© 2024 Boise State Public Radio
NPR in Idaho
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Chad Daybell's murder trial has begun. Follow along here.

A chat with fretless guitar master Ned Evett

Musician Ned Evett stands in a living room playing a guitar.
Rene Hartfield
Ned Evett

Ned Evett is a pioneer in making music on guitars that don’t have “frets” - those little ridges that most guitarists use on the neck of the instrument.

For more than 30 years he’s been creating both guitars and music that are out of the ordinary, leading to Guitar Player Magazine calling him the "the world's first fretless guitar rockstar" and USA Today says he’s the "the king of the glass-necked guitar."

He’s a Nashville boy with very strong Boise roots and he’s coming to the Treasure Valley on Wednesday for a special concert at the Sapphire Room at the Riverside Hotel.

We asked Ned about playing a guitar with frets and how he made the very dramatic switch away from using frets at a New Years Eve concert in McCall in 1990 after he smashed his normal guitar on stage. He went fretless and never looked back.

Without frets, he kept wearing out the necks of normal guitars, so he started building his own glass-necked guitars. He says they’re beautiful and produce a unique sound like no other.

When he isn’t making music or hanging out with Joe Satriani, Peter Frampton, Steve Morse and Andy James teaching folks how to play the fretless guitar at the G-4 Guitar Experience in Las Vegas, he spends time animating and writing comic books.

He joins Idaho Matters to talk about his life and music.

Stay Connected
As Senior Producer of our live daily talk show Idaho Matters, I’m able to indulge my love of storytelling and share all kinds of information (I was probably a Town Crier in a past life!). My career has allowed me to learn something new everyday and to share that knowledge with all my friends on the radio.

You make stories like this possible.

The biggest portion of Boise State Public Radio's funding comes from readers like you who value fact-based journalism and trustworthy information.

Your donation today helps make our local reporting free for our entire community.