
In high cotton: Charlie Musselwhite is thoroughly content with his return to the Delta. “We love living here,” he says. “It just makes sense, and it feels like the blues is alive and well in the Delta and you can just feel it rising up from the earth, it’s so present.”
On his new album, Mississippi Son, the harmonica giant steps out on guitar, evoking the legends of country blues 6-string and earning his place among them.
For Charlie Musselwhite, the blues isn’t just a style of music. It’s a sacrament. And Musselwhite is one of its high priests. With a palmful of bent notes on the harmonica—the instrument on which he’s been an acknowledged master for more than a half-century—or the fat snap of a guitar string, he has the power to summon not only the blues’ great spirits, but the places they rose from. If you listen closely, you can envision the Mississippi Delta’s plantation lands, where the summer sun forms a shimmering belt on the low horizon and even a slight breeze can paint your face red with clay dust. It’s a place both old and eternal—full of mystery and history and magic. And the music from that place, as Musselwhite sings in his new song “Blues Gave Me a Ride,” “tells the truth in a world full of lies.”
“Blues is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to play,” says Musselwhite, who is 78. “It’s more than just another kind of music. Whatever life throws at you, blues is there for you. It’s your buddy when you’re up and your comforter when you’re down, and it’s got this depth and substance that a lot of other music just doesn’t have. So, in that way, it has a sort of spiritual quality, and it really can be your partner in life. It gives you a way to go.”
Although Musselwhite’s parents moved him to Memphis from his native Kosciusko, Mississippi, when he was 3, the blues has, indeed, seemed to be his guiding hand ever since. Most recently, it’s led him to record Mississippi Son, the first of his more than 40 albums that is built around his guitar playing—spare as a skeleton’s rib cage, but as beautiful as a fresh magnolia blossom with hints of dust on its petals.
Charlie Musselwhite - Mississippi Son (Full Album) 2022
Slowly, over the past few decades, Musselwhite has been incorporating guitar into his live performances—sometimes in duets with his longtime compadre Elvin Bishop, who he met in Chicago in the early ’60s, just before integrated blues bands like those they would join and form began making mainstream albums. “Charlie’s guitar playing is way good,” says Bishop. “I really love the way he nails the old deep blues, the country blues. He only plays what’s necessary, and every note has nuance. His tone is dark and deep. He can play slide like Robert Nighthawk, and what Charlie does on the guitar has a good emotional effect on his music. It’s perfect for his singing and harp playing.”
Musselwhite’s life with the guitar and harmonica began when he was around 13. With an acoustic Supertone in hand, he discovered the E7 chord and the old-school Delta sound and began to learn songs like Mississippi Son’s “Pea Vine Blues.” With lyrics that illuminate how the lonesome sound of a distant train whistle can torture the brokenhearted, the song is prime country blues, first recorded by Charley Patton in 1929.
“At some point I remember coming to the realization that every culture probably has its music of lament.”
Luckily, Musselwhite had more than old shellac 78s to learn from. During his teenage and young adult years in Memphis, legendary artists like Furry Lewis, who by then swept Beale Street for a living, and Will Shade, the leader of the Memphis Jug Band, became mentors, cementing his love of the rural blues sound.
“I learned more about slide and open tunings from Furry, and regular tuning and harmonica from Will Shade,” Musselwhite says. He also met harmonica legend Big Walter Horton—a fellow acolyte of Shade’s—in Memphis, and Musselwhite would continue to be under Horton’s sway when he moved to Chicago in the late 1950s. Lesser-known artists like Willie Borum and Earl Bell were also part of Musselwhite’s education in the Bluff City. “I had no idea I was preparing myself for a career,” he says, chuckling. “I would have paid a lot more attention. I was just having fun. And I loved the blues and had to play it, but I didn’t know it was going to become my life and put me on the road.”
Out in front of Clarksdale, Mississippi’s Shack Up Inn, Charlie Musselwhite displays his Harmony Bobkat and steel slide, worn tight on his pinky.
Photo by Rory Doyle
Musselwhite left Memphis for practical reasons. “I’d been working around Memphis, doing construction work and different factory jobs and stuff, and the pay was so low, so I had done a little moonshining on the side, and one day I noticed the police were following me. I thought that was a bad sign. I’d been thinking about going to Chicago, because friends of mine had gone up and gotten jobs in these factories, and they’d come back to visit driving brand new cars ’cause they got paid so much better—and they had benefits. I’d never even heard of benefits before, so that’s why I went to Chicago—just like thousands of other people getting out of the South because it was economically depressed. I was looking for a better life.”
He found that, and a lot more. “I knew nothing about the blues scene there,” he continues. “I’d been told that anybody in the entertainment field either lived in Hollywood or New York City, and even though I had all these records that had Chicago written on ’em, with Vee-Jay and Chess labels, I thought, ‘Well, that’s just where they manufacture the records.’ I didn’t know that’s where all these guys lived. But lucky for me the first job I got in Chicago was as a driver for an exterminator, and I drove him all over Chicago, so I learned the city really well, really fast. Driving around, I started seeing posters and signs for guys like Muddy Waters and Elmore James, and I couldn’t believe it! All my heroes were right here in Chicago! So, I’d make a note of where these clubs were and at night I’d be hanging out listening to live blues right in front of my heroes that I only had records of before.”
For a spell, he lived in the basement of the now-historic Jazz Record Mart music shop, where he also occasionally worked, with the irascible 9-string-playing bluesman Big Joe Williams as his roommate. “Oh boy, you never knew what was going to happen,” Musselwhite offers. “We had a great time. I really wish I’d written down the stories that he told me. We’d go around town visiting friends and relatives, just like I did with Shakey—which is what they called Big Walter in Chicago—always looking for a little taste. That was kind of a common hobby among many of the older blues guys, and often we’d sit up late at night just drinking beer and Joe would be playing guitar and I would be playing harmonica with him, and he just seemed to enjoy doing that, so it was awful encouraging. I picked up little tips on his playing. Occasionally I’d pick up his guitar to try to play it, but, man, the strings were like cables. It was hard to even fret it, but he would play it like it was butter.”
Musselwhite and his manager and wife, Henrietta, have lived and learned in the court of blues royalty. The other gents in this photo are Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.
Photo courtesy of Charlie Musselwhite
Williams’ guitar—albeit reduced to its original 6-string setup—makes a cameo on Mississippi Son, on “Remembering Big Joe,” an instrumental reflecting the savvy gutbucket style of the bluesman noted for the first recordings of “Baby Please Don’t Go” and “Crawling King Snake.”
“I just played off the top of my head, thinking about Big Joe, and that’s what came out,” says Musselwhite. “That’s what I remember him sounding like.”
In Chicago, Mussselwhite also had access to the canonical harmonica players of electric blues: Horton, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and his fellow young trailblazer, Paul Butterfield. And by the mid-’60s, Musselwhite’s own mojo was working. In 1965, he met producer Samuel Charters, who was making his influential Chicago/The Blues/Today! trilogy of recordings. Billed as Memphis Charlie, Musselwhite appeared with the Big Walter Blues Harp Band on the third volume. Later that year, Musselwhite played on John Hammond Jr.’s So Many Roads album, and a session of his own with Charters yielded 1967’s Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite’s Southside Band.
Charlie Musselwhite’s Gear on 'Mississippi Son':
Back home in the Delta, Charlie Musselwhite plucks a Harmony Bobkat as he sits on the porch of a former sharecropper’s residence at a Clarksdale, Mississippi, hotel compound called the Shack Up Inn, where his live 2012 Juke Joint Chapel album was recorded.
Photo by Rory Doyle
Guitars
- Vintage Gibson L-4
- Harmony Bobkat
- 1967 Silvertone solidbody
- 1954 Gibson J-45
- Vintage Gibson L-7
Amps
- Laney A3012
Strings & Slide
- .011-gauge sets
- Steel slide
As luck, or, perhaps, the blues’ guiding hand, had it, the album arrived when freeform FM radio was an emergent force in American music and Musselwhite’s reputation spread throughout the country. Riding this acclaim, he relocated to San Francisco, where his bona fide sound was embraced by the rock counterculture scene anchored at the Fillmore West.
Since then, Musselwhite’s star has burned. At times more brightly than others, but he has consistently toured and recorded and remained not only in the eyes and ears of blues fans, but in the general music loving public’s. It’s not just a matter of his excellence—his ability to blow pure soul through his main axe’s tiny reeds. Musselwhite, despite his devotion to bone-deep blues, is no purist. Over the decades he’s collaborated and made albums with Bonnie Raitt, Flaco Jiménez, the Blind Boys of Alabama, John Lee Hooker, and Ben Harper, exploring jazz, gospel, Tex-Mex, Cuban, and other world musics.
“I discovered that a lot of music—flamenco, Greek, Arabic—has a sound or feel that reminds me of blues,” Musselwhite observes. “It’s got the same kind of heart— especially flamenco. If it ain’t blues, I don’t know what it is. It has that spirit, that same energy. At some point I remember coming to the realization that every culture probably has its music of lament. And there’s a guy on the corner singing about ‘my baby left me’ wherever you go in the world.”
“Every now and then I’d sneak in a track on an album where I was playing guitar. A lot of people never even realized it was me.”
Musselwhite has also hosted a series of world-class guitar players in his bands, from Harvey Mandel and Robben Ford in the ’60s, to Matthew Stubbs and Kirk Fletcher in recent years. “Every now and then I’d sneak in a track on an album where I was playing guitar,” Musselwhite says. “A lot of people never even realized it was me.”
Now, with Mississippi Son, the feline is out of the flour sack. And Musselwhite is back in his native state. He and his wife and manager, Henrietta, purchased a home in the blues mecca of Clarksdale, Mississippi, some years ago, but in 2021 they departed the West Coast to take up permanent residence in the small Delta burg with a downtown that looks frozen in 1966. In Clarksdale, Musselwhite befriended guitarist, songwriter, and producer Gary Vincent, and in 2012 Vincent produced Musselwhite’s live Juke Joint Chapel, at the hip local venue bearing that name.
This time, they regrouped in Vincent’s downtown studio, Clarksdale Soundstage. “With the pandemic, I had all this time on my hands, and Gary’s studio is three blocks from me. He’s got a ton of guitars, so I spent a lot of time over there playing them. At one point, he said, ‘Ya know, we should tape some of these.’ I said, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’ So, the album started spontaneously. We were just recording tunes for posterity.”
With a borrowed white Stratocaster, Musselwhite evokes the old school onstage at the Blues Cazorla Festival on July 22, 2011, in Cazorla, Spain.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Posterity should be pleased. Mississippi Son’s 14 songs add up to one of the best new albums of country blues recorded in decades—since the early ’90s titles cut by Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside for the Fat Possum label. But Musselwhite’s proclivity for acoustic and clean but lightly hairy electric guitars takes the sound back even earlier, to the days when Chess, Vee-Jay, and Sun were cutting records by artists straight out of the cotton fields. His repeated sliding chords and up-picking on the tunes “Hobo Blues” and “Crawling King Snake” evoke the spirit of John Lee Hooker, who cut their most famous versions. But many of the songs are Musselwhite originals with lyrics that also conjure visions of the Delta of yore, alluding to the ’Frisco (the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway), the itinerant bluesman’s life (the semi-autobiographical “Drifting from Town to Town”), and the endless flow of the Mississippi River.
Musselwhite is joined on five songs by drummer Ricky Martin and upright bassist Barry Bays, and he overdubbed his own harmonica. But some of the album’s most profound performances are just Musselwhite and his guitar. The heart-squeezer “The Dark,” a Guy Clark number, is especially hypnotic. As he lays out lightly surging riffs on the Gibson L-4 acoustic archtop that’s one of the album’s MVP 6-strings, he gently intones the lyrics in a way that transforms the small elements of a fading day—a June bug on a window screen, a dripping kitchen faucet, the Earth turning its back on the sun—into something existential. “One way or another,” Musselwhite observes in the third verse, “we’re all in the dark.”
The album’s other guitars were a 1967 Silvertone solidbody electric borrowed from the Clarksdale guitar shop Bluestown Music, a 1954 Gibson J-45, and the Gibson L-7 that belonged to Big Joe Williams. A tube-driven Laney A3012 was the amp Vincent used for Musselwhite’s guitar and harmonica. This model amplifier was made in the ’80s and ’90s and has four 12AX7 preamp tubes and two 6V6 power tubes, but in Musselwhite’s control it sounds like a vintage tweed Fender or a Valco Sears special—an old man of a soundbox with more than a hint of experience in its voice. Vincent recorded the amp with a Neumann U 87.
"I really love the way he nails the old deep blues, the country blues. He only plays what’s necessary, and every note has nuance.”—Elvin Bishop
Musselwhite’s tunings, besides standard, were textbook Delta blues. “Furry Lewis taught me Spanish and Vestapol,” he says, using the terms typically used to describe the open G (Spanish, or cross-tuning for minor-key variations á la Skip James) and open D/E families of tunings. After he plugs in, “I turn the treble all the way off and the bass all the way up, the mids about half-way, and I’m ready to go.” Pedals? Of course not.
When we spoke, Musselwhite had some dates on his schedule with Elvin Bishop, and both artists were looking forward to playing country blues—and especially some country blues guitar—together again, as they have intermittently since meeting in the music’s ultra-fertile ’60s Chicago scene.
“I loved the sound of Chicago blues and where it took the electric guitar, but I’ve always been a big fan of country blues guitar,” says Musselwhite. “There are so many subtleties in it. That’s where the real beauty of the blues is—in those subtleties … just listening to the way those guys accompanied themselves. One guy with a guitar: whether it’s John Lee Hooker or Lightnin’ Hopkins or Charley Patton. I love that stuff and so I guess that’s why I play like I do. I also knew a lot of the old-timers, and they weren’t shredders by any stretch of the imagination. That sound captivated me when I was a kid, and it still does.”
Charlie Musselwhite - Blues Up The River
Charlie Musselwhite plays his song “Blues Up the River,” from Mississippi Son, on a new Epiphone John Lee Hooker model Zephyr.
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Hand-built in the USA, this pedal features original potentiometer values, True Bypass, and three unique modes for versatile distortion options. Commemorative extras included.
This limited-edition pedal is limited to a 1,974-piece run to commemorate the year of DOD’s start, 1974. The original OD250 put DOD on the map as “America’s Pedal” and continues to be an industry favorite today. Each pedal will have a serial-numbered Certificate of Authenticity, a commemorative laser-etched pedal topper, several commemorative guitar picks, and multiple commemorative stickers.
Hand-built in the USA, the DOD OD250 – 50th Anniversary Edition pedal boasts Gain and Level controls using the original potentiometer values and tapers giving the control knob the feel and range that DOD enthusiasts love. A three-position toggle switch features the OD250’s classic “SILICON” mode replicating that original sound. The “Ge/ASYM” mode uses a vintage Germanium diode for asymmetrical even-harmonic distortion. “LIFT” mode cuts the diode clipping from the signal path allowing for a clean boost or even a dirty boost when the vintage LM741 op-amp is clipped at higher gain settings. The DOD 250 also features True Bypass to maintain the integrity of your guitar tone.
This limited edition OD250 is outfitted in a stunning metal flake gray finish with classic yellow screenprint in a callback to the original OD250 of the 1970s. An etched aluminum badge on each unit commemorates this occasion. The DOD OD 250 – 50th Anniversary is ready to take its place among the historic DOD pedal lineup.
When John Johnson and “Mr. DOD” himself, David O. DiFrancesco set out to make DOD Electronics in Salt Lake City, Utah 50 years ago, they had no idea how enduring their legacy would be. Now 50 years later, DOD Electronics continues to be at the forefront of pedal technology. The DOD OD 250 – 50th Anniversary Pedal is an exceptional testament to DOD Electronics’ long–standing success.
Retail Price: $250.00
For more information, please visit digitech.com.
Gator Cases offers custom cases for Flying V and Explorer style guitars in their Traditional Deluxe Series.
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In addition to the Traditional Deluxe Series cases, Gator offers a wide selection of guitar solutions, including gig bags, instrument and patch cables, molded cases, guitar stands, and pedalboards.
For more information, please visit gatorco.com.
The Smiths’ 1984 press shot. From left to right: Andy Rourke, Morrissey, Johnny Marr, and Mike Joyce.
Bassists from California’s finest Smiths tribute bands weigh-in on Andy Rourke’s most fun-to-play parts.
Listen to the Smiths, the iconic 1980s indie-rock band from Manchester, and you’ll hear Andy Rourke’s well-crafted bass lines snaking around Johnny Marr’s intricate guitar work, Mike Joyce’s energetic drumming, and singer Morrissey’s wry vocal delivery.
But playing Smiths bass lines is a different experience altogether. Grab a pick and work your way through the thoughtful phrasing, clever choices, and spirited delivery, and you’ll realize that young Mr. Rourke was an understated genius of melodic bass. In other words, these bass lines are fun.
Andy Rourke was just 18 when he joined the Smiths, and 20 when they released their self-titled 1984 debut. Over four studio albums and numerous singles, Rourke anchored the band with memorable bass melodies that weaved through Marr’s busy guitar parts. After the group broke up, he recorded as a session musician with artists like Sinead O’Connor and the Pretenders, played in several bands, and worked as a club DJ. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2023, when he was 59.
To pinpoint the Smiths songs with the most fun-to-play bass lines, I consulted the experts: bass players from five Smiths tribute bands, all from California. These folks cop Andy Rourke’s style night after night, so who better to know which lines are the most fun? Here are our panelists:
James Manning plays in Shoplifters United, based in Marin County, north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. He’s originally from Monmouth, Wales.
Martin “Ronky” Ronquillo plays in Los Esmiths from Calexico, California, near the southern border, as well as San Diego Smiths tribute band, Still Ill.
Mark Sharp plays in the Bay Area’s This Charming Band, as well as in tributes to the Cure, U2, and others.
Monica Hidalgo played in all-female Smiths tribute band Sheilas Take a Bow, with her sisters, Melissa and Melinda. They’re from the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles.
Joe Escalante has been in the pioneering punk rock band the Vandals since 1980, and with the L.A.-based Smiths and Morrissey tribute band Sweet and Tender Hooligans since 2004.
“Barbarism Begins at Home,” 'Meat Is Murder,' 1985
Manning: I love this line and I dread it. You’ve got to have stamina, especially if you’re playing it in regular E tuning. Tuning up to F# like Andy did makes it easier and the extra string tension adds to the twangy top end.
Ronquillo: This is one of those parts that just makes you feel like a bass player. It’s high energy, it feels good, and it’s maybe his funkiest bass line.
“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” single, 1984
Sharp: With Morrissey’s lyrics, the shimmering Johnny Marr guitar parts, and Rourke’s amazing bass lines, this song is perfection. The bass parts are technically just brilliant.
Escalante: This line is fun to play but really hard. We played some events with Andy DJing, and he would ridicule me for trying to play these songs in E tuning instead of F#.
“The Queen is Dead,” 'The Queen Is Dead,' 1986
Hidalgo: This one is fun because it’s kind of funky. I would go to our drummer’s house and we would play the main riff for hours, just to make sure we were locked in.
Escalante: This is the song I warm up with, even when I'm playing with the Vandals.
“We played some events with Andy DJing, and he would ridicule me for trying to play these songs in E tuning instead of F#.” —Joe Escalante
“Cemetry Gates,” 'The Queen Is Dead,' 1986
Hidalgo: I really love this one. His bass line is very melodic, and it fits so nicely with the guitar.
Escalante: This one kind of just pops, and the lyrics are so dark but the bass line is really fun and playful.
“This Charming Man,” single, 1983
Manning: The bass is such a driving force and I love the vibe of it. Very soulful in the rhythms. There’s a part where he breaks into walking bass—it’s so unexpected.
Sharp: It’s an absolute standout track that showcases the perfect musical symmetry of Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke.
“Bigmouth Strikes Again,” 'The Queen Is Dead,' 1986
Hidalgo: It melds that tiny bit of funk with faster rock and a driving rhythm. You can hear how his influences come together.
“Still Ill,” 'The Smiths,' 1984
Ronquillo: This is a fun bass line, but it’s easy to get lost in. You’ve got to concentrate and can't really dance around, cause you gotta focus and get in the zone.
“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” 'The Queen Is Dead,' 1986
Hidalgo: People love this song, and it has that smooth vibe. The eighth notes are smooth and consistent.
“I Want the One I Can’t Have,” 'Meat Is Murder,' 1985
Ronquillo: This is a really fun song that’s pretty upbeat, and fast-paced. It gets you into that flow state.
“Girlfriend in a Coma,” 'Strangeways Here We Come,' 1987
Sharp: Andy’s performance highlights his different musical influences, as the reggae-flavored bass line works perfectly in the song.
Guitarist Brandon Seabrook, architect of fretboard chaos, and his trusty HMT Tele.
With a modified and well-worn heavy metal Tele, a Jerry Jones 12-string, a couple banjos, some tape sounds, and a mountain of fast-picking chops, New York’s master of guitar mayhem delivers Object of Unknown Function.
“It’s like time travel,” says Brandon Seabrook, reflecting on the sonic whiplash of “Object of Unknown Function.” The piece, which opens the composer’s solo album of the same name, journeys jarringly from aggressive “early banjo stuff” up through “more 21st-century classical music,” combined with electronic found sounds from a TASCAM 4-track cassette recorder. The end result approaches the disorientation of musique concréte.
“The structure is kind of like hopping centuries or epochs,” he adds. “I [wanted] all these different worlds to collide. It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure.”
It’s a heady, thrilling idea—but no one who’s followed his zigzagging career will be surprised at the gumption. As he’s cycled through various projects (including the acclaimed power trio Seabrook Power Plant), he’s become a resident chaos architect within the Brooklyn avant-garde scene—exploring everything from jazz-fusion to brutal prog to other untamed strains of heavy rock, typically wielding his trusted 1928 tenor banjo and a modified “heavy metal Telecaster” acoustic-electric from 1989.
But Object of Unknown Function, his first solo album since 2014’s Sylphid Vitalizers, became his own real-life choose-your-own-adventure—a process of rejuvenation by playing with new toys. Along with his usual gear, Seabrook’s main compositional tools this time were a 6-string 1920 William O. Schmick Lyric guitar banjo and a 1998 Jerry Jones Neptune electric 12-string—both of which became vibrant “new relationships,” even if, at first, he felt like he was “stepping out on his guitar.”
“My other guitar [his Telecaster] is the only thing I’ve been playing for the past 25 to 27 years,” he says, laughing. “I was so afraid to try something else: ‘I can’t play another guitar because it’s like an extension of my arm. I know the topography of this neck so well. It’s my sound.’"
Brandon Seabrook's Gear
Seabrook’s 1989 Fender HMT Thinline Telecaster has seen enough wear to rival Willie Nelson’s Trigger.
Photo by Scott Friedlander
Instruments
- 1928 Bacon & Day Silver Bell tenor banjo
- 1920 William O. Schmick Lyric guitar banjo
- 1989 Fender HMT Thinline Telecaster with Sheptone Pickups
- 1998 Jerry Jones Neptune 12-string electric
Amps
- 1962 Magnatone Custom 450
- 1971 Traynor YGM-3
Pedals
- Arion SAD-1 Stereo Delay
- Jam Pedals Dyna-ssoR compressor
- Jam Pedals Rattler distortion
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario XL Nickel Wound 10's
- Dunlop Tortex .88 mm
Accessories
- TASCAM PORTA 3 4-track cassette recorder
But Seabrook fell in love “right away” with the Jerry Jones, and new ideas started flooding out. “The 12-string is such a magic sound, and the Jerry Jones holds the intonation so well that you can detune some of the double-strings to make different intervals, kind of like a built-in harmonizer,” he says. “When you play chords on that and they ring; it’s some sort of majestic, angelic sound—or it can be.” Photo by Scott Friedlander
Seabrook found the 6-string banjo at Brooklyn shop RetroFret Vintage Guitars, intending to shop for a mandolin. He was struck by William Schmick’s construction (“It uses slightly heavier strings, and the neck is wide”) and, more crucially, the surprising intensity it harnesses: “It just sounded so metal to me or something,” he recalls. “So deep and rich and ominous, but beautiful.” These discoveries came at a pivotal time: “I don’t know what happened last year, but I felt the need to get some new instruments. And that opened up a new sound world.”
He eventually linked up with two key collaborators, producer David Breskin (John Zorn, Bill Frisell) and engineer Ben Greenberg (who plays guitar in noise-rock band Uniform), at the small Brooklyn studio Circular Ruin. That setting was ideal for the physical experience he hoped to capture: “I used contact mics on the guitar, and [sometimes on my body], to have a subtle sound design. It’s in there—you can kinda hear it [on the album] sometimes.”
One reason for that impact: This is, by and large, the most intimate record of Seabrook’s career—a downshift from the wall-to-wall wildness that has defined so much of his work. That said, make no mistake. Almost no one else could create the pogoing guitar madness of “Perverted by Perseverance,” which sounds like ’80s King Crimson being subjected to water torture. (“I actually was revisiting the ’80s King Crimson stuff while I was making this album,” he says. “I just came back to it after years of not hearing it. That’s straight-up Telecaster prepared with some alligator clips, and then I use my radio tape recorder on the pickups.”)
Object sometimes leans into a more traditional “solo” vibe, like on the dissonant, highly improvised banjo piece “Unbalanced Love Portfolio”; at other points, it piles instruments into towering overdub soundscapes, like on “Gondola Freak,” a heart-accelerating swirl of harmonized 12-strings.
Object of Unknown Functionis the guitarist’s first solo record since 2014’s Sylphid Vitalizers.
“I’ve been playing a lot of solo things over the past 10 years, and that’s on banjo and guitar,” Seabrook says. “I was kinda hesitant to make an album of that stuff, although some pieces are totally stripped-down to just me. But I thought I could make a more compelling studio listening experience now that I have a little more of a palette that these instruments are offering. The solo album I did 10 years ago had lots of layers, but I wanted to be a bit more vulnerable on this record and have some songs stripped-down and some full.”
The resulting project is a “blender” of all the things Seabrook loves, thrown together in a way that sparks his imagination. “I’m just trying to sound like the influences I have, whether it’s ’80s King Crimson or Eugene Chadbourne or Van Halen or Joni Mitchell—all these things I hear certain fragments of, and maybe it’s only for a measure or a section,” he says. “I guess I am conscious of messing with form. I love the juxtaposition of certain things.”
Seabrook is a long-time mainstay of the Brooklyn jazz and avant-garde scene, where, in addition to leading his own ensembles, he’s worked with a wide range of artists that includes Nels Cline, Anthony Braxton, Mike Watt, and Mostly Other People Do the Killing.
Photo by Luke Marantz
“I used to be even more of a hailstorm on the audience psyche,” he continues. “I just recorded a new album with this quartet of synthesizer, violin, bass, and guitar, and I want to bring more lyricism and less feeling of intentional surprise. I’m getting there slowly. A lot of the music I listen to is really lyrical, like folk music or soft rock. I try to put elements of that in here. I guess I do want to make weird twists and turns, but I do put a lot of thought into how to weave them and make them coherent.”
It’s not like Seabrook has suddenly recorded an Eagles album, but these more refined moments signal a desire to keep challenging himself—and his audience. “I think it’s getting older and being more vulnerable, more confident in your choices,” he says. “When I was younger, I never wanted one second of space. Now I just want to be more connected to the things I truly love. It’s a journey. I never want to think somebody wants to hear a certain thing from me.”
YouTube It
Video Caption: In this mind-melting performance of “brutalovechamp,” captured May 20th, 2023 at Brooklyn’s Public Records, Seabrook is joined by the epic proportions octet, including everything from cello to recorder.