PG's Editorial Director Reflects on His Decade at the Magazine

I’ve been at Premier Guitar for a decade now, and have served as editorial director for most of the past three years, so this decision doesn’t come lightly. I’ve been able to do a lot of work here that I’m proud of, from interviewing artists ranging from Carlos Santana to the Messthetics, to writing odes to personal heroes like R.L. Burnside and Sonny Sharrock, to gently guiding the magazine in a direction that I hope has served you well and will continue to do so under the leadership of my colleague and friend Richard Bienstock. Rich and I met when I was writing for him at Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado years ago, and more recently he’s taken to writing for us here at PG. The wheel turns. Rich is an exceptional editor and I know you will enjoy what he brings.

“You can never have enough friends in this life. And the ones who inspire and encourage you are especially precious.”

Will I miss feeling the pulse of exciting new gear and music on a daily basis? Sure! But after 47 years as a music journalist, I won’t miss the perpetual deadlines—or the tyranny of the alarm clock! I have a long list of personal musical projects to shepherd and pursue—most prominently the feature film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, which I made with my cosmic roots band Coyote Motel. It’s a psychedelic musical cultural history that is plucked from the pages of my interests and life over the past 30 years. In a final shameless plug within these pages, it is available on several streaming outlets now and as a DVD, and I urge you to satisfy any curiosity you might have about me and my musical interests—think David Gilmour and Sonny Sharrock meeting R.L. Burnside, the Band, and Son House at the intersection of highways 61 and 49.