I first heard of Tommy Emmanuel about 5 years ago when I heard ‘Train To Dusseldorf’ from his solo acoustic guitar album ‘Only’, I was instantly hooked and it inspired me to play again after a break of quite a long time. I bought an acoustic guitar, Tommy’s ‘Only’ album and the TAB book and I’ve been trying to get somewhere close to the virtuosic fingerstyle master ever since, you have to be optimistic don’t you?! Since ‘Only’ Tommy has released ‘Endless Road’ and ‘The Mystery’ on Steve Vai’s record label, Favored Nations. Both are essential listening for any guitarist, the technical ability of Tommy is amazing and is something he has been working on since the age of 6 when he was touring Australia with his dad and brother!

Well Tommy has just released a live double CD called ‘Center Stage’ on Favored Nations and Guitar Noize is giving 1 lucky person the chance to win a signed copy with 4 runners up also receiving a copy (unsigned, sorry). All you have to do is head over to the Competition page and enter your email address, it’s that easy.

I have just listened to ‘Center Stage’ and as a Tommy fan I was not disappointed, there are tracks from ‘Only’ such as the fantastic ‘Train To Dusseldorf’ and a percussive version of ‘Mombasa’ that has to be heard to be believed, it honestly sounds like an entire percussion section has joined Tommy onstage rather than him beating, scratching, plucking and brushing his guitar! There are also 4 new tracks ‘Ruby’s Eyes’, ‘Papa George’ (inspired by George Harrison), ‘Lenny Bro’ and ‘The Jolly Swagman’ which is a kind of celtic track like ‘Tall Fiddler’ (which by the way there is a blisteringly fast version on here) and ends with ‘Waltzing Matilda’ a nod back to his motherland Australia. There is also the obligatory Beatles Medley that Tommy is famous for playing in which he manages to combine tracks with ease starting with ‘Here Comes The Sun’ into ‘When I’m 64’ into ‘Daytripper’ into ‘Lady Madonna’.

CD 2 starts with a track by Merle Haggard called ‘Working Man Blues’ featuring Bob Littell on harmonica and Tommy singing, his guitar playing is better than his voice but it mixes up the set nicely. The next track is a great instrumental version of ‘Georgia on my mind’ with Bob Littell wailing the melody on harmonica and Tommy playing a cool bluesy solo, it really is a fantastic arrangement of the classic Ray Charles track. Other highlights include Tommy’s rendition of Amazing Grace, if you have never heard this bluesy version check out this video on YouTube now imagine it with Bob Littell’s harmonica taking turns on verses!

The nice thing about this CD is that it gives you an insight into Tommy’s sense of humour, especially on his ‘Story of a little boy’, he plays with a lot of humour and if you watch his videos you can see the enjoyment written all over his face, I think it takes a rare talent to convey this to an audience. He also plays using a lot of percussive techniques and he takes this to the next level on the track ‘Inittiation’ where he uses a delay effect to create an amazing soundscape which I think sounds very aboriginal to begin with but then moves into a more modern sounding piece , it is very ethereal and inventive. The CD closes with one of my favourite tracks to play, ‘Questions’ from Tommy’s ‘Only’ album, it is a slightly new arrangement compared to the 2000 album version and Tommy plays it with such precision it sounds incredibly simple, although as I found out when I was learning the piece it is far from simple to seperate the melody and harmonies in the way Tommy does so effortlessly.

So if you want to win this great CD all you have to do is go the Competition page here on Guitar Noize.

Let me introduce to you Kevin Nolan, a long time ago I went to Kidderminster College to do a performing arts course and my music A level. While I was there I had the great pleasure of playing, acting alongside and generally acting like a silly bugger with Kev. At the time he wielded a very nice Fender Precision Bass and was in high demand for bands and performances. The last time Kev and I managed to meet up was back in 2000 in London before I moved to Australia so I thought it was about time to find out what has been happening since then. A lot it seems, after college Kevin joined forces with his brother Robin in The Robin Nolan Trio, a gypsy jazz band, playing rhythm guitar. Since then they have been touring all over the world.

GN: How come you are based in Amsterdam?
The band moved from London to Amsterdam in 92 after finding that London was not very welcoming to street performers. Back then that’s prety much how the band made money. Amsterdam was much more hospitable.

GN: Does your brother let you do any solos?
No. But the point is that when i started to learn the guitar after putting down the bass i only learned how to play rhythm, so i’m not exactly up to standard with my solos.

GN: So what kind of touring schedule do you have these days, I remember you were telling me last time we met up in London that you had played in some pretty exotic locations!
I’ve travelled quite a lot since joining the band. Japan and Iceland being my favourites. But over the last 5 years we’ve had opportunities to play in the States quite a bit. It’s a big country with lots of money, so it’s possible to do some long extended tours over there.

GN: What guitars do you play in the trio?
I still play on the first guitar i ever got. It’s a 1999 Rob Aylward D-hole.

GN: How long has Robin been playing?
Robin first started to play guitar at age 6. He passed his classical grade 8 with distinction. He then went on to study jazz at Leeds college of music.

GN: What inspired him to play gypsy jazz?
He was taken to a festival “THE” festival for gypsy music in Samois-Sur-Seine near Paris. This was in 1990. Our father had always played the music of Django Reinhardt when we were children, but i think that when Rob witnessed it being played he fell in love with the passionate style.

GN: How many CD’s have the Robin Nolan Trio released to date? Go on do some plugging!
I think we have around 8 titles www.robinnolan.com check them out.

GN: So is this the trio a full time job?
It’s been backwards and forwards. Sometimes we have months booked up, and sometimes the opposite. I’ve just moved to the states and not only do i continue to play with the Robin Nolan Trio, but I’ve also joined the John Jorgenson Quintet. This means that I’m lucky enough to make a living from playing.

Thanks for taking the time talking to me Kevin, hopefully we will catch up when you tour Australia. Check out The Robin Nolan Trio site or the MySpace page.

I first picked up the guitar in 1988 at the age of 12, and at the time I was just getting into rock and metal. The first tab book was Iron Maiden’s ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’ which my dad bought me as a present one day and I thought it had the most amazing guitar playing ever, I still love that album and I still think the guitar playing on it is great but something happened which changed the way I thought and played… my friend lent me a video called ”Live Without a Net” a live concert of Van Halen in their 1986 Sammy Hagar early days. At this point I had heard ”OU812” and thought it was quite good. This video introduced me to some earlier Van Halen material and gave me some of the best guitar lessons I’ve ever had. I studied Eddie’s playing for hours and hours, learned vibrato and the tapping part of eruption by the end of the year and was well on my way to becoming a EVH clone, I didn’t even realise at this point that David Lee Roth was anything other than a solo artist with the guy out of crossroads! Anyway I soon looked up the old Van Halen but I was 12, the new stuff sounded pretty good to me and “Eat ‘em And Smile” was one of my favourite albums.

As I got older the early Van Halen soon became my favourite era and with the recent news of a Van Halen reunion tour with Diamond Dave announced there could be no better time for the release of a book like Everybody Wants Some - The Van Halen Saga. I was really excited when the book arrived I immediately played Van Halen 1 in iTunes to get me in the mood. I knew that there had been a lot of disruption in the band over the years and I knew that DLR was a bit of an egomaniac but it is really interesting to actually get a background of what really happened from year to year. Its amazing that they are still alive considering how much Jack Daniels and beer was consumed (Eddie I’m looking at you...) mind you Sammy has apparently become a bit of a Tequila monster in recent years!

The book written by Ian Christe chronicles the lives of Van Halen from the beginning and I’m talking straight off the boat from Holland kind of beginning. There is so much to cram into one book that it understandbly moves along at a pretty fast pace, personally I could have read the unedited version happily! The first section starts off in the early Whisky a go go years as the guys worked the club circuits continually in LA and built a solid foundation of support, it then moves along to the Van Hagar era and the ups of downs of touring with an alcoholic guitarist in full flight and then moves through the Cherone erm, well not era, detour, and then through the last few years of rumour and speculation up to the present day just before the tour was officially announced.

I don’t need to go into detail you know the ups and downs of Van Halen, the squabbling between Roth and Hagar and more recently Eddie and Hagar and poor Michael Anthony… I feel sorry for the guy he always got the raw end of the deal and now he’s been replaced by a 16 year old! Well okay it is no ordinary 16 year old is it, Wolfgang Van Halen is set to be a star of the future according to his dad apparently they have been writing material in 5150 for years!

Even if you aren’t a Van Halen fan, if you ever liked “Runnin’ with the devil”, “Unchained”, “Panama” or even “Poundcake” you have to have to read this book, I’m recommending it to all my friends, I enjoyed it as much as “Motley Crue - The Dirt”! If it wasn’t true it would be a great fictional story and thats what makes it so good, Van Halen has been going for nearly 30 years and its a true rock ‘n’ roll story of excess and debauchery, one of the longest running soap operas in rock history!

I guarantee you’ll be listening to “eruption” within minutes of opening the book!

Oh and Paul and Marty seem to be pretty handy speaking Japanese too!

After seeing the John Butler Trio on Saturday night at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney I thought it was about time to do a feature on John Butler, he is an incredible guitarist and throughout the gig showed his talent for Banjo, lapsteel and distorted Ukele with a bit of Wah Wah thrown in… I think thats the first time I’ve seen that!

The video I have embedded is a lesson from John on warm up techniques that he recorded for Guitar World Magazine and although it is all using open tunings most of the techniques can be reapplied to standard tuning.

The amount of energy that the John Butler Trio put into a performance is amazing, it certainly sounds much more like a 5 or 6 piece band. For those who have never heard of him I strongly recommend you check him out. Here is a video performance of Ocean to get you in the mood.

I just got delivery of my Nerdy Shirts “The Guitar Hero” T-Shirt pictured left, such an awesome idea. Take the legendary “guitar hero” and whack a Guitar Hero Controller in his hands, note it is the limited edition right handed version played upside with buttons reversed

I just noticed this over at Favored Nations’ website, an mp3 of an interview with Tommy Emmanuel, one of my favourite guitarists.

“To hear Tommy Emmanuel discuss his latest CD “THE MYSTERY”, his technique, touring, and more, check out the Green Arrow Radio program hosted by Mister G. at WHUS radio in Connecticut. Click here for Green Arrow Radio’s website:

To hear the Tommy interview click here. “

In a very Wonka-esque move Steve Vai is currently giving 2500 buyer’s of his new limited-edition deluxe Digipak version of Sound Theories Vol. I & II the chance to meet him by inserting a satin backstage pass inside the Digipak for his Sound Theories tour. For info on how to pre-order the digipak go to Vai.com.