The Fretboard Journal Guitar Podcast

Over the years, Nashville's John Knowles has earned a PhD, a Grammy and even two Emmy nominations. Perhaps even more impressive, he's one of a handful of musicians given the "Certified Guitar Player" award from Chet Atkins. On our 82nd podcast, we talk to Knowles about Atkins, the state of fingerstyle guitar playing today, his role as an educator and arranger (he's also the publisher of FingerStyle Quarterly) and about the influence Lenny Breau had on his playing. We also hear a bit about the recording project he's currently working on with Tommy Emmanuel and, at the very end, get a gem of a Bill Monroe story.  read more

Call it whatever you like: torrefaction, thermo-cured, roasted or baked. Fact of the matter is that acoustic guitar companies are flocking to a process where woods are put in a specialized, oxygen-free kiln and essentially cooked, resulting in a stiffer, drier end product (not unlike the woods found in a 60 or 70 year old guitar).  read more

In this hour-long interview, Nels Cline (Wilco) and Julian Lage sit down to talk to us about their fateful meeting (thanks to a lunch date with the late jazz great Jim Hall), the art of the guitar duo, gear (Cline is playing a Gibson Barney Kessel here; Lage is playing his Linda Manzer archtop) and much more. We also hear three tunes from Room, the pair's debut album. This interview features the audio tracks from our Fretboard Journal Live session with the duo, the FJ's live streamed video series.  read more

On this week’s podcast, we talk to luthier Dana Bourgeois about a truly special one-off guitar he recently built to benefit Tony Rice. This is Dana’s first (and likely last) attempt at an enlarged soundhole D-28-style guitar, just like the famous Martin belonging to Rice and, formerly, Clarence White. Dana’s creation is a truly special instrument, with a Bourgeois Aged Tone top, Brazilian rosewood back and sides, a bound fretboard sans position markers and more. Dana will be holding a two week-long auction from his site starting December 1, 2014. read more

Michael Bashkin’s life took a unlikely turn when the former New Jersey resident enrolled as an Art major at the University of Montana. “Living in Western Montana, I quickly discovered the outdoors and developed a strong interest in natural resources and forest management,” Bashkin says in this 40-minute podcast interview. “I [then] switched my major to Forestry.” Bashkin would go on to spend several years in laboratories and in the woods, researching trees and forest ecology. “It was during my master’s program that I got bitten by the guitar bug,” he says. “At some point, my thinking about the trees did shift.” Since 1998, he’s been bulding instruments full-time in Fort Collins, Colorado.  read more

Back in November of 2013, trend analyst, author and musician Eric Garland decided to post an entry to his blog entitled “Guitar Center and the End of Big Box Retail.” He described how GC’s corporate bond had been downgraded to junk status and how, in his view, it signaled “the end of a terrible model” of retailing. Garland never expected the post to go viral but within a couple of weeks it was shared by thousands of guitarists and musicians, GC customers, industry insiders and music lovers (his most recent updates can be found here). read more

For our 76th podcast, we head north to Lynnwood, Washington to visit with Sinasoid Stage & Studio. Sinasoid's Andy Kim and Jonathan Suhr are two musicians who have created a whole new way to purchase guitar cables with their Custom Shop Cable Builder. The recently-launched site allows customers to select from several different guitar cable offerings, pick an exact cable length and choose from a variety of input and output plugs. Sinasoid then makes the cable for you in-house and ships it to your door. As if that wasn’t enough, they're guaranteeing each cable for life. read more

When Portland, Oregon computer programmer Philip Graham decided that his singer-songwriter daughter needed a better microphone, he didn’t just turn to the latest pro audio catalog. Instead, Graham decided to do some research and build her one from scratch. Two years and a ton of R&D later, Ear Trumpet Labs was born and Graham found himself with a new day job, hand-assembling microphones for professional and amateur musicians. Though Graham’s microphones are visually distinctive and look almost steampunk with their copper tubing, plumbing flanges and unique designs, each is made with function in mind. Onstage, acclaimed acoustic artists such as the Milk Carton Kids, Tom Brosseau and Della Mae have all embraced Ear Trumpet microphones. read more

Noam Pikelny and Stuart Duncan are arguably two of the greatest players to ever pick up their respective instruments. Pikelny is, day in and day out, pushing the boundaries of the five-string banjo both on his solo records and with the Punch Brothers. Meanwhile, Duncan is the world-renowned fiddler who has played on innumerable country records and even with Yo-Yo Ma (The Goat Rodeo Sessions). read more

When he was 25, musician Chris Funk left the Midwest for Portland, Oregon. Why? “I knew John Fahey lived in Oregon, and that was a big draw for me. And I knew Bill Frisell lived here [in Seattle]. They’re two of my idols.” As he tells us in this podcast, shortly after relocating to Oregon, he’d meet Colin Meloy and, soon thereafter, become a core member of the Decemberists. In 2007, Funk and the Decemberists’ Nate Query, Jenny Conlee and John Moen decided to form their own bluegrass-inspired offshoot band, Black Prairie. Black Prairie recently released their third studio record, Fortune (Sugar Hill).  read more