This is a slice from my monthly clinic series I do at the First Act Guitar Studio in Boston, MA on Boylston St. right down the road from my "day gig"--Berklee College of Music where I'm a Professor in the Guitar Department. It's co-sponsored by First Act and the now defunct Guitar One magazine (formely my other day gig) and it allows me to get together with some killer players like the two I'm with here--Tony Grey (Hiromi) on bass and Lyndon Rochelle on drums. We're rockin' (sorta) a Jeff Beck tune called "The Pump" from his 'There and Back' record, but we do it in the style of my buddy Steve Lukather mixed with my own brand of foolishness. I was doing some research on Luke for my March 2006 Guitar One feature piece on him and I ran into a live recording of him doing this tune and I really dug it. So much so I thought I'd give it a go around and I thought this clinic was a good time to drop it. Be it known I see and play with these guys once a year and we get minutes in between classes/ensembles to piece together tunes that we're going to play at different junctures that week--so what I'm saying is there's an element of looseness here, so, uh, give us a little slack. Also, I DID NOT purposely edit Tony's solo--I truly love his playing, especially his improvising. Someone either bumped the camera, shut it off, or the Mini-DV tape farted because it was a little garbled and I did the best I could. We did this right smack in the middle of a week at Berklee we call Guitar Sessions where the college opens it's doors to high school kids of all sorts to come and experience the school for a week. It's a great hang and all kinds of good players come out for the event and the kids get to see music like this up close, for free, with no hassles. I'm playing what used to be my main clinic axe when I work for First Act but it has since been murdered by a freak truss rod overturn accident. Bummer, it was a good one. Anyway, you're mostly hearing a V-Stack BHM for the main OD tones, but I think I hit the Fuzz Factory for a bit too. That amp in the back is an Alessandro Working Dog with a First Act logo, but they only exist in the store and are not for sale--it RULES though. The guitar had a Wilkinson bridge on there that took quite a beating that day as you can see from the plethora of crickets I attack it with ... ala Luke.

If anyone is curious about the music you hear on the title pages at the beginning of this video and the GBQ video; they are from my CD Solitaire that I released on my own on my MPT label. It's all freely improvised solo electronic/guitar pieces I recorded on a Mini-Disc in Brooklyn a couple of years back at a place called the Goga Cafe. If you dig, drop me a line and it's yours for $10. The quick clip of audio at the end of the video is my last solo lick from the tune "The Four Horseman" that I mentioned in the NGW video from Dave Martone's CD, 'When the Aliens Come'. CHECK IT OUT!