“Maybe it was inspired by YouTube, the way you can spend an hour on there and see clips of every amazing guitar player under the sun. …it just occured to me how great it would be to be able to hear a whole bunch of today’s greatest guitarists doing their thing on one album.” – Lee Ritenour on the making of 6 String Theory.

I expect most people aren’t that impressed to hear that B.B. King, Joe Bonamassa and Guthrie Govan all guested on an album because these days that process can be as simple as emailing a backing track to someone to load up in their home studio, record a take and sending it back, but the coolest thing about this album is that is recorded in the old fashioned way. 17 of the 20 performers on this album were recorded in an L.A. recording studio mostly with a live band just like when I were a nipper.

6 String Theory is eclectic to say the least with the likes of John Scolfield, Keb’ Mo’, Slash and George Benson all laying down tracks so it is very hard to pigeon-hole. You have everything from the cool jazzy reggae vibes on “Lay It Down” where John Scolfield and Lee Ritenour trade licks, to the rock inspired fusion-ish track “68” featuring Steve Lukather, Neal Schon and Slash, and has one of the most infectious yet crazy melodies I’ve heard in a long time. I’m a big fan of Joe Bonamassa so I was pleased to hear “Give Me Reason” which features not only the vocals and guitar playing of Joe but also blues legend Robert Cray. Basically the track is sliced in half with Cray taking the 2nd half but with both trading vocal and guitar licks at the end. Any track featuring B.B. King is going to be awesome, add into the mix Vince Gill, Keb’ Mo’, Jonny Lang and Lee Ritenour and you get a funky uptempo R&B track that kind of changes feel depending who is singing.

George Benson brings some traditional Jazz to the album with an uptempo cover of “Moon River” alongside Joey DeFrancesco and a solo guitar performance “My One And Only Love“, meanwhile amazing young Australian acoustic guitar virtuoso Joe Robinson does his best Tommy Emmanuel impersonation (well ok Jerry Reed) with a track called “Daddy Longlicks“, seriously I thought it was Tommy until I read the sleeve notes. Another young virtuoso features on this album by the name of Shon Boublil who won The Yamaha Six String Theory Guitar Competition, Shon is a classical guitarist and performance of Luigi Legnani’s “Caprices, Op. 20, No.2 and 7” is the closing track on the album.

The only slight disappointment for me (and I hesitate to utter that word in the same sentence as the great man) is that one of my favourite guitarists Guthrie Govan features on this album playing a live version of “Fives“. Ok yes it is with the incredibly talented young Aussie bass guitarist Tal Wilkenfield and yes the majority of this track is improvised but I just would have liked to have heard something new from Guthrie even if it was an arrangement of someone else’s music, I’m sure I’m not alone, we have all been waiting a long time for Guthrie’s follow up to the amazing “Erotic Cakes” for some time now.

It is quite an achievement for someone to gather such a wealth of talent and capture such amazing performances and Lee Ritenour shows not only what a great guitarist he is but also what a great producer and arranger he is. It is a wonderfully eclectic collection of music that crosses such a broad spectrum so there is something for all guitarists to enjoy, unless of course you only listen to ‘Extreme Death-Math Fuse-Core Skiffle-Shred’ in which case you probably need to get out more.

Update: Check out this video of Lee Ritenour discussing the album with studio footage!

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