Articles by Kevin Johnson - Page 783

Mr. Big, anchored by bass genius Billy Sheehan, will be touring North America starting July 30th in San Diego, California. The trek, in support of their latest album What If, will mark the group’s first North American trek with it’s original members in 13 years. Founded in 1988, Mr. Big’s original and current lineup includes Sheehan, guitarist Paul Gilbert, vocalist...

Our friend Greg Smith sent in this awesome 6-string solo bass clip with this note: “Here’s my buddy Scott Clay showing his six-string dexterity on Janet Jackson’s ‘Love Will Never Do’. Scott plays in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches out of the Music Tree in Morgan Hill, CA.” Have a video to share? Send us a note at...

Former Ramones bassist CJ Ramone has announced a summer tour that will cover just about the whole continental U.S. The tour kicks off July 7th, 2011 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and wraps up on August 7th in Cleveland, Ohio. CJ joined the Ramones in 1989, replacing founding member Dee Dee Ramone. CJ is often credited as breathing life into the legendary...

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have announced their first tour dates after five years in support of their upcoming album, I’m With You, due August 30th. This string of dates has the quartet playing two festivals, Summer Sonic in Japan and Rock in Rio in Brazil, before hitting Europe starting in Germany on October 7th and wrapping up in Spain...

Lefty jazz bassist Jennifer Leitham has released The Real Me Live on DVD. Directed by Mark Lewis, the performance was taken from the bassist’s performance at Franklin Park in Riverside, California in July 2010. The DVD is a compliment to her 2006 CD of the same name and features the same music. The Real Me Live includes a bonus music...

Joe Naylor has introduced a new gadget for instruments with heavy necks, called the Axe Balancer. The product is a small, 7-ounce tungsten steel block with a non-reactive foam bottom that mounts to your bass under the strap button. The gadget acts as a counterweight at the farthest point from the headstock, preventing neck dive to save you from holding...

Lemmy Kilmister is a rock icon. This clip of “Stay Clean” from Motörhead’s DVD is an example of why.

Peter Hook will be bringing his band, The Light, to North America for a string of concert dates in which the group will play Joy Division’s albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer in their entirety. Hook, who was the bassist/founder of the post-punk outfit, took a similar tour late last year, but was only showcasing the first Joy Division album. Closer...

Stanley Clarke will be honored with the Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival on June 26th, just before his performance with Return to Forever IV. He will be the 18th recipient of the award, which started in 1994 to recognize “a great international jazz musician for the entire body of his or her work and for that musician’s...

AweSome Musical Instruments has introduced the T4-Board Kit, a mod using their Pickup Tone Multiplier switching system to provide a total of 68 analog pickup tones for instruments with 4-pickup coils. That includes instruments with two 4-wire humbuckers, one 4-wire humbucker and two single-coil pickups, or four single-coil pickups. The system consists of six switches on a 1″ x 3″...

Everyone could use a little reggae groove to chill out to. Here’s a clip of Steel Pulse from 1990 playing the songs “Blues Dance Raid” and “Soldiers.” Bassist Alvin Ewen, who was with the group for 22 years, holds down the groove with a nice, big fat tone.

Black Country Communion has released their second album, aptly entitled Black Country Communion 2. The group, which started as a supergroup side project, features bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes (ex-Deep Purple/Black Sabbath/Trapeze), drummer Jason Bonham (Foreigner), guitarist Joe Bonamassa, and keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater). The band has grown closer, saying that the sophomore album is a band album, not a side...