|
Soloist, Sideman & Steely Dan’s Guitarist of Choice One unexpected pleasure of my recent Marianne Faithful mini-tour was getting to hear guitarist Jon Herington at the Kate Wolf Music Festival. Jon Herington with his Gibson ES-336. [Photo: Tony Kukulich.] Since 1999, Herington has been best known to audiences as Steely Dan’s touring […] 
Wow, what a week! On Thursday I met Marianne Faithfull for the first time at rehearsal, and then played two shows with her this weekend. It was intense. It was musically challenging. It was amazing. Ten facts about Marianne Faithfull: She’s written countless great songs, including the Stones’ “Sister Morphine.” Her songwriting collaborators have […] D’oh! I omitted a circuit from the Fuzz Detective video. It’s the germanium version of the Shin-Ei Companion Fuzz FY-2. So here’s a brief Fuzz Detective Appendix. The silicon version of the FY-2 is a cult item, a nasty little thing best known for its appearance on Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy album. The germanium […] 
As threatened, the Fuzz Detective video: WHAT: Twelve germanium fuzz circuits compared and analyzed. These represent the sounds of almost every fuzz pedal introduced between 1962 and 1968. WHY: A tool to help players identify the circuits most relevant to their musical needs. This isn’t about particular brands of pedals, but the circuits they […] Silk and steel — bad-ass, or strictly for wusses?. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve tried silk and steel strings. I’ve always thought of them as a transitional set for students migrating from nylon to steel strings. At least that’s how my mom used to explain them to me back […] 
Were the Shaggs born 600 years too late? Here’s reader Freddie Lenzel, writing in response to my post on the bizarre late-medieval composition Fumee fume par fumee: To me, it sort of sounds like The Shaggs from the Dark Ages. But seriously, it’s really interesting. Greetings from Spain, love your blog. And I […] Lon Chaney was an early Fuzz Face user. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a guitarist in possession of a single Face Fuzz must be in want of cool Fuzz Face mods. (Sorry, Jane.) Case in point: The comments section for the new Fuzz Face project. We’re far from the first to […] 
Most sentient guitarists love Hendrix, but not everyone is equally fond of his signature distortion pedal. So what’s your take on the Fuzz Face? I used to hate them — but only because my sole exposure to them was via the crappy reissues of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. They sounded so brittle and harsh! […] While responsible guitar journalists like my ol’ pal Art Thompson from Guitar Player and the fine young fellows from Premier Guitar scoured Musikmesse 2013 tirelessly and systematically, I did the opposite, randomly stumbling through the vast exhibition halls in a jet-lagged daze between my performances, aiming my iPhone at anything vaguely cool or weird. The […] 
For the first Fishman TriplePlay demo I posted last month, I featured pretty, naturalistic acoustic sounds. This time around I went for something a little less polite. I’ve been having a blast — albeit a humbling blast — trying to play real-time drum parts from the guitar. I still suck if it’s much more […] |
            |