E-Mail This Article to a Friend Six-string slingers Duke Levine and Kevin Barry, plus Joe Stump, and the return of Jon Butcher BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Stumbling into Tir Na Nog on a Wednesday night, I was more prepared for a Guinness than a musical fireworks display. Sure, the Nog books some of the area’s finest musicians, but the two guitarists on stage at this hole-in-the-wall Somerville pub were conjuring up every Technicolor angel and demon in my sizable collection of guitar LPs. With barely a breath between tunes, they ripped through instrumental versions of Stax hits, cranked up Buddy Holly numbers, a Buck Owens medley, an Ike Turner blues, Santo and Johnny. They played with fierce heat, one on a Telecaster and the other on an old Gibson acoustic plugged into an amp. Yet they were cool. Smiling. Relaxed. Incendiary soulful solos were passed back and forth like a bottle of Thunderbird. Sly bursts of chicken pickin’ punctuated speedy breaks. Mock steel-guitar bends were wrenched from regular guitar strings. Their slides purred and made the audience — delighted tipplers jammed in so tight that some held pints over their heads to avoid spilling — howl.

How this world-class guitar explosion came to be taking place in a tiny bar is a story of friendship. And its chapters are still being written. If Duke Levine and Kevin Barry are in town and the stars align (meaning they’re not in a studio or on the road with Paula Cole, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ellis Paul, Peter Wolf, Carol Noonan, Family Affair, or any of the myriad other artists each works with), chances are you’ll find them on stage together, usually billed as the Duke Levine Group or supporting veteran Boston songwriter Dennis Brennan.

It was Brennan’s band that first brought them together regularly. After mutual friends introduced Barry and Levine some 13 years ago, they supported him as part of his Iodine Brothers backing group. "Right from the first time I’ve always had fun playing with Duke," says Barry. "I’ve always felt strongly about having the music say what I’m about rather than grandstanding on stage. Even before we met, I would go see Duke, and he would be playing his ass off, just killing, but with no showboating — just standing there and playing the most soulful, incredible stuff. Sometimes I have to be careful because I get so into watching him when we’re playing together that I forget I’m playing too. There have been times when we’ve both stopped to check out what the other guy is doing."

"It feels like a special thing we do together," Levine says of their shared performances. "Especially when Kevin is playing steel, which he got into last year and immediately mastered. We have such a great musical relationship that if I’m playing on the low strings, Kevin automatically goes high. We’re interested in mixing up textures and tones. It’s just second nature because we know each other’s playing so well."

It’s obvious from the delirious grins they sprout while performing together that their friendship extends beyond the stage. "In the music business, there’s a lot of people carrying baggage," Barry explains. "You meet many people who are unbelievably bizarre in their behavior. Assholes, to be honest. And Duke is so far from that. He’s always interested in having fun, joking around, hanging out, and talking about music. Duke knows how good he is, but he has no attitude."

"We really connect musically and personally, and Kevin’s the nicest guy," Levine adds. "If we can hang out together and play, we know it’s always going to be a good time. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with Kevin?"

It helps that they have similar tastes and backgrounds. Barry was a teen when he began playing professionally with country bands around Olean, New York — a small town 70 miles south of Buffalo. Levine was born in Worcester, where he played in country and folk outfits. Barry came to Boston to study at Berklee; Levine moved here for New England Conservatory. And as they’ve grown as players, they’ve devoured all roots-music forms and followed the evolutionary path of guitar through rock, jazz, fusion, and eventually the kind of modernist textural playing that can transport their work to colorful, unexpected places.

Levine has been busy in New York City studios; Barry has been working with Paula Cole on her next album and is now out touring with Mary Chapin Carpenter (a gig Levine, who recorded three albums with the country songwriter, turned him on to). So they haven’t played together much of late. Expect to hear more of their fireworks regularly when Brennan returns to his weekly gig at Somerville’s Independent in October. Meanwhile, you can catch Levine this Tuesday, July 29, at Toad with Maybe Baby, and then at the Lizard Lounge with Brennan on Wednesday.

JOE STUMP’S E-MAIL HANDLE is "Shredlord," which should tell you something about his guitar playing. The Boston-based solo artist, Berklee instructor, and leader of the band Reign of Terror is an old-school metalist with shredding skills that are maybe just one small notch beneath the technical prowess of Yngwie Malmsteen and a few above the likes of Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell and Zack Wylde.

Despite Stump’s prodigious talent, he plays Worcester — and, for that matter, the Midwest and Europe — more often than Boston proper, which has never been much of a metal town. "I’d like to play here more, but that’s a quibble," he admits. "I’m lucky. I get to play the music I love and make a living. Between recording and writing my material, and teaching at Berklee, where I’m the hard-rock, speed-metal shred specialist, I play for at least five hours every day, and I love it."

And so it’s been for years. Inspired by the likes of Gary Moore, Robin Trower, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Ritchie Blackmore, and Hendrix, Stump spent his teens developing his technique into the stuff that instructional videos are made of. (He’s filmed two; they cover sweep arpeggios and other pillars of the metal vocabulary and are available through Berklee Press.) The easiest way to hear him these days is to pick up his new Armed and Ready, a burning homage to many of his influences that’s been released by Leviathan Records, a Cincinnati-based label run by fellow underground metal-guitar firebrand David T. Chastain. The disc spans the gamut of classic metal modes, from the blazing harmonic minor scales that color "Mind Games" to the Hendrix-inspired tonalities of "Destination." It’s part of the label’s "Guitar Masters" series, in which several of its hottest fretburners were given the same bass and drum tracks and asked to layer their own compositional and improvisational flair on top. As an essay in dirty grooves and gunfighter stringslinging, Armed and Ready is among Stump’s best releases. The all-instrumental approach makes it more digestible than the Reign of Terror discs, which tend to have a bit of a Dungeons and Dragons lyric bent.

For Stump, the project was a pleasure. "It gave me a chance to just play and not overthink. That’s cool because it’s very challenging to play an entire track with a lot of nuances and a high skill level and be totally improvising and still nail it. There are no punch-ins or overdubs on the album."

Stump will be touring Europe in October, but meanwhile he’s been writing more instrumental material and is ready to begin rehearsing those tunes for the studio. "It’s going to be similar, because I love this kind of music and have plenty to say. It’ll be a mix of speed metal and new classical shred stuff and more Hendrixy retro things, with lots of layers, but I’ll try to behave myself and not play too many notes. We’ll see how well I live up to that when it’s finished."

OF COURSE, NOT ALL BOSTON GUITAR HEROES stay here. That’s why Jon Butcher is on the phone from his home in the Southern California high desert, where he also runs his Electric Factory Studios and production company. In the ’80s, his band packed the city’s clubs, and the Jon Butcher Axis became synonymous with Boston rock and roll. The local-radio hits "Ocean in Motion," "Goodbye Saving Grace," and "Life Takes a Life" became national hits after Butcher signed a deal with Polydor, released a series of major-label albums, and had videos aired on MTV. "Back then we were going for the brass ring," he recalls. "We toured so much, it was crazy. We were literally on the road for years."

Yet despite his powerful voice and smart, screaming blues-rock guitar style, the big breakthrough never quite came. So when the TV industry beckoned in the late ’80s, Butcher heeded and moved to Los Angeles. There he’s had a winning career, scoring films and programs for the Discovery Network, the History Channel, and UPN shows like The Hughleys. As it turned out, several key executives who ushered him into the scoring biz were fans of the Axis and quite happy to be working with one of their favorite guitarists. But Butcher has continued to write and record his own songs as well. He’s released a series of solo albums over the past decade, and for a time he led a group called Barefoot Servants with the ace session bassist Lee Sklar. He’s even revisited old Axis recordings, and last year he issued Ocean in Motion: Live in Boston 1984 on Razor & Tie.

"I found that film scoring has given me an opportunity to do a wide scope of music and really get my rocks off without all the other stuff that goes with rock and roll," he explains. "The film work has given me a good life, and there’s enough people who are fans from the Axis years to buy my solo albums and keep that aspect of my career going without my having to sleep in Holiday Inns."

Nonetheless, Butcher is about to take a major road trip. He’s coming back to Boston to play a date at the Roxy on Thursday September 11 that will also include Charlie Farren of the ’80s Boston band Farrenheit. "Boston Bands Together To Remember Those Lost in 9/11" (tickets for which are available through Ticketmaster, 617-931-2000) is being organized by a friend of Butcher’s, local drummer Peter Hackel, who lost his mother-in-law in the World Trade Center attack. Funds raised will benefit the Child Witness to Violence Project at Boston Medical Center. It should be a loud and lively rush for those who remember Butcher’s estimable musicianship and pop songwriting chops, since he’ll be performing numbers from throughout his career.

But he himself admits to more than a twinge of nervousness about the homecoming gig. "I’m a Boston guy in my heart, no matter how long I’ve lived out here. I’m thinking about all the people I’m gonna see whom I haven’t seen in a long time. When I think of Boston, I think of all the heavy musicians out there whom I respect and admire, like Charlie Farren, the guys from Aerosmith, Godsmack. That’s why I’m nervous. I hold these people in great esteem, and I know some of them are going to be there, so even though I know I’m ready to play a killer night, I need to watch my p’s and q’s."