
Connors often works in sweeping, lulling, minimalist waves of sound, but he also attacked the strings, as he is here in this 2017 photo from Brooklyn's ISSUE Project Room.
Laboring under the radar for 40 years and afflicted by Parkinson's, the improvising guitarist is riding a wave of new and reissue recordings that may finally bring his blues-, jazz-, and Rothko-inspired music to more listeners.
"Working with Loren is, in some ways, not really 'working with Loren.' It's more like you're entering a space that you both occupy—not a place for conversation or exchanging pleasantries," says experimental musician Jim O'Rourke, describing his longtime musical relationship with guitarist Loren Connors. "More so than anyone I have worked with, it is a place with its own logic, its own sense of time, and no road map." Anyone who has witnessed one of Connors' performances can understand what O'Rourke, who has partnered with Connors in duos and as an engineer, is talking about.
Oblique conversation about Connors' music is common because it's so hard to pin down. There are no real genres to refer to, no easy comparisons to be made, and those references that do exist only tell a small part of the story. Connors takes the raw elemental sounds of the guitar, from the most basic fundamentals of technique and harmony, and assembles them as no other player ever has to create his own world of sound.
This challenging approach has led Connors to spend his long and uncompromising career as an unsung, underground hero. Since the late 1970s, he has amassed an extensive discography of releases spread across mostly small boutique labels, though he's had occasional albums on bigger indies such as Drag City and Secretly Canadian. Connors prefers to perform solo, and his discography reflects that, but he's also a frequent collaborator—mostly in duos—with a long list of co-conspirators that includes Thurston Moore, Keiji Haino, and Bill Orcutt.
Connors always has a queue of projects in the works and, despite the pandemic, remains as prolific as ever. His current list of recently or soon-to-be released albums includes collaborations with Kim Gordon, Alan Licht, and Oren Ambarchi. Meanwhile, Feeding Tube Records has begun reissuing a nine-volume series of some of Connors' earliest and rarest releases.
"With Loren it's more that he opened up the feeling of blues guitar to a greater complexity."—Alan Licht
This bounty means there's never been a better time to be a fan of Loren Connors. Each of the new albums is a unique contribution to his body of work. And while the reissues offer an obviously insightful glimpse of his early beginnings as a rootsy and forward-thinking solo improvisor, his duo records are equally essential. Licht is one of Connors' longest-running collaborators, and on At the Top of the Stairs it can be hard to parse each musician's playing. Their guitars so well-acquainted that they seem to intersect into one slow and psychedelic sound source. Leone, meanwhile, offers a look at a first meeting between Ambarchi and Connors, where Ambarchi's computer-effected sounds are a contrast to Connors' more organic reverb and wah-soaked tone. Together, these two albums reveal Connors' focus and flexibility as a player in far-reaching musical situations.
Blues, Miles Davis, and Mark Rothko
While it may be easy to tie his music to the avant-garde, at his core Connors is a blues guitarist. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1949, he began playing as a teenager. "I was about 15 or so. Everyone played guitar back then," Connors explains. His early influences were Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but Connors dug deeper and discovered country blues, claiming Robert Johnson as one of his main influences. "All the Mississippi Delta bluesmen from the 1920s and '30s had a big effect on me—Son House and Johnson, even Skip James."
In 1970, Connors found an inspiration that would resonate through his music for the entirety of his career, when an artist friend took him to a museum to see the work of abstract painter Mark Rothko. "It took off from there," he says. "Right away, I felt a similarity between his paintings and my improvisations on guitar."
Around the same time, Connors was listening to Miles Davis' electric music, and the guitarist found another deep inspiration in the minimal psychedelia of "He Loved Him Madly," the opening track to Davis' 1974 Get Up With It. "Miles' two solos on that, they only last for a couple minutes apiece, but they affect me a whole lot," Connors says.
While he surely pulls inspiration from other places, it seems as though these three ingredients—Delta blues, Rothko, and "He Loved Him Madly"—lie at the source of Connors' sound, allowing him to explore the guitar with a unique personal perspective. Avant guitarist Alan Licht has played with Connors in duos and other assemblages for nearly three decades and explains the importance of Connor's sonic amalgam: "He really does for blues guitar what Derek Bailey did for jazz guitar, in a way. Derek opened it up harmonically, but with Loren it's more that he opened up the feeling of blues guitar to a greater complexity, even if it remained mostly tonal and relatively simple harmonically."
In this 2001 concert at New York City's Tonic, Loren Conners improvises with trumpeter/composer Rob Mazurak and drummer Chad Taylor. Conners often uses his thumb to attack the strings.
Photo by Peter Gannushkin
Approaching Blues As Art
The first volume of Feeding Tube's series of Connors reissues, 1979's Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations Vol. 1, shows early evidence that he was already forging unique ground at this early stage of his career. Writer and longtime Connors supporter Byron Coley coordinated the reissue series, and interprets Connors' early music as approaching the blues from a new direction: "Loren's sound on these records feels to be based in blues tonalities, but is bent way out of shape and approached as art music rather than folk music, as blues is usually approached. He was definitely following his painterly inclinations, trying to pare down the elements he used to create something with a surface that initially appears to be opaque, but becomes more deeply emotional the more you hear it."
Connors, meanwhile, plays down any notion of heady artistic concepts in his early work. "I couldn't't read music. I kind of improvised everything," he says. "Very free and open, I didn't't think about it that much."
"The Daggett LPs put him in the company of artists like John Fahey, Harry Partch, Sun Ra, Eugene Chadbourne, and other avant-gardists who realized their music would only be documented if they did it themselves."—Byron Coley
While his music has many enthusiastic supporters nowadays, it wasn't always the case. "I was kind of on my own back then," he says. The nine volumes that make up the reissue series were originally pressed in extremely small numbers that Connors self-released on his Daggett label, to no avail. "They didn't't sell good at all. I gave 'em all away. I gave them to radio stations and DJs. I sold very few. Maybe like 10 or so. I threw a bunch of them in the dumpster, maybe 50 or 100 even, in the big boxes they came in."
Coley offers this insight: "The fact he scraped his own money together to put out that series of LPs, despite his financial straits and the knowledge he was working in an area of sound creation that had very little audience, is testament to the strength of his creative drive. The Daggett LPs put him in the company of artists like John Fahey, Harry Partch, Sun Ra, Eugene Chadbourne, and other avant-gardists who realized their music would only be documented if they did it themselves."
Loren Conners' Gear
Guitars
• Squier Mini Stratocaster
Amps
• Various Fenders and Voxes
Effects
• Boss AW-2 Auto Wah
• Boss RV-3 Digital Reverb/Delay
• Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
Strings
• Ernie Ball light-gauge sets
The Sound of Near-Silence
Connors' instrumental approach has changed considerably throughout his career, and he's focused on playing his Stratocaster since the mid-1980s, in search of a more subtle sound. "You can get real quiet on electric guitar, which you can't really do on acoustic guitar," he says. That has led him to develop an "extremely light" touch, in his own words. And he feels as though he reached a tipping point in the last 20 or so years, as he's steered his playing toward a more delicate approach to tone and a greater use of space, and discovered what he refers to as his "new style."
"What I did before—a way of playing, a style, and everything—all that stuff went out the window. Now I just kind of, almost, don't play anything anymore," he explains. While that may seem a little cryptic, it's quite fitting. "It's like almost not there, even. Very few notes and very distant sound and very quiet sound."
Connors was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the early 1990s but insists his playing choices have nothing to do with any physical limitations and that he's led purely by artistic decisions. "Parkinson's doesn't have anything to do with the way I sound now. I take pills to cover it all over. I play a little bit quieter now, I guess."
As O'Rourke sees it, Connors' sound is, however, tied to his overall physical approach to the instrument. "I think a big part of Loren's sound, besides, of course, it being him, is the way he holds the guitar, almost like he is cradling it—the way he extends his right hand supporting it with his thumb extended, suspended above the strings. If it could, his guitar would wrap itself into a ball."
Licht observes that Connors "is going to sound the same no matter what gear he's using." In the early days of their collaboration, the two guitarists would perform using the same Fender Princeton, maintaining distinct sounds and demonstrating that tone really is all in the fingers.
Connors takes a very practical approach to his gear. He has a few Stratocasters and these days prefers his Squier Mini Stratocaster, because of its light weight. He is happy to plug into any kind of Fender amp, though he also likes Voxes. While Connors' tone often seems quite effected, he gets all of his sounds using only a few pedals: a Dunlop Cry Baby Wah or Boss Auto Wah along with a Boss Digital Reverb/Delay.
Despite this austere approach, Connors is a playful collaborator whose duo improvisations reveal a lot about his personality. Eclectic guitarist Chris Forsyth shares this story from one of their first gigs together: "We're setting up and I say, 'Loren, what tuning are you using?' He mutters, 'standard.' But I can hear he's pitched way down. So I said, 'Play me an A?' And his A is like an E or something. Way down. But the strings were in standard-tuning relationships. Next time we played, at soundcheck I'm like 'Loren, give me an A?' And he looks over at me and plucks the A string, but out comes a 100 percent wet backwards reverb wash, like mist, 'shhaahhh!' And he smiles. So I'm like, 'Uh, one more time?' And I'm doing my best to tune to it. Then I look over and he's retuning. Trickster!"
These days, Connors is, like most of us, at home and eagerly awaiting the return of live performances. He says he's not picking up the guitar much but is ready to get back out there. When I ask what he plays when he does pick up his guitar, he simply says, "Whatever's twirling around inside me."YouTube It!
At New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art, Loren Connors performs a slow and meditative improvisation to create a reverb-soaked sonic reflection of Mark Rothko's Four Darks in Red.
Lutefish, the real-time music collaboration device and platform, is excited to announce a suite of new features designed to simplify setup, streamline collaboration, and offer more flexible subscription options for Lutefish Stream users. These latest updates, Audio Presets, Automatic Session Recall, Improved Scheduling with Contact Visibility, and a new Yearly Subscription Plan, are all about making it easier than ever for musicians to jam together, no matter where they’re based.
Save Time and Stay in the Flow with Audio Presets & Session Recall
Musicians can now save and reuse their exact audio settings, reducing setup time and ensuring every session sounds exactly as they want.
- Automatic Session Recall: When users leave a session, their current audio levels are automatically saved and restored when they rejoin.
- User-Defined Audio Presets: Each user can create and name up to five custom presets, like “Band Practice,” “Studio Mic Setup,” or “Quick Jam,” making it effortless to jump back in with the perfect sound.
“These tools are all about saving time and hassle,” said Patrick Finn, Business Manager at Lutefish. “Musicians want to make music, not spend time rebalancing levels every session. With presets and recall, we’re giving them time back and helping them sound their best, every time.”
Smarter Scheduling and Contact Visibility
The latest update to Lutefish also made it easier to find collaborators and book sessions. Users can now:- View all their contacts at a glance when scheduling a session.
- Instantly identify which contacts own a Lutefish Stream device—so they will always know who’s ready to jam.
Go Yearly and Save 20%
Lutefish now offers a Yearly Subscription Plan, providing users with the same great access as the monthly plan at a 20% discount.
This option is now available within the Lutefish app and web platform, and current monthly users are eligible for a discount with an upgrade to a yearly subscription.
Lutefish’s mission has always been to empower musicians to connect and collaborate without boundaries. With these new updates, Lutefish Stream continues to break down barriers—whether you’re jamming with a friend across town or collaborating with a bandmate 500 miles away.
For more information and to start jamming today, visitlutefish.com.
The veteran Florida-born metalcore outfit proves that you don’t need humbuckers to pull off high gain.
Last August, metalcore giants Poison the Well gave the world a gift: They announced they were working on their first studio album in 15 years. They unleashed the first taste, single “Trembling Level,” back in January, and set off on a spring North American tour during which they played their debut record, The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation, in full every night.
PG’s Perry Bean caught up with guitarists Ryan Primack and Vadim Taver, and bassist Noah Harmon, ahead of the band’s show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl for this new Rig Rundown.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Not-So-Quiet As a Mouse
Primack started his playing career on Telecasters, then switched to Les Pauls, but when his prized LPs were stolen, he jumped back to Teles, and now owns nine of them.
His No. 1 is this white one (left). Seymour Duncan made him a JB Model pickup in a single-coil size for the bridge position, while the neck is a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Staggered. He ripped out all the electronics, added a Gibson-style toggle switch, flipped the control plate orientation thanks to an obsession with Danny Gatton, and included just one steel knob to control tone. Primack also installed string trees with foam to control extra noise.
This one has Ernie Ball Papa Het’s Hardwired strings, .011–.050.
Here, Kitty, Kitty
Primack runs both a PRS Archon and a Bad Cat Lynx at the same time, covering both 6L6 and EL34 territories. The Lynx goes into a Friedman 4x12 cab that’s been rebadged in honor of its nickname, “Donkey,” while the Archon, which is like a “refined 5150,” runs through an Orange 4x12.
Ryan Primack’s Pedalboard
Primack’s board sports a Saturnworks True Bypass Multi Looper, plus two Saturnworks boost pedals. The rest includes a Boss TU-3w, DOD Bifet Boost 410, Caroline Electronics Hawaiian Pizza, Fortin ZUUL +, MXR Phase 100, JHS Series 3 Tremolo, Boss DM-2w, DOD Rubberneck, MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Walrus Slo, and SolidGoldFX Surf Rider III.
Taver’s Teles
Vadim Taver’s go-to is this cherryburst Fender Telecaster, which he scored in the early 2000s and has been upgraded to Seymour Duncan pickups on Primack’s recommendation. His white Balaguer T-style has been treated to the same upgrade. The Balaguer is tuned to drop C, and the Fender stays in D standard. Both have D’Addario strings, with a slightly heavier gauge on the Balaguer.
Dual-Channel Chugger
Taver loves his 2-channel Orange Rockerverb 100s, one of which lives in a case made right in Nashville.
Vadim Taver’s Pedalboard
Taver’s board includes an MXR Joshua, MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Empress Tremolo, Walrus ARP-87, Old Blood Noise Endeavors Reflector, MXR Phase 90, Boss CE-2w, and Sonic Research Turbo Tuner ST-200, all powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus.
Big Duff
Harmon’s favorite these days is this Fender Duff McKagan Deluxe Precision Bass, which he’s outfitted with a Leo Quan Badass bridge. His backup is a Mexico-made Fender Classic Series ’70s Jazz Bass. This one also sports Primack-picked pickups.
Rental Rockers
Harmon rented this Orange AD200B MK III head, which runs through a 1x15 cab on top and a 4x10 on the bottom.
Noah Harmon’s Pedalboard
Harmon’s board carries a Boss TU-2, Boss ODB-3, MXR Dyna Comp, Darkglass Electronics Vintage Ultra, and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus. His signal from the Vintage Ultra runs right to the front-of-house, and Harmon estimates that that signal accounts for about half of what people hear on any given night.
Kiesel Guitars has introduced their newest solid body electric guitar: the Kyber.
With its modern performance specs and competitive pricing, the Kyber is Kiesel's most forward-thinking design yet, engineered for comfort, quick playing, and precision with every note.
Introducing the Kiesel Kyber Guitar
- Engineered with a lightweight body to reduce fatigue during long performances without sacrificing tone. Six-string Kybers, configured with the standard woods and a fixed bridge, weigh in at 6 pounds or under on average
- Unique shape made for ergonomic comfort in any playing position and enhanced classical position
- The Kyber features Kiesel's most extreme arm contour and a uniquely shaped body that enhances classical position support while still excelling in standard position.
- The new minimalist yet aggressive headstock pairs perfectly with the body's sleek lines, giving the Kyber a balanced, modern silhouette.
- Hidden strap buttons mounted on rear for excellent balance while giving a clean, ultra-modern look to the front
- Lower horn cutaway design for maximum access to the upper frets
- Sculpted neck heel for seamless playing
- Available in 6 or 7 strings, fixed or tremolo in both standard and multiscale configurations Choose between fixed bridges, tremolos, or multiscale configurations for your perfect setup.
Pricing for the Kyber starts at $1599 and will vary depending on options and features. Learn more about Kiesel’s new Kyber model at kieselguitars.com
The Sunset is a fully analog, zero latency bass amplifier simulator. It features a ¼” input, XLR and ¼” outputs, gain and volume controls and extensive equalization. It’s intended to replace your bass amp both live and in the studio.
If you need a full sounding amp simulator with a lot of EQ, the Sunset is for you. It features a five band equalizer with Treble, Bass, Parametric Midrange (with frequency and level controls), Resonance (for ultra lows), and Presence (for ultra highs). All are carefully tuned for bass guitar. But don’t let that hold you back if you’re a keyboard player. Pianos and synthesizers sound great with the Sunset!
The Sunset includes Gain and master Volume controls which allow you to add compression and classic tube amp growl. It has both ¼” phone and balanced XLR outputs - which lets you use it as a high quality active direct box. Finally, the Sunset features zero latency all analog circuitry – important for the instrument most responsible for the band’s groove.
Introducing the Sunset Bass Amp Simulator
- Zero Latency bass amp simulator.
- Go direct into the PA or DAW.
- Five Band EQ:
- Treble and Bass controls.
- Parametric midrange with level and frequency controls.
- Presence control for extreme highs.
- Resonance control for extreme lows.
- Gain control to add compression and harmonics.
- Master Volume.
- XLR and 1/4" outputs.
- Full bypass.
- 9VDC, 200mA.
Artwork by Aaron Cheney
MAP price: $210 USD ($299 CAD).