Get out the Kleenex, hankies, or whatever you use to wipe away your tears: It’s the last episode of this season of Shred With Shifty, a media event more consequential and profound than the finales of White Lotus and Severance combined. But there’ll be some tears of joy, too, because on this episode, Chris Shiflett talks with one of country music’s greatest players: Vince Gill. Gill’s illustrious solo career speaks for itself, and he’s played with everyone from Reba McEntire and Patty Loveless to...
May 08, 2025•1 hr
The Cars’ self-titled 1978 debut record changed the world of power pop forever. Guitarist and co-vocalist Ric Ocasek penned all the tunes, but lead guitarist Elliott Easton transformed them with his tasteful 6-string stylings. This time on Shred With Shifty, Easton sits down with Chris Shiflett to show him how to play the solo from “My Best Friend’s Girl.” Born in Brooklyn before winding up in Long Island, Easton washed dishes to save up for his first 1971 Fender Telecaster, and after high schoo...
Apr 24, 2025•57 min
The Georgia-born, Nashville-based roots-rock outfit Larkin Poe have had a busy year. Last summer, they toured across the U.S. supporting Slash, and released their seventh studio album, Bloom, on January 22. With a bit of downtime back in Nashville, co-shredders-in-chief Megan and Rebecca Lovell joined Shred With Shifty to deconstruct their face-melting leads on “Summertime Sunset,” off of their 2022 record Blood Harmony. The Lovells grew up reading sheet music and learning violin via the Suzuki ...
Apr 10, 2025•52 min
This time, Chris Shiflett sits down with fellow west coaster Craig Ross, who calls in from Madrid equipped with a lawsuit-era Ibanez 2393. The two buddies kick things off commiserating over an increasingly common tragedy for guitarists: losing precious gear in natural disasters. The takeaway? Don’t leave your gear in storage! Take it on the road! Ross started out in the Los Angeles band Broken Homes, influenced by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and the Beatles, but his big break came when he audition...
Mar 27, 2025•48 min
When you imagine the tools of a guitar shredder, chances are you see a sharp-angled electric 6-string running into a smokin’-hot, fully saturated British halfstack of sorts—the type of thing that’ll blow your hair back. You might not be picturing an acoustic steel-string or a banjo, and that’s a mistake, because some of the most face-melting players to walk this earth work unplugged—like Molly Tuttle. The 31-year-old Californian has been performing live for roughly 20 years, following in a deep ...
Mar 13, 2025•51 min
From Ozzy Osbourne to Black Label Society to Zakk Sabbath to, most recently, his stint filling in for his old friend “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in Pantera, Zakk Wylde has left an unmistakable mark on the hard-rock and metal music worlds. Fresh off performing “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Cleveland Browns game in October, and paying homage to his boss Ozzy at the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Wylde joins this episode of Shred With Shifty to share his teachings from the boo...
Dec 19, 2024•58 min
Break out your glass, steel, or beer bottle: This time on Shred With Shifty, we’re sliding into glory with southern-rock great Derek Trucks, leader of the Derek Trucks Band, co-leader (along with wife Susan Tedeschi) of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and, from 1999 to 2014, member of the Allman Brothers Band. Reared in Jacksonville, Florida, Trucks was born into rock ’n’ roll: His uncle, Butch Trucks, was a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, and from the time he was nine years old, Derek wa...
Dec 12, 2024•49 min
This episode has three main ingredients: Shifty, Schenker, and shredding. What more do you need? Schenker was just 11 when he played his first gig with The Scorpions, and recorded on their debut LP, Lonesome Crow, when he was 16. He’s been playing a Gibson Flying V since those early days, so it's only natural that both he and Shifty bust out the Vs for this occasion. While gigging with Scorpions in Germany, Schenker met and was poached by British rockers UFO, with whom he recorded five studio re...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr
Next up on this action-packed season of Shred With Shifty, country superstar Keith Urban joins Chris Shiflett to walk through some of his most iconic solos and unpack some fine details behind his successful music career. Strapped with the ’51 Fender “Nocaster” that he used to record the solo on “Tumbleweed,” Urban walks Shifty through some of his guitar secrets, like how he came to own Waylon Jennings’ iconic, leatherbound 1950 Fender Broadcaster (hats off to his wife, Nicole Kidman, for that on...
Nov 21, 2024•54 min
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. That’s right: Shred With Shifty is back, and your beloved host Chris Shiflett is kicking off season two of the podcast with a super-special episode. Shifty’s Foo Fighters shredders-in-arms Dave Grohl and Pat Smear join him for this season premier that reveals some of the magic and maneuvering behind the Foos’ triple-guitar attack. The three friends and bandmates start off with some history lessons, discussing their earliest influences a...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 1
As the premier season of the show comes to a close, Richie Sambora sends it off with a fun, free-wheeling episode that looks at his high-drama fingerwork on “Only Lonely” from Bon Jovi’s second record, 1985’s 7800° Fahrenheit. (The song’s music video is everything you’d ever want from mid-’80s hard rock.) Richie joins Shifty subterranean-style, from his mother’s basement in New Jersey, where he’s equipped with a reverse-headstock Charvel, complete with a Floyd Rose system. It’s a busy time for S...
May 10, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 21
The Aerosmith axeman recounts how he ripped the blazing lead on the Rocks hit, dishing some critical history along the way. Behind Steven Tyler’s unhinged howls, Aerosmith’s twin-guitar attack with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford cemented them as one of the greatest hard-rock bands of the ’70s. “Last Child,” the street-strutting, hard-blues hit off their breakout 1976 record Rocks, is one of the greatest demonstrations of this dangerous duo’s interplay. While Perry holds down the funky rhythmic chor...
May 02, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 20
The influential British shredder talks about how he formed his playing style and demonstrates how to rip one of his most iconic leads. To hear Phil Collen tell it, he joined Def Leppard almost by accident. He had loaned the band one of his amps, and when they asked him to play some leads on their upcoming record Pyromania, Collen thought he was just doing his friends a solid. The rest is history. He and Shifty talk through Collen’s formative years on guitar, where he soaked up the scorching play...
Apr 25, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 19
Being born into rock royalty doesn’t make you a rock star—you’ve gotta earn it with your own chops. And whether it’s the classical pedigree of his first name or the hard-rock infamy of his surname, Wolfgang Van Halen has a long lineage to live up to. As he displays on this episode of Shred With Shifty, he’s more than up to the task. Wolf joins Shifty to teach the blistering, tap-heavy solo for his song “Take a Bow,” from 2023’s Mammoth II. It follows in his dad’s footsteps, sure, but it also sho...
Mar 28, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 18
If you can’t figure out how to play Joe Bonamassa’s solo from “Blues Deluxe,” don’t worry. It all changes when Shifty sits down with Bonamassa for this special episode of Shred With Shifty. No surprise that both of them reach for their Les Pauls, and Bonamassa even reveals why he switched from Strats to Gibsons in the early 2000s. Bonamassa is known for his dazzling collection of vintage guitars—which he says has become a target for haters—but he explains that you don’t need a ’58 Les Paul to ge...
Mar 20, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 17
It’s time for Chris Shiflett to rip another solo—solo episode, that is. During this first season of Shred With Shifty, our host has been keeping an eye on fan submissions of the lead parts explained in each episode, hand-picking sharp renditions to share. This time, he spotlights takes on the guitar theatrics from “Alive” by Pearl Jam, “Stay a Little Longer” by Brothers Osborne, and “The Waiting” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, plus a snippet of a Hendrix classic that inspired a listener to ...
Feb 29, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Brent Mason has picked for the biggest and best names in country music: Alan Jackson, Willie Nelson, Shania Twain, Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton, and George Strait are just a few of the country stars on whose records you can hear Mason’s Fender-on-Fender fretwork. But his solo on “Southbound Train,” the closing track on Travis Tritt’s 2000 record Down the Road I Go, might be his hottest work of all. As Mason explains, the song scoots along at his favorite country tempo—a Cajun two-step, Mason...
Feb 15, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Shifty’s biggest guitar hero joins the podcast to run down his unique lead picking on the 1977 Love Gun hit. Ace Frehley is the reason Chris Shiflett picked up a guitar in the first place, so it’s only natural that Shifty invites his original tone teacher onto the pod to recap one his iconic solos. Frehley, saddled with a classic black-and-cream triple-humbucker Les Paul, shares that “Shock Me” was the first KISS track on which he took lead vocal duty. The first time he sang it live, he remember...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ lead guitarist shows Shifty how he bottled an electric reaction to “The Waiting” on the song’s simple, iconic solo. Mike Campbell knows how to write the perfect parts to a song, and records them with the perfect guitar, amp, and tone to match. That’s why Shifty has the Heartbreakers’ lead man on this episode to get a look under the hood at what drives Campbell’s solo on “The Waiting.” The song, from 1981’s Hard Promises, was tracked at Sound City, where Campbell ...
Jan 19, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 13
“I think it’s safe to say John Osborne is a fuckin’ beast!” That’s how Chris Shiflett kicks off this episode of Shred With Shifty, featuring bearded Brothers Osborne shredder-in-chief John Osborne. Osborne joins Shifty to dissect his blistering country-rock ripping on the band’s breakout single, “Stay A Little Longer.” Osborne tells Shifty about failing miserably at guitar in college, where he learned to read and play bass clef but never got the hang of the treble clef. It’s no surprise when Osb...
Dec 21, 2023•1 hr 25 min
This time on Shred With Shifty, Chris Shiflett steps out on his own. Shiflett starts up with a video montage of fan-submitted solo takes on leads from Charlie Starr, Rivers Cuomo, Mike McCready, and others. Some are more faithful than others, and Shifty celebrates the originality. “Learn it kinda, and then put your own twist on it,” he encourages. Next, he’s cued up clips from his sit-downs with Paisley, Starr, McCready, and one of his favorite guitarists, Jawbreaker’s Blake Schwarzenbach. Then ...
Dec 07, 2023•51 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Host Chris Shiflett starts things off with a discussion on the musical context McCready emerged from. “If you didn’t have this punk rock background, then you were looked down upon,” remembers McCready. As he explains, his upbringing was less punk rock and more Cub Scouts until he picked up the guitar. He and PJ rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard preferred the likes of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, and after Gossard caught McCready shredding Stevie Ray Vaughan licks at a party, he phoned him up to st...
Nov 09, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 10
On this week’s Shred With Shifty, Chris Shiflett is joined by one of his all-time favorite players: Blake Schwarzenbach, the 6-string architect behind California punk band Jawbreaker’s simple, noisy, orchestral rippers. But before things really get rolling, Shifty gets his heartbroken as Schwarzenbach squashes rumors that Jawbreaker might have a new record in the works: “There’s no truth to it,” he says. Shifty and Schwarzenbach talk about the band’s trajectory up to and after Dear You, their ma...
Oct 26, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr joins Shred With Shifty to deconstruct his solo on the Smoke’s 2016 track, “Waiting for the Thunder.” Starr, whom Shifty credits with owning one of the best vintage guitar collections he’s ever seen, explains how he got into guitar at age six thanks to the influence of his dad, who was a bluegrass rhythm player. But he turned to his mum, the rocker in the family, to help him get his first electric guitar: a Mosrite copy which he played through his sister’s...
Oct 12, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 8
"It's maybe the most important thing to me that the solos [I record] are things that I haven't done a million times," country guitarist and singer/songwriter Brad Paisley shares on this episode of Shred With Shifty. "That's getting harder and harder to do." But as Paisley walks host Chris Shiflett through his solo on "Mud on the Tires," the centerpiece of the interview, it's clear that Paisley can improvise melodies that don't necessarily need to clear that bar in order to hook and make a lastin...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this solo installment of Shred With Shifty, host Chris Shiflett shares juicy unreleased footage from previous episodes, rates fan submission solos, and fields questions from viewers. This week’s Shred With Shifty keeps the spotlight on our intrepid host and shameless shredmeister, as Shifty kicks things off with a swift hammer-on ascent up the neck. Next, he shares a few ace videos submitted by fans where they tackle Alex Lifeson’s solo on Rush’s “Limelight,” though Shifty has some choice wor...
Sep 07, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 4
CHIC bandleader Nile Rodgers and his Hitmaker spill the history behind writing the unforgettable music and lyrics for Diana Ross’ iconic smash, “I’m Coming Out” When CHIC guitar wizard Nile Rodgers tells Chris Shiflett that he was at Woodstock, Shiflett quips, “You didn’t take the brown acid, did you?” Rodgers grins and chuckles, “I took every color acid they had!” This is the tongue-in-cheek tenor of the latest episode of Shred With Shifty, a fun, often hilarious conversational romp through Rod...
Aug 24, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 4
On this episode, the country guitarist walks Shifty through her blazing solo on "Hits Me," after sharing all about what makes her guitar-mind tick. "I've always looked at guitar solos as additional lyrics to the song," says Lindsay Ell. She approaches guitar solos by balancing their voice with that of the actual vocal, and on this episode of Shred With Shifty, the country guitarist and songwriter—who really draws from a host of genres, including rock, jazz, and blues—breaks down her epic solo on...
Aug 10, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Weezer's Rivers Cuomo sits down with Shifty to talk Yngwie, Phish, and the outro solo to "Only in Dreams" off the “Blue” album. Head to http://volume.com/shifty to watch the full episodes! "I don't use effects," Rivers Cuomo states, matter-of-factly, to Chris Shiflett on this second episode of Shred With Shifty. That might come as a bit of a shock to all the Weezer fans out there who went and bought a Big Muff in an effort to imitate the alt-rock guitarist's sound. For his tones on the band’s fa...
Jul 27, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 2
On the first episode of the new podcast series Shred With Shifty, which features host and Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett getting a front-row lesson from our favorite guitar heroes, Shiflett learns the solo from Rush’s “Limelight” with a little help from the man who wrote it, Alex Lifeson. According to Shiflett, Lifeson’s lead on the song “does exactly what a great solo should do. It’s a scene change, it’s kind of emotional, it builds, and yes, it shreds.” Shiflett recalls that in context,...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 1
