Lightning Joe
How it all began…
A veteran player going all the way back to Christmas day 1964, Lightning Joe has been known to “slay an entire room full of guitarists with a single lick.” He’s performed on television and radio, done session work for several studios, held the position of guitar columnist for the music magazine Sound Check, writing articles on all aspects of the guitar for three years, been in more bands than he can remember, like the SLO Motion Blues Band, Tidal Wave Cafe, Stark Raven, Gun Shy, The Shades, Prime Suspect, the 8th Wonder, Fusion, Just Good Stuff, Concrete Window, and The Purpose, to name a few, he’s literally played thousands of gigs in some of the most impressive venues in our industry and traveled the road for years, performing along side of some very impressive heavyweights in the industry such as Charlie Musselwhite, Mark Naftalins Rythm & Blues Review, The Cash Valley Drifters, Donnie Brooks, Big Joe Turner, Mississippi Johnny Waters, The Curbfeelers, Rod Piazza & the Mighty Flyers, The Blues Survivors, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Pee Wee Crayton, Carey Bell Blues Harp Band, Ralph Shines Blues Band, Rainbow, Life, among others. Joe has played nearly every style of music and is currently settled into the role of guitar technician, enthusiast, teacher, mentor, owner and active CEO of Lightning Joe’s Guitar Heaven…” I watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and knew exactly what I wanted to do: play the guitar.” That was in ’64 and it was later in 1980 in a seedy little bar called the Dark Room in San Luis Obispo, California, that Joe was given the tag ” Lightning ” by fellow members of the SLO Motion Blues Band for soloing “too fast” over the verses of Henry Mancini’s Theme From Peter Gunn. And so the legend lives on at 100 East Branch Street in the sleepy little village of Arroyo Grande on the beautiful Central Coast of California at Lightning Joe’s Guitar Heaven where you’ll find Lightning Joe and his wife Marelene, daughter Savanna, their son Joseph with his wife Ashley, and her brother Joey, plus Jordan and his wife Megan, all running a very impressive, world class guitar shop.
