Author: Oscar Jordan

Metal virtuoso Joe Stump believes Ritchie Blackmore, Uli Jon Roth, and Michael Schenker form the holy trinity of European metal guitar. And he should know. Not only has he built a long career creating incendiary music, he’s a Professor at The Berklee College of Music.

His latest album, The Dark Lord Rises, is a heartfelt testament to his love for the genre closest to his heart. It’s filled with technical brilliance and inspiration from guitar icons Gary Moore, Ritchie Blackmore, and Yngwie Malmsteen.

What did you want to accomplish with The Dark Lord Rises?
It has all the things I like to listen to, whether it’s classical music or all my favorite players like Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen, Gary Moore, Uli Jon Roth, or Michael Schenker. Plus, I like all kinds of metal like Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Accept, and Arch Enemy. So I come up with different things that blend the different schools of metal.

The album has much more diversity than on past records.
Everybody knows my work, especially for the neo-classical stuff, and while there’s plenty of that going on, it has the Blackmore and Gary Moore thing. As time goes on while I still practice very technical things, I still gravitate towards more older school things. Whether it’s Blackmore during his Rainbow period or Gary Moore, I love all of it. I love the classic Gary Moore records like We Want Moore, Victims Of The Future, and Corridors Of Power.

I would learn every solo off those records. Gary Moore use to play a Strat back then; Corridors Of Power was all 100-watt Marshall, a Strat, and a Boss DS-1. He got such killer tones on those records. On Victims Of The Future, he still had a Strat but he used a Les Paul Junior, too – the one he played back in Thin Lizzy.

There’s a strong Deep Purple influence on Dark Lord, with the organ – and slide guitar… on a modern neo-classical track.
That’s the first time I ever played slide on any of my records. I wanted to do that thing that Blackmore does where he plays the evil-sounding Hungarian minor thing with the slide, whether it’s “Stargazer” or some of the stuff he does on “Difficult To Cure” live.

That’s a total Blackmore thing. He played slide on “Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll” and on Rising. He plays a ton of slide stuff. I don’t use any alternate tunings. It’s straight-up slide guitar. I always loved how Blackmore played it in harmonic and Hungarian minor. Another great Blackmore slide tune is “Maybe Next Time” on Difficult To Cure.

Will you tour in support of Dark Lord?
I’ve been playing a bunch of shows and have a Blackmore tribute band called Black Knight’s Castle, where I play a bunch of Deep Purple and Rainbow stuff. I’ll also play some of the Blackmore-inspired instrumentals. It’s cool because I end up playing places that would never allow me to do my solo thing. But I’m shredding and playing a ton of guitar and lot of my own stuff, so I’m getting away with it (laughs)!

I’m also in a Deep Purple tribute band called Stormbringer. The keyboard player has two Leslies and a Hammond. And I do solo stuff, as well.

The most significant thing I’m doing coming up is the Axes & Anchors Cruise with Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Schenker, and Zakk Wylde. It’s a metal cruise that’s all guitar-oriented. It’s going to be very cool. I’m looking forward to this because I get to see Yngwie and Schenker.

You’ve met Yngwie. How does he feel about his style being such a prominent component in your music?
He’s always been very nice to me. I’m not sure how he really feels about it, but I put Yngwie in the guitar legend category like Blackmore and Gary Moore. He’s in a class with the great masters.

You’ve been criticized for sounding too much like Yngwie, but what you do is no different than every blues guitarist who uses the vocabulary of B.B. King or Albert King.
I completely agree, and I’m proud of it. The last time I checked, Yngwie was pretty f***in’ good (laughs).

When you’re teaching at Berklee, do your students refer to you as Professor, or The Dark Lord?
(Laughs) Some students call me Professor, but I tell them to call me Joe. Many students call me the Shred Lord (laughs). That name took on a life of its own.

---

This article originally appeared in VGJuly 2016 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

---

Chicagoan J.D. Simo began playing professionally at age 10 and just five years later was on the road full-time, eventually ending up in Nashville. He faced tough times while making a name for himself, but today he’s barnstorming the globe fusing his visceral musicality with influences from the greatest blues and roots artists in America. His latest album, Let Love Show The Way, is an intoxicating blues-rock manifesto employing the classic recipe of ’60s Marshalls and Les Pauls.

You swapped albums on your record company.
Yeah, we had a whole other record finished that we were going to release, and then they asked us to do a couple of bonus tracks. I’m not a fan of recording studios; I spent years as a session musician. I prefer to work on location, go into places that aren’t studios, necessarily. I reached out to friends in the Allman Brothers circle about doing a session at the brother’s old house in Macon, Georgia. Luckily, everything worked out. We were only there for two days and were supposed to record three bonus tracks. Within the first hour or so we’d done what I needed, and we had all this extra time, which I utilized to get a ton of work done. I was so happy with the performances that I made a frantic call to the label to scrap the majority of what had already been laid out, and include all the stuff we recorded in Georgia. We went in to do bonus tracks, and ended up basically cutting a whole other record.

It was a very productive couple of days, and they don’t happen all the time. For me, it’s just trying to get good performances. I’m a fan of records that are captured rather than assembled. There’s not a single edit on it. All the vocals are live. There’s a lot of bleed between instruments, which was on purpose, and if there’s an overdub, it’s very blatant.

How did moving from Chicago to Nashville affect your playing?
It gave me a hell of a lot of discipline. I starved for a little while and landed in a country/bluegrass/Western-swing group where I had to work really hard to find my footing. It was a style of music I always liked, but never had any exposure playing. Through that experience, I ended up becoming a session musician. For all of my early 20s, I did three sessions a day, then played in a club band. I played nearly 1,300 gigs with that band. The time involved in all of that gives you incredible discipline.

That’s what the city of Nashville did for me – gave me a concentrated amount of time to perform at a very high level. My livelihood depended on it, and I’m forever grateful for the opportunity.

Where you primarily a blues guitarist when you left Chicago?
Yeah. I loved rock and roll, Stax, and American roots music – also Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and rockabilly. I’d been exposed to it before but just hadn’t immersed myself in it, let alone had to play it on essentially no notice. But, I had an opportunity to get a gig and use it to pay my rent. It’s good for you when you’re thrown into something that you’re not prepared for and you just have to do it.

Who are some of your slide heroes?
Duane Allman is a huge one, without question, as a musician and as a man. He was a pistol, very driven, and a great bandleader and musical director. He had great impact on lots of other records – Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Johnny Jenkins… I also love Elmore James, Ry Cooder, and George Harrison. Then there’s Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker. But, Duane sounds like a harmonica player when he plays slide, and it just knocks me out.

You got to play his ’57 goldtop.
I met the owner of that guitar about 10 years ago. I didn’t know he owned it when I met him at a gig, but I eventually found out that he owned it and he was gracious enough to let me use it five or six years ago. When we went to do the sessions at the Big House, he was like, “You’re there? Use it!” It was incredible. It’s something I never dreamed I’d get to do. It was as close as I’ll ever get to meeting the man.

---

This article originally appeared in VG June 2016 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

---

To properly perform the music composed by his father, Frank, Dweezil Zappa had to revamp his playing style. The fruits of his labors can be heard on his new solo record, Via Zammata, where Zappa steps from the shadow of his father with compelling melodies, interesting juxtapositions, and a compositional style all his own.

Via Zammata is an ambitious effort. What did you set out to accomplish with it?
I set out to make the record in a very simplistic way. I had a block of time of about seven months. When I got two weeks from starting, I still didn’t have any idea what was going to be on the record and didn’t have any material. I was busy with so many things.

I had a bunch of songs that I hadn’t done anything with for a long time; I looked at them and started putting elements together that I felt were connected, even though they didn’t sound anything alike.

As we started the record, I got this idea that I wanted to make a record that would be a collection of things that showed the progression of where I started with my most basic musical interests, and then show what I’m doing currently.

I’d been doing Zappa Plays Zappa for 10 years and hadn’t done any of my own music. A lot of people were asking, “What would your own music sound like?” I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t been thinking about my own music for so long. The short answer is that I wanted to make a record that reflected where I am, but also the journey that I had taken for the past 10 years in learning my dad’s music.

Some of the songs are pretty old.
There are three or four songs that are 20 years old – “Just The Way She Is,” “Billionaire’s Son,” “Nothing,” “Hummin’,” “Rat Race,” and “What If.” I changed the arrangements and added little bits and pieces. The newest piece was “Funky 15.” “Dragon Master” is the one my dad wrote the lyrics to in 1988, but I wrote this riff and the music for it when I was making the record. I had different music for it before, in the mid ’90s. We played a version of it live in the band I had called Z, but there’s no resemblance to this version.

The album has an interesting blend of pop and advanced guitar playing.
It almost has a singer/songwriter feel, but with different instrumentation. I didn’t go into it thinking I was a singer/songwriter type of guy. I’d like to make some good songs happen. I had the singer in Zappa Plays Zappa come in and gave him a shot at some of the songs. The point of view wasn’t coming off the same, so I decided to sing it myself. The other thing was the album title. It’s reflective of this trip I made to Sicily where I got to trace our family roots. It was an interesting thing to be able to stand in front of the building where your relatives decided, “Hey, we’re going to leave this place.”

Do you feel the need to distinguish yourself from your father?
It’s not a burden on me in any way. It’s more that I have musical interests other than what I’ve done already. I wanted that stuff to be visible in this music. The challenge was, “Let’s make a song that’s interesting in under three minutes.” For a typical guitar player, that’s hard to do.

You’re famous for working hard on your sound.
I definitely do. It’s so related to whatever the material is. When I go about learning something, like when I was a kid learning how to play “Eruption,” I’d spend a lot of time learning how to play it just as I heard it on the record. I was trying to match Edward [Van Halen’s] phrasing, and then try to get as close to the sound as I could.

With Fractal Audio equipment, it’s possible to sound exactly like the record. It makes it much easier for me to dial in the playing as I heard it. That’s one of the things I find important; if you’re going to play something, play it exactly like it is on the record. That’s a goal I’ve always gone for when I listen to other people’s music. To me, that’s the song, not what I can do to a song. It’s “Can I play it as they played it.”

---

This article originally appeared in VG June 2016 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

---

Larry Mitchell’s guitar-centered “Ah ha!” moments run the gamut from Roy Clark, Van Halen, Prince, and Elvis. With a string of instrumental records, Mitchell is also a Grammy-winning producer and has toured as a guitarist with Billy Squier, Ric Ocasek, and Tracy Chapman. Whether he’s in the control room calling the shots, or onstage performing idiosyncratic funk, shred, and dreamy soul, Mitchell always has his eye on the big picture.

How did you make the transition from guitarist to producer?
That was a life lesson of the music business. My first record came out and did well, but the record company was a little funky. The second record went through three labels. Then I put an acoustic record out on my own and it did really well. That record came out in 1995 and was called Escape.

I recorded it myself and got help from some amazing engineers and producers. I’d been in studios before, but never on that side of the glass. I got some great advice from some amazing people. When the album came out, I was able to get a licensing deal and distribution. Everywhere I turned there was someone helping me get the record out. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to.

The whole thing was an accident. A friend gave me the keys to his house, where he had all this studio gear in his basement. He said, “You need to make a record!” I said, “I can’t make a record.” All the gear was in boxes, so I started calling people who made records for a living. Some amazing people took the time on the phone to walk me through it. In two weeks I had that record done.

Every step of the process – from getting reviewed in guitar magazines and meeting a music lawyer, to meeting a Japanese label owner who wanted to license the record for Japan – was magical. I was being guided. It all happened within two months after finishing the record. There was no way I could have not put this record out.

This proved to me that I could make a record on my own. I started getting studio gear, making my own albums, and meeting a lot of local artists in San Diego. Then I started producing. When I moved to New Mexico, I worked with a lot of Native American artists.

How has producing influenced your playing?
It brought me back to playing in New York in the ’80s where if you were a side guy, you had to be a little bit of everything. You had to be Nile Rodgers for three songs, Eddie Van Halen for one, and a country guitar player for two songs. You had to cover a lot of sounds. I love working in the studio and programing stuff, and I love working with singers and cello players. I’ve produced Native American music, country, gospel, singer songwriters, world music, and a rapper.

How did you discover Fractal Audio?
I was doing a bunch of fly-in gigs and I had a rig with two pedalboards because I had to cover all the sounds. I saw a review of the Axe-Fx and I was like, “I gotta check this out!” It was like everything I wanted back in the rack days, plus all the pedals, all squeezed into a box that I could fly with. It was a big deal for me.

It’s a great time to be a guitar player. It’s a great time for music other than trying to sell your music (laughs). As far as creativity and making music, it’s easy. Great guitar tones are easy to get. I’m also into vintage stuff; I have a 1973 100-watt Marshall plexi that sounds great.

What’s your main guitar?
I met Joe Knaggs and went on the Knaggs Guitar factory tour. When a master wants to build you a guitar, you can’t say no. The Knaggs Severn is kind of a superstrat, and it’s the main guitar I play now. I also have a hollowbody he made, called a Chena. I still play my Ibanez Blaze III guitars that are 20 years old.

What else has been happening?
I’ve been doing a bunch of dates on the East Coast. At age 51, I’m still riding around in a van with guys half my age, and I love it. I have a rhythm section in Seattle, and I play around Washington and Oregon. I’m also recording and I’ll release the first song in January, then I’m doing a house-concert tour, festivals, guitar clinics, and hosted the NAMM show jam with Andy Timmons.

---

This article originally appeared in VG May 2016 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

---