Epiphone partners with Joe Bonamassa to launch the Joe Bonamassa 1962 ES-335 in Sixties Cherry.
The Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1962 ES-335 is a tribute to one of Joe's cherished instruments. It features a one-piece mahogany neck with an Indian laurel fretboard and a comfortable Rounded C profile, Gibson BurstBucker 2 and 3 pickups wired to CTS potentiometers and Mallory capacitors, A Switchcraft pickup selector toggle switch and output jack and a Maestro Vibrola. The Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1962 ES-335 arrives with a custom hardshell case with Epiphone and Joe Bonamassa graphics and a certificate of authenticity.
“I used my Gibson 335 on my first solo album because I wanted to sound like Eric Clapton,” says Joe Bonamassa. “A 335 makes you sound different because it’s semi-hollow, but it also has a very unique, fat and warm sound that no other guitar has. I sold the guitar about three years later to finance a move from NYC to Los Angeles. For almost 17 years I searched for that guitar, but then I finally got it back and now I want to share it with you.”
Joe Bonamassa 1962 ES-335
In 1996, Joe Bonamassa purchased a red 1962 Gibson ES-335 and used the guitar on his first solo album, A New Day Yesterday. In 2001, he regrettably sold the guitar to help fund his move from New York to L.A. As the unexpected phone call resulted in Joe being reunited with his old friend, the red ES-335 that propelled him through his first solo album and launched him into a new life on the West Coast. Feeling fortunate to get his old guitar back, Joe promised that this important instrument would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Touré holds his Godin LGXSA, which he says has an even response across all 6 strings, which is perfect for his fingerstyle technique. “I have to have the acoustic sound and the electric sound together,” he says. “It’s a very cool guitar. It gives me my sound.”
Photo by Kiss Diouara
On a transcendent pair of albums, the preeminent Malian guitarist takes on his country’s musical tradition and teams up with the bewigged psychedelic Texans to pay tribute to his father, Ali Farka Touré.
“You know what’s happening in Mali, right?” Vieux Farka Touré casually asked a sweaty crowd at Philadelphia’s World Café Live this spring. It was a brief aside in a propulsive set that had little downtime. Rather than elaborate, he quickly led his trio into the next pulsating song. It was a short interruption tossed out in the same low-key style as his other more routine between-song banter, but an indicator that Touré wasn’t there just to entertain. He was on a mission.
About a month later, the guitarist is sitting on the veranda of his Bamako, Mali, home, and talking via Zoom. “If you’re a musician, you’re an ambassador,” he says, explaining his philosophy. “You’re working for your country. People have to know exactly what’s happened here.”
Vieux Farka Touré et Khruangbin - Tongo Barra (Visualizer)
In that last remark, he could be talking generally, outlining a career-long ambition. He has continued to build awareness of Malian culture worldwide in the years since his father—the legendary Ali Farka Touré, who helped bridge traditional Malian music and American blues, and won two Grammys for his collaborations with Ry Cooder and Toumani Diabate—died and Vieux’s musical career began.
But in this case, he’s specifically referring to the turmoil Mali has faced in recent years. “Everything is very, very bad. Two days ago, they killed 132 civilians,” he explains, citing a recent attack by jihadist rebels. Since a 2012 coup, the country has fought to stem an Islamist insurgency and has been host to the UN’s deadliest peacekeeping mission.
Touré sings about Malian affairs throughout this year’s Les Racines. “Real musicians want to do something,” he says. “Like in the World Café. It’s good to tell the people; they have to see what’s going on.” Across the album, he sings over beds of warm, crystalline fingerpicked guitar figures, mesmeric bass lines, and the percussion patterns that are the major contributor to its traditional sound. In the liner notes, Touré explains the meanings behind his lyrics, writing that the incendiary mid-tempo “Tinnondirene” “is a call for community dialogue, that is to say to set up a formal framework of consultation in order to play a role in the process of national reconciliation in Mali.” On the upbeat album closer, “Ndjehene Direne,” he sings that “insecurity reigns” and pleads, “If we love our country, let us be the force to overcome the misfortune that divides us, because there is strength in unity.”
“If you have a father like Ali Farka.… He’s the biggest traditional musician in Mali, so no way you’re gonna be on the same level as him.” —Vieux Farka Touré
“My politics—it’s to use my music, to use my name, to use my picture to make it better,” Touré says. “I love kids, so to make it better for kids, it’s very important. This is why I tell you the lyrics.”
The guitarist is passionate about his musical heritage—he’s also just released a tribute album to his father, called Ali—and the impact it has on Malian culture. Les Racines translates from French as “the roots,” and Touré writes that the slow instrumental title track represents his “full circle return, after years of personal exploration and work in all types of music, to the importance of traditional music and the realization that all music and modernity has its origins in its roots.”
“In Mali, every day the music is getting bad,” he asserts, and adds that the sound of traditional Malian instrumentation is being lost in contemporary music. To that end, he’s set up Studio Ali Farka Touré. “My father always would like to build a studio to help the people,” he explains, “so, I tried to do what my father would like to do. I built the studio.” Touré now uses the studio as a home base for his own projects—including Les Racines—and to produce records for other artists, and it’s also available for rent as a commercial studio. The only rule? They must use traditional instruments. “You wanna use the traditional instruments? The studio’s for you, man. Even the rappers who are coming, they have to use the traditional stuff.”
Fresh Sound
Touré’s guitar playing draws obvious comparisons to his father’s iconic desert-blues sound, in which it’s deeply rooted, but he plays with his own style. Starting in 2001, the young guitarist studied with his late father until his passing in 2006, and he learned to use the traditional right-hand technique in which he plays bass accompaniment with his thumb and uses his fingers for melody and lead. On his 2007 self-titled debut, Touré emerged seemingly fully formed with a musical voice of his own. “I don’t know how I got there. I can’t explain,” he says. In the intervening 15 years, Touré’s playing has only gotten more detailed and personal. “My father told me this all the time, ‘Don’t follow me, don’t follow anyone, you have to be you. The music is coming from here [gestures to heart], so you play just what you feel.’”
Vieux Farka Touré’s Gear
Vieux Farka Touré leads his trio with bassist Marshall Henry and percussionist Adama Kone in Bratislava earlier this year.
Photo by Barbora Solarova
Guitars
Godin LGXSA
Godin A6 Ultra
Strings
D’Addario .010-.046 XL Nickel Wound
Amps
Roland JC-120
Effects
Boss ME-80 Guitar Multiple Effects
At the World Café, as his band—which included bassist and manager Marshall Henry and percussionist Adama Kone—wrapped up the first leg of their U.S. tour, they delivered a raucous, jubilant set that bridged his traditional roots and electric wizardry. They opened with a pair of ballads featuring the acoustic sound of Touré’s Godin LGXSA and Kone playing calabash. By the third song, Kone moved to the drum kit, and Touré queued up a bright electric tone on his Boss ME-80.
Ali’s Legacy
Touré knows that his father’s formidable reputation casts a large shadow, and its driven him to make his music stand apart. “All the people I see following what their father was doing,” he explains, “they didn’t do anything, they didn’t go anywhere, they stayed there. I have to do my own stuff.”
But the guitarist is ready to take on his father’s music along with his roots. On Les Racines, he recorded some parts with Ali Farka’s solidbody Seiwa Powersonic, and he’s dedicated “L’Âme” to his memory. But while Les Racines is a vehicle for Touré to use his creative voice as a songwriter and guitarist to work within traditional music, he also wants to modernize his father’s work.
Les Racines, which translates to “the roots,” was recorded in Touré’s newly built Studio Ali Farka Touré in Mali, where he promotes the use of traditional instrumentation in all genres.
“If you have a father like Ali Farka.… He’s the biggest traditional musician in Mali, so no way you’re gonna be on the same level as him,” he explains. “So, I say, ‘Make your own music, make your own place, make your own type, and, after, you come back.’” To do so, he’s tapped the bewigged psychedelic Texas-based trio Khruangbin to collaborate on the transcendent, reverb-soaked Ali.
The guitarist first approached Khruangbin about working together in 2017. They hit it off after an initial meeting the next year, and the quartet headed to Houston’s Terminal C studio in 2019 for five days of jams. Armed with selections from Ali’s catalog, Touré took his regular approach to arrangements, creating the grooves in his head and teaching the band.
“Vieux knew what he wanted to do when we went in,” explains Khruangbin’s guitarist, Mark Speer. “No one told us what we were going to be playing. We just showed up and sat down. He basically was like, ‘This is how the song goes.’It was very organic. It was very loose and free.”
Fierce foursome: On Ali, Touré teamed up with Khruangbin to interpret a set of music by his father, the legendary Ali Farka Touré.
The quartet kept a leisurely schedule, working from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, followed by family-style traditional Malian dinners of fish and rice. While the initial sessions proceeded in more of a traditional jam style, as Speer and bassist Laura Lee detail, the recordings were left to Khruangbin to shape and bring into their own sound world.
Because the sessions took place during the same period as the band’s Mordechai and Texas Moon albums—the latter a collaboration with singer/songwriter Leon Bridges—it wasn’t until 2021 that they revisited the recordings. This worked in Khruangbin’s favor. “I like parts and I like to sit and craft parts, and I typically like to do that alone,” Lee points out. “Rarely do things get to marinate for two years, so there was a real freshness when we came back to it.”
Working with Touré forced Speer to consider his own instrumental role. “Straight up, I was like, ‘I’m not really sure what I should be doing.’ The dude can play the accompaniment and the melody and he’s singing at the same time, and it sounds great. So, I was like, ‘Do I even need to play guitar? And if I’m going to play guitar, what am I going to play?‘” Speer's resultant guitar parts are a testament to his role as an effective big-picture creative thinker, and his stark accompaniments to Touré’s sinewy lines float over Lee and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, Jr.’s deep-groove rhythms, giving the record a widescreen-sunset feel—an ideal framework for the elder guitarist’s tunes.
When Touré approached Khruangbin about working on a collaborative project back in 2017, Laura Lee, the band’s bassist, says the guitarist received “an instant yes from our camp.” The result is the just-released Ali..
Throughout Ali, Touré sounds at home with Khruangbin. Whether on the desert-blues rager “Mahine Me,” the ethereal “Savanne,” or the funky and propulsive “Tongo Barra,” he boldly takes his father’s music to fresh sonic spaces, putting the mark of his singular creative vision on the material.
The Khruangbin-Touré team-up is no doubt a mutually beneficial one. The trio have carefully sculpted a musical persona steeped in global flavors, and Touré’s firm roots and deep authenticity certainly lends credence to their approach. So on Ali, Khruangbin are no longer particularly adept re-interpreters of international sounds, they are originators.
“The dude can play the accompaniment and the melody and he’s singing at the same time, and it sounds great.” —Mark Speers
If the music world is a fair place—though it’s famously not—Ali and Touré’s association with Khruangbin will raise the guitarist’s profile among Western audiences who might not know about Les Racines and his earlier work, and will hopefully take him to a place beyond nicknames like “Hendrix of the Sahara”—which gets lazily thrown at African guitarists from Mdou Moctar to Farees to Touré, who may have been the first to earn the moniker.In the big picture, it’s probably more important that both Ali and Les Racines allow Touré to further his musical mission. Each record marks a conversation between this master player, his rich musical tradition and heritage, and the modern world. They explore different moods, with distinct parameters. While Les Racines tells people “how they have to be,” Ali is a celebration, and both are necessary parts of Touré’s music. Taken together, they make a major statement and mark a decisive step in Touré’s work as one of Mali’s musical ambassadors.
YouTube It
Vieux Farka Touré and percussionist Adama Kone run through a trio of tunes at the 2022 New York Guitar Festival. Without a bassist, the guitarist’s right-thumb accompaniment is easy to hear and feel, and he plays fluid call and response between his powerful voice and his rapid, percussive fingerpicked leads.
Ever wonder what an Australian muscle car sounds like? Let party-punk guitarist Declan Martens provide the burning-rubber details.
Amyl and the Sniffers are pragmatic. They rock fast and write and record even faster. Legend has it they knocked out their debut EP, 2016’s Giddy Up, from start to finish in just 12 hours in the band’s shared home. And their Australian Recording Industry Award-winning (Best Rock Album) self-titled full-length debut is a sweltering, swaggering, scallywag’s set of 11 songs that clock in at 30 minutes. During Australia’s Covid shelter-in mandate, the frenzied foursome locked themselves in their home once again to pen 13 rambunctious-yet-buffed jams that combine blazers with slow burns. Regardless of tempo, danger lurks in their every note and word. With the disregard of Iggy, the venom of Lemmy, and power of Angus, their live performances are tornadic events. Lead singer Amy Taylor is the charismatic lightning, while guitarist Declan Martens, bassist Gus Romer, and drummer Bryce Wilson are the locomotive thunder.
Hours before Amyl and the Sniffers’ headlining set at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, Martens invited PG’s Chris Kies stage right to chronicle his Hemi-like setup. In this episode, we meet his paired live instruments from Gibson, unwrap the story behind his “Excalibur” pedal, and understand Martens’ MO to work smarter, not harder.
Exploring the Explorer
For nearly every show with Amyl and the Sniffers, Declan Martens played a raggedy Strat that was loaded with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge. And on top of that, it’s been featured on all their recordings. That changed in April 2022 when Gibson approached Martens to test drive some of their models. He landed on a daring pair with roots in 1958 that includes this Gibson Explorer in antique natural. It has all-mahogany construction with a rosewood fretboard. The stock Burstbucker 2 (neck) and Burstbucker 3 (bridge) pickups are in place, but the neck humbucker has been disconnected so he can use the selector as a kill switch.
A V for D That’s in Slot B
The second gift from Gibson was this brand-new Flying V that employs the same recipe as the Explorer, with a mahogany body and neck in antique natural, a rosewood fretboard, and Burstbuckers 2 and 3. Martens notes in the Rundown that the Explorer has been seeing more stage time and the V has been reserved for backup duties, but admits that could change at any point.
He once went with coated Elixir strings for their longevity, but he’s been trialing .010–.046 sets from the D’Addario NYXL and Ernie Ball Paradigm families. Martens did mention that he played .010–.052s on the Strat, but found that Gibson’s compact scale length allowed him to reduce to standard .10s. They typically stay in half-step-down tuning, but do venture into drop C# for “Capital.”
M & M
That’s Martens and Marshall. He prefers plugging into JMPs for his love of ’70s rock and punk, but for this U.S. run he’s backlining with a pair of modern JCM800s. Each head is set to stun and firing through a deuce of Marshall 4x12s (1960AVs on top and 1960BVs on bottom) that are carrying Marshall G12 Vintage by Celestion speakers. Martens remarks that he’d ideally run the heads into Marshall 1960AX and BX 4x12s, because they come with 25W Celestion G12M-25 Greenbacks that are more “AC/DC than Guns N' Roses.”
Love At First Sight
Before the band’s first international performance, at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, UK, Martens told their tour manager he needed to find a volume boost/gain pedal. As luck would have it, at the end of the street they were staying on sat a pawnshop. In one of its window displays rested this nondescript home-build. A spontaneously serendipitous spark hit Martens and he purchased the stomp. He plugged it into his rig and was floored: “It wasn’t just something that I liked. I was like ‘holy shit, I love this.’”
Declan says he’s deduced from tinkering that this is a hybrid clone combo that sits between a MXR Distortion+ and DOD Overdrive Preamp 250. He describes it as being a “high midrange boost with hectic gain.” He claims it’s the secret sauce for the studio and values it too much to tour with. However, he did have it in a small case for this run and is tempted to put it into action because he’s missing it.
Declan Marten’s Pedalboard
Declan doesn’t need much to party—proven with this baby board that holds a MXR Carbon Copy Mini, an always-on Electro-Harmonix Soul Food, and a clone of his beloved booster/gain gooser. The TC Electronic PolyTune 2 Noir keeps his Gibbys in check and is actually third in line behind the clone and Soul Food. Everything hits the front of the amp, as he doesn’t use effects loops to keep his tech time at a minimum.
Gretsch honors the late AC/DC co-founder, guitarist, and songwriter with an all-new signature guitar, Limited Edition Malcolm Young “Red Beast” Signature Jet.
Malcolm and Gretsch have a storied relationship and this new Signature Jet pays tribute to Malcolm’s famous 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird 6131, aka “The Beast”. Designed in consultation with Malcolm’s nephew, Stevie Young, this Signature Jet reflects the earliest iteration of Malcolm’s famed guitar used in early AC/DC performances and music videos, including “It’s a Long Way to The Top,” before eventually making his own mods and stripping the top.
For over forty years, Malcolm’s riffs have inspired generations of rock and metal guitarists. Today, Gretsch honors the late AC/DC co-founder, guitarist, and songwriter with an all-new signature guitar: the G6131G-MY-RB Limited Edition Malcolm Young “Red Beast” Signature Jet.
Features
2”-deep double-cutaway chambered mahogany body with maple top
TV Jones® Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity bridge, TV Jones® Starwood humbucker middle and TV Jones® Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity neck pickups
Individual pickup volume controls, master volume, three-position pickup toggle switch, three-position tone switch and three-position standby switch
Harmonica-style Adjusto-MaticTM bridge with pinned ebony base
Available in an aged Vintage Firebird Red finish with black pickguard and aged gold hardware
The Gretsch Limited Malcolm Young Signature "The Beast" Jet | Gretsch Presents | Gretsch Guitars
