I have a healthy one hour commute to work (each way), so I spend a couple hours in the car every days. Over the years I have listened to thousands of hours of music, and the last couple of years I have listened to hundreds of audio books as well. Mainly biographies of musicians, but some other topics as well. By accident searching for new things to listen to I stumbled upon the No Guitar is Safe podcast by Jude Gold. To be fair, I saw somewhere that there was a Robben Ford interview, and I felt obliged to listen. I listened to a few minutes on the laptop, and downloaded the whole interview for the car the next day. This led me to check out who else Jude had interviewed for the podcast.
Like any other lemming, I went for the “go for what you know” option – and downloaded podcasts with interviews for Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Steve Morse, Joe Satriani, Brad Gillis, and many more. After listening to a half dozen of them I was (at that point) just kind of sucked in, and had to download every one available (more than 50 at this writing). Each podcast is roughly an hour and a half to two hours long. Why would anyone want to listen to more than 100 hours of guitar podcasts you say? Let me explain…
The “No Guitar is Safe” podcast is billed as “Guitar Hangs with Guitar Heroes” on iTunes. I think this is the way it started out (because the first episodes were with Joe Satriani, Brad Gillis, and James Valentine). There are dozens of other guitar players interviewed in other episodes, most of which you probably have no clue who they are. And that’s the beauty of it. Jude Gold not only introduces you to players you probably should know, he spans every genre and type of guitar playing you could ever think of. Shred? Got it. Funk? Got it in spades. Metal? Yep. Classical. Check. Flamenco? Yes, and it’s incredible. Blues? Of Course. Soul? It’s in there. Female guitar players? Plenty. Even the most advanced ukelele player you’ve ever heard.
Take a Deep Dive
One of the main reasons to listen to a podcast is because it’s long form, and the interviewer can do deep. When you read an article in a magazine, what you are getting is the edited synopsis of an entire interview. The tidbits they believe most people would be interested in. The actual interview itself could be an hour or two, but the magazine version gets cut down to a page and a half, and in terms of time that’s maybe 5 or 10 minutes of the total interview.
The funny thing about podcasts is that people like them for same reason that Howard Stern interviews are so lauded. Love or hate his show in general, Howard interviews rock stars at great length for one to two hours. If you haven’t head his long form interviews with Robert Plant, Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Leslie West, and more – you’re missing out!
What Howard and podcasts have in common is that they usually start out with background. Where did you go to school? How did you first learn guitar? How much do you practice? What were your first bands? Who are your influences? Everything you could ever want to know about a guitar player is within the No Guitar is Safe podcast. I became instantly addicted to these, and after time started seeing many similarities in successful musicians. You will too.
You can follow No Guitar is Safe on Facebook.
If you have an Apple phone, you can also find it on iTunes.
I personally don’t have an iPhone, so I download them on Soundcloud.