Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i Guitar Player

DON MOSER AND MASTER luthier Bill Asher may have built the Night Tripper guitar, but it’s inhabited by the spirit of Malcolm John Rebennack Jr., the musician, songwriter, performer, producer and six-time Grammy winner better known as Dr. John the Night Tripper, who passed away on June 6, 2019. Moser and Asher brought their talents to bear on a one-of-a-kind guitar befitting the late musician’s elaborate “voodoo medicine” costumes and headdresses, as seen on the cover of Remedies from 1970. The Night Tripper sports Moser’s ornate metalwork, which is reflective of his other highly decorative instruments that honor African-American folk and blues and give people what he calls “a peek inside the supernatural world” through their voodoo imagery. Moser’s guitars are celebrated works, some of which reside in Cleveland’s Rock…

AS THE CORPSE-PAINTED singer, songwriter and guitarist for Poland’s Behemoth, Adam “Nergal” Darski has established himself as one of the most captivating and compelling figures in extreme metal over the course of an almost 30-year career. So it was a big surprise when he picked up an acoustic guitar and formed the duo Me and That Man with English musician John Porter in 2017. With nary a rapid-fire riff, pounding rhythm or guttural vocal, Me and That Man drew from a variety of sounds and styles in the service of something that was dusty and rootsy, but nevertheless wholly undefinable. And in Darski’s estimation, that was the best thing about it. “Every time I talk to people, they say something like, ‘Oh yeah, your folk project.’” Darski says. “And I’m…

TOO EASILY DISMISSED as a toy or three-quarter-sized “kid’s guitar,” Fender’s mid-1950s Duo-Sonic was something of a stealth model, taken up by scads of groundbreaking artists for decades as a “best buy” among pricier vintage Fenders. Now recognized by many guitarists as a petite powerhouse, it’s also relatively collectible for those who want a taste of authentic pre-CBS Fender without a five-figure price tag. Fender debuted its student models in 1956, starting with the Musicmaster, which was followed by the more deluxe Duo-Sonic a few months later. While the Musicmaster had a single pickup, the Duo-Sonic had, as its name implies, two, along with a Gibson-like three-way toggle to select between them. All in all, the Duo-Sonic is quite a different Fender, and in a fun way. If they’d given…

SINCE THEIR EARLIESTdays as a band more than a quarter century ago, Weezer have been blurring the line between serious and humorous. Their debut single, 1994’s “Undone—The Sweater Song,” was, as frontman Rivers Cuomo once said, “supposed to be a sad song, but everyone thinks it’s hilarious.” Their most recent hit, meanwhile, was a faithful and wholly unironic (or was it?) reading of Toto’s enduring ’80s soft-rock touchstone “Africa.” Suffice to say then, casual Weezer fans who aren’t steeped in the group’s history might understandably misinterpret the intent behind the title of the group’s new and 14th studio album, Van Weezer (Atlantic/Crush). Yes, it’s an obvious nod to hard-rock kingpins Van Halen. But even if the line from, say, “Hot for Teacher” to “Buddy Holly” isn’t immediately clear, the album’s…

EVEN BEFORE HE released All Your Life, his 2014 tribute to the Beatles’ music, Al Di Meola knew that a sequel was mandatory. “Let’s face it: Their catalog is so vast and incredible,” he says. “The first Beatles record I did was like scratching the surface. You record one song and you immediately think of three more you could do. So the idea of doing another one appealed to me from a conceptual standpoint, but when All Your Life became a big seller, it became a no-brainer. This is music that I love, and people all over the world want to hear it. The Beatles just make you feel good.” Like All Your Life, the new album, Across the Universe (earMUSIC), sees the guitar legend re-imagining the music of the…

ANDY TIMMONS HIT the big leagues more than three decades ago when he joined the rock group Danger Danger in the late ’80s. Since then, the talented and creative guitarist has, among other things, released several inspired solo albums, formed the Andy Timmons Band, assembled a bluesy side-project in the 1990s called Pawn Kings, appeared as a session musician on many albums and recordings, and served as lead guitarist and musical director for Olivia Newton-John’s ambitiously produced touring band. Timmons’ guitar playing is intensely emotive and demands the listener’s attention whenever he picks up the instrument, as his musical contributions create a sense of shock and awe. While much of what he does is in a melodic rock-based vein, Timmons is also quite versatile and adept at playing gritty blues,…

FENDER LAUNCHED ITS Stories Collection this year to pay tribute to legendary musicians and the modified Fender guitars they’ve used to achieve their signature sounds. So it was appropriate that the first model out of the gate would be a replica of the 1954 Stratocaster nicknamed Virginia that Eric Johnson used on the groundbreaking albums Tones and Ah Via Musicom. As to how Virginia got into his hands in the first place, Johnson explains that he spotted the guitar leaning against a wall at J.R. Reed music store in Austin, Texas, when he was in his early 20s. He tracked down the owner and worked out a trade for the guitar, subsequently nicknaming it Virginia after finding the name and the date 6-18-54 written on a piece of masking tape…

BASED IN DONEGAL, Ireland, Emerald Guitars was founded in 1999 by Alistair Hay, who was inspired to make acoustic guitars from his experience building carbon-fiber Formula 1 boats for Seebold Racing in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a quite a leap from racing to music, but Hay definitely learned to use the technology to create the impressive range of highly innovative six- and seven-string guitars, nylon-string models and spectacular multi-neck designs in Emerald’s Custom Series and Select Series lines. One of the latter—which also includes the X10, X20 and new X7—is the Select X30 on review here. It’s a jumbo-size instrument that features a body comprised of carbon-fiber back and sides, with a veneer of highly figured spalted beech on the top that makes for an impressive visual statement the moment…

Raid Our Stash! The Danelectro Eisenhower Fuzz can produce searing octave-fuzz effects and plenty of other shades of clipped-transistor grind courtesy of its extreme gain, quartet of controls and hugely effective Fat-Sculpt switch, which scoops mids in the latter position while boosting bass and treble for badass metal tone. From buzzy, early ’60s fuzz sounds to bizarre ring-modulator textures, it’s all possible with the Eisenhower’s highly effective control set. To get this on your pedalboard, send an email with the word “Eisenhower” in the subject line to stash.raid@gmail.com, and you just might win! The deadline is June 1, 2020. All gear is “as is.” Turn Up the Mike What a fantastic issue! I’m a huge Mike Campbell fan, so this was easily one of my favorite Guitar Player issues of…

IN THE SAME way that many boomers can remember the first time they saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Los Angeles–based guitarist and singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham recalls exactly where she was when she discovered the band. Her experience was a bit different though. Cunningham grew up listening to and playing contemporary Christian music. By the time she learned about the Fab Four, their music had been absorbed into the very fabric of the culture, like traditional songs sung in a variety of voices across the genres. “I didn’t ever really hear the Beatles until I was graduating high school and a friend gave me Abbey Road,” Cunningham recalls. “My mind was seriously blown. I had been hearing these songs over the speakers of stores and restaurants for years.…

NEIL GIRALDO HAS a peculiar way of pronouncing the word guitar. He calls the instrument a git-tar, with a hard emphasis on the first syllable. One might think that he was raised amid the haystacks of Kornfield Kounty, the fictional town from TV’s Hee Haw, but the veteran guitarist, songwriter and producer actually hails from suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. “I’m Italian, so I’ve always pronounced it git-tar,” Giraldo explains. “Gui-tar always sounds so weird to me. I think I got it from my family. My parents came to the States from Sicily, so they spoke Italian, as did my grandparents. Maybe it’s from the way Italians say chitarra. I never really think about it till people point it out to me.” Although Giraldo has performed with a variety of artists,…

WHEN I FIRST met Finnish guitarist and vocalist Erja Lyytinen in 2005 while on tour in Europe, she struck me as a force to be reckoned with. She had worked tirelessly to become one of the most renowned bluesrock guitarists on the continent. In 2002, she’d opened for Robert Plant and the following year was the only Finnish guitarist to perform at Puistoblues, the country’s biggest blues festival, where she met Bonnie Raitt and Koko Taylor. Since then, Erja has starred on MTV Finland’s Tähdet, Tähdet music competition program, picked up the much-coveted European Guitarist of the Year award in 2017, performed in front of 80,000 people in her hometown of Helsinki on New Year’s Eve 2017 and shared the stage with Carlos Santana in 2018, as well as headlined…

RIVERS CUOMO EMPLOYED a handful of guitars for the recording of Van Weezer, but one in particular was essential to the process. “We needed a guitar with a whammy bar so I could do a bunch of dives and stuff,” Cuomo says. That guitar, says Van Weezer producer Suzy Shinn, was “a Tom Anderson Pro-Am that I rented from Lon Cohen,” a gear rental shop in North Hollywood. “I told them, ‘I don’t care what whammy-bar guitar shows up, we just need one.’ They would always send the Tom Anderson, and it looked ridiculous. Very, very metal. I think it was purple and black, but it sounded great.” “TO ME, VAN WEEZER SOUNDS LIKE WE HAD FUN. WHICH, YOU KNOW, IS WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE” Other primary guitars played…

WHEN THE FLYING V’s original patent appeared in 1957 alongside the Futura/Explorer and Moderne, it might have been argued that Ted McCarty’s heady 1950s sci-fi-style brainstorming sessions in the Gibson boardroom were a little too far out in the modernist field. As it turned out, these guitars were way ahead of their time and took many years to catch on. The Flying V stuttered, stalled and got off to a few false starts before it really began to fly. Fender’s Stratocaster and Telecaster models consistently captured the guitar-buying public’s imagination by embodying the modernist design principle that “form follows function.” But for the Flying V, function appeared to follow its form, as it eventually took off and found its wings as an archetypal hard-rock statement. “It’s very much a rock…

GUITAR SOLOING IS an art unto itself. The goal is to make a meaningful musical statement that not only fits with the mood and tone of the song but also engages the listener and perhaps even becomes something they remember as clearly as the song’s lyrics and melody. The question is, how do you fill that space? Often, guitarists aren’t sure if the right approach to a solo is to pull out all the stops and shred, or take a simpler approach. Likewise, one has to consider whether to opt for using a familiar scale, such as a pentatonic scale, or to base a solo on the song’s riff or its primary vocal melody. Whatever approach you take, there’s no denying that your soloing will be more effective if it…

THIS MARTIN IS truly special, and to have such a progressive acoustic-electric drop virtually out of the blue from America’s most historic guitar manufacturer is like having a Tesla suddenly roll off the line at Ford. The SC-13E represents a totally new shape and style, with all sorts of innovative features, including a cavernous cutaway and a revolutionary neck attachment. In last month’s Frets feature, Martin instrument design manager Tim Teel revealed how the S took shape. This month, we put it through its paces. Martin makes clear that this guitar is different from the get-go. The gig bag’s plush interior is colored a groovy blue hue that also appears in the rosette, the target inlay at the 12th fret and the outline at the edge of its asymmetrical body.…

AS OF LATE, many manufacturers have turned their attention to creating load boxes that feature onboard cab-sim impulse response (IR) files that replicate the sounds of various speaker cabinets. We’ve reviewed several here, including Universal Audio’s OX Amp Top Box, the Suhr Reactive Load IR, and offerings from Two Notes and Audient. For several years, Mesa Engineering has put its wealth of experience into the Cab Clone, which offers analog cabinet simulations. The new Cab Clone IR+ steps up to the power, versatility and realism of high-quality digital IR simulations, while the “+” adds an output attenuator that lets you reduce your amp’s output to a traditional cab for live use and simultaneously send a signal to the IR stage for front-of-house or recording. Both the attenuator and the reactive…

“IT’S A SONG that’s always going to be relevant as long as America keeps going to war,” Randy Bachman says of the Guess Who’s furious anti-war rocker “American Woman,” which hit number one upon its release 50 years ago. “It’s always being played on the radio because it’s just a kick-ass tune and it sounds great, but it seems to take on new importance every seven or eight years.” A LUCKY BREAK Bachman recalls that he and Guess Who lead singer/keyboardist Burton Cummings would get together every Saturday morning to write. Which isn’t how “American Woman” came together. “The song came about by accident,” Bachman explains. “We were playing at this curling rink in Canada. It was February of ’69, and it was freezing. During the show, I broke a…

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“BEST OF” COLLECTIONS are, by nature, anthologies. One exception is Tommy Emmanuel’s latest release, The Best of Tommysongs (Cruzen Street). “This is not an anthology,” the master guitarist insists. “It’s a presentation of my songwriting and how it has evolved over the years.” Far from simply collecting the finest tracks from Emmanuel’s 41-year recording career, The Best of Tommysongs features five new compositions, including his latest single, “Fuel,” plus a trunkful of fresh takes on his past tunes, such as “Lewis & Clark,” “Train to Dusseldorf” and “Drivetime.” The new recordings reflect how Emmanuel has transformed the tunes through years of repeat performances, as they’ve become part of his repertoire and as he has developed as a guitarist and interpreter of his own work. In that respect, The Best of…

AFTER HONING HIS skills under Devon Allman’s wing for many moons, Jackson Stokes has released his eponymous solo debut on Allman’s new label, Create Records. Allman produced the tightly arranged affair that runs the gamut of rootsy rhythm-and-blues styles. Stokes earned his stripes playing in Allman’s band preceding the formation of the Allman Betts Band [see GP July 2019], and ABB slide ace Johnny Stachela makes a sweet-sounding contribution to Stokes’ uplifting “Sins Are Forgiven.” We chatted with the 27-year-old Stokes about his journey, from growing up as Allman’s neighbor to playing in his band and breaking out on his own. How did you connect with Devon Allman? I was playing my acoustic to my parents’ Allman Brothers Band records when my dad said I should take it over to…

THE EARLY 1970s were a golden era for soul music, and one of the best albums from that time and genre is Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly. Released in 1972 on his own Curtom Records, Super Fly served as the soundtrack for the film of the same name. It came along at what was an explosive time for black soul records, one that included milestones like Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Issac Hayes’ Shaft and Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. Born in Chicago in 1942, Curtis was raised by his grandmother, who was a “healer” for the community and a fixture at their church. Through her, the gospel music of the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and Sam Cooke was instilled in his DNA…

RICHIE KOTZEN ISN’T really a guitarist. That will probably be news to anyone who knows his Shrapnel work at the dawn of shred, or his awesome playing on his 22 solo albums, or with the Winery Dogs. But it’s actually not accurate to call Richie Kotzen a guitar player. Rather, he’s a soulful, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter who just happens to be really, really good on guitar. And he didn’t have anything left to prove on the instrument way back in the 1990s. So what does a guitar hero do when he doesn’t care about being a guitar hero anymore? Write songs. Lots and lots of songs. For Kotzen, songs are like lava in a volcano—it’s probably better to get them out regularly and peacefully, otherwise there might be some kind of…

BÉLA FLECK LIVES and breathes banjo. The 15-time Grammy winner is the instrument’s premier player and greatest ambassador. Fleck is married to and collaborates with another amazing banjo player, Abigail Washburn, and he continues to push banjo boundaries forward with his progressive fusion ensemble, Béla Fleck & the Flecktones, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2019. A decade earlier, in an effort to trace the roots of his beloved instrument, Fleck traveled to Africa, where he mixed his American style into a genuinely African context by jamming with a host of musicians in various countries. Fleck’s trek originally yielded a lauded documentary, Throw Down Your Heart, and soundtrack, Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3: Africa Sessions. The new compilation, Throw Down Your Heart: The Complete Africa Sessions (Rounder), is…

WITH THE COUNTRY’S current health crisis, this is a fine time to use self-expression as music therapy, and an opportunity to turn to the trusty acoustic for help in maintaining sanity. Interviewing Tommy Emmanuel about his songwriting [see page 22] and finally finishing up an album of original material has put my head in songwriting mode. An acoustic can facilitate anything from the heaviest riff to the most delicate classical composition, but too often it’s merely used to strum a few chords in common time and standard tuning. That’s a sure-fire way to write something utterly mundane. What the world needs now is something heartfelt, and a little different. Here are a few tips to eschew the tried and true and discover music unique to you. CONNECT WITH YOUR MUSE…

SOME 10 YEARS ago, a collaboration between Dr. Z, late Trainwreck Circuits founder Ken Fischer and super-picker Brad Paisley yielded the fire-breathing Z Wreck heads and combos. Players snatched up those searing, touch-responsive rock machines as a means of attaining some semblance of the hallowed Trainwreck sound and playing feel at a fraction of the price. And as Dr. Z’s Mike Zaite tells Guitar Player, ever since then, guitarists have been begging him for a lower-powered Z Wreck. It’s finally arrived in the form of the Z Wreck Jr. It’s worth noting up front that this amp declares its “junior” status in its halved power output only, using two Russian military-grade 6n14n (EL84) output tubes to produce 15 watts (the original Z Wreck uses four to make 30 watts). Otherwise,…

IN CASE YOU haven’t noticed, Greece has become a hotbed of pedal development, with Crazy Tube Circuits, Tsakalis and Jam Pedals among those creating the new stomp boxes showing up on a plethora of pro pedalboards. Jam Pedals has seen its product adopted by a who’s who of guitar stars, including Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Julian Lage, Jonny Lang, J Mascis, Nels Cline and many others. The company’s original Delay Llama pedal offered warm analog delay courtesy of its faithful reproductions of the Panasonic MN3205 BBD chip. The larger Supreme version added bells and whistles like tap tempo and expression pedal control. Now the new Delay Llama Xtreme introduces even more features. Xtreme uses three 3205 BBD chips, for a maximum of 800ms delay time. As an analog/digital hybrid, it…