Believe it or not, I taught Slash a song on the guitar. Now this story is definitely my claim to fame. My good friend Justin Baumann, who used to do sound for State Radio and now is the sound engineer at The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC, used to jokingly say that I should put “Slash’s Guitar Teacher” on my resume. Justin and I were the only single guys on tour with State Radio for a while and we became true bros. And this was one of his favorite tales. So it gives me great pleasure to share it with you today.

It all happened on that one fateful night in April of 2008 when we were in LA playing the Justice Tour, thanks to Tom Morello. Tom had heard State Radio on a music video channel that he was randomly watching and he liked the music and sentiment of the band. He said it was one of those music channels that has a few videos that you can vote on, and the video with the most votes gets played. Well, at the time Tom was watching, a State Radio video for the song ‘Gang of Thieves’ was in the voting, won the voting, and got played on the channel. Tom was digging the tune, and the sentiment of the song, and thought that State Radio would be great to include in his Justice Tour project.

What was the Justice Tour? Okay, I’ll tell you. Tom had been doing these shows in LA at a venue called the Hotel Café and they had been going really well and getting a lot of support from the local community. Also, Tom had a million rock star friends who were attending the events and performing songs at the shows. From these Hotel Café shows came the idea for the Justice Tour. The Justice Tour premise was to do a community service project the first day we were in a city and then play a show the next night. For instance, in LA we went to a homeless shelter, in New Orleans we did a Katrina clean up, in Boston we did a rally for universal health care, and so on and so forth. And, of course, we played shows in each of these cities. It was a great concept and really inspired State Radio to start its own foundation, Calling All Crows (which focuses on preventing violence against women), and continue with the community service projects around the country through the Ruffshod Foundation (which focuses just on community service). A really great idea by Tom Morello, and you can see how it branches out and starts to make a difference with some hard work and dedication.

Anyway, Tom Morello looked up State Radio after he saw that video on television and then he called our manager to see if we wanted to be a part of the Justice Tour. When he called our manager (Dalton Sim), Dalton didn’t believe it was really Tom Morello. He thought it was one of his friends playing a joke on him. It actually took Tom a few minutes to convince Dalton it was really him. Dalton almost hung up on Tom! Thank God he didn’t. I never would be able to write about Slash if he did. Anyway, State Radio played 3 of the 7 shows on the Justice Tour. One of them was the first one in LA, which had the most rock stars, and had Slash there. The show was at a venue called the Troubadour. The Troubadour fits around 500 to 600 people and I was told that the Justice Tour show was the “thing to do” in LA that night. Yeah, can you believe it, Mike Najarian was performing at the happening place in Hollywood! The place to be that night. Even Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz were there, which is kind of how you measure what was cool in 2008. It takes people years to get to that level in Hollywood, and it took State Radio one video that Tom Morello saw on his TV. Crazy, right?

Either way, there was this area that was designated as a backstage area, it was upstairs, stage left, and had a curtain that blocked it off from people who were at the show just hanging upstairs. I made it a point to try not to mull around backstage too much, and give the rock stars their space, but it was hard to stay away from all the action back there. It was amazing to see these guys and gals interact!

We did a bunch of press earlier in the day, then a quick dinner, and then came show time. A whirlwind of a day. We played about 3 songs near the beginning of the show, as a handful of rock stars (and randomly us) played a few original songs, solo style, before there was an all-out jam session of cover songs with a combo of musicians. For example, the beginning of the jam session had Flea, Dave Navarro, Perry Farrell, and Travis Barker playing Mountain Song, which was sick! Then Stuart Copeland jumped on drums and a cast of musicians played So Lonely with him on kit. Sick! As I was watching all of this crazy awesomeness, I walked backstage for a second to grab a water, or a beer or something, and who comes busting in the backstage area but Slash. Slash, real name Saul Hudson, is the guitar player for Guns N’ Roses. He has unreal chops, sick riffs, and crazy technical solos. He is a favorite guitar player of many, especially the Ratfynkt guitar player Joe Forte. Slash is epic, a true rock star of the highest degree. I also heard he is a great guy, although I had a limited interaction with him. I was told he went and found the guitar tech for the Justice Tour and thanked him personally for setting him up. It’s rare to go seek out someone like that on a busy night with tons of people playing, but Slash did it. Kudos to him for sure.

Back to me backstage. Slash walks in. He walks right up to me. Now I am 6 feet or so, about 170. I am thus decently tall, a pretty slender guy, but not super skinny or anything. Anyway, I was definitely surprised by Slash’s physical presence. He was almost as tall as I was, and was much broader and thicker than I was. Slash looked like he could kick some ass. He was also a pretty handsome guy if I may say so myself.

Anyway, at this point, bear in mind I am pretty star struck, and a bit physically intimidated. Slash just begins to talk to me. No hello, how are you, nice to meet you. He just says, “How do you play ‘Rockin in the Free World’ again?”. Again? In order to tell him again I would have had to tell him in the first place. But who corrects Slash, especially when it seems like he is in a rush? I guess he confused me for another wide eyed, star struck Armenian kid with a flannel on. Either way, and this is the most random part, I actually knew how to play the song. On guitar! I had just started playing shows with my old band Ratfynkt, and I probably knew about 3 to 4 covers total at the time, and ‘Rockin in the Free World’ was one of them. So without missing a beat I said, “Oh yeah, E, D, C in the verse…”. Slash looks at me with a little bit of a confused look. So I sang it to him, “E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, D, D, C”. “Oh yeah! Thanks!” he exclaims and books it out of the backstage area. I grab the water, or beer, I was going for and slowly make my way back to watch the show. I’m still in shock from the experience of meeting, being confused for someone else, and actually being able to answer a guitar question from a guitar god. As I am walking back to my viewing spot I see Slash walking on the stage and immediately start ripping a solo over (yeah you guessed it) that exact chord progression in ‘Rockin in the Free World’. Holy Crap, I just taught Slash ‘Rockin in the Free World’ and just in the nick of time!

As you can imagine, this was the experience of a lifetime. When I told Chad and Chuck about the happening they were blown away. That was quite amazing if you think about it. The fact that I actually knew that progression on guitar. That obviously was the only cover that was played that night that I even knew one guitar chord from, never mind the whole song! Hell, I only knew 3 or 4 cover songs on guitar at the time! And Slash asked me about one of them. This quiz must have been rigged!

Either way, this is how I have earned the title of “Slash’s Guitar Teacher” on my resume. I never thought I would ever be a guitar teacher, never mind teach a guitar legend! Awesome.