Joe Bonamassa is counting on his fans' support as he issues a plea to help recover a score of instruments stolen from LA session musician Mason Stoops.

The guitarist, whose recent work includes recording gigs with Miley Cyrus, the American indie-pop singer-songwriter Sombr, and tours with Jackson Browne, is seeking to recover an extensive list of gear stolen from the back of a pickup truck in LA.

Posting on Instagram Stories on April 13), Stoops listed the missing gear, which includes two of his most prized picks: his “favorite” 1965 Fender Jazzmaster, which bears the Serial Number 110229, with neck stamp 40CT64Ba, and a 1961 Gretsch Corvette, which Stoops says is “mega rare and all original” save for one key change.

The ‘65 Jazzmaster also sports a custom shellac Snake-Fly Green finish, features a broken off-rhythm switch, and “a cute lil apple sticker” on the headstock. He says he used the guitar, which also has two P-90 pickups, “on nearly every record I've ever been part of over the last five plus years.”

The Corvette, meanwhile, was used exclusively on a recent tour with Mumford & Sons, and he’s detailed that there is a ‘Mason’ sticker located near the control knob. It also has an updated Fink Instruments bridge. It has the serial number 42736.

Neither the sticker nor the bridge features in the shared images. Thankfully, Fink has come up clutch with a photo of the modded bridge, shown below.

A 1970s Guyatone wah-fuzz pedal and a Highland Dynamics Delta 4-7 Mini Preamp were also stolen.

“Pretty please keep an eye out for these stolen guitars,” Stoops writes. “Last seen in Highland Park neighborhood, Los Angeles. Please contact me, Mason, if you see them anywhere. Thank you so much.”

Having seen his shoutout, Joe Bonamassa has been quick to call on his one million Instagram followers for help.

“Los Angeles! Let's help our friend Mason Stoops get his two beloved guitars back,” he says, his words a clarion call.

Readers with any information should contact Mason Stoops via Instagram.

The news comes two years after Paul Gilbert had four guitars stolen while on tour in Frankfurt. Sadly, none of those instruments were ever recovered.

Meanwhile, former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor has been left mystified after a 1959 Gibson Les Paul, stolen from him in 1972, re-emerged at auction last year, and former Wings sound engineer Ian Horne has recalled the moment he told Paul McCartney his historic Höfner bass had been stolen, as well as his surprising reaction.

Michael J. Fox also has a theory as to what happened to the Back to the Future guitar, and it's not pretty. The guitar hasn’t been seen since the film's shooting wrapped 40 years ago. Gibson has now hired the people responsible for reuniting McCartney with his beloved bass to help track down the ES-345.

Anyone who's seen Thurston Moore play over the years knows he's a fan of Fender Jazzmaster guitars.

And there's one in his collection that's particularly special, and not just because it hails from the model's first year of manufacture.

On July 4, 1999, Sonic Youth's instruments and stage gear were stolen in Orange County, California, while the group was in the midst of a North American tour. The band members would recover a number of the guitars and basses over the years, but that of course did not help in the short term.

"We had to replenish our coffers with newly bought secondhand guitars at different music stores and re-create the band, as far as our sound goes," says Moore, who also lost lyric books in the theft. "Because we could never replicate the distinctions of each of those guitars."

To Moore's everlasting thanks, Patti Smith came to the rescue with a gift: her vintage Fender Jazzmaster.

"After the initial rip-off, the Patti Smith Group was playing in Northampton [Massachusetts], where we were living in the early 2000s," Moore recalls. "They stayed at our house. Patti shared the story about how their group also had their van broken into. All of the instruments were stolen, along with suitcases and all her signed, first-edition William Burroughs books."

Smith recalls that she purchased the Jazzmaster in the ’70s, from a shop across the street from Manny's Music, on 48th Street in New York City. "I think I put a metal nut and metal pickguard on it," she says. "I gave it to him, as all our equipment was stolen in Chicago in 1978. It was devastating. So I knew how it felt."

As Moore recalls, "She said, 'I want to gift you one of our guitars.' That was incredibly sweet and special and such an honor. I couldn't believe it. It's just a beautiful Jazzmaster, painted gold."

But Moore was in for another surprise when he took the guitar in for some work.

"I found out it's a day-one '58 Jazzmaster, with the year penciled in underneath the neck," he says. "I had a luthier take it apart. He nearly had a 'pack my bags and send me to heaven' moment. He was like, 'I've never seen a Jazzmaster that had this penciling inside. It's a ground-zero Jazzmaster.' I said, 'Yeah, it's a good guitar,’ ” Moore adds with a laugh.

"I remember mentioning to Tom Verlaine, 'Patti gave me this really cool gold Jazzmaster.' He was like, 'She gave you the gold Jazzmaster? Oh, man, I really wanted that guitar.' That's her nature, though. She has this great, kind quality as a friend, that when somebody gets burned, she wants to help make it right."

The Jazzmaster is still in Moore's possession, and he's used it on some of his solo albums — although not his new solo album, Flow Critical Lucidity. The guitar has been seen of late onstage in the hands of his co-guitarist, James Sedwards.

"I treasure it," Moore says. "I keep it very safe and secure when I'm not" using it." He adds, with anther laugh, that, "Talking about it is funny because I always worry that Patti’s' gonna read an interview and say, 'Hey, I always wondered what happened to that guitar. I want it back!' "

Thinking back on the theft, meanwhile, Moore says the event made a profound creative impact on Sonic Youth that went beyond replacing their instruments.

"In some ways it was really interesting because it allowed us to become new again," he explains. "We had to reinvent what we were doing. And it took us awhile to get back to playing the material we were up to playing 'til that point 'cause we had to find the guitars to do so. And even then it wasn't exactly the same. But it became a real opportunity for us to grow, I think."

“It took me years to realize how exquisite so much of standard guitar playing is,” Thurston Moore tells Guitar Player. Contemplating his new album, Flow Critical Lucidity, while lounging on the couch of his home in London, the former Sonic Youth guitarist serves up insights into a guitar approach that has influenced a generation or more of alt-rock guitarists.

"I can't really play 'real' guitar," Moore explains with a chuckle. "Sonic Youth never once played a traditional, standard-tuned guitar outside of the very first EP we did. I never went back to it, but I can do it. Sonic Youth just did something completely else with guitars, and it took me awhile to come to a place where I understood how significant we were and what we were becoming, 'cause we weren't playing generic music and were never in the community of generic music.

"So when you would meet people later on, whether it was Steven Malkmus of Pavement or Kurt Cobain of Nirvana saying, 'Sonic Youth was this [influence] for us, that was cool."

The guitar has certainly proven to be an interesting ride for Moore. Now 66, the Florida-born musician was raised in Connecticut, picked up guitar as a teenager via his older brother, and cut his tastes and, subsequently, his talents in the punk, post-punk, New Wave, no-wave and hardcore scenes in New York. Alongside Lee Ranaldo, Moore spent 30-odd years with Sonic Youth, during which they pioneered a new school of rock guitar playing, one that was highly experimental and determinedly set against anything standard. That includes everything from tunings to melodic sensibility to compositional approach.

Now, with Flow Critical Lucidity, Moore delivers the ninth of what he calls his "proper, song-based" solo albums and his first since 2021's instrumental set Screen Time and the ambitious Spirit Counsel box set that contained his sweeping 63-minute piece "Alice Moki Jayne." Flow Critical Lucidity’s seven songs were arranged during ensemble sessions in Switzerland and recorded in London during 2022 before being mixed last year. Regular Moore collaborator Jon Leidecker, aka Wobbly, helmed the electronics, with Deb Googe on bass, James Sedwards on keyboards and Jem Doulton playing percussion, while Stereolab's Laetitia Sadler provides backing vocals on the single "Sans Limites [watch the video below]."

"With this record there was some conscious idea of reflecting on what was happening in the natural world," Moore explains, "at a time when we were coming out of the pandemic year. That, plus being in the midst of this great natural world energy with Lake Geneva and the Alps behind it — contemplating that and just letting it infuse the composition of the music." Some of the album's lyrics, he adds, focus on aspects of "community," drawing in particular from his experiences in the hardcore scene as a youth.

"There's this juxtaposition between experimental guitar play and singing about something that doesn't have anything to do with experimental guitar play but has everything to do with this other subject matter," Moore explains. "I like the clash of that."

Moore recorded most of the album using an early ’60s Fender Jazzmaster, a "pretty chewed-up" instrument he says, which "allows me to have a lot of play with the strings above the neck and below the bridge."

For the opening track, "New in Town," he also employed a number of objects to create different sounds, mostly "pretty slender cylindrical pieces like a car antenna...or a fairly lightweight drumstick, preferably one that's been used quite a bit so it has some abrasion for the strings to rattle off of."

He laughs. "That's the one song I won't be able to play live, 'cause I don't remember what I was doing with the guitar."

He does, however, recall his tunings for the album, which were primarily (low to high) C G D D C G and, for the closing track, "The Diver,” a droning D# D# A# A# (octave) C# D#. "I tend to get hooked into one tuning and I try to keep investigating that one tuning as opposed to just bouncing from different tunings," he says.

Most of the "special effects," meanwhile are generated with his hands. "I was never a pedal geek or freak," Moore says, "which is criminal to say now 'cause it's all about boutique pedal culture. I don't care about pedals; I care about what's being said on a guitar. To me, my favorite guitar sound is hearing Keith Richards' fingers slipping along the strings."

And that's not the only luddite position he's taking about the album.

"I've got to say that of all the formats Flow Critical Lucidity exists on, the cassettes sound the best," Moore opines. "That fat, phosphorous oxide, that friction across a magnetic head — there's nothing like it. Nothing sounds as good as that."

Eschewing a formal concert tour for the time being, Moore has a number of promotional appearances scheduled to promote Flow Critical Lucidity in Europe and the U.S. — including four nights of curated performances from December 4 through 7 at John Zorn's New York City venue, the Stone, with Ranaldo joining him for a duo program on December 6.

"During the ’80s someone had written that the two most important bands for underground music were the Velvet Underground and Black Sabbath," Moore says. "I remember bringing that up to Lee; he said, 'I understand the Velvet Underground, but I wouldn't agree with the Black Sabbath part.' I said, 'Well, Lee, I've been using a lot of Black Sabbath–style moves in what I'm doing for Sonic Youth.' He looked at me and said, 'You're not!' I said, 'Yes, I am.'

"It was pretty funny. And of course that would become more prominent and prevalent later on. You'd hear something pre-punk like Black Sabbath come more into play with younger people's fascination with how their bands sounded."

By mid 1968, Tommy James and his group, the Shondells, had enjoyed a string of good-time AM radio singles, like “Hanky Panky,” “I Think We’re Alone Now” and “Mony Mony.”

But after the band returned home from a summer tour, James sensed a sea change was taking place. “FM radio was happening, and singles were being replaced by albums,” he says. “Songs were getting more serious. I realized that we had to move with the times, or else we’d be extinct.”

With that in mind, James and Shondells drummer Peter Lucia Jr. wrote “Crimson and Clover.” The transcendent, psychedelic-pop gem became the band’s biggest hit, spending 16 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1968 and early 1969, including two weeks at number one.

“Its impact was incredible,” James says. “It gave us the second half of our career.”

Verse After Verse

James began with the idea of combining two of his favorite words, which he thought sounded poetic as a phrase. After playing a concert, he and Lucia retired to their hotel room, where James played a Gibson Hummingbird while Lucia laid down a beat on pillows.

“I played these three ‘backward’ chords – B, F# and E – at the same time I did the lyrics,” James says. “We didn’t have a recorder with us, so we jotted it down on paper.”

They tried a few iterations of the song, one being, as James describes it, “kind of like James Taylor, with acoustic fingerpicking, but it sounded too dreamy, so we toughened it up.”

Within a few hours, they had enough of it sketched out. “It was kind of a funny thing,” James says. “It was verse after verse, which was also the chorus. That was the hook. We knew we could make it work in the studio.”

The Secret Ingredient

“Crimson and Clover” marked James’ debut as the producer of his own material and his introduction to recording in a 16-track studio, which allowed instruments to be kept separate for greater control during mixing.

“Stereo had become the big thing, and we had to keep up,” he says. The song was recorded in just five hours with Lucia, Shondells bassist Mike Vale and James, who played the bulk of the instruments, including the tremolo-laced electric guitar that became the song’s ear-catching sonic signature.

“I did the guitars using a Fender Jazzmaster through an Ampeg Gemini amp,” he recalls. “The tremolo became a crucial element of the song, and I even put it on my vocals for the fade.”

Album buyers were treated to even more ear candy with an extended mix that featured Shondells guitarist Eddie Gray playing steel guitar and wah and fuzz leads over a lengthy solo break.

“Tom, You’re Done”

Once the session was complete, James made a work tape of the song. “I knew it was a hit,” he says. “It was undeniable.”

While visiting the program director at WLS in Chicago, he played him the tape, and people at the station bootlegged it without his knowledge. “I got in my car and I heard, ‘Here’s a world exclusive on WLS.’ They played the freakin’ rough mix! It was crazy.”

By the time James got back to the New York offices of his label, Roulette Records, he had a situation on his hands. “We were afraid we had blown it with the other big Chicago station, WCFL, and we tried to get WLS to stop playing it, but they refused,” he says.

With “Crimson and Clover” lighting up the phones at WLS, Roulette rush-released the rough mix as the single. “I wanted to do a polished final mix, but I guess it was God’s way of telling me ‘Tom, you’re done.’ Several weeks later, we played the song on Ed Sullivan, and the next day it hit number one.”

“Crimson and Clover” went on to sell more than five million copies and has been covered by artists ranging from Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (who hit number seven with their version in 1982) to Cher (as a duet with her son, Elijah Blue).

James professes his love for all the covers he’s heard, but he singles out Prince’s version (which blends in a blast of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing”) as his favorite.

“Prince did such a futuristic treatment of the song,” he says. “His guitar playing on it was out of this world. He was always such a brilliant guitarist. I was really honored by what he did with ‘Crimson and Clover.’”

Released as Fender’s top-of-the-line electric Spanish guitar in 1958, the Jazzmaster was an instant misnomer. Although it ultimately gained appeal as a workhorse jack-of-all-trades instrument, it was generally shunned by the masters of jazz. Pitting it against the company’s arch(top) rivals in the traditional jazz world was an ambitious move by Fender, given the long-established series of benchmark designs already set by Gibson, beginning in 1923 with the L-5.

“No more convincing proof of the extremely fine playing qualities and design features of the Fender Jazzmaster could be offered than its rapid acceptance and acclaim by guitarists throughout the country,” reads the Jazzmaster’s ’58 catalogue debut. Alas, for the likes of those bona-fide jazz players such as Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and Johnny Smith, a great deal more in the way of “acceptance” and “convincing proof” was evidently required, as existing allegiances to Gibson continued into the ‘60s with the release of its new signature models.

“Fender failed to break into the jazz guitar market because it was already saturated,” explains Terry Foster, co-author of Fender: The Golden Age 1946-1970. “For the most part, the jazz guys – the players for whom the Jazzmaster was intended – were a bit more traditional. They already had the tools they required and they saw no reason to make the change. It didn’t work for them, even though the Jazzmaster mimicked some of the sounds of the big jazz boxes. [Fender] did everything possible and it fell flat.

“Also, back then, most guitar players had one guitar; they didn’t have an arsenal of instruments. I think they weren’t necessarily inclined to even try the Jazzmaster because they’d be worried about what people might think when they stepped on stage. Y’know, ‘Only a Gibson is good enough.’

“Whereas the rock ’n’ roll kids didn’t want their dad’s guitar, and the guys who played in Western swing bands were willing to experiment because it served a purpose; they were constantly on the road and they needed a hard-wearing [solid-bodied] guitar. These were the people who were willing to dress up in flashy clothes and were more inclined to try something new because they were generally less conservative than your typical East Coast jazz guy. Back then, if you’re using a Fender guitar, you’re probably a little more of a liberal-minded, forward-thinking kind of person because you’re willing to try something different. And if you bought a [custom color] Jazzmaster, you were really cut from a different cloth! It was a huge statement to be standing on stage with that.”

The genesis of the Jazzmaster began in early 1957 when Fender owned the country music end of the market and rock ’n’ roll was still in its infancy. Although the Precision Bass (released in 1951) had granted them a foot in the door, at that time, Fender was yet to tackle the electric jazz-guitar scene head on. “Electric bass was Fender’s first foray into jazz,” says Terry, “starting with blackguard Precision Bass players like Monk Montgomery and Shifty Henry, before the offset Jazz Bass arrived [in 1960]. The P-Bass cut across every musical genre and was a huge success in that regard. At that point, rock ’n’ roll was still part of the subculture and Fender largely ignored it – it didn’t factor into their marketing. It was more about Western swing and jazz players.

“The idea for the Jazzmaster came not from Leo Fender’s brain as such, but from the market itself via [Leo’s business partner] Don Randall. Don was a marketing genius and neither of these men would have been as successful individually without the other. They were two sides of the same coin and the Jazzmaster is a good example of the alchemy between them. Don was saying We need a jazz model. How do we get one into the marketplace?’ Leo didn’t make anything Don didn’t ask him to make, but, at the same time, he didn’t make something if he wasn’t interested.

“There was constant feedback coming from the marketplace and they knew what was happening across the country in terms of popular music. Music styles were much more regionalized at that point in time, and although they lived in California, Don was always jetting off to the regional trade shows, so they would have seen how popular jazz was in New York, versus Western swing down in Southern California, Oklahoma and Texas.”

As the idea began to take root in Leo’s brain, work on Fender’s prototype jazz guitar soon commenced.

“In 1957, [factory manager] Forrest White got a little video camera, popped in some color film and walked through the factory,” recounts Terry. “There are several hours of original footage, but there’s a leaked clip online showing [musician/designer] Freddie Tavares sitting in Leo’s lab playing the first Jazzmaster prototype. It had a solid maple neck dated ‘5/57’ and the headstock is a little bit different. They didn’t normally make [fretted] maple neck Jazzmasters, but that neck was later sold on a normal ’58 production model and the prototype body is long gone.

“They eventually chose to use rosewood [fretboards] because that’s what was on the Gibson jazz guitars. And, by that time, they were having trouble with the finish on the maple necks wearing off. Their ideal was that musicians would just buy a new neck, but musicians tend to get very attached to them!

“That first prototype has the offset body shape, but the controls are completely different. It’s likely there were other versions beyond that, but who knows? Leo tended to destroy these things, or they were stolen out of the factory, or given away to employees. The Jazzmaster’s upper tone circuit was designed by Forrest White and came from a one-off lap steel he built before he worked at Fender – he showed it to Leo when he first came to Southern California. Leo was experimenting and trying to make the guitar sound like a big, fat jazz box. Those guys tended to roll off the tone and that’s what they were trying to mimic. He ended up using tone wheels instead of knobs, like he did on his original Fender Radio Service shop solid body guitar [made in 1943].”

Wound with Fender’s standard 42-AWG wire, the Jazzmaster’s bespoke dual pickups feature wide flat single coils that produce a slightly fatter, mellower, more jazz-like tone than that of a Strat or Tele.

“If you look at Gibson, most of their guitars used either P-90s or PAFs, but Leo usually had different pickups made for each model,” points out Terry. “Every guitar had its own voice. The pickups sometimes look the same, but they’re not, and I think Leo would have voiced them differently using a different number of winds.

“The original prototype pickup had eight polepieces [rather than the Jazzmaster’s six] and was a little narrower. They’re essentially the same basic design as the pickups in Fender’s [model 1000 and 800] pedal steel guitars that came out [in the late ‘50s], but they became two different types because the 1000 has two necks with eight strings and the 400 has one neck with eight strings.

“People sometimes forget about this kind of peripheral stuff that Leo was working on and how that influenced things. He scrapped the original design for the Stratocaster trem and started again from zero because it killed the sustain, but there may have been pieces of that initial idea that Leo brought back for the Jazzmaster, having had the time to refine it. The Jazzmaster [/Jaguar] trem system works perfectly, but Leo didn’t picture people dive-bombing like Hendrix. It was meant for a little bit of shimmer at the end of a chord and the odd note here and there. If you use it as intended, it doesn’t go out of tune and it works great.

“It’s the same thing with strings; if you put the right gauge strings on a Jazzmaster, it plays properly. With heavier strings on a Jazzmaster, nothing ever pops out, you can intonate it properly and it feels better – the whole thing starts to feel right.”

Although the Jazzmaster was never quite at home in the jazz world, its unique combination of specs and cutting-edge appearance meant it was soon adopted by the emerging surf-music scene of the early ‘60s. However, it was quickly overshadowed by the release of Fender’s new price-list-topping Jaguar model in 1962, further rendering it less able to find a musical niche of its own.

“In the ‘60s, the Jazzmaster’s lasting cultural impact was almost zero,” says Terry. “By the time the Jazzmaster was in the hands of surf bands, the Jaguar was out. People can argue that surf music had a cultural impact, but it was very much a sub-genre and those groups tended to be regional stars. Other than The Beach Boys, surf groups didn’t sell masses of records. And The Beach Boys weren’t really known for playing Jazzmasters anyway.

“The advertising at that time was more about the Fender brand in general and trying to capture the zeitgeist of the cool, forward-thinking youth market. That’s when they latched more onto youth culture generally, but the Jazzmaster was never intended for a teenager – it was intended for a pro player to be used in a pro setting.”

Jazzmaster production limped on throughout the hard-rock era of the ‘70s, but by the end of the decade it was all over: in 1980, it disappeared from Fender’s price list.

“You see so few ‘70s Jazzmasters around, but they wound the production down just as it was being discovered,” notes Terry. “You could argue that Elvis Costello and Tom Verlaine had an influence, but, again, that was part of the subculture. Things really started to change in the ‘90s. Collectively, we remember the ‘90s as a time when guys like J Mascis, Thurston Moore and Kurt Cobain were playing offsets – that probably drives part of the nostalgia for people these days.

“The prices of Jaguars and Mustangs went through the roof when Cobain started playing them. They rose exponentially overnight because Nirvana had a really broad cultural impact – they sold millions and millions of records in the US alone. One of the main reasons people bought Jazzmasters was because, like the Jags and Mustangs, they were cheaper than Strats and Teles, but there’s way more to Fender than Strats and Teles, and I think the offset Fender thing touches a lot of places now: price, the cool factor, a little bit of nostalgia, and the relative abundance of custom colors.”

“At the moment, vintage custom-color Jazzmasters are relatively inexpensive,” Mike Long, proprietor of ATB Guitars in Cheltenham, tells us. “If you were to try to find an equivalent-year custom-color Strat, you’d be paying a lot more money. Jazzmasters are still a bit of a bargain in the vintage marketplace.

"Prices are going up, but they’re not reaching stratospheric levels. I’ve noticed the Jazzmaster increasing in popularity… People are more interested in them these days. Maybe people are cottoning on to the fact these are really cool guitars. They’re very versatile and you can do a lot with them.

“Guitars should inspire you to do things you don’t normally do. When you pick a Jazzmaster up, it’s a different feel to anything else Fender made, and it makes you play differently. It can break you out of a rut and inspire you to go further. I think the combination of body shape, pickups and trem gives it a unique sound and feel that makes you explore different tonal variations. When you plug into a Jazzmaster, it inspires you to head towards different territories with your playing. Which is what a great guitar should do.”

Guitar Player would like to thank Terry Foster, co-author of Fender: The Golden Age 1946-1970; Mike Long of ATB Guitars in Cheltenham, U.K.; and Vintage ‘n’ Rare Guitars in Bath, U.K.

***The following interview extract originally appeared in the December 2018 issue of Guitar Player***

Recording artists tend to get locked in a cycle. An album is followed by a tour, which is succeeded by a break that leads to another stint in the studio. And on and on it goes.

Kurt Vile has found his own way out of that rut.

The guitarist and songwriter cut his 2018 studio album, Bottle It In (Matador), at various studios in between road dates with his band, the Violators, travelling with his wife and daughters.

During those more than two years on the road, the Philadelphia native also recorded an album of duets with Courtney Barnett (2017’s Lotta Sea Lice), opened for Neil Young and saw his single “Pretty Pimpin” (from 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down…) go to number one on Billboard’s Adult Alternative chart.

If life has been busy for Vile, it hasn’t hampered his productivity.

“Touring is a big part of why you end up anywhere in the world,” Vile explains. “So it’s fun to utilize that moment. You play a gig in a random place where they booked you, and then you could start your adventure from there and travel a little bit.”

The guitarist has become something of an indie-rock god in recent years. Following a brief stint in the War on Drugs, which he cofounded in 2005 with Adam Granduciel, Vile went solo in 2008, signed with Matador Records and began releasing a string of ever-better-selling albums.

Through discs like 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo and 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze, he became known for his droll vocal delivery, riff-oriented songwriting, and a musical range that stretches from lo-fi folk to sprawling electric guitar jams.

Back in 2018, the guitarist took time out from a European excursion to talk with Guitar Player about the making of his eighth studio album, Bottle It In, his deep love of acoustic guitar tones and his longing for simpler times.

What’s the appeal of mixing studio dates in with your touring schedule?

You know, even if I play just one show and go into the studio, it feels more natural to me.

In what way?

When you play live, it’s the most in tune with the music you can be. When you record while you’re on the road, you can carry that energy into the studio.

Obviously, most artists cut records between tours.

There’s no way I could do that. I do everything all in together. I like to go into the studio even for a day or so, in between things. I think you can get just as much done that way as you can if you stay in there for two weeks and work on the same song.

The more time you have, the more you waste. I just figure if I go in and out of the studio while I’m touring, it makes it more natural.

I imagine that also gives you time to listen to what you’ve done and tweak things if you want.

We would definitely tweak the recordings later on and add some things. But ultimately what I wanted was for it to be as live in the studio as possible – get the basics down and then figure the rest out later, if I had to, if it wasn’t, indeed, already figured out.

Your way of touring and recording makes me think about Jackson Browne’s album Running on Empty, which he recorded live, at soundchecks, in hotel rooms and even on the bus while he was on tour.

Wow! I respect Jackson Browne, for sure. That’d be cool to actually record on the stage at soundcheck.

In some ways, when you’re traveling, you’re more relaxed. Somebody can just put a microphone on you at any point, and you’re more comfortable with it. For me, it’s a constant battle of trying to make things feel as laid-back as possible, even in the studio for this record.

Things like, if you can get away with not wearing headphones, don’t wear ’em – sing live while the band’s playing. There are all kinds of ways to make it feel more natural.

Todd Rundgren has recorded his vocals from behind the mixing console for years. He’s like, “I can do it right from here while listening off the monitors.”

Yeah, I did that for “Bottle It In,” while my buddy Stella [Mozgawa], the drummer from Warpaint, was playing drums in the next room.

That’s what this record’s all about, just interacting when I’m with somebody or, when I’m by myself, just getting the part down, like an organic moment captured. That’s what I shoot for.

It’s about knowing your town like the back of your hand. And I really do things like that in my hometown, where I can pull up to the record store and there’s a loading zone across the street, one of many in the city where I know I can just run in, get what I’m looking for and get out before I get a ticket. [laughs]

You have your own way of doing things. The leadoff song, “Loading Zone,” seems to be about that – about making the system work in your favor. What inspired that tune?

And that’s a way of life, in general. It’s like getting by on the backstreets. It’s like you’re just sticking it to the man a little bit – ’cause, obviously, the man’s always sticking it to you anyway.

Why did you choose to name this album after “Bottle It In”?

“Bottle It In” is definitely the album’s centerpiece. I’m definitely proud of it, and it’s like some kind of new territory that I stumbled onto.

When I name my albums – like Smoke Ring for My Halo was named for my favorite song on that record. I had a feeling it needed to be highlighted, otherwise it would just be a song passing by. It’s an important song.

And you know, if you get back to the heart of the matter with artists you respect, usually their classic albums are named for a song on the album. Like Neil Young: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, On the Beach. And those songs are such classics in themselves that you don’t forget them, because they’re each like a statement on their own.

So “Bottle It In” – I just had to roll with it, and I just didn’t want the song to go unnoticed.

Your songs are almost inevitably built on catchy riffs that could stand on their own, without vocals. Do you think in terms of riffs when you’re writing?

Yeah, I like blues licks and melodic folk-tinged riffs. They’ve got to be melodic, a little bit pretty, but like with the blues in there. I like to make them as hypnotic and as melodic as possible. I get lost in most of the riffs that I find myself coming back to.

On a lot of your songs, acoustic guitars provides the structure while heavily effected electric guitar adds sonic interest. Do you prefer one instrument over the other?

Well, if I had to pick a main tool, it would be the acoustic guitar. In fact, certain electric guitars that I fall in love with – and even new electric guitars that I buy – I won’t even plug them in for days sometimes after I get them. I’ll just sit on the couch and listen to how they sound acoustically and how they feel.

I kind of like the idea of sitting on a couch and hearing all the nuances. Acoustically, you can’t beat that. But then, in the studio, you can put it through an amp and all these effects – filters, phasers, delay or any kind of weirdness. Or just a punchy amp sound. It’s just an option to the guitar itself.

What are some of the effect pedals that you used on this album?

I’m not as particular with effects as I used to be, but I tend to just like to put some kind of filter or phaser on there if I can get away with it. One pedal I used was the Moog MIDI MuRF. It’s kind of an envelope filter, but a little more than that.

And the amps are really important too. These days I’m into these little brown ’50s Fender Champs. Just crank those up.

What effect are you using to make that strange vocal-like guitar sound on “Loading Zones”?

It’s a Ludwig [Phase II] guitar synth. It’s the same one used on “The Diamond Sea,” which is one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs.

Do you own that or did you borrow it from Kim Gordon?

No, I’m pretty sure their’s got stolen back in the day. I bought one. It wasn’t cheap.

What’s your main acoustic guitar on this album?

I used these little custom-made 00 Martins that Vintage Instruments in Philadelphia had made. They’re based on their favorite vintage guitars of the day, but they’re made really well.

The first one I had, I’ve been using since “Wakin on a Pretty Day” [from Wakin on a Pretty Daze]. I used it on that song, in fact. It’s a Philadelphia Folk Festival 50th Anniversary guitar. And then I have another custom 00 from later.

You have some great electric guitar tones on the record as well, like those solos on “Skinny Mini.”

That was the last song I wrote for this album. I was on tour with Courtney Barnett for Lotta Sea Lice and I developed a real sound with my pedalboard.

I was using the Moog Minifooger Chorus pedal, which I really love, and there’s something about that with my most recent white 1966 Fender Jaguar. But I’m also getting some really good sounds out of just an old green Big Muff and another crazy pedal called the [Wren and Cuff] Box of War.

For “Skinny Mini,” I played that setup through a 1950s Fender Bassman that we borrowed from a guy. He said it was an original speaker, so be really careful, and we just completely cranked it. So that’s basically just a loud 1950s Fender Bassman with a Big Muff.

You seem to have a fondness for the past. The cover photo for Bottle It In looks vintage, and you even have ringwear on it. In “Mutinies” you sing, “I think things were way easier with a regular telephone.” Other songs describe a fear of flying, and the video for “Loading Zones” is full of old cars. Do you have issues with the modern world?

Yeah, I yearn for simpler times. I’m a victim of my psyche being shocked by a million things at once. I definitely remember, in the old days, we could memorize things, like phone numbers and everything. Now my mind is much more scattered.

I always like to be surrounded by vintage gear with multicolored buttons. And I like the way guitars look when they’re old and used. When I get a new guitar it feels weird. I almost want to throw it against the wall, just to make it look normal.

I like old amps, and I have a lot of old Korg synthesizers from the ’70s. They all look so good, and they all sound good. “They don’t make ’em like they used to” is certainly true in a lot of ways. I like things to be a little worn.

Kurt Vile’s latest album, 2022's Watch My Moves, is out now on Verve.

If you like your blues served raw, GA-20 will satisfy your jones. The blues rockers are a stripped-down three-piece featuring the lo-fi guitars of Matt Stubbs and Pat Faherty, and the solid drumming of Tim Carman.

They’ve made quite a noise for themselves in recent years with a pair of albums that debuted at number one on the Billboard Blues Albums chart. Their last album, 2021’s Hound Dog Taylor tribute GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor: Try It...You Might Like It! saw the group play in the traditional vein, and both Stubbs and Faherty have the requisite chops (Stubbs is Charlie Musselwhite’s longtime right hand).

Their latest album, Crackdown (Colemine/Karma Chief), is their third effort in a row to launch at the top of the Billboard Blues chart. On it, the trio takes a looser and more melodic approach, combining strains of blues, rock and roll, country and even some Ramones-inspired punk in a ramshackle mix that sounds both traditional and fresh.

Cut live in the studio, the album’s nine original songs are instantly memorable and filled with gritty and expressive guitarwork soaked in authentic blues guitar style and tone. And they come by that tone authentically. GA-20 are huge fans of vintage gear. Consider their name, a tribute to Gibson’s 1950s tube amp.

“We didn’t really have a band name when we got our first few gigs. I think all the good band names are gone,” Stubbs says, laughing. “It was just out of necessity – we had to call the band something, and as we’re such big vintage gear nerds, it just seemed to fit.”

Stubbs and Faherty have stocked their arsenal with vintage guitars and amplifiers from Gibson, Fender, Teisco, Silvertone and other oddball brands. For our chat, they shared some of their choice pieces of gear with us and revealed its role in their raw power.

GA-20’s no-frills approach reminds me of bands like the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Red Devils [the early ’90s offshoot of the Blasters].

PAT FAHERTY Yes. I think our band started with the same source material as many other groups, which is the older blues guys. Sometimes people will get into blues through a later act, and then work backwards to the originators, but our influences were directly from the earlier records. Those are really great bands to be compared to though.

MATT STUBBS We try to always make a record that we would want to listen to. That was the goal. We actually recorded this album before our Hound Dog Taylor record, but we didn’t want to put it out while everyone was off the road since we wanted to tour in support of it.

Given that Crackdown was recorded live in the studio, how much does that streamline the tracking?

STUBBS We approach all of our records in the same way: We set up the drums and the amps in the main tracking room, with very little isolation and minimal mics, so that when it comes to time to mix, I’m only working with maybe seven or eight different tracks. It always sounds bigger to me when we do it that way. I’d say ninety-nine percent of the music for Crackdown was recorded live, with a couple of extra guitar overdubs on two songs.

What was the reason for deciding that GA-20 wouldn’t have a bass player?

STUBBS I really wanted us to keep our band very simple. There were a lot of records by artists that I loved that didn’t have a bass player – Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Hound Dog Taylor. I liked the simplicity of it just being me and Pat and a drummer. Also, while we were doing this band for fun, we wanted to try to make a little money. My job playing with Charlie Musselwhite was on hold for a year, so we wanted to keep the band more compact and help make things more economical.

There is so much depth in the sound of your two guitars that you don’t even notice the absence of a bass.

FAHERTY We’ve never had the conversation about adding a bass player really. We’ve never had a problem generating sufficient low-end to make it something that we feel we need.

STUBBS We spend a lot of time in pre-production figuring out what guitars and amps we’re going to use, and even the drum tuning. I find that when you set up everything in one room and let all the instruments bleed into each other, it creates what I call “fat air.” It also makes it pretty easy to mix the music as everything becomes a part of that overall fat sound. The bass guitar seems to be there anyway because of the chemistry between the instruments.

I’ve noticed, from watching a lot of your live material on YouTube, that the kick drum often almost functions as a bass in the way it blends with the band.

STUBBS Absolutely. And when we have our own gear with us, Tim for the most part uses a 24-inch kick drum, which gives more low end. The way that he tunes it, with a very open sound, really adds to the tone and helps us cover a broad spectrum.

You both use a lot of vintage gear, including guitars and amps from a lot of lesser-known manufacturers. What’s the appeal for you?

FAHERTY I think what is interesting about old guitars is that the materials that they are made from is often quite different from what would be used today. There are certain woods that can’t be used anymore, and there are also very often variations between guitars that are supposed to be exactly the same, because there didn’t seem to be the same mass-produced standardization back then.

There will even be differences in wiring and electrical components. As a good example, I have two of the exact same Teisco Kingston guitars, yet they sound completely different from each other, even though they would appear to have all the same parts and pickups. It’s never old gear for the sake of old, though.

STUBBS I’ve been buying and collecting vintage guitars and amps since I was 16, so it’s been a long time now. It just happened to be the case, when we started GA-20, that I was using an old Harmony hollowbody guitar from 1954. We were playing small clubs with small amps, and those hollow Harmonys with the gold-foil pickups were real fat sounding and filled a lot of low end.

I have a lot of Harmonys and Silvertones, and Pat has Teiscos. I also collect vintage Fenders and Gibsons, but at this point it can be pretty hard to find them at a realistic price.

Is it problematic to take older gear on the road in terms of reliability?

FAHERTY Oh yeah. [laughs] When we got to Spain on a tour, two of the toggle switches on my Teisco had snapped off. I hope we never ever have to check our guitars in on an airline, that’s for sure. So much can go wrong. When we were going to Europe, one airline wanted to send our guitars out on a different flight from us.

STUBBS We always bring a back-up amp for each of us, and when we’re onstage, we’re always plugged into two amps: One will be for a cleaner fatter tone, and the other will be for the more cranked-up sounds.

As far as guitars go, I like to mix things up and take some newer guitars on the road along with the vintage instruments. I do have one particular guitar that I had built by Waterslide Guitars out of L.A. It’s in the Coodercaster style, like a Telecaster, with gold-foil pickups and a Bigsby.

How do you divide up your guitar parts?

STUBBS For the first album, Lonely Soul, and Crackdown, I played more solos than Pat, because he’s doing most of the singing. For the Hound Dog Taylor album, Pat was playing most of the solos because he plays slide a lot better than I do. I played all the bottom parts.

Do you need heavier string gauges to keep the older guitars in tune?

STUBBS I use .011s on everything, which I guess feel medium to me.

FAHERTY I use .012s for slide, where I will tune to open E or C#, and .011s for everything else.

Through your music, you’ve introduced people to a lot of great older blues musicians who don’t always get the recognition they deserve. Are you surprised by how positive the response has been from your fans?

I hope we are introducing some older names to people who might not know them. That idea has definitely been in our heads when we’ve made each of our records. I grew up loving traditional blues, but I think these days a lot of people only think of blues as being the British guys like Clapton or the kind of things that they probably associate with Joe Bonamassa.

That’s all great music, but it’s a little different from the stripped-down kind of blues that Hound Dog or Lazy Lester were playing. There isn’t much of that very raw kind of blues music anymore. I guess we are flying the flag for the older guys who don’t get as much attention, so that’s got to be a good thing.

Madison Cunningham aced her way through the whole “sophomore slump” thing in fine form with her second album, 2019’s Who Are You Now. That sublime set of musically adventurous and startlingly personal songs enchanted music fans and critics alike, and went on to earn the iconoclastic singer-guitarist a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album.

Music is therapy for the 25-year-old California native, and as suggested by the title of her sumptuous new album, Revealer (Verve Forecast), songwriting is her way of making sense of feelings.

“I actually had the title right at the beginning,” she explains, “so in many ways it was something of a guiding principle for me. As the songs came into form, the word sort of magnified itself as a through-line. I began to think of a revealer as being kind of a figure. It’s the personality of grief, or maybe it illustrates how grief eliminates all the things that are bubbling under the surface.”

She pauses as she runs that thought around in her head, and chuckles. “I just loved the word,” she says. “I thought it was very beautiful.”

Much of the grief that informed Cunningham’s new music stemmed from the mid-2020 death of her beloved grandmother, and she processes her heartbreak amid soothing strings that wrap their way around her velvety voice on the stirring ballad “Life According to Raechel.” Her anguish takes on a more steely and defiant form on “Hospital,” a gritty guitar riff that lodges inside your head and stays there.

Cunningham has a crafty way of describing sensations without editorializing them, but they have a cumulative power, like on the bleary folk-flavored gem “All I’ve Ever Known,” where she summons a grab bag of images and life experiences over a bobbling, hypnotic guitar figure that takes listeners through a series of looking glasses.

Her love of the late-period Beatles graces the shifting time signatures of “Your Hate Could Power a Train,” and on “In From Japan,” she artfully marries musical theater with Jeff Lynne-style rock orchestration.

“On my previous record, I tried to make the statement ‘I am a guitar player,’ and I think that point was made,” Cunningham notes. “I didn’t veer from that idea too much on this album, but I wanted it to be a spectrum of things.

“I wanted the songwriting to shine through. Like with ‘Life According to Raechel,’ I never pictured it with guitar – I always heard it with strings. It was always about the song and the story I wanted to tell. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record. I’m so proud of it.”

With its highly intimate, yet relatable observations bathed in sophisticated, jazz-tinged folk rock, much of the music on Revealer conjures up another era. At the mention of Laurel Canyon legends Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash, Cunningham lights up. “Oh, definitely!” she says, with a laugh.

“I would consider myself to be a student of those writers. I think they tapped into something that was just so prolific and profound. They didn’t hide any of their emotions that went directly onto the page. I think they’re very unapologetic about that, and I absolutely model my writing and career off of that.”

Still, Cunningham points out that she’s not about to be thought of as anybody’s idea of a carbon copy. “I’ve always just wanted to fight for my own voice,” she says. “I’ve gone through so many different iterations of my own sound to the point where I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was highly influenced by so-and-so during that period.’

“I’m not shy about my influences. I can’t hide them. But really, I just try to express my own identity in everything.”

I read a recent interview with you in which you said you thought being called a female guitar player was “dumb.” I agree. It’s pretty silly people still talk this way, isn’t it?

It is, but I should clarify my opinion. Gender has always been a non-issue, but culture has made it an issue. It’s not that sexism is eradicated; that’s still very much alive, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be working through that.

So in that sense, it’s not gone, and the conversation is just as important as it ever was. But in my opinion, it’s like, I get so tired of talking about it. I’m like, “Come on, guys. Let’s do the work.”

If you love guitar, play guitar and be the best you can be. It doesn’t matter what your DNA is. I guess in that sense, that conversation feels outdated, but it’s still very relevant because there are still people who give me a hard time about it.

You started out playing Christian music. As you might know, a lot of non-Christians don’t listen to Christian music. They think it’s not meant for them. What are they missing?

I have to be careful, but I would say… not much. I’m very much on the outside of Christian music now, so I feel out of date. I grew up with it, but I left it when I was 17. I don’t know. From what I gather, there aren’t a lot of artists that exist in that world like there were some time ago.

Now it’s very much spiritual songs and worship-focus music, which have very specific purposes. It’s for people who hold that faith. Excluded from all of that is the beautiful gospel music that came out of the church.

Aretha Franklin came out of the church. That’s different to me. That’s in a whole different echelon, with its own mission. But as for right now, like I said, I’m out of touch with that industry, although I can’t say that there are songs being written for just the general person to grab onto.

Was there a gateway album that changed things for you? You’ve talked about Abbey Road having a dramatic impact on you. Was that a big one?

It was, because my ears were tuned to this perfect sort of alternative Christian style of music. The Beatles… this is going to sound funny: Their records were so offensive to me at first because there were so many moments where the guitar was out of tune. [laughs]

I didn’t understand the importance of sincerity and performance over perfection, and how those two things sometimes are mutually exclusive. My ears had to mature, and the Beatles taught me so profoundly about what it means to actually perform and innovate, and how sound is often imperfect because perfection and progress can’t happen at the same time. But that being said, the Beatles are perfect in my opinion.

At the time, my ears weren’t being challenged, and they were the first band that did that for me. It’s funny: A lot of my favorite music – and I mean the stuff that absolutely transformed me as an artist – I didn’t really like it at first. I had to sit with it. It’s fascinating how that works.

Any other examples other than the Beatles?

Oh yeah. I mean, it’s sad and I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but when I first heard Radiohead, I was like, “Eh, I don’t hear songs.” Who on earth did I think I was to say that? [laughs]

But that’s just how I felt. And then something hit me, and I was like, “This is the best music I’ve ever heard!” The same can be said about Jeff Buckley and Björk and Fiona Apple. Now they’re my favorite people. It just took me a minute.

You started playing the guitar quite young.

Yeah, I was seven years old.

Was there a time when you decided that you wanted to get really serious about playing? Did you sit down and put in the 10,000 hours?

Oh yeah. I started taking electric guitar seriously when I was probably 16. I was in a high school band, and I had played acoustic guitar, but I decided to make the switch to electric to match what was happening sonically in this band.

It was frustrating, though, because the electric guitar required a different touch. I became very annoyed at how I sounded. It was like I had to learn guitar all over again.

From the ages of 17 to 22, that’s when I practiced the most in my life, especially when I turned 21, because I got asked to do a bunch of gigs in L.A. I had started duetting with [Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers mandolinist] Chris Thile, and I couldn’t afford to be anything but excellent on guitar. That was my goal.

During that period, what kinds of things did you practice?

It would depend. For a while, I was hanging with some friends in Orange County, and we would learn a song a week. One week it was something by Jimi Hendrix, and the next it would be John Scofield. The next it would be Led Zeppelin. We were just going through the coolest guitar players and playing them as best we could.

I did a lot of listening. I listened to B.B. King…a lot of people. And I was transcribing songs. At the same time, I wrote songs and I would imagine what I wanted to hear myself play. Then I’d practice and practice, and I’d get to where I loved it.

You use a lot of open tunings. Where’d that come from?

A family friend named Danny Donnelly showed me open tunings when I was probably 12. Then when I was older and started listening to Joni Mitchell, I understood that she had been playing in open tunings for years. That’s when I was like, “Oh… got it. That’s how you do it.” I started writing songs in open tunings at that age, when I was 16.

Was that a real watershed moment for your songwriting? Did open tunings facilitate your songwriting?

One-hundred percent. I mean, it was all a progression, and eventually all of my electric guitars got tuned down to C standard. I liked how they sounded. I still write songs in that sort of octave.

I think open tunings opened up different melodic pathways for me; they just made more sense, and I could find more voicings that way. I don’t really have a lot of theory in my background. I didn’t go to school for guitar or music. It’s all just self-taught and discovery. A lot of the time, I follow my ear and intuition.

You’re quite a good fingerstyle guitarist. Did you study other players?

A couple. Paul Simon, definitely. But the family friend I mentioned, Danny Donnelly, he was an incredible fingerpicker, and he’s still one of my favorite guitar players. There’s probably a few others, but Paul Simon was the big one.

You had a lot of time to work on this record during the pandemic. During that period, did you pick up the guitar more than usual?

I played a lot, but there were days when I didn’t have the appetite for it. I didn’t want to play; I just wanted to make meals and learn how to make pasta. [laughs] But yeah, I would say overall, the hours that I logged playing guitar were so much more than usual.

Let’s get into the album a bit. There’s a really cool, swirling guitar figure in “All I’ve Ever Known.” On the record, is that a loop?

Nope. It sounds like it’s a loop, but it’s just me playing the part over and over.

I should have figured. I saw you play it during the NPR Tiny Desk Concert you did recently. You use a lot of upstrokes for that part.

I do. It’s a lot of upstrokes and pull-offs. I’m pulling off the strings and using some of the open strings to get that sort of melodic pattern. It was hard to do for a minute. I got the guitar part first, and then the melody came later. I love playing something that has a rhythm flow underneath what I’m singing. It’s become a part of my instincts now.

“Hospital” has a flat-out awesome rock riff. Riffs are hard, aren’t they? You can labor over them, but the best ones come about because you’re noodling around and you have an “aha moment.”

Honestly, that’s true. There’s no math or calculation; it’s really just me figuring stuff out. With “Hospital,” it’s funny because I was trying not to have a riff in the song. I wanted it to be all about just the melody and the song, nothing more.

The riff just happened very naturally. I was playing and playing, and it just sort of slipped out. This happened a couple of times till finally I was like, “Okay, that’s a thing.” If you repeat it a couple of times, it’s a riff.

The riff is almost classic-rock sounding. Tell me, what kind of rock music are you listening to?

Oh, well, like I said, Radiohead. I think they’re the coolest version of rock. Let’s see, what else? I really like Queens of the Stone Age.

Great grooves.

Absolutely. Everything they do is so deep. They’re such a great, creative rock band. I mean, I’ve always loved Led Zeppelin. Those are some of the coolest song structures and guitar-centric stuff. Who am I forgetting? There’s Wilco. I love Wilco! Oh, and Feist. I think she’s rock in her own way. I look up to her a lot.

“Your Hate Could Power a Train” sounds like several songs mashed together.

It does, but it was all one idea. I had this weird riff that happened by accident. I was practicing something else, and I hit the wrong fret. I went, “Whoa, that’s weird… but I kind of like it.” Then I went after the bridge, which has a very open, half-time feel.

After that, I filled in everything else. We wanted it to sound like we had chopped it up and put a bunch of different songs together. So you’re right, but the truth is, it all came together at once.

It’s got such a jazz feel to it. You don’t know what’s going to come at you next.

[laughs] Yeah, that’s cool. Well, it is a train, and it’s taking some fast turns.

Are Fender Jazzmasters still your go-to guitars?

Yeah. My main one is a Mexican Jazzmaster reissue, but I have a couple of backups. I don’t consider myself a Jazzmaster poster child, but I just love that guitar.

It speaks to me. Every environment that I bring it into, it feels like me. It’s like a very flattering jacket. You’re always going to wear that jacket, even if it’s too hot outside. [laughs]

What are your main guitar amps right now?

I’ve been traveling with two Fender Deluxes, and I use both of them at the same time so I can get a cool 3-D sound. It sounds really nice and big.

You seem to like some effects pedals. What are you using?

It’s all JHS at the moment. I have a custom pedal I made with them that’s going to come out soon. It’s called the Artificial Blonde. Even though I’m a real strawberry blonde, I kind of liked that name. It’s basically a warble kind of tremolo thing that I keep on for every single song. It’s got depth and speed, so you can change it around.

Other than that, I have a boost pedal that I use every once in a while. I have a tuner and a delay pedal that I use for short slap. I have been using a [HexeFX] Revolver pedal, which isn’t JHS. It gives me a cool glitchy sound. I think that’s about it.

I’m going to compliment you here. You’re unique. You have your influences, but you distill them in a way that makes you sound different. It’s in your songwriting, and it’s definitely there in your guitar playing.

Thank you! Like I said, I have my influences, but I really try to find my own voice in everything. Especially as a guitar player – there’s a lot of guitar playing that is just not exciting to me. And I also think that the lack of training in theory has allowed me to not care about rules that much.

I really, really try to not let myself be aware of any musical rules, so I don’t feel like I’m breaking them. I just want to keep the pathway as clear for me to create things that make me excited. That’s it. That’s all I care about.

For tour info, merch and more visit the Madison Cunningham website.

With rehearsals for his tour just a week away, rising indie-rock star Bartees Strange is surrounded by his favorite guitars and amplifiers. From all indications, this is the hard part of the job.

“If you could see me right now, I have all of my amps in a circle around me and, like, five guitars,” Strange says over the phone from his home in Virginia. “And I’m just like, ‘What’s going to be the perfect combination?’ I can’t figure it out.”

Whether he’s strapped with his Gibson ’59 ES-335 Reissue, ’67 Epiphone Casino or ’59 Fender Jazzmaster, Strange will show up ready to blaze.

Over the past year, he’s toured with indie vanguards like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Car Seat Headrest.

But as one can tell from his latest album, Farm to Table (4AD), his own music is a fusion of styles and influences stretching back to his youth, when hardcore and emo bands ruled his playlists and fueled his creativity.

“I got into guitars and playing music from having hardcore bands and punk bands expand my understanding of what you can do with a guitar,” he says, “the ethos of guitar playing and sounding like yourself being more important than sounding like anybody else.”

Strange’s music is rooted in the emotional heft of emo, but he pulls R&B and hip-hop into the layered madness of “Cosigns” and explores acoustic pop on “Tours” and “Black Gold.”

There is also a hint of Fleetwood Mac balladry on “Escape This Circus” and some fine dueling guitars on the surging and lyrical “Heavy Heart.”

On the eve of touring for Farm to Table, Strange spoke with Guitar Player about his journey to indie-rock stardom.

How and when did music come into your life?

I remember the first real moment that I was like, Oh, what is this? It was a Norma Jean concert. To see everyone react to it reminded me of church, like the spirit moving through a room and people going crazy, moshing. The music was so loud, and it was such a different context for me.

I went to some all-Black churches and heard some pretty wild, awesome church bands, but I’d never seen anyone making – let alone playing for an hour and half – music that was that intense. It really changed what I thought you could do with music and made it more accessible for me, because I was always so intimidated.

That was my on-ramp to getting into guitar-based music and finding the blues, falling in love with Albert Collins and Freddie King and Rosetta Tharpe, and copying all those licks.

Then I heard those same licks in country music and fell in love with Chet Atkins and Waylon Jennings and Brad Paisley.

Seeing TV on the Radio perform “Wolf Like Me” on [Late Show With David] Letterman and hearing those Telecasters on Bloc Party’s “Helicopter” completed the circle. I knew what I wanted to do with guitars.

What about Telecasters spoke to you?

Teles resonate with me and my guitar philosophy. I’m not a super-fast, technical player. I don’t really know how to read music. I like to write songs – I think about chords and the song construction and what the section means and why it’s there.

I need a guitar that’s not in the way, that I can treat just like a tool. Like, this is a hammer and I build houses with this hammer, and who cares what brand of hammer it is? That’s how I like to think of guitars, and that’s how I think of a Telecaster.

You can play jazz or country on a Tele. Some of my favorite emo bands, like American Football, Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz – these guys are all Tele players. And whenever I make records, there’s always two or three Teles in the room. They record really well, and I know what it’s going to sound like.

It certainly lends itself to the intricate picking you do.

I don’t really play with a pick; I play with my fingers. So every time I play a chord, I’m kind of picking it out and finding the loop within the chord, finding the lead.

Sometimes I’ll write a riff and build the song around it, but most of the time I write the chords and come back and solo on it.

It is literally just me with a looping pedal playing the chords and following along with it. I don’t put too much thought into it. I’m just playing what feels good.

What are your favorite guitar moments on Farm to Table?

My favorite is the end of “Heavy Heart,” where the solo kicks in. I just love that freaking guitar part and all the tones involved with that song. It’s a guitar symphony. It’s such a fun song to write and play. Every guitar line is a solo.

And then on “Hold the Line,” there is a guitar line at the end, which is a solo slide part played by my friend Dan Kleederman.

But my favorite part about the song is how the two guitars interact with each other. I’m playing the rhythm part on the left side, and the part is sneaky confusing. It’s a slow song, so there’s all this space, and you just have to sit in it. You can’t play through it. It took many years of overplaying to get a song like that.

On the song “Escape the Circus,” there is a guitar moment on the bridge where a cacophony of guitars swirl around each other and result in these weird bloopy tape loops, and oversaturated sounds that fade in and out. That’s probably the most Bartees guitar move of all time.

There’s just a combination of a lot of things I love smashed into that section, and then we leave it and move into this big Blink-182, nine-million-guitars, big-drums moment, which is the only moment like that on the whole album, but it’s a throwback to some of my favorite music.

What was your main rig on the record?

My ’67 Epiphone Casino, my favorite guitar, is on everything. There’s also a 1963 Gibson ES-125T, the slim one, with some funny quirks added to it. For that song it had flatwounds on it, and the string slots on the bridge were rubber, so it created a sound that was different from the other 125 I had played. It has the stock Gibson P-90, and so when you hit it, it crunches in a really unique, nice way on the hollow body. I played that guitar quite a bit.

I also used a 1964 [Fender] Jaguar all over the record. For the outro of “Escape the Circus,” I played a Danny Gatton Telecaster and that Jaguar through a Tone King amp and a Benson Vincent amp in stereo, with different ribbon mics on each.

I’m not really big on dynamic mics for guitar amps, ’cause I like how an amp breathes and sounds in a room. Sometimes when a mic is right on the cone, it can be a little too much for me. So I always use a ribbon mic about a foot away, just to catch the darkness and the air.

The amp I used the most on the whole album is an early ’70s [Fender] Vibro Champ. I think it’s my best-sounding amp. Almost every song starts on that amp. I actually broke it on this album, and I still haven’t gotten it fixed, which is killing me. But it’s also forcing me to use some of my other amps.

You were a football player before you took up music. Are there parallels between your days as an athlete and your career as a musician?

I don’t know if there are parallels, but there are definitely things I took from athletics that I apply to music. I’m a competitive person; I have goals of what I want to do with music. I’m extremely grateful that I get to make music, but it doesn’t stop there for me.

Ultimately, I think there are a lot more Black kids from Oklahoma and Arkansas and Missouri and Texas who are great artists and deserve opportunities like I have. Seeing Tunde Adebimpe [of TV on the Radio] on Letterman blew my mind, like, “You can do that?”

It’s like, you can’t tell a Black kid to be a doctor if they’ve never met a doctor before. They’ve got to see it, and I hope people see me and they’re like, “Oh, he did it! I’m going to do it better than he did it. I’m going to do it bigger than he did it.”

That’s really my dream with all of this.

Order Farm to Table by Bartees Strange here.

Back in the early ’90s when I’d frequent the Emeryville, California, Sunday morning Record Swap Meet, I discovered a copy of The Fabulous Roy Lanham in a seller’s milk crate.

Finding this type of rare-bird LP was the reason I set my alarm to wake up at the crack of dawn, but paying a whopping (then personal record) high of $40 for an LP was a little unsettling.

That was a ton of money to me back then, but, kind readers, I made the plunge and had no regrets whatsoever.

This holy grail album showcased a tremendous electric guitar player, and its cover photo gives one the impression Roy Lanham could be a double for Robert Goulet.

How could anyone regret this?

The Fabulous Roy Lanham was originally released on the Sims label in 1963 and reissued on CD by Bear Family in 1993.

The reissue included some great tracks from Lanham’s solo 1961 album, The Most Exciting Guitar, on the Dolton label.

This Vinyl Treasures will focus on the original Sims 1963 vinyl release.

Roy Lanham was born in Corbin, Kentucky, in 1923, and went on to play guitar with the Delmore Brothers and the Sons of the Pioneers for almost three decades.

Barney Kessel would tell Roy, “Take off your boots and hat and you can be a great jazz player,” but I’m grateful that he kept wearing them.

If my arm were twisted to describe Roy’s style by genre, I would probably say he’s a jazz guitar player, but he also had a big spoonful of something that, to my ears, is delightfully indescribable.

Imagine Chet Atkins throwing away his thumb pick and becoming a flat-picking fiend, exhibiting steroidal chops and shredding to his heart’s content. This might be my best shot at describing Mr. Lanham to the uninitiated.

Roy came from an era of guitar that preceded folks obsessing on the “perfect killer tone.”

I might understand paying $5,000 for a Klon Centuar, but one might ask themselves, “Can I play a nylon-string guitar to make folks happy?”

Roy Lanham made people very happy by getting the most out of his right and left hands. He employed right-hand muting, sweep picking, raking toward destination notes, superb phrasing and Django-like trills, typically all packed into one performance.

Sure, I might also suggest this record occasionally flirts with sounding corny, but that’s no diss. It would be corny in the Neil LeVang tradition, which is great corny.

To me, this is high-level, strategized craftsmanship that perfectly complements his moments of jaw-dropping brilliance.

The first example of Roy’s virtuosity is side one’s “Holiday for Strings.” He goes through rapid-fire chord work and rips through key changes while sounding relaxed throughout.

This is followed by one of my personal favorites, “Roy’s Blues.” Here he plays a style that brings to mind Johnny Smith trying to sound like a pedal-steel guitar.

Another stand-out track is “Brazil,” a tune that swings so smoothly it almost melts.

Lanham’s version of the song became my gold medal winner, unseating Les Paul’s great version to a second-place tier silver medal.

“Under the Double Eagle” and “Brown’s Ferry Blues” are absolute stunners, with the latter laying the way for Roy’s opportunity to exhibit his Jimmy Bryant chops, while giving the sonic impression he’s never close to breaking a sweat.

“One Love” shows his ability to play a straighter, traditional jazz, yet somehow Roy manages to sound totally original.

We would be missing the point by attributing this to his Fender Jazzmaster sound; his virtuosity and choices are always distinctive, and his pyrotechnics always sound effortless.

Side two ends with the show-stopper “Can’t We Be Friends,” where Roy and the group – Dusty Rhodes on rhythm guitar, Red Wooten on bass and Muddy Berry on drums – throw in the kitchen sink, beckoning the listener to turn the album over to side one and experience The Fabulous Roy Lanham one more time.

Fabulous!

While writing this column, I did a quick Discogs search for The Fabulous Roy Lanham. Two copies were available, with each seller asking around $200.

Evidently, aside from being a timeless, bad-ass guitar player, Roy Lanham proved that wearing a tux and having a Robert Goulet mustache can be a very good thing.

The guitar players who most influenced Browan Lollar serve as bookends of a sort. In style and tone, the guitarist for horn-heavy soul purveyors St. Paul and the Broken Bones hangs out somewhere between Steve Cropper and Radiohead, and never more so than on his band’s latest album, The Alien Coast (ATO).

“I’m so impressed with somebody like [Radiohead’s] Jonny Greenwood or Ed O’Brien, because those guys were guitar players in the biggest band on Earth,” he explains. “Then they were like, ‘We don’t want to be a guitar band anymore; we want to be an electronic band.’”

Lollar says he and his bandmates can relate, although he’s reluctant to make the comparison.

“Our band is sort of at the same point, where we’re like, ‘We don’t want to make that type of music or be known for one type of music,’” says the guitarist, who previously played in Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit band in the early aughts.

“We want to explore and really press ourselves. I find myself thinking about those guys a lot and what they would do in certain situations.”

After forming in Birmingham, Alabama in 2012, the octet became darlings of the festival and club circuits for its throwback look and sound. It didn’t take long for the band members to grow out of their matching suits, though.

Once their experimental streak began to show, they tugged on that thread and kept pulling it forward.

“A lot of times, especially these days, we’ll bring in something that’s totally written on a synthesizer,” Lollar says. 

Once the other band members get ahold of an idea, though, that synth phrase could end up as a guitar riff or horn blast. And for Lollar, that’s the fun of it. 

On the eve of releasing The Alien Coast, he talked with us about finding his place in an eight-piece band and coming of age in a music town with a backstory all its own.

You grew up near FAME Recording Studio. What was it like to develop around so many great musicians?

I lived over in Florence, which is just across the river from Fame. Everybody knew exactly what Fame had done back in the day.

I grew up going to bars and seeing people like Kelvin Holly, who was Little Richard’s guitar player for a long time, play to people who were just ignoring them. I thought you had to be that good to play at a bar.

Years later, after I started touring, I realized how special what we have there is.

How did your early recording sessions impact you as a young player?

We recorded the Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit [2009] record at FAME. That was the first time I’d actually been able to set up camp in there with a band, where we had the studio for a week and got to move in.

It was also my first real opportunity to get into the studio with all the toys and have time to experiment and do things that Jason didn’t have planned out before going into the studio. I still think about that session a lot.

Which players were you most impressed by growing up?

I loved Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler, and people from the old style of playing. Then I got into more band-oriented players like Steve Cropper and David Gilmour. I felt those players knew their role and the spot in the music they needed to fill, and they filled it perfectly.

Steve Cropper isn’t flashy, but he would come in with a really raw sound. It was just crazy to me how he was able to make that Telecaster sound work in that setting.

For a long time I’ve been interested in guitar as an instrument that adds to a band instead of overtakes it, especially with St. Paul and the Broken Bones, because we’ve got so much stuff going on, and it’s so important to be dynamic in the band.

How did you find your place in such a large ensemble?

I had to discover that I didn’t have to go in there and be “guitar guy” and come up with riffs and stuff. When we first started, before [2014’s] Half the City, I told the guys I didn’t want to take a bunch of guitar solos. I didn’t think that this band needed to be a guitar solo-y band.

At that point in my life, I was pretty tired of it. I just wanted to focus on writing songs. Luckily, it doesn’t really lend itself to that, anyway.

Do you lean on any music theory tips or lessons to find complementary notes to what the horns are playing?

Very little. I’m the one guy in the band that isn’t great at music theory. I know it enough to have a grudging respect, because I have to. All our horn players can just spout the stuff off, and Al [Gamble], too, our organ player. I know what works and doesn’t over a certain chord.

What do you find most challenging about playing in this band?

There’s eight guys onstage, okay? All the low-frequency stuff is organ and bass. All the mid- to high-frequency stuff is pretty much covered by the horns, and all the high-frequency stuff with our singer.

Where does that leave the guitar player? For a long time, I was experimenting to find what kind of guitar tone really suited us.

Where did that journey take you?

I went from a [Gibson] ES-335 to an old [Gibson] Trini Lopez that I really love. It didn’t really work, though, so I went to a [Fender] Jazzmaster and finally settled on a [Southside Custom Guitars] T-style, because it’s got that Steve Cropper thing where it kind of threads the needle between all those other very rounded, beautiful instruments.

You’ve been upheld as a plug-and-play guitar player. Considering how far out you get on The Alien Coast, has that reputation held?

Yeah. Actually, it’s gotten a little better. When we fly, we’ve got 1,000 bags to get from point A to point B. Right now on my pedalboard, I’ve got one of those Cry Baby Mini Wahs, and I really like it a lot.

I’ve got a Boss ES-5 multi-effects processor; that’s what I use for flange and a little bit of echo. That goes into a Strata reverb pedal, and from there I go out.

I don’t have a lot of pedals because I have to focus on what I’m playing with my hands. If I start tap dancing too much, I can’t play well.

Your playing in this band is well suited to a combo amp. What are you using?

For a long time, I was playing the Supro Thunderbolt Plus, but our horn player Allen [Branstetter] is playing a lot of secondary guitar parts on the new record, and he’s going through the Thunderbolt now, and I’ve moved back over to a Fender Twin.

I can’t seem to get away from a Fender amp. Most of the time, if it’s not a Fender amp, I’m just trying to make it sound like a Fender amp.

As a band, it sounds like you threw out the rule book this time.

We have been evolving in that way ever since the second record. With this album, we asked about every single part of this record, “Does this song need this?” We didn’t just throw guitar on a track if it didn’t need it, and honestly that went for anything.

There’s barely any horns. We really just wanted it to be a challenge for us. We wanted it to be out of our comfort zone.

Order The Alien Coast here.

Hailed as the King of the Surf Guitar, Dick Dale was an avid surfer, whose musical expression was informed by the roil and tumble of the experience.

“Surf music is a heavy machine-gun staccato picking style to represent the power of Mother Nature, of our earth, of our ocean,” he told The New York Times in 1994.

Anyone who saw him perform or heard his hits “Let’s Go Trippin’”, “Jungle Fever,” or “Miserlou” will know how fully he succeeded in the effort.

Dale was pummeling his Stratocaster with his band the Del-Tones to crowds of 2,000 to 3,000 surfer-stomping teens in 1961 and ’62 when he found his existing Fender amps imploding under the pressure.

Fender had unveiled its Showman head and cab in 1960, but Dale called Leo to tell him he needed a sturdier rig for his electric guitar.

Fender installed a bigger output transformer often known as “the Dick Dale OT” and then conscribed the guitarist to blow through a hundred or so speakers until the custom-made JBL D130F 15-inch finally proved capable of surviving the 85-watt maelstrom (which peaked at well over 100 watts).

Partnered with a hulking 2x15 extension cab as the Dual Showman, the big-stage rig had finally arrived, and Dick Dale knew exactly what to do with it.

Buy Surfer's Choice by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones here.

This is a 1958 Fender Precision Bass. It has a white transparent blond finish over an ash body with a solid maple neck. It comes with its original tweed case and a matching 1958 Fender Bassman amplifier – both in impeccable condition.

This bass has a gold anodized pickguard, which Leo Fender started using in 1954 on special orders. They thought a metallic pickguard had good shielding properties, but the 60-cycle hum continued to be a problem.

In ’59, the [gold anodized] pickguard was replaced by the more familiar tortoiseshell [cellulose nitrate] ’guard and rosewood ’boards became standard.

In the late '50s, a variety of custom colors were available, but the regular Precision Bass finish was sunburst, moving from a two- to three-tone sunburst in February 1958.

This beautiful guitar has had two owners before me, both of whom are still alive. The instrument was originally purchased in Vermont. And it has virtually no wear at all. The case and the amp, too – they have barely a scuff.

The headstock and neck are completely straight, and it’s never needed any fret-dressing or filing. A lot of the time on these instruments the headstock will lean [forwards] because of the tension on the neck over the years. But this P-Bass has been stored properly.

It even has the original Fender flat-wound strings that it was shipped with. Suffice to say it’s in virtually ‘as new’ condition.  

The original receipt shows it was bought along with the [narrow panel 50-watt/4x10 tweed] ’58 Bassman from the same store. It was a ‘swimming supply and music store’. Back in the day, travelling salesmen would walk into stores and ask, ‘Would you be interested in selling Fender instruments?’ That’s kind of how things happened back then.

I’m not really old enough to remember stores like that, but I’ve seen many receipts over the years that had a mixture of different types of businesses under one roof, like furniture stores that also sold Gibson instruments, for example.  

The blond/ash body, maple neck and gold anodized ’guard spec P-Basses are kind of the Holy Grail pieces for some people. As are the Stratocasters. In fact, I recently sold a blond ’56 with a black anodized pickguard.

The [1957] prototype Jazzmaster was a Desert Sand finish with a black anodized pickguard. And I personally own an early ’59 Stratocaster with an anodized ’guard and Fullerton Red finish – the predecessor to Fiesta Red.

It’s very Pee Wee Crayton-looking. His was also Fullerton Red, although people often call it Fiesta Red. ’59 was the year Fender transitioned to Fiesta Red.  

This P-Bass is one of the scarce colored ones you’ll see from the era. Blond Fender guitars have an ash body, even after they switched to using alder in ’56, because the grain just looks so much better.

And with the gold ’guard it’s a super, super look, although I love them with tortoiseshell ’guards, too.

Blond is such a great color. There’s something specific about ’57 and early ’58 blond finishes; it’s a very white blond and very translucent looking.

If you look at, say, an earlier Blackguard, it’ll probably have much more of a honeyed color, and if you look at a ’59, they have much more white in the color and are less translucent. On this guitar, you can see the ash grain as if you’re looking through a slightly foggy window.

It made sense for Fender to move the P-Bass design away from the original slab-body ‘Telecaster’ bass to the Stratocaster-style contoured body [in 1954].

The Stratocaster was very popular in the late 50s – way more popular than the Tele. When the P-Bass changed again in ’57 [to also include a Strat-style headstock] it was because of the Stratocaster.

Similarly, the Jazz Bass [released in 1960] exists because the Jazzmaster’s offset body design was such a huge hit after it came out in ’58. By 1960, that was their number one-selling electric guitar, so they figured their next bass should mimic the look of the Jazzmaster.

Fender basses kind of followed that logic. Then, of course, the offset VI came out in ’61, followed by the Jaguar in ’62.  

I think the P-Bass is the quintessential rock ’n’ roll bass. The split-pickup design was a really interesting thing to do at the time [from 1957]: the location of the pickup on the body and the way it accentuates the bass in the lower two strings, while the coil for the higher two strings that sits further back towards the bridge gives it its unique voicing.

They even carried that split-pickup design on to the Electric XII model [released in 1965].  

The Jazz Bass pickups maybe do more tricks, but the P-Bass is often the instrument of choice for the person who wants that real thump and bottom-end.

That’s what makes the Precision Bass special for so many.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221- 0563

Where other guitarists have bags of technique, Kevin Shields has originality. As the leader of My Bloody Valentine, he led the group through a pair of albums – 1988’s Isn’t Anything and 1991’s Loveless – that remain alt-rock cornerstones and ground zero for shoegaze.

But it was on their 1990 EP, You Made Me Realise, that Shields found his secret weapon. Wielding a borrowed 1964 Fender Jazzmaster with a tremolo, he discovered he could use the device to make his notes warble and drop.

Applying backward reverb, he created waves of sound that made the whole production teeter woozily as if in a dreamscape.

The resulting “glide guitar” became his plaything. “It was like a new toy, really,” he says.

Shields influenced many other alt-rock mainstays, including Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, and went on to work with numerous acts, from Yo La Tengo to Patti Smith.

No less than Vernon Reid declared of him, “He achieved a wholeness and a unity. He created his own sound.” In doing so, he tremendously expanded guitar’s sonic palette for everyone else.

In this 2018 Fender film celebrating 60 years of the Jazzmaster, Shields’ love for the original Fender offset electric guitar is evident.

When asked how many Jazzmasters he owns, the American-born Irish guitarist replies, “Not a lot. Not millions… Ten, I think. Maybe eleven or 12. Probably 12. There’s more, but I’ve got lots of other ones. Made up ones, Japanese ones, copy ones. So maybe 25. But 12 good ones…

“I need them. I need more.”

We hear you, Kevin!

Browse My Bloody Valentine's catalog here.

In The Cure’s videos, he was traditionally seen without an electric guitar, leaving the impression that former co-guitarist Porl Thompson was behind the group’s densely shimmering six-string magic.

But Robert Smith is an excellent guitarist who’s applied his colorful tones and melodies to the group’s songs in the studio and live on stage, as seen in this clip from 1981.

“Even people who are quite close to the band are surprised to learn that I played the solo on ‘The Edge of the Deep Green Sea,’” he told Guitar Player in 1990.

“Everyone would immediately assume it’s Porl.”

While many of the Cure’s detractors have probably let Smith’s personal flamboyance divert their attention from the band’s phenomenal pop craftsmanship and stylistic range, as their gargantuan worldwide following proves, the Cure combine sublime pop and heartfelt expressivity like no other band.

As the group’s only constant member, Smith richly deserves his due as a guitarist.

Browse The Cure's catalog here.

“We’re like blues from another planet… like rock music for aliens,” Richard Lloyd once said of his groundbreaking New York City art-rock group, Television.

“Ahmet Ertegun didn’t want to sign us to Atlantic Records because he claimed we didn’t play ‘Earth Music.’ I think he was right.”

The key to Television’s otherworldly approach was the electric guitar interplay between Lloyd and Tom Verlaine.

Lloyd called their relationship as guitarists “telepathic,” and indeed there is a conversation, if not an elaborate dance, taking place in their best work together: Lloyd’s trenchant, Hendrix-inspired serpentine solos, performed on his ’61 Fender Stratocaster, and Verlaine’s slower, blues-inflected lead work, onto which he applied his 1958 Fender Jazzmaster’s tremolo.

They met in the early 1970s while playing in Greenwich Village clubs. “I saw Tom play and I thought, He’s got it. And I knew I had it,” Lloyd said.

“But I was missing something, and so was he. What he was missing, I could supply. And vice versa.”

And so they did. Marquee Moon, Television’s groundbreaking 1977 debut, is stunning both for its songwriting and their guitar interplay.

“All the filigrees and arabesques on Marquee Moon are all mine,” says Lloyd, while Verlaine works more slowly and traditionally, building speed and harmonic interest as he finds his way forward.

Together they carried forth the notion of art-rock that fostered punk and, ultimately, the alt-rock movement that followed from it.

Buy Marquee Moon here.

It has been said that instant, easy access to centuries of music makes it hard for young artists to find a truly original voice. Apparently, Naia Izumi didn’t get the memo. 

On the evidence of A Residency in the Los Angeles Area (Sony Masterworks) a fresh, new sound has been created, featuring electric guitar work that recalls neo-soul, but with a style of comping that incorporates unique chord voicings and string tapping.

This personal take on accompaniment is integrated into tunes featuring odd-time sections, hook-laden choruses and a high-voiced singing style that summons the emotional power of blues-legend Skip James.

When last interviewed by Guitar Player in 2016, Izumi was in Los Angeles, identifying as female, playing on the street and scuffling day to day. In 2018, now identifying as male, he submitted a video to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert almost on a whim, promptly winning the whole shebang.

That eventually led to a major label deal with Sony Masterworks and a record produced by Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Molly Tuttle, X, the Replacements). But as he explains, getting where he is today didn’t require any changes in his approach.

“I got from where I was to where I am now by continuing to do the same thing, regardless of how things looked at the time,” Izumi explains. “There were dark periods, but I still kept going. There was no real strategy other than to share my stuff online and keep playing. Since gigs never really pay, especially if you’re unknown, it made sense to play on the streets where at least I could make something. I kept doing it, and things started opening up more and more.”

Entering the NPR Tiny Desk Concert definitely upped the guitarist’s visibility, but it was only part of a pattern of hard work. 

“Different celebrities invited me over to play on stuff,” he says. “They never gave me credit for anything, but it’s okay. Tiny Desk was the big splash that made it seem like it was overnight, but it took a long, long time.”

Izumi began talks with Sony in late 2018, and by early 2019 the deal was made official. He and Berg began working on the album during the summer of 2019 and finished it around December of that year.

Recording at fabled Sound City, producer and artist worked together from Izumi’s original demos. “Tony is old school. We spent a lot of time connecting so he could understand where I was coming from,” Izumi explains.

“I played the songs on guitar, and we formed everything around that. I originally played all the instruments to build it organically. There’s no MIDI or click track. I played some drums but hadn’t practiced much because I don’t have a drum set, so K. Brown, who worked with Meshell Ndegeocello, plays drums on some tracks. On ‘Be Still,’ they liked my feel the best, so we kept it. It was right in the pocket and behind the beat, the way it needed to be.”

If you listen to Izumi’s previous Bandcamp releases, the talent and originality is all there, though in rough-cut form. Like any great producer, Berg became the jeweler that polished the diamond.

“I have chord types I tend to use,” Izumi reveals. “Tony helped me refine my choices. He’s would say, ‘Maybe try this one instead of that one,’ to balance where my vocal melodies lay. 

"Being busy tapping on the guitar, I sometimes didn’t pay attention to where the melody landed. There would be intervals that weren’t achieving the objective the song was going toward. His ear really helped me see those parts. He would make little changes that helped to make the melody soar.”

Berg also brought tasteful sound design to the project. “I’m happy with just drums, guitar and bass, and making the guitar sound live,” Izumi says. But the producer encouraged some extra sounds. 

“‘Six Inch Stilettos’ is a good example,” the guitarist explains. “He pushed me to experiment with a lot of weird wah and all these crazy modulated sounds. Tony is the kind of producer who tries to bring out an artist’s identity, improve it, and maybe expand it sonically.”

A Residency in the Los Angeles Area may sound souped-up, thanks to Berg, but the stellar guitar tones originate in the Izumi’s own years of recording experience. “I’ve been doing it for so long, I know what my tone is and how to get it to sit well in the mix,” he says.

“At first, the guitar wasn’t sounding right. I knew what it needed was my usual process of recording the same lines twice and panning each track to different sides. After we did that, they said, ‘Oh wow, why didn’t you tell us to shut up earlier?’ But I feel it’s a collaboration. I let the other person do their thing and then, if it’s at a standstill, I’ll put in my opinion.”

The panned guitars largely included Izumi’s ’65 Jazzmaster Reissue, or an occasional dash of his Moollon T-type. He also used Berg’s old Gibson Les Paul goldtop with P-90s. “For ‘Good at Being Lonely,’ Tony said, ‘You need to do the solo with this thing,’” Izumi says. “I used it with one of those old Foxx Tone Machine fuzz pedals that have the fuzzy casing.”

Berg brought many new textures to the party, but it was Izumi who contributed the unusual sound on “Natural Disaster,” one that recalls EDM-style stutter effects. “That’s me choking the note really tight, and using a just little fuzz blended with the guitar,” he reveals. “It chops off the note a bit. It doesn’t sound like a guitar at all.”

For the funk of “Sad Song,” the guitarist favored an envelope filter. “I had originally used a pedal they don’t make anymore that opened up in a really smooth way,” he reveals. “I went on a journey to find one that sounded similar for live use and found an older Keeley filter pedal that sounds exactly like the one I used on the record.”

One thing that makes Izumi sound unique is the way he uses the vibrato bar when playing chordal accompaniment. This can be tricky, especially with some Jazzmasters. “I always think if it’s hard to play a certain guitar, I need to practice with it and get used how it works,” he says.

“But I also use a Mastery tailpiece on the Jazzmaster, which makes a big difference. The modern ones don’t move like the old version. I can still get the same effect with the new Fender ones, but the Mastery feels like the older Jazzmaster tailpieces.”

Like Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, A Residency in the Los Angeles Area does not shy away from using odd time signatures in a pop context. “Voodoo,” for example, turns out to be in 9/8. Also like Sting, Izumi never makes these complex rhythmic grooves sound choppy or jerky, rather giving them a floating quality.

“I play with it until it feels right,” he says. “It’s really no different than if you’re writing a speech, or are in a conversation. The way we talk is never in 4/4. We use many weird time signatures every day.”

Pick up a copy of A Residency in the Los Angeles Area by Naia Izumi here.

Despite the ongoing pandemic 2021 was a fabulous year for gear. With many exciting and innovative products appearing over the last 12 months we guitar players have been spoilt for choice. 

Here are some of the top picks from team GP…

Gibson Custom Shop Murphy Lab Les Paul, ES-335 and ES-355 Guitars

A revitalized Gibson introduced its Murphy Lab extension of the Custom Shop early in 2021, and that thrillingly accurate backward glance proved one of the more exciting new developments from a big-name maker in quite some time.

Tom Murphy has long been recognized as a leading practitioner of the art of aging Gibson guitars, and if someone had told us the 1959 Les Paul Heavy Aged, 1959 ES-355 Light Aged, and 1961 ES-335 Ultra-Light Aged we were sent for testing were rare under-the-bed vintage finds we wouldn’t have thought twice.

And not only did they look great, but Custom Shop build quality ensure they also played superbly and sounded authentic. Stellar stuff. DH

Orange Acoustic Pedal

This is an ideal preamp and flexible D.I. for acoustic guitar rockers after an amp-like tone. It simply makes any acoustic-electric guitar sound bigger and bolder without having to fuss with a bunch of complicated controls.

The main event is the very sculptable midrange along with the requisite bass and treble controls. Tweak them a bit for different applications or instruments, but most players can probably pretty much set ’em and forget ’em.

I was miffed about no mute or bypass button at first but needed a mutable tuner in line anyway. Once the ample-sounding Orange Acoustic Pedal tone colors the signal chain, going without it sounds black and white. JL

Reverend Gristle 90

Guitarist Greg Koch went off-road when creating a follow-up to his signature Tele-centric Gristlemaste, and the result is the Gristle 90, a mashup of Fender and Gibson attributes that features a korina body that’s chambered under the pickguard and has a Firebird-style raised center section, and a three-piece korina set-neck topped with a 24 3/4-inch scale, 22-fret ebony fingerboard.

Steering things further into Gibson territory, the Gristle 90 has a Bigsby vibrato and a Tune-o-matic bridge, and it sports a pair of P-90 pickups – specifically, Fishman Fluence Gristle 90s, which were voiced by Koch and crew for this guitar. They feed volume and tone controls – the latter with a push-pull switch for a Peter Green-type out-of-phase sound – along with a pushbutton midrange boost and a three-way selector.

The Gristle 90 is a great playing and superb sounding guitar that combines classic and cutting-edge technologies to create a T-styler like no other. AT

Mesa Badlander

Derived from a long line of high-gain Mesa Rectifier amplifiers, this EL34-powered two-channel 100-watt head (also available in combo, rack-mount and 50-watt versions) delivers an astounding range of tones courtesy of Mesa’s 3 Mode Channel Cloning system that provides independent switching of the Clean, Crunch and Crush modes on each channel, each of which offers different gain and voicing options.

Dialing in righteous clean and overdriven tones is facilitated by the independent gain, master and EQ controls, and there’s a front-panel switch to select 100-, 50- or 20-watt operation (all class A/B), a tube-buffered series FX loop, a trio of speaker jacks and a bias switch to configure the amp for EL34 or 6L6 power tubes.

The features are extensive, but one of the most significant is the Cab Clone IR, a cab-simulator/reactive load with eight Mesa miked-cabinet IRs that can also be loaded with IRs of your choice. It adds up to a magnificently well-endowed amp that’s also an amazing deal. AT

Epiphone USA Casino

This updated and revitalized USA Casino – the first built in the U.S. since 1971 – absolutely nails what makes the iconic hollow-body Casino great: from big, bold British jangle and punch to sexy, syrupy P-90 jazz guitar and blues guitar tones.

The solid mahogany, 22-fret, rounded-C neck is topped with an Indian rosewood fingerboard, and with its three-ply maple/poplar/maple top, Gibson ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge and thinline trapeze tailpiece, it’s a contoured classic in either Royal Tan or Vintage Sunburst nitro finishes.

While it may cost a pretty penny compared to the Asia-made Epiphone Casinos of even a few years ago, the USA Casino is worth the investment, bringing the model back to the premium U.S.-made dream machine it was always meant to be. JVR

Boss OC-5 Octave

The OC-5 builds on the legacy of the OC-2, introduced 40 years ago, with a spot-on re-creation of the original monophonic pedal as well as a Poly mode that delivers the OC-3’s chord-loving goodness.

It ups the ante with a +1 octave control that adds definition and chime to guitar lines, and a -2 octave that in Poly mode becomes a range control for the -1 octave, allowing you to place the sub on just the root of the chord or over all the notes being played.

Boss’s latest tracking technology delivers lightning-fast, glitch-free performance, producing a natural sound and feel even on bends and vibrato. Better still, its suboctave sounds more natural than that of its predecessors. CS

Eventide Micropitch Delay

The MicroPitch Delay is a stereo delay with controls to independently adjust pitch for the left and right channels, as well as pitch-modulation capabilities courtesy of an LFO, and an envelope that responds dynamically to your playing.

The little red box is awesome for delay, chorus and doubling effects, but that is just the tip of this iceberg. The secondary mod parameter lets you choose from three types of pitch modulation: via LFO, via envelope to raise pitch, and via envelope to lower pitch. These last two methods are great for creating dynamically responsive pitch shifts.

It’s also terrific for creating syrupy chorus and ascending and descending delays via picking dynamics. I found that, at its core, the MicroPitch Delay is a fantastic “always-on” sonic enhancer in my signal chain. CS

Fender American Professional Jazzmaster II

If you’re like us, you’ve wanted a Jazzmaster for years. What held you back was those notoriously wonky vibrato tailpieces and the humpy 7.5-inch neck radius. Well, the American Professional II is for you, with a redesigned Panorama tremolo system that gives you all the bending room of a Strat, updated V-Mod II pickups, and – finally! – a more comfortable rounded-C neck shape, with a modern 9.5-inch neck radius. Hallelujah!

The V-Mod II single-coil pickups kick indie ass, too: clear, punchy and articulate, with a coil-tap option for a beefier sound out of that previously thin bridge pup in most Jazzers. With the American Professional II, Fender has given us all the Jazzmaster’s cool character, with absolutely zero trade-offs. JVR

Epiphone “Inspired by Gibson” Hummingbird

Comparable in nearly every detail to its much-pricier U.S.-made Gibson counterpart, the new made-in-China Epiphone Hummingbird features that classic square-shouldered dreadnought shape, a solid Sitka Spruce top, solid-mahogany back and sides, Indian Laurel reverse-belly bridge with bone saddle, tortoise shell pickguard with Hummingbird and floral graphics, a glued-in, tapered dovetail neck joint, quarter-sawn spruce bracing, ivory-and-black six- and four-ply binding and an Aged Gloss finish.

Specs aside, it just plays and sounds great, with a 24.72-inch-scale mahogany neck with rounded-C profile, a 12-inch radius, and a lovely Indian laurel fingerboard. Finally, a Hummingbird for the rest of us. JVR

ESP MH-1000 Deluxe Evertune

An Editors’ Pick Award mysteriously went missing from this review when it appeared in the November 2021 issue, but the MH-1000 Deluxe Evertune certainly earned one.

This beautifully made guitar offers righteous playability thanks to its three-piece set-thru maple neck with a thin U shape and a 25.5-inch-scale Macassar ebony fingerboard carrying 24 mirror-polished, stainless-steel frets. The guitar swings a pair of active EMG pickups – a 60T W-R in the neck position and an 81 in the bridge slot – and the tone knob pulls for split-coil action.

As the name denotes, this version of the MH-1000 Deluxe features an Evertune bridge that provides rock-solid tuning stability and unprecedented intonation accuracy, and can be easily adjusted for the desired string-bending response. The Evertune is a game changer and the MH-1000 Deluxe an ideal platform to showcase its abilities. AT

Orange Terror Stamp

Perfect for mounting on a pedalboard, this potent little amplifier is a hybrid design that uses a 12AX7 tube in the preamp driving a 20-watt solid-state power section. A single foot-switch toggles between volume 1 and volume 2 controls, and there’s a Shape knob for EQ-ing sounds and a master gain control. The speaker output can handle 8- and 16-ohm loads, and there’s an FX loop and a cab-simulated output for recording, headphones or feeding a FOH mixer.

The Terror Stamp has a wide gain range and its British-flavored distortion is killer for everything from blues guitar to hard rock. It’s a great pedal to keep in the gig-bag in case your main amp goes down, or as a full-time amplifier for players who want to reduce the amount of gear they carry to the gig. AT

Neural DSP Quad Cortex Floor Modeler

When it comes to the industry-leading amp modelers, guitarists have stopped debating whether they sound like the real thing and just started using them. In doing so, many have developed strong loyalties to their DSP delivery unit of choice, which led to some ruffled feathers and muddied waters when plug-in designer Neural DSP unveiled this Quad Cortex floor unit.

Boasting an extremely intuitive interface with touch screen and combination rotary-knob-foot-switch gizmos and the ability to capture and reproduce any amp, drive pedal or cab you throw at it, the main takeaway is that the Quad Cortex simply sounds astoundingly good, immediately establishing it as a serious contender for anything out there. DH

Origin Effects RevivalDrive Compact

When you notice that your pals have the same new overdrive pedal on their boards, you know something is up. With its amp-like circuit design and chewy, touch-responsive sag and bloom, the original RevivalDrive caused a massive stir a few years back, but it’s a big pedal. The RevivalDrive Compact packs that same spongy saturation into a fly-rig-approved form factor, and does it sound good.

Is it the “tube amp-style signal path with Class A preamp”? Or maybe the “long-tail pair phase inverter” or the “reactive overdrive design”? It’s those things, plus EQ options for single-coil or double-coil pickups and a wet/dry control so you can blend your amp’s preamp gain with the RevivalDrive’s tailored gain structure.

Put away your ideas about what an overdrive pedal sounds like, and pull out your wallet. JVR

EarthQuaker Devices Astral Destiny Reverb

EarthQuaker’s line of out-of-this-world ambience pedals grew this year with Astral Destiny, a mind-blowing box that serves up eight types of ambience with and some without octave effects. These huge-sounding reverbs include chorus modulation that makes them sound ethereal or haunting, shimmer effects for upper and lower octaves, and high and low octave effects.

All this, plus a regenerating tail for creating reverbs of extended length at pitch or fifth above, as well as upward and downward pitch bending. Astral Destiny is a welcome new tone enhancer and an inspiring effect for guitarists who seek uncommon reverbs. CS

K-Line Springfield

Just when you concluded that everyone and his or her second cousin is making reproduction S-style, bolt-neck, 25.5-inch-scale guitars, along comes one to remind you how magical this 67-year-old recipe can still be when cooked up very, very well.

Chris Kroenlein’s Springfield model wowed us for its superb playability, authentically played-in feel, resonant and lightweight woods, lusciously aged nitro Lake Placid Blue finish (non-aged available), and trenchant tones.

From the archetypally Stratty mix of bright, glassy, snappy, and quacky, to muscular, rich, and multi-dimensional, it’s the compelling and inspiring performer many players believe they’ll find only in a vintage example costing much, much more. DH

L.R. Baggs Voiceprint Acoustic D.I.

Released in fall 2020 with a significant firmware update in 2021, the Voiceprint D.I. is one of the most innovative products released during the pandemic era. Using Impulse Response signal processing and harnessing the power of an iPhone or Apple Watch via the AcousticLive app, Voiceprint conjures a custom filter designed to augment/replace the pickup signal based on a quick demo performance, essentially creating the best version of your favorite instrument for amplification.

That “Voiceprint” then lives in the pedal and can be further sculpted using the app to adjust EQ or volume, reduce feedback or vary the blend. Store up to 99 Voiceprints for an entire acoustic guitar arsenal. JL

Fender Acoustic Junior GO

This little bugger sounds surprisingly toneful and does pretty much anything a troubadour might imagine. The GO’s got a bevy of effects including a built-in looper, plus Bluetooth connectivity that comes in handy for pumping backing tracks or simply rocking out to tunes sent over from a phone.

Dual guitar/vocal channels with identical setups are easy to understand and operate. A perfectly portable compact brown box housing a powerful rechargeable lithium-ion battery is the GO’s coup de grace.

Robust enough to turn any patch of nature into a stage, it was even the main amplifier for all of the acoustic instruments and even some of the electric ones at our Burning Man camp! JL

Epiphone Alex Lifeson Les Paul Standard Access

Here’s an all-around axe if there ever was one, and it’s attainable to practically anyone serious about acquiring a total tone machine. First, it’s a gorgeous, utterly playable and ergonomically excellent Les Paul with push/pull coil-tap capability on both humbuckers. Second, it’s got a piezo pickup in the Floyd Rose-style, whammy-friendly locking Graph Tech Ghost Tremolo Bridge, and that signal can either be separated via a second output jack, or summed with the magnetic signal in the primary output.

Remarkably, Epiphone and Lifeson realized this dream machine for under a grand. AT

Matchless Laurel Canyon Reverb 1x12

California amp maker Matchless has been at the forefront of the boutique scene since 1989, but the Laurel Canyon and its sibling Coldwater Canyon are the first production models it has released with 6V6 output tubes – to which we say it’s about time!

Announced prior to this past year but put on hold review-wise due to pandemic-related constraints, the Laurel Canyon quickly proved that the high-quality, point-to-point Matchless formula applies equally well to American-voiced designs, while also establishing a new 20-watt club combo to beat.

 From lush blooming chime, to biting mid-rich twang to snarling lead tones, all with outstanding reverb slathered over, it’s impressively versatile and a real joy to play. DH

Way Huge Atreides Analog Weirding Module

Atreides is a stellar reimagination of the short-lived but influential 1980 Electro-Harmonix Mini Synthesizer that Eddie Van Halen used to great effect on Fair Warning tracks like “Sunday Afternoon in the Park” and “One Foot Out the Door.”

A guitar synth, envelope filter, fuzz circuit, phaser, and sub-octave device all in one, pimped out with seven satisfying sliders for sensitivity, brightness, phaser rate, and more, it’s sure to help evoke the hallucinogenic “spice” that brings visions and messianic dreams to its Dune namesake, Paul Atreides. JVR

Carr Super Bee

Dressed in natty two-tone covering and designed to deliver three different flavors of blackface-Fender tone, the Super Bee has a rotary Sting switch that selects “64” (based on Steve Carr’s personal ’64 Deluxe Reverb), “68” (a classic Super Reverb) and “72” (a blackface circuit modded for extra overdrive).

Powering this point-to-point wired amp is a pair of 6BM8 tubes that combine a high-gain triode and a power pentode in one glass package. The pair produce 10 watts, which can be throttled down to two watts via the attenuator switch or all the way down to a whisper with the attenuator knob. Two 12AX7s and a 12AT7 handle the EQ (treble, bass, middle) and drive/recovery duties for the lush and enveloping reverb.

The Super Bee offers a cool selection of sounds that range from rich Deluxe Reverb flavors to midrange-forward Super Reverb clean and overdriven tones to gnarly distortion from the 72 setting that’s so dynamic and touch responsive you could play an entire gig on this mode alone. AT

Taylor Grand Theater 811E & K21E

Depending on your perspective, these are either two of the best little big guitars or big little guitars of 2021. Taylor notched out a nice niche between a short scale travel-sized axe and a full scale small-bodied instrument, then made it super playable by lowering the string tension for a remarkably relaxed feel that’s perfect for the beach, the boat or the back porch. C-Class cantilevered bracing helps the Grand Theater’s tone belie its diminutive box, and onboard ES2 electronics make it truly gig-worthy. JL

Damian Probett SG-Teor Guitar

With a diverse background in carpentry and joinery, aircraft tool making and the building of engines for racing motorcycles, London-based luthier Damian Probett shouldn’t have much trouble pulling off a meticulously well-crafted electric guitar – and he most definitely did not on evidence of the SG-Teor that graced GP’s New & Cool pages early in 2021.

Partly inspired by a “what if?” wish list from American guitarist Matte Henderson, Probett captured the spirit and overall sound of a vintage SG in a single-cutaway design that improved balance, eliminated neck-dive and “rubber neck” tuning-wobble issues, and enhanced sonic stability and sustain in the process. The result is a stunning performance tool that’s all the more versatile thanks to stealthy split-coil pickup switching. DH

There’s only one J Mascis. And to the godfather of grunge we say: happy birthday!

As the principal songwriter, singer and guitar player in Dinosaur Jr., Mascis is renowned for using a Jazzmaster plugged into a Marshall amp. Since the band’s pioneering alternative rock days of the mid-‘80s he has used the classic Fender offset (because he couldn’t afford a Strat to begin with) and has since been honored with two signature models: the Fender J Mascis Jazzmaster (released in 2007) and the Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster (released in 2011.)

Earlier this year, Fender also released the J Mascis Telecaster.

But Fender solidbodies aren’t the only electric guitars Mascis favors; he also loves to play a rare 1950s Gibson flat-top model known as the CF-100E. Unveiled in 1951 as an electrified version of the CF-100 (released the previous year) this golden era classic was ahead of its time. These days, cutaway electro-acoustics are the norm, but back in the ‘50s they were slow to catch on and by the end of decade the model was discontinued.

Here’s Mascis putting a Gibson CF-100E to good use during a 2011 solo performance in Austin, Texas…

Fuzz pedals hadn’t even been invented by the time the Gibson CF-100E was discontinued in 1959, and Mascis’ use of the effect is pretty radical even by today’s standards. But then he hardly used the Jazzmaster to play jazz with. And it’s exactly this kind of inventive and uncompromising use of gear that has helped him become such an influential figure in the guitar world. Indeed, Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan and Kurt Vile have all cited him as a major inspiration.

While we’re on a nostalgia trip, here he is rocking a Jazzmaster/Marshall rig back in the mid-‘80s…

And long may it continue. Many happy returns, Mr. Mascis!

Grab a copy of Dinosaur Jr.'s latest album Sweep It Into Space here.

Although he has chops to spare, Anthony Pirog isn’t your prototypical blues-rock virtuoso or metal shredder. Like many modern electric guitar heroes, Pirog is musically multilingual. In his case, this means that he’s equally conversant with Danny Gatton-esque country picking, jazz, free improvisation and post-rock experimentalism.

Recently, he’s provided plenty of places to point, including three albums released within months of each other. Music from the Anacostia Delta (Cuneiform) features the Spellcasters – Pirog and fellow Telecaster-wielders Joel Harrison and Dave Chappell – whose music demonstrates the wide range of tones available from Leo Fender’s revolutionary instrument.

Also, from Cuneiform came the self-titled record Five Times Surprise, a free-improvisation supergroup featuring pioneering avant-guitarist Henry Kaiser, Aquarium Rescue Unit drummer Jeff Sipe, Dixie Dregs bassist Andy West and violinist Tracy Silverman.

Finally, 2019 saw the release of Anthropocosmic Nest, the second album by the Messthetics, Pirog’s band with the former Fugazi rhythm section of bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty. The recording reflects their cohesion after touring almost constantly since their 2016 self-titled debut.

“We played most of these songs live for close to a year, over more than 200 shows,” Pirog explains, “whereas our first record was done after only a handful of performances.” As with so many modern guitarists, Pirog is a pedal pusher and, on Anthropocosmic Nest he isn’t afraid to use them.

“Touch Earth Touch Sky,” for example, displays a drop of distortion and a deluge of atmosphere. “I turned on my Rat pedal and all the ambience for that one: the Boss DD-7 for reverse delay, the EarthQuaker Afterneath reverb, the Moog Moogerfooger MF Delay, as well as Strymon’s Flint and Big Sky pedals,” he explains. “I’m swelling everything in with my Boss volume pedal.”

The guitarist also added a Valhalla Shimmer reverb plug-in to the mix. On the same tune, Pirog revisits some now-retro analog guitar synthesis. “I wanted the end to sound like Tibetan horns,” he says. “I played the low notes with the Roland G-707 guitar driving Roland GR-300 and Korg X911 guitar synthesizers. It was the GR-300 again for the higher solo at the end.”

Over Lally’s catchy bass line for “La Lontra,” Pirog solos with some intermittent octave fuzz. “That’s the Greer Super Hornet,” he says. “It has a momentary octave switch. When I start hitting the first double-stop, I’m tapping the switch with my foot so it spits out the octaves.”

The tune “Assignment” offers octave madness of its own. “My DigiTech Whammy pedal is set for an octave up,” he reveals. “I start tapping it like a momentary switch, and then loop it with the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay reissue, using its octave slider to make it glitch out.”

Having played these compositions live for so long, Pirog found it easy to lay down the initial tracks. But Anthropocosmic Nest is not a live-in-the-studio project. Pirog added various overdubs to create the kind of sonic interest that encourages repeated listening. This begs the question of how the band will now perform the music live.

“I can’t bring a 24-pin synth setup out with us to interpret “Pacifica,” so I got the Meris Enzo pedal and found a guitar-synth setting on that to play the melodies,” he says. “The overdubbed parts won’t be played live, but they were just for extra texture. Besides, when I was very young, I decided that a record and a live performance don’t have to be tied together. I watched the Led Zeppelin movie The Song Remains the Same a lot, and that didn’t sound anything like the records.”

The Messthetics and Five Times Surprise albums were made at roughly the same time, resulting in some moments of creative cross-pollination. For example, Henry Kaiser’s use of the Red Panda Tensor and Montreal Assembly Count to Five pedals inspired Pirog to use both devices on the Anthropocosmic Nest track “Drop Foot.”

“I set the Montreal Assembly pedal to an octave up in reverse, as a quick delay,” Pirog explains. “I played a C barre chord and hit the hold button on the Tensor, which was also set to octave and reverse delay. I’ve been using my Boss DD-7 for reverse delay, but I’ll be switching to the Tensor.”

When the Messthetics formed, Pirog thought it would be a high-intensity improv group like Five Times Surprise. Instead, the Messthetics began intuitively putting songs together, crafting dynamics and developing group vocabularies. Says Pirog, “We rehearse three times a week and record our rehearsals so we can listen back and spend time on the ideas – whereas Five Times Surprise was 100 percent improvised, aside from our cover of the Mahavishnu Orchestra tune “You Know You Know.” We recorded four or five hours of material and Henry edited it into the record. We had specific ideas for improvisations, but they weren’t song structures. It was five people going for it.”

On both Five Times Surprise and Anthropocosmic Nest, Pirog employed his ’62 Fender Jazzmaster with Joe Barden pickups, strung with D’Addario .011s. The former album also saw him play his ’69 Fender Telecaster Thinline for overdubs. He used only his ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb for that outing, but he adds a Marshall 2061X with a 1x12 Marshall extension cabinet when recording and playing with the Messthetics.

As for picks, Pirog’s plectrum of choice is a BlueChip in an elongated teardrop shape that is custom cut for him. At $35 apiece, the picks are luxury items. “I have three in one pocket at all times, and a case in my other pocket with five more,” he says. “It’s hard to take them out and see $100 invested in three picks, but I was impressed that the attack noise wasn’t as abrasive as the Claytons I was using.”

Though Pirog is committed to his various projects, don’t expect Five Times Surprise to hit the road anytime soon. “We’d like to play, but everyone lives in a different part of the country,” he says. “Still, I think if something came up, we would do a show.”

Until then, Pirog can be seen in clubs and theaters around the world with the Messthetics. The band’s show at 2019’s Big Ears Festival was, for many, the guitar highlight. In a schedule that also featured guitar legends David Torn and Bill Frisell, Pirog’s performance felt like a torch was being passed to a new generation.

A Jimi Hendrix-owned 1962 Fender Jazzmaster and a 1969 Marshall Super Lead amplifier – both of which were used onstage extensively by the guitar legend – have gone up for sale on Reverb.com.

Hailing from Neil’s Gear Bazaar in Los Angeles, both pieces of gear come with extensive documentation proving their provenance, and astronomical asking prices to boot.

The '62 Jazzmaster, for starters, was used by Hendrix during his time as a sideman to The Isley Brothers and Little Richard in 1964. The sunburst model features extensive (and genuine, mind you) wear and tear and is accompanied by letters of authenticity from “two very prominent and extremely respected members from the musical/guitar world,” the identities of whom the seller declines to reveal in their listing. 

As for that price tag? The '62 Jazzmaster rings up at a wallet-shriveling $750,000. 

The '69 Super Lead 100 was used onstage by Hendrix from his acquisition of the amp in April 1969 through his final performance at the Open Air Love & Peace Festival in Fehmarn, Germany in September 1970.

Hendrix used the amp during many of his most famous performances – his slot at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, the Band of Gypsys New Year's Eve 1969/New Year's Day 1970 performances at New York City’s Fillmore East, and his headlining set at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970 among them.

The amp features “J.H. EXP.” spray paint, and comes with a number of photographs confirming its provenance, three letters of authenticity, – including one from Marshall – and documentation showing that the amp was inspected by the Head Chief of Marshall Heritage and Archive services, Phil Wells. 

The profound history of this Super Lead 100, unsurprisingly, gives it an equally profound price tag: $350,000.

For more info on Hendrix's Jazzmaster and Marshall, stop on by reverb.com.

What do Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle, Iggy Pop, and Failure have in common? They've all at one time had – and, in the case of QOTSA, still do have – guitarist/producer Troy Van Leeuwen as a member. 

On the latest episode of the No Guitar Is Safe podcast, Van Leeuwen plugs in his new signature-model Fender Jazzmaster, takes you through all its sonic capabilities, shares his guitar playing and producing approaches, and reflects on his musical adventures onstage and off – like the time a bandmate wore a translucent bass and not much else. (Hint: You’ll never look through a Dan Armstrong instrument the same way again.)

Van Leeuwen fell in love with Jazzmasters a decade or so ago, after breaking his collarbone on the left side (his strap shoulder) in a motorcycle accident mere weeks before a festival run with QOTSA. 

“I didn’t want to cancel the tour, so I really had to scramble to find something that would work,” says Van Leeuwen. “I figured I’d try some different things. I had a ’62 Jazzmaster, so I got a special strap for it – a saxophone strap, which I could put over my right shoulder – and that guitar, being a lot lighter than my Les Paul, got me through the tour unscathed. 

"Playing that instrument, I realized, ‘You know, I can get everything I need out of this guitar,’ and the versatility of it kind of opened up a new chapter in my playing, because not only was Queens’ sound morphing at that time, the Jazzmaster was becoming the guitar that I grabbed most often, because I can get a lot out of it.”

As the guitar hang with Van Leeuwen continues, you begin to realize that the Southern California-based multi-instrumentalist is a dream bandmate – one of those rare team players who never misses a gig and who can write, produce, engineer, sing, play multiple instruments (Van Leeuwen also plays lap steel and keyboards with QOTSA), and, most important of all, share the spotlight.

“For me, [when it comes to soloing] it’s always been, ‘Find your moment to shine, and then really take it,’” says Van Leeuwen. “But over the years, I’ve become more and more of a guy who just wants to play with people that he respects and have a great experience. It’s all about collaboration, rather than showing off like, ‘Hey, I can do all this stuff.’”

You can check out the interview – sponsored by NAMM’s Believe In Music Week – with Van Leeuwen below. Stream all episodes of No Guitar Is Safe from your smartphone's Podcasts app, iTunes, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.