Here is some news for the locals. The Calgary International Blues Festival is happening here in town from the 23rd to the 28th of August. There will be quite a few big names at the show including Edgar Winter Band, Rick Derringer Band, Kinsey Report, Alberg Cummings, and Jimmy Bowskill to name a few.

Tickets are kind of steep for a 1 day pass at $50. If you are really into it and you want to get the full 4 day pass it’ll cost you $140. I may hit it up for one day, but I would have to decide on a day first. I think out of any of the days I would want to go on the 23rd to see Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter, and Jimmy Bowskill.

Anyway, if you are in the area and love blues, check out the Calgary Bluesfest website for more details.

Right now Fender is holding a contes to allow us guitar fans to win one of two John Mayer Fender Stratocasters. The first prize is the exact master-built Continuum Strat that John has been playing on his summer tour. The second prize is one Limited Edition John Mayer Signature Stat. There are only 500 of these signature Stats being made and this one will be signed by Mayer.

All you have to do to enter to win one of these is head over to Fender.com and create a Fender Profile on their website. Fender says the profile is to give you access to their online community, but I think it is so they can send you junk mail. Either way, I’m sad that this is yet another contest not available to us living north of the border. So, I guess I meant to say all you have to do is be living in the US of A and create a Fender Profile.

I just got an email from Justin Baker who let me know that he won the custom Gears of War ESP guitar and Xbox360 from the contest that I posted about on on April 28th. In the contest hopeful winners needed to send ESP a picture of themselves air-fragging on their new Xbox.

Justin was kind enough to send me a picture of him and his prize. You can also look below to see Justin’s winning pose. If you want to see all of the entries you can visit the contest page on the ESP website.

The Prize

The Winning Entry

Justin came out of it with a brand new ESP LTD Standard AX-50 guitar and an Xbox360 shipped to him at his home in Canada.

Thanks for the tip Justin and congrats on your win!

First off – Damn, Cary at EGR is fast. He has already posted an article about Gibson’s Les Paul ‘59 USB Drive giveaway.

Second – How is it possible that I didn’t know that Gibson had a mini Les Paul that was a flash drive and came with it’s own little case? I’m the biggest geek I know. Well – maybe not, but I AM the biggest gadget whore I know. I’m just checking out the Gibson website and they have a few geeky products I didn’t know about. For example CD-Rs and DVD-Rs that come in a fancy tin case and 500GB external hard drives that glow blue Gibson logos.

Anyway, Gibson is giving one of these flash drives away this month. I would enter the contest to win one, but once again it’s only open to yanks. So all you Americans, can visit the Gibson website to try and win yourself one of these bad boys.

The drive is a 1GB flash. It’s a ‘59 Les Paul replica (Sorry no Relic versions available). It’s USB 2.0, comes with the cable and a tiny guitar case. As of now I cant seem to find anywhere online to buy one, but I’ll be keeping my eyes out.

Good Luck!

Gibson is holding a guitar solo competition on the beta website Votigo this month that will be running until June 17th. To get a chance to win the Epiphone G-400 SG guitar you will have to record a video of yourself playing any kind of solo and upload it to the Votigo website. Then on June 17th, the video with the most amount of votes will win.

It looks to me like the contest is actually being held by Votigo to promote their website. This is only open to entries from within the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. Apparently one of the rules is to tell your friends to vote… Yeah, it’s a good idea, obviously. There is no limit to how many solos you can submit, but don’t bother submitting the same entry more than once… it just doesn’t make sense. Oh, and you have to be at least 13 years old.

I’m not sure how they are planning on confirming authenticity…. I mean I could upload a video of some random who is really good at shredding and win without even picking up a guitar. They do reserve the right to disqualify any entry, so please don’t try that.

The guitar as I said is an Epiphone G-400 SG. The contest states that it is a $500 value, but they are going on Musicians Friend for $299. It’s nothing to scoff at really, it’s a free guitar if you’ve got the chops. My guess though, is if you have the chops then you already have a better guitar and have no use for an entry level SG.

This video below isn’t me, but out of the 10 or so entries so far it is my favorite. Probably cause he shreds like Wylde. May the best solo win!