Premier Guitar Presents: Diarrhea Planet, Craig Brown Band July 14

I’ve known my guitar teacher, Mike Hoover, for 47 years. After all this time, he’s still teaching me about music—and life. He called today to tell me he’s training for a run of three-hour gigs. Mike turns 80 this year, and he has never stopped playing.

At some point in the conversation he said, “When they quit gigging, they die,” then proceeded to list a handful of old pickers we both knew who hung it up and were gone not long after. It wasn’t morbid—it was matter-of-fact. A field report from a man who has spent a lifetime on bandstands.