Rig Rundowns

Steel: hard metal. Panther: one of the most ferocious animals. Put them together, and you have perhaps the greatest band of the 21st century. And, hot off the release of their latest, most ass-kicking album ever, Steel Panther is re-invading America. While in Nashville, before they played a blistering set for a packed crowd at Marathon Music Works, Panther’s lead guitarist Satchel invited PG’s John Bohlinger to soundcheck to show off his mighty rig.Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard.

Full Rig Details: https://bit.ly/EricGalesRR2023Eric Gales is back again. Since last chatting with John Bohlinger in 2017, the blues maestro’s rig has transitioned to include more signature Raw Dawg gear pieces—including pedals, amps, and, of course, his signature Magneto guitars. Just last year, the lefty slinger released the Grammy-nominated, Crown, which features collabs with his pal Joe Bonamassa. Gales was touring in support of that record when he rolled through Nashville.Subscribe to PG's YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/SubscribePGYouTubeShop the Rig: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/ZQdNNzWin Guitar Gear: https://bit.ly/GiveawaysPG Don't Miss a Rundown: http://bit.ly/RIgRundownENLMerch & Magazines: https://shop.premierguitar.comPG's Facebook: https://facebook.com/premierguitarPG's Instagram:

Bush had an unbelievable debut with 1994’s Sixteen Stone that eventually surpassed 6x platinum status. The post-grunge juggernaut continued making moody, mercurial, and sometimes menacing music has continuing mutating while keeping them modern with a total of nine full-length releases with 2022’s The Art of Survival as their most recent chapter.The band’s headlining Ryman tour stop was furthering their support for the October 2022 release where the camp invited PG’s Chris Kies onstage to catalog their compact setups. Guitarist Chris Traynor starts the chat covering his instruments that run the gamut from import steals to one-off custom baritones with and without frets. The baton gets passed to Gavin Rossdale tech Trace Foster who covers the frontman’s arsenal of Strats, SGs, and Jazzmasters before breaking down Rossdale’s core patches living within his Fractal Audio FM9.Brought to you by D'Addario XPND.

Right now, they’re in Europe, but Atlanta-based rockers with a distinctly Southern musical accent, Blackberry Smoke, smoked Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for two nights in February before jumping the pond.Their latest album, You Hear Georgia, was produced by Dave Cobb in Nashville, and hit the top of the Billboard Americana/Folk chart when it was released in mid-2021. PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with guitarists Charlie Starr and Paul Jackson before their sold-out show at the Ryman to run down their ever-expanding universe of gear.Brought to you by D’Addario XS Strings.

It’s been 11 years since Kenny Wayne Shepherd filmed his previous Rig Rundown. PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with the blues-rocker before his recent sold-out show at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium to hear some killer playing and see some untouchable—by anyone but Kenny and his tech—gear.The tour stop was supporting the December 2022 release of Trouble Is … 25, a re-recording of his 1997 breakthrough album, which had four top 10 hits when it was originally issued: “Slow Ride,” “Somehow, Somewhere, Someway,” “Everything is Broken,” and “Blue on Black.” There have been seven other studio recordings since then, and while he’s still mostly a Strat player, some other instruments have joined his armada, too. And Dumbles … he has lots of Dumbles.Brought to you by D’Addario XS Strings.

College internships can run the gamut. They can lead you into a career or dissuade you from pursuing one altogether. In 2004, while still attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, singer Rachael Price, bassist Bridget Kearney, guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson, and drummer Mike Calabrese joined forces to perform as what they dubbed a “free country band,” where they intended to play country music in an improvised, avant-garde style. As it goes with many college-years experiments, it didn’t stick, but the fervid foursome pushed forward in continuing to develop their own sound. They quickly graduated to a bona fide band cultivating a buzz with infectious concerts, creative covers, and complex, groovy originals. Through their mutual influences and complimentary counterpoints, their sound matured into a harmonious fusion, as if Berry Gordy produced the Beatles in Nashville’s RCA Studio.If starting a band and shaping their sound was an internship and bachelor’s degree, self-releasing records and o

“I feel like a lot of people, when they see me play, they think, ‘Oh, it's going to be super aggressive, and there's a lot of shades of that,” shares Jared James Nichols. “But I'm so obsessed with the tone, the feel of it…. Growing up listening to Jeff Beck, Albert King, guys like that; the super feel stuff to me is where it's at.”That sentiment is overwhelmingly clear when hearing just a single note of Nichols’ playing. And what makes his musicianship that much more compelling is his abandonment of the pick—most of the time, he’s not really “fingerpicking,” but he uses his fingers to shred like any picking guitarist. He explains, “I'm a lefty, so that's where it originated. I tried to use a pick, and I was really uncoordinated. I can play a lot of the same riffs that someone could do with a pick, but play ’em and they sound a lot different.”Earlier this year, Nichols came out with his third full-length release, Jared James Nichols, which adds to his catalog 12 more dirt-covered, gritty tunes t

Since their debut, Before the Sun Goes Down, in 2014, Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley have made a name for themselves as some of the hottest country and bluegrass players in the business. As individuals, their credits range from Willie Nelson to Earl Scruggs to Merle Haggard—and as a duo, they’ve toured and recorded with artists including Tommy Emmanuel, Taj Mahal, Jorma Kaukonen & Hot Tuna, Luther Dickinson, and Molly Tuttle. It’s likely their forthcoming full-length release, Living in a Song, will only bolster their already impressive reputation.Out on February 10th, Living in a Song is a new collection of two covers and 10 originals that were inspired by Ickes and Hensley’s life on the road. They collaborated with long-time producer Brent Maher (Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson) along with some award-winning songwriters to compose a total of 40 songs, which were then trimmed down to the resulting selection. That final cut of material leans in

“You gotta remember, I wasn’t really shit until about a year-and-a-half ago,” Bartees Strange reminds the crowd at Nashville’s Basement East just before performing his song, “Hennessy.” “I was just in my basement playing guitar. And my wife was like, ‘Do the dishes ... Do something other than play guitar.’ Now all I do is play guitar again [laughs].”Strange (born Bartees Leon Cox, Jr.), is a sponge and synthesis of everywhere he’s been and everything he’s seen or heard. Born in England and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his experience performing with Brooklyn-based post-hardcore outfit Stay Inside and a later move to Washington D.C. have all contributed to his singular cosmic sound. He notes during the Rundown that, as an adolescent, his guitar heroes were Thomas Erak of the Fall of Troy and Omar Rodríguez-López of At the Drive-In and the Mars Volta. But in the next sentence, he confesses his love for Nelly.“I always thought people aren’t really honest all the time with what they’re

When it comes to jazz virtuoso Julian Lage, you’d be hard-pressed to find an electric guitarist who uses less gear. “Any time I’ve [used too much equipment], there’s an awkwardness where I’m still grappling with the fact that I play here,” he says, gesturing to his guitar, then gesturing to his amp, “but the sound comes out there.” He continues, “It sounds like a joke, but it’s been a struggle for me. Any time there’s layers or filters or anything, I feel dissociated.” Of course, Lage’s rig, which buoys his clean, no-frills tone, makes sense for a musician like himself—whose playing often comes across fluidly, and as gently as his personality.For Lage, that fluidity stems from his conception of music as a language. “I think that the way people speak is often more unfettered,” Lage told Premier Guitar in 2021. “There might not be an obvious correlation between the way people speak in a lecture and the notes on the guitar. But it's just a little stretch of the imagination to see that those a

We’ve featured loud rigs. We’ve stood strong in front of Matt Pike’s octet of Oranges, been washed over with waves of volume from Angus Young’s nine Marshalls for AC/DC’s “small gig setup” in an arena, trembled from J Mascis’ three plexi full stacks, and even withstood Bonamassa’s barrage of seven amps at the Ryman, but nothing prepared us or compared to the Godzilla-rising-from-the-Pacific roar that is Sunn O)))’s auditory artillery. And it’s more than the sheer sight of 14 amps and 16 cabs or the dishing of deafening decibels; it’s the interplay of these characters and their conductors.“The third member of the band is the amplifiers!” laughed Greg Anderson in a 2014 interview with PG. “We use vintage Sunn Model Ts from the early ’70s. They’re a crucial part of the show. I’ve got more amps than I have guitars.”Stephen O’Malley takes a more metaphysical outlook to the connection between him and the thundering Model Ts. “My philosophy is that I’m just part of this b

KingTone’s The Duellist is currently Ariel Posen’s most-used pedal. One side of the dual drive (the Bluesbreaker voicing) is always on. But there’s another duality at play when Posen plugs in—the balance between songwriter and guitarist.“These days, I like listening to songs and the story and the total package,” Posen told PG back in 2019, when talking about his solo debut, How Long, after departing from his sideman slot for the Bros. Landreth. “Obviously, I’m known as a guitar player, but my music and the music I write is not guitar music. It’s songs, and it goes back to the Beatles. I love songs, and I love story and melody and singing, and there was a lot of detail and attention put into the guitar sound and the playing and the parts—almost more than I’ve ever done.”And in 2021, he found himself equally expressing his yin-and-yang artistry by releasing two albums that represented both sides of his musicality. First, Headway continued the sultry sizzle of songwriting featured o

Swarms of musicians and guitarists have found social media’s current 60-second attention span inspirational and fruitful. But what happens after that first minute? Well, for TikTok bass tycoon Blu DeTiger, you become a shooting star. However, her story isn’t that sudden or serendipitous. She’s been working towards the spotlight since she first picked up the bass to jam with her drummer brother, Rex, at age 7.“He was playing drums and I wanted to play an instrument,” recalls DeTiger. “As a girl, I thought guitar was ‘mainstream’ because I saw that everywhere and thought bass was rare and it would be more unique to play. I fell in love with it and my passion took over.”Further fanning her musical flame, she joined School of Rock and performed semester-ending concerts covering Zeppelin, Bowie, Prince, the Stones, and others. She collaborated and performed with Chromeo and Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers. Inspired by horn-playing DJs, she even toted her bass to DJ gigs, where she laid down the funkiest lines she could

We revisited setups for Anthrax, Megadeth, Guthrie Govan, Bonamassa, and others, introduced ourselves to Cory Wong's and Wolf Van Halen's gear, but who's guitarsenal got the most clicks? Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard: https://ddar.io/xpnd.rr

Inspired to by play guitar by his 6-stringing father, Shawn Tubbs emerged from the Christian-music scene. By his late teens, he was doing club and session gigs, and became part of The Violet Burning. In 1992, he played with Stone Temple Pilots on an episode of MTV Unplugged, then got deeper in the high-profile Nashville session scene, and began touring with Carrie Underwood. He’s since stopped road-tripping in favor of the studio, where he’s a first-call player and his credits include recent work with David Crosby. The 30-year-veteran guitarist’s current album, Demolition, A Collection of Short Jams, can be heard on SoundCloud, and he’s got a popular YouTube channel, but you can hear him demo is own gear in this Rig Rundown, filmed at his home studio.Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard.

When you produce acts like Taylor Swift, Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, Weezer, Green Day, Pink, Rayland Baxter, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr., it’s hard to find time for your own music. Yet in 2022, Butch Walker managed to release his 10th album, Butch Walker as … Glenn—a surprising tribute to the ’70s piano-rock balladeers that were among the rulers of FM radio in his youth. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop him from bringing a fleet of cool Fender and Gibson guitars, and a hemi of an amp, a Two-Rock Bloomfield Drive, on his recent It’s About Damn Tour tour.For Walker, playing those guitars is something of a comeback celebration. In 2007, the house he was renting in Malibu from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers caught fire and the Rome, Georgia, native lost the collection of classic axes he’d spent a lifetime accumulating, as well as the masters to every song of his own that he’d recorded. As Walker explains in the Rundown, it was a hard lesson abou

Trivium steadily raised its metal flag through the old-fashioned method—relentless touring. The band took any and all opening slots, priming crowds for Metallica, Iron Maiden, Killswitch Engage, Machine Head, DragonForce, Korn, and Megadeth before graduating to headliner status. That constant grind was fueled by 10 full-length releases that incorporate varying tints and tinges of their three core musical tenets: metalcore, melodic death metal, and thrash. (The band derives their name from a Latin word that means “three-way intersection,” describing their combination of these aggressive subgenres.)And while tone dictates many decisions made by a guitarist, touring comes with a cost and might be the one thing that could trump a player’s desired setup or sound. Now, with elevated gas prices, venues fleecing bands for merch cuts, and overall hiked inflation, many artists are having to compromise and condense their live arsenal. Thankfully, digital modelers like the Fractal

Rut busting and reconstructing has probably been happening since the discovery of fire and advent of the wheel. Guitarists confront it each time they pick up a new instrument to avoid predictable patterns and tones. Premier Guitar contributor (and recent Rig Rundown subject) Pete Thorn has addressed this by suggesting several practices to approach our beloved 6 strings in a fresh perspective. And recently John Bohlinger recommended playing a different instrument to fertilize musical crops. But what does a guitar-playing producer and multi-instrumentalist do to shake things up for his band’s fourth album? Well, for Puscifer’s Mat Mitchell and the band’s 2020 release, Existential Reckoning, you go back in time 40 years to 8-bit synth sounds and the archaic sampling lurking inside the proto-digital Fairlight CMI.“Part of [the appeal],” Mitchell told PG in a 2021 interview, “is the flow—the way that you work when you’re using these tools. It fo

The Smashing Pumpkins' first two albums, Gish and Siamese Dream, were a huge part of the soundtrack for the early ’90s alternative rock revolution. Still sounding revolutionary all these years later, the band’s leader, Billy Corgan, recently brought the Smashing Pumpkins to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena for the Spirits on Fire tour, on the heels of their 11th studio album, Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts.The concept album is a sequel to the Smashing Pumpkins’ definitive three-LP masterwork Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, from 1995—which also brought them crushing into the mainstream. Acts two and three of Atum are scheduled for January and April 2023. But meanwhile, there are live shows … and all the gear it takes to recreate more than three decades years of the band’s signature sounds. PS: Special thanks to super-tech Trace Davis for his help with the fine points.Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard.

If you were to ask my wife, “What two things sum up Chris?” … she’d likely respond with “grilled meats and heavy metal.” So, given the chance to interview the self-appointed (and unchallenged) founders of “Drive-Thru Metal” that solidified their crispy claim with classic cuts “Frying Pan,” “Sweet Beef,” and “Pair-a-Buns,” I ordered a full plate.The thing is, you don’t just interview guitarist Slayer MacCheeze and bassist Grimalice. Not because they’re from the “bowels of outer space” and don’t speak or understand English. They converse quite well. But these seasoned freaks don’t do anything for free. Everything’s on the menu and it’s all for sale. Thankfully, minutes before doors opened at Nashville’s longstanding rock beacon, Exit/In, Mac Sabbath’s techs Bill Woodcock and Jonathan Hischke summarized their monster masters’ tangy tone tools. The flash-fried, seedy conversation quickly taps some key signature gear of another Sabbath that equally sweetens and thickens the band’s sound like a condensed