Before their Nashville gig in April of 2016, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid and Doug Wimbish met with PG’s John Bohlinger to talk about their combined sorcery that makes guitar, bass and drums sounds like an army of instruments. Reid and Wimbish utilize killer chops and miles of pedals and cables—making their tech Jeff Cummings the hardest-working man in show business. During the interview, bass legend Billy Cox crashes the party for some avuncular bass commentary.
9. The Darkness
PG’s Chris Kies hung out with Dan Hawkins, Frankie Poullain, and Justin Hawkins of The Darkness before their gig at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.
8. Children of Bodom
Alexi Laiho, frontman and guitarist for melodic death metal band Children of Bodom, took us through his sparse, but powerful, setup before the band’s Nashville show at the Exit/In. A combination of ESP guitars, Marshall amps, and a few Boss pedals help create Laiho’s lightning-fast leads and bone-rattling rhythms.
7. Steve Lukather
Premier Guitar’s John Bohlinger hung with Steve Lukather and his tech, Jon Gosnell, shortly before Toto’s show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. While Gosnell covered the nuts and bolts of the pedalboard and amp, Lukather showed what his signature Music Man guitars are capable of.
6. Don Felder
Shortly before a recent show at Nashville’s City Winery, Don Felder took a few minutes to talk to Premier Guitar’s John Bohlinger about everything from his first garage band with Stephen Stills to his years with the Eagles and beyond.
5. Peter Frampton
Guitar icon Peter Frampton invites Premier Guitar’s John Bohlinger to his Nashville rehearsal studio to talk and demonstrate his sprawling live setup.
4. Andy Timmons
Andy Timmons is currently on the Ultimate Guitar Experience tour with fellow 6-stringers Jennifer Batten and Uli John Roth. Before their soundcheck in Nashville at the Basement East, Timmons demonstrated how he gets studio-quality tones onstage.
3. Zakk Wylde
PG’s John Bohlinger hung with Zakk Wylde before soundcheck during the Nashville stop of the Generation Axe tour. Wylde, an intimidating muscle-bound shred monster turned out to be perhaps the nicest guy on the planet, is a renaissance man, and a titian of industry. Zakk humbly took us through his rig full of newly-launched Wylde Audio wares.
2. Johnny Hiland
High above the Nashville skyline, guitar slinger Johnny Hiland met with PG’s John Bohlinger for a pre-show Rig Rundown. Hiland showed off a diverse cache of 6-strings, two cool amps and a larger—yet practical—board that makes for a killer setup for both the studio and live gigs.
1. AC/DC
Premier Guitar’s Chris Kies traveled south to hang with AC/DC techs Trace Foster and Greg Howard before their show at Atlanta’s Phillips Arena. As you watch this video, you’ll slowly understand why both techs claim that this is both the easiest gig (because of the light load of equipment) and the hardest gig (no pedals or effects to hide behind) they’ve ever had.
What an empty calendar teaches you about yourself.
Here’s what happened in my so-called professional life in the last 30 days: A lucrative TV gig fell through, my three weekly club dates expired, and the one online session I booked stiffed me after I spent five labor intensive hours on their crap track. This may sound like complaining, but it is not. These are the standard professional musician/entertainer landmines we inevitably encounter while navigating this career path that has no path.
For most Americans, you are what you do. So when a musician is all rig, no gig, it hits you on a deep level that leaves you waking up at 3 a.m. wondering, who am I? What am I doing with my life? Should I do something else? Where can I get money?
I’m reminded of the 2010 Joan Rivers documentary,A Piece of Work. In one poignant scene, Joan looks at her book (calendar) replete with empty dates and says: “If my book ever looked like this, it would mean that nobody wants me and that everything I ever tried to do in life didn’t work and nobody cared and I've been totally forgotten.”
Joan Rivers is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. She was a trailblazer for women in comedy, breaking barriers in the 1950s and ’60s when stand-up was male-dominated. She became the first woman to host a late-night network talk show (The Late Show with Joan Rivers, in 1986), won a Daytime Emmy, a Grammy, and was nominated for a Tony. You’d think that after that much success, Joan could calmly coast with plenty of dough and accolades to carry her through. But there she was at age 77, still terrified of not working. She needed the gigs for validation, a lifeline. Maybe that’s what it takes to be a legend.
Musicians and entertainers are like puppies: Give us nothing to do, and we chew on the couch, poo on the floor. For me, music is more than a paycheck. It’s therapy, meditation, medicine, my always-there-for-you friend. Take it away, and the quiet exposes how messy the rest of life can get.
Yet the old truth holds: This too shall pass. Everything shifts—gigs, chops, the economy, even mountains. Grip too hard for permanence, and you suffer. Embrace the flux, and yeah, it’s unnerving at first. But it’s also freeing. Nothing left to clutch so desperately. Let it go.
“For me, music is more than a paycheck. It’s therapy, meditation, medicine, my always-there-for-you friend.”
The Buddha broke it down like this:
Problem: Life is unsatisfactory—there’s always something off, something we resist.
Cause: Clinging, craving, attachment (the fearful, greedy kind).
Cure: Release the grip—suffering fades.
Treatment: Train mind and heart (the Eightfold Path).
It’s not about snuffing desire—good ambition or kindness is skillful. It’s dropping the obsessive hold that breeds turmoil. Zen teachers point out that pain and our personal likes/dislikes will always be part of life and never fully disappear. The real problem comes when we keep demanding that reality change to match what we want or avoid what we don’t want. When we stop fighting what’s actually happening and simply accept the present moment as it is, we naturally feel more at ease and peaceful.
That’s what clicked during the 2020 quarantine. For the first time as an adult, I wasn’t hunting for work. After decades of muscling doors open, the world slammed them shut—and forced me to sit with no control. It was terrifying, then strangely liberating. I learned to breathe in the pause.
Staying zen is calmly accepting whatever comes. That’s why music hooks me—it drops me into pure activity, mutes the world’s chatter, lets me dissolve into the flow.
A younger me in a dry spell would’ve spiraled like Joan Rivers: catastrophizing nonstop, convinced the apocalypse had arrived. After years of white-knuckling through slumps, I’m finally easing up. I play for the joy of it, try to learn something new, but mostly I lean into whatever the day brings; ride my bike, watch movies, hang with family and friends, take long walks, enjoy quiet mornings with coffee and no agenda.
Everything has its season. To everything, turn, turn, turn. The calendar blanks out, then fills again. The phone goes silent, then rings off the hook. In the quiet between, I remember: My sense of self doesn’t vanish when the gigs do. It just gets room to stretch, to root deeper beyond the spotlight.
The guitar’s still here, patient as ever. It never ghosts me. And right now, that’s plenty.
John Scofield is an absolute titan of jazz guitar. He’s had an illustrious solo career spanning over four decades and he’s shared the stage with the most important musicians of our time. In this lesson we’ll look at his brilliant single-line approach that endears him to jazz audiences around the globe.
Ex. 1 is about as Scofield as we can get without consulting a patent lawyer, though a good case could be made that he took this idea from pianist Thelonious Monk. You can hear this descending whole-tone-based lick in many of Sco’s solos. The notes impart a strong Bb7#11 sound and the final note is pushed off the fingerboard and returned in a vibrato-like motion. That’s another great Scofield-ism that just can’t be ignored.
Ex. 1
Turn up that chorus pedal and hone your string-skipping chops with Ex. 2, a 1980s-style 16th-note funk lick. The basic sound is G7, but with a host of alterations. The G half/whole diminished scale (G–Ab–Bb–B–C#–D–E–F) is clearly important, but it doesn’t explain everything Scofield plays. As Scofield has mentioned regarding playing over vamps like this one, “I’m not really sure what I’m doing. It’s just an in-and-out bop style.” Feel free to include chromatic approaches and blues licks as done here as well.
Ex. 2
The IIm–V–I lick in Ex. 3 shows how Scofield could extend basic bebop mannerisms into something distinctly original. It’s clear that the thinking is F Lydian dominant (F–G–A–B–C–D–Eb) over both the Cm7 and the F7 chords. Scofield would occasionally “summarize” both chords as simply F7.
Ex. 3
Scofield’s now-classic albums with Medeski, Martin, and Wood have garnered mass appeal among funk and jam band enthusiasts over recent decades. Most of his playing on these records is roots-based and you’ll hear plenty of straightforward, blues-inspired licks like this one (Ex. 4) in B minor.
Ex. 4
The B Dorian (B–C#–D–E–F#–G#–A) lick in Ex. 5 is a good example of how Scofield develops a simple motive and answers it with contrasting material. Pinch harmonics can always be used in Scofield’s style. Don’t be concerned with these harmonics generating a specific pitch or even getting them to sound perfect—the randomness is all part of the charm.
Ex. 5
Superimposing ideas in novel ways is important to Sco’s approach and a great way to generate interest over static harmonies. Ex. 6 begins with a simple root/fifth figure in Bb that’s shifted up a half-step to B, and finally resolving back to Bb at the end. It’s an effective way to establish tension and release in a line.
Ex. 6
In recent years, Scofield has embraced a cleaner tone on some of his straight-ahead recordings. Think Vox amp and no RAT. Ex. 7 is an ever-flowing line that he might play over the first phrase of an F blues. Notice how the pickup bar is a G7 idea over the C7 and the first part of measure 1 is actually a C7 line over the F7. This kind of “misalignment” is something that intermediate players often miss, trying to faithfully match the chords all the time. Before long, the music is back on track and matching the chords in a more predictable manner, at least until the eclectic use of an A major line leading into the Bb7. Finish everything up with a Sco trademark major seventh double-stop.
Ex. 7
Ex. 8 is a particularly guitaristic way to play over the second phrase of an F blues. Even though the line is fingered in the 6th position, why not use an open string? The open high E (a #11) gives us the opportunity to get a cool angular sound to the Bb7 line that would otherwise be impossible.
Ex. 8
This phrase (Ex. 9), which begins in the 8th measure of the blues, shows Scofield’s mastery of bebop language. The D7b9 lick pushes into Gm7, which begins the final phrase of the 12-bar form. The IIm–V is clearly a simple sequence from C Lydian dominant (C–D–E–F#–G–A–Bb). The big lesson here is the importance of knowing your bebop fundamentals.
Ex. 9
Now that we’ve broken out the nuts and bolts of this lesson, let’s listen to few essential Scofield tracks to get our ears right. Even jazzers were making music videos in the 1980s.
John Scofield Protocol
“Protocol” from Still Warm, has a classic fusion groove thanks to drummer Omar Hakim and bassist Darryl Jones (both of whom played with Scofield in Miles Davis’ group). Sco’s tone is wide thanks to his signature chorus sound, an often-imitated element of his style.
Wee
When Enroute landed in 2004 it instantly became a classic guitar trio album. Recorded live at the Blue Note, it featured Sco’s longtime trio of drummer Bill Stewart and mentor/electric bassist Steve Swallow. “Wee” is a “rhythm changes” tune, which isn’t that groundbreaking, but the playing takes Denzil Best’s most well-known composition to another planet.
Chicken Dog
In 1998, Scofield teamed up with funk-jazz stalwarts Medeski, Martin, and Wood for A-Go-Go, which is a standout in Sco’s discography. This was the album that introduced him to the jam band scene and informed many of his more recent albums.
How session ace, producer and Pat Benatar guitarist Neil Giraldo took over the ‘80s airwaves and earned a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Neil Giraldo joins the Axe Lords for a deep dive into the guitars, amps, and outboard gear behind mega-hits like Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” on which he nailed the legendary solo in one take, thank you very much.
The Ohio native (just like Dave!) walks us through his go-to BC Rich Eagle and Marshall 2x12 combo rig, how a Schaefer-Vega wireless feeding an Eventide H949 became his signature stereo sound, and why he leans on heavy strings, aggressive muting, and low gain instead of shred-style distortion. Neil also talks about how music grounded him as a kid, discusses his touring rig, and shares some of the secret recording tricks he uses to shape his tone in the studio.
Along with his musical partner and wife Pat Benatar, Neil is also the author of best-selling children’s bookMy Grandma and Grandpa Rock!
Follow @neilgiraldoofficial and @benatargiraldo for news, tour dates, and more.
Axe Lords is presented in partnership with Premier Guitar. Hosted by Dave Hill, Cindy Hulej and Tom Beaujour. Produced by Studio Kairos. Executive Producer is Kirsten Cluthe. Edited by Justin Thomas at Revoice Media. Engineered by Patrick Samaha. Recorded at Kensaltown East. Artwork by Mark Dowd. Theme music by Valley Lodge.
Follow @axelordspod for updates, news, and cool stuff.
After a devastating theft in 2021, the metal band’s guitarist rebuilt his tone empire around some life-changing loans.
Chicago post-metal band Russian Circles had to battle their way back to gear heaven. In 2021, the bulk of the band’s gear was stolen while on tour, leading to a years-long rebuild. As a result, many of the items you might’ve seen in guitarist Mike Sullivan’s Rig Rundown back in 2017 are long gone.
PG’s Chris Kies recently met up with Sullivan at the band’s Chicago practice space, where they’ve resided for nearly 20 years. Check out some highlights from Sullivan’s new, resurrected rig below.
Sullivan has been favoring Dunable guitars of late, borrowing one from tourmate Chelsea Wolfe after his other guitar was nabbed. The green one is based on the Dunable Narwhal, with a more Gibson-like scale—comparable to Sullivan’s old Les Paul. This Narwhal has a mahogany body and neck, maple top, and a coil-tap function for the two humbuckers: a DiMarzio PAF 26th Anniversary and a DiMarzio Joe Duplantier Fortitude signature. Vibrating atop those pickups are D’Addario strings—a set of .011–.056, with the low E swapped for a .058. Sullivan uses a number of different down tunings, all with D-A-D-G-A-D as a starting point.
The white Dunable has a maple neck, a 25.5” scale, and is tuned lower, with a .062 for the low E string. It’s used for drop-A tunings, and has the same DiMarzio pickups.
Gettin’ Hi
Sullivan was turned onto Hiwatts after acquiring some on loan in the wake of the gear theft, and he hasn’t turned back since. The cabinets are loaded with Hiwatt Octapulse speakers.
Mike Sullivan’s Pedalboard
Sullivan runs two pedalboards. The first includes a Peterson tuner, Shure P9HW, Dunlop CBM95 Cry Baby Mini, DigiTech Drop and Whammy Ricochet, and MXR Phase 95.
The motherboard carries a Dunlop DVP3 volume pedal, a Friedman BE-OD Deluxe, Strymon Dig, TimeLine, and Flint, a T-Rex Image Looper, DigiTech JamMan Stereo, MXR CAE Boost/Line Driver, Foxrox Octron3, Electric Eye Cannibal Unicorn, Maxon Apex808, Fortin-Modded Ibanez Tube Screamer, and a Radial Shotgun Guitar Splitter and Buffer.
Cropper performing at a "Guitar Greats" concert at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, on November 3, 1984.
Ebet Roberts
On December 3, 2025, the night before we heard the news of Steve Cropper’s passing, my wife and I were jamming to a simple loop. Distracted, at one point I strayed into a noodle that wasn’t doing my wife or the song any favors. Then a voice spoke loudly in my head: “Booker T. and the M.G.’s, you idiot! Cropper! Now!” In a shot I was off the noodle bus and back on track.
That voice, it seems, sat at the shoulder of many guitarists. Such was the reach and influence of a musician that could be hookmeister, bedrock, silk, switchblade, or the lonely cry at the root of a heartbreaking melody. Cropper’s signature, however, was his economy and restraint—much of which was reinforced by his keen producer’s ear. Keith Richards, one of the kings of rhythm and timing, was once asked what he thought of Cropper. Richards, who can spiel when moved, was reduced to two words: “Perfect, man.” And truly, it’s hard to find a moment in Cropper’s body of work as rhythm guitarist, lead ace, and producer that isn’t, by some measure, impeccable.
Steve Cropper was born on October 21, 1941, in rural Dora, MO. But before he was 10, his family moved to Memphis. Like any open-minded, musically inclined individual with access to a radio in that time and place, Cropper found a feast for the ears in Memphis in the 1950s—blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, country, and the rockabilly percolations bubbling up from Sun Records.
Cropper was playing guitar by the time he was 14. And his influences around that time tell much about the sum that would become the Cropper style. From jazz giant Tal Farlow he learned how to dance around a melody with precision. From Chet Atkins, he took a sense for how chord melody and the twang and pop of an electric guitar could work together. Chuck Berry opened his ears to the power of relentless, uptempo, driving rhythm. And Jimmy Reed taught him the ways of deriving swing from skeletal, haunting simplicity.
By the time he was 20, Cropper had joined forces, along with future Booker T. and the M.G.’s bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, in an instrumental band that evolved into the Mar-Keys, which hit number 3 with “Last Night,” a release on Memphis-based Satellite Records. Within a few years, Satellite became Stax, and on the strength of the Carla Thomas single “Cause I Love You,” entered a distribution deal with Atlantic Records. Stax’s agreement with Atlantic meant product and hits had to keep coming. And that effort was facilitated by Stax’s in-house band, which featured Cropper, drummer Al Jackson Jr., and bassist Lewis Steinberg. That trio, with organist Booker T. Jones, further boosted Stax’s fortune and profile, when an impromptu jam intended as a B-side became “Green Onions”
Though “Green Onions” showcases the awesome collective strength of Booker T. and the M.G.’s as a mighty groove machine, Cropper’s contributions to the track included a lock-step doubling of Lewis Steinberg’s bass, a horn section-style stab on the one, and a lead that is the essence of economy and attitude, reflecting Ike Turner or Johnny Guitar Watson’s fiery r&b fretwork. Cropper, in fact, provided much of the tune’s dynamics. The song may have legitimized Stax. But it also cemented Booker T. and the M.G.’s reputation as a band’s band, revered by surf and garage bands on the West Coast, soul and r&b artists working in the South and on the East Coast, and perhaps most notably, the bands that would soon make up the British Invasion.
Had the M.G.’s left behind “Green Onions” alone, they would have been legendary. But the band, and Cropper, in particular, would go on to make Stax one of the most vital and important labels of the 1960s, and he would lend a hand in nourishing the careers of some of some of soul music’s most titanic figures.
Cropper ultimately became the front-line producer at Stax and their subsidiary Volt. And his production style mirrored his approach to guitar. It was lean, hard-hitting, dripping with groove, but also spacious enough to make room for the awesome voices that passed through Stax’s Memphis studios. Cropper’s production was so powerful and full of sinewy punch that it practically tormented British artists who struggled to find Stax’s potency in their own studios. At one point the Beatles were slated to work with Cropper on the LP that eventually became Revolver. That didn’t pan out, but Cropper’s production, recording, and performing prowess would still touch millions of people through hits from Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd, and, most monumentally, Otis Redding, who co-authored “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” with Cropper (who also adorns the yearning track with pearls of subtle guitar shading that virtually define the instrument’s role in soul balladry).
Cropper didn’t stop working after Stax’s hits dried up. He continued to produce records and play sessions, and reached millions more playing himself in the Blues Brothers film. He toured—once again with the M.G.’s—backing Neil Young at the height of Young’s volcanic reawakening in the 1990s. Cropper was, generally speaking, a quiet, gentlemanly guy, quite happy to deliver the goods in relative anonymity as sparks flew around him—qualities evident in essential performance films like Shake! Otis Live at Monterey and footage from the Stax tour of Europe in 1967. And improbably, perhaps, in light of his reserve, Cropper’s music and his impeccable touch as a guitarist and producer is everywhere where people listen. His legacy and influence are matched by few.
![Rig Rundown: Russian Circles’ Mike Sullivan [2025]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/youtube.jpg?id=62303631&width=1245&height=700&quality=70&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
