Steve Wariner teaches licks

It Ain't All Bad

After an eight-year hiatus, master guitarist, consummate singer and songwriter Steve Wariner releases his first non-instrumental album. In 2009, Wariner paid tribute to his mentor, Chet Atkins, with the hot-picking instrumental album "Steve Wariner, c.g.p., My Tribute to Chet Atkins," and he followed it two years later with another album of instrumentals, "Guitar Laboratory." On this new album, the four-time Grammy winner comes out with guitars blazing and baritone booming, ...

Guitar Laboratory

Grammy winner Steve Wariner explores the range of guitar sounds, and from jazz to Honky Tonk and on into acoustical finger-picking, the range is impressive. Tele Kinesis is a hard driving picking tune in a twangy "chicken pickin'" style that's clearly rooted in the '70s though new. At the other end of the spectrum are songs like Sugarfoot Rag that Wariner plays on a nylon-string guitar as part of a duet with Leon Rhodes. A strong classical influence emerges on songs ...

c.g.p.

Paying homage to a legend like the late Chet Atkins is a tall order, especially when the man who forever shaped Nashville's musical landscape happened to be a close friend and mentor. So it's not all that surprising Steve Wariner's latest album, a 10-song tribute to Atkins, who died in 2001, hits the high notes musically but is a bit over the top when it comes to his reverence for his one-time hero. Wariner's silky smooth picking has seldom sounded better. ...