GUITAR GODS: Badi Assad

This is the final "lost interview" from the series, originally published at Tinfoil Music.
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Badi Assad - have you heard the name?

Badi Assad is a guitarist of enormous talent, a composer of other-worldly sounds, a singer with a hauntingly beautiful voice...and much more.

Born in São João da Boa Vista (Brazil), she grew up in Rio in a musical household (her brothers are Sergio & Odair Assad of Duo Assad). She began playing at an early age, studied classical guitar at the University of Rio de Janeiro and by 1986 had gained the mastery required to win the Young Instrumentalists Contest in 1984. In 1987 she was named Best Brazilian Guitarist of the International Villa Lobos Festival, and toured Brazil, Israel, and Europe. Three albums later, she was voted "Best Fingerstyle Guitarist" in Guitar Player Magazine's annual poll. She has released almost 1 album per year since (including the "La Guitara: Gender Bending Strings", a collection of female guitar players ranging from Jennifer Batten to Rory Block to Sharon Isbin to Patty Larkin).

Her MySpace page has a nice cross-section of her music, and her multi-language web-site "Badi Assad's House" has 20 main pages filled with countless sub-pages of incredible information: photos, tour dates, lyrics, poems, biographies, audio, video, and more.

I had a chance to speak Badi recently. Check it out!

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Lance Landreth

Lance is an amazing artist....painter, sculpture, musician, and more. The photos below are not hi-rez, but will give you a look at some VERY cool work. Check out his Instagram page for more!

GUITAR GODS: Dustie Waring

Another of our "lost interviews"....found!

GUITAR GODS: Dustie Waring
Written by SkinnyDevil
Friday, 09 May 2008 03:38

Dustie Waring plays guitar for the progressive metalcore band Between the Buried and Me. He is one half of the BTBAM guitar assault (along with fellow shredder Paul Waggoner), joining in 2005 after the exit of guitarist Nick Fletcher.

While Dustie certainly contributes classic "lead guitar" to the mix, he is best known for his massive rhythms, cinematic use of sound, and inventive counter lines, helping set Between the Buried and Me apart from the pack. (You can learn all about them while checking out their music at their web-site!)

They found time between the dates of their relentless touring (including Ozzfest 2006) to record the latest CD "Colors" (2007) and are performing with 3, Opeth, and Dream Theater on the "Progressive Nation '08" tour throughout the spring & summer.

I had a chance to speak with Dustie recently. Check it out!

Gilgamesh Tablet Found

This story is actually from 2015, but it bears spreading the news....

Published on September 24, 2015
The Newly Discovered Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh
written by Osama S. M. Amin

I was taking photos in the main hall of the Sulaymaniyah Museum and came across a display case containing a small clay tablet. The description beside it said the tablet was part of the Epic of Gilgamesh and a fragment of tablet V. Immediately I thought it was a ‘replica’ as the description was superficial. It did not say the tablet was genuine, that it was newly discovered or even told about the many new pieces of information it had revealed.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq and the dramatic looting of Iraqi and other museums, the Sulaymaniyah Museum (directed by the council of ministers of Iraqi Kurdistan) started an initiative. They paid smugglers to ‘intercept’ archeological artifacts on their journey to other countries. No questions were asked about who was selling the piece or where it came from. The Sulaymaniyah Museum believed this condition kept smugglers from selling their merchandise to other buyers, as they would have otherwise done so "with ease and without any legal consequences.".....

Read the entire story HERE.

GUITAR GODS: Phil Keaggy

This is abnother of our "Lost Interviews" from 2008. This one is the amazing Phil Keaggy! Honored to have the opportunity to share this one again!

Be sure to visit Phil on-line at his web-site.

Monday, 05 May 2008 23:49

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Johnny Carson: "Jimi, how does it feel to be the world's greatest guitar player?"

Jimi Hendrix: "I don't know, you'll have to ask Phil Keaggy."

This story is not true, it's one of those persistent myths. Another version is Dick Cavett speaking to Eric Clapton, and another still of Eddie Van Halen responding to a Guitar Player Magazine writer after he won the "Overall Best Guitarist" award in the early 1980s. Phil Keaggy himself brushes it off: "I don't think there is anything to it at all. I doubt that Jimi ever heard me play..." and other such statements.

But why on Earth would such a myth continue?

Photo Shop: Joe McGuire of TMedia

We featured Joe a few years back in THIS ARTICLE. Time to feature this amazing photographer again, who has had a lot of milestones since the last photo story!

Check out his work below, and visit him on Instagram (which he up-dates far more than FB or his webiste - haha!).

 More shots below!

GUITAR GODS: Bobby Ferrara

This interview is originally from 2007 and was published at Tinfoil Music Magazine. It was among the "lost interviews" and we've just recovered them and are posting them all. Bobby Ferrara, unfortunately, passed away a year after this interview posted. The info on that, and more about him, can be found HERE. I've included a comment that was retrieved on the original web-site, but was unable to retrieve any others. Monday, 17 December 2007 07:12 ========================= Well, we've been down for a while, but we're back now with an all new interview (albeit one conducted about this time last year). This time it's shred-master Bobby Ferrara. Check it out!

World Science Festival: How music and science combine to monitor climate change

Music researcher Dr Leah Barclay told the 100 Ways To Listen project that artists and scientists working together could unlock the secrets of climate change.

"The way we think about music and the way sound artists listen, can really influence and inspire how scientists are responding to climate change," she said.

Recording sound from different environments, allowed music scientists to monitor climate change, by using hydrophones and binaural microphones that mimicked the same technology as the human ear.

"Dramatic changes in aquatic ecosystems can go unnoticed simply due to visibility," said Dr Barclay, whose hydrology piece featured recordings of the world's water systems collected over a decade.

This non-invasive technique called acoustic ecology enabled the researchers "to listen to an active and healthy reef and hear active fish and snapping shrimp" or the increased traffic of Humpback whales, she said.

A lack of noise or increased noise levels could be indicators of the ecosystem's health.

Read it all HERE!

GUITAR GODS: Roy Rogers

The blues is a stunningly diverse musical form that began some time post-Civil War in the southern US. The earliest blues was an acoustic form (electric blues came later) and often was performed by solo musicians. When performed this way, it requires great skill to "fill the space", and legends like Robert Johnson, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, and others - with their distinct vocal styles, slide guitar skills, and rhythmic prowess - set the bar very high for those who dared follow.

Roy Rogers is one of the few living guitarists to dare and to meet that bar.