DJs

This week's shredder is Mark Tremonti. He's a great player, and a fantastic songwriter. He's written huge songs for Creed, Alter Bridge and now his solo band, Tremonti. He's got a great sense of melody and song structure, and on top of that, he's a good singer and an amazing guitarist!

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This week, I want to feature the guitar skills of Mark Tremonti. He's kind of an underrated guitar player, since he tends to play more for the song instead of the shred, but when he cuts loose, he can really cut loose! I found these videos a while back, with guitar shred king Rusty Cooley and Mark trading off licks.

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Okay, that sounded a little weird. Not actually a part of HIM has arrived, but his gear has arrived. For the first time I can remember in Balloonfest history, one of the bands has shipped their gear to us!

Usually we just find scraggly-looking musicians, struggling with gear coming off the baggage carousel at the airport, hoping for either a vegan meal or Whataburger.

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Tony MacAlpine is our guitar shredder for the week, and we've seen some old songs, new songs, collaborations and learned a little about one of the premier guitar players out there. If you haven't been aware of him before now, hopefully you've found a cool new guitar player to share with your friends!

Maybe you've also found some cool new ideas and licks you can learn from one of his early instructional videos, too!

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So, Lzzy recently was asked about her Playboy interview, and whether she'd ever consider posing for them if they asked. Because she is one of the most awesome rock chicks to walk the face of the earth, she didn't say no! I love this girl so much!
I haven't really been asked that a lot. I was thinking about it the other day.

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Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm all for more shows filmed and based here, really. But what I'd really like for the shows to do, is stop portraying El Paso like Hollywood thinks of El Paso. Good example, Kill Bill. All you're left with the impression of El Paso is a small mission in the middle of freaking nowhere.

This trailer for the new show "The Bridge" looks pretty creepy and cool...

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What's T-Mac been up to recently? He's stayed really busy musically, and has even toured quite a bit with Billy Sheehan, Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian, playing some serious music for the people. Check out Thursday's shred song for today, Billy Sheehan's "Shy Boy", originally written for Billy's band Talas, and then re-recorded with Van Halen maniac David Lee Roth!

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Wednesday on the Shredder of the Week brings us a trip back to big hair and lots of reverb. Guitar master Tony MacAlpine plays one of the songs that he released on his 1987 album Maximum Security on PolyGram...whoa, there's a name from the past, PolyGram. They died a horrible label death...eventually being absorbed into Universal Music Group.

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At first glance, an acoustic day at Balloonfest 2013 seems kind of weird. But the more you think about it, the better the idea gets! It's something we haven't done since Zakk Wylde came down and performed songs from his then new album Book of Shadows. (Anyone else remember that?) That was a really cool show, and something people really didn't expect from Zakk at the time...heck, it's still odd to think of Zakk on an acoustic guitar, even though he's just done an acoustic tour.

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Day two of Tony MacAlpine week features a song from Tony's album Premonition, called "The Violin Song". This is one of the tracks from the album that features keyboard master Jens Johansson. The melody on this one is really good, and grabs you right away.

Tony began his classical training at five years old, and trained on classical piano and violin at the Springfield Conservatory of Music in Massachusetts.

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Some of you might remember this guy's name from the 80's, when the guitar shred boom really began in a big way. Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen really opened the door for a lot of guys to get known widely for instrumental music.

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In case you'd need another reason to sign up for the Orion VIP trip package we're giving away, here's something I'd love to check out at the festival this year. Last year, each band member had his own "tent" with things that reflect that guy's hobbies or interests. James had cars and bikes, Lars had movies, Robert had skating stuff, and the whole band had their museum.

The part I really want to see...

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