In contrast to her new solo album, the music of Screaming Females—especially live—brings the bristling energy and punk/riot grrrl roots of Paternoster to the fore.
Before she released seven full-length albums with her punk band Screaming Females, another four under her solo moniker Noun, and was listed as one of SPIN’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” singer/songwriter Marissa Paternoster didn’t have much hope for musical success.
“I spent a lot, if not all, of my teenage years being very afraid,” she shares. “I thought because of my gender, and then knowing full well that I was gay, that those things were going to keep me from ever being in a band or just being happy. I felt trapped.”
But the all-consuming urge to play guitar and be in a band kept her going. She absorbed every Smashing Pumpkins riff possible at her childhood home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and then discovered the anarchic punk women of the ’90s riot grrrl scene—which changed everything. She thought, “They exist, they’re out there. Maybe there is this little, tiny chance that I can find those people too.”
Marissa Paternoster - Peace Meter [FULL ALBUM STREAM]
Today, Paternoster has long since found her niche, her people, and her voice. This past December she released Peace Meter, her first album under her own name, co-produced by Andy Gibbs (of Thou) and featuring Shanna Polley (leader of Snakeskin) on background vocals and Kate Wakefield (of the duo Lung) on cello. She says it might as well be a continuation of Noun, and that the main reason that it’s under her name is because it’s more searchable, she laughs, but it does seem like a benchmark in her career. The concise, 31-minute, nine-track album is inexplicably new. It’s subtly supernatural, with Paternoster’s haunting vocals carrying through an acoustic/electronic folk realm, articulating an unfamiliar yet comforting sense of calm.
The project was conceived at the beginning of the pandemic when Paternoster found herself alone in her deceased grandmother’s home and began crafting and sharing her work with Gibbs remotely. In the beginning, she wasn’t sure it was going to become anything, but the more the two collaborated, the more she saw it going somewhere. Maybe it’s the quality of her voice, or maybe it’s the delay effects, or the ineffable chemistry between Paternoster, Gibbs, Polley, and Wakefield, but Peace Meter somehow fills a void none of us knew existed.
“I thought because of my gender, and then knowing full well that I was gay, that those things were going to keep me from ever being in a band or just being happy. I felt trapped.”
In March 2020, Screaming Females was nearly at the end of their tour with Canadian rock band PUP when the rise of the pandemic forced them to cancel their final dates in California. The group then drove their rental gear back to Los Angeles from Eugene, Oregon, and flew home—with Paternoster heading to her grandmother’s house in Union, New Jersey, to be close to her father.
She immediately set up her recording gear in the basement and began making music “like I had done for my whole life,” she says. All she had with her was her Screaming Females gear and a Taylor GS Mini that was at the house. This small-bodied acoustic can be heard on the album as part of the colorful mix of real and virtual instruments underpinning her chocolatey, melismatic voice.
Marissa Paternoster's Gear
Marissa Paternoster hovers over her pedalboard with her main axe: a G&L S-500 that’s her electric workhorse. It played counterpoint to her Taylor GS Mini on Peace Meter.
Guitars
- G&L S-500
- Taylor GS Mini
Strings & Picks
- GHS strings (.009–.042)
- Dunlop Heavy Sharps
Amps
- Sunn Concert Lead
Effects
- Fulltone OCD
- Earthbound Audio Supercollider
- Klon Centaur clone
- Boss DD-6 Digital Delay
- Boss Chromatic Tuner
- TC Electronic Flashback Delay
After putting some rough ideas together, Paternoster sent a draft of “Promises”—which ended up being the last track on the album—to Gibbs, a long-time friend, and asked if he could add some electronic drums to it. (Outside of Thou, Gibbs has a serious interest in electronic production.) “I didn’t have any expectations,” she says, “but what he sent back was really beautiful. I was like, ‘Should we do more? Was this fun for you?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, let’s do more.’”
Paternoster says that the album’s production was basically a 50/50 split between her and Gibbs. He took the originally morose, down-tempo “I Lost You” and infused it with a happier, up-tempo beat—it’s the track Paternoster says she’s most proud of from the collection. Throughout the project, “he would even manipulate the vocals. He used them as an instrument that he could add modulation to, which added texture to the songs.” The weird, Cocteau Twins kind of blurred line between analog and electronic instrumentation, she says, was mostly a product of Gibbs’ influence.
“I never felt confused about what I wanted to do with my life until I discovered punk. Then I wanted to be in a band so bad I thought that if I wasn’t in a band I would die.”
Paternoster enjoys effects—a lot of them—to the point where she’s had to limit her options just to prevent herself from going overboard. “If it were up to me, there’d be phaser on everything, and that’s not good,” she laughs. “As I’ve grown as a musician, I’ve removed a lot of flangers and phasers and octave pedals from my board. Now it’s just gain-staging and a delay pedal and that’s it.”
One piece of gear that ended up being central to the album’s guitar sounds was her TC Electronic Flashback Delay pedal. “I do really like this crystal delay function that it has,” she elaborates. “It has a nice little whistle tone as the delay trails off. It’s very dreamy. You can hear that a lot on the record.”
Marissa Paternoster: “My Secret Weapon Is My Unrelenting Anxiety!”
When asked if Peace Meter is a result of Paternoster’s personal evolution as a songwriter, she shares that the real change in her life has been that she now has access to a broad network of friends, contemporaries, and peers whom she admires, and who want to work with her. “I never had that before,” she comments. She hates having the album under her name, because she says she needs other people to make music—and the project gave her the opportunity to reach out to them.
Paternoster has always felt that art was her calling, even when she was just a child who loved to draw. “There was no question in my mind that someday I was going to be an artist,” she expresses. But that aspiration shifted when she entered her teenage years and found music. “I never felt confused about what I wanted to do with my life until I discovered punk. Then I wanted to be in a band so bad I thought that if I wasn’t in a band I would die.”
TIDBIT: Paternoster’s new album is a classic Covid project—recorded remotely and crafted via file sharing. However, thanks to her haunting vocals, a wide sonic palette, and her emotional songwriting, it’s far from standard fare.
While riot grrrl taught her that she was capable of being a punk rocker, she says that the biggest influence on her guitar playing was undoubtedly Billy Corgan. Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream is still her favorite album, and it was that type of music that she used to teach herself to play when she was in high school—alongside the songs of bands like Bratmobile and Bikini Kill. Though technically demanding guitar solos didn’t exactly fit her tastes, she did feel as though she needed to learn how to improvise, despite being a songwriter at heart.
“In the early ’00s, most of my peers who played music were men,” she shares. “And I thought that if I could rip a solo in a way that would impress these young boys, they might let me play in their band. But my focus has always been on songwriting, making interesting sounds, creating engaging art, and not really on shredding or whatever. I really don’t care about that at all.”
Rig Rundown - Screaming Females
When describing why she makes music, Paternoster delves into the topic of mental health. She lives with anxiety and depression, and, as she puts it, has had frank and open discussions about her mental well-being since she started going to therapy at age 14. “[For me, making art and music is mostly] born out of the compulsion to quell my anxiety in some way. And it’s been that way ever since I was very, very small. It was my coping mechanism for everything and anything.” She continues, “Your mental health affects your body, it affects you, and it affects absolutely everyone around you. It’s important to take care of yourself because in turn you take care of everyone around you.”
“My focus has always been on songwriting. Songwriting, making interesting sounds, creating engaging art, and not really on shredding or whatever. I really don’t care about that at all.”
Paternoster brings that self-awareness to all aspects of her life, including collaborating with fellow musicians. Working with others comes naturally to her, as she’s been doing it essentially from the beginning, but she does confess to having some shortcomings when it comes to bandleading. “I have a tendency to be a bit bossy when it comes to logistics,” she says. “I don’t want to let that intensity go, but I also don’t want to waste time worrying. You have to leave some things to the chaos that is our reality.
In her room: Paternoster created the bones of her new album alone, in the home of her late grandmother. Then she shared the files with co-producer Andy Gibbs and her other collaborators, vocalist and Snakeskin leader Shanna Polley and cellist Kate Wakefield.
“To be honest, I never really wanted to have full control,” she admits. “There is a lot to be said about relinquishing some aspects of creative control to people that you trust and admire. When you trust people who you know already do good work, they’re probably going to show up and do good work.”
Aside from being motivated by anxiety and compulsion, Paternoster describes how she often finds inspiration in silly simplicity. “I’m a big fan of like, general tomfoolery,” she comments, telling a story about how she’d seen two separate giant carrots graffitied on buildings in Providence, Rhode Island, where she’s been staying. It gave rise to a lot of questions. “What happened that night? Why did they paint the carrots so big? Why have they never done it again? Who are they, where are they, can we hang out?” she says, laughing.
That playful spirit ties into a sense of humility both about herself and her musicianship. She reflects on the one music theory course she took in college, during which she “mostly took naps,” and the pros and cons of being self-taught. “I mean, at age 35 I still am often like, ‘Man, I wish I could take guitar lessons or singing lessons.’ I think that would be really fun, but I only have so many hours in the day.”In the meantime, she feels that sticking with music might be a good idea. “This is my comfort zone … and other people tell me that I do this well, so I think I ought to do it more.”
LAVA Broken Roof Sessions: Marissa Paternoster (Screaming Females/Noun)
Around the time she was working on Peace Meter, Marissa Paternoster climbed atop a West Philly roof to record this intimate acoustic performance featuring several of the album’s songs. Be sure to catch a glimpse of her DIY guitar strap.
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“Earthwood Bell Bronze strings are a giant leap forward in tone, playability, and durability. They’re great in any musical setting but really shine when played solo. There’s an orchestral quality to them.” -John Mayer
Product Features:
- Developed in collaboration with John Mayer
- Big, bold sound
- Inspired by alloys used for bells and cymbals
- Increased resonance with improved projection and sustain
- Patent-pending alloy unique to Ernie Ball stringsHow is Bell Bronze different?
- Richer and fuller sound than 80/20 and Phosphor Bronze without sounding dark
- Similar top end to 80/20 Bronze with richer low end than Phosphor Bronze
Milkman’s Jerry Garcia-style JG-40 combo.
Entire books about the Grateful Dead’s gear have been written, so we can’t cover it all here. Garcia tinkered with all facets of his sound from about 1971 until 1978, when his signal path reached stability. By then, his On-Board Effects Loop—an innovation he developed to control how much signal reached his effects—was dialed in, his backline firm, and his choice of effects pedals solidified. Even then, adjustments were made, especially when MIDI arrived or when technology like in-ear monitoring was used. Here are some basics.
Scarlet Fire’s recreation of Garcia’s Wolf, originally built by Doug Irwin.
It starts with guitars. For players wanting to get their Jerry on, there’s a wide range of Garcia-esque instruments—with just as wide a range of prices—out there. Recreations of the Doug Irwin guitars and the Fender Alligator Strat abound. China-built models from companies likePhred Instruments can go for as little as $700 or so. Luthier Thomas Lieber apprenticed with Irwin long ago, and his Lieber Guitars will deliver a copy of a variety of Garcia models. Leo Elliott’sScarlet Fire Guitars out of Dallas, Texas, takes things in another direction. Elliott builds Doug Irwin replicas that start at $20,000 and go up from there, with a current wait time of about 18 months for an instrument. He’s outfitted many of the top Garcia guitarists today, including Tom Hamilton Jr. and Jeff Mattson. Elliott says, “I’m a self-taught luthier; I didn’t really build my first guitar until 2010. I understood a little bit about woodworking before I got started, but I learned by reading books and through trial and error. I started building replicas of Doug Irwin’s Wolf guitar right away, which is sort of like building a car and starting with a Ferrari. I didn’t know any better. Then, eventually I got to know Doug Irwin and collaborated with him. So, I got to hold Garcia’s Tiger guitar and get to know it really well, and by 2015, I had built replicas of that guitar. There’s one guy who helps me around the shop, but otherwise, I am building these guitars on my own. I’m collaborating with Doug Irwin on a new series of Tiger guitars, which will retail for 50 grand each.” That’s one way to get your Jerry going.
The JBL-inspired Milkman K-120.
Garcia’s choice of amplifiers is another matter. He preferred Fender Twin Reverbs loaded with JBL Alnico speakers, which were popular amongst many rock bands in the 1970s. The details get complicated; Garcia’s amps were heavily modified, and the Fender Twin served as a preamp that ran to a McIntosh MC-3500 power amp.
It’s hard to find vintage JBL speakers today—at least ones in good shape. San Francisco’s Milkman Sound, founded by Tim Marcus, has created a faithful reproduction of those classic JBLsthey call the K-140. They’re coupling those speakers with a Garcia-style recreation of his Fender Twin that Marcus named the JG-40. “I think 75 percent of Jerry’s tone is in the JBL speakers,” Milkman’s founder says. “But when you start to analyze the other 25 percent, you kind of have to start withDon Rich. [Editor’s Note: Rich was the guitar player in Buck Owens’ band, pioneers of the Bakersfield Sound.] That’s Jerry’s tone, too, but the difference is Garcia’s midrange was a bit throatier. It sounds clean, but really, it’s not clean at the same time. Especially his tone in the late ’70s. There is something about running that Fender Twin Reverb through the McIntosh that would just completely blow out the tone in a really interesting way.”
Garcia colored his tone with off-the-shelf effects. This was, after all, long before the days of boutique pedals. By 1978 and beyond, you’d hear him playing through an MXR Distortion+, an MXR Analog Delay, and an MXR Phase 100. He often used auto wahs, preferring the Musitronics Mu-Tron envelope filter as well as a Mu-Tron Octave Divider and a Mu-Tron combination volume and wah pedal.
When I asked Jeff Mattson, Bella Rayne, and Tom Hamilton Jr. exactly how orthodox they are about using the kind of gear that Garcia did, I got three different answers.
Mattson tells me that because Dark Star Orchestra is doing something very specific, he really has to tailor his sound as carefully to Garcia’s as he can. “Some folks get too hung up on small things, like what kind of cable to use and things like that, and I don’t go that far. But it’s important for Dark Star Orchestra to get Jerry’s sound right because we are covering different eras and different shows. In 2022, for example, we went to Europe and recreated shows from the Dead’s famous Europe ’72 tour, so you have to pay close attention to what kind of gear they were using to do that right.”
Hamilton works differently. He’s always preferred a higher-gain signal than Garcia ever did, landing in more of a British or heavy metal tone. (Randy Rhoads was a big influence.) “I’ve always approached it like, ‘What’s the new information we can put into this thing?’” he says. “Not just recreate but pushing in a forward direction. And anytime I’ve played with the guys who played with Garcia back in the day, they always said to me, ‘You’re here because you’re here. Don’t try and do what we did back in 1978 or do it because Garcia did it that way.’ They’ve always encouraged me to be myself.”
Bella Rayne is just wrapping her head around what it really means to try to sound like Garcia. “Besides Jerry, I’m influenced by guitarists like Dickey Betts and Derek Trucks, so my tone tends to be a bit heavier and bluesy,” she explains. “I’m generally running a Stratocaster through a Fender Twin Reverb. But recently, I was doing a show, and a buddy of mine set up a Jerry rig for me, and that was so cool: JBL speakers, McIntosh head, the whole setup. I had never played through one. I didn’t know what the hype was all about. I plugged in, and it was just amazing; there was such a snap, and I was really commanding the band. I can see myself keeping my current rig but adding a Dead-rig to experiment. But honestly, anything is fine; I am not picky. I just want to play the best that I can.”
“The distinctive pickup configurations of these five guitars deliver a versatile tonal platform, whether you’re exploring subtle textures or pushing the envelope. The deep dive into our Narrowfield technology is obvious with this launch. With both the S2 models made in our Maryland factory and the SE models made in Indonesia, our goal has been to create guitars that will inspire you and spark creativity, all at an exceptional value,” said PRS Guitars COO, Jack Higginbotham.
S2 Special Semi-Hollow
The PRS S2 Special Semi-Hollow features a pair of 58/15 LT humbuckers in the bass and treble positions and a PRS Narrowfield in the middle. A 5-way blade switch and two mini-toggles allow players to tap the humbuckers, creating twelve distinct pickup combinations for sonic exploration. The carved maple top and mahogany back encompass a semi-hollow body that adds a natural airiness and depth to the guitar’s tone while enhancing sustain.
S2 Studio
The PRS S2 Studio delivers a wide range of sonic possibilities through its distinctive single-single-hum configuration. Featuring two proprietary PRS Narrowfield pickups in the bass and middle positions and a 58/15 LT humbucker in the treble position, the S2 Studio offers a palette of sounds from single-coil clarity to vocal humbucker tones. This model also has a 5-way blade switch and push/pull tone control.
SE Special Semi-Hollow
The PRS SE Special Semi-Hollow is designed with the versatility of a hum/“single”/hum setup, bringing PRS’s Narrowfield DD pickup design to the SE Series in a classic maple-top guitar. The semi-hollow construction also enhances sustain and resonance, while the f-hole adds a classic aesthetic. The coil-tap switching system unlocks a wide range of tones through a pair of 58/15 LT “S” pickups in the bass and treble positions and a PRS Narrowfield DD “S” in the middle.
SE Studio
The PRS SE Studio’s “single”/”single”/hum pickup configuration provides a wide range of tonal options. This combination of PRS Narrowfield DD “S” bass and middle pickups with a PRS 58/15 LT “S” treble humbucker offers humbucking warmth, single-coil sparkle, and everything in between. The 5-way blade switch and push/pull tone control further enhance its versatility.
SE Studio Standard
The only bolt-on neck in this release group, the PRS SE Studio Standard brings the tone, playability, and versatility of the Studio model to the SE Series and into an all-mahogany design with a vintage-style pickguard aesthetic. At the heart of the SE Studio Standard is its versatile trio of pickups: an 58/15 LT “S” humbucker in the treble position with two Narrowfield DD “S” pickups in the middle and bass positions. The 5-way blade switch and push/pull tone control allow for an array of pickup configurations.
PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year.
