Author: Wolf Marshall

In 1991, a movement emerged from Seattle that shook the musical world to its core. Seemingly overnight, a cadre of unlikely “grunge” bands from the Northwest rose quickly to attain musical dominance, sweeping aside the shred, glam, and prog-rock excesses of the ’80s.

As the movement took hold, an alternative-rock attitude defined a generation of composers and performers, reuniting punk with hard rock, and heavy metal with story songs of youthful angst and social commentary. Nurtured by the indie-rock college crowd, it reconciled ingredients that had merely threatened to align two decades earlier.

The media labeled Seattle’s proponents as “grunge” for marketing purposes, encouraged by Sub Pop, the city’s indie record label. But, the genre was not the monolithic concern touted in the press. In truth, seclusion, not uniformity, characterized the movement.

Sheltered from the commercial demands of media centers like Los Angeles and New York, Seattle served as incubator for an aesthetically challenging form of rock in which the leading groups differed markedly in sound and conception; Nirvana came off like a power trio fronted by a rogue singer/songwriter who favored low-tech psychedelic undertones, while Pearl Jam purveyed a classic-rock guitar-driven ’70s hybrid and Alice in Chains mixed ’80s power-pop and blues-rock with modern metal elements.

Guitarist Kim Thayil embodies the collision of tangents inherent in grunge, and became one of the founders and earliest – and arguably heaviest – practitioners of the new music. Born in Seattle, he was raised in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest. His mother was a music teacher, but he became interested in music independently at an early age and was writing lyrics by 12. His teen influences included hard rock/metal bands and ’70s punk. His first band, Bozo and the Pinheads, played punk cover tunes and Thayil originals. After briefly attending the University of Illinois, Thayil returned to Seattle with schoolmate Hiro Yamamoto. There, he earned a degree in philosophy at the University of Washington while working as a DJ for KLCMU. Concurrently, he assembled the first lineup of Soundgarden.

Named after the wind-channeling pipe sculpture at Seattle’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the band was formed in the early ’80s as the Shemps with singer/drummer Chris Cornell and Thayil on bass after being recruited to replace Yamamoto. By ’84, the group had reshuffled to feature Cornell, Thayil on guitar, and Yamamoto on bass. In ’85 they added drummer Scott Sundquist, allowing Cornell to assume rhythm-guitar/frontman duties. The quartet performed in and around Seattle, and first recorded on the ’86 compilation Deep Six, which also included the Melvins, Green River, and Skin Yard. That year, Sundquist left Soundgarden to be succeeded by Skin Yard’s Matt Cameron. The band made its formal debut with the song “Hunted Down” in ’87, which marked the creation of the Sub Pop label. This led to the Screaming Life and Fopp EPs, eventually released as Screaming Life/Fopp in ’90. Soundgarden’s first official album, Ultramega OK (’88), was recorded for SST. Though deemed “a mistake” by Cornell because he felt the producer hadn’t understood the Seattle aesthetic, Ultramega received accolades that tagged the music as “Stooges meets Zeppelin/Sabbath sound.” It earned a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in ’90.

Soundgarden subsequently signed with A&M Records, released their major-label debut Louder Than Love, in ’89, toured with Guns ’N Roses, and began a shift from punk toward a more-commercial Zep/Sabbath connection.

While the band toured in 1990, Yamamoto was replaced by Jason Everman, who was in turn succeeded by Ben Shepherd just before the recording of Badmotorfinger in ’91. The album was praised for its improved material and balance of cerebral, artsy music with mainstream metal. Though it was eclipsed by Nirvana’s Nevermind, it nonetheless paved a way for Soundgarden and other Seattle bands. “Outshined” and “Rusty Cage” were embraced by the alt-rock audience, and Badmotorfinger became a hit and was nominated for a Grammy in ’92. The quartet toured with Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, and Faith No More, performed at the ’92 Lollapalooza tour, and released a limited edition of Badmotorfinger with a spot-on cover of Sabbath’s “Into the Void.” The following year, they appeared on screen and soundtrack, in Singles, the cinematic saga of the Seattle scene.

Soundgarden’s breakthrough fourth record, Superunknown, entered the charts at #1. Revered for its experimentation and range, its lyrics addressed themes like suicide, substance abuse, alienation, and mental illness while incorporating Middle Eastern and Indian musical references alongside trademark metal elements. The album spawned hit singles, “Spoonman,” “Black Hole Sun,” “The Day I Tried to Live,” “My Wave,” and “Fell on Black Days,” won two Grammys, and was certified five times platinum. It remains their most successful work.

Down on the Upside was Soundgarden’s final recording of the ’90s (and the glory days of the Seattle wave). Self-produced, it reflected the band’s desire to delve into varied sounds and featured greater use of acoustic/electric timbres that prompted critics to compare it favorably with Zep’s balanced arrangements. However, it also reflected tensions between Thayil and Cornell over the band’s direction. Consequently, it sounds like the lighter effort preferred by the singer. “Pretty Noose” was nominated for a Grammy, but the album failed to reach the sales or critical acclaim of Superunknown, and the group disbanded in April ’97. A greatest-hits compilation, A-Sides, featured their prime singles. Typically, experimental hard-rock bands wouldn’t be adequately represented by such an obvious and seemingly superficial collection, but the material remains definitive – a neat trick few bands can approach. It’s a testament to their abilities, chemistry, and staying power, and to the magic of the Seattle phenomenon.

INFLUENCES
Thayil’s influences include Kiss, Velvet Underground, Butthole Surfers, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Meat Puppets, Killing Joke, and British post-punk acts such as Gang of Four, and Bauhaus. He praises guitarists Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers), Zoot Horn Rollo (Captain Beefheart), Robert Quine (Voidoids) and Ron Asheton (Stooges). He also cites Neil Young, Dick Dale, Link Wray, George Harrison, Metallica, and Eddie Van Halen’s early lead work as significant.

STYLE
What is grunge? That depends on the band. Nowhere is that more inscrutable than in Soundgarden. Thayil has referred to their style as “Sabbath-influenced punk” – and his playing epitomizes that mindset. His expression of grunge on the early recordings specified guitar-dominated rock fusing idiomatic punk and heavy-metal elements with an emphasis on overdriven amp sounds. However, the group maintained and developed an experimental, inquisitive trajectory. Psychedelia, atonality, and world-music sounds figured prominently and marked their evolution from Badmotorfinger to Superunknown. Consider the juxtaposition of atypical timbres in “Black Hole Sun.” The effect is one of lighter psychedelia (think “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” given a quirky early-Floyd/Syd Barrett treatment) contrasted with much darker and brooding metal.

Thayil’s contributions to Soundgarden are personified by the riffs. His thematic figures range from hard-driving power-chord patterns as in “Spoonman” and “My Wave” and Spartan single-note melodies to unusual lopsided lines that freely careen through varied time signatures. Thayil’s lead playing treads between traditional and unusual. Consider the melodic choices in his solo to “Spoonman,” which contain a mixing of modes suggesting blues-rock tempered with Indian raga sounds. His leads often allude to the pentatonic blues-based language of Iommi, et al, but similarly transcend blues rigidity by relating to sounds apart from the blues-rock canon. Like Hendrix, Page, and Iommi, much of his playing owes to transplanting and manipulating ’60s blues-rock melodies in new and unfamiliar (often highly dissonant) contexts. Case in point is the solo in “Black Hole Sun”; to heighten the blues-rock connection, he applied wah to his largely pentatonic lines in A minor played over a F6sus^#4sus2 sonority – hardly a standard harmonic concession in rock songwriting.

Uncommon meters and rhythmic shifts distinguish several Soundgarden compositions. These were not preconceived, but occurred intuitively during development of the band’s material, and underscore the organic nature of their work ethic. Odd time signatures are prevalent in “Circle of Power” and “My Wave” (⁵/4), “Fell on Black Days” (⁶/4), “Limo Wreck” (¹⁵/8), and “The Day I Tried to Live,” which flaunts alternating ⁷/8 to ⁴/4 meters. “Black Hole Sun” takes a step further and exploits motion through ⁴/4, ²/4, ⁶/4, and ⁹/8 in the course. “Rusty Cage” is situated in a moderate-rock ⁴/4 groove, but gives way to a sinister Zeppelin-inspired line in the closing section that reverts to a much slower tempo and a guitar figure alternating between ³/4 and ⁵/4 meters.

Thayil’s penchant for alternate tunings plays an integral role in the Soundgarden equation, particularly dropped tunings like drop-D in “Outshined,” “Black Hole Sun,” “Hands All Over,” and “Black Rain.” Others used dropped low-E strings or whole-step re-tuning of the entire guitar that deepened the Black Sabbath connection. However, Thayil took the approach even further, sometimes dropping the E as low as B, as heard in “Holy Water” and “Rusty Cage.” Other tunings include D-G-D-G-B-E in “New Damage,” D-A-D-G-B-B (B unisons) in “Face Pollution,” E-E-B-B-B-E in “Somewhere,” E-E-B-B-B-B in “My Wave” and C-G-C-G-G-E in “Burden in my Hand” and “Pretty Noose.”
 
ESSENTIAL LISTENING
Superunknown, Badmotorfinger, and A-Sides are definitive.

ESSENTIAL VIEWING
Soundgarden clips abound online. Recommended are “Black Hole Sun” (2013, Wiltern) and a 2014 Lollapalooza performance.

SOUND
Thayil’s choice of guitar reflects his individuality and quirkiness. Most Seattle guitarists used Fender and Gibson axes, but Thayil popularized the all-but-forgotten Guild S-100, with its SG-shaped body, two humbuckers with phase switch, rosewood fretboard with block inlays, and a slanted stop-tail that allows for string bending between the bridge and tailpiece. He also used Guild S-300 models with DiMarzio pickups, a ’59 Telecaster for rhythm parts on Superunknown and Down on the Upside. Onstage, he occasionally played a Gibson Firebird reissue, American Standard Tele, and black Les Paul Custom.

Thayil has played a number of amps. An early favorite was the Peavey VTM-120. By the mid ’90s, he favored Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifiers with 4×12 cabs for solos, and 50-watt Mavericks for rhythm. He supplemented his rig with Fender Super, Princeton, Twin-Reverb and Vibro-King combos, along with a vintage Orange head. He sometimes applied a preamp for his DI signal, as well as an Intellitronix LA-2 and Summit units. His effects included a Dunlop Rotovibe, wah, Ibanez chorus, and Mutron Phase Shifter (“Applebite”). Thayil prefers Dunlop .73mm picks and Ernie Ball Super slinky strings, with heavier bass strings for drop tunings.

Wolf Marshall is the founder and original editor-in-chief of GuitarOne magazine. A respected author and columnist, he has been influential in contemporary music education since the early 1980s. His books include 101 Must-Know Rock Licks, B.B. King: the Definitive Collection, and Best of Jazz Guitar, and a list credits can be found at wolfmarshall.com.

This article originally appeared in VG March 2021 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Formed with two formidable front men in Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton, Humble Pie was one of the earliest “supergroups” to emerge from the British Invasion and embody aspirations beyond pop.

Marriott rocked audiences as vocalist of Small Faces, which scored hit singles with “Itchycoo Park,” “All or Nothing,” “Tin Soldier” and “Lazy Sunday.” Frampton was the 16-year-old guitar prodigy in The Herd, which hit with “From the Underworld,” “Paradise Lost” and “I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die.” Moreover, he was a teen idol awarded “The Face of ’68” accolade by Rave magazine.

Marriott campaigned to recruit Frampton into Small Faces, even added him as guest performer in concert, but met with opposition from the group. This sparked the development of a side project; at Marriott’s insistence, Frampton served as studio player when Small Faces backed French singer Johnny Hallyday during December ’68 sessions that foreshadowed Marriott’s official departure that New Years’ Eve, and the birth of Humble Pie, a band he started for Frampton then wound up joining. Completing the lineup were bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley. Ridley was a founding member of Spooky Tooth and 17-year-old Shirley was a veteran of The Apostolic Intervention, a group mentored by Marriott while Small Faces were with Immediate Records. With this auspicious merging of talent and experience, the quartet was accorded supergroup status, largely by a ready-to-hype music press that relished the story of a promise foretold. Accordingly, the band chose its self-effacing moniker in a gesture to downplay the expectations and publicity foisted upon them.

Humble Pie initially gravitated to eclectic folk-rock-roots sounds reminiscent of The Band, which had taken the world by storm in ’68. “Natural Born Bugie” was a U.K. hit single and preceded two albums for Immediate. The first, As Safe As Yesterday Is, purveyed hard rock, British blues, folk, country and post-hippie psychedelia, and was one of the first albums to receive the then-unflattering “heavy metal” appellation. It flaunted a wealth of Frampton guitar moments and solid songwriting in diverse pieces like “Desperation,” “Growing Closer,” “Alabama ’69” and the title track. By contrast, the rush-release follow-up Town and Country, issued only two months later, was largely acoustic and reflected Frampton and Marriott’s love of country, folk, ballads, and blues while exploiting ambitious mixed timbres including sitar, keyboards, and various atypical percussion instruments. Only “Down Home Again” and “Silver Tongue” approached the hard-rock intensity of their first album. With these musical treasures, the group began touring the U.S.

Humble Pie returned to England to find Immediate in financial ruin and soon signed with A&M. Their major-label debut, Humble Pie, marked a transition back to progressive hard rock and featured greater group interaction and sonic contrasts. “Only a Roach” was a country-tinged hippie number with pedal-steel colors and a rare lead vocal from composer Shirley. Frampton’s acoustic-dominated folk-pop tune “Earth and Water Song” was flanked by two of the record’s heaviest tracks, the metallic boogie “One-Eyed Trouser-Snake Rumba” and “I’m Ready,” a hard-rock reinterpretation of Willie Dixon’s blues song. “Theme From Skint” was Marriott’s country-rock novelty ditty lampooning Immediate’s bankruptcy, and “Sucking on the Sweet Vine” was a Ridley composition that evoked Jethro Tull’s prog-rock/folk amalgam.

The appropriately titled Rock On achieved greater success and underscored the blues-rock-metal direction that became Pie’s calling card, augmented by guests B.J. Cole (pedal steel), Bobby Keys (saxophone), the Soul Sisters singing group, and vocalist Alexis Korner. This was Frampton’s last studio album with the band. He exited in ’71 to pursue a solo career and the progressive pop/rock songs and layered electric/acoustic timbres he favored. In this period, he made notable guest appearances on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and Harry Nilsson’s Son of Schmilsson.

Humble Pie reached a pinnacle with Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore, which ironically climbed the charts as Frampton assembled his next band, Camel. Nonetheless, it marked the first of two important Frampton live albums in the decade. Recorded at NYC’s Fillmore East, it was a commercial breakthrough reaching #21 on Billboard’s chart and U.K.’s Top 40. “I Don’t Need No Doctor” was issued as a single and climbed to #73 on the Hot 100 in October ’71. The album remains a milestone that captures the grandeur of their live show, and Frampton’s famed Phenix guitar is heard in full glory, as are his inventive chording and sophisticated-but-melodic blues-rock solo statements.

INFLUENCES

Frampton’s earliest role models were the Shadows, Ventures, and an obscure American garage-rock outfit called The Preachers. He also gravitated to American rock-and-roll artists like Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent, blues musicians B.B., Albert and Freddie King, and R&B via Motown. In the mid ’60s, he was enamored of the Beatles, Stones, Who, Animals, and Yardbirds, as well as guitarists Clapton, Beck, Peter Green, Alvin Lee, and Jimi Hendrix. An ardent jazz fan from his youth, his most important guitar influences were Kenny Burrell, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, and George Benson.

STYLE

Frampton was one of the first guitarists to successfully integrate an eclectic, sophisticated lead style into a hard-rock setting. In this regard, much of his playing presaged emerging Eurometal stylists like Michael Schenker, et al. His solos bear a strong blues-rock pedigree with characteristic string bends, vibrato, pentatonic/blues-scale language and idiomatic phrasing, personified in tracks like “Rollin’ Stone.” However, the modal runs, color tones suggesting chordal extensions of jazz, and chromatic decorations that distinguish his rock solos have their roots in influences like Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, and particularly Kenny Burrell, though no flagrant lifting is evident. Punctuating his British blues-rock licks rendered on a Les Paul and a cranked Marshall are intricate, lyrical melodies that capture the spirit of those inspirations in permutations that enhance guitar style beyond the obvious Clapton-Beck-Page lineage. In Frampton’s view, the two are inseparable. In the February ’21 isssue of VG, he described the fusion succinctly: “It’s always been jazz and blues for me. Blues is not a specific group of phrases, it’s what comes from the soul.” Consequently, Frampton’s style is a musical melting pot. Some of his runs suggest a classical influence in their inherent melodic quality, particularly the diatonic sequences he was fond of running alongside requisite blues and rock lines. Other licks have their origins in country music, Laurel Canyon folk-rock a la CS&N, and American roots sounds.

His acoustic playing similarly flaunts a mix of folk, blues, country, Beatles idiosyncrasies, and pop-rock tangents blended with more-progressive and sophisticated jazz-informed harmony. “Take Me Back” and “Only You Can See” on Town and Country are illustrative cases in point.

Frampton’s rhythm work and chording are also imaginative and convey a wider artistic vision. When an aggressive power-chord pattern, metallic riff, or boogie-rock figure is required, it’s deftly applied with authentic tone and conviction. However, when a more harmonically rich or atypical voicing is needed, his jazz and folk influences surface and provide appropriate colors, timbres, and atmospheric sonorities, indicative of sounds heard in later solo albums. This range and flexibility are part and parcel of his style, and is an identifier of his personal approach to rock music.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING

Frampton’s eclectic contributions to Humble Pie are well-documented on the Immediate albums As Safe As Yesterday Is and Town and Country, while Humble Pie and Rock On are indicative of his heavier rock style. Performance is in a class by itself and remains one of the greatest live recordings in hard rock. All five are highly recommended for a complete picture of this important band.

ESSENTIAL VIEWING

Several classic Humble Pie performances from ’69 through ’71 are available online. Noteworthy are “Natural Born Bugie” (with Frampton sporting a ’59 Gretsch Duo Jet), “For Your Love” (’64 Epiphone Texan) and “Rollin’ Stone” (with the newly acquired Phenix and two half stacks). And while you’re at it, check out Frampton and Marriott’s guitar interactions on “I Walk on Gilded Splinters.”

SOUND

Frampton played a variety of guitars in the first phase of Humble Pie. In ’69, he was seen with that Bigsby-equipped Gretsch Duo Jet, and by his own account endured a number of unsatisfactory Les Pauls, SGs, and an ES-335 until he received Phenix, a modded ’54 Gibson Les Paul Custom given to him by fan Mark Mariana during Humble Pie’s concerts at San Francisco’s Fillmore West in 1970. Frampton was frustrated with the uncontrollable feedback he was experiencing onstage with his 335, but also disillusioned with Les Pauls and SGs. He played Phenix tentatively that evening and, by the second show, grew to love it. He offered to buy the guitar, but Mariana refused payment and insisted it was a gift.<

Phenix underwent significant modifications. Inspired by the ’57 Custom with three humbuckers seen on a Smokey Robinson album cover, Mariana rerouted the guitar for three humbucking pickups to replace and augment the two original P-90 and Alnico V single-coil pickups. The pickups went through various incarnations. Phenix was initially modified with stock Gibson humbuckers; the added middle pickup was a ’68 humbucker while the neck and bridge were vintage PAFs. It later sported black-bobbin Seymour Duncan humbuckers and white surrounds. By 1980, he switched to white-bobbin Seymours.

Phenix was re-wired to access all three pickups in any combination and produce an out-of-phase tone Frampton claimed was the “secret” of his sound. Moreover, it was capable of a stereo signal path that allowed the neck and bridge pickups to feed one amp while the middle was sent to another when using a stereo cord – an option he did not use. Its neck was shaved, a brass nut was installed, and the knobs were replaced with newer versions.

Phenix later graced his masterpiece, Frampton Comes Alive. It was lost in a plane crash in Venezuela in 1980, then later recovered and reunited with Frampton in 2011 (read more at www.vintageguitar.com/36427/the-tale-of-framptons-54-les-paul-custom). It was restored at Nashville’s Gibson Custom Shop and now has three vintage Patent Number pickups, NOS bumblebee caps and correct pots.

In Pie, Frampton plugged into 100-watt Marshall stacks and 4×12 cabinets. In the early ’70s he used two cabs on his side of the stage while a second 50-watt head fed a 4×12 on the other. His effects were minimal; an MXR Phase 90, Binson Echorec magnetic-disc delay and Leslie run by a Marshall head. He also occasionally used a wah pedal, largely for tone changes. In the studio he often favored small amps like an overdriven Fender Champ for distortion sounds, and he sometimes added a Univibe when recording. Frampton preferred a small and very heavy Höfner jazz pick, and used ultra-light Picato roundwound strings.

Wolf Marshall is the founder and original editor-in-chief of GuitarOne magazine. A respected author and columnist, he has been influential in contemporary music education since the early 1980s. His books include 101 Must-Know Rock Licks, B.B. King: the Definitive Collection, and Best of Jazz Guitar, and a list credits can be found at wolfmarshall.com.

This article originally appeared in VG April 2021 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Jerry Miller is back. For many he never left – especially admirers of his innovative playing with the legendary Moby Grape. Clapton, Page, and Stills are on that list, as well as dozens of guitar heroes.

Miller reached out to VG to share a preview of his newest recording venture, which finds him moving in many directions at once, set on a course to reaffirm and redefine his legacy.

“It’s going to be diverse,” he said, which is a given for a player who segues from “Stormy Monday” to “Round Midnight” in the blink of an eye. With the tentative title of Back To The Top, he’s ready to show what 65 years of honing his craft sounds like.

It has been over two decades since Miller’s last official studio release, Life is Like That, but he hasn’t been idle in the interim. Rather, he has been writing, arranging, and sharpening his skills with regular performances in his native Seattle-Tacoma area. Pacific Studios, Tacoma, is handling the tracking and recruited members of his working trio, drummer Glenn Hummel and bassist Kim Workman, as well as several respected local musicians. Miller is excited about getting back to basics and to be recording in the classic Charles Neville tradition with an emphasis on live playing without using click tracks, auto-tune, or “processed garbage.”

With his blues/jazz/country/rock pedigree, Miller intends to tip his hat to the greats who inspired him. “That means the Kings, T-Bone Walker, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Albert Collins, Little Milton… even Pete Johnson boogie-woogie.”

But this is no contrived tribute album; he’s focusing on original material that reveals his continuing growth as player and composer and building clever arrangements with varied meters, tight Grape-inspired vocal harmonies (he’ll also be singing some lead) and is bound to add horns to offset his ubiquitous guitar improvisations.

“I want to discover new ground, approach it with the right spirit, the right people, and fluid chops. Guitar improvisation is an important aspect along with rhythm-section interaction, especially for the blues and jazz things. Some of it will be tightly structured in the pop sense with overdubs and some will be looser and funky.”

Regarding guitars, front and center is Beulah, Miller’s iconic, well-seasoned ’62 Gibson L-5 CES that has been with him since before the Grape, and a selection of axes including a single-pickup Epiphone Regent and a Jack Dimentel solidbody. One of his secret weapons is a renovated ’50s tweed Gibson Explorer amp with a single 10″ speaker.

“It’s older than dirt, covered with coffee stains and cigarette burns,” he said. “It sounds extremely clean and quiet but, turned up, gets nasty overdrive.”

He’ll also be plugging into his signature Tone 4×10 Custom-Reverb amp by Will Roemermann (essentially a beefed-up tweed Bassman), old blackface Fender Super Reverb, and a reissue Fender Deluxe.

Miller is self-funding the album’s production through a Kickstarter campaign and invites anyone to participate. More can be found at his website, thejerrymillerband.com.

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.

Few can claim the title of living legend. Kenny Burrell is just such a person. In fact he’s more – he’s living history, past, present and future. His credentials are voluminous and accomplishments staggering, and he hasn’t stopped.

He has recorded at least 108 albums as a band leader and is today, at age 82, still on top of his game. His latest offering is Special Requests, a live set from 2012, ; which reached #1 on the jazz charts in September and was the most-reported jazz album on 51 radio stations.

Burrell has one of the most recognizable voices in jazz guitar and has been a leader and role model since he first appeared on the scene with Dizzy Gillespie’s band in 1951. The paragon of taste, feeling, and sophistication, Burrell is also the quintessential sideman, lending his touch to hundreds of important recordings over the last six decades. Today, he is active recording and performing, a respected educator, and an elder statesman of the music. His legacy is pervasive. His soulful sound and approach have influenced virtually everyone claiming a jazz pedigree but extends to many outside the genre, a la Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, Steve Howe, Andy Summers, and Freddie King. B.B. King calls Burrell his favorite guitarist and fellow bluesmen Stevie Ray Vaughan and Otis Rush recorded reverential covers of Burrell’s “Chitlins Con Carne.”

Burrell’s resume reads like a Who’s Who in American Music. Talking with him is like taking a guided tour through the soundtrack of jazz, with casual asides to Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Eubie Blake, and Jimmy Smith along the way – a travelog accompanied by a healthy dose of deep musical philosophy that bespeaks his years of paying dues and life lessons learned and assimilated.

Innovation and history-making have followed Burrell through the decades and are part and parcel of his jazz journey, marked by advances in the organ trio, guitar trio, solo chord-melody playing, orchestral experiments, and much more. But beyond his accomplishments, awards, and accolades, at the end of the day Burrell is the embodiment and epitome of his musical credo: “Play what you feel, and mean it.”

Over the years, you’ve emphasized the blues aspect of your playing in many album titles, like Blues: The Common Ground, Midnight Blue, Blue Moods, Pieces of Blue, and Blue Muse. The blues has drawn many listeners and fans of different genres to you.
The blues is part of my heritage, part of my surroundings growing up in Detroit – on the radio, on records, in clubs, on the street. Like most guitarists, the blues was what I first learned to play. In my earliest jam sessions, we always played the blues. It felt natural. I will never deny that part of who I am. Some jazz musicians and some jazz fans feel the blues is so simple they don’t want to bother with it; that it’s too primitive. I never felt that way. Time has proven me right. Throughout the history of jazz, people play the blues in many forms – fast, medium, slow, funky, sophisticated, in different meters and avant-garde. It’s still blues.

The argument that blues is beneath you is not right. It’s a matter of what the artist does with it. In fact, blues is so beautiful it’s hard to do anything wrong with it. It’s so harmonically simple it gives you a lot of freedom. It also opens a door where other musicians and listeners can really [see] who you are and what you can do with this open door, this “freedom palette,” and what your story is, what have you got to say. Blues is a unique part of American music and I’m glad to be part of it.

Who were your guitar influences?
My two main influences were Charlie Christian and Oscar Moore, along with blues players like T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, and Johnny Moore. And I was indirectly affected by acoustic blues players, on record, radio, and around the neighborhood.

B.B. King has cited you as his favorite guitarist. Have you played much with him in your career?
I made a record with B.B. in the ’70s, Newport in New York. It was the Newport Jazz Festival recorded at Yankee Stadium. We played a song together in a jam session; it was very nice. And, he was onstage with us at my 80th-birthday concert.

The Gibson Super 400
The Gibson Super 400, with its 18″ body, gold-colored hardware, fine woods, and luxurious appointments, was awe-inspiring from its inception in 1934. With the name “Super” and price tag of $400, it projected power, oozed opulence, and set a standard that prompted competitors Epiphone and Gretsch, as well as luthiers John D’Angelico and Elmer Stromberg, to produce similar 18″ beauties. But there was nothing like the timbre, volume, grandeur, and dazzling appearance of the Super 400.

Representing the pinnacle of archtop evolution, the Super 400 reigned supreme in swing bands and pop orchestras, but was also played by country artists Roy Rogers, Hank Snow, Don Gibson with Joe Maphis, and Hank Thompson. It was also seen in the hands of Norman Brown (in the Mills Brothers) and blues man Pee Wee Crayton, who played one with a bar pickup.
The Super 400 underwent five model changes from 1934 to 1950, including the advent of cutaway body styles the Super 400 Premier, in ’37 and Super 400C (cutaway) in ’48.

The Super 400CES (cutaway electric Spanish) was introduced in 1951 and ushered in an era of amplified excellence akin to what the Super 400 had done for acoustic archtops. The sixth version of the Super 400CES was nearly identical to the acoustic Super 400C – same appointments, dimensions, ornamentation, Y-shaped adjustable tailpiece, and finish options. It had a carved spruce top and back of bookmatched curly maple. However, its top was fitted with two built-in pickups and carved slightly thicker to reduce vibration and feedback. The top was braced with two long parallel braces (or “tone bars”) spaced farther apart to accommodate routing for pickups, and several smaller spruce or mahogany cross braces to make it more rigid. Small strut braces were used at the tips of the tone bars for greater rigidity. Ted McCarty stated that the resulting timbre differed from any amplified Super 400 made previously and provided the right response to professional guitarists’ demands.

The Super 400CES had two black P-90 single-coil pickups on the debut model, serial number A7227, made in March of ’51. It was upgraded to Alnico pickups in ’54 and humbucking pickups in ’57. According to Gibson factory records, the first Super 400CES with PAFs was serial number A26590 (November ’57). The intermediate Alnico-pickup version was given a Tune-O-Matic bridge in ’55, though the rosewood bridge was not discontinued, so is sometimes seen post-’55 (the ’64 Gibson catalog shows an ES-175 with a wood bridge alongside a Tune-O-Matic equipped L-5CES).

The biggest single change in the Super 400CES occurred with the seventh model, made from 1960-’69. Gibson’s desire to offer “something new” was manifested in a Florentine cutaway that replaced the rounded Venetian cutaway. Its sharp point and larger space necessitated a rim fashioned of two pieces instead of a single bent piece. The first was attached alongside the neck block, bent into the cutaway, and brought up to its outer point. The second piece began there as the outside rim and continued around the outer edge of the body to the heel block. The two ends meeting at the Florentine point were covered with thick white binding. The new body style was accompanied by a longer neck block and shorter pickguard screwed into the top.

The Florentine Super 400CES saw other changes. The three-way pickup selector switch was mounted in a rubber grommet to silence switching noises. The tailpiece had smaller and simpler engraving. By ’64, a shell-like celluloid pickguard replaced the mottled “marble” pickguard. In ’63, Gibson began experimenting with the backs of high-end archtop electrics. By ’64, a laminated panel replaced the two-piece back, appearing to be a large piece of figured maple without a center seam. This is detected by comparing grain patterns inside the body, through the f-shaped sound holes, with grains on the back – revealing differences in direction and figuration. The laminated back had more-pronounced arching, typical of mid-’60s models. Gibson reinstated the two-piece back in ’68/’69 before returning to the Venetian cutaway shape in 1970. Sunburst finishes varied in the ’60s, from brown-to-golden early in the decade to reddish brown-to-gold midway through, and cherry sunburst later.

In the early ’60s, Gibson fitted guitars with PAF pickups, transitioned to “patent number” pickups in ’63, and “T-tops” after ’65. Because gold-colored PAFs were reserved for high-end instruments, supplies lasted until mid-decade; it’s not uncommon to find a 1965 Super 400CES with PAFs.

The Super 400CES headstock changed slightly in the ’60s with more exaggerated peaks on the edges and the word “Custom” etched into a parallelogram on the truss-rod cover. Gibson continued to use gold-plated Kluson Sealfast tuners in the decade.

The neck went through changes in the ’60s. In ’62, the contour was rounder and thicker in circumference than the ’61 Super 400CES and earlier models, and remained so through the decade. The earliest Florentine models had a two-piece maple neck with a single mahogany strip. In ’62, the two-piece neck was superseded by a three-piece maple neck with two mahogany strips. The neck width at the nut was thinner after the mid-1960s, narrowed from a 111/16″ width to 19/16″.

In due course, the Super 400CES would prove formidable in a variety of music. Maybe there’s something in the inherent beauty and power of an amplified Super 400 that spurs innovation in its players. Witness the varied tangents of Merle Travis, father of country picking, Scotty Moore, rock pioneer with Elvis, funk-jazz-studio wiz Eric Gale, Larry Coryell, father of fusion, blues-rock innovator Robben Ford, modern jazz-pop virtuoso George Benson, and venerable jazz legend Kenny Burrell. –Wolf Marshall

Special thanks to Tom Van Hoose.

Did specific blues influences like Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, and B.B. King shape your aesthetics?
Yes, but beyond the styles of different people is a certain feeling. In blues and in jazz, the most important aspect of communicating your music is honesty. As humans, we get hung up on trying to be honest. Music is a place where you can do that freely. It’s simple – just play what you feel. That doesn’t cancel your intellect. You’ll always know what the chords are, but that doesn’t overwhelm what you’re feeling.

One of the reasons for my success, and others’ through the years, is that I honestly try to play what I feel. It may not give you instant success, but, I believe if you do it consistently, it will give you long-term success. It’s spirit-to-spirit communication.

You got your professional start in jazz with Dizzy Gillespie.
Yes, I was 19. We met at the Club Juana, in Detroit, and I played with him for one month. He needed a quick replacement and I got the call – probably a recommendation from Milt Jackson. It was the first time Dizzy used a guitar instead of piano to play back-up chords, solos, and ensemble lines. He continued to use that format in some of his ensembles for the rest of his career. I didn’t realize at the time that I was helping to create a standard for Dizzy’s idea.

You’ve played with many of the iconic figures in jazz – John Coltrane comes to mind. You are the only guitarist to have recorded with him, playing on at least four albums.
The first was in 1951 (“Tin Tin Deo”) with Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Then again on “Soul Eyes” (Interplay for 2 Trumpets and 2 Tenors). Trane was one of the most dedicated and focused musicians I’ve ever met.

What was it like at the famous session you co-led in 1958 while recording the Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane album?
That was what we called a “blowing session” put together by Prestige. I was happy to be in the circle of people called for that. We were each expected to bring in one or two songs. In the process, there’s no time for rehearsals. You run something down once or twice and record it. I had to be on my toes, but was with great people. There were no problems. These were guys I knew – Trane, Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb. We had a few originals and couple of standards, nothing complicated.

For some reason, they made Trane and me co-leaders on the date. We didn’t think in terms of who was the leader; we were just trying to make good music. The other record in that period was The Cats. I don’t know who the leader was on that album. I enjoyed playing with Trane because there was always magic happening.

You recorded a hit pop song with Louis Armstrong. That was a slight departure; you played acoustic guitar.
Yes, I played on “What a Wonderful World.” That was part of what I did – studio work. I got a call from one of my regular contractors and I was just happy to be playing with Louis Armstrong. I had no idea the record would be that big.

That was a nylon-string played fingerstyle. Did it reflect your classical training?
Yes. I still use the technique I learned as a classical player. My advice to players is to learn all you can.

How active were you as a studio player? Did you have a variety of instruments?
Yes, I had to have them. I certainly had a jazz guitar – a couple of them – and a couple acoustic guitars, steel-string and a nylon. I also had a couple of what I call blues or rock guitars; I set up an ES-175 for that and used the bridge pickup and lighter-gauge strings, for bending.

When I was in New York from 1958 to ’63, I did an average of six sessions a week. That’s a conservative estimate – I sometimes did two or three a day – at least 1,560. Those are just the sessions; my name was on maybe 10 percent of them. Usually, at a session we made four records. I’m not counting jazz records or my own albums. I was like a doctor, constantly on call. After ’63 it tapered off; I did less studio work and more of my own recordings. Still, I enjoyed the studio work; it made me feel I was good at my craft. But it did hurt in some ways because I didn’t have enough time to practice and concentrate on my music. That’s why I took the jobs in Bye, Bye Birdie and other shows. It was steady work and after a couple of weeks you hardly need to look at the music. It allowed time to practice, think conceptually, and write music for albums like Midnight Blue and Guitar Forms.

Do you consider either of those albums career-defining?
I don’t know. I’m like a gardener in the dirt; I can’t see the whole garden, from my perspective. I see imperfection in all my records so for me none are definitive. But for convenience you could start with Guitar Forms; that gives a broad view of what I do.

Guitar Forms is important to me because of the diversity and working with (arranger/conductor) Gil Evans. It wasn’t an easy record to make for several reasons. Gil took his time, which was fine with me but not the A&R people. I transcribed the Gershwin piano piece “Prelude #2” for solo guitar, which was difficult to work out. I did a variety of music – blues, flamenco, classical, bossa nova, Latin, folk, and modern jazz, pieces with a large ensemble and small combo with electric and acoustic guitars.

What were your experiences with Billie Holiday?
I met her in 1952 or ’53, when she traveled to Detroit to perform. I put together a band for her at the Rouge Lounge, a club in River Rouge, near Detroit. My group was popular in town, so we backed her a few times. I think we had (pianist) Tommy Flanagan in the band. Billie liked the way I played and that I was sensitive to the lyrics. I tried to complement her and not get in the way of her music.

We became friends and had mutual respect. When I moved to New York City in ’56, I backed her several times, including at Carnegie Hall. Billie would come to hear me play at clubs, like Minton’s, in Harlem. I also played on a number of her records, including the last one, Lady in Satin. I wasn’t listed because I was a last-minute substitute for Barry Galbraith and it wasn’t on the contract. I didn’t play any solos, just rhythm and maybe a little passage here or there.

Billie was a beautiful artist and, as we say in the business, she never sang a note she didn’t mean. She influenced a lot of people. Not only jazz singers but pop singers, including Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

A Living Legend’s Primary “Weapons”
The Gibson Super 400 has been your trademark guitar for many years. When did you first begin playing one, and what attracted you?
It was probably in the late 1960s. I’d been using a D’Angelico New Yorker, which was the same size as a Super 400 (18″ body). I like that body size – and where my elbow rests. What I like about the Super 400 (CES) is the humbucking pickup. I originally used the Charlie Christian bar pickup; that’s what I had in my L-5 and L-7 guitars [in the late ’50s/early ’60s]. But the humbuckers had no noise and worked better, especially when I had to turn up the volume with people like Jimmy Smith. They are more “utilitarian,” if you will. I prefer the Super 400 model with two humbuckers and a Florentine cutaway. With that cutaway, I can get my whole hand up there.

Earlier, you had a Gibson ES-175 and then a custom L-5 CES with a Florentine cutaway. That was years before the Florentine cutaway on the L-5 and Super 400. How did it come about?

Gibson made me an L-5 with a deep cutaway in the late ’50s. They did it reluctantly. I played that guitar for a while, but it was too heavy. It had a much bigger block; they thought the body wouldn’t hold the neck with the deep cutaway otherwise. The 175 was too small and always felt clumsy; I couldn’t grab it comfortably with my arm. The Super 400 feels perfect for me.

You’ve gone through a number of Super 400s over the years. Do you still have them all?
I have two – both have two humbuckers and the Florentine cutaway. I got my main one in San Diego many years ago. I wandered into a shop – maybe for some strings – and saw it. It was from the ’60s and felt very good. I did have another at the time, but that one became my primary instrument. Before that, I had a Venetian-cutaway Super 400 with a DeArmond pickup, like my D’Angelico.

Do you do anything special to your Super 400 to personalize it?
I adjust the action at the bridge so the strings are lower on the bass side. And I have done things to cut down on feedback. I placed some foam rubber inside the body at the top f-hole and also put a surface plug on the f-hole. It deadens the guitar just enough to reduce feedback. I also screwed a little piece of plastic into the top to hold the bridge in place. Sometimes, I play hard and the bridge moves a little. I cover the plastic with a piece of tape. I also installed tuning keys with peg-winder handles.

Is your signature Heritage Super KB based on your Super 400?
Yes. Heritage did a nice job of capturing the qualities I like. The Super KB is a little different. It has a slightly thinner body and shorter body (3″ deep x 207/8″ long instead of 33/8″ x 213/4″); the 18″ width is the same. The body has a little more curve-around; they did it by making it thinner up near the neck. It has a finger tailpiece, like on my custom L-5. I love the way it looks and that I can adjust string tension for each string separately. I set it medium and occasionally loosen a string a little bit here and there.

What are using for amps these days?
I prefer a Fender Twin for the most part. I was one of the first to use a Twin; I got one in Detroit and liked the extra bite. I like a fat, warm sound, so I set the Treble lower, the Bass medium, and pump up the Middle. I sometimes use a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus as a substitute. When I don’t have to play loud, I might use an old Polytone or Heritage Kenny Burrell amp. I am also checking out the new Fender George Benson 1×12 for smaller gigs. – Wolf Marshall

You had quite a partnership with Jimmy Smith; a lot of organ-trio concepts are based on what you developed together.
Yes. We met at a jam session at the Bohemian Caverns. He was this dynamic new voice on the organ – nobody had heard anything like that before. I went to see him and he asked me to sit in. Alfred Lion, of Blue Note Records, was in the audience. He wanted to record me with Jimmy. I’d already recorded my first album (Introducing Kenny Burrell) for Blue Note. He thought it would make Jimmy’s record more powerful.

Jimmy and I made many records together. We had a natural affinity for each other’s music; we just clicked. We both knew a lot of songs; we hardly ever had rehearsals and there was very little preparation. We just talked over a song or he might mention a tune he wanted to play. We did most of it on the spot. It was the easiest partnership I’ve ever had. He always wanted me to play with him if possible, which was rough on the guitar players in his working bands.

On your second album Kenny Burrell, Volume 2, you had Horace Silver as pianist.
That was also on Blue Note – we all knew each other there. He was a tremendous composer. I was so happy to have Horace on that record, as well as Hank Mobley. And don’t forget Art Blakey; he was on Blue Lights.

You also worked with Oscar Peterson.
Yes, in 1955. I’d just graduated from Wayne State University and was about to move to New York. Herb Ellis was playing with Oscar’s trio, but had to take time off for his health. Oscar and (bassist) Ray Brown were in Detroit and came to see me at Kline’s Show Bar, one of the two big jazz clubs in town. They offered me the job that night. I went on the road with them for about six months.

It was an enlightening and growth-inducing experience, playing with those two giants. I learned about making music with a trio and working with guitar and piano. The main thing is to listen and complement each other – do whatever will make the music work. I was glad I could handle it. I also learned a lot about life on the road, how to cope. I sometimes roomed with Ray. He got up early and started practicing; that was his routine. And mine, too, as a result. And, I took up golf.

You are credited with developing the guitar/bass/drums trio that led to the working band on A Night at the Vanguard. How did it come about?
It started with an experiment in the early ’50s at a small club in Detroit with a tiny space that only allowed for that size trio. I wanted to try the format again in New York in ’59. Max Gordon, who ran the Village Vanguard, didn’t like the idea of working without a piano at first. He always had a great piano there. But we were friends and I’d played there many times so I asked him to give it a chance. He gave me one night – a Monday night or something. I wanted it to be as good as possible, so I got two of the best guys, Roy Haynes and Richard Davis. Max liked it and gave us two weeks – a pretty long time by today’s standards. The second week we recorded live for Cadet.

That was a dream fulfilled because it had been in my mind for a long time and felt I could do it well. In a guitar trio, the focus is to think about the possibilities, not what’s missing. If you do, things will flow. I’m not doing a lot of it now – no particular reason, I’m just trying different things. But I do love that format. In retrospect, it not only affected jazz players but also rock players.

You had a close association with Wes Montgomery.
I was very close to Wes and his brothers. I met Wes when I was a teenager in Detroit. He and his friends used to drive from Indianapolis to hear me play. I had no idea of who he was or his ability. We just met and talked, a couple of guitar players who liked each other. I was working hard to get better, practicing six hours a day on my way up the ladder.

A little later I saw Wes in Detroit at the Paradise Theater with Lionel Hampton’s band and we became friends. We got together often in New York when he started traveling and had many nights jamming in the hotel room. My guitar-playing friend Warren Stevens worked closely with Wes. He knew his schedule and put us together when Wes was in town. Warren loved to hear us play together. I was happy to play on Wes’ album with strings, Fusion! (1963)

Didn’t he use your equipment on his first recording session?
Yes. I was in New York, and when Riverside Records signed Wes, they brought him to town to record. I got a call from Orrin Keepnews, the head of Riverside, asking if Wes could use my guitar and amp. Wes didn’t like to fly and didn’t take his guitar on the plane. That didn’t make sense to me, but I said, “Okay,” because we were friends and I admired his playing.

I was working at the time, at the Village Vanguard I think, so I was using my L-5, but always had a couple other electrics, and so I let him have my L-7 for his first record (The Wes Montgomery Trio). I think he used my Fender Deluxe.

Did you influence each other?
When his music got more popular, Wes talked to me about his concerns. The predominant sound on his hit records was octaves, more so than chords or single notes. People responded to that sound. Wes used to say, “As soon as I stop playing the octaves, people start talking and don’t listen.” I felt bad about that. It was a mixed blessing. He wanted people to love his music and knew musicians could see through all the pop stuff. But the people who paid a lot of money to see him wanted to hear the record they knew.

You recorded with Herbie Hancock in the ’60s. These days, your relationship with him has come full-circle and he’s involved with the jazz program at UCLA.
Yes. He was on Blues: The Common Ground. He is very diverse and great to work with. I particularly admire his fresh approach to harmony. I am so happy he brought the Thelonius Monk Institute here to UCLA.

The UCLA Jazz Studies program is one of the most revered in the world and is really your creation. How did it come about?
I began teaching at UCLA in 1978, in the winter quarter. I was asked to teach by the director of African-American Studies, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan. They wanted to do something with jazz as a natural outgrowth of the program. I couldn’t do it full-time with my performing, recording, and traveling schedule, but I did agree to teach part-time, one class a year in winter.

My inclination was to do a class on Duke Ellington. To me, he was the most successful jazz musician – jazz and beyond. It worked, and now they’re teaching Ellington classes all over the world. I had the first one and called it Ellingtonia, an umbrella phrase for all his music. But it’s not just about music; it’s about a style, a persona, African-Americanism, his philosophy and influence. I still teach that class now, 35 years later.

The course was increasingly popular and people here understood I was a capable teacher as well as a jazz musician of note. When UCLA decided to create a jazz program in 1996, they came to me. I agreed because it was one of my lifelong dreams. When I was in college, jazz wasn’t even discussed as a legitimate high-art form. So I took a full-time faculty position as founder and director of the Jazz Studies program. I had a wonderful faculty – still do. Some the early teachers were Billy Higgins, Gerald Wilson, George Bohanon, Ruth Price, Billy Childs, Oscar Brashear, and Harold Land. Every year, it has gotten better and the reputation has grown; we have well over 100 applicants a year, and accept about 15. Herb Alpert has donated a tremendous amount of money and resources. The Monk Institute of Jazz is here, and we have great relationship with them. It’s a beautiful example of how things can work when people are sincerely interested in promoting this music, this highly developed art form. I am still very excited about it.

Duke Ellington has named you his favorite guitarist. Did you ever play with him?
I played guitar with Duke only once as part of the band, on the TV show “We Love You Madly,” which was produced by Quincy Jones and Buddy Yorkin. I was happy to learn I was his favorite guitarist. I had an invitation to play on his record, My People, but it was in Chicago and I was unable to make it. I played on several recordings by his key side men, notably (saxophonists) Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonzalves and (trumpeter) Clark Terry, where he was present and submitted music. Joe Benjamin (Ellington’s bassist) played on my Guitar Forms and Weaver of Dreams albums.

You are known to have a tremendous connection with Ellington’s music, having made two Ellington is Forever tribute albums and teaching the Ellingtonia class at UCLA.
He was ahead of his time and a leader in American music at its best. Ellington’s output was so varied and excellent, no one else compares with him. I learned many lessons from Ellington, but probably the most important one is to be yourself. Like Mae West said, be who you are because all the other bodies are taken.

How do stay yourself when inundated with external influences?
It’s a balance of head and heart, left brain versus right brain, intellect and feeling. One side says do what you feel while the other says wait a minute, I’m not sure. One stands guard, the other just acts. If you relax and allow yourself to be, it’ll work. Don’t be afraid or worry about what others think. Express your deep self. Then the influences will surface in a unique way that only you can determine.

Another thing I learned from Ellington is be free with yourself. Don’t let the information interfere with what you feel. We have a greater intelligence than we realize. That intelligence has to do with our spirit and soul; it’s beyond knowledge. As Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge or information. And more powerful.

My first teacher, my brother Billy, gave me some advice when I was leaving for New York: play what you feel and mean it. If I had a question about what to do in a musical situation, I followed that advice and it never failed. That’s that other intelligence working, if we allow it to happen. Same is true of a musical phrase, no matter what you may think or how weird it may seem. A friend of mine was transcribing some Ellington music and was amazed by some of the combinations he found. He said he’d never seen so many wrong-looking notes and right-sounding notes in his life! One of Ellington’s favorite sayings, and I’ve adopted it in my life, is, “If it sounds right, it is right.” Now, wait a minute… If it sounds right to who? You, that’s who!

This article originally appeared in VG March 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Carl Verheyen is a member of that elite (and shrinking) group of musicians known as “session guitarists.” Super-qualified pickers, they’re the hired guns brought in for the most demanding and important recording dates.

They command triple-scale fees, but work in a pressure cooker where time is money, where skillsets call for expertise in blues, jazz, pop, country, rock, and orchestral situations, where producers and composers presume tone, touch, and technique on tap, and where players are routinely expected to one moment sight-read pages with more black than white, and in next deliver an authentic metal-shred vibe.

For more than 25 years, first-call guitarist Verheyen has made his mark as one of L.A.’s most successful studio players. In that time, he has crossed enumerable musical boundaries and amassed an impressive array of credits. His playing graces albums by everyone from the Bee Gees to Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton to Glenn Frey, Cher to Dave Grusin, and Tiffany to Victor Feldman. Moreover, he is heard on the soundtracks of prominent films including The Milagro Beanfield Wars, The Crow, Moscow on the Hudson, Ratatouille, Blow, and Stand and Deliver, as well as iconic TV shows such as “Laverne and Shirley” and “Cheers.”

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Verheyen does not toil in anonymity. Instead, he has chosen the path less traveled but more rewarded – the one pursued by predecessors like Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Howard Roberts, and Steve Lukather. For more than a decade, Carl has maintained a strong global presence as a solo artist, composer, virtuoso guitar player and bandleader, touring internationally with his own group and as a member of Supertramp, which he joined in 1985.

Despite his heavy client load, Verheyen regularly enters the studio to record his own music. Since 1988, he has released a string of solo albums filled with ear-catching guitar moments and memorable compositions. The latest is Trading 8s, a sonic cavalcade that finds him stretching out on his instrument and sharing the limelight with guitar-wielding colleagues like Joe Bonamassa, Steve Morse, Robben Ford, Albert Lee, Rick Vito, and Scott Henderson.

Poised for a European tour, the indefatigable Verheyen recently sat with VG to discuss vintage guitars, his perspectives on tone, and the new album.

What are some of the highlights of your guitar collection?

My heart and soul is in the Fender Stratocaster. My number one live guitar is a ’61 Strat in Sea Foam Green, made of light swamp ash with a rosewood fretboard. I believe it was repainted at the Fender factory in the pre-CBS days; it has a different patina than my other vintage Strats, which are also checking differently. I have a ’58 Strat with a maple board I bought about 15 years ago. I love that one; it’s a fine rock guitar and weighs 7.3 pounds. Seymour Duncan advised me to buy that one. He said it has the best continuous three-pickup sound he ever heard; the pickups are very even and each is a logical progression in tone. I’m very into that; when I go to the rear pickup, I don’t want it to sound like a different guitar. The middle pickup has to have that glassy tone, and the neck pickup has to have that big, fat, warm, woody tone. I also have a ’65 Strat, pre-CBS L-series; it’s a great rhythm guitar with huge low-end reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s tone. I used it a lot on the new record for dirty rhythm and clean picking, and it distorts well, too. I tend to use it in the studio more than the others.

I have a newer Fender Strat I take on the road, and a guitar made by John Suhr with the exact neck of my ’61 Strat, except it’s all maple. It has a set of his noiseless pickups, which give a more modern tone. It’s a great rhythm guitar. I also have a number of offset double-cuts built by Tommy Metz, who has made a new guitar for every European tour I’ve done for the past 10 years, all necks duplicated from my ’58 and ’61 Strats. I keep most of them in Germany to use when I play in Europe.

What made the Strat your main guitar?

I started out playing Gibsons; I had an SG in high school, then a Les Paul, then a 335. I got into the Strat in the late ’70s, when I was playing jazz with Victor Feldman’s band, then with Max Roach a little, and a lot of jazz gigs. I remember driving home from a gig when I heard a Joe Walsh solo on the Eagles’ “Those Shoes.” It was so powerful I had to pull over. After that, I had to reassess rock guitar, because I’d left it in the early Aerosmith days, when I got into jazz – Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and all those guys. But when I heard that Walsh solo, I said “Man, this is the music of my people” (laughs)!

Then I started learning everything I dug, like Chet Atkins. I learned to play classical guitar, country guitar… everything. In the process, the Strat started to appeal for its tonal colors, like the high-end sparkle, which was a new thing to me.

Then I really got into the Strat’s nuances. I was exploring the sounds of all the different combinations; I change pickups about three times per note (laughs)! I’m all over that. Another thing I do is set up my Strat with a floating vibrato so when I pull up on the bar the G string goes up a minor third, my B goes up a whole step, and my high E goes up a half step. It gives me intervals I can depend on, so I can use the bar for melodies, like Jeff Beck. I balance the tension with the claw angle and springs, and put more tension on the bass strings. I dial it in to find that spot where the spring tension gives me the minor third on the G string, and go from there. I don’t care as much about the intervals on the lower three.

Do you experience any tuning issues?

No, it stays in tune really well, even with fairly fresh strings; I use a .009-.046 set, light top, heavier bottom; Thomastik-Infeld makes a Verheyen set. And I put a little Archer lube in the bridge, the nut, even the string trees.

Is there something inherently special about Strat tone?

In my opinion, guitar players who get saturated distortion tones using single-coil pickups always have more character, a more personal sound, like David Gilmour, Eric Johnson, or Stevie Ray Vaughan. They’ve had to jump through more hoops, try harder, and experiment with effects; they’re generally more the “tone guys,” to my ears. But there are plenty of exceptions – Duane Allman, Van Halen, Eric Clapton in the Cream era – but so many the humbucker players sound exactly the same because they’re hitting the front of their amps with a really big signal, making sort of a square wave. Whereas if you have a single-coil, it’s a weaker signal and you have to do something to it – find the right pedal or something.

And how does your amp play into the sound?

I tend to use amps without a master volume, and crank them. I’ll use an attenuator or a Variac and go for that big power-tube distortion, then add a pedal or two – distortion or gain pedal.

Do you use stock Fender pickups in your Strats?

I use everything. In my old Strats, they’re all stock; I buy them for that. But I’ll use my ’97 Strat for pickup experiments. I’ve tried everything – Lindy Fralins, Seymour Duncans, Joe Bardens, and a bunch of others.

What were you playing just before the Strat?

My ’65 ES-335, for the most part.

Was it a difficult transition?

At first, the Strat was harder to chord when I had to stretch because of the difference in fretboard scale. My first custom guitar was made with a Gibson 24¾” scale by Dale Fortune. It was cool, but didn’t sound like the longer 25½” scale. I like to play a Strat through Vox AC30s, and I really need those harmonics and that sparkle.

In the ’80s, I had a few hotrodded Strats with humbuckers, some stunt guitars with Floyd Rose vibratos built by Norik Renson. I used one on The Crow. But since the mid ’80s it’s mostly been a true Strat. In the late ’80s, I abandoned the rack because my ’61 Strat through a blackface Fender Princeton Reverb sounded better than $60,000 worth of rack gear. It’s that marriage of wood – this guitar and that amp. I broke away from the L.A. studio guys at that point, though I still use some of that stuff for movie scores. There are some orchestrators in town who write parts for me to play along with strings for that sound. Then I’ll use a volume pedal and rackmounted delays for the echo and swelling effects; the rack thing does that very well.

How about other Fender guitars?

I have a 1960 Telecaster Custom – sunburst with the bound body. It has a slab-board neck and is a beautiful-sounding guitar. I don’t use it for country; I like it better for “swampy” things… claw-picking, a la Jerry Reed. That and my Tele Thinline are my two best guitars for the semi-crunch sound with slight distortion – maybe paired with a tweed Fender amp, a THD, or even a Marshall.

The Thinline is a 1970 model that weighs nothing – I love lightweight guitars. It has a rosewood fretboard and is a great jazz guitar when it’s got heavier strings. It’s liberating to play; you can fly on the fingerboard. And I love the feel of that body vibrating against my ribs (laughs)!

Do you have any favorite Gibsons?

I’ve got a ’54 Les Paul goldtop with the wrap-around bridge. That’s a secret-weapon guitar. It has a very powerful neck pickup. I use it for solos a lot because it has a sonic girth and cuts through a wall of guitar sounds. On Slang Justice, I played it on the title track and the cover of “Two Trains Running.”

I also have a sunburst ’72 Les Paul Deluxe I bought because it was so light. Someone replaced the mini-humbuckers and routed the body for [humbuckers], so I installed real PAFs from a ES-175. It’s a great little guitar; I use it all the time.

Speaking of the ES-175, you’ve played semi-hollow guitars for decades, right?

Yes, I still have – and love – my sunburst ’58 175. It’s my main jazz guitar, the one I played in the mid ’70s. A lot of my favorite players used them – Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, and Jim Hall. In the early ’70s I got a ’65 ES-335 with a skinny neck. The original trapeze tail had been converted to a stop-tail early on. But what a tone; I can get that exact Clapton “Crossroads” sound out of it!

One of the guitars on the new album is your Gibson korina Flying V.

It’ a ’92 Heritage reissue – very light, with a big baseball-bat neck. I used it a lot on my Take One Step record, like the solos on “Lighthouse” and “Georgia’s Reel.”

And your cherry SG Standard is very cool…

I bought that – it’s a ’66 – from a friend who removed the stock Vibrola and replaced it with a stop tailpiece. It’s lightweight and has great access to the upper register.

Does it have a specific purpose in your arsenal?

I like it for doubling with a Les Paul, playing both on the bridge pickup. For example, on the title track on Take One Step, I wanted a huge lead sound with two guitars. To beef up the chorus, I used tiny amps with them – a Gibson Falcon with the SG in one channel, the Les Paul in the other channel with a tweed Deluxe.

I think about combinations like that. For example, for chordal things my Tele Thinline with a little distortion sounds great mixed with a Rickenbacker 12-string set perfectly clean. I think layering and orchestrating guitars is what’s happening in guitar records these days. Everybody can shred, but now we want to hear combinations of tones.

What other notable electrics do you have?

I have a ’59 Gretsch 6120 with Filter-Trons. That was the perfect year. According to Brian Setzer (VG, September ’05), the 1958 is braced wrong and the 1960 has the wrong pickups… or something like that. When I looked up the serial number and date, I said “Score!” (Supertramp producer) Jack Douglas got me started on a quest for the Gretsch as an alternate or quirky sound in the studio. It took a long time to find the right one; most didn’t feel right or sound right.

My blond ’67 Rickenbacker 360/12 is the Byrds model, with the rounded body. The Byrds’ guitar sound still jumps out of the radio at me; they inspired me as a kid, so I had to have a Rick 12; mine has a skinny neck, but I can get around pretty well on it. I use it for arpeggio parts, mostly worked out on the bottom four strings.

I also have a ’56 Supro Dual-Tone set up for slide. I use heavy-gauge flatwound strings on it, and play with distortion or clean tone for notes and chords. I use mostly open tunings – A and G, E and D  – that’s about my extent of it. If I have to sight-read music, I’ll keep it in standard tuning.

What about amps?

The blackface Princeton is the ground-zero amp for me – a perfect reference point. I have three – 1965, ’66 and ’67; I keep two in my studio room where I do my practicing, listening, playing and teaching. Those are the amps I use to tweak guitars, adjust pickup heights, and to listen to my hands. The Princetons are true to what God has intended electric guitar to sound like. They’re not hyped; they have the perfect frequency with 17 golden watts and the old Oxford and Jensen speakers. I have used them for playing live and recording.

My ’63 Fender Tremolux is an interesting amp. It sounds great at any volume – you can turn it up to 10 and it sounds like Keith Richards, or you can play it at 3, where it’s nice and clean. I’ve matched it to a blackface Band Master 2×12 cabinet modified so it has an open back; the sound bangs around the room better and it’s more efficient. I love those old Oxford speakers.

I also use a 1963 Gibson Falcon. It’s a little 1×12 amp, the Gibson equivalent of the Fender Deluxe. I contend the reverb sounds better on that amp than a Fender. I use it all the time; it’s a honey tone with the 175. You can get a beautiful jazz tone but when you crank it breaks up well. The more you turn it up, the quieter the reverb. I bought it years ago when I was on the road in Toronto for 70 bucks.

Currently I get my definitive clean sound with either two Vox AC30s or two Fender Twin-Reverbs, in stereo. I have many ways of getting right and left clean tone, but the ’63 Vox and ’64 Twin are my favorite. The Twin gives the great, fat low-mid and bottom-end, not a lot of high-end sparkle, and the Vox gives everything else. I go into the Normal channel of the Twin and the Normal channel, not the Top Boost, of the Vox most of the time; it’s a perfect blend and a nice stereo image. For smaller gigs, I’ll use two blackface Princetons, or I could do it with the Tremolux and a Jim Kelly.

What about the Kelly amp?

I was an early Jim Kelly customer; at one point with Supertramp, I took three out on the road. The Kelly FACS is coming from a Fender direction with four 6V6s, very sweet tube sound. It has two channels, one voiced a little grittier than the other; one is like a clean Fender and the other one has a dirt factor. Jim had an attenuator to control power tubes for power-amp distortion. The Kelly was a big part of my early sound with Strats; I used them a lot in the late ’70s. They were one of the first boutique amps.

What’s your preference for distorted amp sounds?

My go-to Verheyen sound is usually the ’61 Strat with a Marshall plexi head or the Dr Z SRZ-65, and various cabinets. And I use pedals for distortion; these days it’s the Landgraff, the Fuchs, and an Italian box called Il Distasore. I’m using the Dr. Z for my main distortion amp; I have two of them. They have a master volume, but turned all the way up it’s out of the circuit, and that’s the way I use them. The template for me is the ’68 Marshall JMP 50-watt plexi. Turning the amp up to 6 gives me just enough distortion to where using a pedal throws it over the top. So it’s a nice power-chord sound without a pedal and, with it, a perfect lead tone. Most pedals these days are so sophisticated that the guitar volume cleans them up nicely. I also have a 1966 JTM-45 with a script logo; that’s a beautiful blues amp. I like to play it with my Gibson guitars; turn it up to 6 or 7 and you’re dialed for that Blues Breaker tone.

I also have a 1969 100-watt Marshall metalface I modified to go through the power amp only; I take a speaker-out into a Hot Plate, then direct out of the Hot Plate into a cabinet. That’s a dry straight-through sound that can be attenuated. Then I can go from the line-out into a Lexicon PCM-41 at line level. From there I go into the power amp of my modified 100-watt Marshall. With a flick of a little switch I’m into the power amp, and that’s my delay side. So I’ve got wet and dry. If on the next song I don’t need as much wet sound, I just walk over and turn down the Marshall a little bit. I don’t have to mess with delay parameters.

Are there certain guitars that work best with the Marshall?

Any Strat through the 50-watt plexi is amazing, with or without a pedal, though I usually use some distortion pedal. If I want to sound like Hendrix, I’ll use the ’65 Strat and the 100-watt. The Les Paul, 335, and Flying V all sound great out of the JTM-45.

Do you have any notable acoustics?

I like Gibson acoustics. John Fogerty turned me on to them. He said, “Martins are nice and sweet for the bluegrass thing, country sounds, and folk strumming. But Gibsons rock!” And he’s right. So I found a ’59 J-50, and I love it. Then I found a ’51 J-50 that was even better. You can really dig on it, and I love the way it sits in a track. I use the J-50 a lot for strummed parts.

I also have a ’36 Gibson L-00, a Robert-Johnson-style guitar with a little body. When I have a lot of acoustics on a track and they want me to play a melody on top of them, that’s the guitar I use. It has its own character and fills a sonic space the others don’t, and it’s great for slide.

But you have more than just Gibson acoustics?

Yes. I use my ’59 Martin D-18 for country stuff and fingerpicking. My ’75 Guild F-50 feels like an L-5; it has a bound neck and an ebony board. It’s a maple guitar – jumbo beyond jumbo – but it isn’t very loud! It has a softer sound.

I also have a couple of Mark Angus steel-strings, made at the Laguna Beach Guitar Shop. Mark makes my signature acoustic guitar, the CV model. He makes four or five of them a year. It’s modeled after a 1920s/’30s Martin with a slotted headstock; it has a small body with a cutaway. The Mark Angus CV has a sound like nothing else, completely unique. I did a solo acoustic record a few years ago, Solo Guitar Improvisations – Eddie Kramer produced a bit of it – and we tried 14 guitars, all my acoustics, borrowed guitars… you name it. In the end, the winning tone was the Angus CV. It’s killer.

A nylon-string I’ve used on countless recordings, movies scores, and the like is a 1980 Ramirez 1A I got in their Madrid showroom. The ’55 Maccaferri G-40 I have is supposed to look like a Django guitar, and it has the Django quality and a primitive, bluesy vibe. It’s good for slide, as well. My other nylon-strings are hand-made Avalons. The Lowden people make them in Ireland, they’re a little thinner and won’t feed back. They’re fantastic guitars. I also have an Avalon D-32; it’s like a Martin D-28. I use it in the studio a lot; it’s a workhorse.

What’s in your live setup?

The clean side of my live rig uses a couple reverbs; a T-Rex Room-Mate pedal and a rack-mount spring reverb by Robert Stamps, a chorus pedal by TC Electronics, and a Lexicon MPX-100, stereo-in/stereo out, which ties the two clean amps together. The distortion side uses a Dr. Z SRZ-65 slaved through my ’69 100-watt Marshall using a THD Hotplate and a Lexicon PCM-41.

I keep five or six amps in Europe; a Dr. Z, two Fender Twins, two Vibro-Kings, and two THDs. When I travel, I take only a pedalboard. I’ve duplicated my L.A. rig for use over there.

What’s in your pedalboard?

It’s an A/B system running stereo clean, mono dirty. I’ve got three distortion pedals on B – the dirty side – a new Landgraff Perfect Distortion, the Il Distasore, and a Voodoo Labs Pro Octavia. I have one distortion box, a Zen Drive, for A (the clean side) in case I want to dirty it up a bit. I also use a new one, the Fuchs Cream pedal.

I’ve got five pedalboards – one for the studio, one for my live A/B switching rig, a little one, one that has specific strange sounds with vintage pedals – all “wiggle” effects like the old CE-1, Phase 90 and Mutron Bi-Phase – and one for the acoustic.

Are you into vintage effects?

I have a ’68 Fender Vibratone that’s definitely guitar-oriented and works different than a Leslie. You don’t mic the front; you mic the sides and the top – that’s where the sound comes out. Once we figured that out, it was a usable tool – a secret weapon, perfect for an alternate sound.

I also have a couple old Fender Reverb units – a ’63 and a ’64. I’m a reverb fanatic, and I initially used them in my live rig, but now I pull them out only for surf parts when they want the real thing.

What’s the story behind the new record.

Well, I wrote a handful of tunes, then thought about guests to play on it. For the country-oriented tune “Country Girl” I picked Albert Lee, and for the slow blues “New Year’s Day” I picked Robben Ford. I thought maybe I’d get Steve Morse for the ballad “On Our Way” with his real lyrical side; I got the lyrical side and the burning side, too. Joe Bonamassa played on the instrumental “Highway 27.” I ran into Rick Vito at my clinic in California Vintage Guitar; I’ve always been a fan of his, so I got him to play slide on “Higher Ground,” which has an extended ending. He played brilliantly. And then I have a version of “Taxman” I’ve done live for the last five or six years; Scott Henderson is on that track. We traded eights, and Joe Bonamassa and I also traded eights. That’s where the title came from. Albert and I traded fours and then eights later. Robben and I traded 12-bar blues solos, and Rick and I traded 12s, too.

Was it recorded in L.A.?

Mostly. Steve Morse did it in his studio in Florida, and Rick Vito played his parts in his studio in Maui. The rest of guys and I recorded together. It was really interesting to hear everybody’s sounds and to find out how they produced them, because I’m meticulous about my sound.

I did my guitar parts at Sunset Sound, to my ears the best-sounding guitar recording studio on the planet – you know, Led Zeppelin IV, Van Halen I and II, The Doors, The Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Richard Thompson… I booked it for a week and did my guitar parts there, a tune or two a day. The basics were done at the Firehouse in Pasadena, which gave a real fat, clean drum sound. Then I went to different studios to get the guest tracks.

Do you pursue specific recording strategies for guitar albums?

When I make a record, I orchestrate the guitars on a given track with the intention of determining who’s going to be the “Frank Sinatra.” What I mean is how Frank’s voice cut through the glorious big-band arrangements on those classic Capitol sessions. As glorious as those big bands and orchestras were, Frank’s voice was even more glorious, above it all. If I put a clean stereo Strat out of two AC30s on a track, and maybe a 12-string acoustic in the middle, and then beef it up with one of my Teles with a little crunch – that’s a wall of sound. What will cut through? You can do it mic’ing techniques – distance mics and close mics – or maybe, if I have Fenders for the basics and there’s a lot of highs and upper mids, I’ll use a humbucker guitar like a 335, Flying V, Les Paul, or an SG to cover the center frequencies.

You must’ve experienced some special musical moments making the album…

Sure! When Joe Bonamassa recorded with me in Studio 1 at Sunset Sound, he walked in with his signature Les Paul and said, “Do you have any Marshalls?” I’d had maybe 30 amps delivered and 10 or 15 cabinets – a candy store (laughs)! So I offered him my favorite Marshall – the ’68 50-watt plexi – but he wanted a 100-watt amp. So he played my ’69 Marshall head and cabinet with a Tube Screamer. I used the Strat, the Fuchs pedal and the Dr Z into another cabinet. When I’m going for a specific sound, I don’t always use a pedalboard; I’ll use just a single pedal like a Fuzz Face. So Joe used a pedal and I used a pedal, and we put a baffle between our two 4×12 cabinets and played. I wanted the bleed of my solo in his mics and visa versa. We did four takes and the last was the one – no fixes. We had jammed a bunch of times before, so there was a friendly competition. We were in and out of the studio in an hour and 15 minutes, including selecting amps and getting sounds.

How about the cover of the Beatles’ “Taxman” with Scott Henderson?

I took the basic tracks to Scott’s home studio. He has an interesting strategy; he records dry with some plug-ins so it sounds good while recording, then re-amps it with a tube Echoplex. That way, he has the option of using as much echo as he wants with a fader. Instead of having a delay plug-in, it adds one more analog tube stage.

And what did you use on the track?

I used a lot of things – the Fender Vibratone set clean, Phase 90s, and other stuff. For my solo it was the Strat, Dr Z, and the Landgraff pedal. Scott played his Suhr, a 100-watt Marshall, and an 808 Tube Screamer. Our sounds are completely different; it was great – his has more saturation and heavier gain. And there was a section where he played electric sitar and we traded.

What did you think of Scott’s playing?

He played so brilliantly! He’s got a more reckless spirit than I do, and he played some insane stuff with that wammy-bar Jeff Beck approach. He warned me to stop him when I thought it was good, and I tried, but he wouldn’t stop (laughs)! He always felt he could do it better.

“On Our Way” with Steve Morse is a pretty ballad.

Yes. On that track, I played my ’65 Strat through my favorite clean-amp combination – a ’64 Twin-Reverb and a ’64 AC30 Top Boost, with a little delay.

But the solo sounds very different…

Well, for the solo, I searched for something interesting, and used the korina V through a blackface Princeton – which is unusual for me. I think of those as clean amps, but when pushed with a humbucker, they break up in a unique way. I started the solo clean, then added an Xotic BB Booster halfway through, to give little bump.

Do you know what Steve used?

I don’t, but I’d guess his Music Man guitar and an Engl amp. I asked him to play a solo and maybe a lower harmony part to my choruses.

And how did he do?

He surprised me; I was expecting his clean sound on a ballad, but he came in with the heaviest distorted crunch early in the tune. At first I didn’t know what he was doing, but after a couple of listenings I said, “Genius!”

What did you use on “Constant As The Wind”?

I cut that with my Suhr Classic and an old English Arbiter Fuzz Face with a Marshall for that real saturated sound. The Suhr noiseless pickups are great with a Fuzz Face because they’re so noiseful (laughs)! That old Fuzz Face is a quirky pedal; it sounds good after about an hour. It needs to be plugged in for a while.

And “Higher Ground” has the Rick Vito slide solo…

Yes. Coincidentally, we both use Supro Dual Tone guitars for slide. They’re great for that – big baseball-bat necks setup with a high nut. He used a Supro amp, too, and I played my ’72 Les Paul, somewhat clean.

And on “New Year’s Day” we hear a Strat, correct?

Yes, my ’58. I love the sound it gets with my ’66 JTM-45 and my ’68 plexi – not distorted, but clean, in stereo. It’s a really warm Strat tone, almost like a hollowbody jazz guitar. I also used just a little delay, like the Lexicon MP-100, to image. I like darker analog delay sounds with less sizzle for distortion, and a brighter pinging digital sound for clean tone. It adds sparkle to the high-end. “New Year’s Day” is a blues in B minor and I did the solo with my ’61 Strat, a pedal and the Dr Z, my fat Strat tone.

Robben Ford guested on the track.

He played a ’68 ES-335 through his Dumble, no pedal, with just a close mic. Those amps have a Master Volume. I’m not a master-volume guy, so the two sounds are quite different. I took my tracks to a studio near Robben’s place, and what was so cool is how he reacted to my parts – the trading and the hand-off between phrases are so musical. I love his touch and the subtlety of the tail-end of his bends. I play a couple of choruses, he plays a couple, then a vocal verse, then we trade eights on the I-chord at the end.

Did you record it in one take?

He listened once, played one for pacing, then took it from the top – recorded the whole thing, didn’t punch a note. It’s an amazing tribute to his ability to play the blues.

How about the acoustic piece, “Henry’s Farm”?

I expanded that piece for the band at the suggestion of (bassist) Dave Marotta. I orchestrated it for bass and percussion, played the acoustic part, then played a clean Mark-Knopfler-sound Strat part on top of it. It’s one of my favorite things on the album. I decided to write a second part that features Jim Cox, one of my favorite keyboard players. We recorded it at the Firehouse, where they have a great big Bosendorfer grand piano. I asked Jim to be a cross between Keith Jarrett and Bruce Hornsby; I played a Strat and traded guitar/piano with him. He did a bunch of takes and each was better than the last, absolutely brilliant.

It’s a really nice track.

I love it, thanks. And it’s funny, because at first I thought it was going to be filler.

Albert Lee helped on “Country Girl.”

We did that in Studio 3 at Sunset Sound, which is a glorious guitar room with great old analog gear. Albert had just come back from Europe and brought a Music Man 1×12 combo from the ’70s. He likes to play his Music Man Albert Lee model through a rack-mount Korg A-1, which has a very subtle flange effect. That’s his thing. Albert has a B-bender, so he did some neat chordal bends. I used my ’60 Tele Custom with a THD Flexi-50 head, which gives a nasty, growling Tele sound, just slightly overdriven. I did it intentionally, thinking a contrast would be cool because Albert never uses overdrive or distortion, yet I found it hard to make the two sounds work together. At first they sounded too much like they were recorded in different studios, which they were. So we had to re-amp and put them in the same room.

Any interesting memories about the last song, “Eastern Steppes”?

It was written while I was between cues at the Star Trek movie date. I was plugged into some rack gear I have for film scores and hooked up headphones so I could practice. So I wrote it while getting paid for the movie date (laughs)! The next day, I layered it with some backward guitar. I wrote it to give the band somewhere to go live, a real open improvisational area in the set that can be different every night. It can be a shuffle, or it can go into ⁶/8, straight eights, anything…

So what did you take away from the process of making the album?

In retrospect, it was a great learning experience – an opportunity to peer into the methodology of some of my favorite players and watch how they put it together.

This article originally appeared in VG August 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.