Rock Photographer Robert Knight’s The Brotherhood of the Guitar

By: Robert Knight

The Brotherhood Of The Guitar is an idea I’ve had for sometime. Ever since I was in the documentary film Rock Prophecies, and found young artists like Sick Puppies, and Tyler Bryant, I have been getting hundreds of emails a month, asking me to either look at, or help, up and coming young guitars players and young bands.

A lot of the younger players were without any really good guitars, so I reached out to my friends at Fender, and they gave me several guitars to put in the hands of some really cool up-and-coming guitar players. Other artists however had great Fender guitars, but were suffering from lack of any sort of exposure, living in very small towns in mid-America, or outside the U.S. altogether. I went back to Fender, and said what is really needed is a spotlight to shine on the unknown artists.

Two years ago, when I went to the NAMM show, guitar player Josh Gooch saw all the young players that were hanging around, and said, “I see you have your brotherhood of the guitar with you.” So,  I have Josh Gooch to thank for the name!

I reached back out to Fender, and asked if they would support me in putting together a web site of young Fender unsigned guitar players, giving them a window to show who they were, and what they wanted to do. I then reached out to long time friend artists, and artist / futurist / collaborator Jim Evans, who crafted the really cool web site and logo that gives The Brotherhood Of The Guitar its identity.

Rock Photographer Robert Knight

It will be fun, and I encourage other players to post their videos on our Facebook page, where we can take a look at what’s happening around the world.

I told my friends at Guitar Center what I was doing, and they offered to help support the effort by engaging their powerful marketing, and web and blog blasts! They have given me some great gear to give away from time to time as well. It’s possible that someone from our web site might be offered to play at Guitar Center events, and am even in talks about creating a Brotherhood Of The Guitar tour with a couple of my A-list rock star friends, this tour will help showcase the up-and-coming artists.

The Brotherhood is not just for guys, I really want to see more young girls pick up the guitar, and was lucky to find several amazing players for this project.

I have several more great guitar players I recently filmed, and we will be adding more as we move forward in the future with the Brotherhood of the Guitar site!

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