Guitarist/producer Jerry Kennedy, recipient of four Grammy awards, is proud of his three sons, all of whom are accomplished musicians and songwriters.

The Nashville veteran’s oldest, Gordon, is a Grammy-winning songwriter (Song of the Year for co-writing Eric Clapton’s “Change the World”) and a Grammy-winning guitarist (he was the other guitar player on Peter Frampton’s Fingerprints). Middle son Bryan has toured with and written hits for Garth Brooks.

A song written by youngest son Shelby (“I’m A Survivor”) is the theme for Reba McIntire’s television show, and he works as the Director of Writer/Publisher Relations in the Nashville offices of BMI.

However, Gordon is the family gearhound, and thus caretaker of the bulk of his father’s instruments, as well as an avid collector himself. Both reside in the Nashville area.

Jerry Kennedy is originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, and his first steps to playing an instrument followed familiar footsteps.

“My folks got me a Silvertone guitar when I was eight or nine,” he said. “I’d been beating on broomsticks and other things before then.” He took lessons from local legend Tillman Franks, and later got a small Martin acoustic. He attended “Louisiana Hayride” shows at the legendary Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, and recalls Hank Williams’ last performance there (“I was a kid sittin’ on the front row”). He also has a unique recollection about one of Elvis Presley’s performances at that venue.

“Me and a friend went to see the show,” he recounted. “But we got mad at all of the girls screamin’, because we couldn’t hear Scotty (Moore) when Elvis was doin’ his shakin’. It upset us that we couldn’t hear the guitar.”

When he was 11 years old, Kennedy signed with RCA, and recorded singles that included Chet Atkins on some sessions.

“I did two sides in Dallas and four sides in Nashville, and Chet was the leader on the Nashville sessions. I was just a kid, and it was very intimidating; he was my idol at the time and I’d listened to as much of his stuff as I could get my hands on.”

In the mid ’50s, Kennedy also got his first electric guitar, a Fender Telecaster. By the age of 18, he was in the “Hayride” house band. Later, he went on the road with Johnny Horton and acquired a ’58 Les Paul Standard.

“When I was playing dances with Horton, that guitar was too heavy,” he remarked. “Billy Sanford, another picker from Shreveport, had a Stratocaster that was a lot lighter, so I swapped with him and moved to Nashville in March of 1961. Shelby Singleton talked me into coming here to record, and after I got here I realized I had the wrong kind of guitar for the kind of music he was doing. So I went to Hewgley’s Music and traded that Strat for a (Gibson ES-) 335.”

That ’61 335 is something of an icon – Kennedy played it while recording the guitar parts on Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” Elvis Presley’s “Good Luck Charm,” Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” and Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde album, and countless other songs and albums. Furthermore, Gordon Kennedy has used the guitar on sessions with Jewel, Garth Brooks, Frampton, SheDaisy, and others. It’s now on display at the Musician’s Hall of Fame in downtown Nashville.

Jerry detailed that the unusual-looking gizmo on the guitar is a palm pedal built by Dean Porter and installed circa 1963.

“He built one for me and one for Grady Martin,” he recalled. “That’s the only two I know of. It was something different; a crazy idea, but I said ‘Let’s go for it.’”

He also recalled using an Ampeg amplifier on “Pretty Woman,” which he described as “…one of the warmest-sounding amps I’ve ever used. After that, a Fender Twin owned by the studio became my favorite. If I’d been the wrong kind of guy, I would have eased out the back door with it! But I always looked forward to playing it, and since then I’ve pretty much stayed with Fenders.”

Kennedy acquired other requisite instruments for studio musicians of the era, including a Dobro (heard on “Harper Valley PTA,” “Engine #9,” and other hits), which he and legendary producer Harold Bradley bought in the mid ’60s, and a Danelectro six-string bass guitar he played on sessions by Ray Price and Brenda Lee and more notably on “Ahab the Arab” by Ray Stevens. “We loosened the pickup on it to where it was kinda touchin’ the strings to get that sound,” he noted. Bradley is also cited by Kennedy as the creator of the fabled Nashville “tick-tack” sound, achieved by doubling a Danelectro six-string bass guitar with an upright bass.

He later acquired a ’62 Sobrinos De Domingo Esteo flamenco guitar that Roy Orbison brought back from Spain, and there’s a Gibson ES-175 given to him by Howard Roberts.

In 1966, Jerry became the Vice-President of Mercury Records’ Nashville division, succeeding Singleton. The shift to the producer’s chair had begun in ’62, when Singleton asked Jerry to produce a Rex Allen session. He gradually got more into production rather than session work, and a list of recording artists with whom he’s worked is too long to be printed here; the perception would be that a list of artists with whom he hasn’t worked would be shorter. His extensive work with Jerry Lee Lewis and the Statler Brothers is noteworthy, and he even produced the Statlers’ hilarious comedy material in the ’70s, when they lampooned small-town country bands under the pseudonym Lester “Roadhog” Moran & His Cadillac Cowboys.

“That was Lew Dewitt on guitar,” Kennedy recalled with a laugh. “I don’t remember what he played, but it sounds awful. And it was awesome that they could sing off-key. It took a lot of talent to sing like that, and for Lew to play like that, although we’ve all tried to live that project down all these years. Somebody told me that album was on every bus leaving Nashville back when it was released – a must for the bus. It’s good to know that people still remember Roadhog. We’re proud of it, but we wouldn’t want to do it again.”

The career move to producer didn’t stop Kennedy from garnering new instruments that provided new sounds, including a ’67 Coral Electric Sitar, and he got a Martin acoustic in the early ’70s from Hank Williams, Jr., with Bradley as go-between. He also toured on occasion with selected artists throughout the ensuing decades.

Jerry now considers himself retired, and takes a lot of pride in the accomplishments of his sons.

“All three are great songwriters,” he summarized. They’ve all written songs that meant something. I’m prouder of those three boys than anything I ever did.”

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As the first-born child of a Nashville veteran, Gordon Kennedy recalls seeing guitars and amplifiers around his childhood home “since I can remember. We had a piano and a juke box when we lived in Goodletsville, and the juke box was stuffed with 45s that my father was involved with, as either a player or producer. The earliest things I can remember that he produced was some of Roger Miller’s stuff.

“When I tried to break into the studio scene here, there were a couple of people, like Harold Bradley and Chip Young, who showed me the ropes; Jerry Reed, too. Besides my father, guys like that were the ones who pulled me aside and said things like, ‘Let me show you how to do this.’ And Chip would show me how to make my strings last longer – little tricks of the trade. They were willing to pass things along to me instead of looking at me like I was a new kid. Every time I met Chet Atkins, he always had something kind and sweet to say about my dad.”

While Gordon had access to his father’s instruments at an early age, he recalls owning the ubiquitous Harmony acoustic guitar. “But when I started to get serious about guitar, my dad could see what was coming,” he said. “So he got me a Fender Telecaster for Christmas when I was 15, and I still use it. Along with his 335, I’ve probably used those two guitars on 80 percent of the recordings I’ve played on.”

Two months after he got the Tele, he got his first gig, playing in a band with Jerry Reed’s daughter at a school talent show. The set list consisted of the Pointer Sisters’ “Yes We Can Can,” Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’,” and the Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music.” And Jerry Reed helped Gordon adjust his amp for the gig – by turning it up!

“I never really wanted to play in Top 40 bands,” Gordon said. “But Dann Huff, who’s now a top producer in Nashville and L.A., his brother David, and I had a band in high school, and we played everything from McCartney to Bachman-Turner Overdrive to Brothers Johnson to Barry Manilow; we were all over the map. And even back then we picked things to play because they were great songs, not because of a certain guitar part.”

The younger Kennedy came to public notice in a contemporary Christian band called Whiteheart.

“The third band I ever played in had David Huff on drums again, and Larry Stewart and David Ennis, who would join Restless Heart,” he said. “And after that band, I moved over to Whiteheart. I joined to fill in for Dann (Huff) for three shows, and was with them for six years. I think there were some Dove-award nominations along the way, but we lost to Petra every year!”

“Change the World” was co-written by Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick and Tommy Sims. Performed by Clapton for the movie Phenomenon, the song had phenomenal chart success in its own right a decade ago.

“It holds the record for being in the Top 20 for 81 straight weeks, starting in the summer of ’96,” Kennedy enthused. “And I think it was in the top spot for 17 weeks. The other day, I decided to buy some different versions of that song, and I think I downloaded – legally, mind you – 23 versions of it.”

As for his use of guitars for songwriting, Gordon noted “Three-fourths of the time, for me it involves an acoustic guitar to start a song. Sometimes I’ll fool myself into thinking I’m practicing on electric, and I’ll just be riffing, but I’ll hear something, then I’ll record it so it may end up in a song.

“I have some gourmet guitars I like to play just because they feel so good – Lowden, Avalon, Langejans – and there are certain acoustics I like better live because of their pickup system. Lately, I’ve been playing the Frampton model Martin, and I have a Clapton Martin I got when all of the action on the song was going on. I also like writing on my ’59 Gibson J-45.”

As for his guitar-collecting propensity, Gordon noted, “To me, ‘collecting’ is sort of a loose term because I use those instruments. It just so happens that some of the things I enjoy using the most are among the most soughtafter instruments around.”

Gordon began his education about the importance of classic instruments while he was still in high school.

“There was a guitar in a closet at home; it looked like my Telecaster and didn’t have a case,” he recalled. “I checked it out; it was an Esquire. I started playing it, and that’s what made me notice the difference between something made in the ’70s and something made in the ’50s. Then I’d compare guitars at local music stores to my dad’s ’61 ES-335. But not every ’59 Strat you pick up is gonna be a great guitar; you still have to compare.”

Kennedy’s comparison shopping credo is exemplified by the story of his purchase of a ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard that was formerly owned by John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful. He examined a total of five late-’50s Bursts at one retailer.

“The Sebastian Les Paul sounded the best, out of the case,” he recounted. “The other four – two ’58s and two ’59s – were in new condition, and had these stories about people playing them for 30 minutes then storing them. But the Sebastian guitar sounded great plugged in, and when I heard it through a little blackface (Fender) Deluxe Reverb, it was over. The other four weren’t even close. So they’re not always the same just because of a serial number or because they’ve got P.A.F. pickups.”

In 1999, a cousin in Shreveport served as the inspiration for his acquisition of a ’54 Les Paul similar to the one the cousin owned decades before. Kennedy bought the Les Paul, nine other guitars, and 11 amplifiers from a seller in Norfolk, Nebraska, and he and a friend drove a cargo van to pick up the cache.

“It took 15 hours to drive there, and 16 hours comin’ back,” he chuckled. “The three best guitars in the bunch were the goldtop, a ’61 Telecaster, and a ’59 Strat with ‘November’ stenciled in it; I was born in November of 1959. There were some great amps in there, as well. I felt this (transaction) was meant to be; I stayed in touch with (the sellers) afterwards and let them know what records I was using certain guitars on.”

Gordon has used the goldtop on “Austin City Limits” backing Garth Brooks, and on session work with Faith Hill and SheDaisy, among others. He also owns a ’62 SG/Les Paul Standard with a sideways vibrato that he uses on occasion, but admits, “It’s hard to gravitate toward that one with Sebastian’s Les Paul sitting nearby. Also, an SG is a little awkward for me; it just has a different feel.”

The aforementioned “closet Esquire” is a ’57 that Jerry Kennedy bought from Harold Bradley for $35 in the ’60s, and Gordon used it on “Float” on Frampton’s Fingerprints album. His 1960 Gretsch 6120 was a gift from Garth Brooks, and he has used it on television shows with Brooks.

The younger Kennedy acquired a ’59 Fender Precision Bass from Jerry Reed. “He called one day and asked me to sell it,” Gordon recalled. “I asked him to get me the (serial) number off of the neck plate. I called him back 20 minutes later and said ‘Jerry, I ain’t sellin’ this bass for you. I’m buyin’ it!’ I wanted it because it was his bass, and again, I was born in ’59. He fought me for a while, with a sense of humor. About a month later, after he and I had been doing some producing together, he said, ‘I need to settle up with you, so would you be willin’ to take that bass?’ So he gave it to me. I’ve got two other basses – a newer Höfner that Leland Sklar hand-picked for me, and an early-’90s Rickenbacker.”

Gordon also has an assemblage of classic amplifiers. “These days, the ’59 tweed (Fender) Twin is rockin’ my world. To me, it’s what everything else wants to be when it grows up! It’s spectacular.”

His appreciation for historically-important instruments besides his father’s ES-335 began several years ago, while on tour with a triple bill of Frampton, Styx, and Nelson, where he played, onstage, the Telecaster Joe Walsh used on the James Gang’s “Funk #49.”

These days, Gordon is more focused on songwriting than concerts and touring, and has a new home studio to handle.

“My publishing company is beatin’ my door down, yellin’ ‘Where’s our songs?’,” he chuckled. “I’ve got a quota to hand in, and my studio’s up and running. Of the first four songs I did, one already has a hold placed on it.

“But Peter and I will be working together every chance we get,” he summarized. “I also wrote with Lynyrd Skynyrd a week ago, so I’m staying busy.”

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Special thanks to Peter Frampton and Lisa Jenkins.

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This article originally appeared in VG‘s October 2007 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Despite prevailing trends and “industry wisdom” – an oxymoron Pete Anderson has disproved several times over – the 20-year association of this guitarist/producer/label-head and country star Dwight Yoakam has been one of the most fruitful in country music history.

Based in Los Angeles instead of Nashville, with a guitarist doubling as producer, using their seasoned bar band instead of session musicians, and daring to actually play rootsy country music (even proudly calling it “hillbilly music”) instead of some homogenized substitute, Yoakam and company reached #3 on Billboard‘s country chart in 1986 with a kick-ass remake of Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man” – which had created a buzz as part of their self-released EP before signing with Warner/Reprise. The first two Yoakam albums yielded six Top 10 country hits, and the boys were mainstays on the rock circuit long before the third release, Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room, scored two #1 country singles.

The term “neo-traditionalist” was often applied to Yoakam, often in the same reviews that credited him with pushing the envelope of country music. Deftly making sense of this seeming incongruity was Anderson, in the control room and on the Telecaster. His arrangements and solos refused to settle into a comfortable rut, preferring to take chances and explore new sounds. The best of the pair’s Reprise output (spanning 15 albums), is compiled on Rhino’s four-CD box, Reprise Please Baby: The Warner Bros. Years – from the Bakersfield shuffle of “Little Ways” (featuring an Anderson baritone solo) to the ethereal “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere” (with Pete’s slide recalling Duane Allman).

Anderson became an in-demand producer, working with Michelle Shocked, Rosie Flores, the Meat Puppets, and k.d. lang and Roy Orbison. In 1993, he founded Little Dog Records, and released his eclectic solo debut, Working Class (with the ad campaign, “It ain’t country, Homer!”), in ’94. He followed with 1997’s Dogs In Heaven and a live CD, and was mixing a new solo CD, tentatively titled Daredevil, at press time.

In 2003, he helmed Yoakam’s Population: Me but didn’t tour with the singer for the first time in many years. Having co-produced the compilation A Town South of Bakersfield album and its sequel (Another Town South of Bakersfield), he showcased another fine crop of unsigned country talent on Little Dog’s A Country West of Nashville and was spotted gigging with new signee Moot Davis, who just might become the next Dwight Yoakam.

Vintage Guitar:You’re working on another solo CD?
Pete Anderson: I was asked to do some instrumental cues for CMT – 45 seconds or a minute each, for shows like “Rockin’ Country,” “Gig Bag,” “The Morning Show.” I played all the instruments, and when I went back and reviewed the cues, there were 10 that I decided to make into songs.

I know some people would like me to make a country record with a lot of fast picking, but that’s not what I do; I’m of the Steve Cropper/James Burton, economical school. Compositions interest me more than guitaristic exercises. I consider myself a musician first, rather than a guitarist. I learned a long time ago, when I first started recording with Dwight, that I was going to subjugate what I did to make the songs better.

The hook seems paramount in your mind…
Always. I’m going to get eight bars, or 16, in a song to play something, and the watermark is [Amos Garrett’s solo on] “Midnight At The Oasis.” But what happens prior to and post is equally important, because it has to be subservient to the song. I’ll do it on the acoustic guitar, on the electric, the rhythm, up-chunka-chunks, whatever.

None of that is random in my mind; it’s all purposely patterned out to contribute to some texture of the song. Should it be tuned down to D; should it be a six-string; should it be with soapbars? It’s not about Pete; it’s about the song. In most cases I’m almost making the painting. Dwight will give me an outline, and I have to choose the colors.

Who were your earliest influences?
In retrospect, my earliest influence, unbeknownst to me, had to be Scotty Moore and also the guy who played with Bill Haley, because that music attracted me to the guitar. Who was the Italian guy with Bill Haley (hums Danny Cedrone’s solo on “Rock Around the Clock”)? What a player! Just the coolest ever. Nobody can play like that.

Those guys got me into guitar, but then I got into Dylan as a folk singer, and the folk guys like Dave Van Ronk and Koerner, Ray & Glover, Tom Rush. My buddies and I had a jug band. I played harmonica on a rack and had a brand-new ’65 Gibson LG-1. I drilled an extra hole in it and put a seventh string on it, doubling up the A string, because Spider John Koerner had a nine-string Stella. We played a coffee house on Detroit’s West Side, and I saw Paul Butterfield play there in early ’66, with Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop.

When you got into playing country, did you still draw on your blues influences?
All the time. My right-hand technique was an extension of that, because when I started playing, I used my fingers. I had to learn to use a pick. Then I got into country and learned the hybrid picking technique, and I would palm my pick sometimes and go back to my blues-type fingerpicking to get different sounds – the downstroke, the upstroke, the pluck, the pop.
Growing up in Detroit, I sort of realized that if you learned to play blues really well, you could play anything – meaning that to be a good blues player, you’ve got to have good feel. And Muddy’s stuff is symphonic. That stuff was played that way every time; it wasn’t a jam. It wasn’t like these drummers you want to shoot, who go, “It’s just a shuffle.” There’s no “just a shuffle.” This one’s called “Trouble No More” – learn it!

When I later started playing country bars, I was still playing blues pretty much – minor pents. To get by, I chicken-picked, but a la Hubert Sumlin on Howlin’ Wolf records. I applied blues knowledge, and then mentally slid the minor pentatonics into major pentatonics and back-doored it, a la Jesse Ed Davis. He was pretty much the first guy who I thought was playing cool steel licks. I mean, you’re listening to Taj Mahal and one day he does “Six Days on the Road,” with Jesse Ed on guitar (Giant Step). That was definitely a turning point.

With Dwight, on Guitars, Cadillacs…, I played something that was a little more me, and I made a conscious effort to not go down the road of (in order of my favorites) Ray Flacke, Albert Lee, Vince Gill, and five other guys who were playing like Albert Lee. I would have just been in their wake. So I remember specifically thinking, “What would Freddie King do?” I was channeling all that “Hide Away” kind of stuff.

When you moved to Arizona, did your musical tastes change?
I went back and forth to Phoenix each winter from ’68 to ’72, and I was just bombarded by country music. I was a Dylan fan, so that led me to the Band. And I was into the Byrds, and that led to the Burrito Brothers.

When I moved to L.A., by ’79 I joined a group called Rick Tucker & the Good-Time Band, with Pete Gavin, who was the drummer with Head, Hands & Feet. We worked constantly, especially after Urban Cowboy hit. So my playing just leaped, and I really formed a style.

It’s ironic that you had this on-the-job training thanks, in part, to the Urban Cowboy explosion, because when you and Dwight hit the scene, you were flying in the face of that whole trend.
We were coming out of the post-Urban explosion. As it was dying, the Hollywood cowpunk scene was emerging. We were just trying to play ****hole clubs in the Valley and make 30 bucks each, and somebody said, “Hey, you should play the Lingerie and Madam Wong’s and all these cool rock clubs.” So we went and saw them, and all these bands were really bad, trying to play country music, bless their hearts. We said, “Let’s get in on this scene.”

So we got sharkskin jackets and tight pants, and went down there and just hurt people. Because we could really play. You can imagine a bunch of guys 25-and-under who had been in punk bands and now wanted to learn George Jones. God bless ’em, but they were pretty horrible. The band was me, Dwight, Jeff Donavan, J.D. Foster, and Brantley Kearns [the Babylonian Cowboys] – it was pretty overpowering. Before the first record, we were already doing “I Sang Dixie,” “I’ll Be Gone,” “It Won’t Hurt.”
We didn’t make a dime, but we’d get press because we’d open for Maria McKee and Lone Justice, and everybody came down to see her. They’d go, “Who the hell are these guys?”

How aware were you that you were bucking everything that was country radio and Nashville?
We were so naive of Nashville and the radio and Billboard and how it worked, it didn’t even cross our minds. Dwight was still thinking, “Maybe we can get a record deal.” We were too stupid to know that people from Nashville didn’t even come out to L.A. We did get an offer from IRS. Miles Copeland came and saw us at the Palomino, and told Dwight, “I think we can do something, and maybe my brother can help you produce the record.” The drummer guy [Stewart Copeland of the Police], right? Dwight and I looked at each other and said, “We don’t think so.”

We had a young manager, Sherman Halsey, and I’d talked to some friends and told him, “Here’s what you need to do: say $100,000, complete creative control, and 12 points.” They’d just kind of rolled their eyes. I told Dwight, “This is a punk scene, and all these kids are cowpunk this and that, but when all the smoke clears, you’re a country artist. You’ve got longevity. You’re going to need to be on a country label.” If we’d been on IRS, they might have made a record or two; we never would have gotten on country radio. We just got lucky because Warner was in Nashville, and they were artist-friendly.

Once you got signed, was the creative control ever a sticking point?
No. I was old enough to know that if those things I told Sherman didn’t happen, we were not going to have success. I was looking out for the longevity of the career. Because when I met Dwight, he had 21 great songs. I specifically said, “Let’s put seven songs on each record and do three covers. Now you’ve got three albums’ worth of material. Let’s not put ‘I Sang Dixie’ on the first record, because you’re probably not going to have a #1 on the first record. Let’s knock down some doors.” So we saved “I Sang Dixie” for the third record, and it was our first legitimate #1 Billboard hit.

We had a meeting with Jim Halsey, Sherman’s father, because the Blasters offered to have us open on their tour. We asked Jim if he could get us the money to fly to New York. He said, “Well, what about the record?” I said, “Listen, you should call everyone that you’ve pitched this record to and ask them to send it back, and then do not call anyone. If you allow us to do these gigs, the press alone – all you’re going to have to do is pick up the phone.” He thought for a moment and told Sherman, “Call and get the records back.” He was cool, and would roll the dice.

We went to New York and The Village Voice was beating on our door right after our set.

After the first Dwight album or two, you must have started hearing records where the guitar players weren’t playing like James Burton or Albert Lee, but were playing like you.
People pointed that out to me, and I didn’t really notice it, to be honest. I remember going to Nashville, and who do I meet, but Bruce Bowden and Ray Flacke. They were going, “Do you know what you did?” What? “The guitar in Guitars, Cadillacs… Do you know what you did?” No. “You don’t have any chorus on it. And you’re not using a Stratocaster.”
The only time I was aware of it was on Radney Foster’s album, Del Rio, Texas. I remember listening to some song off there that was a video, and thinking, “Did I play on that?” For whatever reasons, the guitar player wasn’t playing my licks, but he was playing what I would have played.

You play especially economically and hook-oriented on A Country West of Nashville.
On Dwight’s records I’m expected to do a certain thing. I’m not saying that negatively; I’ve got a wide latitude. But I just play differently with different people and try to be sensitive to the situation. In the case of the compilation, I think the first rule of producing is that you shouldn’t have any preconceived rules or ideas; you just want to wrap the present as best you can. I had all these different artists, and I just wanted to play exactly what was necessary to fit the song.

Will you make more records and tour with Dwight again, down the road?
I would think that it’s probably over. From my perspective, I’m very proud of Population:Me, but after the box set would have been a good time to say, “We’ve had a hell of a run; look what we’ve done. God bless you.” Once I looked back on it, I went, “Wow! I’m very proud of our legacy.” Every record has one or two songs that I hate, but the ones I like… I mean, I was on tour in 2002, 54 years old, standing onstage playing “I Sang Dixie,” and it does not embarrass me. It’s like being in Muddy’s band; I would never be embarrassed. It’s still relevant; it’s not like I’ve got to put makeup on.

But I don’t know what more I can bring to the party. Obviously, there are things I can bring to the party, but everyone has to grow to do that.

What made you start your own label?
Little Dog started around ’93, with Anthony Crawford. I thought, “This will be easy. I’m Pete Anderson, multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning producer. I can talk to the head of every company in the world. I’ll get this guy a deal in a minute.”

Wrong. They played me bad music, and I was just like, “Screw these people. I know I’m on the wrong side of the desk.” When I started doing this, I walked into the room like a guitar player. These guys had a desk and a nice car and expensive shoes, and they made money. I figured they knew more than me. Then, after they played me some godawful crap, I figured they couldn’t write poetry, they didn’t study literature, they didn’t have a record collection, and they couldn’t play an instrument to save their lives. Most of them knew less than people who didn’t do that, because at least they were music fans; these guys were music snobs. I said, “I’m going to start my own label.”

Since you started Little Dog, major labels have experienced a huge drop-off, and the Internet has changed everything.
Major corporations bought into the entertainment business in the ’60s. If you think back, record companies were owned by musicians – producers, songwriters, whatever. There were basically no corporate guys running record companies in ’59, ’60 to ’65, ’66. Babyboomers came in with disposable funds, and when I was a teenager I could buy beer, go to a movie, or buy a record; there weren’t a lot of other options. So my disposable money went to entertainment.

And that’s when bottom-line people, corporations that buy “things” bought into entertainment. And it’s taken 30 years for them to destroy it.
The first guy to blink was Seagram’s buying MCA and then buying Polygram. One day, they looked at their ledger sheet and said, “Our stock has fallen; what are we doing here? Why are we in entertainment? Sell it.” They sold Polygram for $10 billion.

That was Day One – and it’s not going to stop. It will continue until every record company is probably music-person-owned. Epitath and Sugar Hill/Vanguard will be considered large record companies in the future, because they’re privately owned.

So this is a good thing.
It’s an excellent thing. I’m excited. It’s better for me every day. My company is growing very slowly, but consistently. But with everything collapsing around it, it looks like I’m on a skyrocket here – because I’m dealing in reality and these other people aren’t. And anybody who’s like, “Oh, the business ebbs and flows… Dude, there’s only ebb; it will never be flow, because you cracked the dike over the Internet. We communicate; we can hear music; we can talk. I get orders from all over the world. And you know how you use your computer… If I need the words to a song, I go online. I heard about this hot guitar player, Jimmy Herring. “Who is that guy?” Go on the computer. Most of my time and energy is spent creating my infrastructure on the web.

When I picked up the guitar and my romance and love affair with the instrument started, it didn’t have a dollar sign attached to it. I have to play the guitar; I love to play the guitar; and I feel fortunate that I’ve made money by playing the guitar. I get to do all this and have fun every day? I win!

The stereotype is that artists don’t have any business sense.
Well, if you have above-average intelligence, are not overly self-centered, not a drug addict or an alcoholic, you learn. I mean, how did you learn not to touch the stove? Your mom told you not to touch the stove, so you touched the ****ing stove! Some people keep touching the damn thing; I didn’t.

But it wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t easy. I was just wandering through life. But I just got on the guitar and have flown around the world with it. I’ve been fortunate and lucky, but I had to learn a lot of stuff.

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Dog toys

Pete Anderson’s (Signal) Chain

In the early days with Dwight Yoakam, Pete Anderson’s trademark guitar was a sunburst ’59 Telecaster Custom (with binding, rosewood board, and stock pickups). For the slide work on songs like “Takes a Lot To Rock You” and “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,” he played a ’59 hard-tail Strat, using a Mighty Mite brass slide on the former and a slide made of titanium on the latter. “It’s the hardest metal ever, so it’s real fast,” he says.

He later built a guitar specifically dedicated for slide, which he dubbed the “Muddycaster.”

“I wanted the action high, heavy strings, big neck – using the lap steel idea of taking a powerful pickup and putting it as far back to the bridge, completely disregarding where the harmonics are on the strings. So I put a Seymour Duncan humbucker on it. It was right around that time the Muddy Waters postage stamp came out, so I got out my woodburning kit and burned a frame and put the stamp on there with the dates of his birth and death, and I put a little sun over Muddy – like, ‘The sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday.’ Then I put a Hipshot tuner on, but reconfigured it so I could drop the high E instead of the low E, to switch to Muddy’s tuning (open G) on the top four strings.”

These days, Pete’s main guitar is a Tom Anderson Hollow T Classic.
“His craftsmanship is incredible. I ended up getting one of his tremolo Teles with a middle pickup, so I could play all my country stuff on the Tele; switch to the middle pickup and get all my Strat sounds – when I use a Stratocaster, I only use the middle pickup – and then do all my whammy stuff. The last piece of the puzzle was when DiMarzio came out with their vintage Tele pickup with no hum.”

Pete’s main acoustics have been a Martin HD-28 or a Larrivee, but recently he’s been working with Robbie Brown, of Legend, designing “…the ultimate Pete Anderson acoustic guitar,” which is going to be called the Delta Bomber. “It’s like an OM, with a bigger butt and a narrower waist. I’m very excited about it.”

The story of Pete’s succession of amps includes many tales of the mods he had done, and who did them.

“By the time I got to Dwight, my main amp was a blackface Deluxe with an Electro-Voice speaker, 6L6 Groove Tubes, and a solidstate rectifier. I was using a Goodrich volume pedal and an old tube Echoplex in the effects loop. When we began playing bigger places, I started making the Deluxes as powerful as possible, and I ended up with two of them. I had them maxed-out, power-wise, with an EV in each, and with two of them, I had a wet cab/dry cab setup with spring reverb in both cabinets and a link that would start the tremolo and make them identical when I used it. On the left side, I had the Echoplex and a Boss Chorus Ensemble, on the completely slowest mode, which I’d sometimes use for steel licks.

“Only one guy modified that amp, and his name is Jim Williams. He told me that Deluxes had a middle control, but it was a value that Fender shorted-out on the chasis where they didn’t use a knob. It’s like a preset middle control that helps shape the amp. He said, ‘What I do is take this middle control value and put it on 10, because it’s on 3 or 4.’ I asked him to do that, because I think the guitars live in midrange. Once Jim gave me this middle control, I put the treble on 5, the bass on 21/2 or 3, reverb on 21/2, and the volume somewhere between 31/2 and 51/2. After 5 or 6, the Deluxe just flattens out and keeps compressing. That was the sweet spot on the amp.

“The next step was to increase the power. So I got the biggest transformer that would power a two-tube amp, and it scoped to maybe 60 watts.

“I have no idea what Cesar Diaz did to Stevie Ray’s amps, but I know I figured out a long time ago that my personal sound came from preamp distortion. I didn’t want power amp distortion or tube distortion or speaker distortion. Hence, 6L6s versus 6V6s, an EV versus a Jensen, and the biggest transformer I could get. That goes back to the days of me playing bars and trying to imitate a steel guitar. I figured out that steel guitar amps really don’t distort; they’re clean as all get-out, but the pickups are really powerful. The pickups hit the front end of the amp really hot, and if there’s any distortion or grind, it comes from preamp distortion – the preamp getting hit hard. That’s what I was going for.

“So I asked Jim why a Twin didn’t sound like a big Deluxe. He explained that the bright switch values were wrong. Deluxes had bright switches, but they were shorted-out on the chasis; they didn’t really have a switch, but there was a value in there creating whatever the sound was. So he changed the value of the bright switch on a blackface Twin, so that when you pushed it down it was the value of the shorted-out ‘bright switch’ that’s in the Deluxe that you don’t know about, and when I pushed it up it was the bright switch of a Super.

“I used the Twin for a while, but I lost my wet/dry cab gag. Then Bob Bradshaw created this reamplification thing, where you reamplify your effects. I talked to him about how I could get my wet/dry cab thing, and he built this switching system and a dummy load thing, so you could have various amp heads and switch between them, and have two cabinets onstage. So I’d reamplify the effects through a power amp and send them to the wet cab, which would mix the effects in with the sound of the amplifier, reamplified, and then the dry cab would have the original amp in it, and I would use various amp heads. I had a Matchless 80-watt head that I used on ‘A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,’ a Vox AC-30; I wasn’t just using blackface Fenders on the Dwight records – it started to expand. I bought the Groove Tubes Solo 75, which was very much like a Deluxe, and then I got the new models from Fender like the Vibro King and the Dual Professional.

“The Dual Pro was like a big brown Twin head, and that was my main clean amp. I used the Solo 75 to simulate the early Dwight stuff on the Deluxes, and for kind of bluesy stuff like ‘Long White Cadillac’ I used the Matchless. I could switch them with the Bradshaw, and I had a small rack of effects, including a Korg digital delay I had modified so the return signal came back browner than it went in. With the Korg and the click track, I could dial in the BPMs for every song, and have my slap set exactly to the beat of the music. And, I had a [Fender] Tonemaster so that I could switch from channel A to channel B and get more drive, and it became my massive rock amp, with the Dual Professional as my clean, basic country amp, and I still had my Solo 75 for the Deluxe sound.

“That existed until I hooked up with Line 6. Remember when Amp Farm came out? I beta-tested the software. They brought over the very first Flextone and said, ‘Check this out; it’s like your Deluxes.’ I played it and said, ‘Well, yeah, it sounds real good, but I can’t tell if it’s like my Deluxes.’ I A/B’ed it with my Deluxes, but they were hyped up, different amps. I think of it as cloning, so I asked them to get me the amp that was the mother of this amp, the one they cloned it from. They brought over this pre-CBS blackface, and I A/B’ed the mother, the organic clone, and the software clone. I recorded an instrumental on all three amps, and had the engineer switch between the three without me looking, to see if I could pick out which one was which. I could always tell which one was the organic amplifer; there was something missing. But between the mother amp and the software, I could not tell the difference. So I figured, I’m not stupid; I’ll just start using the software. So I started recording in Amp Farm.

“Then the Vetta came out, and I’ve got every amplifier I’ve ever wanted in that digital box. With the Vetta, I can adjust the amps so in the course of 22 songs, at least 15 would be a blackface Twin, but maybe some would just be rhythm. So I could tune the amplifier to give me the ultimate sound to play rhythm, then tune it to get steel licks, then tune it for baritone. Instead of having to adjust my amplifer, I hit a button, and it changes the reverb, the delay, the tone, everything. And it has a post-EQ section, where I can notch frequencies instead of just relying on tone knobs. Once I did that, I could dial these things in unbelievably.”

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Photos courtesy Little Dog Records.
This article originally appeared in VG‘s Jan. ’04 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Wishbone Ash guitarist Andy Powell isn’t caught in a time warp. True, he’s the sole remaining member of the English foursome that proffered a twin-lead guitar sound that took the band to acclaim in the early 1970s, but under the aegis of Powell (VG June/July ’92, April ’98), Wishbone Ash has toured incessantly and released new recordings.

“The Ash” formed in 1969 under the management guidance of music entrepreneur Miles Copeland, who placed an ad in England’s Melody Maker on behalf of bassist Martin Turner and drummer Steve Upton, in search of a guitar player. Ultimately, two guitarists were tapped, and Powell and Ted Turner began forging their twin-lead arrangements.

The original foursome recorded four studio albums, a self-titled debut (1970), Pilgrimage (1971), Argus (1972), and Wishbone Four (1973). A live album, Live Dates, was released in late 1973.

In ’71, Powell acquired a mid-’60s Gibson Flying V. The first time many American fans became aware of the Ash and Powell’s Flying V was in a 1972 ad in Rolling Stone that showed Ted Turner with a Strat and Powell with his V; the text proclaimed Wishbone Ash to be “The world’s greatest twin-lead-guitar band.”

Powell still has the Flying V, and its image has become the band’s unofficial logo to many observers (see sidebar).

Ted Turner left the band in ’74, and was replaced by Laurie Wisefield. This lineup of the Ash stayed intact until the latter half of 1980, and released seven studio albums, from 1974’s There’s the Rub through 1981’s Number the Brave, which hit the racks after Martin Turner had departed. A live double album, Live Dates II, released outside the U.S., was culled to a single album release in America titled Hot Ash.

Subsequent bassists included John Wetton (King Crimson, Roxy Music) and Trevor Bolder (between stints with Uriah Heep). Numerous personnel changes have occurred since that era, although the original quartet reunited in the late ’80s at the behest of Copeland for an instrument album, Nouveau Calls, for his Nospeak series of recordings, and a subsequent studio album, Here to Hear (both on I.R.S.). Then the personnel turnover began again while a studio album (1991’s Strange Affair) and a live album (1992’s Live in Chicago) were released. By late ’93, however, Powell was the only original member of the band inclined to continue recording and touring under the Wishbone Ash banner.

Live In Geneva and a studio album called Illuminations were released in ’96. However, around the time of Powell’s second VG interview, two unusual albums credited to Wishbone Ash were marketed. Powell was technically the only participant on the first effort, Trance Visionary, while the followup, Psychic Terrorism, included Powell and other then-band members. Both were dance-mix efforts… and an “acquired taste” for longtime Ash fans.

“Those were done with samples,” Powell said. “In the mid ’90s, there was this explosion of dance/club music, and we were having trouble getting a record deal, so I tried this. I think it worked pretty well for what it was supposed to be. And we actually tried to take it on the road, but it didn’t work out.”

Further personnel changes were in the offing for the Ash at the time, as well. Former guitar tech/roadie/guitarist Roger Filgate and vocalist/bassist Tony Kishman departed, to be supplanted in early ’98 by guitarist Mark Birch and bassist Bob Skeat. Filgate was a neighbor of Powell’s, and he tired of touring, which Powell said was “… understandable, but I’m a road rat.”

They’ve remained friends. As for Kishman, Powell cited complicated logistics (Kishamn lived in Arizona, Powell in Connecticut). Later that year, drummer Mike Sturgis departed and was replaced by the returning Ray Weston, whom Sturgis had himself replaced in late ’91.

 

The first release by the Wishbone Ash lineup of Powell/Birch/Skeat/Weston was the “unplugged” Bare Bones, which debuted in ’99 on HTD Records/Castle Music.

Produced by Powell, the album included various acoustic and quasi-acoustic versions of Wishbone Ash favorites.

“I used my ’60s vintage Epiphone Texan, which has been on many of the classic Ash albums,” Powell recalled. “As well as Takamine guitars, including a great koa model Takamine gave me in Japan. I also played my 1919 Gibson A-2 mandolin. A couple of songs had some electric guitar parts; I used my Flying V and a Music Man.”

In April of 2000, the band staged a 30th anniversary concert at the Shepherd’s Bush, in London. Among the participants was Laurie Wisefield, who was in the band from 1974 through ’85, and longtime Ash “associate vocalist” Claire Hamill. As for the other three founding members, Powell said, “Martin Turner was on holiday in Florida, Steve Upton wasn’t interested, and we couldn’t get in contact with Ted Turner.”

Also that year, a chronicle of the first three decades of the Ash saga was published. Blowin’ Free: Thirty Years of Wishbone Ash (Firefly) was written by Gary Carter and Mark Chatterton, and Powell described his association with the project as “overseer,” noting, “I added some anecdotes. It’s a good academic look at the history of the band, without trying to dig out any so-called ‘scandalous’ stories.”

Soon after, Mark Birch opted for an alternate career, according to Powell, who described the other guitarist as “…in the nicest possible way, a computer geek. He enjoys designing programs, and that’s what he wanted to get into. He’s very talented in that field, as well, and we’ve remained good friends.”

To fill the vacancy, Powell turned to Ben Granfelt because, “I knew he was a great singer and songwriter, and a powerful guitarist.”

The Finnish guitarist’s installation yielded a bonanza in songwriting, as seven of the 10 tracks on ’02’s Bona Fide were written or co-written by Granfelt, including the complex, twin-lead-guitar instrumental title track.

At its outset, Bona Fide avers the musical viability of the Ash; the opening track, “Almighty Blues,” is a raucous, boogie-based number that will delight longtime fans by interpolating a trademark ethereal twin-lead guitar interlude. Powell is particularly fond of the reflective Granfelt-Powell composition “Faith, Hope and Love,” which opens with another example of Wishbone Ash harmony guitar riffs.

“It’s not exactly a flat-out rocker,” he remarked with a chuckle. “But it’s got a great sound and feel to it.”

Asked about any sociopolitical significance to “Come Rain, Come Shine”, which was also co-written by Powell and Granfelt and includes segments of news broadcasts about September 11, Powell said, “We were recording the album when that happened. It was horrifying, and it affected everyone, so we felt like we had to write about it.”

The next album was a live two-CD anthology titled Tracks, also on Talking Elephant. Researching the vaults of live Wishbone Ash material, Powell delivered 26 songs dating from ’72 to ’01.

Included are acoustic treatments of “Wings of Desire” (from Strange Affair) and “Ballad of the Beacon” (from Wishbone Four). While an unplugged studio version of “Wings of Desire” does lead off Bare Bones, “Ballad of the Beacon” does not appear on the ’99 effort, so its appearance on Tracks marks the first time that song has been heard in an acoustic arrangement on a Wishbone Ash CD, though both were performed with acoustic guitars, accordion, and violin on the 30th Anniversary DVD.

“We’ve put out a lot of live albums, and people are into ’em,” Powell said. “I had a request from the label, asking if there was anything that could be released to help support the (Bona Fide) tour, before the next studio album. We got live material from different sources, and there’s still more. A lot of people have recorded us over the years, and there’s stuff continually coming to light.”

Other happenings over the last several have included the advent of the “AshCon” fan conventions in England, Germany, and the U.S. Following the format of other bands’ intimate get-togethers for fans, they often include question-and-answer sessions, as well as acoustic and electric concerts.

“If your fans have been around a long time, you get to know each other, and we started doing fan club conventions,” said Powell. “Fans get to have more of a hands-on approach; they get to hang with the band, and they get more behind-the-scenes, and they can trade memorabilia.

“When we did conventions in England and Germany, people have come from all over the world,” he added. “Singapore, Korea, the United States, Canada. That was another thing that made us think ‘Gee, we’ve got to tour the U.S.’ It was the least we could do to return the honor.

“It’s been an amazing thing, and I don’t see every band being able to do [conventions]; I think it’s a sign of maturity when you can meet with your fans like that.”

The initial American AshCon was held in Chicago in May, 1999. Subsequent AshCons took place on cruises to Mexico and the Caribbean.

The band tours extensively in England and Europe, and in 2002 performed in the U.S., culminating in AshCon at sea. The band played 160 shows that year, and ’03 saw the expected tour of Europe and an more concerts in the U.S. Still, its primary opportunities are in the United Kingdom and Europe.

“That’s the main ‘engine’ for our road work,” he confirmed. “The U.S. is a difficult place to tour on our level. It’s tough to do, economically. We’ve done several exploratory [U.S.] tours. We really appreciate it when people make the effort to come out and hear us.”

Powell’s road instruments include his mid-’60s Gibson Flying V, as well as Music Man Silhouette guitars. But he also noted, “When I play local gigs on my own, I still use my old 1952 Telecaster, but I don’t take it out on the road.”

In ’02, Granfelt utilized a Finnish-made Duck guitar, backed with Fender Stratocasters. In ’03 his main backup road guitar was a ’90 Gibson Les Paul Standard with a Seymour Duncan “JB” humbucker in the bridge position. Bob Skeat holds down the bottom-end with a Music Man five-string bass and Warwick four-string basses. The stage amps for Powell and Granfelt are quite similar, consisting of Fenders and Boogies, while Skeat runs through a Gallien-Krueger stack.

“My Boogie is the same one I’ve used for a long time – an original ’74 Mark I,” Powell said. “I’ve got a reissue that Ben uses. I use Boogies quite clean, for a foundation sound, then use something a bit rougher like a (Fender) Hot Rod DeVille. In the U.K., I’m using a Fender ProSonic as well; I think they’ve been discontinued, and I really like those! We just did a big festival in Europe for 30,000 people, and we used Fender combos. It can be anything – Hot Rod DeVilles, ProSonics, and even a vintage Bassman I’ll put out sometimes. I’ve also got a reissue Bassman. With a compilation of small combo amps we can cover just about any gig as long as they’re maintained well and the tubes are biased correctly. I used to use two 200-watt Orange amps with JBL speakers, and I don’t want to lose any more of my hearing. I can get plenty of power with these.”

The most recent projects for Wishbone Ash included the release of Almighty Blues – London and Beyond (Classic Rock Productions), a limited edition DVD set recorded in London by the current incarnation of the band, and a concert from ’89 by the original lineup. Late ’03 also saw the release of Tracks 2, another double CD of previously unreleased live recordings that date to ’72. This time, however, there’s a healthy dose of concert material from the current lineup, as well as two tracks from ’02 (“Mercury Blues” and “Steppin’ Out”) described as a “rare audience recording” from Holland.

As for the band’s future, Powell said, “We’ll also probably be releasing one or two more archive albums, we’re contracted to do another studio album [this year], and we’ve got a lot to touring to do, including South America.”

The latest lineup of Wishbone Ash has been intact for over three years, and all of its road work has molded it into a cohesive unit. These days, the band is still potent and viable – the classic/signature songs sound as good as ever, while the recent material is assertive and confident.

Powell and his musical associates could now be considered journeymen, but for the bulk of its history, Wishbone Ash was a “player’s band.” Its chronology has surpassed a third of a century, and the modern “Mark XVI” version stays active, demonstrating that the Ash still has a lot of great guitar-based music to offer.

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Andy Powells ca. 1967 Gibson Flying V

Wishbone Ash’s Andy Powell is the proverbial “road warrior,” and this is the primary weapon he has used more than 30 years.

In the band’s early days, Powell relied on homemade guitars and a Gibson SG Jr. In 1971, he purchased this ca. 1967 Gibson Flying V (serial #000951) as new old stock (N.O.S.) from England’s Orange Music.

“I liked the way it played, and how ‘vibrant’ it felt, even before I plugged it in,” Andy recalled in his 1992 interview with Vintage Guitar. “I bought it, took it home, put it in a chair, and stared at it.”

An example of the second generation of Flying Vs (Powell has owned two ’50s korina Vs, as well) proffered by Gibson in the mid ’60s, with a mahogany body, cherry finish, and white pickguard, the V has an original Gibson Vibrola tailpiece that Powell uses extensively. He attributes its smooth, hassle-free operation to the original height-adjustment wheels on the Tune-O-Matic bridge posts.

The instrument has experienced numerous modifications. In 1973, Powell purchased a ’59 Gibson ES-335 and replaced the V’s original humbuckers with the 335’s Patent Applied For (PAF) humbuckers. The bridge pickup later developed problems was replaced with a Seymour Duncan JB.

Grover tuning machines were also added, and in the guitar was refinished in the 1980s. At that time, an old-style Gibson logo was installed on the headstock, supplanting the logo of the original large white truss rod cover, which was replaced with a small black cover.

Rugged, refinished, and roadworthy, Powell’s V has been traveling around the world for over three decades, purveying terrific twin-lead guitar music for fans in nations across the globe. Any modification has been undertaken to improve its sound, which (like Wishbone Ash itself) is still very potent. Vintage purists might turn up their noses at all the mods, but this V has simply served – and continues to serve – its owner well, as the Ash continues its musical
saga.

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This article originally appeared in VG‘s May. ’04 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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Wishbone Ash – Blowin’ Free – 1973