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3 weeks ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Greg Olwell |Greg Cahill |Mark Small
On May 1, 2025, the singer-songwriter world lost one of its most irrepressible and beloved free spirits when Jill Sobule died in a house fire while on tour in Minnesota. Sobule, 66, was best known, in her own words, as a “two-hit wonder”: for “I Kissed a Girl,” from 1995, the first overtly gay-themed song to reach the Top 20 (13 years before Katy Perry’s song of the same title); and “Supermodel,” featured in the Clueless movie soundtrack.
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1 month ago | 
acousticguitar.com | E.E. Bradman |Emile Menasche |James Rotondi |Mark Small
As country, Americana, and bluegrass artists like the Avett Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, Jason Isbell, Sierra Ferrell, and Billy Strings continue to shake up the national charts and rack up record crowds, a rising generation of proudly roots-faithful young players and songwriters is following in their footsteps.
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Mar 7, 2025 | 
acousticguitar.com | Mac Randall |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Mark Small |Bob Doerschuk
When talking to Rosanne Cash, it’s hard to avoid the word legacy. (For the record, she said it first, in the second exchange of our Q&A below.) And what a legacy she represents, not only by virtue of her lineage—daughter of one American musical icon, Johnny Cash, and stepdaughter of another, June Carter Cash—but through her own work as a musician. Over a 45-year, 18-album career, Cash has built an estimable reputation for herself.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Christopher Paul Stelling |Pat Moran |Karen Peterson |Mark Small
At first glance, Grisha Goryachev seems an unlikely torch bearer for flamenco guitar. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1977, descended from ancestors with Russian and Ukrainian lines. His forebears lived far from Andalusia, where flamenco music developed among the Romani people who migrated from India to settle in southern Spain in the ninth century.
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Oct 27, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Craig Havighurst |Kate Koenig |Mark Small |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Last fall Pat Metheny kicked off a tour unlike any he’d done before, surveying the sounds and approaches of his diverse solo projects going back to the 1970s. I caught the tour opener in Homer, New York, and while Metheny was alone onstage, the show was anything but small.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
newsbreak.com | Mark Small
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Pete Madsen |Nick Grizzle |Mark Small
From the first notes of Laura Snowden’s March 2024 concert for the Boston Classical Guitar Society, it was clear that the audience was not in for a typical recital.
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May 31, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | E.E. Bradman |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Mark Small
Sometimes, it’s the little things that make all the difference. Few people know this as intimately as Rick Shubb, whose capos might seem like optional accessories until it’s time to play familiar chord shapes in unfamiliar keys, a task most acoustic guitarists face regularly. The things Shubb capos do best—looking good and being easy to use while not changing an instrument’s intonation—are the result of dogged determination to get the details just right.
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Apr 28, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Kate Koenig |Julie Bergman |Mark Small |Gretchen Menn
Jiji plops to the floor the moment she sees there are cats. Allowing them to approach at their own pace, she earns their immediate approval. She is swarmed with purrs and fluffiness as we sit in my apartment, talking about music, matcha, and the Steven Mackey guitar concerto that we are both scheduled to perform—Jiji with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in March, and I with the Utah Symphony in April. I hand her the Kenny Hill classical that I currently have on loan.
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Apr 21, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Emile Menasche |Adam Perlmutter |Mark Small |E.E. Bradman
Fingerstyle guitar is in good hands, judging by the diverse talents of Jontavious Willis, Janet Noguera, Hayden Pedigo, and Muireann Bradley. Whether offering a fresh take on traditional styles (Willis and Bradley) or pushing modernist ideas into new territory (Noguera and Pedigo), each one of these rising stars has found a voice of his or her own. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then synthesis is the sincerest expression of respect—and demonstration of mastery.
