Why you might be your own most important DIY project.
This is our annual DIY issue, where we share a few interesting projects—this time, a guitar mod that's a lesson in the proper way to use a router and six pedal-kit builds—that can be done fairly easily, in one day. The idea is to showcase attainable work that builds basic skills needed for more complex projects.
But for those of us with creative ambitions, the most important DIY project is far more complex than a pedal build, a pickup swap, or even homebuilding a guitar. I’ve always believed that the mark of an artist is having a unique character that comes through in their work. There are plenty of examples: Joni Mitchell, James Hetfield, David Gilmour, Polly Jean Harvey, Jimi Hendrix, Ava Mendoza, Anthony Pirog, Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Yvette Young, Coltrane, Miles, Billy Gibbons, Mike Watt, Brent Mason, and many, many more. What they all have in common is that it takes just a few notes or a vocal line or two to recognize them. Some might only be known in your town, but that doesn't make their work any less viable or important—especially if it’s important to you.
My favorite example, and also my favorite living songwriter, is Tom Waits. Whether you hear Tom crooning in his early post-Tin Pan Alley phase on a song like 1973’s “Ol’ 55” or whooping and cawing through 1987’s “Temptation,” accompanied by Marc Ribot’s gnawing guitar solo, or raving through 2011’s “Bad As Me,” recorded well after his conversion to avant troubadour … it all sounds like Tom Waits. And not just in the vocals and arrangements—although those are unmistakable. There is a rock-bottom sentimentality to much of his writing, which is consistently literate and poetic, and he has a way of drawing on roots-music sources in unlikely, sometimes outright weird contexts. He’s also a capable actor, but anyone who has seen Tom onstage, even before his first major theatrical role, in 1986’s Down by Law, knows that. I understand that everybody isn’t as fond of Tom’s work as I am, but that doesn’t matter. What does is that he is always recognizably himself—that he has a unique artistic character.
“What matters is knowing your own creative truth and embracing it.”
So, the point is, how do we follow in the footsteps of all the above to discover who we are artistically and bring that to play in our own work, in a way that conveys our distinctive creative character to anyone who hears our music? And once we do that, how do we keep growing while staying true to ourselves? There’s no pat answer, so it’s not as easy as soldering or even learning to blaze on scales for Instagram. And developing a unique artistic character is not important to everyone. There’s a lot to be said for just playing guitar and performing covers and having a whale of a time. But for those of us making original albums, trying to establish a sound or style that is authentically our own, trying to expand the envelope of genre, or do whatever the heck it is that lets us be us … well, it’s a lifelong DIY project.
The tools can’t be ordered online. They’re imagination, inspiration, honest evaluation, and the proverbial 10,000 hours. Along the way, decisions need to be made—about the playing approach and gear you might need to create a sound of your own, about really workshopping your songwriting and composing to get to a place where you hear that what you’re creating is authentically yours and not a diluted version of one of your heroes, about deciding exactly what you want your music to do. (A good way to arrive at the latter is working out an elevator pitch that explains your music to a stranger in as few words as possible. Decoding it for them also decodes it for you.)
It doesn’t matter how others judge your work. What matters is knowing your own creative truth and embracing it. Besides, it’s not always, or even often, easy to get others to embrace your vision, but that doesn't matter, as long as it’s your vision—and you know it, deep in your heart and brain.
Sure, gear is great and important, and I could talk about it all day. (Just ask my wife, Laurie, who has done her best to stay awake during many of my obsessive conversations with gearhead friends.) And learning how to mod it or make it so it best serves you is important. But if you have a creative vision, what’s most important is pursuing that vision, nurturing it, and truly owning it—until you and that vision are wholly the same thing.
Music is a lifelong pursuit, and all of us who love guitars and the sounds they make are in it together.
When you pick up an issue of Premier Guitar, you’re chasing music. And I’ll bet that’s something you and I have been doing, whenever we can, our entire lives. Driven by love, curiosity, and the excitement of discovery, we pursue the sounds that thrill us or might thrill us, and the more we learn or find, the brighter the flame grows.
For me, the first sparks happened in my parents’ kitchen, where my mother, Rose, listened to WEXT, a country station broadcasting from New Britain, Connecticut. There, I learned that music takes you places, like Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” and introduces you to the vastly different lives of others, via songs like Johnny Cash’s“The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” TV also became a path of exploration. I was only 6, but I remember seeing—and hearing—the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and not exactly understanding (all that screaming!), but grasping that rock ’n’ roll was something I should look into. Soon, Shindig! and Hullabaloo introduced me to the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Herman’s Hermits, and the giant whose birthday I share, Howlin’ Wolf. (June 10 … feel free to send cards!) The Johnny Cash Show spotlighted Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Derek and the Dominos. And The Midnight Special turned me on to virtually every major rock and R&B artist of the early ’70s, and sent me down a lifelong rabbit hole of blues and soul when Ray Charles and Ike & Tina Turner appeared. My first allowances—50 cents and eventually $2 a week—were spent on music. (First album: The Sound of Johnny Cash, for $2 at Woolworth’s, and I still own it. It features my first guitar hero: Luther Perkins.)
Shortly, I discovered there was such a thing as music journalism, and I fell for the writing of Robert Palmer and Lester Bangs, and found a magazine called Musician, where I would eventually make my bones as an editor. Each of these discoveries enflamed the chase, and by the time I got to college, I spent part of nearly every weekend combing new and used record shops from New York City to Hartford. I was also able to get to Manhattan easily from school in Bridgeport, to experience the punk revolution. And so it went, and still goes—that unquenchable pursuit of musical discovery.
Somewhere along the line, a guitar fell into my hands, and a new dimension slowly and painstakingly (I am far from a natural) developed—where I could be part of that great musical continuum in a deeper way, and where, eventually, I learned the wordless language of musicians. It’s a rich tongue that conveys so much emotional information without as much as a single vowel. The dialog of sound. It is amazing, powerful, profound, and unlike anything else. If there is real magic, it is in listening to and playing music.
That magic has taken me many places. I went from seeing bands at CBGB to playing its stage many times. I played the New England clubs that I would sneak into when I was underage, catching G.E. Smith with the Scratch Band and other regional heroes. Eventually, the music I played took me across the country and to Europe, and to the stages of Bonnaroo and Memphis in May and France’s Cognac Blues Passions and Switzerland’s Blues Rules and so many roadhouses, dive bars, and breweries and barbecue joints you’d think I wouldn’t remember them all, but I do.
The point is this: Music is a lifelong adventure. We are in the chase together, no matter how different we may seem. The sound of it thrills us, and I’d be surprised—shocked, actually—if it hasn’t taken you somewhere. As guitar players, even those of us who’ve never left the couch have been transported. Tell me you’ve never played a song, plucked out a melody, or slammed out a favorite riff and suddenly found yourself completely removed from your surroundings—in a kind of reverie. And make no mistake, even if you’ve never played a gig and have a hard time forming an open-position B chord, you’re a guitar player. No one should be judging you (although I know it’s hard not to judge yourself).
It’s an honor and a privilege for us at PG to offer signposts for your chase—to introduce you to new players or reintroduce you to ones you love, to turn you on to new guitar music, to shed light on new gear and how to use it, and make using the gear you own even better. We do not take this lightly. And we love the chase every bit as much as you do.
Life—and playing guitar—is really about the art of storytelling.
I became infatuated with Roy Buchanan’s incendiary playing when I was a relative youngster, after finding a copy of Guitar Player with Roy on the cover. He looked more like one of dad’s disheveled friends than a star, which intrigued me enough to pick up Roy Buchanan and Second Album—the first time I heard the war between angels and demons channeled through wood and steel.
A few years later, my friend Stuart Stack and I hopped in my dad’s battered ’67 Comet to see Roy play the Pinecrest in Shelton, Connecticut. The opening band was unmemorable, but then came the wait. One hour. Two hours. And no Roy.
Suddenly, the sold-out crowd began parting behind us, and I turned to see Roy coming through the human sea, with a Fender case dangling from his left hand. As he passed, saying hi and excuse me, the aroma of distillery accompanied him. Stu and I looked at each other. This was not going to be good.
We were right. It was amazing! Roy took the stage and quickly summoned every demon and angel at his call, sending overtone squeals to the sky, supercharging his chords on standards like “Green Onions” with one of the crunchiest “clean” Tele tones I’ve ever heard, and dancing up and down the fretboard like the Nicholas Brothers. (Look them up on YouTube. It’ll be worthwhile.) He even delivered “The Messiah Will Come Again,” with its heartbreaking melody, stoic monologue, and explosive finale. We became fans for life.
A few years after that, when Roy had signed with Alligator Records and cut a firestorm called When a Guitar Plays the Blues, I interviewed him after another casually brilliant—and sober—performance at a club called Jonathan Swift’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After the gig, Roy and I adjourned to the motor lodge where he was staying in Harvard Square. Roy wanted to do the interview in the lobby, where, luckily, the coffee table, two chairs, and hot pot of java that were its only appointments were available.
He was a delightful person: soft-spoken, articulate, his eyes bright with humor and life. And about half-way through, for obvious reasons, I asked him if he believed the guitar had the power to channel the spiritual world.
“Well,” he replied, “the ghost of Jim Hendrix appeared to me and saved my life.” I was instantly all in. Roy went on to explain that after a gig he’d played in D.C. one night, when he was so wasted by booze and other vices that he felt near death, some college students—seeing he was in a bad way—invited him back to their place. Once there, they offered a cure: LSD.
It was the first time he dropped acid, he said, and in addition to the colors and weird audio transformations, he started to see a kind of mist, and Jimi appeared. He warned Roy, reflecting on his own death, that if Roy kept on this path he would die, and that the time to quit and get sober was now—or he’d no longer be able to serve a higher calling with his guitar. Roy promised Jimi, who he’d never met before, that he’d find a street called straight.
I asked Roy if he believed Jimi really appeared, or if it was just the acid. Roy said he wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought it was real … or at least real enough.
I’ve told you that story because, well, that’s what I’ve done my entire life—told stories. One of the great joys of interviewing musicians and gear makers is finding interesting stories and passing them along, but only after you’ve relished them yourself for a while. And if you love chasing musical adventures like I do, then you also create a few stories of your own along the way.
Every page of PG—even regular features like Gear Radar and Tools for the Task—is a story. What’s new, what’s good, what’s useful? We want to tell you what we’ve found. And some of our best storytelling is in our reviews, which are really accounts of musical explorations, where our writers share the memories, references, and sonic triggers they experience and, when the gear is good, the very tangible joy they feel in playing.
We can all relate to that, because there might be nothing better than picking up a guitar and letting the stories—or the angels and demons—inside it talk. In that sense, we’re all deep storytellers … and if the ghost of Jimi Hendrix happens to appear, well, that’s a bonus!