The Setlist Blog

Finding lessons and backing tracks just got easier, but first, if you're new here, let me explain how Texas Blues Alley is structured.

Welcome to the third and final video in the series looking at my favorite ballads across the decades. So far, we've explored ballads from the '50s and '60s, as well as the power ballads from the late '70s to the…

Welcome to the second video in the series looking at my favorite ballads across the decades. In my previous video, we looked at ballads from the 1950s and 1960s, and today we're fast-forwarding to the era of big hair, big…

This is the first video in a series looking at ballads. Ballads are the only style of music I love as much as blues. I've actually been listening to ballads for longer than I've been listening to blues. As a…

If you're new to Texas Blues Alley, I want you to understand how I teach before buying any of my courses. Because the launch of my new course is closing soon, I wanted to give you the opportunity to see…

We've reached the final video of the "SRV Sky Is Crying Blueprint" series. So far, we've looked at the history of the song in Video 1, the importance of SRV's "less is more" approach in Video 2, and a lot…

Welcome to the 3rd video in this series entitled "The SRV 'Sky Is Crying' Blueprint". In this 3rd video, I'm going to teach you how to capture some of the magic of SRV's cover in your own playing,

I can remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, and who I was with the first time I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan play. That moment is burned into my memory, and the soundtrack to that memory is "The…

Welcome to the first installment of The SRV "Sky Is Crying" Blueprint. In this series, I'm going to look at Stevie Ray Vaughan's recording of this song from several angles.

In a few days I'll be starting a new lesson series called The SRV "Sky Is Crying" Blueprint.

This is my opinionated review of "Tribute to Ljk", the latest album from Eric Gales. A true blues album from start to finish, it is my favorite album of 2025 so far.

I recently published an update to our TXBA Pro Player tool that has a new feature called "Auto-Looping". This is the third major improvement to video looping since the Pro Player first launched in 2015 along with our TXBA Locals…

Yesterday, I watched an interview with Josh Smith on the Music Is Win channel on YouTube. Towards the end of the interview, Josh talked about the day he decided to stop trying to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Over the past two months since the release of Little Wing Deep Dive, there's been something bothering me. Something was missing, I just couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was.

In the past 46 days, I've published 46 lessons via my new series "1-Minute Blues". I have to admit, the questions I'm getting in response to these lessons are giving me major deja vu. You see, back in 2007, when…

Most of us have a movie, a song, or even a single solo that provided the spark to ignite our love of blues guitar. We had a dream, and that dream provided the gravity to pull us through whatever practice…

Tom Petty said that waiting is the hardest part, but when it comes to establishing a guitar practice routine, waiting is definitely the easiest part. It's the STARTING that's difficult. Most of us wait and wait and wait just to…

Has anyone ever told you to set goals for your guitar playing? How did that work out? (Just for the record: I'm not against goal-setting, I just think you need to set the right kind of goals.) This year, I…

I don't know if any of you have ever run a marathon (I certainly haven't), but as 2024 comes to a close, it feels like I've completed a year-long marathon, topped off with a 60-day sprint. It has been a…

Six months ago I realized I didn't really understand Little Wing, so I set out to change it. Now, Little Wing Deep Dive is here, documenting what I learned during my six-month obsession with the song.