Farees—seen here in the studio with his Danelectro 12-string—cut his teeth playing with iconic Tuareg group Tinariwen.
Farees’ new album, Blindsight, opens with a blistering cover of “Hey Joe.” And although the guitarist is heavily influenced by Hendrix and delivers a nearly spot-on rendition of the iconic solo in the middle of the song, he’s really displeased by the comparisons being bandied about in attempts to describe his own guitar prowess.
“It really pisses me off when they say ‘the new Jimi Hendrix,’ or ‘here’s the next Hendrix,’ or ‘the Jimi Hendrix of the Sahara’,” says Farees, who is of Tuareg and German/Italian heritage. “There’s only one Jimi Hendrix. It’s promotional bullshit, just to attract attention. World music is really a neocolonial system. It’s based on exoticism to this day, and so they always try to manufacture this exotic image—you see a person of color with an electric guitar, and you go, ‘Jimi Hendrix,’ which is racist. So, yeah, I don’t like the way Jimi is used. It’s profiting off the image of Jimi to promote someone else.”
Farees’ strong, articulate character permeates his musical output and vision. He’s a fiercely independent artist who wants to dictate his own terms within the music industry. And he’s fervently committed to dismantling the thinking around the neocolonial power dynamics that dictate much of capitalist society—check out his “Maneefesto” at farees.com for his incisive worldview. Regarding the music industry, he’s challenging what he calls “the age of shallowness and appearance.” As such, his music and lyrics are inextricably linked to the ideals and values that define him as a human being. There’s no separating the performer from the person. “I’m invested in societal change because I’m a musician. It’s as simple as that—it’s natural,” he proclaims.
FAREES feat. LEO NOCENTELLI of THE METERS - The Melting (Official Music Video)
On the bouncy and funky “The Melting,” Farees sets down his guitar and lets the Meters’ original guitarist, the legendary Leo Nocentelli, handle all the guitar parts.
When it comes to songcraft, Farees grounds himself in his traditional Tuareg heritage. For the uninitiated, the Tuareg people are a large nomadic ethnic group that principally inhabit a vast area of the Sahara. “It was a huge empire and, being nomadic, they were influenced by many different cultures, so you have a music and poetry style that’s very diverse,” he explains. “If you listen to traditional stuff from Timbuktu and the Niger River in West Africa, it really sounds like the blues. And since millennia Tuaregs had rap and spoken word. We had all of that in Africa.”
Farees started out playing guitar professionally as part of the Saharan music scene in the bands Tinariwen and Terakaft. His first record, Mississippi to Sahara (released under the name Faris in 2015), assayed the traditional rural blues of Mississippi through the lens of a Tuareg style. It is an unequivocal tour de force of mostly solo guitar playing. The album caught the ears of Taj Mahal and Ben Harper, who quickly embraced both his musical ambition and his social mission. And even though it was a low-budget project, recorded in just a couple days, Mississippi to Sahara contains all the hallmarks of the highly rhythmic approach that would come to define his guitar playing, producing, and songwriting on future albums.
In 2020, he released Border Patrol and Both Sides of the Border, two collections of genre-hopping, guitar-heavy protest songs, including Border Patrol’s “Y’all Don’t Know What’s Going On,” a collaboration with U.S.-based indie-rock band Calexico. Drawing on his own experience of being profiled, arrested, and detained during an American tour, his spoken-word poetry on Border Patrol harks back to the late-’60s protest traditions of artists like Bob Marley and Hendrix. Farees employs spoken word throughout much of his music and says that this came out of necessity. “I have too much to say for just standard lyrics,” he chuckles.
“World music is really a neocolonial system. It’s based on exoticism to this day, and so they always try to manufacture this exotic image.”
Farees’ recent release, Blindsight, continues his genre-bending, socially responsive musical trajectory. Through bombastic funk, conscious but raucous hip-hop, and psychedelic blues, Blindsight affirms the signature “wall of groove” production style he is becoming known for. “I guess that’s my African ancestry,” he says. “Rhythm always comes first. I always lay down a wall of different rhythm tracks on different instruments—drums, bass, keyboards, guitars, or percussion—and then, once I have this wall of groove underneath, every melody comes alive. That’s the way I think as a producer.” A prime example is “The Melting,” featuring Leo Nocentelli from the original Meters line-up on guitar. The song is like a jigsaw puzzle of cascading rhythms and contrapuntal melodies—including a busy and melodic bass line—that coalesce with astonishing fluidity.
The Meters are another of the Farees’ big Western influences, so it was quite an honor to have Nocentelli onboard. “We met online,” recalls Farees. “I asked him, ‘Do you feel like you could play some guitar on one of my tracks?’ And he was like, ‘Sure, man.’ So, it was a dream come true for me. Now it’s more of a spiritual connection—we became like brothers.” Nocentelli performed all the guitar parts on “The Melting.” “I didn’t touch the guitars, specifically to leave room for him,” says Farees.
At the time of this interview, Farees had just played with Nocentelli’s band at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in support of the Meters guitarist’s own much-heralded, recently released lost 1971 solo album, Another Side. Nocentelli says he was drawn to Farees because he’s a unique person with unique ideas: “His music is like a mixture of dialects and musical interpretations from various parts of the world, and I like that.”
After meeting Leo Nocentelli online, Farees asked the original Meters’ guitarist to play a feature track on Blindsight. The famed 6-stringer said yes and handles all the guitar parts on “The Melting.” This year, Farees joined Nocentelli’s band at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
For “The Melting,” Nocentelli used a Gibson ES-335, direct through the board. “I’m old school,” he says. “I like the direct sound if I’m tracking a clean sound, especially rhythm. When you hear Jimmy Nolen with James Brown, the guitar is clean. There’s no distortion or anything like that. Al McKay from Earth, Wind & Fire, too—his rhythms were sparkling clean, and I try to duplicate that.”
Clearly, Farees isn’t content to be defined solely by his guitar playing, good as it may be. Collaboration, whether with Nocentelli or Calexico, is a driving force in his life. “I love to create,” he attests. “The guitar was my first instrument, but then I had to explore, and I think that’s how it’s going to be with me. I just love sound.” On “Fuck You, I’m Black,” he even plays the banjo, tuned in a Tuareg style. “It’s tuned the same way the Tuareg tune their lutes. Tuaregs have nine or 10 different [open] tunings based on the songs. Probably the easiest one, and the one we use most, is the low ‘E’—you tune it up to ‘G.’ And then you play in ‘G,’ and you have all kinds of scales and stuff to do.” [A typical Tuareg open G tuning is G–A–D–G–B–E.]
But Farees points out that he is a completely self-taught guitarist and doesn’t know anything about Western music theory. “I don’t know what notes I’m playing,” he admits. “I don’t count the rhythms. I just do everything by instinct, so there’s a lot of mystery to it. Most of the things I do, I don’t know how I’m doing them. I just do them. I guess it comes from above, as they say.”
Farees’ Gear
Seen here tracking bass parts, Farees says he wrote most of Blindsight at the keyboard.
Photo by Rafaelle Serra
Guitars
- Numerous customized Squier Strats with Q pickups
- ES-style with vintage-type Q humbuckers
- Squier Starcaster
- Greco 1978 triple-humbucker LP copy
- Greco 1979 S-style
- Danelectro 12-string electric
Amps
- Vox Pathfinder 10
- Custom 25W head based on Fender Bronco circuit
- Replica JTM45 head
- 1963 GEM Deluxe combo
- 1973 Davoli Tuono combo
- Custom 4x12 cabinet with Celestion Greenbacks
Effects
- Custom-made Fuzz pedals
- Two custom-made Univibe-style pedals (one has more output and a stronger preamp section)
- ’70s Jen Phase Shifter
- Rocktron Banshee Talkbox
Wahs
- Custom-made or modded wah pedals
- 1966 Vox Clyde McCoy wah
- Various ’70s Italian-made wahs
Strings and Picks
- GHS Strings (.010–.038)
- Planet Waves Medium 0.70 mm picks
He also doesn’t ascribe to a single playing technique. “I play every style—fingerpicking, picks,” he attests. “Usually, for a pick, I use the butt of the pick, not the front. It gives me more speed and fattens the sound.” And when it comes to gear, Farees makes sure that his instrument choices align with his thinking—a kind of a practice-what-you-preach methodology. “People are starting to watch what an artist says and does,” he explains. “It has to align with what you say. I’d rather go to a small artisan that produces quality stuff by hand. That’s why I endorse Q Pickups. For a set of pickups, the most pricey are maybe $150. They don’t charge you for the brand. No bullshit and real quality. That’s what I’m about.
“The sound is part of the song for me, so it’s really important. I work a lot on my sound,” he continues, explaining that he finds “incredible sounds using incredibly cheap gear” and cites the rhythm guitar track on “Hey Joe.” “That’s the Vox Pathfinder 10, and it’s an awesome amp. I don’t know how they did that circuit, but it sounds like a big Marshall amp, and it’s just a transistor, super-small practice amp.” He mostly plays Squier guitars, as well as a pair of ’70s Greco guitars from Japan. “They’re incredible,” he says. “The Japanese craftsmanship in the ’70s was incredible. If you do a blind test with a vintage ’68 Strat, you probably won’t notice any difference.” For the outro solo on “Hey Joe,” he used an unnamed vintage Italian-made phase shifter and a custom-made JTM45-replica head with an Orange bass cab. “I love bass cabs, rather than guitar cabs, because they add more fat to my tone.”
“I love bass cabs, rather than guitar cabs, because they add more fat to my tone.”
Farees’ values are reflected in all aspects of his music. He’s put in his time hustling to set up his own label and distribute his records worldwide, and feels that he’s now a truly independent musician. Farees says that his 2020 release Border Patrol was finished for two-and-a-half years before it came out as he prepared the infrastructure needed to be truly free of record companies and the hierarchy that goes along with that side of the business. “I was contacted by major labels, but they wanted to censor me and change my whole persona,” he explains. “They’ve tried to change my song titles, change the album titles. I wanted a double LP, and they were like, ‘No. It has to be a single LP.’”
The music and the message are important to Farees, not marketing or sales concerns. “I make music because I really believe in good music and good values,” he explains. “It’s about bringing something good and something new to the table, and not doing what everybody else is doing or imitating. I think that’s an artist’s responsibility. Not that you have to revolutionize or change everything—just bring your own thing to the table.”
Blindsight
Blindsight opens with a blistering, funky version of “Hey Joe,” but Farees rejects the idea of using Hendrix to self-aggrandize: “I don’t like the way Jimi is used. It’s profiting off of the image of Jimi to promote someone else, and it’s bullshit.”
Farees - HEY JOE (Isolated Guitar)
PG Exclusive: Check out the isolated guitar tracks from "Hey Joe" off Farees' new album, Blindsight.
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For Pink Floyd fans, the visuals give away that this is David Gilmour along with his longtime bassist Guy Pratt and drummer Adam Betts, who appear on Gilmour’s new Luck and Strange, navigating the band’s classic “Time.”
That tone, and so many of the other sounds that Gilmour has conjured in his 46 years of recording with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist, inspired me to leave Nashville to attend the first concert of Gilmour’s five-night stand at Madison Square Garden, on November 4. I’d been lucky enough to catch Gilmour’s tour supporting 1984’s About Face and two later Pink Floyd concerts, but the guitarist is 78 this year, so I felt that the 21 dates he’s playing in a mere four cities might be my last chance to be in the same room with all of his extraordinary tones. Plus, Pink Floyd, and especially Gilmour’s solo recordings and his brilliant Live at Pompeii concert film, was my wife, Laurie’s, and my refuge during the Covid lockdown. This was our opportunity to experience the sorcerer at work in one of his temples, where he and Pink Floyd first played in 1977.
Gilmour wields his Black Cat Strat, which he also played on Luck and Strange’s opener, “Black Cat,” in the studio.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
Was it worth the price of two concert tickets, flights, two nights in a Midtown hotel, and a subway ride? If you need to ask, it’s likely you’re not as familiar with Gilmour’s playing as I suggest that you should be. For guitarists, outside-the-box musical thinkers, and lovers of exceptional songwriting–and even concert lighting effects and live sound–this show was a perfect 10. Gilmour and his ensemble, including his daughter Romany, performed a well-chosen set of tunes by Pink Floyd and from Gilmour’s solo work, including his recent album Luck and Strange, which is more about composition than guitar exposition. Live, this was not the case. “Luck and Strange,” “A Single Spark,” and others from the album were expanded to include 6-string excursions that–in his signature style–took the lyrics as their inspiration and expanded their emotional architecture.
A close-up of Gilmour’s famed Workmate guitar, a 1955 Fender Esquire that once belonged to Seymour Duncan.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
Repeatedly, Gilmour displayed his ability to play the perfect parts, and especially solos, for each song. Some, of course, like “Time,” require sticking to text, but his expansions of “Breathe” and other numbers incorporated subtle improvisations dappled by pitch-changing, his emotive string bending, and numerous shifts in tone and phrasing that nonetheless always respected his unmistakable core sound. In Nashville, a frequent compliment is that a musician “always plays the perfect part.” For me, that’s a warning that I’m probably going to hear very professional and predictable playing all night long, and that’s usually boring. But Gilmour’s ear-opening sounds and phrases are constantly peppered with surprises–a hallmark of his characterful virtuosity. In the first of his Garden shows, he stepped outside the box while always respecting its contents, and it was a pleasure to hear him repeatedly practice that high art.
Guy Pratt remarked, while speaking to the audience before the show, that his first gig at MSG with Gilmour had been 37 years and one day earlier. Live, it was clear that Pratt is Gilmour’s right-hand man, as he set up cues for the other players.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
A pre-tour rumor was that Gilmour would not be playing any Pink Floyd numbers. That seemed unlikely, given his role as the composer and vocalist of so many of the band’s showcase songs. And, indeed, “Speak to Me,” “Breathe,” “Time,” “Marooned” (with its pitch-defying solo), “Wish You Were Here,” “High Hopes,” “Sorrow,” “A Great Day for Freedom,” “The Great Gig in the Sky,” “Coming Back to Life,” and “Comfortably Numb” were all present during the roughly two-and-a-half hours of music. What seemed remarkable throughout was not only the perfection of Gilmour’s playing but his ability to still hit every vocal high note with the same energy and accuracy of the original recordings, including his superb recreation of the scatting in “Wish You Were Here.”
Gilmour’s acoustic guitar, especially on “Wish You Were Here,” sparkled with clarity and articulation, and his scatting on that song proved that at 78 he can still summon the power and precision to hit the high vocal notes.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
“Wish You Were Here” was his first acoustic guitar excursion of the concert, and he and supporting guitarist Ben Worsley made the song a trip in the Wayback Machine, effortlessly conjuring the introduction’s vibrant appeal and deep emotionalism. Their acoustic instruments sounded crisp and resonant through the arena-sized PA, which should not have been surprising given Gilmour and Pink Floyd’s high standards for live sound. And all night, Gilmour’s vocals enjoyed the same clarity, making every lyric understandable, which is quite a feat for any large-hall show. The only quibble is that the drums echoed off the Garden’s back wall, which, given its 19,500 capacity, was on par.
Guy Pratt, David Gilmour, and Ben Worsley keeping the rock in arena rock. In addition to his Fender Jazz Bass, Pratt also played an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray, and an upright. For electric guitar, Worsley slung a PRS S2 SSH.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
Romany Gilmour played a vital role in the show, with her voice navigating the Celtic-influenced melody of “Between Two Points,” from Luck and Strange, before joining the already formidable voices of Louise Marshall, and Charlie and Hattie Webb, in the band’s chorus. All four took turns singing lead on Dark Side of the Moon’s wordless masterpiece “The Great Gig in the Sky,” as Marshall played piano and Gilmour took one of his turns on the table-steel guitar.
A crowd’s-eye view, with lighting-enhanced stage fog. At right, just out of frame, is famed keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, who first joined Gilmour’s ensemble as part of the Rattle That Lock tour of Europe and appears in the Live in Pompeii concert film.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
“In Any Tongue,” from Gilmour’s 2014 album Rattle That Lock, was, of course, a musical highlight, ignited by that grizzly tone, but furthered by expressive, powerhouse solos from both Gilmour and Worsley. The song’s anti-war theme was enhanced by the same back-projected, heart-breaking video shown in 2016’s Live in Pompeii film, which conveys the idea that military violence spares neither the often-reluctant invaders nor the invaded. And last, of course, came “Comfortably Numb,” with Gilmour’s holy grail guitar solos, perfectly executed as he and the band played from behind an allusive wall of light. With their deep, idiosyncratic bends, rich, howling midrange, and his perfect, vibrato-laden bends, squealing harmonics, touch, and phrasing, these solos were the ultimate 6-string microphone drop.
Gilmour and his Black Cat Strat–partners for the concert’s closing number, “Comfortably Numb,” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
If that was my last opportunity to hear Gilmour live, it’s understandable. He’s a legend who has earned his status through nearly a half-century of remarkable playing and composing. He has no need to create or perform on any terms beyond his own. I’m simply happy to have been able to bear witness, and to share the experience with you.
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Aguilar is introducing the amPlug3 Tone Hammer, a portable headphone amplifier inspired by the iconic Tone Hammer sound. Ideal for practicing anywhere, this compact device packs dual channel Clean and Drive modes for ultimate versatility. To help keep practice sessions inspiring, the unit includes reverb, chorus, and compression as built-in, onboard effects and a built-in rhythm feature to keep any players favorite basslines in time. Lastly, the amPlug3 features AUX connectivity to allow players to play along with tracks, or via a TRRS cable, record straight to a phone or laptop with ease. Whether at home, in the studio, or on the road, the amPlug3 Tone Hammer offers a convenient practice solution without compromising tone.
In addition to the amPlug 3 Tone Hammer, Aguilar has revamped their iconic Tone Hammer Preamp pedal. Built upon the original design that has become an essential tool for bass players seeking tone and flexibility. Incorporating customer feedback and refining key features, the new Tone Hammer Preamp offers enhanced drive functionality featuring an expanded gain range with a separate "drive" control for greater tonal precision, allowing users to refine their overdriven and clean tones independently. New Practice-friendly features include the addition of a headphone output and auxiliary input, allowing the pedal to double as the perfect practice companion at home or on the road. The updated, compact enclosure has a modern aesthetic, complementing the Tone Hammer series of amplifiers.
“We are thrilled to expand the Tone Hammer family with these new products,” said Jordan Cortese of Aguilar Amplification. “The reimagined Preamp/DI pedal and the all-new amPlug3 Tone Hammer provide bassists with even more options to achieve their perfect sound, whether they’re on stage or practicing on the move.”
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Aguilar amPlug 3 Tone Hammer Bass Guitar Headphone Amplifier
