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
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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...
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September 7, 2023 • 43 mins
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 Lifeso...
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August 24, 2023 • 79 mins
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 Wi...
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August 10, 2023 • 64 mins
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 gen...
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July 27, 2023 • 64 mins
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 imi...
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July 13, 2023 • 69 mins
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, ...
Mark as Played
May 31, 2023 • 1 min
Did you ever wonder how the most epic guitar solos of our time were crafted? Let Chris Shiflett of the Foo Fighters be your tour guide and listen in as he breaks down legendary guitar solos with the artists themselves.
Head to http://volume.com/shifty to watch full video episodes.
Mark as Played
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