Ned Evett(Rene Hartfield)

Ned Evett is a pioneer in making music on guitars that don’t have “frets” - those little ridges that most guitarists use on the neck of the instrument.

For more than 30 years he’s been creating both guitars and music that are out of the ordinary, leading to Guitar Player Magazine calling him the "the world's first fretless guitar rockstar" and USA Today says he’s the "the king of the glass-necked guitar."

He’s a Nashville boy with very strong Boise roots and he’s coming to the Treasure Valley on Wednesday for a special concert at the Sapphire Room at the Riverside Hotel.

We asked Ned about playing a guitar with frets and how he made the very dramatic switch away from using frets at a New Years Eve concert in McCall in 1990 after he smashed his normal guitar on stage. He went fretless and never looked back.

Without frets, he kept wearing out the necks of normal guitars, so he started building his own glass-necked guitars. He says they’re beautiful and produce a unique sound like no other.

When he isn’t making music or hanging out with Joe Satriani, Peter Frampton, Steve Morse and Andy James teaching folks how to play the fretless guitar at the G-4 Guitar Experience in Las Vegas, he spends time animating and writing comic books.

He joins Idaho Matters to talk about his life and music.