Jimmie Vaughan | JasonShadrick

Summer Update

Posted on July 25, 2010 in: Guitar, Guitar Lessons|View Comments

As you can tell, things have been slow around here. That is mostly because writing for Guitar Edge and Premier Guitar has taken up a lot of my time. A few weeks ago I went to the Crossroads Festival in Chicago and recorded a few videos. The first one below is with one of my all-time guitar heroes, Jimmie Vaughan.

I met with Jimmie before his CD Release Party at Buddy Guy’s new club. Not only was Buddy there, but Jeff Beck also showed up to celebrate his birthday. The next night I met up with Pete Huttlinger to record to lesson videos:

The rest of the summer I will spending getting settled into my new house in addition to cranking out lessons for GE and PG. I will also begin teaching at the Marion Music Academy this fall, so if you are interested in lessons, send me an email and I can get you the info.

Spread the Love

National Guitar Workshop Summer Tour Part Three: Austin, TX

Posted on August 9, 2009 in: Guitar, NGW|View Comments

Keep Austin Weird.

Austin is by far one of my favorite cities to go to. There is always great food nearby and if live music is your thing (which for me it is), there is plenty of great bands and musicians to check out.

This year our workshop took place at Concordia University in the northwest suburbs of Austin. It is a great campus that gave the feeling that you were on a nature retreat somewhere in the hill country of Texas. Everyone there welcomed us back (we were at their old location in 2006 and 2007) and I was really looking forward to seeing the returning students and our faculty.

Our featured guest for our Blues Summit was Jimmie Vaughan. Jimmie is a legendary Texas Blues musician and is one of a handful of guitarists who we have never had the chance to work with. For his appearance, Jimmie brought his band with him that included Mike Flanigin on B3 and the legendary blues drummer, Frosty. The band did a great job of mixing up some performances of Jimmie’s tunes and some Q and A with the audience. This is a big reason why our students come back year after year, they get the chance not only to see some of their guitar heroes up close, but also get the opportunity to ask them questions.

Another guest we had in Austin was John Jorgenson. John is largely known for his time in the twang supergroup The Hellecasters with Jerry Donahue and Will Ray. John’s talent as a musician is endless. Not only is he a scary good electric country player he is easily one of the foremost Gipsy style guitarists in the world. Adding his skills on clarinet and he is pretty much one of the most versatile musicians around.

Overall it was a great week for the students and faculty alike.

Here is a video of an especially talented student playing on the student concert:

Spread the Love

National Guitar Workshop Summer Tour Part Two: Chicago

Posted on July 22, 2009 in: Guitar|View Comments

As always, Chicago this year was great. From the location to the housing to the great people at Judson who take care of us, it seems that every year our Chicago campus is usually my favorite.

The faculty this year included Matt Smith, Dennis McCumber, Cass Faulconer, John Horne, Murali Coryell, Mike Cramer, Shawn Purcell, Jeff Beasley, Dave Tiede, and several more amazing instructors.

The week began with meeting Amanda Monaco at O’Hare and then directly heading down to the Jazz Record Mart. I had been there several times before and I knew that I had to put a time limit on our visit otherwise we would be there all day. I ended up with a Paul Motian album and an early Jerry Bergonzi album.

The faculty arrived on Saturday and we had a nice hang before the students arrived on Sunday. This year’s group of students were some of the most talented I had ever seen at NGW. We had two students from Mexico, one from Italy and one from France. All of them had decided to come to Chicago to get the chance to see our guest artist, Buddy Guy.

One of the most memorable moments of the week was the night of the first student concert. That afternoon the power went out for about half of the campus, which of course included our performance space. At the last minute we decided to have the concert in a large classroom with minimal amplification and with the drummer only using a snare and a splash cymbal.

It was one of the most memorable student concerts ever.

Everyone who came had such a great time. The students played great and many of them came up to me at the end of the week and let me know how great of a time they had.

On the 16th we headed down to Buddy Guy’s Legends to spend some time with the man himself. As we arrived at the club, Buddy was sitting at the bar waiting for us. Many of the students had to look twice as they walked in, not believing that he was just hanging out.

Buddy Guy at Legends Photo Courtesy of GuitarVibe.com

Buddy spent some time answering questions and telling stories about his life in music over the last 6 decades. After he answered questions, he went back to sitting at the bar and proceeded to make sure everyone who attended had the chance to say hi, get an autograph or get a picture taken. It was great to see someone at his level take the time to do this.

After all the autographs were signed the jam for the students started. Buddy continued to hang to check out the first few bands and you could tell he was digging it. It was an incredible thrill for everyone involved and I hope to talk to Buddy (and Isabelle) soon to bring him to another campus.

Another cool thing about this week was that Zack from GuitarVibe was attending as a student to document the entire week. He did an amazing job of writing about the experience from a student’s perspective. You can also check out some videos he shot on his YouTube channel.

I am already in Austin (very hot) and today we have the great Jimmie Vaughan on campus. It is great being able to travel in the summer and see all of the students, but I am looking forward to going home on Saturday.