From left to right: drummer Leo Didkovsky, guitarist Mario Miron, guitarist/vocalist Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, and bassist Tia Vincent-Clark.
Most musicians hate labeling themselves with a genre. But Liturgy vocalist, guitarist, and mastermind Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix is different. She knows exactly what her music sounds like, and why.
“A lot of people don’t like the idea of naming what they do, but I love it,” she says with a laugh. “[Liturgy is] a cross between extreme metal; avant-garde, minimalist, classical music; 19th-century Romantic classical music; and American screamo-inflected metalcore.” Her quick response and detailed description are typical of Hunt-Hendrix’s musical personality. Everything she does comes from a crystallized vision, years of music education, and a passion for the theological and philosophical purpose that she believes animates the greater zoetic universe.
Conceived around the concept of Christianity’s kingdom of heaven, Liturgy’s latest release, 93696—named after a numerological representation of heaven, or a new eon for civilization—and its companion EP, As the Blood of God Bursts the Veins of Time, embrace the entirety of the band’s catalog and push it even further into the cosmos. With each release, Hunt-Hendrix has searched for new inspiration, new sounds, and a new approach. In the past, that included everything from electronic trap-style layers to a wide range of world and orchestral instruments. Based on her earlier musical education, Hunt-Hendrix took a more classical approach to 93696, and while that may have turned off a few black metal purists, she knew what she was doing—and chose to double down on it.
Djennaration
“With this one, I felt happy with the language of the band and wanted to make something really, really epic using that language,” she explains. “It feels like a synthesis of a lot of things that we’ve done before. It’s by far the most ambitious record we’ve ever done. It’s longer, and more complex.” Every instrument, whether in the gigantic “Djennaration” or the instrumental, organ-driven “Angel of Individuation,” plays a key role in a bed of twisting, layered melodies and deep harmonic complexity. This is especially evident in the bass work, where alternate chord inversions and counterpoint are more common than driving root notes.
“[93696] feels like a synthesis of a lot of things that we’ve done before. It’s by far the most ambitious record we’ve ever done.”
“That’s pretty unusual on electric bass,” she admits. “It’s in that classical tradition of writing music. The bass has a role while the higher voices come together doing different things. Then it all coalesces into unity.”
Speaking on the evolution of her musical influences, she elaborates, “I played piano from a very young age and was really into classical music. But, in high school, black metal was this fascinating, faraway thing. I was listening to a lot of the classic second-wave Norwegian stuff. Emperor and Darkthrone were my favorite bands, and I was intentionally emulating them.”
Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix's Gear
From a young age, Hunt-Hendrix was interested in classical music, but in high school, she got into listening to black metal bands like Emperor and Darkthrone.
Photo by Alexander Perelli
Guitars
- Reverend Descent Baritone (standard or drop-D tuning)
Amps
- Sovtek Mig 100
- Orange TH30 combo (studio only)
- Ampeg 4x12 cabinet
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball .009s
- Dunlop Tortex .5 mm
After graduating, Hunt-Hendrix attended the prestigious Columbia University, where black metal took a backseat to her philosophy and classical composition studies. Her plan was to make a future in the classical arts. That didn’t last long. “There was a time when I thought I might be a composer and write music in the classical tradition. I studied classical composition and was really into minimalism and Romanticism. I was reading scores and studying them and then trying to write [my own]. But I got swept up in the punk and metal scenes and wanted to, instead, take those techniques and put them into rock music.”
When Hunt-Hendrix says “rock music,” again, think “black metal.” And her alchemy of the genre, as well as classical composition and philosophical studies, would soon manifest in Liturgy’s 2009 debut LP Renihilation, released when the band was just a solo project. Full of blast beats, dissonance, and throat-shredding vocals, there was no question where Hunt-Hendrix cut her teeth. But, even on her early releases, Liturgy went far beyond the aggression and atmosphere of black metal’s forebears. Throughout their catalog, each savage and unrelenting instrument together weaves a whole much larger than their individual parts.
“I studied classical composition and was really into minimalism and Romanticism…. But I got swept up in the punk and metal scenes and wanted to, instead, take those techniques and put them into rock music.”
This, Hunt-Hendrix says, is where the classical influence comes in. “Learning to write music in Western notation and think about it in terms of themes, variations, sonatas, or a fugue has been a big influence on the way that I write Liturgy’s music. I’m combining classical music and metal. Not to overlay symphonic stuff onto metal, but to use the structural tools of symphonic music with metal instruments.”
Hunt-Hendrix composes Liturgy’s songs using DAWs and notation software, then shares them with her bandmates for them to learn.
Photo by Mike Boyd
For all of the classical influence, Hunt-Hendrix’s black-metal-approved wall of distortion gives each Liturgy release its trademark sound. Much of that comes down to her relentless speed-picking technique that transforms single-note lines into what sounds like a demonic orchestra. “I noticed, [when you’re] picking really fast and have a distorted sound, it kind of sounds similar to violins in a string orchestra,” she says. “So that became my main thing. That’s pretty much what I am almost always doing in Liturgy songs. To me, that’s the string orchestra aspect. It’s in the range of a violin or a soprano singer.”
And when she says “always,” she really means it. When Hunt-Hendrix is playing, her picking hand is flying the whole time. With multiple songs clocking in at over 10 minutes, it makes you wonder how she makes it look so easy. “At this point, it’s not hard at all,” she said. “I barely notice. It’s like the way drummers who play really fast double-kick learn to do it so gently that they can do it forever. But it’s a big problem if I don't have the right picks!”
Her playing style—and picks—have been constants throughout Liturgy’s career. But they may be the only ones. Since her first release, Hunt-Hendrix has expanded the band (now including guitarist Mario Miron, bassist Tia Vincent-Clark, and drummer Leo Didkovsky) to record and perform as a quartet. Hunt-Hendrix’s compositions are ever-evolving the sound of the band and the genre.
“I noticed, [when you’re] picking really fast and have a distorted sound, it kind of sounds similar to violins in a string orchestra.”
But with so much of that aforementioned, variegated musical background swirling around her exacting vision, writing 93696 demanded a different approach than a group of people plugging in and jamming. Instead, she again pulled from her classical training, composing each part individually with the help of technology.
“I wrote most of the music using Logic and Ableton, and used Sibelius for notation software,” says Hunt-Hendrix. “Then it’s different with different songs. I'll either make a demo using a drum machine and recording guitar into my computer, or I’ll make the demo using an organ sound that sounds like the guitars will sound. But there’s a lot of revision and a lot of listening back!
“Then I’ll either give the demo to my bandmates or give them music to read. And we were working through this album during the height of Covid, so a lot of our rehearsals were actually on Zoom in the early part of the year.”
Then there’s all of the other instrumentation throughout the record. Everything from harp to ocarina to glockenspiel to vibraphone play their part on 93696. And, while some artists may whip these auxiliary sounds up with virtual instrument plugins, Hunt-Hendrix wanted to keep a raw, human element.
Hunt-Hendrix’s picking hand almost never stops moving in Liturgy’s live performances. In her rapidfire, distorted guitar lines, she hears orchestral strings.
Photo by Mike Boyd
“It’s mostly all done live,” she reveals. “I have a lot of friends and acquaintances in New York who are in the avant-garde classical scene, or jazz scene, or something like that. So I just called people up. I wrote out the music, gave it to them, and then they came to the studio and played it.”
That human element extended to every element of the album’s recording process, giving it a surprisingly gritty, punk vibe. The secret, according to Hunt-Hendrix, is that “It’s mostly all recorded live.” Aside from the additional instrumentation and occasional electronic elements, the band tracked nearly every tremolo-picked guitar line, chordal bass passage, and exceedingly complex drum performance together and in the same room. “And we tracked the whole record to the tape,” she added.
Furthering Liturgy’s no-nonsense approach is both guitarists’ simple selection of gear. Miron relies on his trusty ESP LTD MH-200 into an MXR Fullbore Metal pedal and Quilter ToneBlock 200 amp head. But Hunt-Hendrix takes a uniquely pragmatic approach to her gear, dictated by her equally singular technique.
“Bringing in the old material has this quality of your life flashing before your eyes…. It adds a purpose to the sense of culmination, or heaven, if you like.”
“So, now, I actually play a baritone guitar, a Reverend Descent. I’m almost always playing at the very top of the neck above the 12th fret,” she explains. “All the chord changes and everything are up there. Since I’m playing at the top of the neck all the time, there’s more space between the frets for my fingers. I string it with normal, .009-gauge guitar strings, and it’s tuned like a standard guitar or drop D."Next in line is her beloved Sovtek Mig 100 amplifier, complemented in the studio with an unlikely combo. “I don’t use any pedals at all,” she explains. “I run my guitar straight into my Mig 100. I like it because it distorts a lot, but it’s not a super crunchy distortion like you hear in a lot of metal. The notes ring out and breathe. And, on a recording, I like to contrast it with my Orange TH30 combo. It’s very small and not good for using live. But if you mic it in the studio, it sounds huge."
This raw, DIY character helps make 93696 a wonderfully challenging listen with endless intrigue. The aggression and themes that propel the 15-minute title track are somehow matched by the mandolin and choir-driven space and beauty of “Immortal Life II.” And, speaking of songs on the album ending in “II,” these are references to Liturgy songs from previous releases. As new compositions inspired by her earlier work, they perfectly sum up Hunt-Hendrix’s vision for the entire record.
“For some reason, while we were working on this record, I began listening to older Liturgy songs. I was fascinated by the potential to go back and take material from those songs and work them out in totally new ways. Bringing in the old material has this quality of your life flashing before your eyes. It’s like surveying Liturgy’s whole career before, or at, the end. It adds a purpose to the sense of culmination, or heaven, if you like.
“I’m not saying that this is the band’s last album. I want to keep making more music that sounds like this. But, and maybe it’s more of a time we live in, it feels like this is the last couple of years that humanity will exist. That may or may not be true, but this is an album for that time. In that sense, it’s the final album [laughs].”YouTube It
Liturgy delivers a thrashing wall of sound in a performance of “Glory Bronze” from their 2011 album Aesthetica at First Unitarian Church, a fitting venue, given the band’s theological influence.
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Keith Urban’s first instrument was a ukulele at age 4. When he started learning guitar two years later, he complained that it made his fingers hurt. Eventually, he came around. As did the world.
He’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards, four American Music Awards, and racked up BMI Country Awards for 25 different singles.
He’s been a judge on American Idol and The Voice. In conjunction with Yamaha, he has his own brand of affordably priced Urban guitars and amps, and he has posted beginner guitar lessons on YouTube. His 2014 Academy of Country Music Award-winning video for “Highways Don’t Care” featured Tim McGraw and Keith’s former opening act, Taylor Swift. Add his marriage to fellow Aussie, the actress Nicole Kidman, and he’s seen enough red carpet to cover a football field.
Significantly, his four Grammys were all for Country Male Vocal Performance. A constant refrain among newcomers is, “and he’s a really good guitar player,” as if by surprise or an afterthought. Especially onstage, his chops are in full force. There are country elements, to be sure, but rock, blues, and pop influences like Mark Knopfler are front and center.
Unafraid to push the envelope, 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 mixed drum machines, processed vocals, and a duet with Pink with his “ganjo”—an instrument constructed of a 6-string guitar neck on a banjo body—and even a didgeridoo. It, too, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and climbed to No. 7 on the Pop chart.
His new release, High, is more down-to-earth, but is not without a few wrinkles. He employs an EBow on “Messed Up As Me” and, on “Wildfire,” makes use of a sequencerreminiscent of ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Background vocals in “Straight Lines” imitate a horn section, and this time out he duets on “Go Home W U” with rising country star Lainey Wilson. The video for “Heart Like a Hometown” is full of home movies and family photos of a young Urban dwarfed by even a 3/4-size Suzuki nylon-string.
Born Keith Urbahn (his surname’s original spelling) in New Zealand, his family moved to Queensland, Australia, when he was 2. He took up guitar at 6, two years after receiving his beloved ukulele. He released his self-titled debut album in 1991 for the Australian-only market, and moved to Nashville two years later. It wasn’t until ’97 that he put out a group effort, fronting the Ranch, and another self-titled album marked his American debut as a leader, in ’99. It eventually went platinum—a pattern that’s become almost routine.
The 57-year-old’s celebrity and wealth were hard-earned and certainly a far cry from his humble beginnings. “Australia is a very working-class country, certainly when I was growing up, and I definitely come from working-class parents,” he details. “My dad loved all the American country artists, like Johnny Cash, Haggard, Waylon. He didn’t play professionally, but before he got married he played drums in a band, and my grandfather and uncles all played instruments.
One of Urban’s biggest influences as a young guitar player was Mark Knopfler, but he was also mesmerized by lesser-known session musicians such as Albert Lee, Ian Bairnson, Reggie Young, and Ray Flacke. Here, he’s playing a 1950 Broadcaster once owned by Waylon Jennings that was a gift from Nicole Kidman, his wife.
“For me, it was a mix of that and Top 40 radio, which at the time was much more diverse than it is now. You would just hear way more genres, and Australia itself had its own, what they call Aussie pub rock—very blue-collar, hard-driving music for the testosterone-fueled teenager. Grimy, sweaty, kind of raw themes.”
A memorable event happened when he was 7. “My dad got tickets for the whole family to see Johnny Cash. He even bought us little Western shirts and bolo ties. It was amazing.”
But the ukulele he was gifted a few years earlier, at the age of 4, became a constant companion. “I think to some degree it was my version of the stuffed animal, something that was mine, and I felt safe with it. My dad said I would strum it in time to all the songs on the radio, and he told my mom, ‘He’s got rhythm. I wonder what a good age is for him to learn chords.’ My mom and dad ran a little corner store, and a lady named Sue McCarthy asked if she could put an ad in the window offering guitar lessons. They said, ‘If you teach our kid for free, we’ll put your ad in the window.’”
Yet, guitar didn’t come without problems. “With the guitar, my fingers hurt like hell,” he laughs, “and I started conveniently leaving the house whenever the guitar teacher would show up. Typical kid. I don’t wanna learn, I just wanna be able to do it. It didn’t feel like any fun. My dad called me in and went, ‘What the hell? The teacher comes here for lessons. What’s the problem?’ I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. He just said, ‘Okay, then don’t do it.’ Kind of reverse psychology, right? So I just stayed with it and persevered. Once I learned a few chords, it was the same feeling when any of us learn how to be moving on a bike with two wheels and nobody holding us up. That’s what those first chords felt like in my hands.”
Keith Urban's Gear
Urban has 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA Awards, and four Grammys to his name—the last of which are all for Best Country Male Vocal Performance.
Guitars
For touring:
- Maton Diesel Special
- Maton EBG808TE Tommy Emmanuel Signature
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior, TV yellow
- 1959 Gibson ES-345 (with Varitone turned into a master volume)
- Fender 40th Anniversary Tele, “Clarence”
- Two first-generation Fender Eric Clapton Stratocasters (One is black with DiMarzio Area ’67 pickups, standard tuning. The other is pewter gray, loaded with Fralin “real ’54” pickups, tuned down a half-step.)
- John Bolin Telecaster (has a Babicz bridge with a single humbucker and a single volume control. Standard tuning.)
- PRS Paul’s Guitar (with two of their narrowfield humbuckers. Standard tuning.)
- Yamaha Keith Urban Acoustic Guitar (with EMG ACS soundhole pickups)
- Deering “ganjo”
Amps
- Mid-’60s black-panel Fender Showman (modified by Chris Miller, with oversized transformers to power 6550 tubes; 130 watts)
- 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special (built with reverb included)
- Two Pacific Woodworks 1x12 ported cabinets (Both are loaded with EV BlackLabel Zakk Wylde signature speakers and can handle 300 watts each.)
Effects
- Two Boss SD-1W Waza Craft Super Overdrives with different settings
- Mr. Black SuperMoon Chrome
- FXengineering RAF Mirage Compressor
- Ibanez TS9 with Tamura Mod
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
- J. Rockett Audio .45 Caliber Overdrive
- Pro Co RAT 2
- Radial Engineering JX44 (for guitar distribution)
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx XL+ (for acoustic guitars)
- Two Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III (one for electric guitar, one for bass)
- Bricasti Design Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor
- RJM Effect Gizmo (for pedal loops)
(Note: All delays, reverb, chorus, etc. is done post amp. The signal is captured with microphones first then processed by Axe-Fx and other gear.)
- Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049; electric)
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012–.053; acoustics)
- D’Addario EJ16, for ganjo (.012–.053; much thicker than a typical banjo strings)
- D’Addario 1.0 mm signature picks
He vividly remembers the first song he was able to play after “corny songs like ‘Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.’” He recalls, “There was a song I loved by the Stylistics, ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New.’ My guitar teacher brought in the sheet music, so not only did I have the words, but above them were the chords. I strummed the first chord, and went, [sings E to Am] ‘My love,’ and then minor, ‘I'll never find the words, my,’ back to the original chord, ‘love.’ Even now, I get covered in chills thinking what it felt like to sing and put that chord sequence together.”
After the nylon-string Suzuki, he got his first electric at 9. “It was an Ibanez copy of a Telecaster Custom—the classic dark walnut with the mother-of-pearl pickguard. My first Fender was a Stratocaster. I wanted one so badly. I’d just discovered Mark Knopfler, and I only wanted a red Strat, because that’s what Knopfler had. And he had a red Strat because of Hank Marvin. All roads lead to Hank!”
He clarifies, “Remember a short-lived run of guitar that Fender did around 1980–’81, simply called ‘the Strat’? I got talked into buying one of those, and the thing weighed a ton. Ridiculously heavy. But I was just smitten when it arrived. ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the first thing I played on it. ‘Oh my god! I sound a bit like Mark.’”
“Messed Up As Me” has some licks reminiscent of Knopfler. “I think he influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player. ‘Tunnel of Love,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ ‘Telegraph Road,’ the first Dire Straits album, and Communique. I was spellbound by Mark’s touch, tone, and melodic choice every time.”
Other influences are more obscure. “There were lots of session guitar players whose solos I was loving, but had no clue who they were,” he explains. “A good example was Ian Bairnson in the Scottish band Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. It was only in the last handful of years that I stumbled upon him and did a deep dive, and realized he played the solo on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Eye in the Sky’ by Alan Parsons, ‘It’s Magic’ and ‘January’ by Pilot’—all these songs that spoke to me growing up. I also feel like a lot of local-band guitar players are inspirations—they certainly were to me. They didn’t have a name, the band wasn’t famous, but when you’re 12 or 13, watching Barry Clough and guys in cover bands, it’s, ‘Man, I wish I could play like that.’”
On High, Urban keeps things song-oriented, playing short and economical solos.
In terms of country guitarists, he nods, “Again, a lot of session players whose names I didn’t know, like Reggie Young. The first names I think would be Albert Lee and Ray Flacke, whose chicken pickin’ stuff on the Ricky Skaggs records became a big influence. ‘How is he doing that?’”
Flacke played a role in a humorous juxtaposition. “I camped out to see Iron Maiden,” Urban recounts. “They’d just put out Number of the Beast, and I was a big fan. I was 15, so my hormones were raging. I’d been playing country since I was 6, 7, 8 years old. But this new heavy-metal thing is totally speaking to me. So I joined a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror, just as their guitar player. At the same time, I also discovered Ricky Skaggs and Highways and Heartaches. What is this chicken pickin’ thing? One night I was in the metal band, doing a Judas Priest song or Saxon. They threw me a solo, and through my red Strat, plugged into a Marshall stack that belonged to the lead singer, I shredded this high-distortion, chicken pickin’ solo. The lead singer looked at me like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I got fired from the band.”
Although at 15 he “floated around different kinds of music and bands,” when he was 21 he saw John Mellencamp. “He’d just put out Lonesome Jubilee. I’d been in bands covering ‘Hurts So Good,' ‘Jack & Diane,’ and all the early shit. This record had fiddle and mandolin and acoustic guitars, wall of electrics, drums—the most amazing fusion of things. I saw that concert, and this epiphany happened so profoundly. I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. That’s what John did. I’m not gonna think about genre; I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’
“Of course, getting to Nashville with that recipe wasn’t going to fly in 1993,” he laughs. “Took me another seven-plus years to really start getting some traction in that town.”
Urban’s main amp today is a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, which used to belong to John Mayer. He also owns a bass amp that Alexander Dumble built for himself.
Photo by Jim Summaria
When it comes to “crossover” in country music, one thinks of Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton’s more commercial singles like “Two Doors Down.” Regarding the often polarizing subject and, indeed, what constitutes country music, it’s obvious that Urban has thought a lot—and probably been asked a lot—about the syndrome. The Speed of Now Part 1 blurs so many lines, it makes Shania Twain sound like Mother Maybelle Carter. Well, almost.
“I can’t speak for any other artists, but to me, it’s always organic,” he begins. “Anybody that’s ever seen me play live would notice that I cover a huge stylistic field of music, incorporating my influences, from country, Top 40, rock, pop, soft rock, bluegrass, real country. That’s how you get songs like ‘Kiss a Girl’—maybe more ’70s influence than anything else.”
“I think [Mark Knopfler] influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player.”
Citing ’50s producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who moved the genre from hillbilly to the more sophisticated countrypolitan, Keith argues, “In the history of country music, this is exactly the same as it has always been. Patsy Cline doing ‘Walking After Midnight’ or ‘Crazy’; it ain’t Bob Wills. It ain’t Hank Williams. It’s a new sound, drawing on pop elements. That’s the 1950s, and it has never changed. I’ve always seen country like a lung, that expands outwards because it embraces new sounds, new artists, new fusions, to find a bigger audience. Then it feels, ‘We’ve lost our way. Holy crap, I don’t even know who we are,’ and it shrinks back down again. Because a purist in the traditional sense comes along, whether it be Ricky Skaggs or Randy Travis. The only thing that I think has changed is there’s portals now for everything, which didn’t used to exist. There isn’t one central control area that would yell at everybody, ‘You’ve got to bring it back to the center.’ I don’t know that we have that center anymore.”
Stating his position regarding the current crop of talent, he reflects, “To someone who says, ‘That’s not country music,’ I always go, “‘It’s not your country music; it’s somebody else’s country music.’ I don’t believe anybody has a right to say something’s not anything. It’s been amazing watching this generation actually say, ‘Can we get back to a bit of purity? Can we get real guitars and real storytelling?’ So you’ve seen the explosion of Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who are way purer than the previous generation of country music.”
Seen performing here in 2003, Urban is celebrated mostly for his songwriting, but is also an excellent guitarist.
Photo by Steve Trager/Frank White Photo Agency
As for the actual recording process, he notes, “This always shocks people, but ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson is all drum machine. I write songs on acoustic guitar and drum machine, or drum machine and banjo. Of course, you go into the studio and replace that with a drummer. But my very first official single, in 1999, was ‘It’s a Love Thing,’ and it literally opens with a drum loop and an acoustic guitar riff. Then the drummer comes in. But the loop never goes away, and you hear it crystal clear. I haven’t changed much about that approach.”
On the road, Urban utilizes different electrics “almost always because of different pickups—single-coil, humbucker, P-90. And then one that’s tuned down a half-step for a few songs in half-keys. Tele, Strat, Les Paul, a couple of others for color. I’ve got a John Bolin guitar that I love—the feel of it. It’s a Tele design with just one PAF, one volume knob, no tone control. It’s very light, beautifully balanced—every string, every fret, all the way up the neck. It doesn’t have a lot of tonal character of its own, so it lets my fingers do the coloring. You can feel the fingerprints of Billy Gibbons on this guitar. It’s very Billy.”
“I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’”
Addressing his role as the collector, “or acquirer,” as he says, some pieces have quite a history. “I haven’t gone out specifically thinking, ‘I’m missing this from the collection.’ I feel really lucky to have a couple of very special guitars. I got Waylon Jennings’ guitar in an auction. It was one he had all through the ’70s, wrapped in the leather and the whole thing. In the ’80s, he gave it to Reggie Young, who owned it for 25 years or so and eventually put it up for auction. My wife wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I was trying to bid on it, and she made sure that I couldn’t get registered! When it arrived, I discovered it’s a 1950 Broadcaster—which is insane. I had no idea. I just wanted it because I’m a massive Waylon fan, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that guitar disappearing overseas under somebody’s bed, when it should be played.
“I also have a 1951 Nocaster, which used to belong to Tom Keifer in Cinderella. It’s the best Telecaster I’ve ever played, hands down. It has the loudest, most ferocious pickup, and the wood is amazing.”
YouTube
Urban plays a Gibson SG here at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Wait until the end to see him show off his shred abilities.
Other favorites include “a first-year Strat, ’54, that I love, and a ’58 goldtop. I also own a ’58 ’burst, but prefer the goldtop; it’s just a bit more spanky and lively. I feel abundantly blessed with the guitars I’ve been able to own and play. And I think every guitar should be played, literally. There’s no guitar that’s too precious to be played.”
Speaking of precious, there are also a few Dumble amps that elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” “Around 2008, John Mayer had a few of them, and he wanted to part with this particular Overdrive Special head. When he told me the price, I said, ‘That sounds ludicrous.’ He said, ‘How much is your most expensive guitar?’ It was three times the value of the amp. He said, ‘So that’s one guitar. What amp are you plugging all these expensive guitars into?’ I was like, ‘Sold. I guess when you look at it that way.’ It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
“It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
Keith also developed a relationship with the late Alexander Dumble. “We emailed back and forth, a lot of just life stuff and the beautifully eccentric stuff he was known for. His vocabulary was as interesting as his tubes and harmonic understanding. My one regret is that he invited me out to the ranch many times, and I was never able to go. Right now, my main amp is an Overdrive Reverb that also used to belong to John when he was doing the John Mayer Trio. I got it years later. And I have an Odyssey, which was Alexander’s personal bass amp that he built for himself. I sent all the details to him, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my amp.’”
The gearhead in Keith doesn’t even mind minutiae like picks and strings. “I’ve never held picks with the pointy bit hitting the string. I have custom picks that D’Addario makes for me. They have little grippy ridges like on Dunlops and Hercos, but I have that section just placed in one corner. I can use a little bit of it on the string, or I can flip it over. During the pandemic, I decided to go down a couple of string gauges. I was getting comfortable on .009s, and I thought, ‘Great. I’ve lightened up my playing.’ Then the very first gig, I was bending the crap out of them. So I went to .010s, except for a couple of guitars that are .011s.”
As with his best albums, High is song-oriented; thus, solos are short and economical. “Growing up, I listened to songs where the guitar was just in support of that song,” he reasons. “If the song needs a two-bar break, and then you want to hear the next vocal section, that’s what it needs. If it sounds like it needs a longer guitar section, then that’s what it needs. There’s even a track called ‘Love Is Hard’ that doesn’t have any solo. It’s the first thing I’ve ever recorded in my life where I literally don’t play one instrument. Eren Cannata co-wrote it [with Shane McAnally and Justin Tranter], and I really loved the demo with him playing all the instruments. I loved it so much I just went with his acoustic guitar. I’m that much in service of the song.”
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Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS Electric Guitar - Coral Red
Fender Player II Jaguar Electric Guitar - Aquatone Blue
The 2018 CCL Deco Custom, in all its Pelham blue glory.
Anyway, we became friends and I started working on him pretty early—my 40th birthday was approaching, and that meant it was time for us to start designing his first solidbody build. If you stopped on this page, it’s because the photo of the finished product caught your eye. Beautiful, right? The 2018 CCL Deco Custom: Never shall there be another.
Old National Glenwood guitars were my design inspiration, but I wanted a slim waist like a PRS and the like. We used a solid block of korina to start, routed like MacGyver to get the knobs and switches where I wanted them. Dale builds all his own lathes and machines (usually out of lumber, y’all), as the task requires. This beast took some creativity—it’s tight wiring under that custom-steel pickguard. Many were the preliminary sketches. Four coats of Pelham blue, 11 coats of nitro. Honduran mahogany neck, Madagascar ebony fretboard with Dale’s signature not-quite-Super-400 inlays. He designed the logo; I just said, “Make it art deco.”
We sourced all the bits and bobs from StewMac and Allparts and Reverb and the like, mostly to get that chrome look I so adore. Graph Tech Ratio tuners, Duesenberg Radiator trem (had to order that one from Germany), TonePros TP6R-C roller bridge. The pickups were a genius suggestion from the builder, Guitarfetish plug ’n’ play 1/8" solderless swappable, which means I have about 10 pickups in the case to choose from: rockabilly to metal. And both slots are tapped, with the tone knobs serving as single- to double-coil switches. I put the selector on the lower horn to accommodate my tendency to accidentally flip the thing on Les Pauls—definite lifesaver.
Reader and guitar enthusiast, Cody Lindsey.
Dale offered to chamber this monster, but I said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It weighs in at 11 pounds, if it’s an ounce. We carved the neck to match a ’60s SG, so it’s like the mini bat you get at the ballpark on little kids’ day. Easy peasy. 1 11/16" nut, 25" scale, jumbo frets, just 2 1/8" at the 12th fret.
Delivery in its lovely, hygrometer-equipped Cedar Creek case actually happened a month or two shy of my 41st, but hey, you can’t rush these things. We ended up with a studio Swiss Army knife; it does a bit of everything and does it effortlessly. A looker, too. Dale didn’t spend his career doing this kind of thing—he was in IT or some such—and I imagine he’s winding this “hobby” of his down these days, enjoying retirement with a bottle of Killian’s and a lawn chair at Duluth Blues Fest. But this guitar will live on as a marker of his skill and otherworldly patience. It sits at the head of the class in my practice room, welcoming any visitors and bringing a smile to my face every day. And Dale, my friend, I’ll be 50 before you know it....
Cody requested that Dale design an art deco logo for the guitar’s headstock.