ’em. Are there?

Dave Kline: That was like, “Oh my God, this is where it’s at.!” Because he and I, we were actually playing a blues tune, and it was just, the synergy was just amazing. And when you get that happening, it’s like Gestalt theory. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that’s what happens.

That’s what happened there. It was like boom, the music took on a life of its own. And I guess that in a way, not meaning to sound arrogant at all here, but what you’re doing, what are you doing when you create music, really, you’re creating life, aren’t you? And that’s what’s satisfying,

I think, because you are creating life in a way; that’s right here, right now. It’s never been created quite like that before and will never be created quite like that again. And if you get that synergy and that explosion happening inside the band and with the audience, everybody in that room is creating life at the same time.

Dave Kline

Rick:  So are those the moments when you get that synergy in the audience, how would you value that compared to when you’re sitting there and you come up with some lyrics and you go, “Whoa, where’d that come from? It’s perfect.”

Dave Kline: Well, that’s a good point. They’re two completely different experiences. One is the composition, the joy of composition, and the other is the joy of performance. And they are two different things. Because what happens with me is generally the stuff that I write almost writes itself.

And I don’t spend a lot of time, I’m notorious behind a console, I will tweak forever, but when I’m writing, I write the piece, it’s done. And I might rearrange it if I come up with a better idea on arrangement, later for live performance, but the actual piece is done, and I’ll write a piece in half hour. And that’s the way it is. It’ll be like that from then on.

The satisfaction on that is partly the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve just created something that’s outside of the material universe. I think that’s what you’re doing. So, I get the personal satisfaction of knowing that I am being, that I am doing that, and I am creating that. And with that also, there’s a sense of, I hear how it could be. Sometimes I’ll play an idea of a tune or a tune I’ve written for somebody else, and they don’t get it because they’re not envisioning what it’s going to be, like with the band. And I do, and I can see how that’s going to transfer over to that live performance concept.

Rick: Are you writing songs with lyrics, or are you doing mostly instrumental?

Dave Kline: I do write songs with lyrics. I’m a bit closed mouth on that.

Rick: I’ve got to hear some of them. Well, that’s what I’ve got, is there anything we’ve missed?

Dave Kline: That was a really thorough, I didn’t know I had all that in me. Thank you.

Dave Kline Facebook

The Dave Kline Band Website

 

Source: Prospect PR

Joe Bonamassa has officially released The Spirit Of Rory Live From Cork, a powerful live album and concert film celebrating the music and enduring legacy of Irish guitar legend Rory Gallagher. Available now via J&R Adventures, the project captures Bonamassa’s sold-out tribute performances in Cork, Ireland, where Gallagher’s influence remains woven into the fabric of the city itself. Alongside the album release, Bonamassa has also unveiled the epic live performance video for the project’s emotional centerpiece, “A Million Miles Away (Live).”

Recorded with the blessing of Gallagher’s family and performed before passionate hometown audiences, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Corkdocuments what many in attendance described as a once-in-a-lifetime musical event. A lifelong admirer of Gallagher, Bonamassa approached the material with deep reverence, bringing together a band capable of honoring the fire, spontaneity, and emotional honesty that defined Gallagher’s work while allowing the performances to breathe with their own energy.

Rory Gallagher remains one of Ireland’s most beloved musical figures, revered worldwide for a style that fused traditional electric blues with hard rock intensity, Celtic influences, and fearless improvisation. His distinctive guitar tone, expressive slide work, and deeply emotional performances inspired generations of players, including Bonamassa himself. Together, the album and film capture both the scale of Gallagher’s influence and the deep personal connection his music continues to inspire among musicians and fans around the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the heart of the release is “A Million Miles Away,” one of Gallagher’s most beloved and emotionally resonant compositions. Originally released on 1973’s Tattoo and a legendary extended rendition on his Irish Tour ‘74, the song captures themes of loneliness, longing, and emotional distance, pairing poetic imagery with one of Gallagher’s most vulnerable vocal performances. Joe’s DVD bonus features include a special interview with Rory’s brother, Donal, who recounts the story behind the song’s creation and visits the dramatic Irish cliffs whose rugged beauty helped inspire its emotional power.

Bonamassa’s interpretation embraces that emotional core. Filmed in front of a packed Cork audience, the performance unfolds with patience and restraint before building into a soaring guitar statement that reflects both Gallagher’s influence and Bonamassa’s own musical voice. The result serves as a fitting centerpiece for a project built on admiration, respect, and a shared love of the blues.

What began as a single tribute concert ultimately grew into a three-night sold-out run in Gallagher’s hometown, with fans traveling from around the world to celebrate the music. The atmosphere throughout the performances was electric, creating what Bonamassa describes as one of the most meaningful experiences of his career.

Early praise has already begun to reflect the significance of the project. Guitarist Magazine praised the release, writing, “Joe does his hero proud…a very fitting affectionate tribute to one of the most notable blues guitarists of our age.” Blues Matters hailed The Spirit Of Rory “one of the finest live albums ever produced,” while Powerplay awarded the project a perfect 10/10, writing that “Bonamassa has captured Gallagher’s genre-defining influence and honored it with flawless perfection.”

Joe Performing at Live At The Marquee – Photo Credit: Marcus Bird

Across fourteen carefully selected songs, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Corkexplores the full breadth of Gallagher’s catalog, from explosive live staples like “Walk On Hot Coals,” “Bullfrog Blues,” and “Bad Penny” to deeply personal performances including “Tattoo’d Lady” and “I Fall Apart.” The broader setlist was also inspired in part by the spirit of Gallagher’s legendary Irish Tour ‘74 era, which first introduced many listeners, including Bonamassa, to Gallagher’s singular live power.

The project also includes several moments of special historical significance, including Bonamassa’s performance of “As The Crow Flies” on Gallagher’s own 1930 National Triolian resonator guitar, generously loaned by the Cork Public Museum. Additional DVD and Blu-ray bonus features include The Inspiration of Rory, featuring conversations with Brian May and Slash, along with Rory’sAcoustic Guitar and Ballycotton – A Million Miles Away.

In celebration of the album’s release, European fans can now enter a special raffle benefiting the Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation, with the chance to win a one-of-a-kind signed Rory tribute guitar.

Joe Bonamassa with Rory’s brother Donal Gallagher and Irish Promoter Peter Aiken

The raffle runs from June 19th through July 20th, with donations supporting KTBA’s ongoing mission of funding music education and assisting musicians in need. The centerpiece of the raffle is a Classic Series ‘60s Fender Stratocaster personally purchased by Bonamassa at Cork’s legendary Crowley’s Music Centre and was subsequently signed backstage by Bonamassa, members of the band, Rory Gallagher’s family and others involved in the historic event. The prize package also includes a Joe signed copy of the Red Marble Double Vinyl, a CD/DVD or CD/Blu-ray package, and a $100 merchandise credit to the Joe Bonamassa online store.

Ultimately, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Cork stands as both a celebration and a thank-you letter – from one guitarist to another, from one generation of blues musicians to the next, and from a devoted fan to an artist whose influence continues to resonate decades after his passing.

As Bonamassa wrote in the project’s liner notes: “What you hear on these recordings is our best effort to pay tribute to Rory Gallagher, a man I never met, but admire so deeply. His music is part of me and I’m grateful that we were able to contribute in some small way to his ongoing legacy.”

CD Track Listing
1. Cradle Rock (Live)
2. Walk On Hot Coals (Live)
3. Tattoo’d Lady (Live)
4. I Wonder Who (Live)
5. Calling Card (Live)
6. Who’s That Coming? (Live)
7. Messin’ With The Kid (Live)
8. Bullfrog Blues (Live)
9. Treat Her Right (Live)
10. Bad Penny (Live)
11. I Fall Apart (Live)
12. A Million Miles Away (Live)
13. As The Crow Flies (Live)
14. Back On My Stompin’ Ground (Live)

DVD / Blu-Ray
1. The Spirit Of Rory (Opening Scene)
2. Cradle Rock
3. Walk On Hot Coals
4. Tattoo’d Lady
5. I Wonder Who
6. Calling Card
7. Who’s That Coming?
8. Messin’ With The Kid
9. Band Introductions
10. Bullfrog Blues
11. Treat Her Right
12. Bad Penny
13. I Fall Apart
14. A Million Miles Away
15. As The Crow Flies
16. Back On My Stompin’ Ground
17. Ballycotton (End Credits)

DVD / Blu-Ray Bonus Features:

• Ballycotton – A Million Miles Away
• Rory’s Acoustic Guitar
• The Inspiration of Rory (A Conversation with Brian May & Slash)

Vinyl  (180 gram Red Marble Double LP)

Side A
1. Cradle Rock (Live)
2. Walk On Hot Coals (Live)
3. Tattoo’d Lady (Live)
4. I Wonder Who (Live)

Side B
5. Calling Card (Live)
6. Who’s That Coming? (Live)
7. Messin’ With The Kid (Live)
8. Bullfrog Blues (Live)

Side C
9. Treat Her Right (Live)
10. Bad Penny (Live)
11. I Fall Apart (Live)

Side D
12. A Million Miles Away (Live)
13. As The Crow Flies (Live)
14. Back On My Stompin’ Ground (Live)

U.S. SUMMER TOUR 2026
June 26 – Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts w/ JJ Grey & Mofro & D.K. Harrell
June 27 – Atlantic City, NJ – Ocean Casino Resort
June 28 – Newark, NJ – New Jersey Performing Arts Center
July 4 –  Sioux City, IA – Saturday in the Park
July 29 – Vienna, VA – Wolf Trap w/ Gov’t Mule
July 31 – Bangor, ME – Maine Savings Amphitheater w/ Gov’t Mule
August 1 – Gilford, NH – BankNH Pavilion w/ Gov’t Mule
August 3 – Hyannis, MA – Cape Cod Melody Tent
August 5 – Bridgeport, CT – Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater w/ JJ Grey & Mofro
August 7 – Selbyville, DE – Freeman Arts Pavilion
August 8 – Baltimore, MD – Pier Six Pavilion w/ Gov’t Mule
August 9 – Youngstown, OH – The Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre w/ Gov’t Mule
August 11 – Huber Heights, OH – Rose Music Center at The Heights
August 12 – Highland Park, IL – Ravinia Festival
August 14 – Interlochen, MI – Kresge Auditorium w/ Gov’t Mule
August 15 – Welch, MN – Treasure Island Resort & Casino w/ Gov’t Mule
August 16 – Lincoln, NE – Pinewood Bowl Theater w/ Gov’t Mule
August 19 – Cheyenne, WY – Cheyenne Civic Center
August 20 – Salt Lake City, UT – Eccles Theater
August 22 – Albuquerque, NM – Sandia Resort & Casino
August 23 – Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre
September 26-27 – Austin, TX – Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival @ Moody Center

EU FALL TOUR 2026
October 21 – Helsinki, FL – Veikkaus Arena
October 23 – Stockholm, SE – Stockholm Avicii Arena
October 24 – Oslo, NO – Oslo Spektrum
October 25 – Gothenburg, SE – Göteborg Partille Arena
October 27 – Copenhagen, DK – K.B. Hallen København
October 29 – Rostock, DE – Stadthalle Rostock
October 30 – Berlin, DE – Uber Arena
October 31 – Dortmund, DE – Westfalenhalle
November 4 – Milan, IT – Unipol Forum
November 6 – Toulouse,FR – Zenith Toulouse Metropole
November 7 – Barcelona, ES – Barcelona Sant Jordi Club
November 8 – Madrid, ES – Madrid Palacio Vistalegre
November 11 – Wroclaw, Poland – Ethno Festival

ABOUT JOE BONAMASSA
Blues-rock superstar Joe Bonamassa is one of the most celebrated performing musicians of his generation. A five-time GRAMMY-nominated artist and 15-time Blues Music Award nominee – with four wins – he recently notched his 30th No. 1 album on the Billboard Blues Chart with B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100, extending his record for the most No. 1 albums in the chart’s history. With more than 50 releases spanning studio and live recordings, he has built a far-reaching, multi-genre catalog.

Beyond performing, Bonamassa plays a central role in today’s blues landscape as a producer and curator. Working closely with Josh Smith, he has produced albums for artists including Joanne Shaw Taylor, Marc Broussard, Larry McCray, and Jimmy Hall through his Journeyman and KTBA labels. He also curates and headlines sold-out destination events like Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea and Sound Wave Beach Weekend, while his Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation has funded hundreds of music education projects across the country.

A dedicated student of the instrument, Bonamassa is also known as one of the world’s leading guitar collectors and historians, with a deep connection to the lineage of blues and rock. For more information, visit http://www.jbonamassa.com.

Guitar International and the masterful singer-songwriter, producer, author and music historian-presenter, Rod MacDonald, continue our conversation about Rod’s music career, including challenges, songwriting, memorable performances, the quiet times of creating, and the situational flexibility to change on a dime to address audience dynamics.

If you missed the beginning of our conversation, please go to PART 1 HERE! and PART 2 HERE!

“A keen sense of humor, an ingratiating way with romantic songs, and just enough recklessness to keep an audience wondering.” 

Buffalo Daily News

“Rod MacDonald is a brilliant folk singer and composer. His melodic songs possess words that go straight into your heart and soul.” Atlantic City

(NJ) Press

“One of the most highly regarded singer-songwriters working in North America today” 

Fast Folk Musical Magazine

CHECK OUT ROD’S 2026 CALENDAR! 

Rod MacDonald

Rick: It seems to me that based on what you’ve accomplished, it takes a certain amount of discipline and some resilience not only to start a project, which is always kind of fun, but getting to the finish line, as it seems to be the last 5% of a project that’s the hardest part of most projects. It sounds like you’re a finisher, you like to get things done and you crunch through that last 5% and get it right.

Rod MacDonald: I do like to get things done. I’ll even do things that I know I’m not going use just to finish them and then put ’em aside and say, “Well, okay, but at least this is done if I ever want to come back to it.”

That’s definitely part of my personality, no doubt about it. I like to finish things and I like to finish them to the degree that I think that they’re where they belong, that they’re as good as they can be. I don’t like to leave things unfinished very much, unless I feel like every once in a while you come to a place where you think, “Well, I don’t think this is going to get any better no matter what I do, but I still don’t think it’s good enough to release.”

Andt then you have to let go of it. The song will occasionally end up that way. And then sometimes I’ll put it on my website as an archival recording later on and say, “Because it’s the only recording of this song. And every once in a while somebody will write me a letter or an email or say, “Hey, have you ever recorded such and such a song? I heard you do it at a gig and I loved it and I’d love to get a copy of it.” And then that’s what I’ll send them, that kind of thing.

But, yes, I am definitely a finisher.

Mark Dann and I work very well together. I’d have to give Mark a lot of credit as leading me through a lot of the processes of recording and finishing work, but I’m finicky about the details. I’ll send a mix back and have him correct it just because I hear something going in the background at some point in the mix, I’ll make run, another one without that in it, that kind of thing. I’m very finicky about details, but I do finished work.

Rick: When you’re writing your songs, writing your books, and when you develop your workshop presentations, that’s kind of a loner type of a world. And then you go out and you perform, which is more of an extrovert situation. How would you define yourself?

Rod MacDonald: I’m a little bit of both. I don’t think I’m naturally an ebullient person. I’ve come across artists who say,”The stage is my home.” I definitely don’t feel that way. I have to get up on stage and work my way through it.

I even had a woman once offered to pay for me to take lessons and how to smile more on stage. And I asked a friend of mine who’s in theater who teaches acting to teach me how to smile more on stage. And he’s a guy that’s come to a lot of my shows and he thought about it for a second and he said, “No, I won’t do it.”

“I said, really? Why not?” And he said, “Because, one of the things I like about watching you perform is watching you wrestle with it. And I don’t want to teach you how to be slick. I don’t want to see you be slick.”

And so I guess that’s a good analysis of the fact that I do have to wrestle with it a little bit. Years ago, back in the 1990s, I was traveling in the Midwest and I was holed up for a couple of days between shows and this woman who was affiliated with the club that I was there to play, very nice lady, asked me if I would like her to read my horoscope chart.

I said, “Well, I dunno, that’s kind of a personal thing.” And she said, “I’m really quite good at it and I rely on real material, real fixed material. I don’t just make it up. So, we had an afternoon hanging around, we were drinking coffee, and I said, “Okay, go for it.”

And one of the things that she said to me, I’m not sure if I have this exactly right, was that because I’m a Leo as a sun sign, but my moon sign or my birth sign rising sign, one of those is in Saturn. She said that I’m an unusual combination of a person who has both the ability to jump to the forefront of a situation and really be a leader of it, or alternately sit at the back of the room and very quietly observe everybody else. She said, there are very few people who have this dual ability, but you do. I absolutely understood what she meant right off the top. I had no problem. I didn’t at all go “Really? I never thought of that.”

I had never thought of it consciously, but I instinctively knew that it was true. I do have those two abilities. I often get put in leadership situations. In fact, almost every situation I’ve ever been involved in, people have put me in a leadership position without my even asking them to.

And then I sort of direct traffic. I think that one of the reasons that I’m good at it is that I don’t do it from a very egotistical point of view. I don’t sit there and go like, “Oh, I’m so important or anything like that. I kind of do it from a very pragmatic point of view, where I try to get the best out of everybody involved and let everybody do what they want to do and somehow make it make sense.

I’ve been the band leader of almost every band I’ve ever been in, even though I’m almost never the best musician in the band. In fact, I don’t even want to be the best musician in the band. I like to surround myself with better musicians than myself and then kind of direct traffic and get everybody to maximize what they do, without them having to think about telling everybody else what to do. So that is one reason why I think I’ve worked well with other musicians, probably a personality thing.

And then at the same time, I do have the ability to sit at the back of the room and listen and just kind of take it all in. And maybe this has allowed me to be a bit of a producer of my own recordings, but also of other people. I’ve produced a few recordings for people. I’ve directed a little bit of traffic. Sometimes people have invited me to their sessions and they’ll ask me what I think and I’ll diplomatically tell them and they’ll sometimes even do what I suggest. So I think that’s true. That’s something I can do both ways. So, I do find that the introspective part of it can be very rewarding.

When I feel really tuned into the writing, which isn’t always but does happen, and that’s when I write, is when I feel connected to it. And it’s an irregular thing. It’s something I can cultivate, but it’s also something that just kind of springs on me sometimes when I feel connected to the writing. It feels great when you have something that comes through and you are able to get it down in such a way that you feel makes sense. I really love that feeling. And it’s a solitary thing, absolutely.

It’s just you and the bull and you end up working your way through it. And sometimes it can be draining. I’ve burst into tears, fortunately, nobody else is around to see me feel like I’m embarrassing myself when that happens. But I’ve had that feeling in the writing process, and then you have to kind of try to take that out to the public.

The funny thing is that I didn’t understand that dynamic when I was young. I think I actually learned it from the process, specifically. This isn’t the only time it’s happened. When I was younger, I used to write songs that I think I thought people would like; happy, upbeat, kind of funny type stuff. And people liked them, okay, but they weren’t the songs that they were blown away by. They weren’t the memorable songs for people.

When I wrote “Cross Country Waltz”, which is one of my earliest songs on the White Buffalo album, and when I wrote American Jerusalem in 1978 or so, I played it for a songwriting workshop that I was going to with my peers in the Village. And everybody listened to it, and nobody said a word after I played it. Nobody said a word to me except my roommate, Tom Inandi, who was a former English teacher in high school who had become a singer-songwriter in the Village. And he was my roommate. And he was a great influence to be around because he didn’t really write words himself, but he really understood lyric writing on a listener level. And he looked at me after that song and he said, “I’m going to learn that.

And then Shawn Colvin said, “Can you teach me that song?” She learned it away right after I wrote it. Didn’t record it until 2015 or something, but she learned it right away and sang it all these years. And then I was playing a gig at Folk City one night and I was opening for somebody and I was playing some, what I thought the audience favorites were supposed to be.

Lucy Lansky, who’s a pretty good singer and writer herself, was the bartender. And she yelled from behind the bar, “Aren’t you going to play American Jerusalem?” And then everybody in the crowd who’d never heard the song kind of went, “What’s that?” And so I played it, and of course, it’s six minutes long and it’s very quiet, it’s very personal, and they really loved it. And everybody started asking me to play this song.

And somewhere in that process I realized that it’s okay to really externalize your inner self in song, that that’s to a great extent, what people actually most want from you.

So, if you can get to that place where you’re really kind of expressing your most inner feelings about things, and that’s what people are mostly going to remember, most of those songs come about spontaneously. They might get triggered by hearing a phrase or thinking, “I’d like to address this kind of situation,” or whatever it is. But most of those songs as songwriters often say, they kind of write themselves. It’s like they’re passing by and they choose you to download. And that’s often the most memorable songs in your repertoire. I think for most songwriters,

Rick: Well, maybe they resonate because they align more closely with your core values.

Rod MacDonald: And maybe they also resonate because that’s probably true, even if you’re expressing them poetically. And I think also it’s probably true that when people see you sing those songs, they think that’s the real you. Oh, this is the real guy here.

Rick: True.

Rod MacDonald: This isn’t the guy who’s put on some happy mask. For my sake, this is the real guy. And people are drawn to that. I mean, we all loved The Beatles, and John Lennon said he never wrote a song that meant a thing to him until “In My Life”, which is what, their fourth or fifth album. So there is a place in music, especially popular music for well constructed songs, you might say. But I think that at the end of the day, what people really want is the real deal, and that’s you, something that you have to work at, but it’s kind of a gift when it comes to you.

Rick: Yeah. So do you have a favorite setting where you maybe prefer to perform? Concerts, small venues, festivals, and do you have any favorite or humorous performance moments?

Rod MacDonald: Oh, geeze. Well, everybody who’s done as many gigs as I have has humorous performance moments. But I don’t know. I like a lot of it. When I moved to Florida was playing in bars. I’d never done much of that when I was living in the village. I never really liked it because I didn’t like subjecting my own songs to the noise.

But I found that playing in the Irish Trio in West Palm Beach on weekends, for years, that I became a much better musician. And I got a lot of satisfaction out of that. And in fact, a friend of mine who’s maybe my oldest real good musician friend came down and visited me during that time. He’s in the traditional music world, he’s a mandolinist. And he sat in with us and he said, “You’re really getting better. This is a good thing for you to be doing. You’re going to become a much better guitar player from doing this on a regular basis.”

So I like that. I like anything that I feel is a fun experience and I of course love any fun experience when the audience really responds and gets it, that’s great. And they get it a lot of the time in almost any real listening situation. I think audiences like my songwriting and singing, and I play a fair amount of gigs where they’re unfamiliar with me because frankly, I’ve not been marketed by anybody.

So, I can show up in a city somewhere in another part of the country that I’ve never been before. And the audience that’s there is largely going to be, you might say, speculative. They’re going to be there because the promoter of the gig told them, “Hey, this guy’s really good. You should check him out.” Or there’s an article in the newspaper, or they heard one song on the local folk radio station and they’re deciding, “Okay, I like that song. I’ll go see this guy. I like this series. I am a regular member of this series, so I guess I’ll go see this guy.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

I play a fair amount of shows like that, and they’re usually very good. I think that I do well with those audiences. I like those kind of shows. I like the challenge. And then there are some places that I play. I play The People’s Voice Cafe in New York City every February. And the Turning Point in Piermont, I do that almost every year. And in fact, I’ve done the People’s Voice Cafe now for 15 years in a row. Really the same weekend every year. And a lot of those people that come are my long, loyal, longtime fans, and they could tell you or probably request songs that I do that I haven’t played in years.

And I’ll try to accommodate one or two of those requests. I like to challenge myself almost every show. I do one song that I haven’t played in a while, that I haven’t played for an audience so that each audience gets something special and unique out of me.

I love festivals. I just played Falcon Ridge this past summer, and that was really great. That was fun. I was on the main stage twice. One of the times was solo, and one of the times was with Joe Jenks and Pete and Maura Kennedy, and those were really fun. I do some Dylan Fests where everybody plays Bob Dylan songs. I’ve done a lot of those with Pete and Maura. Those are really fun. I suppose my least favorite gig is places where people really aren’t there for the music. They’re just okay. I mean, you do your best with those, but they’re not as much fun as playing for a crowd that’s really there to hear your music.

Rick: Like listening rooms are pretty good.

Rod MacDonald: Okay, let me off the top of my head, let me see if I can free associate some memorable, bizarre situations.

I played in Zagreb, Croatia, twice, once in about 1997 and once in 2024 for the same promoter both times. And the first time we went there, the first gig was in a gymnasium that would’ve easily held 5,000 people. And we were on the stage at one end of it and about a hundred feet away, collected in the middle of the basketball floor were about a hundred chairs where people were sitting when we started to play.

I could not make a thing out on stage. I mean, we had monitors, but the volume that it took to project out to the audience and the emptiness of the room created so much echo that it was like that psych experiment where they put your headphones on you and then delay your voice while you talk until you can’t talk anymore , because you just can’t separate the reflection from the real thing. And it was so weird. And we played one song and we finished the song and it was just total soup on stage. We played one song and the entire audience stood up and started cheering and clapping, and we kind of looked at each other and went, “I guess it sounds okay to them.”

So we just slugged our way through it, and they absolutely loved it. They thought it was a brilliant concert. So there’s an example of where you really have to know what you’re doing on stage. You have to be able to execute your music even when the situation that you’re listening to is just awful.

Then the very next night, we played a huge dance club for about a thousand people, and there were actually a thousand people in the club. And the speakers, they had these subwoofers under the stage because they were blasting disco music in between. And every note that Mark hit on the bass made my teeth rattle. I mean, it was unbelievably loud on stage, and I couldn’t function, and we didn’t get to do a soundcheck. They put us up in front of a thousand people with no soundcheck. So I plugged in my guitar and he plugged in his bass, and the next thing I know, it’s like, “Oh God, this is painful.” And the sound man doesn’t speak any English. So I’m pointing at the bass and to the floor. And he thinks I’m meaning, turn it up, turn up what’s underneath me. And I’m going like, “No, please turn it down, turn it down.”

And finally somebody went over to the guy and I guess understood English and said to him, “He means turn the bass down.”

And we finally got it down to where it was possible to stand on stage and play. And so we started off with a song of mine called “The Aliens Came in Business Suits”, which is from White Buffalo back in 1986 or so. And it’s the very first song that I wrote that was a spoken word piece, but it’s a real guitar extravaganza. There’s a lot of instrumental work in it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And they were yelling and dancing and jumping around like crazy, all right in front of the stage, like a big rock arena type show. And we’re cranked up and we’re just acoustic guitar and bass. And we got through it and they went nuts. And so I turned to Mark and I said, “We’re just going to play all of my loudest and fastest songs here. That’s what we’re going to do.” And so that’s what we did, and we ended up having a pretty fun time with the crowd loving it and stuff. But I mean, you have to be able to react to the moment sometimes, particularly because we’re not one of those acts that arrives in a bus with our own sound crew. We’re getting up and playing.

You have to be able to tell the sound guys what you need, and you have to know what that is in each situation. And then on the same tour in rural Italy, at one of those places that’s like on a farm somewhere where they make all their own salami and wine and bread and cheese, and they’re hoping that people from the town will drive out.

And so we are in this restaurant with about 20 people in the audience and the sound system and a kind of a vacuum cleaner. It’s like this hose that you put in front of you and you sing into, and it sounds like you have to force your vocal into this tunnel. And then it comes out the other end of this device that’s sitting next to you on the stage going so loud that it’s drowning out everything you’re doing.

And I looked at the guy that was, and he was very proud of his P.A. I said, “We can’t use that.” And he goes, “What do you mean? And I got him to shut the thing off, and we just sang and played. Fortunately, I can play and sing loud enough into a small room, they can hear it. So we just did the concert with no sound at all. So again, it’s a situation where you have to be prepared. I remember talking about this recently, I was playing Easter Sunday at Folk City with a five piece band.

My piano player, a guy named Bernie Shanahan, who was a very good rock and roll piano player and a good guy…was kind of religious, Catholic. And we were playing on Easter Sunday, and he wanted to watch Jesus of Nazareth, which was being broadcast as a special on some TV network. So we watched Jesus of Nazareth before going over to do the gig, and then we got there and he said, “We shouldn’t do this show.” I said, “Why is that?” And he said, “It’s sacrilegious to be playing our music on a night after watching something like that.” I said, “There’s nothing sacrilegious about our show.”

Well, we did have one song called “All of the Same Old Saviors” that was kind of a not very religious type song. And so we got up on stage and I was playing electric guitar and Folk City in those days had a pretty primitive P.A., probably had the same P.A. he’d had for 25 years. And we started into the first song and the sound man flipped the ground switch like 30 seconds into the first song and sent a bolt of lightning through the microphone into my nose!

Knocked me flat backwards into the drum set, knocked over the drums, and of course the music came to a grinding stop and the audience was horrified. Well, we had done a soundcheck, and then he flipped the ground switch during the first actual song. So we got back up and Bernie looks at me and he goes, “I told you, I told you.”

And then the sound man waves at me. And he goes, “It’s okay. I got it fixed. But I did the rest of that night, really keeping my distance from the microphone, which of course is pretty tough to do because you’re singing in front of a band and it’s loud on stage. I mean, there are those things, and then there are other things. Sometimes stuff happens that’s just, I don’t know, kind of crazy. And sometimes it’s a happy accident when something happens.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was playing one time at the Florida Folk Festival. There’s this pavilion down by the Suwanee River that’s kind of a legendary venue run by a longtime guy who’s no longer with us. And they didn’t use a P.A. It was like a gazebo on the river, and there’d be 50 people there and you’d just sing to ’em.

And there was a Chinese couple and they had their little daughter with them. And she was very young, very, very pretty little girl, two, three years old, whatever it was. And I started singing a song called “I’m Your Dad,” that I wrote for my daughter when she was first born. And this little girl wearing this really pretty little blue dress, started dancing around in front of me, holding her arms up to the sky. She was creating wings for herself and just dancing around in a circle. And she danced around in front of me for the whole song. And the audience was just spellbound, me included. I mean, could barely, it was so beautiful. I almost forgot where I was several times in the song. And it was just a really beautiful moment. And then when it was over, she went back and sat with her parents for the rest of the set, and I just went on.

Afterwards everybody came up to me and said, “Oh God, that was so incredible!” And it really was, was just a beautiful thing. But then on the other hand, here’s another one. When my rock and roll band was playing in Hartford back in the late Seventies, we used to play a song called, “I Don’t Believe You Don’t Want To Dance”. I never released it commercially, but it’s actually on this USB drive that I just released this past year. It’s an older song and it’s a very uptempo song, a real dance number. And there was a dance floor at the club that we were playing, and people got up and danced a lot if we played anything that was fun to dance to.

And so we started playing that song, and I think it was the end of the night. It was the very last song of the night. And we started playing that song. There was this guy who was kind of short and there was this very tall six foot blonde woman, very slender, very pretty, and for some reason they ended up on the dance floor together. I don’t know if they were a couple. And he started dancing really vigorously trying to get her attention.

And she just looked at him like, who are you? And he didn’t quit. He did this for the entire song. He danced, rings around her, he just chugged around her in this circle. And then everybody else on the dance floor backed off and started clapping and watching him. And this guy put on this amazing show dancing in a circle around this girl who clearly didn’t want anything to do with him, but didn’t know what to do. And she was kind of looking out across the crowd for one of her friends to come bail her out. And wherever her friends were, they were probably clapping along for this too and maybe didn’t realize, but we could see from the stage that she was really not very comfortable with this.We kept playing this song, and one of the members of my band was a woman, Peggy Atwood, and she kind of looked at me, raised her eyebrows, “Are you going to wrap this song up to this Poor girl Can get away?” But the song had a real fixed arrangement, and there was a lengthy guitar solo that was part of the arrangement, and we weren’t going to tell the guitar player that he couldn’t play his solo. So we played the entire song, and this went on for five full minutes of this guy dancing in rings around this girl. And finally we ended this song and the lights came on, I think while we were still playing the song, which the restaurant had a very strict policy when the lights came on, stop playing, get it over with. So we were done and the girl walked away and just turned her back on the guy, and everybody walked away and everybody kind of applauded for the guy what he’d just done. He’d really done this amazing dance.

Was like a meeting dance. I couldn’t describe it any other way, but it obviously didn’t work. And then in that same club on another night, we were playing, I think in about 19, the spring of 1980, and it was right after the Iranian hostages had been released,

And somebody walked up to me while we were on stage and said, “Do you know that there’s one of the Iranian hostages is in the audience? And I said, “No kidding. Ask him if he’d like to come up and say a few words. And we played another song and the guy came back up to me and he said, “Yeah” that he would be glad to do that. So I said, “Okay”.

Well, we got a couple more songs to do this set and then I’ll invite him up. So we did. And then I said, and the audience, it was a big dance club, and so there were people drinking and partying, and it wasn’t like a quiet crowd, but it was a responsive crowd. They would clap and cheer at the end of songs, a noisy crowd. I walked up to the mic and I said, we have one of the hostages recently back from Iran here tonight, and it was the most amazing transformation. Everybody jumped to their feet and started cheering and clapping. Up until that moment, I wouldn’t have believed that everybody was paying that much attention to anything I said.

But they jumped to their feet and started cheering and clapping immediately, like everybody in the place all the way to the far end of the room had heard what I said. I thought, “Holy smoke!” And then they clapped and the guy walked up through the crowd and he got up on the crowd to the microphone and we stepped back, and I guess I stayed on stage. I didn’t want to abandon him up there. Well, I figured what I would do would be when he was done that there’d be a big round of applause, and we’d say, “We’re going to take a break. We’ll be right back.” We stayed on stage and he said to the crowd, “Thank you for that welcome.” And then he paused for a moment and he said, “I have to tell you that for quite some time, we thought that people had completely forgotten about us. And the mood in the room suddenly turned unbelievably ugly. I looked out at the crowd and I thought they were going to walk up on stage and beat us all to a pulp.  Really, you could see the anger rising in people. And I thought, “Oh my God.”

I remember the lead guitar player Bill turning to me with his eyes wide, we got to get out of here. And then the guy said, “But you’ve just shown me that that wasn’t true. Thank you so very much.”

And he walked off the stage and then there was this kind of half-hearted applause, but everybody chilled. And I said, “Okay, thanks everybody. We’ll be right back.” And we got the hell out of there as fast as we could. And you learn a basic lesson from that, that if you do that, you better be prepared for whatever reaction you might get.

I mean, those are some of the magic moments I’ve been thinking lately about a song of mine called,”The Minstrel Boy” that I want to record that I’ve wrote 30 or 40 years ago and recorded a couple of times, but never released.

And it has a line in there. “You sat out on the highway looking for a living, trying to remember the people are listening with an ear or two though they may sleep through your finest lines. You walk along the shore, you sleep out in the dirt, you used to know the score, but now you’re really searching to one night they’re quiet and you feel it all light up before your eyes. It makes the man a minstrel boy.”

And I was trying to remember the first time that really happened. I think that it was probably me at Folk City in the 1970s that I had really been yearning to really get over to an audience that I was really motivated to play and sing my songs, but that I really kind of needed to have that happen.  I know that it happened at Folk City one time I was playing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I played two of my quietest and longest songs, “American Jerusalem” and “Sandcastles” at the end of my set back to back and got this really amazing encore from the audience, and it was like a really beautiful moment. And then I went back up on stage and played another song and everybody really loved it. And I just thought, “Wow, it was really magical. But I was the opening act and the headlining act, instead of taking a break, rushed up on stage and said to the crowd, “Thank you for staying through all of that.” What? A couple people booed her.

Rick: Wow.

Rod MacDonald: A couple people booed her for her lack of grace. It was kind of weird.

Rick: Yeah, it was weird. Jealous. Sounds like it’s jealousy,

Rod MacDonald: Insecurity, insecurity.

Rick: Your competition.

Rod MacDonald: You can’t think of opening acts that way. I’ve opened for a lot of people and the best of them always walk up and say something nice about you, even if you didn’t have that great a set. They’re just smart enough to say that and move on. I remember opening for Tom Rush and having a really great set once and getting an encore, and he walked up on stage and he goes, “How about that Rod McDonald?” That’s all he did. Everybody gets to clap a little more. And he goes “Okay! And then he goes into his thing and I thought, “Class act.” Exactly the way you want it handled. Really nice man and a gracious person. It’s part of his DNA and that’s a good thing.

I mean that’s something actually that I strive to emulate when you witness something like that, you think I want to be like that. I have guys open for me all the time too, guys and women in groups and whoever, and you always want to say something nice about ’em.

Rick: Yeah, it’s honorable to do that as well, I think.

Rod MacDonald: It’s honorable, but it’s also that everybody who gets up on stage is putting themselves on the line. It takes a certain amount of courage, even if you’re naive, even if you’re blind, even if you’re a maniac, it still takes a certain amount of courage to get up there and do that.

But anyway, when I sang those two really quiet songs and realized the most personal stuff sometimes is the most magical thing, and the people just lit up before my eyes. It’s what happens. And that’s kind of what you want to have. And as you get better and better, that happens more and more as you get more, I mean, I started out without a lot of experience doing this. Some people start playing when they’re 12 years old, but I did not, I never really faced an audience with a guitar in my hands till I was in my twenties. So, I had to really kind of figure it out.

BONUS VIDEO!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Roger McGuinn Interview

by Rick Landers

During the mid-60s, the US music scene was overwhelmed with rock groups from England, to the point where the phrase “British invasion” entered the American lexicon. In response, one homegrown U.S. group emerged to fill the airwaves with a new and unique sound that became known as folk rock.

The Byrds.

The Bryds were fronted by Roger McGuinn on vocals and his chimey 12-string Rickenbacker. The group laid down the gauntlet with a string of singles with McGuinn’s signature “jingle jangle” guitar work shining through with strong melodic undercurrents.

Although, Roger was certainly the hub of the group, David Crosby, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clark were equals when their mix of personalities, musical influences and individual talents sparked, igniting hits like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “So You Wanna Be a Rock ‘n Roll Star,” and “Eight Miles High.” All of the songs are enduring classics that conjure up the phantasmagorical subculture of the Haight-Ashbury and Carnaby Street scenes, where the air was filled with flower power, peace, love, music, incense and other sweet smells of the moment.

Late in their career, the Byrds settled into their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album that would inspire the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers and others into yet another style called Country Rock. The group disbanded in 1973 and Roger moved on to a solo career.

By 1978, Roger, Gene Clark and Chris Hillman got back together and signed a six album deal with Capitol Records and released their first LP McGuinn, Clark & Hillman (Capitol Records — 1979). Unfortunately, the group didn’t capture the magic or success of their previous collaboration and eventually moved on. There were more fitful starts and stops and by the 1980s, Roger’s solo career again made sense.

Born James Joseph McGuinn III in Chicago on July 13, 1942, by the time Roger reached his teens, he was inspired by such songs as “Abilene,” “Well, Well, Well,” and “You Can Tell The World” and their co-writer, folk legend Bob Gibson.

A folk singer at heart, McGuinn has maintained the storytelling tradition of that genre in his songs for his entire career. This coupled with his sense of musical composition and other talents have blessed him with not only a long career, but one where the name Roger McGuinn is well respected and recognized around the world.

In 1991, McGuinn, along with the Byrds, was inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. That same year he released his superb Back From Rio CD that included a cast of luminaries like Elvis Costello, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, John Jorgensen and Michael Penn.

Always a traditionalist, McGuinn again journeyed back to his roots in 2002 when he released Treasures From the Folk Den with a series of duets that include Pete Seeger, Odetta, Josh White Jr., Joan Baez, and Judy Collins. This highly acclaimed CD was nominated in 2002 for a Grammy in the Best Traditional Folk Album category.

As an early adopter of new technologies, Roger has gained expertise in the area of home recording and in 2004 issued the DVD Roger McGuinn’s Guide to Home Recording on a Computer. The DVD is an instructional course that takes viewers through editing, fading, and mixing a recording as he lays down songs track by track. At one point, he makes a mistake, then takes the time to show his “students” how to fix it.

McGuinn has two other DVDs available, one that gives instruction on twelve-string guitar (The 12-String Guitar of Roger McGuinn) and another on how to play folk guitar (Roger McGuinn’s Basic Folk Guitar).

This year McGuinn released The Folk Den Project 1995 — 2005, a four CD edition that compiles 100 of his favorite folk tunes. The Folk Den effort started out as a way for Roger to help preserve the folk music tradition of handing down music to the next generation and this new set pulls together the best of the best doing just that.

Modern Guitars (Guitar International) met with Roger before he went on stage at the Melodee Music auditorium in Sterling, Virginia, where he sang and talked to the audience about his career, his interests in music, and some of the guitar techniques he’s employed to get that signature McGuinn sound.

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Many people claim that you first discovered the 12-string guitar after seeing George Harrison play his Rickenbacker?

Roger McGuinn: The first 12-string guitar I bought was probably around 1957. I was influenced by Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Bob Gibson and a lot of the folk singers. In the late 50s, I was in Chicago and went to the Old Town School of Folk Music. That’s where I learned about Leadbelly. Leadbelly’s guitar is in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

I went to the south side of Chicago and got what I thought was a Stella, but it had a spruce top. It was a nice sounding guitar. I got a 12-string very early on and it wasn’t my main instrument, but something that was certainly part of my repertoire.

On your Limited Edition CD, you pay tribute to George. Was he a friend?

RM: Yes, we were friends. He was very reserved. A really sweet guy, he loved his music, loved his family. Not much to say. We went to his house in Hyde Park and he was kind enough to show us around. He let me play his Rickenbacker that he played on A Hard Day’s Night. Showed us around his studio and we all went out to dinner. Early on the Byrds went to see A Hard Day’s Night, a kind of reconnaissance trip. And we took notes on what the Beatles were playing and bought instruments like they had. We got a Gretsch Country Gentleman and the Rick.

You recorded “Turn, Turn, Turn” before forming the Byrds?

RM: I was sort of a sideman. I was a studio musician in New York. I did quite a few sessions with Elecktra Records. And around 1963, Judy Collins was doing a session at the time. So, Jac Holzman (Founder, Elektra Records) had me recording on a Judy Collins album and I started playing on that track. I ended up coming up with a lot of ideas and by the end of it she gave me a nice, very generous, credit as Musical Director.

What songwriters have influenced you or you’ve enjoyed over the years?

RM: Songwriters, hmm. Let’s see, I loved Lennon and McCartney, Pete Seeger, love his work. Bob Dylan, loved his songwriting. You mentioned Fred Neil earlier, I like his work too. People like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell.

How did the instantly recognizable Byrds sound come about?

RM: The sound actually was formed in New York before I flew out to California. Well, not the 12-string Rickenbacker part, but the part about mixing folk and rock.

I was working as a songwriter in Bobby Darin’s publishing company in the Brill Building. My job was to listen to the radio and write songs like ones that came over on the radio.

The Beatles came out about that time and I got really jazzed by the Beatles. I loved what they were doing and they were doing a lot of passing chords. Like instead of just going like G, C, D, they’d go G, Bm, Em, C, Am, to D. So, the minor and passing chords I liked and, I thought these are really folk music chord changes. I kind of got it from what they were doing, I guess because they’d been a skiffle band.

I imagined that they were more folk oriented than they really were. I thought they were probably more a folk band that could play bluegrass banjo and mandolin, but they chose to do pop music because it was more commercial.

Turned out not to be the case. But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there. To the point where a guy put out a sign outside that said, “Beatle Imitations.” I was kind of put off by that.

What pulled you to California?

RM: An opportunity came up right after that to fly out to California to play in Doug Weston’s Troubadour. I opened for Roger Miller and Hoyt Axton and took that repertoire out there, the folk music with the Beatles’ beat and the folk purists had kind of a mixed reaction. But that’s not all that were there.

One guy in the audience got it.

Gene Clark came up after the show and said, “I like what you’re doing, let’s write some songs together.” We had the same vision. So that was the nucleus of the Byrds. But the idea of mixing the folk and the rock act came ready-made from New York.

I always got a kick out of it when they called it the California Sound because it really came out of Liverpool and Greenwich Village. [Smiles]

Did Bob Dylan ever say anything about your renditions of his music?

RM: Yeah, in fact he was at our rehearsal hall when we were working up the song “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Not only that song, but we did quite a few of his other songs.

And I remember playing, I think it was “All I Really Want to Do” and he asked, “What was that?” I told him it was one of his songs. And he said, “Ah ha!” He didn’t recognize it. Bobby Neuwirth was there and said, “You can dance to it, that’s pretty cool!”

And they were very supportive of what we were doing with Bob’s music. So, we recorded “Mr. Tamborine Man,” and Albert Grossman tried to stop it. Bob was behind it, but his manager wasn’t. But, it had already gained enough momentum that Columbia couldn’t stop it.

What guitars are on your favorites list?

RM: Well, I guess that early 12 string. The first Martin I bought. I bought it around 1957 with money I earned as a janitor assistant. I bought brand new. I still have that. A five string banjo, a Vega long neck. I traded that for my first Rickenbacker and the first Rick was one of my favorite guitars.

Then, I guess, the Country Gentleman. I liked that a lot. And some of my other Martins. I have a D-12-35. I bought it new in 1967 or 68. I have from around the same time period a Martin D-12-45 which is really pretty. They didn’t make that many of them. I don’t really collect guitars. I like my Rick Signature 12-string model. I like that a lot. I like the Martin Signature 12-sting that Martin made in 1999.

What about the newest Roger McGuinn 7-string by Martin Guitar?

RM: Of course, the HD-7 I’m happy how that came out.

I went to Dick Boak (Director of Artist Relations & Publicity, Martin Guitar Company) and told him we we’re planning a European tour and Air France had broken my D-12-42RM. Dick was able to repair it, but it still had scars and cracks. I didn’t want that to happen again.

I wanted a guitar and thought it would be great if I could get one that had that jingle jangle thing on the G string and be able to bend like a six-string. So, I told Dick about my vision for a composite and he worked out a little design at the tail piece.

We talked about where to put the four strings as opposed to the, you know, three below and four on top. And I wanted D-45 inlays on it and we kept the herringbone. It’s basically a D-28. It’s Indian Rosewood. Brazilian would have kicked the price up. But this one has quite a punch to it! And this is number 7, HD-7. Dick’s idea. So those are the guitars in my life!

Please, tell us about your teaching DVDs.

RM: Okay, Happy Trail approached me I guess about 5 years ago to do one. The first one was a 12-string Rickenbacker oriented DVD where I actually show you how to adjust the tension rods in the neck by taking the plate off and how to change strings. Also, how to change the battery because it has a built in compressor circuit.

The sound we got with the Byrds uses two compressors run into each other. I had the compressor built in to the guitar and it sounds very much like it.

So, I do that and I play a couple of songs and demonstrate how it works. That’s basically the first one.

The second one is a more simplified folky one. I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can’t recall all the songs on it. There’s some finger picking on it. Somebody actually complained on Amazon.com saying “This is NOT basic guitar! He’s finger picking and flat picking, so many beats per minute!” [Laughs] It does have that, but it also has some slowed down parts, so you can learn them.

And the third one, probably my favorite, is the DVD on how to record on a computer.

RM: I am! That’s my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don’t have to sell out to the record company. You don’t have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record.

Now, you can just get a laptop, get some software, put a microphone on it and make a record. You have to know how to do it. It does help if you’ve had 35 or 40 years of experience in the studio. But, it still levels the playing field so artists can record their own stuff.

Your CDs are recorded at home?

RM: Yeah, that’s how we did my latest Limited Edition CD. One track was recorded in a studio in Nashville and the other twelve were recorded on a laptop, a Dell laptop. And that’s why I did it. Specifically for that purpose. To prove a point. To show that you could record an entire CD on a laptop.

When writing songs do you first start with a chord progression?

RM: Yes, basically, like you said, I’ll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that. Once in a while and really the exception, will be when I have an idea, then I’ll write a poem first and then write a tune to the poem.

Have some new chord patterns sitting around waiting for poems?

FM: Yeah, I do have a couple sitting around. Once I’ve written a song, I sometimes refine them. There’s one on the recording DVD, a poem from Ireland, “May the Road Rise to Meet You.” I think I had just put some on some new strings and I went in the powder room in my house and wondered if anyone had ever made up a tune to go with it. I had to revise the words a bit to make them rhyme.

So, I came up with a tune for that and kind of reworked the words so it would rhyme. And then I showed it to my wife, Carmella, when she came home and the two of us wrote down some verses. She’s been helping me since 1978. It was the exception to the rule though to come up with the chords and make up the melody.

Do you think the folk tradition of passing down songs from person to person has died?

RM: No, I don’t think so. I think with the advent of the Internet it’s still a one-on-one experience. When you’re sitting in front of a computer like my folk tune project, you can listen to it in MP3 and see the lyrics and the chords and story about the song. You can listen to it and learn it right off the DVD. It’s still a one-on-one experience for the person who’s watching it. Because you can reach so many more people now, it’s the oral tradition amplified.

Do you prefer smaller venues?

RM: I love the intimate surrounding. Where it gets to be less enjoyable is when the audience claps and there’s a time delay. So, it has to be a certain number of feet that the sound can travel and still be in the same number of milliseconds, so it will still be acceptable in that meter.

Otherwise, it gets too far away and when they clap there’s a time delay. If it’s like a thousand feet away, then it’s off. It’s off the beat. I like it to stay within the same sonic frame.

What else beside music occupies your time?

RM: Well I love music and it’s what I do for a living. We love traveling. I get to do concerts and travel with my wife, like Charles Kuralt. I have his book and it’s fun reading about his life. And I’m into electronics and computers.

While on stage, how do you weave the old tunes with your newer music?

RM: I do the songs that people want to hear usually at the end of the set. I start out with maybe one, maybe two songs from solos CDs, folks tunes. And then come up with the end of the set with from solo CD and then “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Eight miles High.”

Let’s roll through some quick questions of your favorite things.

Book? The Bible.

Beverage? Water

Song? “Turn, Turn, Turn”

Album? If we’re talking about mine, then it’s the Limited Edition. Others? I like Pet Sounds and Meet the Beatles. My overall favorite is probably a Beatles album. Not Sergeant Peppers, maybe Revolver.

Car? I love my Ford van. I love it! Everything you need, a little house!

Guitars? I like my Martin acoustics and Rickenbacker electrics. Various models.

Quote? “To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose under heaven.”

Guitarist? Andre Segovia. Clapton.

Do you have a special concert moment that you cherish?

RM: When I was at a festival and I started singing “The Ballad of Easy Rider” and Odetta joined me on stage. It choked me up. She liked the song and she’d recorded it. It was a real honor.

Do you have any sage advice for musicians who have just had their first hit?

RM: Well, if they already have a hit song, it’s too late to get your deal together. Try to get all of your publishing in your name from now on, so it’s yours. And watch out for your manager. You can’t trust your manager or business manager to keep on eye on your best interests. You want to trust them, but it’s a luxury you can’t afford.

Tell us about your latest Limited Edition CD.

RM: The latest the one was a response to fans, people on the Internet, e-mails asking me to record another Rickenbacker electric album. My previous two had been acoustic, Treasures from the Photan and Life on Mars. So, I dusted off the old Rickenbacker and did the jingle jangle album. We started it off with the George Harrison tribute “If I Needed Someone,” which was a song we recorded in Nashville.

This is a funny story. When we got to Nashville, I expected to use a 24-track and a board. When we got there we found hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment sitting in a corner and they’re recording with a mouse! And this little computer! I said, “Wait a minute! I can do this at home!”

We recorded the rest at home on a laptop and really just to prove a point. We recorded it in the family room. I did hired musicians and they’d come in and we paid them. It was a real recording session. But it just happened that instead of using the computer in the studio, we recorded it in our house. And studio time was free. It was a much more relaxed atmosphere.

Just how do you get that jingle jangle sound?

RM: The sound is a combination of several things. It’s compressed. I have to credit Ray Gerhard. He’s an engineer at Columbia Records. He came up with the idea because without compression the Rick kind of falls off. It doesn’t sustain a long time. And he compressed that into another, a serial compression.

The other thing is the arpeggio style I play comes more from a 5-string banjo. And then a lot of the folky stuff, like the Travis picking behind the lead break. Underneath it I’m playing (Plays), rolling. So, I’m overdubbing the lead break and doing the rolling underneath it.

I guess that’s the sound. Banjo picking, compression and some other little folk techniques I picked up along the way.

Do you foresee a Byrds reunion concert?

RM: I don’t think so. I’d like to leave it as a good memory. It’s hard to reheat a souffle as Paul (McCartney) said one time. We really couldn’t live up to it. It would be a sentimental thing, people would go, “Nice to see them together!”, but would it be better? I don’t know.

Source: J. Tempchin

“Hi Folks, 

I’m putting together a short film and album called, On The Spot May 2026. No release date has been set yet for the album, so stay tuned! 

I went to the beach that day and with a few folks that dropped by I made up songs on the spot. It’s filmed in fantastic iPhone color and called, This Guitar Is My Best Friend.

Lead guitar by Jesse London and acoustic bass by a a guy named Mateo. He was walking by and went to his car and go his bass. I never saw him before, or since. Mixed by the great Craig Parker Adams.

Thanks! Jack”

Click here to view the embedded video.

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About Jack Tempchin: Signed to Arista Records by Clive Davis, the now legendary songwriter, Jack Tempchin, composed the song, “Slow Dancing (Swayin’ To The Music) that was recorded by Johnny Rivers in 1977. The song. reached the No. 10 spot of the Hot 100 and No. 8 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Tempchin’s songwriting attracted the attention of such major artists as: Buck Owens, George Jones and others who recorded his compositions. Jack would form a collaborative relationship with the Eagles that boosted his songwriting reputation by his songs such as, “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” and “Already Gone,” both featured on The Eagles 1917-1975 greatest hits album that was highlighted by RIAA

as the Best-Selling Album of the 20th Century. He’d partner with the Eagles’ Glenn Frey co-writing major hits, including, “The One You Love,” and “Smuggler’s Blues”. The songwriter’s songs would find themselves in film and television to be featured I such iconic films as “The Big Lebowski,” and “Thelma & Louise”. Jack would also co-write the theme song for the tv series, “7th Heaven”. 

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019, Tempchin’s songwriting lyrics have been displayed at both The Grammy Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And in 2024 his full-length film, Midnight: Jack The Movie, attracted critical acclaim, with Jason Mraz noting it as “an amazing movie, a master class in songwriting and in life”. 

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