The all-star producer invites John Bohlinger to his home studio for a glimpse of his most treasured gear.
Veteran producer and behind-the-scenes guitar superstar Dann Huff released his debut solo album, When Words Aren’t Enough, on May 30, but his career began long before that. He’s been making records and playing guitar for roughly 50 years, working with everyone from Taylor Swift to Rodney Crowell to Michael Jackson.
His home studio is where the magic happens, and for this Rig Rundown, he invited PG’s John Bohlinger over to talk about his career, his new record, and the best bits of gear he’s played along the way. Keep an eye out for our feature on Huff online and in our August print issue.
Huff had hardly played this 1964 FenderStratocaster for 20 years when he walked by it before recording his latest solo album and deciding it was time to reconnect. It was heavily modded by builder James Tyler.
The lower tone knob is also a push-pull switch to modify the pickup configurations; the middle tone knob is a mid-boost circuit, which can be toggled on or off with a push-pull function; and the volume pot is, well, just a volume pot. Huff explains the series of three switches, each assigned to one of the three pickups: “Down is louder, up is softer.”
Tyler Tone
This James Tyler Strat, built specially for Huff by Tyler, is an exacting copy of his ’64 Strat, complete with Tyler’s signature mods.
Revv Your Engine
Derek Eastveld, owner of Winnipeg, Manitoba-based amp company Revv, brought this Dynamis D40 head for Huff to try out, and it clicked instantly; Huff wrote a song on it for his solo record. It runs through a Little Walter 2x12 open-back cabinet.
Dann Huff’s Pedalboard
Huff doesn’t need a spaceship to get where he needs to go. Along with a TC Electronic PolyTune and a Lehle volume pedal, he runs a Vertex Effects Steel String (Slight Return Edition), Vertex Ultraphonix Mk II, Boss SD-2, TC Electronic Corona, Boss VB-2w, Mr. Black SuperMoon, Strymon Brigadier, and Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler.
Guitarist Sonny Sharrock was one of the most forward-thinking guitarists coming out of the ’60s, and his music stayed on the cutting edge throughout his long career.
His credits include Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson and Herbie Mann—next to whom he performed in Questlove’s 2021 documentary, Summer of Soul—and his tunes have been covered by Santana and the Messthetics. But it’s as a bandleader and collaborator where Sharrock cut his wildest recordings. As groundbreaking as Sharrock’s music could be, his distorted tone and melodic tunes helped bring rock listeners into the jazz tent. Our callers let us know how much Sharrock meant to them and why he’s one of the “top guys of all time.”
Guitar players wanting to catch the Grateful Dead’s particular lightning in a bottle exist along a spectrum. Some are content to take inspiration from Jerry Garcia’s playing but make their own way regarding guitar choice and signal path. Others strive to emulate Garcia’s sonic decisions down to the most minor details and create signal paths as close to Jerry’s as possible. In recent years, an ecosystem of gear has developed around fostering Jerry Garcia’s electric tone, including everything from guitars, amps, and stompboxes to on-board preamps and speakers.
Entire books about the Grateful Dead’s gear have been written, so we can’t cover it all here. Garcia tinkered with all facets of his sound from about 1971 until 1978, when his signal path reached stability. By then, his On-Board Effects Loop—an innovation he developed to control how much signal reached his effects—was dialed in, his backline firm, and his choice of effects pedals solidified. Even then, adjustments were made, especially when MIDI arrived or when technology like in-ear monitoring was used. Here are some basics.
Scarlet Fire’s recreation of Garcia’s Wolf, originally built by Doug Irwin.
It starts with guitars. For players wanting to get their Jerry on, there’s a wide range of Garcia-esque instruments—with just as wide a range of prices—out there. Recreations of the Doug Irwin guitars and the Fender Alligator Strat abound. China-built models from companies likePhred Instruments can go for as little as $700 or so. Luthier Thomas Lieber apprenticed with Irwin long ago, and his Lieber Guitars will deliver a copy of a variety of Garcia models. Leo Elliott’s Scarlet Fire Guitars out of Dallas, Texas, takes things in another direction. Elliott builds Doug Irwin replicas that start at $20,000 and go up from there, with a current wait time of about 18 months for an instrument. He’s outfitted many of the top Garcia guitarists today, including Zach Nugent and Jeff Mattson. Elliott says, “I’m a self-taught luthier; I didn’t really build my first guitar until 2010. I understood a little bit about woodworking before I got started, but I learned by reading books and through trial and error. I started building replicas of Doug Irwin’s Wolf guitar right away, which is sort of like building a car and starting with a Ferrari. I didn’t know any better. Then, eventually I got to know Doug Irwin and collaborated with him. So, I got to hold Garcia’s Tiger guitar and get to know it really well. There’s one guy who helps me around the shop, but otherwise, I am building these guitars on my own. I’m collaborating with Doug Irwin on a new series of Tiger guitars, which will retail for 50 grand each.” That’s one way to get your Jerry going.
The JBL-inspired Milkman K-120.
Garcia’s choice of amplifiers is another matter. He preferred Fender Twin Reverbs loaded with JBL Alnico speakers, which were popular amongst many rock bands in the 1970s. The details get complicated; Garcia’s amps were heavily modified, and the Fender Twin served as a preamp that ran to a McIntosh MC-3500 power amp.
It’s hard to find vintage JBL speakers today—at least ones in good shape. San Francisco’s Milkman Sound, founded by Tim Marcus, has created a faithful reproduction of those classic JBLsthey call the K-120. They’re coupling those speakers with a Garcia-style recreation of his Fender Twin that Marcus named the JG-40. “I think 75 percent of Jerry’s tone is in the JBL speakers,” Milkman’s founder says. “But when you start to analyze the other 25 percent, you kind of have to start withDon Rich. [Editor’s Note: Rich was the guitar player in Buck Owens’ band, pioneers of the Bakersfield Sound.] That’s Jerry’s tone, too, but the difference is Garcia’s midrange was a bit throatier. It sounds clean, but really, it’s not clean at the same time. Especially his tone in the late ’70s. There is something about running that Fender Twin Reverb through the McIntosh that would just completely blow out the tone in a really interesting way.”
Garcia colored his tone with off-the-shelf effects. This was, after all, long before the days of boutique pedals. By 1978 and beyond, you’d hear him playing through an MXR Distortion+, an MXR Analog Delay, and an MXR Phase 100. He often used auto wahs, preferring the Musitronics Mu-Tron envelope filter as well as a Mu-Tron Octave Divider and a Mu-Tron combination volume and wah pedal.
When I asked Jeff Mattson, Bella Rayne, and Tom Hamilton Jr. exactly how orthodox they are about using the kind of gear that Garcia did, I got three different answers.
Mattson tells me that because Dark Star Orchestra is doing something very specific, he really has to tailor his sound as carefully to Garcia’s as he can. “Some folks get too hung up on small things, like what kind of cable to use and things like that, and I don’t go that far. But it’s important for Dark Star Orchestra to get Jerry’s sound right because we are covering different eras and different shows. In 2022, for example, we went to Europe and recreated shows from the Dead’s famous Europe ’72 tour, so you have to pay close attention to what kind of gear they were using to do that right.”
Hamilton works differently. He’s always preferred a higher-gain signal than Garcia ever did, landing in more of a British or heavy metal tone. (Randy Rhoads was a big influence.) “I’ve always approached it like, ‘What’s the new information we can put into this thing?’” he says. “Not just recreate but pushing in a forward direction. And anytime I’ve played with the guys who played with Garcia back in the day, they always said to me, ‘You’re here because you’re here. Don’t try and do what we did back in 1978 or do it because Garcia did it that way.’ They’ve always encouraged me to be myself.”
Bella Rayne is just wrapping her head around what it really means to try to sound like Garcia. “Besides Jerry, I’m influenced by guitarists like Dickey Betts and Derek Trucks, so my tone tends to be a bit heavier and bluesy,” she explains. “I’m generally running a Stratocaster through a Fender Twin Reverb. But recently, I was doing a show, and a buddy of mine set up a Jerry rig for me, and that was so cool: JBL speakers, McIntosh head, the whole setup. I had never played through one. I didn’t know what the hype was all about. I plugged in, and it was just amazing; there was such a snap, and I was really commanding the band. I can see myself keeping my current rig but adding a Dead-rig to experiment. But honestly, anything is fine; I am not picky. I just want to play the best that I can.”
Axe-wielders Jake Cinninger and Brendan Bayliss take us through their current gear garages.
It’s been just over 10 years since we had legendary South Bend, Indiana, jam band Umphrey’s McGee on Rig Rundown, so when we saw that they were coming to play at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in early April, we figured it was time to reconnect.
Guitarists Jake Cinninger and Brendan Bayliss showed PG’s John Bohlinger what pieces of kit they’re digging these days, and how they orchestrate their incredibly broad range of sounds.
Here’s an up-close look at Cinninger’s No. 1, a G&L Comanche. The Z-coil pickups do away with typical single-coil 60-cycle hum issues at high-gain settings. It’s an all-purpose workhorse.
Cinninger replaced the stock trem bar with a Jake Blade, a custom-made replacement patented by Mark Benjamin of RoughGauge LLC. Compared to a regular trem bar, it’s out of the way and allows for more expressive playing.
For strings, Cinninger uses D’Addario .10s, and he swears by his beveled-edge Telefunken 2 mm picks.
Special S
Cinninger says only 50 of these G&L S-styles were made, with remarkable pieces of wood and specially designed pickups. This one cuts closer to a classic, throaty Stratocaster sound, and if a venue has quiet, clean power that won’t present excessive noise issues, it’s more likely to be called into action.
Two by Two
Cinninger’s signal runs to one amp at a time. The Schroeder head, which is used for cleans, was built with military-spec durability by Tim Schroeder in Chicago and is one of 10. Cinninger says it’s got some Dumble qualities, with its clarity, power, consistency, and speed to the speaker, and it connects to a Schroeder cabinet and custom speaker.
The Oldfield Marquis 100-JC, built by Paul Gussler in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the Marshall-flavored side of Cinninger’s rig. It handles dirty signals and is connected to classic Electro-Voice drivers.
Jake Cinninger’s Pedalboard
Cinninger’s board, which he made with his dad, is 25 years old, and it’s constantly changing. His always-on boxes include a Banzai Cold Fusion Overdrive, Fuchs Royal Plush Compressor, and Mesa Boogie Five-Band Graphic EQ, plus a Steel Guitar Black Box tube buffer that adds some “air” in the high end.
On top of those, there’s a Boss TU-3, MXR Smart Gate, Radial Tonebone Hot British, MXR Distortion III, Sarno Earth Drive, TC Electronic Flashback, Boss PS-5, Source Audio Soundblox 2 Multiwave Distortion, Malekko Fuzz, Guyatone MD2, Boss PH-3, Morley Bad Horsie, BBE Mind Bender, and a custom “FuzzBucket” fuzz made by a friend.
Utility units include a Lily P4D, Radial BigShot ABY, and Ebtech Hum Eliminator, plus a 9-channel effects switching system.
Sorry, Mark
Meet Miss Lucy. This is a PRS Mark Tremonti Signature, albeit without Tremonti’s name on the headstock, and tricked out with the Jake Blade. This one runs a bit hotter than Brendan Bayliss’ other PRS guitars, and his tech changes the strings on it—D’Addario XL .010s—every day. Like Cinninger, he digs the Telefunken 2 mm picks.
Also in the stable are another PRS single-cutaway and a double-cut PRS McCarty.
Doubles of the Oldfield
Bayliss runs both a Mesa Boogie Lonestar head and a Gussler-built Oldfield head (which sounds similar to his Lonestar) at the same time. The Mesa runs to a cab with Celestion 12″ speakers.
Brendan Bayliss’ Board
Bayliss’ board also features the Steel Guitar Black Box, a Lily P4D, Radial BigShot ABY, a Boss TU-3, and a Morley 20/20 Bad Horsie wah.
Aside from those, there’s a Keeley Compressor, MXR Custom Badass Modified O.D., Cusack Screamer, MXR Timmy, Cusack Tap-A-Whirl, Audio Blend Edge EQ, Boss OC-5, Boss CE-5, MXR Phase 95, Eventide H9, Stigtronics Delay, and Boss DD-20.
Guitarist William Tyler, a restless sonic explorer: “I would get bored staying in the same place.”
Photo by Angelina Castillo
The expansive instrumental guitarist/composer pushes himself out of his comfort zone, beyond the boundaries of his neo-Americana wheelhouse on Time Indefinite.
Mastering an instrument and an artistic style—and then being recognized and rewarded for it—is a daunting enough accomplishment that one might be forgiven for feeling that, once reached, it’s the be-all to end-all. Guitarist William Tyler, for all the praise and opportunity that have come his way over the past decade and a half, isn’t content to plow the same furrow. With his evolutionary new album, Time Indefinite, this son of the South is pushing further afield, not completely forgoing his virtuosic neo-Americana lyricism but incorporating it into static-friendly, otherworldly studio experimentation.
The disorienting opener of Time Indefinite, “Cabin Six,” begins with a loop of hovering blare that, lasting nearly a minute, might lead listeners to think something is amiss with their turntable stylus; this gradually dissipates into an eddy of railroad-like whine from which a chiming 6-string hook emerges only to finally sink into a murky, detuned drone. The simple, lovely “Anima Motel” and almost naïve “Concern” are eminently approachable, and “Howling at the Second Moon,” with its alternate, Joni Mitchell-inspired tuning, feels like something that could have appeared on one of Tyler’s previous albums (even if it was recorded on his iPhone then texturized via a bump to a cassette recorder and dosed with added effects). But the distressed sonic sculptures of “The Hardest Land to Harvest” and “Electric Lake” or the sampled, distorted church choir laced through “Star of Hope” have a ghostly resonance unlike anything the guitarist has done before.
SoundStream
“I think it’s important for artists to push themselves into new ways of working,” Tyler says. “Most of my favorites, artists I follow over the long trajectory of their careers, have done that, whether it’s in music, film, visual art, novels. Of course, some people have a method or style that they stick to, and it serves them. And I wouldn’t want to put anything out into the world that I wouldn’t myself, as a consumer, enjoy spending time with and taking seriously. That said, I would get bored staying in the same place. The new record is about making something that was a little less chained to certain kinds of guitar music, where I felt like I might be running up against my creative limitations or enthusiasms in that area. I wanted to reinvent myself for myself, to explore fresh possibilities, even with the guitar as my primary tool.”
Tyler, whose parents were hitmaking Nashville songwriters, made his name early on as a young guitar phenom playing in such alternative-minded, country-influenced bands as Lambchop and Silver Jews, before appearing on the fourth volume of the influential Tompkins Square “Imaginational Anthem” series of new-era American Primitive guitar and then making his full-length debut as a solo artist with the 2010 album Behold the Spirit. As a player and composer, he was recognized for subsuming the early influence of John Fahey and the Takoma style into something vibrantly his own.
Once Tyler signed to the stalwart indie-rock label Merge, the guitarist released a string of warmly received electro-acoustic albums: Impossible Truth (2013), Deseret Canyon (2015) and Modern Country (2016). There was also a marvel of a solo performance at Nashville’s Third Man Records released as an LP in the “Live at Third Man” series. A few years later came the album Goes West, its title alluding to a pre-pandemic move to Los Angeles, and its arrangements flecked with atmospheric swirls and sunny, almost pop-like touches. Tyler also created an aptly rustic score for First Cow, director Kelly Reichardt’s 2019 art house Western, and the guitarist capped his Merge run in 2023 with Secret Stratosphere, a live album of soaring full-band versions of numbers from his back catalog, credited to William Tyler’s Impossible Truth.
“I wanted to reinvent myself for myself, to explore fresh possibilities, even with the guitar as my primary tool.”
Tyler has released covers of such disparate artists as Alex Chilton, Michael Chapman, Fleetwood Mac, Yo La Tengo and Neu!/Harmonia’s Michael Rother, not to mention classical composers Handel and Dvorák. The broad listening palette suggested by these choices always pointed toward a more intrepid path. But the album that most presaged the spirit of Time Indefinite is New Vanitas, a small masterpiece of pandemic creation that found him threading beautiful, involved guitar melodies through hypnagogic soundscapes, often haunted by lo-fi snatches of radio broadcasts and sotto-voce dialogue, as on the evocatively titled “Slow Night’s Static.” New Vanitas even includes a woozy track called “Time Indefinite,” the foreshadowing title a favorite that he borrowed from a film by documentarian Ross McElwee.
On Time Indefinite, Tyler says, “I was drawn to more ambient music, including by guitarists like Christian Fennesz and Norman Westberg, but also groups like Stars of the Lid and Boards of Canada.”
Another signpost on Tyler’s new road was a collaboration with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden that yielded the folktronica single “Darkness, Darkness.” Then last year brought the standalone track “Flight Final,” Tyler’s first release for the artist-led imprint Psychic Hotline, and a slice of musique concrète that brings to mind Brian Eno’s association with German “kosmische” pioneers Harmonia and Cluster. That recording, the first fruit of an association with collaborator and co-producer Jake Davis, set the stage for their work together on Time Indefinite. Most of the pieces on this album, whether blown-out lullabies or spectral hymns or folk-art abstractions, feel like memories refracted in a dream diary.
“The process of working on this album helped me get better at tempo, just feeling more comfortable playing slower.”
“The new album started out as a series of experiments, without necessarily thinking that they were going to make for a whole record—though, eventually, Jake and I heard a thematic coherence to what we were coming up with,” Tyler explains. “It took a long while to come together, but the roots of the music are in the Covid lockdown. The emotional landscape of that time changed the things I was listening to as well as the music that was coming out of me. I was drawn to more ambient music, including by guitarists like Christian Fennesz and Norman Westberg, but also groups like Stars of the Lid and Boards of Canada. I had gone back to Nashville and was dealing with a problematic mental state. Among other issues, I can tend to approach things too fast, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Beyond using different recording techniques and learning new ways of creating a piece of music, the process of working on this album helped me get better at tempo, just feeling more comfortable playing slower.”
The guitars Tyler used in the studio for Time Indefinite were his “family heirloom” Martin D-18 and a beloved Gibson SG, both of which are his main live instruments. For effects pedals, he favored a Hologram Electronics Microcosm (“for low-pass filter looping and really weird granular stuff”) and a Strymon El Capistan (“for delays kind of like the old Electro-Harmonix Memory Man”), though Davis also did a lot of processing with an array of his own. One serendipitous piece of gear was a 1959 Webcor Regent reel-to-reel machine deck that Tyler liberated, still new in the box, while helping to clear out his grandfather’s storage space in Mississippi. Davis was inspired to make old-school tape loops with it, including that startling sound that opens the album. Tyler would play arrhythmic, asymmetrical parts that Davis would record and chop up for the loops.
Tyler at this year’s Big Ears Festival with Jake Davis and Cecilia Stair.
Photo by Ross Bustin
Tyler’s recent spate of collaborations, from Davis and Four Tet to pedal-steel guitarist Luke Schneider, “has kept me on my toes, challenged me and recharged me,” he says. “The insularity of being a solo instrumentalist and writing everything by yourself can be freeing at first. And it can be motivating, as when I first started learning how to play fingerstyle guitar, with all the practicing. But I don’t like the isolation of it now. These days, I prefer working with other people. It pushes you into other genres, those different modes of communication.”
Another recent colleague, Marisa Anderson, has credited Tyler for his open, venturesome spirit as a studio partner, with his default attitude of “yes” when they were making their absorbing duo album, Lost Futures. “That was something I really enjoyed about playing with William—he was up for everything,” she said. “I was like, ‘There’s the diving board,’ and he’d say, ‘Let’s go.’”
“These days, I prefer working with other people. It pushes you into other genres, those different modes of communication.”
Tyler is quick to credit artists and albums that have inspired him. Along with the aforementioned players, he namechecks a vast range of others, from Jimmy Page to Jeff Parker, Bill Frisell to Fred Frith, Bruce Langhorne to Nels Cline, William Ackerman to Sandy Bull. Tyler muses about how some of his Nashville session heroes should “have gotten weirder…. I wish Chet Atkins had dropped acid, listened to a Sonny Sharrock LP, and made his own noise record, you know?” Regarding his touchstones for sonic left turns, he points to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as well as Talk Talk’s emotive, avant-minded swansongs Spirit of Eden and Laughingstock.
“Those two Talk Talk albums are beyond masterpieces, with some great guitar playing,” Tyler says. “They were in essence made by an artist, Mark Hollis, who did not care about being commercial anymore and certainly not about being able to replicate the stuff live. When Jake and I were recording ‘Howling at the Second Moon,’ that sort of attitude was a reference point, kind of like, ‘Well, instead of trying to get away from the lo-fi weirdness of my original iPhone demo, why don’t we lean into it?’”
Ever thoughtful and candid in conversation, Tyler has been exceptionally transparent about coping with personal loss and midlife crises, as well as going to rehab for the over-indulgence of alcohol. Knowing that, one can hear grief and anxiety in the whorls of Time Indefinite, with the passages of guileless 6-string representing a nostalgia for less complicated times. “It’s a mental landscape record for sure,” he says. “For fans of my previous albums, it might not hit the same way, I realize. But I hope this record says to people that it’s all right to take chances with how you express yourself, with how naked and raw that can be. It has a purposeful arc and is meant to prompt things that aren’t super fashionable in today’s ephemeral, constant-content culture, like deep listening, emotional ambiguity, self-reflection, you know?”
YouTube It
This three-song set from last year showcases the expansive cosmic country sound of Tyler and his Impossible Truth band, which includes a Kraftwerk cover.
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