Plenty of musicians have day jobs, but Bill Lloyd’s is sweeter than most. The power-pop singer-songwriter and ex-member of the late ’80s country-rock duo Foster & Lloyd spends his nine-to-fives at downtown Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where he’s stringed instrument curator. That makes the guitarist caretaker of a collection of 400 axes—108 of them Gibsons. Some, like Maybelle Carter’s Gibson L-5, Bill Monroe’s Gibson F-5 mandolin, and Jimmie Rodgers’ Martin 0-18 acoustic guitar, are part of the fabric of country music. They were played on the genre’s bedrock recordings. Others are rare birds, like a 1924 Gibson mandola, a beefy relative of the mandolin that’s tuned like a viola (C-D-G-A) and was made by the company’s master builder Lloyd Loar, who also designed Monroe’s F-5.

Nike and Apple understand the importance of an elegant and simple visual icon to represent their company and products, and so do many musical outfits. Some band logos—like the Rolling Stones’ famous lips and tongue graphic—have gone on to become pop culture icons in their own right, while other musicians’ hallmarks have been used more sparingly. Test your Band Logo IQ by matching the musicians with the designs they’ve chosen to represent them. Answers and logo details follow.

In some ways Dion DiMucci’s career has come full circle. Few knew, but back when the legendary singer was scoring hits like "Teenager in Love" and "The Wanderer" in the late ’50s and early ’60s, he was also nurturing a secret love of country blues. In fact, upon first hearing the music of Robert Johnson, in 1959, Dion says he "recognized intuitively that these blues guys were backroad poet geniuses." Flash forward nearly four decades, and the rock and roll pioneer has himself fully embraced roots music traditions. First, in 2006, he released a stripped-to-the-bones country blues album titled Bronx in Blue. Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, Dion brought empathy to classics by the likes of Willie Dixon, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and yes, Robert Johnson. He also tossed in a couple of worthy blues originals.

Fort Worth’s stylin’ Goldtop slinger James Hinkle came up in a Texas flood of guitarists. While he was literally getting a grip on the instrument in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jimmie Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Vaughan’s little brother Stevie were driving over from Austin to play the city’s blues haunts—a circuit where U.P. Wilson was already lord of the bent string and Robert Ealey was running a juke joint called the Bluebird. But it was lesser-known local musician Freddie Cisneros who taught Hinkle to play blues guitar and took him to the African-American nightspots where the music was sharp and stinging.

Welcome back to Gibson’s quick-hit column on techniques for recording guitars. This time I’m going to discuss some basics for recording acoustic guitars, offering a few pointers that are largely very simple but can help you achieve dramatically improved results in many home studios. This is another two-parter that will investigate some more complex acoustic miking techniques next time out.

Though Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman’s lyrical propensities have long angled toward the pensive, it’s still a little surprising to hear just how completely the arena rocker indulges his softer side on the new Fall and Winter EPs, the first two of his intended set of four seasonally themed projects. As far as rock voices go, Foreman’s has always been a tender one, and it served him well as he conceived this collection of acoustic-led material. Foreman’s Switchfoot bandmates urged him, he said, to put to tape the ideas deemed too intimate for the band. The two six-song EPs were recorded quickly and simply, the writing of some new songs completed as they were being recorded. The quick-and-dirty recording process is nearly imperceptible; instead there’s a clean, well-shaped simplicity in both discs’ production. Also there is the gripping honesty and a continuation of the stylistic adventurousness Switchfoot showed on their last disc, Oh! Gravity.

With the success of video games like Guitar Hero and high-profile memoirs from legends like Slash, the term “guitar hero” is growing increasingly ubiquitous in mainstream culture. While we readily embrace players who can actually, well, play, here we’re turning the focus onto the great guitar anti-heroes. In other words, “Paradise City” is classic, but if you haven’t played air guitar along to Dinosaur Jr’s “Freak Scene,” you’re missing out on a whole feedback-drenched world of guitar grandeur.

If 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson had done nothing but pen the garage-psych classic “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” he’d still be noted in rock history books. But it turns out that the barreling hit song Roky wrote in 1966 was just a page in a fascinating life wrecked by drug abuse and mental illness, and ultimately redeemed by family, friends, and a drive that kept him writing songs through the madness.

By all accounts, 2007 was pretty kind to Gainesville, Florida punk act Against Me!, and despite some naysayers, the coming year’s not looking any worse. After spending the past decade pounding out the beats in sweaty basements and DIY venues, Against Me!’s major-label debut, New Wave, was heralded as the best album of the year by Spin. Touring relentlessly behind the album, they converted an influx of new fans by sharing the bill with a diverse roster of bands ranging from Fake Problems and Mastodon to Green Day and Foo Fighters.

Time is not kind to professional skaters. For every Tony Hawk, there are countless washed-out ramp stars who are either in jail, hooked on crack, or begging for spare change at Fisherman’s Wharf. As far as occupational hazards go, it’s right up there with dentistry and truck driving. San Francisco native Tommy Guerrero not only survived a lengthy career in skateboarding—the Police Academy movies made his Santa Cruz crew the Bones Brigade world famous in the ’80s—but at 42 he has lasted in the business well past the average expiration date.