FEATURE: SUMMER STUDY GUIDE
Check out our guide to this summer’s guitar shows—the Healdsburg Guitar Festival and the Montreal Guitar Show—as well as our complete list of workshops and camps. [More]

FEATURE: THE ROOTS OF COUNTRY RHYTHM GUITAR LESSON
How the playing of four country pioneers—Maybelle Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Harvey, and Riley Puckett—helped create today’s bluegrass, country, and folk rhythm guitar style. With video. [More]

PRIVATE LESSON: LEDWARD KAAPANA
The slack-key virtuoso gives a road map to a distinctive family tuning. With audio. [More]

FEATURE: TAYLOR MADE
Acoustic Guitar takes a tour of Taylor’s advanced guitar factory. [More]

NEW GEAR REVIEW: MARTIN OMCGTE CHERRY
Sustainable woods and a timeless design create a uniquely voiced OM. With video. [More]

NEW GEAR REVIEW: VOYAGE-AIR VAD-2
A radical approach to the travel-guitar concept enables globe-trotting pickers to pack a full-size ax. With video. [More]

NEW GEAR REVIEW: FIVE CLIP-ON TUNERS
We test models by Crafter, Planet Waves, Sabine, Seiko, and TuneTech. With video. [More]

DON ALDER, Not a Planet
Alder, the 2007 Winfield winner, explores some new musical directions on his latest CD. The sort of intricate solo instrumental pieces for which he’s best known are well represented here—the driving “Finger’s Fingers” and the gentle ballad “Flacon de neige (Snowflake)” being prime cases in point. But on nine of the 13 pieces on Not a Planet, Alder teams up with other musicians, using ensembles to extend his compositions. He duets with bassist Michael Manring on the lilting and reflective piece “Sayonara.calm” and intertwines his guitar with Julia Thornton’s harp playing on “Ms. Diana,” a mesmerizing dance-like piece that features Alder’s subdued but effective percussion on his guitar’s body. “Blue Shift Principle” is a jazzy, up-tempo tune on which Alder’s guitar is driven by bass and drums, and he does a beautiful quartet arrangement of “The Wall,” which features slide guitarist Tim Tweedale. The most significant stylistic departures here are “6 Ft. Tall” and “Haunting Me,” two pop tunes with Alder singing. While his vocals are competent and smooth, it’s his spectacular guitar work that shines most brightly. (Available at donalder.com/donaldercd.htm and cdbaby.com)
—RON FORBES-ROBERTS

RICKY SKAGGS, The High Notes
Ricky Skaggs certainly isn’t the first musician to start off in bluegrass and wind up making it big as a country star in Nashville. But it’s pretty certain he’s the first one to take his Top 40 country hits and re-record them bluegrass style. On the aptly titled The High Notes, Skaggs brings the same straight-from-the-still intensity he puts into his true bluegrass recordings into the dozen country tunes included here. Backed by his world-class Kentucky Thunder band, along with guest artists Paul Franklin on pedal steel and Buck White on piano, Skaggs infuses past hits like “Highway 40 Blues,” “Honey (Open That Door),” and “Country Boy” with both a fresh perspective and a wry sense of how strange the music business can be. Filled with great mandolin playing, perfect singing, and dazzling acoustic guitar work by Skaggs and the awesome Cody Kilby, The High Notes hits all the right ones in almost every case, turning potential commercial filler into a project crackling with new power and insight. (Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, crackerbarrel.com)
—DAVID McCARTY

For more CD reviews, go to acousticguitar.com/playlist.

MAY 2009: Martin Simpson fingerstyle lesson; home recording tips and tricks; reviews of the Cole Clark dreadnought and a slew of rhythm stomp boxes; and music to the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” and the late, great Jerry Reed’s “Jerry’s Breakdown.”

JUNE 2009: Interview with Neko Case; Ernie Hawkins explores the style of blues master Rev. Gary Davis; our editors give the lowdown on the highlights of the NAMM show; reviews of the PRS Tonare acoustic and Acoustic Image Corus amp; and music to Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” and Sheryl Crow’s “Picture.”

JULY 2009: A guitarist’s guide to songwriting; reviews of the Takamine Limited Edition 2009 and Ultrasound Pro-250 amplifier; and music to Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and Led Zeppelin’s “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?”

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