When Jim Campilongo phones in with Premier Guitar, it’s from his home in the Bay Area—the same place where he first picked up the guitar in the 1970s, began playing shows with local groups some years later and, eventually, launched his recording career in the 1990s. Over the subsequent decades, he established himself as one of the instrument’s foremost creatives, building a catalog of primarily instrumental albums that encompass a dazzling array of styles—rock, jazz, roots, Western swing, classical, experimental—all informed by his inventive, flexible and never-predictable playing, mostly on a Fender Telecaster plugged direct into an amp.