My pal Sean Kelly wears a few different hats. He's primarily known as a Juno-nominated guitarist who's played with Nelly Furtado, Lee Aaron, Coney Hatch, Helix, and several other acts. He's also a music teacher, and the author of three books.

He joins me today to talk about his newest work, the upcoming book entitled Battle Axes: A Hard Rockin' History of Pointy Guitars. The book examines the cultural and musical evolution of those wildly shaped guitars we've all seen, beginning with Gibson Flying Vs and Explorers, and progressing through later models produced by Hamer, Jackson, Charvel, Dean, and others. Throughout the book, Sean talks to some of the guitarists who helped put these companies on the map - Def Leppard's Phil Collen, GN'R's Gilby Clarke, Triumph's Rik Emmett, Twisted Sister's Jay Jay French, and even Metal Method's Doug Marks! Let the guitar geekery begin.

One July evening in northern Ontario back in 1994, I had a very unusual liaison with a person from the United States who would appear and then disappear within a span of about 12 hours, never to be heard from again.

After listening to last month's NSTS episode featuring the guitarists who auditioned to replace Ace Frehley in KISS, friend of the show and co-host of the Famous Lost Words podcast Tom Jokic dropped by the NSTS studios with a list of other interesting musical substitutions, featuring artists like Dave Grohl, Stevie Nicks, Lenny Kravitz, and The Doors.

According to Tom, Eddie Van Halen asked a well-known female singer to join the band before they asked Sammy Hagar, who was asked by The Grateful Dead to replace Jerry Garcia(!). Lots of interesting discussion in this episode.