Friends, neighbors and shredders……..

Robert Trujillo at The Fonda

Out in front of the Gojira/ Devin Townsend Concert

Seeing Doug Aldrich and Keith St. John 

Doug was my guitar teacher back in high school. 

Seeing Alphonso Johnson at the Warwick booth

Alphonso used to be my neighbor back when he was in Santana.

Seeing Devin Townsend the day after his show

(he thanked my friend on vid for going to the show- funny dude)

 

Rusty Cooley

This dude is an animal on the guitar

Laurie Monk/ Truth in Shredding posted my footage:  http://www.truthinshredding.com/2013/01/rusty-cooley-peavey-amps-namm-2013.html

Heavy Mellow

These guys rule.  I caught 3 of their shows at NAMM.  Greatness!

Richie Kotzen

I saw Richie play twice at NAMM.  Nobody can sing or play like him.

Russ Miller/ Steve Smith

We just somehow stumbled upon this signing with some of my favorite drummers. The signed drum heads rule.

 

Stu Hamm

Stu is one of my heroes on the bass.  I saw him play twice at the show, got a pic and an autograph.  He even gave me his business card so I could e-mail him stuff.   Awesome!

Meeting Steve Morse

One of my favorite guitarists of all time.  I’ve seen him play live at least 20 times.  We mostly talked about his old instructional videos from the 80s.

GWAR 2013 with Trippy the Clown

What a photo op this was at the RNRI booth….

Kill Devil Hill saying hello……

Metal Masters Signing

Being at the very front of the line for the Metal Masters signing certainly didn’t suck.   And Billy Sheehan was the last person at the table, which was really cool.  

Bumblefoot and Tony Harnell performing together

Last show of NAMM – I watched them play, said hi to the guys afterwards, got an autographed poster and headed straight home. Perfect ending to a great 4 days.

BLABBERMOUTH used my footage of one of their tunes: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=185424.

Phil X and The Drills are a band to look out for this year.   Phil is a MONSTER guitar player and a certified YouTube guitar sensation with over 32 million views.   Even at a cursory glance, his credentials are quite astonishing.       In addition to being funny as can be, he’s so good that it’s absolutely ridiculous.  He brilliantly intersperses technical guitar playing with humorous and familiar songs.   Hearing him play a super-charged quick passage from The Flintstones theme and use an iPhone to make guitar music  is awesome – people were laughing while their jaws were dropping.   And his band can keep up with him!  This band may be the best kept secret in rock music.  With great drumming by Randy Cooke and killer bass playing by Daniel Spriewald, you’re always in for a treat when seeing The Drills. 

The Drills kicked everyone’s ass that was in attendance.   The really rock a lot of the music from Led Zeppelin.  They should have played at that Zeppelin thing instead of one of the shitty acts that played there (no names, but I’m not referring to Heart). 

It was the perfect way to end the NAMM show.   Definitely make it a point to see them live if you can.

My buddy was literally floored after the show!

This is the newly released CD from Phil X & The Drills:

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Cheers, Phil!!!

Saturday night, Tony Harnell (the former golden voice of TNT) briefly performed with Stryper at the House of Blues, which was a great show to a sold out crowd.  Tony has one of the best voices in rock music and is criminally underrated.   He played again this afternoon with Guns-N-Roses guitar whiz, Ron Thal (a.k.a. “Bumblefoot”) at the TC Electronics booth to close out the NAMM show.   They were joined by Wood Violins endorser Cassandra Sotos.   They cracked jokes and played several very familiar tunes, like “Ramble On”,  “Kashmir”, “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “Somebody To Love” by Queen.  Bumblefoot also threw down with some great vocals on that one.    They followed up with a signing.  What a spectacular way to end Winter NAMM 2013.  They’re definitely some of the coolest people and best musicians you could ever possibly meet.  

 

 

Prior to the set, Ron warmed up and joked around. He played some Cheap Trick and a few Pantera riffs.

Here’s  5 seconds of 5 minutes Alone

A little bit of “Dream Police”