Michael Dregni

No, this is not a history of Joe Maphis, Don Rich, Buck Owens, Roy Nichols, Merle Haggard, and the other pickers who created the Bakersfield Sound. Rather, it’s the tale of the luthiers centered around the San Joaquin Valley city – builders

Sue Foley named her paisley Telecaster reissue “Pinky,” and her latest album celebrates the guitar she has played her whole career. Over the years, Foley moved from her native Canada to Austin, and has proven she can play the blues. This is a solid guitar-trio album, with

Every now and then, you pick up a guitar and realize you’re holding magic in your hands. Welcome to the Collings CJ-45 T. The inspiration is obvious in a slope-shouldered design that harkens to the J-45, Gibson’s wartime answer to Martin’s big pre-war dreadnoughts. Like that classic, Collings’ guita…

Bobby Zimmerman’s famed Bootleg Series has been of prime interest for alternate takes, outtakes, rehearsals, and never-released tunes giving a glimpse behind the mask. That’s all present in spades in this collection, covering the early-’80s albums Shot of Love, Infidels, and Empire Burlesque. Of equ…

Sue Foley’s Paisley-finished Telecaster is the one guitar to which she has remained true since her debut album, Young Girl Blues. After 29 years, it only seemed right to dedicate her new album to the steadfast instrument by calling it Pinky’s Blues. Hailing from Canada, Foley grew

One night in the late 1950s, Eddie Cochran set the world alight onstage in the City of

Luthier Barry Grzebik was a Jersey boy who moved to NorCal in his teens. When he began building guitars, he was inspired by the sonic possibilities of redwood. Those possibilities perhaps seem fully realized in his Grez Mendocino Junior. Grez’s flagship Mendocino is a crazy-cool chambered semi-hollo…

When Robin Trower segued from his wah-driven blues-rock riffing into the slowed, deep-blues groove of the second half of his ’74 anthem “Too Rolling Stoned,” he kicked it over to a progressively more aggressive overdrive sound. And in his final screaming solo, he hits those big bluesy