Shred With Shifty
In each episode Chris Shiflett sits down with a legendary guitarist and aims to answer a singular question: “How did you do that?” Each guitarist will give rare insight into the art of the guitar solo and what makes a great one so memorable.
Episodes
December 19, 2024 • 58 mins
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...
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December 12, 2024 • 49 mins
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...
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December 5, 2024 • 60 mins
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 poa...
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November 21, 2024 • 53 mins
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 Fen...
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November 14, 2024 • 59 mins
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 ...
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May 10, 2024 • 54 mins
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 C...
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May 2, 2024 • 57 mins
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 dangero...
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April 25, 2024 • 59 mins
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...
Mark as Played
March 28, 2024 • 60 mins
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 Mam...
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March 20, 2024 • 96 mins
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 ...
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February 29, 2024 • 34 mins
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,...
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February 15, 2024 • 81 mins
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 scoo...
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February 1, 2024 • 66 mins
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...
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January 19, 2024 • 52 mins
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...
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December 21, 2023 • 84 mins
“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 b...
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December 7, 2023 • 50 mins
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...
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November 9, 2023 • 69 mins
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 shre...
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October 26, 2023 • 79 mins
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 t...
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October 12, 2023 • 69 mins
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 el...
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September 28, 2023 • 77 mins
"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 nece...
Mark as Played
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