These articles originally appeared in Acoustic Guitar magazine. You’ll find even more lessons, music to play, profiles, and guitar coverage in our digital archives.
Q: What do you feel are the “right” areas to try to improve upon the classic styles? What areas of design must remain true to vintage originals in order to preserve integrity, and what areas have wiggle room for experimentation? On a more personal note, do you still feel challenged…
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Briskly galloping out of the gate, the title track of Ryan Shupe’s self-released eighth album, We Rode On, announces the former country-chart-topper’s transition to alternative artist. This collection is bright clangoring pop-rock, focused on moving forward, but it’s grounded in the building blocks of Shupe’s bluegrass past—his earnest everyman vocals…
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Three songs into the 13-track Montage of Heck, a compilation of raw, lo-fi home demos and other recordings Kurt Cobain made, is a happy little acoustic instrumental titled, appropriately, “Happy Guitar.” Its Gypsy-jazz chording and fingerpicking reveal a perhaps unexpected fascination the late Nirvana front man seemed to have had…
“I’m drawn to archtops because each maker puts his fingerprint on each individual instrument,” Dan Krugman says. He’s speaking from the Brooklyn workshop of DDK Guitars, the company he launched in 2011. “Design elements seem less agreed upon. Everyone has their own style of F-hole or bridge configuration.” He likens…
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Fifty years have passed since Simon and Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence, the duo’s breakthrough album. In that time, “I Am a Rock,” “Richard Cory,” and the title cut have become folk-rock classics. But the record covered one already-beloved song: “Anji,” an instrumental by Davey Graham, was well-known among British…
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