Khruangbin, from left to right: guitarist Mark Speer, bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr.
Ochoa is describing the epiphany that brought her to the bass back in 2009, when she was working as a third-grade math teacher. First learning piano with help from her pal, guitarist Mark Speer, she recalls, “I was trying to play along to a song and he said to follow the bass. Then I picked one up, and it weirdly made sense to me.” It was a monumental event—the catalyst for just about everything that followed.
Soon, Ochoa quit her teaching job to go on tour with Speer in the shoegaze band Yppah. “It was five people staying in a Motel 6 every night, flipping a quarter for who slept on a bed,” she remembers. “We were in a minivan, I had no amp, I was playing direct every night—it was that kind of tour. Our very last show was in Seattle, and we drove to Houston in one shot and didn’t stop. We were all crooked getting out of the van, and I looked at Mark and was like, ‘I wanna start a band.’”
Khruangbin - "Pon Pón"
Ochoa and Speer’s weekly hangs with Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr., a producer who played with Speer at a regular church gig, made assembling a band easy. “I didn’t know that DJ played drums,” says Ochoa, “because I knew him as an organ or keyboard player. Mark was like, ‘I’ve never heard DJ play drums, but I know he’ll play the way we want.’”
“I didn’t grow up ever thinking I’d play bass.”
Fast forward a few years of jamming, and Khruangbin released their debut, The Universe Smiles Upon You, in 2015. The trio caught the ears of listeners and critics with their unique stew of influences, the most immediate of which was vintage Thai funk, but international sounds from Peru to the Middle East were detectable. Speer played with the reverb-soaked twang of surf rock and the laid-back feel of soul jazz. Ochoa and Johnson served as his rhythmic foils, delivering tight grooves with both bounce and economy that were equal parts reggae, Motown, and lo-fi hip-hop.
Laura Lee Ochoa's Gear
Ochoa uses flats on her original SX J bass and never changes ’em.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Bass
- SX J bass
Amp
- Acme Audio Motown DI
- Ampeg bass amp
Strings
- Flatwounds
Khruangbin skyrocketed to the tops of taste-making lists, drawing in record collectors and public radio listeners alike. Along the way, the band lived in their sound more deeply with every new project. And there have been many: They’ve now delivered four LPs, plus a pair of EPs with Leon Bridges, and Ali, a collaboration with Malian guitar virtuoso Vieux Farka Touré as a tribute to his legendary father, Ali Farka Touré.
On their newest album, A LA SALA, the band jump-started the writing process by digging into their vault of demos and jams, going as far back as one of Speers’ pre-Khruangbin demos of “May Ninth,” which dates from 2008. Other vault recordings came from throughout their career—“Ada Jean” was demoed around the time of their debut—while some songs are new. The goal, Ochoa says, was “to just be influenced by ourselves.” Like the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You or Van Halen’s A Different Kind of Truth, both of which were created by archive-diving, there are no discernible differences between the old and new. They all simply sound like Khruangbin. “When I listen to the final product and what they turned into,” says Johnson of their vault recordings, “it’s incredible to me.”
While Ochoa and Johnson call Speer’s guitar the lead singer of the mostly instrumental group—though Ochoa’s voice is featured, it’s mostly as a background element—at the heart of the band’s sound is the deep, sympathetic rhythmic hookup between the three players, and much of that starts with the foundation laid down by Ochoa and Johnson. “A lot of times, it starts with DJ and I playing a bunch to lock in,” says Ochoa. “We’ll start smiling at each other, like, ‘We’re here now.’” Together, they bounce. They’re tight, but airy. The low end pumps enough to keep you moving, even on slower, lighter tunes, but their flow is always dynamic.
A LA SALA features all new recordings, but the songs are a mix of all-new compositions and some that consist of old riffs and parts dating as far back as 2008.
On 2020’s Mordechai, the band tweaked their formula and their feel. The songs leaned more toward poppy, dance grooves, and Ochoa’s breathy background vocals moved into the fore. Her playing changed as well. “I was trying to be complicated,” she explains. “I was trying to play things that were slightly less comfortable for myself because I was trying to go outside the box and play more notes or play faster.” It was an essential step in her internal relationship with the bass. “It’s like being a teenager in the lifespan of playing. I started out naively, and then I was like, ‘I know more, my fingers are more agile, I’m going to make this more complicated.’”
By pushing herself to the limit on Mordechai, Ochoa was able to find more of herself—the kind of stuff that really makes Laura Lee sound like Laura Lee—on A LA SALA. “I feel like with this record, I didn’t have that same need,” she says. Instead, she decided to “just play what sounds good and what feels good.”
“If you lose the fourth-finger thing, it creates a limitation, but for me it’s fun and bouncy.”
Whether on “Juegos y Nubes,” where she plays an on/off counterpoint to Speer’s guitar melody or “Three from Two,” where she injects melody into a mostly root/fifth pattern, her sound is immediately recognizable. Much of that is because of her melody-driven sensibility—her influences are more melodic, and she says she doesn’t really have favorite bassists. “I didn’t grow up ever thinking I’d play bass,” she points out.
Ochoa also credits her sound in part to her technique. “I don’t play with all four of my fingers, because I attach two of my fingers together,” she explains. “I’m not technically trained. Because of that, I think I play differently, and it changes the feel of the whole thing. Like James Jamerson playing with one finger, if you lose the fourth finger thing, it creates a limitation, but for me it’s fun and bouncy.”
And Ochoa’s sense of rhythm is a crucial part of her playing. It’s what helps sell the sound and makes it so infectious. “I play and practice Laura Lee bass lines because they’re fun to play,” says Johnson. “The stuff that you sit down and you play is the stuff that’s good and the stuff that you like. I’m always studying her placement. She has a very keen sense of rhythm that’s on top but doesn’t rush. It’s laid-back but it doesn’t drag. I’d be lying if I told you I’ve figured it out.”
YouTube It
The trio’s effortless mastery of groove and style is evident in this cover-filled set from the 2022 BBC 6 Music Festival.
Illustration by Kate Koenig
The apartment-ready 4-track tape recorder changed the game in the ’70s, then the next decade’s digital advancements blew the doors clean off the studio system. Suddenly, artists could handily create their own recordings from home, and they weren’t half bad. Check out Morphine’s 1993 radio hit “Cure for Pain,” for an example. The horns were recorded on a 4-track in frontman Mark Sandman’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, loft. (Listen closely and you can hear the effect the slightly stretched tape had on their sound.)
“They were really experimenting with unorthodox recording techniques to get previously unheard sounds onto records, and you can still incorporate that philosophy into digital recording.” - Rich Gilbert
As time went on, some went all-in. Venerated alt-rock outfit Deerhoof, who had used a 4-track to record their 1997 album, began making records with laptops and Pro Tools starting in 2000. “It seems like you can either go to a medium- or high-budget studio for one day, or you can use the equipment you have or can borrow from friends, and do it as long as you want,” drummer Greg Saunier said in a 2006 interview. “I realized there was no comparison—the time was so much more valuable than the fanciness of the equipment.”
Home recording equipment for guitarists has basically moved at the speed of light since 2006, and now many of the pros don’t even leave the comfort of their own nest to lay down award-winning tracks. There are plenty of reasons for that (besides the ability to do it in your pajamas). Recording your own guitars in your own space can be incredibly empowering: It’s an exercise in self-sufficiency and independence, both of which can be rare commodities in the world of recorded music. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t require a stack of cash to get recordings that you like.
“Sometimes, recording in a DAW, it can sound like you’re on top of the music if you’re recording in a collaboration.” - Ella Feingold
Of course, there’s a spectrum of approaches. Some rely on big-money gear to get the job done, but just as many will swear by cobbling together a home-brew sound setup that matches the project. And besides, it’s not all about the equipment. Recording guitar parts on your own in your dwelling is a unique process with its own complexities, not all of which can be captured and explained in instructional YouTube videos. That’s where battle-tested insights come in handy.
So, I asked three guitarists—a studio heavy-hitter to the stars; a “legendary” long-time independent punk; and an alt-rock up-and-comer—how they cut record-worthy 6-string tracks at home. Here’s what I learned.
Ella Feingold
Flanked by records from Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, Ella Feingold clutches her home studio’s secret weapon: a ’60s Maestro EP-2 Echoplex.
When Ella Feingold started recording at home in 2002, the Digidesign Digi 001 was the tech of the day. Feingold always wanted to figure out how guitar parts and overdubs worked together, be they on a Barry White record or a Motown guitar section, so she set to recreating those layers with the recording system. It wasn’t long before she was working on overdubs for other artists with her new rig, and the practice turned into a career. Now, she’s known for her work with Silk Sonic, Questlove, and Erykah Badu, and on Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Feingold began her career when everyone still gathered in the studio and recorded to tape, so she’s familiar with the feeling and energy of creating something together rather than in isolation. The key to avoiding Lone Musician Syndrome, she says, is to find a way to get inside the music rather than playing on top of it. “Sometimes, recording in a DAW, it can sound like you’re on top of the music if you’re recording in a collaboration,” she says.
There are technical remedies for this, like plugins and impulse responses (IRs) that can help mimic atmosphere or certain room sounds. But there’s a philosophical angle to it, too. When Feingold gets a project, she first listens to it over and over with no instrument in her hand. The idea is to rein in your instincts. Sometimes, they’re helpful. But other times, they let you drift to familiar sounds, progressions, or timings. Feingold will jot notes based on what pops into her head on those first listens, but only later will she pick up a guitar to arrange a part, and see how those initial reactions actually fit with a patient, considered read on the music.
Ella Feingold's Home Studio Gear
Guitars
- 1981 Gibson ES-345 Stereo
- 1967 Vox Super Lynx
- 1967 Goya Rangemaster
- 1950’s Kay Thin Twin
- 1981 Ibanez GB10
- Fender Nile Rodgers Hitmaker Stratocaster
- 1972 Fender Telecaster
- Fender MIM Stratocaster (strung for inverted tuning)
Amps
- 1966 Fender Princeton Reverb
Effects
- Maestro EP-2 Echoplex
- Maestro Boomerang BG-2 Wah Pedal
- Maestro PS-1A Phase Shifter
- Maestro FZ-1A Fuzz-Tone
- Maestro FSH-1 Filter/Sample Hold
- Zoom 9030
Interface, Mics, and Monitors
- Acme Audio DI WB-3
- BAE 1073
- Ableton Live
- RCA 77-D
- Electro-Voice 635A
- Yamaha NS-10
- Dynaudio BM-15
Feingold’s biggest gripe with home recording is engineering for herself. When she records direct into her interface, it’s no issue, but miking, listening, and tweaking mic position ad infinitum is a major drag—especially if a client has revisions on your work. Say you recorded a lead part in 8th notes, and they tell you a week later that they want a portion of it redone in 16ths. If you recorded those parts on a miked amp, there’s a good chance it’s not set up the same way anymore, and you’ll spend a nice chunk of time replicating the exact sound you got the first go-around. “If I could, I would never engineer for myself,” she groans.
Feingold lives in the mountains, so background noise isn’t a concern these days, though she uses the Waves NS1 plugin for apartment dwellers looking to erase unwanted background from their recordings. But what’s her biggest piece of advice for guitarists recording from home for someone else’s projects? Communicate. “Ask them what their expectations are of you,” she says. “It’s always important to know who you’re working with. By asking, it allows you to help them and not waste your own time.”
Finally, if you’re miking your rig, Feingold suggests checking out good preamps for everything you record. They can add something to the signal that will make your life easier at every turn down the road. “Getting ‘the sound’ before it touches the computer is really where it’s at,” she says.
Rich Gilbert
Lifelong DIYer Rich Gilbert sold most of his home studio gear last year, but with just a couple key pieces, he can still cut album-ready tracks from his new casa in Italy.
Photo by Liz Linder
Home studio whiz Rich Gilbert sold off most of his recording toys when he moved from Maine to Italy in late 2023, but he’s cool with it. All he needs these days is a good laptop with Logic Pro, an interface, and some half-decent nearfield speakers to get comfy with. He records most of his guitars direct these days, and writes and programs his own drums in EZdrummer.
Gilbert has been playing in rock bands since the late ’70s, including Boston art-punks Human Sexual Response and the Zulus, Frank Black and the Catholics, and Eileen Rose (whom Gilbert married). He always loved recording, and soaked in everything he could learn when his bands were in the studio, even if it meant pestering the engineer a little. When Pro Tools became affordable in the early 2000s, he loaded it up with a rackmount interface and MacBook Pro. He devoured issues of Tape Op magazine and started building up his collection of microphones and plugins. He still doesn’t call himself a pro, but that’s part of the point. “This whole digital recording revolution is fantastic in that it enables people like me to make good-sounding records,” he says. “At the same time, it’s kind of a cheat because I don’t really have to know as much.” Over the past 20 years, Gilbert has home-recorded LPs for his solo project, Eileen Rose, and his old band, the Zulus. He also has a practice of cutting tracks for indie artists—for one example, St. Augustine, Florida’s Delta Haints—at $75 per song.
Rich Gilbert's Home Studio Gear
Guitars
- Peavey Omniac JD
- Amps
- Line 6 POD Farm
Effects
- Slate Digital plugins
Interface, Mics, and Monitors
- Pro Tools
- Mackie HR824
- Line 6 POD Studio UX2
- Shure SM7
- Shure SM57
- Shure SM58
- Audio-Technica AT2020
- Audio-Technica AT2035
- Blue Spark
- Monster Power PowerCenter PRO 3500
Gilbert says any aspiring at-home engineer ought to go right to the source for solid information. Study how other engineers have recorded things through history. If there’s a particular sound or feel you’re going for, look at the equipment used to capture it. These days, chances are good that basically any piece of gear you’d lust after has been turned into a plugin.
“Read as much as you can,” says Gilbert. “Read interviews with other engineers as much as you can, ’cause you’ll learn.” In Gilbert’s decades of reading and research, he says he’s seen one sentiment crop up again and again: There is no right or wrong way to do it. “All these things we do are just techniques that someone else did, and then passed it on to someone else,” says Gilbert.
That ethos, he explains, actually comes right from the 1960s and ’70s golden recording era that most of us are trying to ape. “They were really experimenting with unorthodox recording techniques to get previously unheard sounds onto records, and you can still incorporate that philosophy into digital recording,” says Gilbert. “Don’t be afraid to experiment. If it sounds good, it is good.”
That said, another important piece is to know when to walk away from a session. If every frequency seems to be just out of whack with your ears, there’s a good chance you need a break. Remember: At home, you’re juggling the jobs of guitarist, engineer, and producer, and sometimes, the producer has to tell the guitarist to take a walk and come back with a fresh perspective.
James Goodson
James Goodson launched his home-recording project Dazy as an outlet for his “demoitis,” and his song “Pressure Cooker” exploded into an alt-classic.
Photo by Chris Carreon
James Goodson never meant for his band Dazy to be a home-recording project, but after years of tinkering in GarageBand, he’d gotten attached to the rawness of the demos he made with drum machines. During the great shutdown of 2020, he decided to release them into the wild. Now, his single “Pressure Cooker,” a collab with the punks in Militarie Gun, has racked up more than 500,000 streams.
Goodson says he’s not a technical person, so he tries to keep it simple and trust his ears. “If something sounds cool, then that’s that,” he says. “I’m not worried about ‘the right way’ to arrive there.” After almost 20 years on GarageBand, he recently switched to Logic, into which he runs his 4-channel Behringer interface. He uses two mics—a Shure SM57 for his vocals, and a Sennheiser e 609 for recording guitars. He prefers the 609 for its simplicity: Slap it right flush with the grille and start playing. It’s usually on a Vox AC15C1, but Goodson’s secret weapon is a lineup of battery-powered pocket amps that sound “truly wild” when cranked. This combo is how he achieves most of the lush, varied guitar sounds on Dazy’s recordings, with the odd “weird DI tone” in the mix as well. “There’s something cool about the tones from a real amp colliding with some wack digital tone,” he says.
James Goodson's Home Studio Gear
Guitars
- Fender Vintera ’60s Jazzmaster Modified
- Fender MIJ Telecaster
- Fender Marauder
- Fender Highway One Jazz Bass
- Fender Villager 12-String Acoustic
Amps
- Vox AC15C1
- Fender MD20 Mini Deluxe
- Fender Mini ’57 Twin-Amp
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
- Electro-Harmonix Op Amp Big Muff
- Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz
- Big Knob Pedals I.C.B.M. 1977 Op Amp Muff
- Permanent Electronics Silver Cord Fuzz
- Electro-Harmonix Soul Food
- Boss SD-1
- Seymour Duncan Shape Shifter
- MXR Phase 90
- MXR Micro Chorus
Interface, Mics, and Monitors
- Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD
- Sennheiser e 609
- Shure SM57
Goodson says his biggest challenge is managing volume levels. Feedback, for example, is difficult to capture unless you push an amp to its limits, which generally involves a lot of noise. Space is limited at Goodson’s house, so he’s generally in close quarters with that squall for extended periods of time. “Thankfully, my wife is incredibly patient about the racket,” he says, “but I’m not sure if my ears are as flexible.”
“There’s something cool about the tones from a real amp colliding with some wack digital tone.” - James Goodson
Those downsides do have proportionate offsets, though. Goodson says the creative process that one can chase at home is incomparable to its studio counterpart. This ultimately comes down to time and money. “I love being able to just sit around for hours rearranging pedals in search of the ugliest fuzz or playing a part over and over trying to make the screechiest noise—the kind of thing that no one is gonna want to put up with when you have two days in a studio to record ten songs,” he says.
Pushing the boundaries of good taste is one of the sweet joys of life, but Goodson says it's important to know your limits, too. When recording at home, it’s critical to know when to tag in help, he says, and he always sends off his tracks to be mixed by a professional engineer.
The Wrap-UP
There’s a lot of technical overlap between how Feingold, Gilbert, and Goodson work, but the crucial thing they all have in common is reverence and excitement for whatever they’re playing on. Recording guitar from home works best if you really, deeply care about the sounds that you’re creating—even if they’re not for your own projects. Getting the best possible result out of your stay-at-home studio is a matter of experimentation, patience, and genuine respect for the music. You don’t have to drop big money to get those things, but you do have to practice at them. If you ever get frustrated with the process, just remember: Being a work-from-home guitarist is a pretty sweet gig.
Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.
While it might be tempting to geek out and ask Albini about all the iconic albums that he’s recorded with the utmost finesse—and surely, there would be value in rapping about recording some of the biggest names in guitar music—that’s all been done.
What’s much more interesting is the work that goes on every single day at the studio. So, when he tells me, “My colleagues at Electrical Audio and I are constantly having to interrogate our methods and validate the things that we’re doing and come up with arguments for why we should do things this way or that,” that’s the stuff I want to know about. If you want to learn about how he recorded In Utero, go listen to Conan’s podcast. (Albini was a guest, along with Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, on the October 23, 2023 episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, and it’s a thorough discussion that is totally worth checking out.)
The fact is, Albini has recorded countless records. I’m sure he has a tally in his books somewhere, but it would be exceedingly difficult to know for sure how many albums he’s engineered. That’s because, as extensive as his credits are in various record-collecting resources, he’s also impressively accessible as a for-hire engineer. All levels of artists—from superstars to harder-to-track, mostly unknown road dogs—have carved out their time with him. Plus, he’s been at it since he started renting four-track demo packages on the weekends during his high school years in Missoula, Montana.
The body of engineering work that Albini has amassed is monumental not just in size, but also in musical scope, which extends further than from Sunn O))) to Magnolia Electric Company, Cheap Trick to Neurosis, or Low to The Thing. And with those artists, he often helps capture a landmark album, or at least the record that fans refer to as “the one they recorded with Albini.”
Aside from his day job, there’s also his guitar playing. Albini serves as the compass for cutting, brutal tone in the punk and underground rock scenes. Since his early days in the hard-hitting Big Black through his continuing work alongside bassist Bob Weston and drummer Todd Trainer in the band Shellac—whose soon-to-be six (no info yet, but a new one is confirmed to be on the way) full-length albums and some other recorded odds and ends are maybe the purest documents of his overall sonic aesthetic—he’s used a fairly concise rig of well-suited esoteric gear to shape his incisive, metallic, and esoterically personal guitar sound in the creation of angular riffage and gnarly feedback.
Albini’s sonic mastery seems to know no bounds: He’s probably the most-cited proponent of analog recording. His live-band-in-a-room sound is unparalleled. And his drum sounds are peerless. But, while it’s not as if he never talks about guitar, it’s rare to see him dive deep on his guitar-specific processes.
So, we called up Electrical Audio and had a chat about his methods on recording guitars and how they’ve evolved, his take on modern guitar culture, and the definitive details of his sound.
In addition to his gear collection, Albini is also a good-bandname-T-shirt collector. (If this isn’t proof enough, go look up a photo from when he won his first gold bracelet in the World Series of Poker.)
Photo by Daniel Bergeron
When you’re going to record a guitarist, what’s your process of deciding how you’re going to choose a microphone, and how you’re going to mic their amp or cabinet?
Steve Albini: You have a conversation—what kind of sound are they shooting for? Who are some guitarists whose sound would be appropriate for their music? That sort of thing. And sometimes that’ll give you a clue about how to get started.
If they like a thick, bass-y, chewy, distorted sound, you want to make sure you’re using mics that capture that low-frequency stuff with good definition and not get muddy or soft. If the kind of guitar sound they’re shooting for is very bright and very crisp and dry, you’ll want to make sure to avoid using mics that can have some resonance or bloom to them that will soften that sort of precision.
I think it’s a bad idea to have a standard method where when whatever guitarist walks in you stick an SM57 on it and call it good. A lot of people do that as a default just because it resolves the issue quickly, and they can get on with their day and do more fancy stuff. But I think it’s absolutely critical to pair the microphone with the actual sound that’s coming out of the amp.
After having a conversation with the guitar player, understanding what their aesthetic is, I have them set up their gear and just play a bit, to get a feel what their playing style is like. Are they using a lot of feedback and sustain or are they hopping on a bunch of different pedals all the time? Is the sound derived from their playing style or from particular layering of pedals? Getting intimate with the exact specifics of the guitar style and sound and aesthetic guides you on what microphones to use and physically where to put them.
The main thing is not to have a preconceived notion about what mics are good for guitar. I’ve used everything from vocal-caliber condenser microphones to quite limited electret microphones to high-quality ribbon microphones to pawnshop junk microphones—I’ve used absolutely everything you can imagine on a guitar amp, and that selection is always based on the aesthetic of the person playing and then the actual sound that’s coming out of the cabinet. In your mind, you might have an idealized notion of what a heavy guitar sounds like or what a clean guitar sounds like, but until you get down on all fours and listen to the sound coming out of the speakers, you don’t really know what you’re dealing with.
“When you listen to the speaker when the guitar player is playing, the sound that’s coming off—you should consider that the goal. What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make that sound happen in people’s homes.”
How do you interpret what you’re hearing then?
Albini: When you’re down on all fours listening, you need to be forming a mental image of what that sound is like. Are there spikes and dips in the frequency response? Is there a lot of granular treble detail? Is it a really smooth sound? Does it have a sort of billowing quality, like a trombone-like fundamental, or is it really dry and raspy? Even using wine-tasting words like that, it helps you form an internal image of what that guitar is supposed to sound like when you hear it on playback, and from your experience with your mic collection, you’ll know what microphones are best suited to sounds like that, or you’ll know where to start anyway.
When you listen to the speaker when the guitar player is playing, the sound that’s coming off—you should consider that the goal. What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make that sound happen in people’s homes.
Steve Albini's Gear
Hands on faders, Albini and his team at Electrical Audio are “constantly in session, constantly under fire.”
Photo by Kevin Tiongson
Guitars
- Travis Bean TB500
Amps
- Tapco/Intersound IVP Preamp
- Fender Bassman
- Custom homemade speaker enclosure based on Electro-Voice TL Series plans with 10" and 12" Celestion Greenbacks
Effects
- Interfax Harmonic Percolator
- MXR Smartgate
Strings and Picks
- Ice picks with the points cut off
- D’Addario XLs (.012–.016–.020w–.028–.038–.048)
Once you’ve chosen a mic, what’s next in the decision-making process?
Albini: One thing that I do that I think is probably distinctly different from what a lot of other engineers do, I tend to have whatever microphone I’m using on the guitar in the middle of the speaker cone, and I don’t generally use microphones pressed up close to the grille cloth right next to the speaker. I tend to use microphones at a working distance of between eight and 14 inches from the cabinet.
A lot of engineers made their bones as live engineers, where they’re trying to get isolation on stage, so they have the mics as close as possible to the speaker cabinet, and that practice translated into the studio. I experimented with that technique because I saw everybody else doing it, but I just never got good results with it. It always sounded slightly tweaked and muffled and weird. I found that when I put the microphone dead center on the speaker, then the sound hitting the microphone sounded more like what I heard when I was down on all fours listening to the speaker myself.
Working distance has a big effect on the sound quality. If the microphone is choked up tight on the speaker, you get a lot more low-frequency energy. You get a lot more muscular pumping low end from the proximity effect of the microphone, and, especially with ribbon microphones that are bi-directional and have a fairly exaggerated proximity effect, you can really use that to tune the response of the microphone. So, I say that I use a working distance of between eight and 14 inches. If I’m in the closer part of that range, six to eight inches from the speaker, there’s going to be a lot more of the sub low end emphasized in a bi-directional ribbon microphone, and that can be great to add weight and heaviness to a heavy guitar.
Then, if the microphone is backed off more like 12 to 14 inches, then you get much more of an overall picture of the sound of the cabinet, where it’s not emphasizing any particular region, for lack of a better word. It’s a flatter representation of the sound coming off the speaker. Being able to tune the behavior of the microphone by moving the microphone in and out just by a matter of inches can make a noticeable difference in the sound quality.
At this point in your career, do you know what mic to use as soon as you listen to someone’s playing?
Albini: It’s really rare for me to listen to a speaker, listen to somebody playing guitar, grab a microphone, put it up, and have it be right in the first instance. When that does happen sometimes, you feel like a fucking genius. That’s really satisfying. That means the first 30 years of your career weren’t wasted, but it doesn’t happen often.
Often, you have to move the microphone, or sometimes you have to swap the microphone out completely, like this microphone just can’t handle that much high end, it sounds too raspy, it’s just too midrange forward, it starts to sound nasal and different parts of the playing vocabulary can sound different as well. Sometimes, you’ll have a setup that sounds amazing when the guitarist is just playing rhythm stuff, but then when they go up the strip and start showing off, it can be too piercing or too woolly sounding, so it’s often a good idea to have a complement microphone.
“It’s really rare for me to listen to a speaker, listen to somebody playing guitar, grab a microphone, put it up, and have it be right in the first instance. When that does happen sometimes, you feel like a fucking genius.”
You’ll have a couple of microphones in the same position, one that is maybe a brighter, drier sound and one that’s maybe a fatter, darker sound. And that way you can either balance those microphones against each other for a composite sound or use them in stereo to synthesize a stereo image. Or when the lead kicks in, you can nudge the brighter microphone for a little bit more bite and attack.
I think having an ambient character available on the recording often helps with the sense of realism. If you’re just using a single guitar, for example, then having an ambient microphone that you can use to create a stereo image helps add to the sensation of hearing the sound in a room, even if it’s a very dry room. Having close mics on the amp and then also having a distant mic out in the room eight or 10 feet away gives you a little bit of air on that secondary mic, which you can then use to create a stereo image to help localize the guitar in the stereo image of the whole thing.
All of those little things, if you don’t have it set up so you have those kinds of options available, then you can’t make those choices down the road. I have been in sessions where some engineers have an array of microphones around a speaker cabinet. They’ll have eight or 10 microphones in a sort of swarm around a speaker cabinet. And that, to me, just speaks of really poor decision making. If you’re recording eight or 10 microphones at once and with the idea that you’ll sort it all out later, that just puts all your critical decisions off until the last minute and means that you’re going to make those decisions poorly. I think it’s much, much better to listen to it on the first playback and decide if you are on the right track or not. And if you’re not, just stop and fix it. Don’t just carry on with the plan to deal with it later, because when you get to later, you just have way too much shit to deal with.
Onstage with Shellac, Albini wields “Old Ironsides,” his Travis Bean TB500. Behind the guitarist lurks his customized amp head, which contains a Tapco/Intersound IVP Preamp and Fender Bassman, and his homemade speaker cabs.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
It’s like it creates option anxiety, and at that point, you’re just making the mix all that much longer.
Albini: Yeah, it’s not even the amount of effort that it takes. I don’t think it’s possible to make 10,000 critical decisions simultaneously and have them all be as valid as if you were to make those decisions one at a time as they came up with all your attention and full consideration. So, while you’re setting up the guitar, figure out which microphones you want to use and commit to them, and once you’ve committed to them, then that decision is made, and you can just get on with your day and you don’t ever need to re-litigate those decisions.
I also feel like over the course of working on a record, you get acclimated to the sound that you’re listening to, and then that becomes the basis on which you make other decisions. If you pull the plug on that by changing the sound around at the last minute, then all of those predicate decisions that were made based on that original place keeper have somewhat been invalidated. And I think that’s a dangerous thing as well.
In one of the videos on the Electrical Audio YouTube page, you talk about developing your practices through an iterative process of trial and error. Is experimentation still a part of your process?
Albini: I actively question myself and verify my preconceptions or challenge my preconceptions. One nice way to do that in a kind of a programmatic way is something I stole from Bob Weston, the bass player in the band Shellac that I’m in. He’s also a fine recording engineer and mastering engineer. I read an interview with him maybe 15 years ago where he said that on every session he does, he tries to do just one thing that he’s never done before. It might be the choice of microphone or positioning a microphone or a processing choice or a routing, just something, and that seemed brilliant to me. Just a very simple way to make sure that you’re always expanding your repertoire and always expanding your knowledge base. You don’t get set in your habits. And so, I stole that, and I do that to this day.
“While you’re setting up the guitar, figure out which microphones you want to use and commit to them, and once you’ve committed to them, then that decision is made, and you can just get on with your day and you don’t ever need to re-litigate those decisions.”
Also, microphones come in over the transom. There are microphones being designed and invented every day, and we get a chance to hear a lot of those either as trial or because people want our opinions on them. They’ll send them to us to put them in use for a while and play around with them. So, I get to play around with stuff that I’ve never heard before pretty regularly, and I like to try microphones I’ve never heard before.
This has proven enormously valuable over the course of the last 15 or 20 years. My routine behaviors have changed quite a bit as a result of these little, tiny experiments that I’ve done one at a time.
With Shellac bandmates Todd Trainer (drums) and Bob Weston (bass) in view, the most legendary Harmonic Percolator is at Steve’s feet, next to his MXR Smart Gate. If you’re wondering, Albini uses a waist strap for his guitar.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
I would imagine that, making as many records as you do, that’s like constant revision.
Albini: I promise you, the moment you get complacent about how you do things, someone will show up with a rig that’s freakish in a way you’ve never encountered before.
I did an album with the group Sunn O))). Their music is really slow-moving, impossibly heavy riffs, but the sound is really minimal. It’s just two guitars most of the time. In the studio, they added a few guests. One of is Hildur Guðnadóttir; she plays the cello.
There’s an instrument that was invented for her by a friend of hers called the halldorophone. It’s an electric cello that has built into it an amplifier and loudspeaker, so it’s a self-resonating, self-feeding-back, infinite-sustain cello. It’s a super bizarre thing, but she’s an expert. There’s one in the world and I’m staring at it and I have to figure out how to record it.
The fact that I am confronted with these new and different things all the time means that my vocabulary and my skillset and my facilities are constantly being tested and improved. And that’s one of the great joys, for me anyway, of doing what I do for a living, that I do get to do these freakish things once in a while.
You use a small pedal setup as a player, but you’re engaging with different kinds of players all the time. What do you think about modern pedal technology?
Albini: The stage that we are at now, where every player in every band has a pedalboard and have this sort of a curated collection of sounds that they come up with, I actually got a preview of that in the late ’80s. The first time I went to Japan, most guitarists that I worked with had a pedalboard with a half a dozen pedals on it, and that’s how they would craft their sound. They could bring that anywhere and plug it into any amp and they’d be happy.
Something very similar is happening now in the U.S. where a lot of people are doing demo recording at home through modeling amps or through interfaces, and rather than using an amplifier for its inherent qualities, they’re kind of defeating the amplifier by using pedals as the principal source of their sound. It’s a trend. I don’t really have an opinion about it.
“I promise you, the moment you get complacent about how you do things, someone will show up with a rig that’s freakish in a way you’ve never encountered before.”
There are some people who are more adept at it than others, but it’s absolutely the case that most players in most bands now have multiple pedals that they’re using, and the songs are arranged in a way where you use this combination for this part and this combination for this part. And nothing about it seems bad to me. It’s a little more cumbersome, especially when you’re in the studio and you’re trying to track down problems. But when you see somebody who’s really put some thought and attention into it and they’re really using the pedals in an expressive way….
I did a session with Reba Myers from Code Orange. She has this really expansive pedal setup where she’s got a main soundboard where the general tone for a given song comes from, and then she’s got a kind of an expression board, which is just all the crazy shit, and she’s constantly going back and forth. She’s an example of someone who’s put a lot of thought and attention into the specifics of the pedalboard and is using it as a creative tool. I’ve seen other people where it’s kind of pro forma—like, Kiss wore funny outfits on stage, and so for a while a lot of bands felt obliged to wear funny outfits on stage.
I know some old school guys are like, ‘Plug the guitar straight into the amp, and if you can’t get it done with that, you’re not a real musician,’ or whatever. That’s horse shit. That’s just boomer shit. I’m not into that at all.
How Steve Albini Gets His Guitar Sound
How did your personal guitar sound develop over the years?
Albini: When I was in Big Black, that band was predicated on the do-it-cheap, do-it-quick, take-no-prisoners approach. That was very much the cornerstone of the behavior in the punk rock scene. Don’t try to get it perfect, just get it. So, everything about that band was done sort of extemporaneously. I made the first Big Black record on my own in my apartment, so I needed an amplifier that I could use for either guitar or bass. I stumbled onto this bizarre preamp called the Tapco/Intersound IVP. It had a clean channel and a distorted channel. I didn’t find much use for the clean channel, but the distorted channel sounded great on either bass or guitar—or great toward my aesthetic at the moment, which was a pretty brutal one.
When Shellac started, I was looking for a fatter, fuller sound than the scrabble-scratchy sound I had with Big Black. I eventually gravitated toward the Fender Bassman as the perfect tube amp for me. But when I would play just the Bassman, I missed a little bit of the bite and the sizzle from the old transistor days. So, I ended up making a hybrid setup with the Tapco IVP preamp, typically recorded direct. And then on stage, I’ll have a monitor cabinet for it that has a horn in it, so it’s like a full-range speaker, and the Fender Bassman going into a fairly bass-y cabinet, typically a 4x12 when we’re on tour in Europe and we’re using backline.
The cabinets that Bob and I made for our amps—I have two Celestion greenbacks in that, a 10" and a 12"—are based on the TL series cabinet that are the published plans that Electro-Voice made available for using their speakers in an enclosure. If you just built a cabinet along those published plans, you would end up with exactly what Bob and I use for our speaker setups.
When you record yourself for a Shellac album, do you always use the same gear?
Albini: No, it has been different on literally every session. I often use the amp that I use on stage. Often, I do not. Often, I’ll use some other transistor amp and some other tube amp as the two complement signals. It’s essentially always two amplifiers, a transistor amp and a tube amp. The transistor amp is typically being recorded direct, and the tube amp is always recorded acoustically through a speaker cabinet with microphones and stuff.
But I have used an Orange OR80. There’s an amp that was made by a company called Sam Amp, and I believe there are very few of them in the world, but I ended up with one of them, and I’ve used the Sam Amp. I’ve used the Traynor YBA-3, Traynor YBA-1, a Marshall JTM-45. I’ve used a lot of different amplifiers for the studio recordings.
The Travis Bean that I use is such an indestructible sound. It’s weird that I’m so fussy about my amp because I’ve demonstrated myself that it kind of doesn’t matter what amp I play through, I can always get something that I like out of it.
We did a tour of Japan very early in the band’s tenure, right after we started. In Japan, it’s normal practice for the venue to have a backline. Every night it was a different, quite crappy by our standards, amplifier on stage. One night, it was a Roland Jazz Chorus. I used a Guyatone amplifier several times, and other Japanese brand names that I was unfamiliar with. Every night sounded fine. As specific as I am about what I like and don’t like, I have sort of taught myself that it’s not that important and that I can zero in on what I like and don’t like about even an imperfect setup.
For pedals, do you use anything other than the Harmonic Percolator, which you’re most known for using?
Albini: I’ve used a noise gate since I first started playing on stage. For many, many years it was just one of the original old-school MXR noise gates. They’ve all crapped out and been repaired and crapped out again many times. There’s an updated version of that MXR called the Smart Gate. I switched over to that. It’s set so that I can just touch the guitar and it opens up, but if I’m not actively playing it, it doesn’t open.
The output of the noise gate goes into the fuzz tone. And the fuzz tone has been a Harmonic Percolator [made by Interfax] since, I want to say, 1986. My friend Jay Tiller from Milwaukee worked at a head shop, record shop, and pawn shop combo in Milwaukee called Record Head. When I was there one time, he said, ‘We have this cool fuzz tone this guy made here. You should try it out.’ And I loved it. So, I bought one from him, and then over the years, I’ve bought a couple more when he stumbled across them at record swap or whatever, or at guitar fairs or whatever, he’s picked them up and I got ’em from him.
I’ve referred to the Percolator as a labor-saving device, because as soon as you hit the switch, the guitar just starts playing. I don’t even need to tell it what notes or anything. It just goes, and that’s my favorite thing about the Percolator, how it’s completely unhinged using it for feedback or whatever. It will choose little melodies that it wants to play, and it’ll just whistle them for you. But you kind of need to be physically moving. I’ve noticed that if you stand in one spot, it just squeals. But if you’re moving around, if the distance between you and your amplifier changes, then the fundamental frequency changes from the physical distance, and you get these really great psychedelic melodies that it creates.
Have you played any of the Percolator clones?
Albini: They all sound very slightly different, but they’re all basically the same. Chuck Collins made a complete, meticulous resurrection of the Harmonic Percolator [through his company, Theremaniacs] a few years ago—those are absolutely perfect. They respond exactly the same way. They sound the same. Almost all the others that I have seen—people send them to me because they feel like I should pass my hands over their Percolator or whatever, I’ve had maybe six or eight others—I can’t use any of ’em. They all behave differently somehow.
I think one of the perversions of my setup is that coming out of the noise gate, the signal into the Percolator is buffered, so it sounds different if you just plug your guitar straight into it, and I never do that.
On her new solo record, Laura Jane Grace goes back to her two most trusted partners in crime: her voice and her acoustic guitar.
“When things are moving, just keep moving,” she says. “I’m not trying to jinx anything, but I’m really looking forward to this year, and the future.
”Grace, who is best known for fronting iconic punk band Against Me!, has spent a good piece of the past four years trying to get her momentum back—the sort of energy that feels like a trademark for the singer and guitarist. Since she was a teen, her life has revolved around the seasons of music work: writing, recording, promoting, touring, repeat. Against Me! was three shows into a tour leg when the Covid pandemic slammed the brakes on that 20-year routine, and emotionally, Grace went flying through the windshield.
“My world was just completely turned upside down and shaken around,” she says. Since 2012, she had built her off-the-road life in an apartment in Chicago, but a shift in her personal life meant she had to split her time between there and St. Louis. There were some benefits: Grace couldn’t crank her amps in her apartment, and finding spare private space to play and record would be cheaper in St. Louis than Chicago. She found a studio there called Native Sound, which used to belong to Son Volt’s Jay Farrar, nested above a bar in downtown St. Louis. “I was like, ‘Shit, if Jay can make that work, so can I,’” says Grace.
Laura Jane Grace - "Birds Talk Too"
“When things are moving, just keep moving. I’m not trying to jinx anything, but I’m really looking forward to this year, and the future.”
That studio is where Grace recorded Hole in My Head, her third solo record, which was released on February 16. It’s a lean, uncomplicated folk-punk joyride. Though the opening, title track jolts the LP to life with a full-band punk-rock crush of melody, harmony, and abandon, the rest of the album is primarily about Grace’s vocal cords and her acoustic guitar. “I’m Not a Cop,” a fuzzy, crust-punk, doo-wop ditty, mashes together Modern Lovers’ off-kilter tone with a ’50s rock ’n’ roll shuffle. Then, “Dysphoria Hoodie” pares it back to just Grace and her acoustic for an ode to a baggy Adidas sweater—her greatest protector on days when she doesn’t want the world sussing her gender. Drums and a gritty electric check in again on the short, sweet firecracker “Birds Talk Too,” but otherwise, it’s all acoustic, propped up by a handful of bass lines and some good old handclaps, a tambourine, and shakers for percussion. Why did Grace pull back from years of full-band chaos?
“I mean this in the best way possible, but this record’s coming from a place of fear,” Grace explains. “Fear challenges you and makes you grow, and takes you out of your comfort zone. I think artists are most prolific and do their best work when they’re coming from a place of survival.”
Hole in My Head’s cover art, captured by Dave Decker and illustrated by Annie Walter, shows Grace behind the State Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida. The recognizable cobblestones remind Grace of being a teen, doing “deviant shit” in that very alley with friends.
Entering her 40s in 2020, Grace was back in survival mode, a familiar place for her as a teen in Gainesville, Florida. Longtime fans will know this story well: After moving around the world with her family, Grace landed in the inland college town, a military brat turned anarchist punk. Between benders and doing “deviant shit” with friends, she started performing solo as Against Me!, with just an acoustic and her powerful, pitch-perfect roar. She played alone in dives up and down the panhandle before Against Me! solidified into a band. (Even then, their first recordings were as DIY as you can get: Original drummer Kevin McMahon played a bucket drum on the first two Against Me! EPs, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it makes an appearance on their first full-length, the now-iconic Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose.)
“I think artists are most prolific and do their best work when they’re coming from a place of survival.”
Against Me! went on to sign with a major label and release two hi-fi punk-rock records, both produced by Butch Vig: 2007’s New Wave spawned their biggest hit with “Thrash Unreal,” and 2010’s White Crosses dipped further into arena-rock waters, an anarcho-Springsteen hybrid. This era famously cost Against Me! a good chunk of their earliest supporters, who felt burned by the band’s “selling out.” Their van’s tires were slashed on tour, and Grace was cussed out on plenty of occasions. But the band cut things off with corporate and went independent again for 2014’s scrappy Transgendered Dysphoria Blues, the first Against Me! record that explicitly detailed Grace’s experience as a trans woman.
That was 10 years ago. It’s as if Grace hit some uncanny peak with the major-label signing, and has since been slowly retracing her steps back to her crust-punk origins: After two solo records accompanied by her backing band, the Devouring Mothers, she’s back to just a voice and a guitar.
Laura Jane Grace's Gear
With Against Me!, Grace ascended from crust-punk streetnik to major-label star. But after two corporate records, the band went rogue again.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball Everlast Coated Acoustic (.010–.050)
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010–.046)
- Dunlop Tortex Standard .66 mm picks
Other similarities appeared over the last few years, as if some cosmic clock had been reset and she were back at square one. As a kid, she had spent summers and winters going up to Missouri, where her father lived. She always hated it, and this current era, where that state came back into her life, offered a chance to reconcile with the past. She decided to start working on music again on her own to minimize the risk of greater financial losses—if one week of solo shows got canceled, it would just mean she personally was put out, rather than four band members and five crew. But after decades of touring with a group, going back to just six strings and a voice—something she’d not done on a regular basis since her teens—took some finessing. “You feel afraid in the same ways, but again, a healthy fear,” she says.
“If the whole house burns down, if I can make it out with my acoustic guitar, worst-case scenario I’ll be busking on a street corner and hoping people throw change into the guitar case—but I can feed myself.”
“It’s an exercise in self-reliance,” she continues, “and it’s a comfort to always have that there. That’s what I think is beautiful about the acoustic guitar, is that you’re stripping it down to the bare minimum, and I know, ‘Okay, as long as I have that, I’m okay. If the whole fuckin’ house burns down, if I can make it out with my acoustic guitar, worst-case scenario I’ll be busking on a street corner and hoping people throw change in to the guitar case—but I can feed myself. That’s a comforting feeling. Those barebones tools as an artist; that’s self-reliance and that gives you self-confidence and self-esteem, and then you build from there.
”Plus, just like the modest recordings of early classic rock ’n’ roll songs, Hole in My Head never feels wanting in its simplicity. Grace notes that we don’t listen to Buddy Holly or Dion’s “The Wanderer” and wish there were more modern flourishes or a more discernible kick drum. The aesthetic works, and since she was going it mostly alone, it’s what Grace chased.
When it comes to acoustics, Grace prizes one criterion above all: Does it break strings?
Photo by Travis Shinn
Her coconspirator on the record wound up being Matt Patton, mentioned earlier, who provided bass and backing vocals for six songs. Grace had never met Patton before when he drove from Mississippi up to St. Louis in February 2023 for the sessions—X, then Twitter, brought them together in a moment of “total kismet,” says Grace. The two became fast friends, and Grace says the connection with Patton is her most cherished part of the album. “He took a total chance coming to St. Louis,” she says. “His contribution is immeasurable.” Patton returned the favor last December, hosting Grace for some sessions at his Water Valley, Mississippi studio.
“Those places that people refer to as ‘shithole’ cities, or the places where no one wants to be, I have this natural urge inside of me…. I’m like, ‘I dunno, maybe I want to go there.’”
Grace and Patton worked with engineer David Buzzbee at Native Sound, and Grace brought along four guitars to get the job done. Her all-black Yamaha LJ16 was—and still is—her acoustic of choice, a guitar with which she says she shares “a total soul connection. When it comes down to acoustic guitars, the thing that I’m most concerned about onstage is, ‘Does it stay in tune and does it break strings?’” she says. “That thing does not break strings, so I fucking love that guitar.”
Her 1963 Fender Jaguar and ’70s silver-panel Twin Reverb—both of which she bought off of original Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch—were in regular rotation, as was a handpainted Gretsch gifted to Grace from her longtime tattoo artist. Her signature blackout Rickenbacker 370 can be heard on the record, too. But no pedals at all were used, and the low-rent grit of “Hole in My Head” was coaxed not from Grace’s Twin, but from a Rickenbacker TR7, a dinky solid-state 1x10 amp. Grace remarks that she’s obsessed with making records with tiny amplifiers these days. “Maybe it’s cause the studio was upstairs, and I’m like, ‘Fuck, I don’t wanna carry a big amp upstairs,’” she chuckles.
Grace loves her new part-time homebase of St. Louis, Missouri, even though it’s not exactly a prime destination. That’s part of the appeal.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
Over a year on from her introduction to the city, Grace now feels a fairly legitimate affection for St. Louis. Unlike Chicago, which always overwhelmed her, St. Louis is manageable: You can get just about anywhere you need to be in 15 minutes, and rents haven’t spiked to unlivable levels the way they have in other cities. Grace fell in love with the city by bar-hopping, starting with the Whiskey Ring, right under Native Sound. Grace is sober, but that made bar-hopping all the more doable. She could slug nonalcoholic beers, then drive to check out another corner of town.
St. Louis is an underdog city, which endears it to Grace. “Those places that people refer to as ‘shithole’ cities, or the places where no one wants to be, I have this natural urge inside of me that if I hear someone talking about a place like that, I’m like, ‘I dunno, maybe I want to go there,’” she says. “Maybe it’s just a rebellion against the opposite of, that place that everyone else wants to go, I don’t want to go.”
YouTube It
Grace leads a rip-roaring acoustic set last summer in Southern California, captured here in stereo audio by a dedicated fan.
Guitarists Charlie Starr and Paul Jackson work like a southern-fried Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood: Their rhythms are just as important as the leads, and they’re all about telling a story.
Like the band, the album is a mix of just about every uniquely American musical genre wrapped into one. From the mountain-country calm of “Azalea” to “Watchu Know Good”’s smokey barroom groove, Blackberry Smoke is what happens when real musicians tell authentic stories through great songs.
Listening to lead vocalist/guitarist Charlie Starr and guitarist Paul Jackson name-check their influences, it’s apparent where they got their versatile yet classic sound. For Jackson, it was simple.
“My dad asked me, ‘Do you want to hear something really cool?’” he remembers. “He put on Chuck Berry, and that was that for me. I got turned on.”
“I grew up playing bluegrass and gospel and traditional country music with my dad,” Starr adds. “But my mom liked the Stones, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan. He says these influences and Jackson’s high-pitched vocal ability brought the two together over two decades ago.
“I remember hearing [Ratt’s] Out of the Cellar for the first time, which is something that me and Paul really bond on, and we were playing the same honky-tonks and little bars around West Georgia and East Alabama,” Starr continues. When he moved to Atlanta, he met brothers Brit and Richard Turner, who would become Blackberry Smoke’s drummer and bassist.“I had started writing some songs coming from bluegrass and southern rock music and was like, ‘Well, we need another guitar player, and we need somebody who can sing high.’ Harmony is very important, but the only bands that could sing around there were my band and Paul’s bands,” Starr chuckles. “I called Paul and was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, but we’re putting this band together. Would you like to be in it?’”
“That was that, and here we are,” Jackson laughs, “23 years later.”
Since then, Blackberry Smoke—which also includes Brandon Still (keyboards), Preston Holcomb (percussion), and Benji Shanks (guitar)—has taken their music around the world, garnering fans and critical acclaim. Starr’s bluegrass-meets-southern rock sound has also grown to embrace the best elements of blues, country, soul, jazz, and R&B. These genres share a traditional heritage, one that comes from the Southern states Blackberry Smoke calls home.
“My dad asked me, ‘Do you want to hear something really cool?’ He put on Chuck Berry, and that was that for me.” —Paul Jackson
Blackberry Smoke’s music is definitely a kind of stylistic and cultural gumbo. But, according to Starr and Jackson, the recipe only comes together because of the players that make up the band. “It’s the way that people play their instruments and the way that they express themselves, all seven of us,” says Starr. “You get the way that the instruments are being played and then the way that it’s all glued together. That’s where two decades of playing together comes into it. It’s like a football team where everybody’s moving and working toward the same goal.”
Be Right Here, Blackberry Smoke’s eighth album, was recorded live off the floor by Dave Cobb, who wanted to capture the band as they learned the songs.
Be Right Here embodies that human element better than, perhaps, any of the band’s previous work. Together with producer Dave Cobb, they took their already honest approach to writing and recording and stripped it back even further, tracking right off the live room floor. While there may have been some initial hesitations, Starr said the process soon proved its value.
“I had my doubts at first, but he had already done it. I think just previously, he had made Slash and Myles Kennedy’s newest record that way. He just said, ‘I want everything in the room and everybody in the room.’ There’s some bleed, but it was really about the feel, and he was right.”
“That’s where two decades of playing together comes into it. It’s like a football team where everybody’s moving and working toward the same goal.” —Charlie Starr
That “feel” dominates the record. From the greasy riffs of lead track “Dig a Hole,” the guitars are loose, raw, and packed with attitude, just like the classic records of rock’s heyday. That’s no accident.
“Dave’s coming from that ’60s recording mentality,” explained Starr. “He doesn’t allow a click or auto-tune. It’s all analog. That’s his MO. And if you think about it, we all spend every waking hour in the studio chasing records that were made in the ’60s and ’70s, because it sounds so good. Especially as guitar players and instrumentalists, it’s like, man, that’s the pure drop right there! It’s the way that Neve consoles and Neumann microphones make music sound.”
Charlie Starr's Gear
Starr and Jackson usually drop off a truckload of high-wattage amps at the studio when they record, but Cobb encouraged them to keep things small and simple.
Photo by Steve Kalinsky
Guitars
- 1964 Gibson ES-335
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior
- 1963 Fender Esquire
- 1958 Fender Telecaster
- 1965 Gibson ES-330
Shared Acoustics:
- 1950 Martin D-28
- 1953 Martin D-18
- 1946 Martin 000-18
- 1955 Gibson J-45
Amps
- 1964 Fender Champ
- 1950s–’60s Supro Super
- 1950s Fender Custom Champ (modified to Dumble spec)
Effects
- 1990s Menatone Red Snapper
- Vintage MXR Phase 45
- Vintage Maestro EP-3 Echoplex
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario (.010–.046)
- Blue Chip picks (acoustic)
- InTune picks (electric)
Tracking live through classic studio gear wasn’t the only way Cobb and the band changed things for the new record. Much to Starr’s surprise, Cobb also wanted the band to come in fresh—as in, not-having-heard-the-songs-before fresh. Starr remembered Cobb saying, “Hey, man, don’t send demos of the songs to the guys this time. Don’t even play the songs yet. I want you to sit in the studio, get the guitar, and say, ‘The song goes like this.’ I want to capture the first thing that people play when we start to roll tape. That’s usually the best.
”As a result, often what you hear on Be Right Here is the sound of seven talented musicians playing off each other and reacting to the music in real-time like only a band of musical brothers can. Not even the band’s gear escaped Cobb’s less-is-more approach. Jackson and Starr, both diehard vintage-gear collectors, are well known for using Marshall and Marshall-style heads and cabinets. But Starr said the amps hardly got any use in the studio.
“If you think about it, we all spend every waking hour in the studio chasing records that were made in the ’60s and ’70s, because it sounds so good.” —Charlie Starr
“Over the last 20 years, you know, we’ll go to make a record, and then it’s like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to take this Plexi to the studio,’ or, ‘I got this new Bandmaster I can’t wait to take in,’” he explains. “We’ll literally bring a truck full of shit. And Dave’s got a whole studio full of shit. But Dave called and said, ‘Hey, call Benji and Paul and tell them not to bring any amp bigger than a 10" speaker. Let’s make a funky little amp record.’”
“And, believe it or not, I used just two amps on this record,” adds Jackson. “They just sounded great. I was on the verge of just using one, my Gibson Lancer. It’s a ’59. I used it for most of the record. Then, I think, on the last two songs, it took a dump on me, and I used Dave’s ’58 or ’59 Rickenbacker amp for the last songs.”
Starr kept his recording rig just as streamlined. On almost every song, you can hear him play through a 1964 black-panel Fender Champ, with a few cameos from a Supro Super. But the holy grail turned out to be a 1950s Fender Custom Champ, which had some particularly special magic.
Paul Jackson's Gear
Guitarist Paul Jackson says the best solos ought to sound like you’re singing.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Guitars
- 1960 Gibson ES-335 (owned by Dave Cobb)
- Gibson 40th Anniversary Les Paul
- 1979 Gibson Les Paul Standard
Amps
- 1958–’59 Rickenbacker combo
- 1959 Gibson GA-6 Lancer
Effects
- Neo Instruments Ventilator
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario (.010–.046)
- InTune picks
“Dave actually had an email from Dumble that he showed me. He’s like, ‘This is the advice that I got from Dumble on what to do with your Champs and Princetons.’ I can’t tell anyone what it said. It’s a Dave Cobb, Howard Dumble secret. But it was a speaker trick. Our tech was out there with his soldering iron, like a crazy professor, modding these vintage amps on the live room floor.” The unmistakable tweed grit on “Don’t Mind If I Do” is just one of the stellar guitar tones that drive Be Right Here.
Both Jackson and Starr managed to work a few of their favorite pedals into the sessions as well. “I actually fell in love with this pedal that Dave had called a Red Snapper by Menatone,” Starr says. “It was a mid-’90s pedal. I was like, ‘Dude, that is great! I got to have one of those.’ It’s Klon-ish but a little brighter, actually. And you were using a [Neo Instruments] Ventilator for the solo for ‘A Little Bit Crazy.’ Isn’t that what it is?” Jackson confirms. “The chase never ends, does it?” Starr continues. “You can’t help it.”
“The way I look at it is, we’re singers anyway. When we play guitar, the vocal comes through the guitar.” —Paul Jackson
There are delicious tones to be found on every song, and getting those tones was a journey in itself. Because of their tracking process, each sound had to fit the whole and perfectly translate the songs’ meanings. Cobb and the band understood this, and as Starr explains, they took their time dialing things in one chord stab at a time. “For each song, [Dave would] plug in a little amp, and you’d hit a G chord. He’s like, ‘No.’ Then it’s like, ‘Okay, how about this little Super amp?’ He’d be like, ‘No.’ Then you land on the one, and he goes, ‘That’s it!’ He would do that with every person in the band.”
“That chase is the fun part to me,” adds Jackson. “When you’re in a room with a bunch of guys and trying to find that sound, it’s exciting. I could sit there all day and just listen and watch.”
Photo by Andy Sapp
Southern rock revivalists Blackberry Smoke have been going strong for 23 years, and guitarists Charlie Starr and Paul Jackson say they have no intentions of slowing down.
While both Starr and Jackson put many of their vintage instruments to work during those sessions, Jackson spent a lot of time working one of Cobb’s prized 6-strings. “I mainly used Dave’s blonde ES-335,” he says. “He said it was a late ’50s or early ’60s. I fell in love with that. I used it for most of the tracking.” Jackson also turned to his black 40th Anniversary Les Paul and a ’79 Standard Les Paul, but the 335 won the day.
Starr relied on his personal arsenal of old-school Gibsons and Fenders, including a 1964 ES-335, a ’65 ES-330, a ’57 Les Paul Junior, a ’63 Esquire, and a ’58 Telecaster. Of course, great songwriters are never far from their favorite acoustic guitars, and Blackberry Smoke gets the most out of a prized collection that includes a 1950 Martin D-28, a ’53 D-18, a ’46 000-18, and a 1955 Gibson J-45.
“I called Paul and was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, but we’re putting this band together. Would you like to be in it?’” —Charlie Starr
The band’s gear and tones are likely enough to make most Premier Guitar readers misty-eyed. To Starr and Jackson, though, they are a means to an end. To them, it’s still all about the songs and the emotions. This goes double for their approach to solos, of which there are plenty on the new LP.
“When I’m putting together a solo for a song, the best place to start is the melody of the vocal,” explains Starr. “Then just expand on that. I mean, when you’ve played with traditional bluegrass guys, if you came in there playing a solo on ‘Faded Love,’ and you aren’t playing the melody, they’d be like, ‘What the hell are you playing? You’re not playing the song!’”
“The way I look at it,” Jackson adds, “is we’re singers anyway. When we play guitar, the vocal comes through the guitar. That’s what gets me on solos. I could rip at home and do that by myself. I’m not worried about that. It’s about the songwriting, and when I hear Charlie throw something out there, it just works.”
The duo agrees that rhythm is 90 percent of a guitarist’s gig, which is why they complement each other’s rhythm styles perfectly. Even on straight-up rockers like “Hammer and the Nail,” the two fill the space with a combination of powerful chords, punctuating slide flourishes, and Stones-like juxtaposition. Starr admits that it’s something they’ve worked on since day one.
“Paul and I, in the early days of the band, had talked about not doing the same exact thing and how it’s so interesting for a two-guitar band. Think about it: When we were young, and we listened to Highway to Hell, you would turn the balance left and right [on the stereo] and get Malcolm on the left and Angus on the right. It was always a little different. Even Appetite for Destruction. That’s an even better example of how Izzy and Slash played totally different parts. That’s what Keith Richards and Ron Wood talk about, taking these different parts and making something greater.”
Blackberry Smoke’s 23-year career shows how far you can go with a handful of chords and the honest truth. Through rock’s attitude, blues’ swagger, bluegrass’ melodicism, and soul’s sensuality, they keep creating records that resonate with fans worldwide.
Yet in the modern music age of algorithms and AI, you have to ask: What keeps them going? Why crank old guitars into tube amps after all these years? The romantic answer is, “the song.” The more practical answer—and every bit as true—is that they simply have to.
“It’s an addiction,” says Starr. “Look at the Stones. They’re 80. They can’t stop.”
“Exactly,” agrees Jackson. “It’s still exciting.”
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Blackberry Smoke takes a soulful ramble through their hit, “One Horse Town,” live in Atlanta back in 2019.