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Last Call

John Bohlinger on Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt, live in New York.

Photo by William P. Gottlieb

Our Last Call columnist considers his dream Rig Rundown subject.

“Django was music made into a man.” —Emmanuel Soudieux, Django’s bassist

My friend and colleague Chris Kies recently filmed a Pantera Rig Rundown. One could argue that Pantera is the reason that Rig Rundowns exist. Pantera, more specifically Pantera’s guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell, got Kies into guitar, and he eventually—along with former PG editorial director Joe Coffey—came up with the idea of filming guitarists with their rigs. So you have Hell’s own cowboy, Dimebag, via Kies to thank for the Rundown brand of infotainment.

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What Happens After Your Music Dreams Come True?

The Three Ts of Great Musicianship: Tuning, Tone and Taste

Behind the Scenes of a Televised Christmas Special

Hippie Mumbo Jumbo for Musicians That Really Works

Facing Down a Ruptured Eardrum

The Problems with Rolling Stone's Top 250 Guitarists List

The Problems with Rolling Stone's Top 250 Guitarists List

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in My School Orchestra

Last Call: Is “Better” Really Better Than Beater?

Rick Rubin: Reducer, Not Producer

Last Call: The Mysterious Appeal of Sad Music

Acoustic Therapy

As one of life’s simple pleasures, playing acoustic guitar—especially outside—can be the perfect mental-health solution.

“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”—John Stuart Mill

My heroes have always been musicians. After a lifetime of gigs and a decade of Rig Rundowns, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of musicians that I have loved, emulated, followed, stalked. For the most part, they are nothing like the demigods I imagined. If you get an unguarded glimpse into who they are, often you will recognize a kinship, for we share this same fragile, nervous, socially awkward, somewhat insecure core. Distill it all down without smoke and mirrors, or smoke and beers, and you can see that like most of us, they were drawn to music from an early age because it gave them something they needed.

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Last Call: Amor Fati

A positive attitude won’t fix your problems, but accepting things as they are is a good start.

I did not enjoy the transition from childhood to adulthood. Going from a loving, nurturing home to an indifferent and, at times, seemingly cruel real world was not a good fit for me. My freshman year in college, I was adrift, scared, and, occasionally, what I now recognize as clinically depressed. Out of desperation, I took a philosophy course to get some answers. There, I read Nietzsche’s book, The Gay Science (perhaps the greatest title ever), and learned the phrase amor fati, which is Latin for “love of one’s fate.”

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Last Call: Guitars for Vets

Jared James Nichols performs with John Bohlinger at the “Rock to Remember” concert live at Nashville’s Gibson Garage in February 2023.

I was hired to lead the house band for a benefit to raise funds for veterans battling PTSD. Jared James Nichols, Kirk Fletcher, Dave Mustaine, and others joined the cause, and here’s how it went.

Often with multi-act shows, limited budget, space, and inputs on the mix necessitate that some acts share a house band. Because I’ve been slugging it out for 30-plus years in Nashville, I occasionally get hired to lead it. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get the call to lead for “Rock to Remember,” a concert/live auction collab between Guitars for Vets (an organization that provides guitars to veterans struggling with PTSD) and Gibson Gives.

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Last Call: Is Your Gear a Blessing?

In 1967, Richard Head bought his dream guitar for $350 and went on a decades-long musical journey with his prized possession. Now, he’s selling it to raise money for injured veterans.

In Joe Bonamassa’s latest Rig Rundown, filmed in early 2022, Bonamassa showed us a beautiful, faded sunburst 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard with a history. This guitar was slated to be sold for charity, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit organization that builds specially adapted custom homes and donates them to severely injured post-9/11 veterans. (HFOT has built 350 homes to date, with another 71 projects underway nationwide.)

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