Country is a genre of popular music that originated with blues, old-time music, and various types of American folk music including Appalachian, Cajun, and the cowboy Western music styles of New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Its popularized roots originate in the Southern United States of the early 1920s.
Carlos Humberto Santana Barragánaudio (help·info) is a Mexican and American guitarist who rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock 'n' roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound featured his melodic, blues-based lines set against Latin and African rhythms played on percussion instruments not generally heard in rock, such as timbales and congas. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine listed him at No. 20 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists. He has received 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, and was inducted along with his namesake band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
The White Stripes were an American rock duo formed in Detroit, Michigan in 1997. The group consisted of Jack White and his one-time wife Meg White. After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit music scene, the White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002 as part of the garage rock revival scene. Their successful and critically acclaimed albums White Blood Cells and Elephant drew attention from a large variety of media outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The single "Seven Nation Army", which used a guitar and an octave pedal to create the iconic opening riff, became one of their most recognizable songs. The band recorded two more albums, Get Behind Me Satan in 2005 and Icky Thump in 2007, and dissolved in 2011 after a lengthy hiatus from performing and recording.
Country Joe and the Fish was an American psychedelic rock band formed in Berkeley, California, in 1965. The band was among the influential groups in the San Francisco music scene during the mid- to late 1960s. Much of the band's music was written by founding members Country Joe McDonald and Barry "The Fish" Melton, with lyrics pointedly addressing issues of importance to the counterculture, such as anti-war protests, free love, and recreational drug use. Through a combination of psychedelia and electronic music, the band's sound was marked by innovative guitar melodies and distorted organ-driven instrumentals which were significant to the development of acid rock.
Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor.
John Anthony White is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He is best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the duo the White Stripes, but has also had success in other bands and as a solo artist. White has enjoyed consistent critical and popular success and is widely credited as one of the key artists in the garage rock revival of the 2000s. He has won 12 Grammy Awards, and all three of his solo albums have reached number one on the Billboard charts. Rolling Stone ranked him number 70 on its 2010 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". David Fricke's 2011 list ranked him at number 17.
Donald Jay Fagen is an American musician best known as the co-founder, lead singer, co-songwriter, and keyboardist of the band Steely Dan, formed in the early 1970s. He has also released four albums as a solo artist and in 2001 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The 2017 death of Steely Dan's co-founder Walter Becker left Fagen as the only remaining original member.
Café Tacuba is a band from Ciudad Satélite, Mexico. The group gained popularity in the early 1990s. They were founded in 1989, before they had the current lineup of Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega, Emmanuel del Real Díaz, José Alfredo "Joselo" Rangel Arroyo, and Enrique "Quique" Rangel Arroyo:, their friend Roberto Silva played the keyboards for a short period of time. Mexican folk music player Alejandro Flores was for a time considered the 5th tacubo, as he played the violin in almost every Café Tacvba concert for many years. Since the Cuatro Caminos World Tour, Luis "El Children" Ledezma has played the drums in every concert but is not considered an official member of the band.
Phillip Geoffrey Targett-Adams, known professionally as Phil Manzanera, is an English musician and record producer. He was the lead guitarist with Roxy Music, 801, and Quiet Sun. In 2006 Manzanera co-produced David Gilmour's album On an Island and played in Gilmour's band for tours in Europe and North America. He wrote and presented a series of 14 one-hour radio programmes for station Planet Rock entitled The A-Z of Great Guitarists.
Michael McDonald is an American musician, singer-songwriter, keyboardist, and record producer known for his distinctive, soulful voice and as a member of the bands the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan (1974). McDonald wrote and sang several hit singles with the Doobie Brothers, including "What a Fool Believes", "Minute by Minute", and "Takin' It to the Streets". McDonald has also performed as a prominent backing vocalist on numerous recordings by artists including Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, and Kenny Loggins. He is considered an influential figure in the development of the yacht rock genre.
James Messina is an American musician, songwriter, singer, guitarist, recording engineer and record producer. He was a member of the folk rock group Buffalo Springfield, a founding member of the pioneering country rock band Poco, and half of the soft rock duo Loggins and Messina with Kenny Loggins.
Tom Freund is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Freund's music consists of elements of folk rock, americana and alternative rock. Freund met Ben Harper when he was attending Pitzer College in Claremont, California. In 1992 the duo released an album, Pleasure and Pain. Not long after, he joined the alternative country group The Silos as their bassist, and moved to Austin, Texas. He released his debut solo album, North American Long Weekend, in 1998 and has released albums on his own Surf Road Records since 2000. While releasing his own music, Tom has also contributed to albums by artists including Graham Parker, Mandy Moore, and Josh Kelley. Some of his work, including "Copper Moon", appeared on the TV program One Tree Hill, while other songs have appeared on Dawson's Creek and Parenthood.
Redgum were an Australian folk and political music group formed in Adelaide in 1975 by singer-songwriter John Schumann, Michael Atkinson on guitars/vocals, Verity Truman on flute/vocals; they were later joined by Hugh McDonald on fiddle and Chris Timms on violin. All four had been students at Flinders University and together developed a strong political voice. They are best known for their protest song exploring the impact of war in the 1980s "I Was Only 19", which peaked at No. 1 on the National singles charts. The song is in the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) list of Top 30 of All Time Best Australian Songs created in 2001.
Cyril May is an Australian country music singer and songwriter who often performs with Mexican-American singer-songwriter, Jack McDonald.
Robert Swire-Thompson is an Australian musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and DJ, best known as the founder and vocalist of the Australian drum and bass and electronic rock band Pendulum, as well as DJ and co-founder of electro house duo Knife Party formed of Swire and Gareth McGrillen. Originally from Perth, Western Australia, he relocated to the United Kingdom in 2003 with fellow Pendulum co-founders Gareth McGrillen and Paul "El Hornet" Harding. Swire has since fulfilled a broad spectrum of roles as a member of Pendulum, ranging from songwriting to singing while performing live with an unusual guitar-like MIDI controller – Starr Labs' Ztar Z6S-XPA. Swire also plays guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, and other instruments. He is sometimes referred to by the stage name Anscenic.
"Cheeseburger in Paradise" is a song written and performed by American popular music singer Jimmy Buffett. It appeared on his 1978 album Son of a Son of a Sailor and was released as a single, reaching No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Cheeseburger in Paradise" has become one of Buffett's signature songs and was selected as the first track on his greatest hits album Songs You Know by Heart.
Andy McKee is an American fingerstyle guitar player who has released five albums and been the subject of YouTube videos, garnering over 100 million views.
Jack Sonni is a writer, musician and former marketing executive best known as "the other guitarist" in Dire Straits during the band's Brothers in Arms era.
Playing For Change is a multimedia music project, co-founded in 2002 by American music engineer/producer Mark Johnson and film producer/philanthropist Whitney Kroenke. Playing For Change also created a separate non-profit organization called the Playing For Change Foundation, which builds music and art schools for children around the world.
Rory O'Donoghue was an Australian actor and musician, best known for playing the character "Thin Arthur" in the 1970s ABC Television sketch comedy series The Aunty Jack Show, and for playing the guitar solo on Kevin Johnson's biggest hit "Rock 'N' Roll ". The Aunty Jack Show featured O'Donoghue's long-time creative partner Grahame Bond as the title character.
