For her new record Echo The Diamond, Margaret Glaspy worked with bassist Chris Morrissey and drummer Dave King to create an indie-rock record bursting with spontaneity and unrehearsed grit.
“It was exciting to say that we could put these three people in a room and play music, and it would be record-worthy,” says guitarist and singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy about the trio of musicians, herself included, that created her latest release, Echo the Diamond, a collection of brash, rootsy indie, rock ’n’ roll, and alt-country sounds. The record’s rhythm section comprises established jazz musicians Chris Morrissey (Ben Kweller, Mark Guiliana, and many others) on bass and Dave King (The Bad Plus) on drums. They added an element of spontaneity to the music and acted as a safety net, allowing Glaspy to take some calculated risks.
Margaret Glaspy - Irish Goodbye (Official Audio)
The trio didn’t rehearse much before the album’s recording sessions, aiming to let the magic happen in the moment. Some cuts were from the first take; “Female Brain,” with its raucous, F-to-E-minor progression strummed heavily through a crumbling, past-the-point-of-breakup, low-wattage amp, was actually from a rehearsal take. The process was a gamble, but Glaspy got what she wanted. Echo the Diamond is edgy and raw—at times, it feels like the whole thing could fall apart, but it never does. The album’s naturally overdriven, crunchy guitars, plus the omission of overdubs, synths, and harmony vocals, contrast Glaspy’s previous release, the polished and poppy Devotion.
“Echo the Diamond isn’t necessarily like a super manicured record,” says Glaspy. “It was super intentional to keep it kind of wild and wooly. I think this record is definitely flying a flag for live music, and for making records that feel like live music.”
Glaspy tailors her music for the live experience, writing songs with the intention that they can be performed solo with nothing lost in translation.“I think it’s just naturally how I think about song structure. When I was young, I would open for everybody, and I needed to be able to command an audience by myself,” says Glaspy. “You have to write and arrange songs in a way that was going to be able to keep people’s attention from start to finish without a band.”
Glaspy first came up with her new album’s title as a suggestion for one of Lage’s recordings. When he didn’t use it, she saved it for herself. “It meant, for me, to shine bright: echo the diamond, be like the diamond,” she says.
This approach is at the core of Glaspy’s guitar style: Her goal is to be able to play “everything all at the same time so it’s not missing anything just because it’s a solo performance,” explains Glaspy. “Whether I actually can do that or not is a different question [laughs]. But that’s often what I strive for: to try and have it be kind of a closed loop.”
Glaspy’s self-contained parts are rhythmically interesting, at times mixing in lead lines. On “Memories”—a deeply personal song about loss that was so difficult to sing, Glaspy used the only take she was able to get through—she plays a melodic, low-register solo with chordal accompaniment on the same guitar. Another track, “Irish Goodbye,” features contrasting parts with intricate bass figures, riffs, and chords.
Glaspy’s partner, jazz guitar icon Julian Lage, co-produced Echo the Diamond, whose title came from a phrase that Glaspy suggested when Lage was looking for a song title for his own record. Glaspy recalls, “I said, ‘What about ‘Echo the Diamond?’ And he didn’t like it. But I loved it, and it stuck with me ever since, and then it felt really fitting for this record. It meant, for me, to shine bright: echo the diamond, be like the diamond. And there was a Bruce Lee quote that I’ve referenced before, that really inspired me, where he said to ‘be water.’ If water is poured into this glass, it takes the shape of this glass, and water gets poured into a kettle, it takes the shape of the kettle. For me, that was a really transformative thing to metabolize and understand. That flexibility is strength in a certain way.”
Echo the Diamond was recorded at Reservoir Studios in New York City, and throughout the process, Lage acted like Glaspy’s third eye. When he felt like he was seeing something that she wasn’t seeing, he didn’t hesitate to bring it up. “When he has input about something, and says, ‘That was the take,’ I take him seriously, because he has a good track record for understanding when I’m capturing something that I would want in the big picture,” explains Glaspy. “He’s a really good compass and has a really good radar for when things are happening in the way that I need them to happen.”
After years spent as a solo opening act, Margaret Glaspy learned to write captivating guitar parts that she could reproduce live on her own.
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
“I think sometimes for me, the point is to be able to show up to the show and see what happens. And whether that’s a good idea or not is a different thing—it’s how I’ve operated most of my life.”
Since both of them are extremely busy, well-established musicians (“Our lives are music, so there’s no separation,” says Glaspy), they have to be mindful of boundaries when engaging each other for musical advice. But in general, they have an open-door policy with one another. “There’s an understanding both ways that if you’re asking me something right now, it’s because it's urgent, and so, ask me,” says Glaspy. “Sometimes you’ll ask too many questions, and [the other person will] go, ‘You’re asking me too many questions.’ In general, our lifestyle is very focused on making projects like that work. Those are our babies, Julian and I. I feel like there’s some part of our records that feels like they’re slightly part of our family.”
Glaspy’s intense musical environment isn’t much different than the one she grew up in. Music was the center of her household—everyone in her family played guitar and listened avidly to music. Her dad played jazz around the house, which led her to impersonate Louis Armstrong as a youth; her mom was into rock bands and singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. Her sister and brother brought ’90s rock influences like Pearl Jam, Deftones, and Alanis Morissette into the house, but Glaspy herself initially took to the music of Michael Jackson and Elliot Smith. She played fiddle until she was 16, when she started getting into guitar and songwriting.
Margaret Glaspy's Gear
Glaspy’s partner, jazz guitarist Julian Lage, helped co-produce Echo the Diamond. Glaspy says their songs are like kin: “I feel like there’s some part of our records that feels like they're slightly part of our family.”
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
- 1978 Fender Telecaster Deluxe
- Danocaster T-style
- Waterloo WL-14
Amps
- Magic Amplification Vibro Prince
Effects
- Strymon Flint
- Pete Cornish Duplex pedal (CC-1TM and OC-1 TM)
- Boss TU-3
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario (.011 sets)
- D’Addario heavy pick
After high school, Glaspy won a grant from the YoungArts Foundation in 2007 in the popular voice category, and she used the money to enroll at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Coming from Red Bluff, a small town in Northern California where she was one of only a few aspiring professional musicians, the move came with immediate culture shock. “I think the biggest education I got from Berklee was really just being around that many musicians at one time,” says Glaspy. “To be in that environment was kind of bizarre at first. You kind of get your mind blown by being around that many musicians, and then over time, it just makes you work harder and harder because the bar just starts to rise higher and higher.”
Her grant money was exhausted after one semester, but Glaspy remained a fixture on the Berklee campus, sneaking into classes and attending master classes. She lived in Boston for a total of three years, using her time to develop her live act at places like Club Passim, an iconic Cambridge venue where the likes of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan performed. “I hustled really hard,” says Glaspy. “I would play around Boston on a weekly basis and get gigs wherever I could. When I lived in Boston, I would have gigs in New York occasionally. So I would take the $10 bus at like 4 iin the morning to get to New York, spend the whole day there, play a show, and then sometimes take the bus back at 4 in the morning or whatever. By the time I got to New York, I kind of understood what it meant to have to hustle and so I just kept doing that in New York. I would work jobs while I was here during that time, and I would just try and get as many residencies, as many gigs, as I possibly could. And then it was just like rinse and repeat constantly.”
Echo the Diamond also marks a big change in Glaspy’s gear setup. For years, Glaspy’s go-to instrument was Lage’s Danocaster T-style guitar, which she had played on her previous records. But as studio time got closer, she wanted something that felt just a little bit darker and could sustain in a different way. “The Danocaster is incredible, and it’s still on the record, too. But I was feeling like, ‘Am I going to get a Les Paul?’ Like something that just feels heavy,” recalls Glaspy. Fate intervened when she went to get a repair done at TR Crandall, a New York City guitar shop where she worked back in the day, and where luminaries like Nels Cline and Bill Frisell hang.
“I got a CBS-era ’78 Tele Deluxe at TR Crandall like a week before I made the record,” says Glaspy. “It was really last minute. I was like, ‘If I run into something, maybe I’ll get it.’ Then Alex Whitman at TR Crandall recommended this Tele Deluxe. It wasn’t even on my radar to think about a Tele Deluxe, but I fell in love with it pretty instantly.”
The Tele Deluxe behaves a little differently than Glaspy’s other instruments, and this characteristic brought about a welcome surprise. “The one thing about that guitar that is interesting is I find that in order for me to get what I need out of it, I have to crank the amp,” says Glaspy. “So I really have so much fun playing that guitar when it’s very loud.”
“I think this record is definitely flying a flag for live music, and for making records that feel like live music.”
The new axe’s unique idiosyncrasies deepened Glaspy’s dynamic approach. “It’s influenced my right hand quite a bit where I’m kind of relearning to play the guitar in a way, because if I overplay and I’m digging in too hard, and the amp is very loud, I feel like it has diminishing returns,” she explains. “So I learned to have a slightly lighter touch on my right hand with the amp loud. It’s kind of been a little bit of a reworking for me.”
Glaspy also used a Magic Amps Vibro Prince—amp builder Mike Moody’s take on a Princeton—on Echo the Diamond. Her sound relies heavily on the interaction between her fingers and the amp, and her recent move to a house in New Jersey after years of living in Brooklyn has allowed her to more easily explore this connection. “[In New York] you’re needing to go to practice spaces and things like that,” says Glaspy. “Now, our whole basement is a practice space, which is great. I think that when you start to understand your own relativity to an amp, you start to understand that, ‘Okay, I know what this sounds like at a low volume, and I can play it at a low volume. And I understand what it sounds like loud. So when I get to the venue and play the gig, I can anticipate what I’m going to need at a louder volume.’ But I wasn’t always able to practice in that way. Okay, honestly, I’m not a practicer. I don’t practice a whole lot [laughs].”
Despite living in the world of jazz, where players are known to practice religiously, Glaspy says her only rehearsals come in the writing and arranging of her songs. “For me, the point is to be able to show up to the show and see what happens,” she says.
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
That last comment might come as a surprise. But Glaspy’s not one to sit around and shed arpeggios all day with a metronome. She adds, “In terms of saying like, ‘I’m going to practice scales. I’m going to practice technique. I’m going to put in my hours.’ I don’t do that at all.”
But that doesn’t mean she isn’t spending tons of quality time honing her craft. “There is some element of practice, for sure,” says Glaspy. “But most of it’s done in the writing phase and I’m not really practicing a whole lot after that. So, if I’m making a song, by the time the song is actually done, I played that part so many times in order to do that, and now it’s just in my hands. I think sometimes for me, the point is to be able to show up to the show and see what happens. And whether that’s a good idea or not is a different thing—it’s how I’ve operated most of my life.”
Margaret Glaspy - Act Natural (Live In Philadelphia)
A grunge influence crept into Glapsy’s style while she made Echo the Diamond, with bass-register riffs dominating on songs like opener “Act Natural.”
- Tonal Calculus: Margaret Glaspy ›
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- Julian Lage: “What Are You Transmitting?” ›
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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