On his new album, Riverboat Sky, Carl Verheyen combines passionate musicality, spellbinding virtuosity, and ebullient rock and roll. It’s also a tone fest, as Verheyen morphs chicken-fried banjo rolls with the blues.
For Verheyen, though, it’s always about the song – songs with the coolest gear performed in high-end studios, that is.
Your guitar playing is stellar, but your vocals are perfect on Riverboat Sky.
I’ve been taking voice lessons, which has been a funny thing to finally do at my age. I produced a record by a singer/songwriter who was writing a play. He could be Prince, Stevie Wonder, or a gospel singer. I said, “Do you teach?” He said, “That’s what I do for a living.” So, I’ve been studying with him, and he has opened some doors for me, especially when it comes to warm-ups, because I never used to warm up. I hated doing it.
You took your album on the road before you recorded it.
I have the kind of fans that don’t mind if you spring stuff on them they’ve never heard. I did a tour in 2021 with Chad Wackerman on drums and Alphonso Johnson on bass, and we tried new stuff. Then I took my regular touring band on the road, and I knew who I wanted to play on it, which arrangement worked best, and it was a great way to do it. We were tight on everything by the time we got in the studio. There were only a few new tunes to spring on them.
So, you tried different arrangements on tour.
Yeah. I cut parts out and added a bridge to the song “Dragonfly.” I wrote a halftime section and a bridge after we were halfway through the tour.
You’re a big fan of old-school recording studios like Sunset Sound Recorders.
Everybody has a home studio. So many of my friends do overdubs at home. But there’s nothing like going into a big studio and being able to distance-mic your amp as well as close-mic it. I like to put 10 heads in the control room, choose a cabinet, and have an engineer who walks around and listens to where the sound is blooming. Some engineers will get up on a stool or a ladder and say, “Hey, it sounds amazing up here!” Then mic up there. That’s the kind of engineer I like to work with – the creative type. We spend all our time getting the tone and very little time figuring out how to get it recorded. That’s their job.
Which amps did you use on the album?
I’m a big Marshall fan, so I used three of those. I have a 1966 JTM45, and I used a ’68 JMP50, both plexis. I also have a ’69 100-watt, which is what Van Halen used. I’m also a big Fender fan, especially for the cleans. My current live rig is a Showman head and a 100-watt Hiwatt head running clean, in stereo.
Every year, I play an event called The Guitar Masters Series, in Bakersfield. The promoter one day told me that a fan wanted to give me a Dumble. I said, “What?” John Mayer just paid 150 grand for one of those. I think it’s a little out of my wheelhouse.” But the guy wanted me to have it; he was about 80 years old and had been friends with Alexander Dumble. It was a later-era model, and he said, “I don’t need the money, but you need the amp.” He was adamant.
I used that Dumble on a lot of the record, but it took me a while to figure out how to use it. I’ve always found sound by dialing my amp into semi-crunch mode then using a pedal to saturate and and allow it to soar. With the Dumble, you don’t use a pedal. I used a humbucker and it took a while to learn all that because I was using it live as a part of my rig. Once I figured it out, I began to dig it.
Other than your ’66 SG, what did you play?
I used my LSL signature models. I have one maple-neck and two rosewood-neck models. I used the SG for solos. On “Queen Bee,” I used a ’66 ES-335. I recorded a rhythm track with the SG and it sounded too aggressive. So, I went back in with a Framus Mayfield, which is like an Epiphone Casino or a ES-330 with P-90s. It was the perfect sound for that song.
This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
