THE GIG ECONOMY

THROUGHOUT WHITESNAKE’S ROUGHLY 40-YEAR CAREER, THE DAVID COVERDALE–LED BAND HAS FEATURED MORE THAN ITS FAIR SHARE OF ACCOMPLISHED GUITARISTS ON RECORD AND ONSTAGE

THEY HAVE INCLUDED blues rockers Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden in the early years, and John Sykes, Adrian Vandenberg and Vivian Campbell starting in the mid ’80s. Later iterations featured Steve Vai, Warren DeMartini and Doug Aldrich.

So it’s no small compliment, nor is it an overstatement, to say that the band’s current guitar team of Reb Beach and Joel Hoekstra can stand toe-to-toe with any of their predecessors. Indeed, both players come to Whitesnake with distinguished pedigrees. Beach, who joined in 2002, first made his name as a hotshot guitar slinger with Winger, and has played with acts like Alice Cooper, Night Ranger and Dokken, as well as performed session work for artists ranging from the Bee Gees to Chaka Khan to Howard Jones. Hoekstra, meanwhile, is quite possibly one of the busiest players in the guitar universe today. A fellow former Night Ranger member, he’s racked up thousands of performances as a musician in Broadway shows like Rock of Ages and Love, Janis. Concurrent with his Whitesnake duties, he also performs with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Cher.

Both Beach and Hoekstra can be heard on Whitesnake’s new and 13th studio album, (Frontiers Music Srl). Though they recorded together for 2015’s , a reimagining of songs from Coverdale’s tenure in Deep Purple, is the first time the two have collaborated on a Whitesnake record of original material. And judging