Los Angeles-native Rundle has five albums as leader to her credit, plus two new collaborations with Thou, as well as recordings with the Nocturnes, Red Sparowes, and Marriages.
It's virtually impossible to interview anyone nowadays and not have the pandemic come up. The only difference in the conversations is the degree to which it has affected the subject's life. Last March, Emma Ruth Rundle was touring solo—as in, sans backing band—in support of her 2018 release On Dark Horses, when the severity of the pandemic hit. Her last live show was on March 10, at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles.
"That was a very strange show, because of what was happening," she recalls. "I was on tour with Cult of Luna and Intronaut. We started in February and were in 'tour-land,' so you're kind of in a bubble, where the outside world doesn't really exist and the escalation of the virus—that news wasn't impacting us. We weren't seeing it, but by the time we got to Los Angeles ...," she drifts off, the disbelief still palpable. "I'm from L.A. I was born and raised there, and driving into Hollywood, the streets were fucking empty."
"Showing up with an electric guitar and no effects is my version of the nightmare people have where they go to school with no clothes on."
Riding into an upscale ghost town sounds like an apocalyptic scenario—especially when your livelihood depends on audiences. But the adaptability of Rundle, who recorded during the lockdown and recently released an album and an EP, has been a hallmark of her career. The 37-year-old rose to prominence in the early 2000s with the Nocturnes, a folkgaze ensemble blending chamber-pop, goth, and post-rock elements into the genre. Albums like A Year of Spring (2009) and Aokigahara(2011) spotlighted her as one of the millennium's most inspired rock singer-songwriters. While in the Nocturnes, she branched out to work with post-rockers Red Sparowes, and in 2012 forged a more-straight-ahead rock collaboration under the Marriages moniker with Sparowes bassist Greg Burns. In between her musical partnerships, the prolific Rundle has also released four dazzling solo albums.
A common thread through all of her recordings is her passion for the craft of guitar playing. And her thirst for the new is reflected in that, too. With On Dark Horses, she first delved into baritone guitars—their shadowed tones magnifying Rundle's already somewhat foreboding, light-versus-dark aesthetic. From succinct to bombastic, weighty to crushing, and nuanced to vulnerable, her playing—particularly her baritone-derived soundscapes—toes the line between lilting and bludgeoning.
Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - The Valley (Official Audio)
TIDBIT: Rundle's open baritone tuning differs from Thou's G# standard, but all four guitars on their collaborative album mesh thanks to smartly varying parts and the work of producer/engineer James Whitten.
Rundle's pair of recent recordings, late 2020's May Our Chambers Be Full and the new The Helm of Sorrow EP, mark yet another collaboration—this time with Louisiana sludge-metal lords Thou. Although Thou already had three guitar players, these releases are a perfect refuge for Rundle's low-tuned 6-strings. On Chambers'"Killing Floor," "Out of Existence," and "Magickal Cost," her playing weaves into Thou's majestic guitar tapestry as if it has always been there Meanwhile, her haunting, hypnotic vocals transcend the musical maelstrom with melodies that pierce Thou's musical armor, adding a welcome dimension to their muscular riffing. Check out Helm of Sorrow's cunning cover of the Cranberries' "Hollywood" for a slice of that sublime magic.
The Rundle/Thou union began with what she calls a long internet flirtation. "I've been such a massive fan," she admits. "I was listening to them a lot and tagging them on social media." Rundle, also a painter, would often listen to Thou while she worked. They finally met in 2018, backstage at the Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. "It was so uncomfortable," she remembers. "There's a lot of them and they each have a very different flavor. Everyone's got a very different personality."
When it comes to conventional electrics, Rundle favors this Guild T-Bird or her Gibson SG Special. "I just don't think you can beat an SG," she says.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Their musical partnership with Rundle kicked off when, in April 2019, Thou was invited to be the artists-in-residence at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands. Artists-in-residence perform a collaborative set with an artist of their choosing, so Thou asked Rundle. "That was so much fun," she explains. "I was like, 'Fuck yeah, I'm not going to miss this opportunity.' It was just such a dream come true to be asked to work with my favorite band. We had to come up with original material for a 40-minute set. That's how it started."
In preparation for Roadburn, they began meeting in New Orleans in February 2019. By then, Rundle and Thou guitarist Andy Gibbs had already been emailing ideas back and forth. "It started like a riff here, a riff there," she recalls. "KC [Stafford, guitar/vocals] came into the project with 'Monolith,' which they had written pretty much all the way through. We just fleshed it out." Rundle says the songwriting process was very involved and thinks maybe her Thou cohorts were a bit surprised by her level of commitment. "I think some of their other collaborations were just … expedient," she surmises, carefully choosing her words. "Whereas we were really crafting full songs from absolutely nothing."
"Because I play in a different tuning than everyone else, sometimes I couldn't play the same riffs as them—the voicing would be really strange."
Before heading off to Roadburn, Thou and Rundle embarked on a short tour to warm up for the festival. Rundle performed solo as an opener, and Thou would play their own set, and every few nights they would inject their collaborative performance. "It was like, if the final album is a sculpture that's realized, where you can see features and details, what we had by the time we got to Roadburn was just a lump of clay," she admits. "I recently heard the set from Roadburn, and I can tell I was totally making things up that just sounded like words. [laughs]. It evolved a lot more after we played that set."
A lot of Thou's mighty sound relies on the number of guitars playing the same down-tuned riff. In addition to Gibbs and Stafford, the band includes Matthew Thudium on guitar and Mitch Wells on bass, so fitting into that heavy alignment provided some challenges for Rundle. She says they made it work with the help of producer/engineer James Whitten, who she refers to as Thou's secret weapon. He recorded both May Our Chambers Be Full and The Helm of Sorrow at High Tower Music in New Orleans."
Emma Ruth Rundle's Gear
With 2018's On Dark Horses, Emma Ruth Rundle adopted the Fender Jaguar Special Baritone HH as her main instrument. "They don't make it anymore," she relates, "but it has humbuckers, which is the reason why I really love it."
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Two Fender Jaguar Special Baritone HHs
- Gibson SG Special
- Guild S-200 T-Bird
- Dunable Yeti
- Cordoba Luthier Series GK Pro
- Blueridge BR-143 Historic Series
Strings
- D'Addario EJ21 sets (standard-scale guitars)
- D'Addario EXL158 sets (baritones)
- D'Addario EJ46 sets (nylon strings)
- D'Addario EJ17 sets (steel-string acoustics)
Amps
- Roland JC-120
- Verellen 2x12 combo based on the Loucks head
Effects
- Korg Pitchblack tuner
- Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork
- EarthQuaker Devices Arrows
- EarthQuaker Devices Palisades
- Keeley Loomer
- Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai
- Line 6 M9
- Two Boss DD-6 Digital Delays
- Boss RV-5 Digital Reverb
- Red Panda Context
James is a genius with guitar tone and with finding a place for all of the guitars," Rundle says. "There is some mystery and mystique to his method. There's no way to have four guitars happening all the time and have it sound that good. I think he's doing some magic and picking and choosing. It was a surprise to hear what moments came out."
It's worth noting that Rundle plays in a different tuning than the rest of Thou, which further complicated how the guitars intermingled. The tuning on Rundle's baritone is G#–C#– G#–A#–C#–G#—an open tuning that lets her barre chords with a single index finger. Thou's tuning, according to Gibbs, is G# standard, just like standard tuning, except the lowest string is G#. "The process went like this," Rundle says. "There would be basic riffs. We would all learn them together, and that would form the basis of the song. But because I play in a different tuning than everyone else, sometimes I couldn't play the same riffs as them—the voicing would be really strange." In some cases, Rundle says it also just didn't make sense to have four guitars and a bass player playing the same drop-tuned riff together. So sometimes she would play other parts. "It made sense to have a little lead melody happening or a different chord voicing," she says. "That's how we made it work. There are times where I'm playing the same 'sort-of' riffs, but there are a lot of moments where it's either a finger-picked thing or a little lead line."
Emma Ruth Rundle Rig Rundown
Exclusively a fingerstylist, Rundle uses acrylic nails to pluck her primary guitar, a Fender Jaguar Special Baritone HH. "They don't make it anymore," she relates, "but it has humbuckers, which is the reason why I really love it. That specific model was what got me into playing baritone guitars."
Because the baritone is "pretty wonky" intonation-wise, Rundle also wields a Gibson SG Special, a Guild S-200 T-Bird (both in C# tuning), and a new Dunable Yeti that was custom built for her by Intronaut's Sacha Dunable. "With the Fender, you can't get the intonation right," she says. "It's just the nature of the scale length—and then I'm doing drop-tuning on a drop-tuned instrument! It's flawed in so many ways." [Editor's note: The Jaguar Special bari has a 27" scale, whereas "true" baritones are typically 28" or more in order to intonate more accurately across the fretboard.] Ultimately, she concludes, "I just don't think you can beat an SG." She says that instrument's fretboard reminds her of the classical guitars she learned to fingerpick on—and that she still uses to write and practice on. "To me, the SG is the perfect guitar."
In addition to the baritone, effects are crucial to Rundle's sound and style. "I consider my pedalboard an instrument that I wouldn't want to do any of this stuff without. It's like a palette of tones and effects that you know will work in any given situation. After a certain amount of time, you just know when something has to have a super-hot fuzz with an octave on it for it to cut through at the right moment and make sense. And if I have an EBow, I know it's always going to go with either a slide or a really slow delay."
For acoustic guitars, Rundle uses either a Cordoba GK Pro nylon-string or this Blueridge BR-143 Historic Series steel string.
Photo by Geert Breakers
Rundle says her fascination with effects and electric guitar playing happened in parallel. "I got a multi-effects pedal with my first guitar. I think showing up with an electric guitar and no effects is my version of the nightmare people have where they go to school with no clothes on," she laughs. "It's not a place I want to be, you know?"
Speaking of school, it was while working a 13-year stint at McCabe's Guitar Shop, a folk music center in Santa Monica, California, that she received her informal musical education. "We sold instruments, we had concerts, and we had lessons. A lot of the things that I've learned that have made their way into my playing just came from the people there—the teachers that would come down. Pete Steinberg is an amazing, award-winning finger picker, and he'd just be like, 'Come over here. I'm going to show you something.'" And on the rock side, she credits the inspiration of Jimi Hendrix, Billy Corgan, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, P.J. Harvey, and, especially, Nancy Wilson.
"I had this revelation when I learned about Heart. It blew my mind—just seeing a woman shred like that. I felt, when I was super young, that I didn't see myself reflected in guitar magazines or in rock music, necessarily. I'm stoked that we don't have the 'bikini-fashion-show-guitar-thing' anymore, you know what I mean?"
Live at Tilburg's Roadburn Festival in 2019, Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou work out the dynamics of their then-upcoming collaborative recordings in the furious "Ancestral Recall."
- PG Editors' Best Albums of 2018 - Premier Guitar ›
- Dylan Carlson's Theme for an Imaginary Western - Premier Guitar ›
- Rig Rundown: Emma Ruth Rundle - Premier Guitar ›
When not performing at various festivals across North America in 2024, front man Jakob Nowell immersed himself in the Sublime catalog and found a deep sense of connection to his late father. The band is tapping into the 90s nostalgia, writing and recording the new songs with powerhouse producing duo Travis Barker and John Feldmann, in addition to working with producer Jon Joseph (BØRNS). The first single will be released this Summer via their newly established label Sublime Recordings.
"I grew up on Sublime. ‘40oz. to Freedom’ changed the way I listened to music. I’m so honored to be working with the guys in Sublime. Creating music for this album has been so fun and exciting. Bradley comes through his son Jakob while writing in the studio and performing. Chills every day in the studio when he sings and play guitar. This is going to be really special." – Travis Barker
“Sublime has always been a huge influence on me and to be able work with the band has been inspirational and game changing…It has been a highlight of my life to work on such a seminal record with such talented people. I’m so grateful for this opportunity and to continue the legacy and keep it authentic to what they have historically done.” – John Feldmann
After Jakob Nowell’s debut as Sublime’s new front man at Coachella 2024, he and his uncles Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson continued the momentum of this latest chapter of the band, performing at over 20 festivals and shows across North America by the end of last year. Additional highlights from 2024 include Sublime’s late-night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, a 4-song set on the Howard Stern Show and the band’s first top 10 hit on alternative radio since 1997 with their single “Feel Like That,” featuring the vocals of both Bradley Nowell and his son Jakob together.
2025 is shaping up to be an even busier year for the band, with a handful of headlining shows, high-profile festival appearances to support the release of the new album.
For more information, please visit sublimelbc.com.
Sublime 2025 Tour Dates
- April 5 – LIV Golf Miami – Miami, FL
- April 18 – Red Rocks Amphitheater – Morrison, CO
- May 3 – Beachlife Festival – Redondo Beach, CA
- May 16 – Welcome To Rockville – Daytona Beach, FL
- May 23 – BottleRock Napa Valley – Napa, CA
- May 25 – Boston Calling – Boston, MA
- June 14 – Vans Warped Tour – Washington, DC
- July 12 – 89.7 The River’s 30th Anniversary Show – Omaha, NE
- July 20 – Minnesota Yacht Club Festival – Saint Paul, MN
- September 14 – Sea.Hear.Now – Asbury Park, NJ
- September 19 – Shaky Knees Festival – Atlanta, GA
Price unveiled her new band and her new signature model at a recent performance at the Gibson Garage in Nashville.
The 6-string was inspired by the J-45 she bought at Nashville’s Carter Vintage Guitars after she was signed to Third Man Records, where she made her 2016 ice-breaker album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. But her affection for Gibson acoustics predates that, going back to when she found a 1956 LG-3 in her grandmother’s home. The guitar had been abandoned there by her songwriter great uncle, Bobby Fischer.
“I played it for years before I found my J-45,” Price recounts. “At Carter Vintage, I tried a lot of guitars, but when I picked up that J-45, I loved that it was a smaller guitar but really cut through, and I was just really drawn to the sound of it. And so I went home with that guitar and I’ve been playing it ever since.”
“Having a signature model was something I had dreamed about.”
Of course, Price was also aware of the model’s history, but her demands for a guitar were rooted in the present—the requirements of the studio and road. The 1965 J-45 she acquired at Carter Vintage, which is also a cherry ’burst, was especially appealing “compared to a Martin D-21 or some of the other things that I was picking up. I have pretty small hands, and it just was so playable all up the neck. It was something that I could easily play barre chords on. I could immediately get everything that I needed out of it.”
If you’ve seen Price on TV, including stops at Saturday Night Live, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, you’ve seen her ’65. And you’ve also seen, over the years, that part of the soundhole’s top has been scraped away by her aggressive strumming. It’s experienced worse wear from an airline, though. After one unfortunate flight, Price found her guitar practically in splinters inside a badly crushed case. “It was like somebody would have had to drive over this case with a truck,” she relates. Luckily, Dave Johnson from Nashville’s Scale Model Guitars was able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
After that, an alternative guitar for the road seemed like a requirement. “Having a signature model was something I had dreamed about,” Price says. Friends in her songwriting circle, including Lukas Nelson and Nathaniel Rateliff, already had them. Four years ago, a tweet asking which women they thought should have signature models appeared, and one of her fans wrote “Margo Price.” Smartly, Price tagged Gibson and retweeted. Codey Allen in Gibson entertainment relations spotted the tweet and agreed.
The double pickguard was chosen for Price’s J-45 because of its symmetry, as a nod to the Hummingbird, and due to her heavy strumming hand.
Photo courtesy of Gibson
“The neck is not quite as small as my J-45, but it is just a bit smaller than many J-45s fives, and very playable no matter what size hands you have.”
“And so we began our journey of building this guitar,” Price says. “I debated whether it should be the LG-3, which I still have hanging on my wall, or the J-45. I went to Montana and visited their [acoustic] factory and sat down with Robi Johns [senior product development manager at Gibson acoustic], and we ultimately decided that the J-45 was my guitar. Then we started talking about the specs. We did pull from the LG-3 in that the body of this signature guitar is a bit smaller. It still has a really loud, clear sound that rings through. The neck is not quite as small as my 1965 J-45, but it is just a bit smaller than many J-45s, and very playable no matter what size hands that you have.”
The pickup that Price selected is a L.R. Baggs VTC Element with a preamp, and she took a prototype of the guitar on the road opening for the Tedeschi Trucks Band. “I am used to playing with a really loud band, with drums and sometimes a couple electric guitars, and I wanted to make sure that this guitar just cut through,” she says. “It was really important to me that it be loud, and it cut beautifully. It’s got a mahogany body and scalloped bracing, which makes it very sturdy. This guitar is a workhorse, just like me.”
The Margo Price J-45’s most arresting characteristic, in addition to its warm sunburst finish, is its double-sided pickguard with an etching of a quartet of red-tailed hawks in flight. It’s practical for her strumming style, but it’s also got a deeper significance.
“We talked about all sorts of things that we could put on the pickguard, and I’ve always been a big fan of the Hummingbird, so what we did is a bit of a nod to that,” Price continues. “I’ve always been drawn to red-tailed hawks. They are supposed to be divine messengers, and they have such strength. They symbolize vision and protection. I would always count them along the highway as I’d be driving home to see my family in Illinois.”
Birds of a feather: “I’ve always been drawn to red-tailed hawks,” says Price. “They are supposed to be divine messengers, and they have such strength. They symbolize vision and protection.”
Photo courtesy of Gibson
With its comfortable neck, slightly thinner body, and serious projection, Price notes, “I wanted my guitar to be something that young girls can pick up and feel comfortable in their hands and inspire songs, but I didn’t want it to be so small that it felt like a toy, and that it didn’t have the volume. This guitar has all of those things.” To get her heavy sound, Price uses D’Addario Phosphor Bronze (.012–.053) strings.
Price says she and her signature J-45, which is street priced at $3,999, have been in the studio a lot lately, “and I have a whole bunch of things I’m excited about.” In mid March, she debuted her new band—which includes Logan Ledger and Sean Thompson on guitars, bassist Alec Newman, Libby Weitnauer on fiddle, and Chris Gelb on drums—in a coming out party for the Margo Price Signature Gibson J-45 at the Gibson Garage in Nashville. “I’ve been with my previous band, the Price Tags, for more than 10 years, and it’s definitely emotional when a band reaches the end of its life cycle,” she says. “But it’s also really exciting, because now, having a fiddle in the band and incredible harmony singers … it’s a completely different vibe. I’ve got a whole bunch of festivals coming up this year. We’re playing Jazz Fest in New Orleans, and I’m so excited for everyone to hear this new iteration of what we’re doing.”
With its heritage cherry sunburst finish and other appointments, the Margo Price Signature Gibson J-45 balances classic and modern guitar design.
Photo courtesy of Gibson
There’s a good chance that if you’re a guitar fan, you’ve seen Nathaniel Murphy’s gear demos—either on his Instagram account, where he goes by @zeppelinbarnatra, or on the Chicago Music Exchange page. His solo arrangements of classic tunes display his next-level technique and knack for clever arranging, and he makes our jaws drop every time he posts. When we learned that the Irish guitarist is a huge fan of U2’s The Edge, we knew he had to be our expert for this episode.
Together with Nathaniel, we’re decoding our favorite eras of the Edge’s tones—from his early Memory Man days through his expanding delay rack rig, into his 1990s Achtung Baby sounds, and all the way through to his Sphere rig. How does he get those amazing delay tones? And what are those cool picks he uses?
