Music & Arts Alum: Anthony Pirog

One of the finest guitarists of his generation reflects on his formative years as a student at Music & Arts. “That’s where my first real musical education began,” he says.

To put it mildly, Anthony Pirog is busy. When the guitarist and composer spoke with Music & Arts in late July, he’d just finished marathon recording sessions interrupted by a gig on the National Mall, fresh off a European tour. “I’m like … I don’t even know what’s going on right now,” he said with a chuckle, Zooming in from his home in suburban Maryland, just outside D.C. 

Not that he would have it any other way. Over the past two decades, Pirog has worked constantly to create this exciting life in music, taking on an astonishing range of projects and developing a sound that, as the New York Times wrote, “suggests a remarkable distillation of about 60 years of electric guitar history.” His highest-profile group is the Messthetics, featuring bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty of Fugazi, among the most revered and musicianly bands in punk-rock history. In recent years, the Messthetics have teamed with the tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, seamlessly fusing adventurous rock and jazz. Their collaborative album, released by the legendary jazz label Impulse!, is a tour de force that the Times named one of 2024’s best jazz recordings. 

To hear Pirog, on record or on stage, is to wonder if there’s anything he can’t play. In Janel and Anthony, he and his spouse, the cellist Janel Leppin, compose and improvise a deeply personal vision of chamber music. With the addition of drummer Mike Kuhl, Janel and Anthony become the trio Skullcap, whose new album, Snakes of Albuquerque, is similarly beyond-genre. He’s also a devoted disciple of D.C.-area guitar icon Danny Gatton, regularly paying tribute to his trademark blend of rockabilly, blues, country, jazz and rock ’n’ roll. As a bandleader and solo performer, Pirog is recognized for both his spellbinding technique and his ability to conjure new worlds of sound through electronic effects. To put it another way, his combination of “guitar hero” chops with his understanding of music’s artier, more intellectual strains has made him one of the most interesting and respected guitarists currently at work. 

And he sowed the seeds of this reputation at a Music & Arts store in Northern Virginia, where he took lessons throughout his adolescence in the 1990s. After high school, Pirog attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music on a scholarship before studying jazz at New York University.

In the testimonial below, Pirog reflects on his musical beginnings and pays homage to Randy Adams, a generous teacher whose all-embracing approach no doubt inspired Pirog’s wide-angle take on music and sonics.  

Opening Riffs

I remember asking my parents if I could play guitar when I was 5 years old, and they said I would have to wait a few years. My dad had a vintage Fender Jaguar under his bed, because he was in surf bands when he was in high school in New Jersey. When I was 10, I pulled it out and went to the library and got a videotape on how to play guitar.

The first thing they taught on the video was the riff to “Oh, Pretty Woman,” by Roy Orbison. I learned that before everyone came home from work, and when they did, I played it for my family. They were all impressed, and then my dad showed me the lick to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” that night. I learned everything really quickly. So he said, “Yeah, we should get Anthony guitar lessons.” 

I got my first guitar, an Epiphone Strat, at the end of that year, right before I turned 11, and a Japanese Fender Strat when I was about 12. I took a few lessons elsewhere first, and then my parents signed me up for lessons at the Music & Arts store in Oakton, Virginia. I studied there with Randy Adams through middle school and most of high school, and I’ve stayed in touch with him ever since. That’s where my first real musical education began. 

Endless Curiosity Encouraged

I remember he was really open to me bringing in any type of music; he would show me anything I wanted to learn. But he was also showing me things that became deeply influential. It was the early ’90s and I liked grunge and a lot of “anti-technique” music. He gave me a cassette of tracks by [jazz-rock fusion virtuoso] Allan Holdsworth, and I was actually offended [laughs]. But now that’s one of my favorite musicians. 

There were so many breakthroughs with Randy in those years. I remember he was trying to explain the modes to me for a few months, and I couldn’t understand how one scale could be seven scales and seven scales could be one scale. And then one day I told my mom I was sick and stayed home from school to figure this out. It clicked for me, and that was the beginning of really understanding how to look at the instrument and music and harmony.

I recall him teaching me the solo to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and he said, “This is a very common thing you can do — play the vocal melody to create a solo.” I even brought in a Nine Inch Nails record and asked, “How are they making these sounds?” He was like, “Oh, that’s a synthesizer and sequencing.” Randy also taught me “Black Mountain Side,” the solo acoustic piece on Led Zeppelin I in an alternate tuning. He played it for me and I was just blown away. 

We moved quickly. Our lessons went from learning the intro to Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day,” and understanding how it contains a variation on the blues turnaround, to exploring the modes and scales and getting into improvisation. Randy was very into jammy, Grateful Dead kind of stuff, but more than that he was a very good musician who knew a lot about all kinds of guitar styles. Another time I was talking about [solo jazz guitar master] Joe Pass, and I was like, “How is he doing this?” Randy explained that Pass was thinking more in terms of the material within each chord, a vocabulary-based approach to improvising instead of a scalar approach. 

His lessons have stayed with me. Every time I’m improvising, I remember so many different references from throughout my whole life. I’ll play something and I’ll remember that it’s rooted in a Jimi Hendrix thing I learned when I was 13. And like I said, my understanding of how chords are built from scales all comes from my experience at Music & Arts with Randy. 

Beyond the Lessons

He was just so kind, and he was very encouraging as a teacher — and that went beyond the lessons. In high school he gave me a Paul Reed Smith guitar to borrow long-term, and I’d try out his different effects. When I was in music school, I would come home for the summer and we’d meet for coffee. I’d talk about these different guitarists I was listening to, and he was like, “Well, when are you going to get in there and do it? You’re just as cool as them.” Later on, I played in his band. He did some singer-songwriter stuff where I was the lead guitarist. Through Music & Arts, I had someone who really supported me in those early years. He taught my brother too!

As an educator myself, I don’t feel like you get the most out of people by making them feel bad — like they’re not good enough or that their interests aren’t worthy. That’s a great way to discourage people from doing anything at all. No one made me feel bad for wanting to know about industrial music.

You don’t know what people are capable of until someone simply believes in them. And if anybody wants to work on music, there’s a deep relationship that they have or want to have with it. A great teacher honors that.