The 15-year history of Rig Rundown has established that guitar gear fascination (and obsession) runs deep in our community. It’s the life blood of our show. But if there was ever antithetical example to guitar gluttony and equipment idolatry, it would be American Football. Their original self-proclaimed “bedroom college project” focused on self-expression, musical creativity, and working with what you had, which wasn’t much.

For the recording of their pioneering American Football album released in 1999, they borrowed most of their gear, shared a single guitar cable and tuner, didn’t use bass, and formulated odd open tunings that allowed for sinuously melodic cinematic passages between Kinsella and Holmes. Their exploration of unique open tunings inspire a legion of players include 6-string virtuoso Yvette Young. (She now ships all her signature Ibanez guitars in a tricky open tuning—F–A–C–G–B–E—derived from American Football.) Their ingenious and scrappy methods went on to inform the brand of Midwest emo that simmered a devoted fanbase waiting for their return after disbanding in 2000. First returning to the stage in 2014 and delivering two more American Football albums in 2016 and 2019, the band continues using minimal gear for maximum art.

Ahead of American Football’s headlining show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, cofounding members Mike Kinsella (vocals/guitar) and Steve Holmes (guitar) invited PG’s Perry Bean onstage for a refreshingly practical gear chat. Kinsella recalls the band’s basic beginnings and explains how he starts every American Football demo. Then, Holmes shows off his “gorgeous and favorite” Tele. Plus, we encounter a Rig Rundown first where the tech has veto power over setlists.

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PG’s John Bohlinger hung with Alter Bridge’s two-man guitar army, Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy, before their sold-out show at The Orpheum Theater in Memphis. Tremonti and Kennedy showcased some beautiful signature Paul Reed Smith guitars, as well as a not-yet-released PRS signature amp.

Thanks to techs Dave Pate and Scott Davis for their help with the details.

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Emily Wolfe doesn’t play guitar. She bends it to her will. Like a bronco buster taming a stallion, she saddles up on her signature Sheratons and lets it rip. Much of the magic felt and heard on her self-titled debut was pure adrenaline hitting your speaker. And while her second album, 2021’s Outlier, incorporates Wolfe’s love of Motown grooves and modern-pop stickiness refreshening her songwriting with backdrops of more polished, waxy tones, but tumbleweed oscillation, helicopter, square-wave chops, and barbed-wire fuzz are still howls welcomed in this Wolfe pack.

“When I go up there, something could hit me at any point—an emotion that I felt 10 years ago could come out in a bend on the low E. There’s so much rawness [to classic rock]; the edges are not perfect, but there’s a magic in that,” explained Wolfe to PG.

But how do you marry earworm poppiness with a gunslinger’s approach to guitar?

“Some of my rock friends say, ‘Pop isn’t relevant,’ and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about—it’s everywhere!’ It’s so sticky for people, and that’s really fascinating to me. I want my music to have that quality … but also the realness of a raw guitar tone. [With Outlier] I wanted to make something that would be classic 10, 20, 30 years from now,” she told PG in 2021. “That was the goal, and I think we achieved it.”

Before Wolfe’s headlining show at Nashville’s Blue Room (located inside the Third Man Records compound), PG’s Chris Kies joined the shredding songwriter onstage to talk shop. The resulting conversation covers the development behind her Epiphone Sheraton, how a boring night in Cleveland spent with her “Chex-mix crushing, brother-in-tone” bass player Evan Nicholson convinced her play a doubleneck guitar, and we discover what three pedals work together to make what she describes as “the sound that belongs to me.”

Full Rig Details: https://bit.ly/EmilyWolfeRig2023

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*© Copyright Gearhead Communications LLC, 2023*

00:00 - D’Addario XPND Pedalboard

00:15 - Emily Wolfe Playing Intro

00:34 - Chris Kies & Emily Wolfe Intro

01:08 - Epiphone Emily Wolfe Signature Sheraton Stealth

05:36 - Selecting the Epiphone Alnico Classic PRO pickups

08:48 - Emily Wolfe's Strings & Picks

10:31 - Epiphone Emily Wolfe "White Wolfe" Sheraton Signature

13:09 - Epiphone G-1275

17:05 - Fender Hot Rod DeVille 410 III

19:51 - Emily Wolfe's Pedalboard

#guitar #rigrundown #guitarist #epiphone #guitarplayer #emilywolfe

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Steve Vai is much more than a great guitarist. The American guitarist has established himself as a key figure in guitar culture, and one of the world’s leading masters of shred. Vai broke on the scene in 1980 as Frank Zappa’s transcriptionist, until Zappa hired Vai, age 20, to join his touring band—Zappa allegedly called Vai his “little Italian virtuoso.”

Bolstering his guitar theatrics with sharp songwriting and producing, Vai went on to conquer the world of guitar music, winning three Grammys and selling 15 million records. PG was lucky to be invited to Vai’s recent show at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s CMA Theatre in Nashville, where his tech, Doug MacArthur, took John Bohlinger through Vai’s jaw-dropping current touring rig.

Special thanks to Doug MacArthur for explaining this incredibly complex rig.

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It might actually be easier to list the artists Derek Wells hasn’t worked with, than the ones with whom he has.

The Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist and producer has lent a hand to more than 100 number one singles over the years, with household staples like Kenny Chesney, Maren Morris, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, even Shakira. He’s also piled up production credits with artists like Hardy, Lainey Wilson, Maddie & Tae, and Scotty McCreery, and over the years he’s collected a flashy mantle’s-worth of awards: the Academy of Country Music named Wells their Guitar Player of the Year two times, and he was MusicRow’s 2022 Guitarist of the Year.

Wells invited PG’s John Bohlinger to the studio to run down his main recording rig.

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When some people travel, they take photos on their phone to remember the trip. Old-soul voyagers will recount their adventures with pen and paper. But for Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez, who together make the globetrotting Ecuadorian-Swiss duo Hermanos Gutiérrez, their experiences conjure soundtracks, and a visit years ago to the American Southwest changed their sound forever.

A couple years after forming their duo, the brothers took a trip through Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. “It just blew our minds,” Estevan told PG. The desert, he says, “is where our music was born.”

“Part of what we’re doing is traveling together as brothers,” Alejandro told PG in 2022. “We go to places, we come back and we’re feeling inspired, and we feel like we’ve gotta write something about this place.”

After finding bountiful inspiration in the West, the duo began turning out mystical compositions, like sonic souvenirs and passport stamps on their consciousness. “It’s just beautiful where we can go with this music,” Alejandro said last year. “It’s just my brother and I together, and we’re so happy to have this.”

The sold-out Hermanos Gutiérrez concert at Nashville’s Basement East on June 20th marked their first time performing in Music City since recording El Bueno Y El Malowith Dan Auerbach at Easy Eye Sound in 2022. The pair invited PG’s Chris Kies onstage to decode their spellbinding cinematic sounds. The conversation touched on their symbiotic alchemy, enchanting hollowbodies, and how a single Strymon reset their slow-burn backdrop. 

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Nashville has long been the hub for all things country music but in the last two decades, transplant rockers like Jack White, the Black Keys, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine, Judas Priest’s Richie Faulkner and others, have all have made the 615 home. Adding to its growth is the organic blossoms generated via the rock block, cultivating names like Paramore, All Them Witches, Bully, Moon Taxi, The Wild Feathers, The Band Camino, and the guitar extraordinaires that make up Diarrhea Planet.

We got caught up with the semi-retired fearsome foursome for their first headlining performance at the Ryman Auditorium ahead of their return to Bonnaroo. We covered why neck humbuckers are useless (but neck dives rule), how the whole band was gifted Klon KTRs, and what each shredator does to stand in and out among their collective guitarmegeddon.

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For more than two decades, trailblazing acoustic guitarists Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero have been blending metal, flamenco, pop, and jazz with their Grammy-winning duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, and they’re not showing any sign of slowing down. They’re currently on the road in support of their seventh full-length album, In Between Thoughts…A New World, released in April. It’s a characteristically adventurous endeavor, arranged as a single, album-length composition and augmented with electronics and orchestral elements.

The eclectic guitar maestros toured PG’s John Bohlinger through their respective rigs before their show at Nashville’s Historic Ryman Auditorium.

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A decade ago, Vince Gill and Paul Franklin recorded Bakersfield, a tribute to the raw-boned country music that came out of the rough-and-rowdy clubs patronized by oil-field hands and agricultural workers in the ’50s and early ’60s—packed with songs by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. And we visited with them for a Rig Rundown then.

Now, just for the good times, these two legends of modern country music—the real deal kind—have recorded Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys. Price was known for his warm, baritone approach to melody, which is a perfect springboard for Gill’s and Franklin’s nuanced approaches to their own instruments.

If you don’t know Gill’s work, it’s about time you got informed. He has won more CMA Awards than any performer in history, plus 21 Grammys. He’s also sold more than 21-million albums and is currently in the Eagles, where his sweet tenor voice and skill with harmonies makes him a perfect match. (You can also hear Gill talk about his work on Cory Wong’s Wong Notes podcast, from November 2020.)

Although Franklin spends his time over the pedal steel, this artist is no slouch. He’s played on more than 500 albums, has been named Best Steel Guitarist by the Academy of Country Music multiple times, and is in the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame and the Musician’s Hall of Fame. Franklin is the most nominated artist in CMA history. He is also a member of Grammy-winning outfit the Time Jumpers.

Along with the PG video team, I met them at Gill’s Nashville studio, where they recorded Sweet Memories. The goal: to get a close-up look at Franklin’s steel rig and some of the incredible acoustic guitars Gill used on this album.

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Full Rig Details:https://bit.ly/NileRodgersRR

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Since the early ’70s, the guitar legend has trusted his 1960 “Hitmaker” Strat to turn out chart toppers that have changed the course of music history and shaped cultures around the world. We explore its unusual origins and DNA as well as uncover some ordinary tools making extraordinary grooves.

Guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers has received virtually every significant honorific that exists for musical achievement. He’s a hall-of-famer twice over, having been inducted to both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won six Grammys, including the prestigious Lifetime Achievement award.

The accolades hardly begin to capture how monumentally important and influential Rodgers’ music career has been. Since beginning with his disco-funk-rock fusion outfit Chic in 1972, Rodgers has been pioneering musical language that, among other things, sparked the advent of hip-hop. He’s also the producer who introduced the world to Stevie Ray Vaughan via Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.”

Rodgers invited John Bohlinger and the PG team to the Chic show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, where they met with his trusty tech Gert Marckx. Marckx took us through Rodgers’ streamlined touring rig, capped off with Rodgers’ holy grail guitar—the instrument that’s at least partially responsible for the sale of half a billion records around the world.

(Intro video captured by https://www.youtube.com/@Biorupp)

Full Rig Details: https://bit.ly/NileRodgersRR

Subscribe to PG's Channel: http://bit.ly/SubscribePGYouTube

Win Guitar Gear: https://bit.ly/GiveawaysPG

Don't Miss a Rundown: http://bit.ly/RIgRundownENL

Merch & Magazines: https://shop.premierguitar.com

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PG's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/premierguitar/

PG's Twitter: https://twitter.com/premierguitar

PG's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@premierguitar

[Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard: https://www.daddario.com/XPNDRR]

00:00 - D’Addario XPND Pedalboard

00:15 - Nile Rodgers & Chic Perform "Let's Dance"

00:55 - John Bohlinger & tech Gert Marckx Intro

01:09 - Nile Rodgers' 1960 "Hitmaker" Stratocaster

05:27 - Fender Nile Rodgers Hitmaker Stratocaster Signature

06:23 - Nile Rodgers' Strings & Picks

06:54 - Nile Rodgers' Pedalboard

09:39 - Fender Hot Rod Deville 410s

10:35 - Keith Urban's Guest Rig

*© Copyright Gearhead Communications LLC, 2023*

#guitar #rigrundown #nilerodgers #stratocaster

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