Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Guitar Player

ON A LATE-AUGUST evening in 1964, a car ferried Bob Dylan from his home in upstate New York to the Delmonico Hotel in New York City for a historic meeting with the Beatles. The date has gone down in history as the night Dylan turned the English pop group onto grass. It’s assumed that this initiation took the Fab Four down a path to the mind-expanding experimentalism that resulted in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band less than three years later. But that night was also significant for the bonds that were created. The Beatles had been Dylan fans since their stay in Paris in January of that year, when they’d first heard him by way of his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Simultaneously, Dylan was falling for the Beatles’…

BACK IN THE early 2000s, as nu-metal seethed and hip-hop and dance music burgeoned, rock fans and the media which covered the genre were desperate to find a new gang of long-haired riff slingers to champion. And for a minute, at least, that band was the Les Paul–wielding, unitard-wearing, Queen-and-Thin-Lizzy–worshipping U.K. act known as the Darkness. “When we came out in 2003 with our debut, Permission to Land, all the press was like, ‘This is the band that’s going to save rock and roll,’” recalls singer and guitarist Justin Hawkins. “And to me it was like, ‘Well, what kind of peril is rock and roll actually in? Is it teetering on the edge of a volcano, or is it just that nobody’s done anything exciting with it for a while?’…

COMING OFF THEIR brash garage-soul debut, Get Gone, the Seratones decided to shake up their winning formula. Instead of pushing the guitars into the red again and rushing out a similarly spirited follow-up record, front-woman and guitarist AJ Haynes let the songwriting process steer the direction of Power (New West Records), the new album from the Shreveport, Louisiana, rock quintet. “The genesis of a song and what you end up with in the studio aren’t always the same thing,” Haynes says. “Sometimes there was a guitar, sometimes it was keys. I think the presence of the keys on this record happened because it just needed to in the moment.” After welcoming new guitarist Travis Stewart and keyboardist Tyran Coker into the fold, Haynes and company teamed with producer Brad Shultz…

IN NOVEMBER 2008, I was on the road in Europe with a 22-year-old guitarist named Joanne Shaw Taylor. By that time, she had been a touring pro for more than six years after being discovered at 16 by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. What immediately struck me about Jo was the earthiness of her sound and her persona. Her Strat tone is huge and meaty, and her playing style borders somewhere between her British blues-rock roots and the deep American South. As a chick, she’s about a real as it gets — a true-blue player. Jo released her latest album, Reckless Heart, in 2019. In our interview, she spoke about her early years and the various challenges she faced as a young female blues guitarist. How did you get started…

I MET DOUG Tuttle, the creator of these mind-blowing pedals, in a most accidental if not uncomfortable way several months ago. I was reviewing what I was led to believe was one of his effect units and wrote a glowing review of it, which ran in these pages. At press time, however, I was unable to reach the pedal’s maker: There was no information on the box, and the site from which I purchased the effect had gone cold. I assumed he had begun working for a major pedal maker and taken his personal site down. I was so wrong. As it turned out, the pedal was a counterfeit of Tuttle’s own Clari(not) stomp box. Though it bore no resemblance to the real thing, it had the same name. When…

AFTER FOUR DECADES in Toto and countless session and live gigs, Steve Lukather has learned a thing or five about the music business. If you hope to go one-tenth as far as he has, you could do worse than to follow his top-five career tips for musicians. 1. LEARN THE BUSINESS “It’s very simple: Don’t sign sh*t you don’t understand. I hear young guys say, ‘All I want to do is make a record and not be a Rockefeller.’ Gimme a break — everybody wants to make money. But you’re not going to do that unless you know the business. Get a good lawyer and read contracts.” 2. DON’T TRUST YOUR MANAGER “How many times have you heard the stories? Elton John’s manager stole $20 million from him. Billy Joel…

“This was a late addition to Gary’s collection. He got it around the recording of Close As You Get. A friend of his was selling a few bits and pieces along with it that also got used on recordings, including a Vox AC30 that went in a previous Bonhams sale. They were useful purchases; they got used and appreciated, which is great. [The Burns] appears on the track ‘Hard Times’ on Close As You Get. You can hear it clunking around — a little tremolo thing in the background. He was mucking around with it and said, ‘That’s different. Let’s put this on it!’ It was a little bit of variation that gave the track an edge. You can hear the [tremolo unit] springs, but that’s part of its charm.”…

1 1991/’92 MAR SHALL JCM900 4 500 “Gary did an EPK film for the Ballads & Blues compilation that came out in ’94. It was filmed at SARM Studios, and this amp is sitting on the rack behind him during the interview. You can see the clip on YouTube. He’s playing through it and demonstrating a few things with both the Les Pauls he had: the ex–Peter Green and the other’59’Burst.” 2 1990 FENDER ’ 63 VIBROVERB “This is one of Fender’s first reissue amps. It was used on some of the stuff for Close As You Get. We used this and those Plexi combos that Dennis Cornell put out. For a lot of those sessions, Gary just used a guitar, a cable and an amp. The breakup’s nice with…

Holdsworth’s most useful scale is very familiar, as it’s related to the major, or “do, re, mi,” scale. However, it is the least crowded way of choosing seven notes from 12, since they’re spread out as far as possible (maximally even is the technical term for such a distribution). The guitarist tended to name scales from the minor perspective, seeing C major, or C Ionian, as D Dorian, although it’s important to remember that this set of seven notes is also E Phrygian, F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian and B Locrian, so we can think of it as the Dorian family, as well as the major family (or Lydian family, and so on, depending on your preferred modal perspective). Fig. 1 shows all the fretted notes of this scale…

WINTER ISN’T COMING — it’s here! If you haven’t prepared your acoustic guitar for the long, dark journey, now is the time to do it, before changes in temperature and humidity affect playability, loosen joints and crack the finish. Depending on where you live, the environment is either becoming freeze-dried or dank and clammy. Here are some vital ways to protect your acoustic from the big chill. KEEP IT COMFORTABLE An acoustic guitar’s body, like your own, functions best when kept consistently cozy, with an ideal temperature range between 72 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. When the ambient temperature drops, wood contracts. Warm it up, and it expands. An acute drop is bad news, and recurring severe temperature fluctuations can cause cracks. Heed the following seasonal warning from Martin’s Care &…

I ALWAYS THOUGHT the old Silvertone guitars that came in a case with a built-in amp were pretty cool. After all, the less gear I have to lug, the better. But what if you didn’t even need the case to have an amplified guitar? That’s where ElectroPhonic comes in. The Model One you see here has a built-in preamp, power amplifier, speakers and effects. It also comes with rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that will provide more than 10 hours of playing time under most conditions. When I first saw the Model One, I was knocked out by the custom purple color, which looked great on the sexy body shape. The vents for the two onboard speakers look super cool as well. The three knobs on the top govern master volume, overdrive…

WOW! WHO WILL stop the benign madmen at Electro-Harmonix from assaulting us with more and more products that deliver a wealth of great sounds and super-musical features? Witness the new Mod 11 Modulator pedal on review here, which delivers an astonishing variety of modulation effects, while maintaining ease of use and a super-compact size that players with crowded pedalboards will certainly appreciate. The features and tones contained within the Mod 11 would have cost you approximately a million dollars in the ’80s (and many coke-fueled tone chasers would have gladly paid it), and yet here we are: You can get 11 awesome mod effects, with supreme control over them, in a tiny footprint, for appreciably less than $1 million with this awesome pedal. For fans of chorus, flange, Uni-Vibe, rotary…

This month’s giveaway is a Walrus Audio Emissary Parallel Boost pedal. This two-in-one boost is designed to give your tone a boost and your nose a “sinus clearing experience,” per the manufacturer. It features two independent boost circuits running in parallel: a clean, high-headroom JFET boost that gives upper frequencies a slight emphasis to brighten your tone, and a mid boost that can be selectively targeted for either 800 Hz or 1 kHz. Use one or the other by itself, or mix them in combination by turning up each knob to whatever level you desire. Want this box on your’board? Send an email with the word “Emissary” in the subject line to stash.raid@gmail.com, and you just might win! The deadline is February 3, 2020. All gear is “as is.” Police…

YOU COULDN’T REALLY blame Bryan Beller for playing it safe. Despite his talent and high-profile gigs with the likes of Dweezil Zappa, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and the Aristocrats, it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the bass savant. He’s had his ups and downs, and thought about packing it in. But these days, he’s finally hitting his stride, and, metaphorically speaking, he’s settling into a groove. So what’s his prudent, non-boat-rocking game plan? To make an 18-song, 88-minute concept album, of course. Scenes From the Flood (Onion Boy Records) isn’t just the least likely course of action for a working musician. It’s also a dramatic, spectacular musical journey that explores the heavy and the subtle, acoustic and electric, and — to borrow a phrase — light and shade. It…

EVEN A CURSORY look at Waddy Wachtel’s credits is enough to boggle the mind. During his nearly 50-year career, the guitarist has toured and recorded with the Everly Brothers, Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and dozens — no, hundreds — more. “I came out from New York to Los Angeles in the late ’60s at just the right time,” he says. “The studio scene was changing, and I was able to get in with the right producers and musicians. It’s been an amazing ride. Sometimes I’ll just look at the guitar pick in my fingers and go, ‘It’s all your fault!’” Wachtel considers himself a “rock and roll specialist.” “People call me when they want me to generate the kind of rhythm that gets a…

WE’VE COME A long way since echo meant dragging recording tape over tape-deck heads. We now have tapped delays, chorus delays, emulated tape delays and more. Dub music, in particular, uses echo very creatively, with shifting tempo-synced beats and polyrhythmic echoes, and that’s the inspiration behind this column. We’ll go beyond delay plug-ins by copying tracks and shifting them in time to create echoes. Lower-volume echoes can even be used to precede the original track and create pre-echo effects. Stylistic considerations. This technique works well with staccato chords and notes. Shorter echoes create ambient and polyrhythmic effects that fill in the spaces between notes and chords. Longer echoes are a bit like looping, where what you played repeats later. However, this is not a real-time technique; you can’t be sure…

WHAT IS A GUITARIST WITHOUT A GUITAR? In September 1966, George Harrison all but gave up playing the instrument when he embarked on a spiritual journey that began with his study of the sitar. With the Beatles just a few months away from recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Harrison traveled to India to begin formal lessons with sitar master Ravi Shankar. As he discovered, his education wasn’t performed over a matter of hours-long sessions, nor was it strictly about the sitar. Indian music is inextricably linked with meditation and philosophy. Hindus believe music is God, and the ragas of Indian music are extended hymns to the creator. Studying the sitar is a devotion that takes a lifetime, and which has but one aim: to reveal God. Far from…

“I DON’T WANT another guitar player. I want him!” “Those were the nine words that completely changed my life,” Charlie Daniels recalls of Bob Dylan’s proclamation to producer Bob Johnston after hearing the relatively new studio musician play on the first 1969 Nashville Skyline session. “That just about blew my mind when I heard that! It was incredible news to me. Dylan’s regular guitarist wasn’t available that day, so Bob [Johnston], who was one of my dearest friends, had contacted me. I was only supposed to stay for one song, but as soon I finished, I was packing up to leave when Dylan asked Bob, ‘Where’s he going?’ and I wound up playing on the whole album.” The results of those very special sessions, including the songs, “I Threw It…

AS GARY MOORE’S guitar tech, personal assistant, tour manager and friend for more than two decades, Graham Lilley knew the Belfast-born blues-rock legend better than most. So he was the perfect person to share insights into the late guitarist’s gear that went on the block this December in The Gary Moore Collection at auctioneer Gardiner Houlgate, in Corsham, England. The 88 lots included a diverse selection of guitars, amps, cabinets, pedals and effects Moore used from the 1980s up to his last tour, in 2010. Eager to find a good home for the gear, Lilley worked tirelessly to pull the collection together. The auction had yet to take place at the time we went to press, but the results will be available online in the archive at guitar-auctions.co.uk. Gathering the…

“He picked this up in July ’95 at Chandlers Guitars when it was still in Kew [London]. If Gary was in London at a recording session, he would often disappear while there was a mix coming together or something. He’d say, ‘Let’s pop over to Kew and see what’s going on.’ He spotted this, tried it out and said, ‘This is different. Let’s have it.’ It was one of those guitars where he thought he might get something out of it. As a semi-acoustic with the P-100 pickups, it was different to the rest of his collection. It didn’t end up being used on any sessions, but it was a nice guitar for him to have kicking around.”…

JERRY McPHERSON STILL gets the kind of Nashville session calls that dried up for most players many moons ago. When called upon, he can help an established artist land a hit, or use his extensive experience to guide a less experienced player to a particular guitar-based musical vision. McPherson’s credits include countless sessions for superstars such as Faith Hill, Kelly Clarkson and Tim McGraw, as well as many other artists. One of the lauded producers who counts on his fleet fingers is Grammy winner Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Kings of Leon). The two recently teamed up for Universal Audio to make an in-depth Tones & Techniques video about tracking acoustic guitars, and every reader even remotely interested in recording should take a serious look at it (visit uaudio.com/blog/recordingacoustic-guitars-with-jacquire-king). In the…

While still a teen, Holdsworth decided not to accept traditional scales but to start again in a way that made sense to him. He discovered what scales could be built from the 12 notes in an octave by writing out every possible combination. To explain his approach, imagine if we labeled the 12 notes 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 E T. A five-note scale could be 0-1-2-3-4, 0-1-2-3-5 or 0-1-2-3-6, and so on, to create 792 unique scales (there would also be 924 six-note scales, 792 seven-note scales, 495 eight-note scales, etc.). Holdsworth calculated hundreds of scales in his so-called Phonebook from Hell and worked through them, rejecting those that were “too crowded” to find the ones that appealed to him. These scales are used…

DESCRIBED BY FENDER as “Our most advanced series of guitars and basses for discerning players who demand the ultimate in precision, performance and tone,” the new American Ultra series includes two Strats (Standard and HSS), a Telecaster and a Jazzmaster, as well as Jazz and Precision basses. Since these guitars aren’t intended to be vintage spec, Fender was free to do a bunch of performance-enhancing updates that include sculpted rear-body contours, maple necks with a Modern D profile, tapered heels for easy access to the highest positions, and fretboards with rolled edges and a 10-inch to 14-inch compound radius. Other details include sealed locking tuning machines and a variety of finish choices. All models also have Ultra Noiseless Vintage pickups with advanced wiring options, and a premium molded case. We…

DESIGNED IN COLLABORATION with Mars Volta guitarist/composer Omar Rodríguez-López, the Mariposa is a sleek guitar that features a roasted maple neck with a 25.5-inch-scale ebony fretboard carrying 22 fairly tall, medium-width frets and what Music Man calls Atlante block inlays. The sleek neck is finished in a satiny gunstock oil/natural wax formula, with the visual bonus of a clear gloss finish on the back side of the headstock and body-matching paint on the audience side. It attaches to an angular body made of okoume wood (a species native to west-central Africa) via a five-bolt neck joint. The Dorado Green finish is nicely accented by a Turbulent Green pickguard with a laser-etched floral pattern. (The guitar is also available in Imperial Black, Imperial White and Pueblo Pink finishes, with pickguards in…

THIS IS THE most highly customized Country Western in Gibson history, according to the venerable manufacturer. The idea was to use Crow’s own sweet-sounding classic CW as a baseline and add a dose of punch and projection via a hand-scalloped, advanced X-bracing pattern from the 1930s. This was applied to a thermally aged Sitka spruce top, which was adhered to mahogany back and sides with hot hide glue. Outfitted with top-shelf electronics, the guitar was made with the professional performer in mind. Like the lady herself, the Sheryl Crow Signature Country Western Supreme is an eye catcher. With a quick glance at the front, it might look rather like a traditional Country Western with squared shoulders, a “belly-up” bridge and an expanded hummingbird-style pickguard, plus a few subtle enhancements, such…

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DEVENDRA BANHART GAVE his new album from Nonesuch Records the title Ma, and true to that word, the subject matter on the record is largely concerned with the ties that bind people to one another and to the world at large, be they maternal, spiritual, cultural or geographical. However, Banhart says there was another, more specifically musical motivation behind his choosing that title. “Right before we began recording, I was in Japan and I came across this word, ma, a philosophical term for essence, or space,” he explains. “The example for ma is an empty cup, and the essence of that cup is the empty space. So I began thinking about that in the context of music. The essence of the song is not just the notes but the space…

IF EVER A guitar maker qualified for the prize of having the most guitars in the hands of world-dominating rock stars while remaining unrecognized as a brand name, it would be Tony Zemaitis. His custom-made guitars have been played by artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Marc Bolan, Donovan, Bob Dylan, David Gilmour, Peter Frampton, Ronnie Wood, Ronnie Lane, James Honeyman-Scott… And yet, outside of enthusiast and collector’s circles, if you had mentioned the name Zemaitis in the U.S.A. in the pre-Internet days, most music fans and guitarists alike would have drawn a blank. On the other hand, describe “one of those fancy, engraved metal-front guitars shaped like a Les Paul,” and suddenly many of those same people would know exactly what you…

WARNING: THIS RECORD might not be for every Guitar Player reader. For the second time in this column’s history, I’m veering off the well-traveled road of strings to share an album I love that features a different instrument. Recorded in 1961 and released on Verve Records that same year, Motion by saxophonist/composer Lee Konitz is an example of post-bop and features Elvin Jones on drums and Sonny Dallas on bass. Lee has a great body of work, but Motion remains one of my favorite records and holds a steady place in my desert island Top 10. Lee Konitz was born in 1927 and was part of New York City’s cool-jazz scene in the ’40s and ’50s. Over a long and distinguished career, the now 92-year-old saxophonist has played with Miles…

THINGS HAVE NEVER been better for Toto,” Steve Lukather told Guitar Player back in early 2018. “Everything we were told could never happen for us is now happening for us.” At the time, Lukather seemed to be on top of the world. Toto had just released a career-spanning box set, 40 Trips Around the Sun, to coincide with their 40th anniversary (and, even more coincidentally, sales of 40 million albums worldwide), and the band was in the midst of an extensive and successful global tour. Over the next year and a half, the group would continue to sell out arenas around the world. The sheer fact that Toto were performing at all seemed remarkable. The group had been through more than its share of travails, including the deaths of three…

“Gary got this from Gibson directly out of their London showroom. He said, ‘Oh, that’s a bit different. Can I borrow that for something?’ It ended up being included in a bunch of photographs that were used for a tour promo, so we said, ‘We’d better give you some money for it then!’ It was all over the promo posters across Europe and Russia and Ireland. It’s quite a striking photo of Gary with the guitar. We hung on to it because we thought it might be useful for something. Its ‘all-gold’ finish is interesting. You normally see that on ES-295s, the Scotty Moore guitar and the odd Les Paul model.”…

1 EARLY ’90S MARSHALL BLUES BREAKER “Gary was very well known for using the Marshall Guv’nor, which is the pedal heard on Still Got the Blues. The Blues Breaker was one of the pedals that Marshall came up with after that — the Shred Master, the Drive Master and the Blues Breaker. That was the second wave, if you like, and they’re all interesting. I think the Blues Breaker name piques peoples’ interest. They’re quite sought after now. Marshall stopped making them years ago and moved on to the more compact-sized pedals, including the [BB-2] Blues Breaker II.” 2 1987 BOSS DSD-3 DIGITAL SAMPLER/DELAY “Some collector might be interested in this, but hopefully somebody’s going to get some use out of it. There are red and black markings on this…

WHILE ARGUMENTS ABOUT who is “the best” in music are generally unhelpful and meaningless, Allan Holdsworth ranks as a guitarist who was among the most universally respected by his fellow players. He received superlative praise from masters of the guitar of every style, including Frank Zappa (who claimed that Holdsworth “single-handedly reinvented the electric guitar”), Carlos Santana, Joe Satriani, John McLaughlin, Guthrie Govan, George Benson, Tom Morello and especially Eddie Van Halen, who called him “the best, in my book” and helped him land a major-label recording contract. Despite being an influence and inspiration to so many guitarists, Holdsworth never reached the household-name status of guitarists like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, Van Halen, Jimmy Page and Brian May, probably due to the challenging nature of his music, as well as misfortune…

EVEN IF YOU know a lot of cool riffs and licks, you may find yourself stumped when it’s time to come up with something creative on the fly. If in such moments you find yourself relying on tired phrases, mundane chord voicings and static, go-nowhere, copycat riffs, take heart! This lesson will shed light on the fine art of riff crafting and help you make the most of those opportunities. THE BOOGIE RIFF Many consider Chuck Berry to be the first rock and roll guitar god, and with good reason. His lead-and rhythm-playing styles, not to mention guitar tone and showmanship, were so influential that they have withstood the test of time. Ex. 1 is based on Berry’s riffing style in songs such as “Johnny B. Goode” and “Sweet Little…

ECHOPARK INSTRUMENTS FOUNDER Gabriel Currie states that the Clarence 25 is the result of “designing and building amplifiers for some of the world’s most toneful players around,” a list that includes Joe Perry, Troy Van Leeuwen, Jackson Browne and numerous others. Simplicity was a big part of the calculus in developing the Clarence 25, and Curry and crew have developed an amp that celebrates minimalism, offering just volume and tone controls, a pair of inputs, and two 6V6 power tubes driving a single 12-inch WGS speaker with no doping on the surround, to give it a “broken-in” response right off the bat. Tucked into a birch-ply cabinet that’s an inch wider than that of a Fender Deluxe Reverb, the welded-aluminum chassis is exposed by removing 10 screws that secure the…

CALIFORNIA-BASED SEYMOUR DUNCAN is best known as a company that makes guitar and bass pickups, but that’s also changed quite a bit due to all the pedals it has released over the years. The lineup has grown to include some 17 models, encompassing distortion and overdrive boxes; boost, compression, and modulation pedals; and delay and reverb units. The Dark Sun Digital Delay + Reverb is one of the most recent to have landed at GP, so let’s take a look at what it has to offer. Created in conjunction with Periphery guitarist and prog-metal tastemaker Mark Holcomb, the Dark Sun is a cool, one-stop-shopping place for those seeking expansive delay and reverb sounds with loads of flexible control over them. The pedal has a formidable interface, with nine knobs, seven…

MARTIN’S NEWEST CUSTOM Signature Edition is an ode to the Man in Black, Johnny Cash. America’s oldest guitar company and the Americana icon have a rich history dating back to Cash’s initial request for an all-black lacquered D-35 dreadnought in the early ’70s that became his stage hallmark. In 1997, Martin introduced a very limited-edition D-42JC Johnny Cash autographed by the man himself, and 2006 brought the still-available D-35 Johnny Cash Commemorative. In 2019, Martin joined forces with John Carter Cash and the Cash Foundation management team to create the DX Johnny Cash, offering a nod to Johnny’s D-35 that is accessible to folks without stacks of cash to spare. Constructed from high-pressure wood laminates and equipped with Fishman MX electronics, the DX Johnny Cash is made in Martin’s Mexican…

> SHE SHARED STAGES with James Brown, Ray Charles and Bobby “Blue” Bland, and played guitar on one of John Lennon’s favorite sides. In a career that lasted more than six decades, Beverly “Guitar” Watkins performed across the U.S., South America, Europe and Australia. When she passed away this past October, the music world lost one of R&B’s pioneering guitar women and a musician famous for her fiery displays of blues virtuosity, performed for much of her career on a red 1962 Fender Mustang. > Born in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 6, 1939, Watkins was raised by her maternal grandparents when her mother died a few months after giving birth to her. Around the age of nine, Watkins got her first guitar. “The name of it was Stella, and it…