Seen here at Nashville’s Easy Eye Sound, Estevan strums an E minor on “Rudy,” Dan Auerbach’s 1958 Gretsch 6120, while Alejandro cradles his own Silvertone 1446 with his Rickenbacker Electro NS looking on.
The desert has captured the imaginations of so many guitarists. Throughout the modern history of our instrument, players have been enchanted by its mystery, stillness, or whatever they feel it represents. Those who’ve made the desert their muse, whether for a one-off project or lifelong dedication, interpret their feelings just as widely. From Grant Green’s funky settings of cowboy tunes on his Goin’ West to the slow, monolithic riffs of doom icons Earth, Ry Cooder’s lonely, plaintive slide work on the soundtrack for Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, to Saharan guitar masters Ali Farka Touré and Tinariwen, there is no one desert sound. Instead, there’s an ineffable feeling, a vibration that resonates across the quirkiest and the most severe of these projects.
For brothers Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez, it wasn’t until they’d travelled across the American Southwest that they realized how captivated they’d become. Raised by an Ecuadoran mother and Swiss father in Switzerland—a decent distance from any arid terrain—Estevan explains, “I think it’s just a feeling that we have. It’s just in us.” In 2018, a couple years after forming their duo, Hermanos Gutiérrez, they took a trip across through Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. “It just blew our minds.” he says. The brothers had never discussed musical influences, and their trip taught them their deepest musical truth. The desert, Estevan says, “is where our music was born.”
Hermanos Gutiérrez - "Los Chicos Tristes" [Official Music Video]
A few years have now passed, and the brothers are confident in their inspiration, which, on El Bueno Y El Malo—their fifth full-length release and their first on Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound—comes by way of classic film imagery. The album opens with the title track, its dramatic first strums serving as an overture that introduces listeners to the type of instrumental storytelling they’re about to hear in 10 short, simply stated chapters. By the middle of the record, Western analogies abound: “Tres Hermanos” feels like a three-way high-noon guitar showdown across the stereo field with Auerbach joining in, while the simple, major-key elegance of “Pueblo Man” radiates the morning sun, contrasting the minor-key chiaroscuro of the subsequent “La Verdad.” Together, the album makes for an enthralling listen, with a balance of instrumental plot and exposition in their simple chord progressions, ornate rhythms, and plainly stated melodies that appeals to the same sensibilities as some of Cormac McCarthy’s best novels.
Any of the songs on El Bueno Y El Malo could serve as more intimate stand-ins for Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack work, and throughout their body of work, the brothers’ music feels like a series of ready-made film scores. “On a personal level,” says Alejandro, “I always love to make a sound that brings you somewhere. Because we love the desert and the spaghetti Western kind of vibe, we’re telling a story that has this kind of a feeling.” He points to “big film scores” as an outsize influence, specifically Morricone’s work with director Sergio Leone. “Watching those movies without music,” he says, “it’s impossible. It just shows the power of music itself.” He goes on to call Neil Young’s score to Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man “a milestone in film scores. It’s perfect.”
“The biggest thing you can hear on the record is the Easy Eye Sound, which sounds kind of hilarious, but it is. You enter this studio, and you can just feel it, you know?” –Estevan
It’s no surprise, then, that the Gutiérrezes talk at least as much in visual references as they do about musical ones. And as a touring act they’ve taken in a lot of firsthand stimuli. “Part of what we’re doing is travelling together as brothers,” says Alejandro, “so we go to places, we come back and we’re feeling inspired, and we feel like we’ve gotta write something about this place.”
Their relationship as brothers is the other essential part of their music. Around the age of 9, Estevan first picked up a guitar. He started by studying classical guitar and says he was a fan of “old music from Ecuador,” which he played into his teens. Once he took up surfing, he got into Jack Johnson, but says he “always stayed with my salsa roots.” Eight years younger, Alejandro saw the power of music in his brother’s hands for as long as he can remember. “Our mom always got emotional when he was playing that old milonga kind of music,” he says about “those Argentinian pieces which are so beautiful.”
Working with Dan Auerbach and his stable of Nashville veterans, El Bueno Y El Malo marks the first time the brothers have collaborated with a producer or featured other musicians on an Hermanos Gutiérrez album.
In his 20s, Estevan moved to Ecuador to live with his grandparents. “I didn’t have a real plan,” he confesses. “I just went over, and I started to work in a salsa bar on the weekend.” There, he served drinks and worked security, spending the rest of his time surfing. “[It] was the best experience I ever had.”
Back in Switzerland, Alejandro picked up the guitar out of loneliness. “I just missed that sound in our house, so I started playing,” he explains. He started by teaching himself and, by 18, his parents gave him a classical guitar.
It wasn’t until just six years ago, when Alejandro moved to Zurich, that the brothers, once again living in the same place, started playing music together. “We were missing each other,” Alejandro explains. “Instantly, we were connecting through music.” Writing with just their electric guitars plugged direct into small amps—a Gibson CS-336 and a Fender Princeton Reverb for Estevan, and a Fender Stratocaster and Vox AC10 for Alejandro—he says they “always had this idea of having our own vinyl” because “it lasts forever, and you can pass it on to future generations.” In 2017, they recorded their debut, 8 Ãños.
Estevan Guttiérez’s Gear
It wasn’t until the brothers took a trip through the American Southwest that they realized the desert was their muse. Estevan explains, “It just blew our minds.”
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
- Gibson CS-336
- Gretsch 6120
- 1959 Gretsch 6120 “Rudy” (at Easy Eye Sound)
Amps
- Fender Deluxe Reverb
- Fender Princeton Reverb
- Vintage Magnatone (at Easy Eye Sound)
Effects
- Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
- MXR Dyna Comp
- Malekko Omicron Vibrato
- Strymon El Capistan
- Boss TR-2 Tremolo Analog Man mod
- Boss RC-300 Loop Station
Strings
- D’Addario EXL 115 (.011–.049)
Even on their first record, the Hermanos Gutiérrez established a strong, recognizable style. Estevan and Alejandro say their basic approach to writing and collaborating has never changed. “We have this invisible communication,” says Alejandro. “We don’t have to talk to each other that much. We feel it.” When writing, he explains, “we always know the other part is missing, this is the other brother’s part. We have this deep connection as brothers.” He adds that they never question their intuition. “We’re never looking for a particular sound or rhythm,” he says. “It’s never conceptual. It was never trying to have this sound. It’s just what it was.”
That’s not to say the project hasn’t evolved. Gear discoveries have helped them along their path. “When we started, we didn’t use any pedals,” says Estevan. “We just used the guitars and the amps. We were just two brothers playing guitar.” Eventually, Estevan discovered the Strymon El Capistan, a watershed that opened up creative possibilities. “I remember that day,” he reminisces about first playing the pedal. “I fell in love. I knew it was gonna change something in our sound.” As soon as he purchased the El Capistan, he says he called his brother and said, “You have to buy this. This is gonna be next level for us.”
“Part of what we’re doing is travelling together as brothers, so we go to places, we come back, and we’re feeling inspired, and we feel like we’ve gotta write something about this place.” – Alejandro
Part of the El Capistan’s allure, Alejandro explains, is that that they both found ways to approach the pedal differently. “I use it as a layer,” he explains. “Really subtle. My brother uses it more as a delay. He has this horse sound, like this galloping sound he can create with his slapping, which only he can do.”
That slapping is a percussive righthand technique that Estevan uses—not slapping of the funk variety. Rather, it’s the way he hits the strings when he’s strumming. Both Estevan and Alejandro are fingerpickers, which—and lots of credit to their classical-guitar backgrounds—means they have a variety of picking, strumming, and righthand attack techniques at their disposal. That includes using muted-string attacks for percussive effect, a relative of the early “bongo guitar” methods used by players such as Ray Crawford or Herb Ellis in drummer-less trio settings. While Alejandro credits his brother’s signature technique, they each do a variation on the move.
The Gutiérrezes’ rhythmic versatility casts a spell in live performance. There are few instrumental guitar duos out there who can make their audience dance and rock out. But when the Hermanos played Philadelphia in November, most of the near-capacity audience pulsed along with the music, with a small cohort breaking out into wavy, full-body interpretations.
Alejandro Guttiérez’s Gear
The brothers live in Switzerland, but they were back at Hollywood Forever for a Day of the Dead concert this fall. “Part of what we’re doing is travelling together as brothers,” says Alejandro, “so we go to places, we come back and we’re feeling inspired, and we feel like we’ve gotta write something about this place.”
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
- Fender Stratocaster
- Rickenbacker Electro NS lap steel
- Silvertone 1446
Amps
- Fender Deluxe Reverb
- Vox AC10
- Vintage Flot-A-Tone amp (at Easy Eye Sound)
Effects
- Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
- Boss GE-7 Equalizer
- Ceasar Diaz Texas Tremodillo
- MXR Dyna Comp
- Strymon El Capistan
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
Strings & Picks
- Pyramid Gold Heavy (.013–.052)
In concert, it’s just as easy to zoom in on the finer details in the brothers’ music as it is to vibe out on a wave of rhythm. Both Estevan and Alejandro sound as though they’re reproducing the most life-affirming classic guitar tones—mythical, old-school sounds, like they’re contemporaries of Santo and Johnny (another pair of guitar- and steel-playing brothers)—which will draw in any armchair historian of guitar music. Of course, that’s one thing to capture on record, which they do, but it’s another, more impressive thing to do with some rented Deluxe Reverbs. Within those sounds, there are sonic details to catch, like how nuanced Estevan’s right-hand patterns can get, or how Alejandro manages to pluck the string on his lap steel with his thumbnail—he eschews fingerpicks on lap steel as well—to add a bright attack to just the right notes. At the Philadelphia show, most of those who weren’t dancing slowly lurched closer to the duo until, near the end, the brothers were encircled on the World Café’s narrowly defined stage by listeners who were seemingly enraptured by these subtleties.
No doubt, though, it’s the brothers’ chemistry that ultimately makes them sound magical, no matter what a listener is focused on. For El Bueno Y El Malo, Auerbach was careful not to disrupt any of that energy. Upon arriving at Easy Eye Sound, he didn’t dissect how they’d approach the session with the duo. Instead, Auerbach simply let them do their thing. “We entered the studio,” says Alejandro, “and we were recording after 20 minutes.” As soon as they plugged into their amps, Auerbach made a few level adjustments around them while they got a feel for the studio. “We didn’t even realize,” he adds. “We looked at Dan and he said, ‘From the top again,’ and we were recording. That was ‘El Bueno Y El Malo,’ it was the first take.”
Although much has been written about Auerbach’s studio, including in PG, it bears repeating that the producer/guitarist has curated not just a fine collection of gear in Easy Eye Sound, but a vibe. “The biggest thing you can hear on the record,” points out Estevan, “is Easy Eye Sound, which sounds kind of hilarious, but it is. You enter this studio, and you can just feel it, you know? So, this mixed with all these vintage amps and guitars and our flavors that we put together, it was like a soup that we were cooking. It’s beautiful. You can hear it and it sounds so special.”
Brothers Estevan (left) and Alejandro (right) Gutiérrez at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in May 2022.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
At Easy Eye, Alejandro used the house Flot-A-Tone amp and Estevan opted for a vintage Magnatone. He points out that the amp’s heralded vibrato is noticeable on the title track. Alejandro brought along his own vintage Silvertone 1446 and his Rickenbacker Electro NS lap steel—which he tunes by ear to each song, though he notes that he doesn’t keep track of his tunings. While Estevan brought his own modern Gretsch 6120, Auerbach offered his own 1958 Gretsch 6120, “Rudy,” which was too good to resist, and he used as his primary instrument for the record.
The duo finished their parts in just two and a half days, using several first takes. “We were not rushing things at all,” says Alejandro. “It was just really flowing perfectly.” With more time planned for the session, the brothers, who’d never worked with other musicians on their records, had plenty of ideas for how they would take advantage of Auerbach’s connections, and they brought in percussion, string, and organ players for overdubs.
“It’s never conceptual. It was never trying to have this sound. It’s just what it was.” –Alejandro
“It was so beautiful to work with these kinds of musicians,” says Estevan. “Everyone is on a high level. We felt like this is the right place for us.” Although other Auerbach productions might feature old-school session cats ripping solos and contributing key riffs, the additional production on El Bueno Y El Malo simply adds color and amplifies the magic that is already there. Auerbach and company deliver the perfect Easy Eye treatment—all ears are on the brothers.
With El Bueno Y El Malo, coming to Nashville to record has added to the brothers’ ongoing musical travelogue. Having come this far, it’s no surprise that the album stands as a major aesthetic statement for instrumental guitar music, and the definitive statement of Hermanos Gutiérrez. At least for now. When we spoke, they were getting ready for their U.S. tour, which would end in the Southwest. Both brothers acknowledged this trip would be a return to the source of their musical inspiration, a full-circle experience they were looking forward to. “It’s just beautiful where we can go with this music,” says Alejandro. “It’s just my brother and I together, and we’re so happy to have this.”
YouTube It
With a pair of hollowbodies in hand, Estevan and Alejandro seem to manifest the history of electric-guitar music in this intimate live taping of “El Bueno Y El Malo.”
There are plenty of mighty American rock bands, but relatively few have had as profound an impact on the international musical landscape as X. Along with other select members of punk’s original Class of 1977, including Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Talking Heads, the Los Angeles-based outfit proved that rock ’n’ roll could be stripped to its bones and still be as literate and allusive as the best work of the songwriters who emerged during the previous decade and were swept up in the corporate-rock tidal wave that punk rebelled against. X’s first three albums–Los Angles, Wild Gift, and Under the Big Black Sun-were a beautiful and provocative foundation, and rocked like Mt. Rushmore.
Last year, X released a new album, Smoke & Fiction, and, after declaring it would be their last, embarked on what was billed as a goodbye tour, seemingly putting a bow on 47 years of their creative journey. But when PG caught up with X at Memphis’s Minglewood Hall in late fall, vocalist and bassist John Doe let us in on a secret: They are going to continue playing select dates and the occasional mini-tour, and will be part of the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in April 12.
Not-so-secret is that they still rock like Mt. Rushmore, and that the work of all four of the founders–bassist, singer, and songwriter Doe, vocalist and songwriter Exene Cervenka, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer D.J. Bonebreak–remains inspired.
Onstage at Minglewood Hall, Doe talked a bit about his lead role in the film-festival-award-winning 2022 remake of the film noir classic D.O.A. But most important, he and Zoom let us in on their minimalist sonic secrets.Brought to you by D’Addario.
Gretsch A Sketch
Since X’s earliest days, Billy Zoom has played Gretsches. In the beginning, it was a Silver Jet, but in recent years he’s preferred the hollowbody G6122T-59 Vintage Select Chet Atkins Country Gentleman. This example roars a little more thanks to the Kent Armstrong P-90 in the neck and a Seymour Duncan DeArmond-style pickup in the bridge. Zoom, who is an electronics wiz, also did some custom wiring and has locking tuners on the guitar.
More DeArmond
Zoom’s sole effect is this vintage DeArmond 602 volume pedal. It helps him reign in the feedback that occasionally comes soaring in, since he stations himself right in front of his amp during shows.
It's a Zoom!
Zoom’s experience with electronics began as a kid, when he began building items from the famed Heath Kit series and made his own CB radio. And since he’s a guitarist, building amps seemed inevitable. This 1x12 was crafted at the request of G&L Guitars, but never came to market. It is switchable between 10 and 30 watts and sports a single Celestion Vintage 30.
Tube Time!
The tube array includes two EL84, 12AX7s in the preamp stage, and a single 12AT7. The rightmost input is for a reverb/tremolo footswitch.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Big Black Sun
Besides 3-band EQ, reverb, and tremolo, Zoom’s custom wiring allows for a mid-boost that pumps up to 14 dB. Not content with 11, it starts there and goes to 20.
Baby Blue
This amp is also a Zoom creation, with just a tone and volume control (the latter with a low boost). It also relies on 12AX7s and EL84s.
Big Bottom
Here is John Doe’s rig in full: Ampeg and Fender basses, with his simple stack between them. The red head atop his cabs is a rare bird: an Amber Light Walter Woods from the 1970s. These amps are legendary among bass players for their full tone, and especially good for upright bass and eccentric instruments like Doe’s scroll-head Ampeg. “I think they were the first small, solid-state bass amps ever,” Doe offers. They have channels designated for electric and upright basses (Doe says he uses the upright channel, for a mid-dier tone), plus volume, treble, bass, and master volume controls. One of the switches puts the signal out of phase, but he’s not sure what the others do. Then, there’s a Genzler cab with two 12" speakers and four horns, and an Ampeg 4x10.
Scared Scroll
Here’s the headstock of that Ampeg scroll bass, an artifact of the ’60s with a microphone pickup. Doe seems to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this instrument, which has open tuners and through-body f-style holes on its right and left sides. “The interesting thing,” he says, “is that you cannot have any treble on the pickup. If you do, it sounds like shit. With a pick, you can sort of get away with it.” So he mostly rolls off all the treble to shake the earth.
Jazz Bass II
This is the second Fender Jazz Bass that Doe has owned. He bought his first from a friend in Baltimore for $150, and used it to write and record most of X’s early albums. That one no longer leaves home. But this touring instrument came from the Guitar Castle in Salem, Oregon, and was painted to recreate the vintage vibe of Doe’s historic bass.
Tinkering with theSDE-3 Dual Digital Delay suggested a similar, possibly enduring appeal. As an evolution of the Roland SDE-3000rack unit from the 1980s, it’s a texture machine, bubbling with subtle-to-odd triangle LFO modulations and enhanced dual-delay patterns that make tone mazes from dopey-simple melodies. And with the capacity to use it with two amps in stereo or in panning capacity, it can be much more dimensional. But while the SDE-3 will become indispensable to some for its most complex echo textures, its basic voice possesses warmth that lends personality in pedestrian applications too.
Tapping Into the Source
Some interest in the original SDE-3000 is in its association with Eddie Van Halen, who ran two of them in a wet-dry-wet configuration, using different delay rates and modulation to thicken and lend dimension to solos. But while EVH’s de facto endorsement prompted reissues of the effect as far back as the ’90s, part of the appeal was down to the 3000’s intrinsic elegance and simplicity.
In fact, the original rack unit’s features don’t differ much from what you would find on modern, inexpensive stompbox echoes. But the SDE-3000’s simplicity and reliable predictability made it conducive to fast workflow in the studio. Critically, it also avoided the lo-fi and sterility shortcomings that plagued some lesser rivals—an attribute designer Yoshi Ikegami chalks up to analog components elsewhere in the circuit and a fortuitous clock imprecision that lends organic essence to the repeats.
Evolved Echo Animal
Though the SDE-3 traces a line back to the SDE-3000 in sound and function, it is a very evolved riff on a theme. I don’t have an original SDE-3000 on hand for comparison, but it’s easy to hear how the SDE-3 bridges a gap between analog haze and more clinical, surgical digital sounds in the way that made the original famous. Thanks to the hi-cut control, the SDE-3’s voice can be shaped to enhance the angular aspect of the echoes, or blunt sharp edges. There’s also a lot of leeway to toy with varied EQ settings without sacrificing the ample definition in the repeats. That also means you can take advantage of the polyrhythmic effects that are arguably its greatest asset.
“There’s a lot of leeway to toy with varied EQ settings without sacrificing the ample definition in the repeats.”
The SDE-3’s offset control, which generates these polyrhythmic echoes, is its heart. The most practical and familiar echos, like quarter, eighth, and dotted-eighth patterns, are easy to access in the second half of the offset knobs range. In the first half of the knob’s throw, however, the offset delays often clang about at less-regular intervals, producing complex polyrhythms that are also cool multipliers of the modulation and EQ effects. For example, when emphasizing top end in repeats, using aggressive effects mixes and pitch-wobble modulation generates eerie ghost notes that swim through and around patterns, adding rhythmic interest and texture without derailing the drive behind a groove. Even at modest settings, these are great alternatives to more staid, regular subdivision patterns. Many of the coolest sounds tend toward the foggy reverb spectrum. Removing high end, piling on feedback, and adding the woozy, drunken drift from modulation creates fascinating backdrops for slow, sparse chord melodies. Faster modulations throb and swirl like old BBC Radiophonic Workshop sci-fi sound designs.
By themselves, the modulations have their own broad appeal. Chorus tones are rarely the archetypal Roland Jazz Chorus or CE type—tending to be a bit darker and mistier. But they do a nice job suggesting that texture without lapsing into caricature. There are also really cool rotary-speaker-like textures and vibrato sounds that offer alternatives to go-to industry standards.
The Verdict
The SDE-3’s many available sounds and textures would be appealing at $219—even without the stereo and panning connectivity options, a useful hold function, and expression pedal control that opens up additional options. The panning capabilities, in particular, sparked all kinds of thoughts about studio applications. Mastering the SDE-3 takes just a little study—certain polyrhythms can be dramatically reshaped by the interactivity of other controls and you need to take care to achieve identical results twice. But this is a pedal that, by virtue of its relative simplicity and richness and breadth of sounds, exceeds the utility of some similarly priced rivals, all while opening up possibilities well outside the simple echo realm
Reader: T. Moody
Hometown: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Guitar: The Green Snake
Reader T. Moody turned this Yamaha Pacifica body into a reptilian rocker.
I have always loved the reverse headstock, simply because nothing says 1987 (the best year in the history of the world) like a reverse headstock. The pickups are both Seymour Duncan—an SH-1N in the neck position and TB-4 in the bridge, both in a very cool lime green color. Right when these pickups got listed, the Buy It Now button once again lit up like the Fourth of July. I am a loyal disciple of Sperzel locking tuners and think Bob Sperzel was a pure genius, so I knew those were going on this project even before I started on it. I also knew that I wanted a Vega-Trem; those units are absolutely amazing.
When the body arrived, I thought it would be cool to do some kind of burst around the yellow so I went with a neon green. It turned out better than I imagined. Next up was the shaping and cutting of the pickguard. I had this crocodile-type, faux-leather material that I glued on the pickguard and then shaped to my liking. I wanted just a single volume control and no tone knob, because, like King Edward (Van Halen) once said, “Your volume is your tone.”
T. Moody
I then shaped and glued the faux-leather material in the cavity. The tuning knobs, volume knob, pickguard, screws, and selector switch were also painted in the lemon-lime paint scheme. I put everything together, installed the pickups, strung it up, set it up, plugged it in, and I was blown away. I think this is the best-playing and -sounding guitar I have ever tried.
The only thing missing was the center piece and strap. The latter was easy because DiMarzio makes their ClipLock in neon green. The center piece was more difficult because originally, I was thinking that some kind of gator-style decoration would be cool. In the end, I went with a green snake, because crocodiles ain’t too flexible—and they’re way too big to fit in a pickup cavity!
The Green Snake’s back is just as striking as the front.
