Although he's become a leading figure in both jazz and blues guitar, Robben Ford's first instrument was saxophone. He switched to guitar at 14 and was fronting the Charles Ford Blues Band—named after his father—and supporting blues greats Charlie Musselwhite and Jimmy Witherspoon by age 18.
"I consider it a real blessing having learned the guitar through the blues medium," says Robben Ford. "I then developed a great love for jazz and, in particular, the tenor saxophone. Those guys—or the guys that I like, I should say—are all very vocal players. They're singers. Miles Davis's trumpet as well is the most brilliant example of a trumpet player using his horn as a voice. It's very much related to speech. Sometimes you speak softly. Sometimes you just groove along. Sometimes you yell. You're always trying to say something as opposed to play something."
Robben Ford's musical conversations date back to the early 1970s and include work with artists as disparate as Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Miles Davis, the Yellowjackets, and Charlie Musselwhite. He's also released more than 30 albums as a leader, with most featuring his songwriting and vocals. However, like many things these days, change is in the air, and his recently released Pure is an all-instrumental album. It's the first time he's done that since Tiger Walk in 1997.
Pure
Ford's playing is a unique hybrid style that incorporates the nuance and sensibilities of the blues with the harmonic complexity of jazz. It's an approach that sounds intuitive and obvious in his hands, and on Pure, he takes advantage of the instrumental setting to showcase those different sides of his musical personality.
Pure's roots date back to 2017, when Ford relocated to Nashville. After years on the road, he was looking for a community with a vibrant music scene. He wanted a place where he could gig regularly with local players, focus on producing albums for other artists, and—for someone who's basically been a road warrior since the early 1970s—somewhat settle down.
"I've always been trying to find it on the guitar as opposed to with an effect."
By early 2020, Ford had racked up a number of production credits and was knee-deep in instrumental projects with people like saxophonist Bill Evans, pedal-steel guitarist Paul Franklin, and guitarist John Jorgenson. But then the world came to a screeching halt, and all that work was put on hold.
Except his psyche was still in a very instrumental zone, because that's what he was busy with when the work dried up. "Ever since Tiger Walk, I've basically devoted myself to really learning how to write a good song and to deliver it on the bandstand as a vocalist," Ford says. "But my head was in the instrumental thing, and I thought, 'Let's just run with it. I am feeling it.' And indeed, that's why I did the instrumental record."
Robben Ford's Gear
Since 1983, Ford had used the same amp on all his albums—the second Overdrive Special built by Howard Dumble, with a 2x12 Dumble cab—until 2018. "It's been a revelation for me to get into the smaller amp thing when recording," he says.
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
Guitars
- 1960 Fender Telecaster
- 1952 Fender Telecaster
- 1966 Epiphone Riviera
- 1964 Gibson ES-355
- 1964 Gibson SG
- Assorted Paul Reed Smith guitars
Strings & Picks
- D'Addario (.010–.046)
- D'Addario heavy picks
Amps
- Dumble Overdrive Special (100 watt)
- Dumble 2x12 Cabinet
- Little Walter "59" (50 watt)
- Little Walter King Arthur (15 watt)
Effects
- Hermida Audio Zendrive
- Cornerstone Music Gear Gladio preamp
- Strymon TimeLine Delay
- Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
It's a setting that plays to Ford's strengths—the most prominent being his use of dynamics. He doesn't dime his amp and scream at you song after song. He tells a story, mimicking the natural inflections of speech. It's a skill he's mastered and, according to him, is the result of growing up immersed in the blues, followed by developing a passion for horn-centric jazz.
Rig Rundown - Robben Ford
Watch Robben Ford and Nashville luthier Joe Glaser go over his live setup.
Another way Ford changes things up is in the subtle use of his pick. He regularly plays by holding the pick backward and using the rounded end, but switches to the pointy end when aiming softer and lighter. He'll also vary the timbre by intuitively moving his picking hand between the neck end and the bridge, which is more percussive and punchy.
TIBIT: The new album was recorded at Purple House, an intimate studio outside of Nashville owned by Ford's co-producer, engineer, and second guitarist, Casey Wasner.
"I've always been trying to find it on the guitar as opposed to with an effect," he says about searching for the right tone. "That's another deliberate choice. Rather than going to a pedal, I'll try to get nuance using the pick and volume. It's just the way I learned how to play. The blues players and tenor players, man, those guys weren't using effects." But he's not an anti-pedal purist (despite the album's title), and pedals have factored into his tone for decades. "We have so many colors on the new album that I am trying to find them and recreate a little of what happened on the album through effects. This is a new phase for me. I'm using two different overdrives instead of just the one, because I need that other color. I am also working a lot with the Strymon TimeLine Delay. I've been using that for a while, but really just for short and long delays, nothing special."
Ford's main overdrive, for decades, is the Hermida Audio Zendrive. He's been through a number of units, but it's been a staple. He's also added a second overdrive to his pedalboard: the Gladio preamp from the Italian manufacturer Cornerstone Music Gear.
Robben Ford Show 6º Festival de Blues e Jazz
Here's Robben Ford defining great tone in a 2021 livestream show from Nashville, with his 1961 Gibson SG.
"It's basically an overdrive pedal," he says. "The fellow basically designed it trying to capture what he heard me doing with the Zendrive. He sent pedals to my friend Jeff McErlain. Jeff is a guitar player from Brooklyn. I produced his album, and he's been very helpful to me in terms of gear. He's turned me on to things that I was unaware of, and the Gladio was one of them."
Another essential element of Ford's tone has been his Dumble Overdrive Special, which he's been using since 1983. Since all Dumbles are built for specific players, Ford's was made by Howard Dumble with his particular tonal needs in mind. That amp—the second Overdrive Special built—still comes out occasionally when he plays live, but in the studio, since moving to Nashville, his needs have evolved.
Ford's latest album features several guests, but his core band is Casey Wasner on guitar, Michael Rhodes on bass, and drummer Shannon Forrest.
Photo by Mascha Thompson
Ford was recording 2018's Purple House at a studio in Leipers Fork, Tennessee, called—you guessed it—the Purple House, when he realized that the Dumble wasn't going to work. "The Purple House is a studio owned by my co-producer and engineer, Casey Wasner. It's a small house and the rooms are small—the rooms aren't live—and I tried using the Dumble and it was just too big. Everything was being recorded in one room. It was a small, dead room, and the drums, bass, and myself—with my amp and a cabinet—were in that one room. The bass was direct, and Casey was in the control room playing rhythm guitar, along with a second engineer. No matter how hard we tried, the Dumble just didn't fit. I always work in a much more spacious environment. I like larger rooms. When we did that record, it was an experiment. I learned a lot about recording—how to record and how to use the studio—and, in particular, I got comfortable with small amplifiers."
"I don't want to change the way I play. It took a long time to get here."
For Ford, getting comfortable with small amplifiers meant finding a way to adapt to the new situation without changing the way he plays. "That was the journey," he says. "How do we keep the vibe? I don't want to change the way I play. It took a long time to get here. I had to find a way. It was hard for me, and it was a struggle. It took about four months during the making of Purple House to feel like, 'Okay, now I get it.' There were times when we went into a really righteous overdub room where I could crank the amp up. It's a real process and, for me, not one that I ever paid that much attention to. Up until Purple House I had always worked in larger rooms, with the same amp and cabinet, and some great engineer. I've been doing this for 30 years. It was a big change but cool. I am really happy having had the experience and having learned these things."
Back in 1974, George Harrison hired wunderkind 23-year-old guitarist Robben Ford for the George Harrison and Friends North American Tour.
Photo by Jim Summaria/Frank White Photo Agency
Ford took those lessons to heart, and he's continued in that vein on Pure. In the studio, his primary amp was the Little Walter "59," which is a 50-watt head, through a single 12" cabinet, which, despite what he's learned, is still taking some getting used to. "I've literally done every record I've ever made since Talk to Your Daughter (1988) with the same Dumble Overdrive Special and cabinet. [That's a 2x12, also built by Dumble.] It's been a revelation for me to get into the smaller amp thing when recording."
But despite his intensive efforts discovering the right tone—not to mention his years studying the instrument and developing his craft—ultimately, playing, for Ford, is intuitive.
"An analogy that I came up with for the way I play is that it's like finger painting," he says. "You put the color on the paper and then you brush it around. You're not making a square, necessarily, you're free flowing. It's more like clouds and wind. There is freedom in it, and it is never going to be the same way twice—it actually can't be the same way twice—because it's like brush strokes. I made a very conscious effort to take chances in the improvisations. It's always been very key to me, and, once again, it's a product of the people I listened to."
How to Play “That Out Shit”
(For more insight, watch Robben Ford explain—and play—diminished scale blues in this video.)
A big part of Robben Ford's playing is his use of the half/whole diminished scale, which is an eight-note scale that alternates half-steps and whole-steps over the course of an octave. It's a scale that's been in the jazz repertoire for decades and was a huge part of the Miles Davis sound throughout the 1980s. Ford was a member of Davis' band in 1986, although he began using that scale much earlier.
"A long time ago, I was 19, and my brother Patrick, a drummer, and I were playing with Charlie Musselwhite," Ford says. "We were on the bill with Larry Coryell at a club long gone in L.A. called the Ash Grove. At one point, I just asked him, 'How do you play all that out shit?' He said, 'I use the half-step whole-step scale.' And I was like, 'Okay.' I went back to my hotel room and went G, G#, A#, B, and I worked out the scale. That was in 1971."
"We were on the bill with Larry Coryell at a club long gone in L.A. called the Ash Grove. At one point, I just asked him, 'How do you play all that out shit?'"
One aspect of that scale's sound is the b9, which is a note Miles Davis often sat on. "Miles Davis would just play a b9 right on top of a seventh chord as his first note. I heard that sound, and from that time on I experimented with the half/whole diminished scale. Once I understood it through learning chords and realized it was a diminished scale and you could play it right off a #9 chord, that was the sound that I heard. I just got deep into it, and it has been a major quality in my playing."
Ford points out that all of the notes in a dominant 7th chord fit into the scale and says, "So there's my chord and I can play any of these notes. I can play a b9 against a G7—whether anybody likes it or not—and it's legit. I really work with that, and for me, that was the gift of Miles Davis."
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
PRS Standard 24 Satin Electric Guitar - Satin Red Apple Metallic
