Posted October 23, 2007 at 3:44 am | No comments
“Bowling Green” John Cephas, who takes his stage name from Bowling Green, Virginia, where he was raised, embodies the soul and spirit of a little-known style of music called the Piedmont blues. Guitar International spoke with Cephas at the 69th National Folk Festival in Richmond, Virginia, on September 14, 2007, before he went on stage with master harmonica player Phil Wiggins, about his style of blues, his guitars and his life-long study and commitment to keeping the Piedmont blues alive. Read »
Posted in: Other News and Information
Posted October 11, 2007 at 6:13 am | No comments
Mike Varney has a vinyl fetish. The founder and head of the Shrapnel Label Group started collecting records at the age of five or six and now owns over 40,000 vinyls and CDs, a collection that he’s put to good use. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more knowledgeable about the history of metal, hard rock, progressive guitar instrumental, blues-rock, jazz-fusion, and the various sub-genres those styles have produced, especially with respect to the role the electric guitar has played in such music. Since the founding of Shrapnel Records in 1980, Varney has expanded the business into three imprints under the Shrapnel Label Group: Shrapnel Records, Blues Bureau Records and Tone Center Records, with each label having a focus on a different genre – metal, hard rock, guitar instrumental (primarily progressive) and rock tributes on Shrapnel, blues-rock and blues tributes on Blues Bureau and progressive-jazz-fusion and jazz tributes on Tone Center. More »
Posted in: Interviews
