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In their 35-plus years as perhaps the greatest metal band of all time, Iron Maiden has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. They led the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and they forever changed the sound of heavy metal. Directly or indirectly, Maiden’s influence permeates the sound of countless bands from yesteryear and today—including hot-shot young bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Dragonforce, and Trivium. In fact, it’s fair to say that classic Maiden albums like The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, and Powerslave are essential listening for any true headbanger.
Like their iconic, zombified mascot, Maiden shows no signs of faltering— even in the midst of an economic crisis and the changing face of the music industry. The band’s latest release and 15th studio album, The Final Frontier, debuted at #1 in 28 countries and at #4 on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, making it their highest-charting US release ever. The album—which is also the band’s longest to date at 76 minutes and 34 seconds—features the expected epic compositions imbued with some unusually challenging prog-inflected escapades.
Premier Guitar recently caught up with Maiden guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers to get the inside scoop on The Final Frontier. About an hour before doors opened at their sold-out show at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, we sat down for the interview at a hotel 40 miles away in midtown Manhattan. The band was pretty wrapped up in the final game of the World Cup, but Murray, Smith, and Gers soon got around to amiably discussing the new album and divulging secrets of the Maiden sound before making the trek back to the venue.
What was the songwriting process for this album?
Murray: It was pretty much the same as always. Everyone would bring in ideas, which eventually went to Steve, who is like the nucleus of the band. He’d take the parts and get the songs into shape. He also wrote a lot of the lyrics on this album.
Smith: Because Steve’s a bass player, he thinks a little bit differently. He gets you to play things you normally wouldn’t play and sometimes it can be a bit uncomfortable. “El Dorado” was Steve’s song, and he had everything written down to the last detail from start to finish. With Steve’s stuff, you have to play it exactly the way he hears it and that can be very rigorous. Janick volunteered to do the parts. Steve showed him what to play, and it took Janick a lot of work to do it the way Steve wanted him to.
That’s how it used to be in the old days when Steve would write a lot of songs. We’d sit down and go through it the way Steve wanted it, even so far as the picking accents, using downstrokes or upstrokes.
Gers: There’s no set way of doing it, and that keeps it fresh. I think if you get into the rut of doing it the same way every time, you lose the spontaneity. You never quite know what’s going to work and what isn’t. I’ve brought in stuff that I thought was amazing and it didn’t get on the album.
Classic Maiden albums like Piece of Mind, Powerslave, and Somewhere in Time were recorded at Compass Point Studios. More than two decades later, you returned there to record The Final Frontier.
Murray: Compass Point hasn’t changed much in 25 years, although [producer] Kevin Shirley brought in all of this new equipment to keep the album sounding current. We embrace new technology. It doesn’t change the sound or the identity of the band—it just makes the whole process more spontaneous and keeps everything fresh. We like to get an analog feel, but we used Pro Tools on this album—like we have on the last few albums—to speed things up. You can record really quickly on it and jump sections around. We had a two-and-a-half-month window to record, but we finished recording in six weeks and Kevin took the tracks to California and did the final mixing.
Yet you still incorporate such old-school methods as recording without a click track.
Murray: Music has to live and breathe and move around. If you put a click track to any Iron Maiden song, it’s going to be moving around. The thing is that it moves in the right places so it adds dynamics. It might lift up a little bit in the chorus or the solos, but I think if you listen to the great rock bands from the ’70s, you’ll hear the same thing. Everything’s moving around, but it’s like a pulse.
Gers: Yeah, isn’t that what music should do? It’s supposed to breathe. You listen to the Beatles, Zeppelin, and Hendrix, and doesn’t everything fluctuate? It’s supposed to come from here [points to his heart]. That’s where all the greats come from. The Berklee guys that play the same riff for 12 hours—that comes from the head. I’m talking about feeling— about guys like Paul Kossoff or Tommy Bolin. It’s a technological age we live in now, and producers are always trying to bring in their own ideas to make things more “solid.” But music should move—it’s organic and it grows.
Smith: We don’t overly concern ourselves that every beat has to be perfect, as long as it feels right.
Dave Murray during the Somewhere on Tour tour at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit,
Michigan, May 18, 1987. Murray is playing his trusty black Fender Strat,
which appears to be outfitted with a Kahler tremolo. Photo by Ken Settle
Does one of you ever go in a different direction, tempo-wise, than the rest of the band?
Murray: Sometimes one of us might get excited and start moving, and the band might follow that. It’s kind of a natural thing, because of the adrenaline or the way the audience is reacting to the song.
How would you address that in the studio?
Murray: Well, with Pro Tools you can move stuff back into time, if need be [laughs]. Obviously, the timing is an important factor, but what’s more important is how it feels.
Are your solos worked out or off the cuff?
Murray: On this album, they were basically all spontaneous, although there may have been a few melodies I had worked out in advance for some songs.
Gers: Same here. It’s spontaneous, but if I have a melody I like, I’ll use it. Even live, there are certain things you keep the melodies for. I find it impossible to play the same thing twice. And if you’re playing how you feel, how can you play the same thing twice?
What makes a good solo?
Smith: A little bit of melody, a little bit of flash. And it should be something memorable. There’s a song on the new album called “Isle of Avalon” that has more of a fusion-y kind of solo. It’s over an unusual time signature—7/8. That was nice, because it makes you play something different. You can get into the trap of playing the same old thing over and over again. I was happy with that one.
Gers: It has to be something that enhances the song. It’s not about me doing a solo—not about, “Now it’s my chance to shine.” It’s about making the band sound better.
Adrian Smith rocks his Floyd Rose-equipped Jackson on the World Slavery tour, June 12, 1985,
at Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkston, Michigan. Photo by Ken Settle
With three guitarists, how do you get the subtle nuances of harmonized bends and vibrato to sound cohesive?
Murray: We sit down and listen to each other, and you hear what someone is doing and naturally go there. It’s not hit or miss. Obviously, if anything is bent totally out of key, we’ll just go back and redo it.
Gers: If I need to match them, I’ll match them, but more often than not we don’t plan out these things. The whole point is that you have three very different guitarists. I mean, if we both sound exactly the same, why don’t we just track Adrian? Music is personal. I’ll play how I play. Smith: It can be very difficult with three guitarists, though. I’m really sensitive to tuning, intonation, and bending right together. I notice that a lot of people don’t hear it, but I hear it and it really bothers me. Kevin doesn’t hear it, and Steve doesn’t hear it. Sometimes I have to fight to say, “That does not sound right.”
So you will redo a track to, say, match the rate of a vibrato?
Smith: Yeah. Dave and Janick probably have similar vibratos—a quicker vibrato—and I have a slower vibrato. Sometimes, if it’s for the good of the song, I won’t do a vibrato. I’ll just play it straight and it fits in with their vibratos. I’ll compromise. Performing live is easy, but recording three guitarists is very difficult.
Gers: However, you can take it to the extreme and get us to play it exactly the same, and put the bends in exactly the same place. But then you might as well have just one guitarist do all the tracks. If you listen to [Deep Purple’s] Fireball, you’ll hear two voices and one might be slightly off kilter. Ian Gillan did this a lot in the old days of Deep Purple. I love that. If you listen to the early Sabbath solos, Tony [Iommi] would play two solos and one would be doing a completely different thing than the other. I love that!
Adrian, I know you sometimes tune down to D or lower, but Janick and Dave don’t. Was that the case on this album?
Smith: I actually pleaded with the other guys to tune down for one song, “Mother of Mercy,” because they don’t really like doing it. The original demo was in E, but it was too high for Bruce to sing so we moved it down to D—which isn’t really a heavy key. I played with Bruce’s solo band, and he was really into the dropped-D tuning. Steve didn’t tune down though.
Since you use Floyd Roses, do you have a separate guitar for the dropped-D tuning?
Smith: Yeah. You have to.
What piece of gear do each of you consider essential?
Smith: In the studio, I just use what I use on stage—a 100-watt Marshall DSL and an American Strat loaded with DiMarzio pickups. Sometimes I’ll use Stevie Ray Vaughan singlecoils just to get a different sound. Kevin Shirley isn’t really into messing around with different amps and different sounds. Sometimes, in the past, I’ve recorded with just a guitar straight into a Marshall. I wanted to go back and try it with different amps and stuff, but I wasn’t able to because the band wants to keep it like a live setup. It can be a little frustrating, to be honest. For example, because you want to keep a pure sound straight into the amp, you have to compromise on the clean sound in the studio. Instead of getting a nice Fender Twin for a clean tone, you’d just use a Marshall with the guitar volume down, which isn’t really ideal.
Murray: I just got a Fulltone Deja’Vibe I really like. Also, using just a little bit of delay is nice for ambience, so it’s not completely dry. With Maiden, because there are three guitarists, you need to cut through everything, and having that ambience helps. And maybe a little bit of a chorus—anything that can add some spark and make it more musical and less flat.
Gers: A Marshall amp.
Adrian Smith and Dave Murray live at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel,
New Jersey, July 11, 2010. Photo by Rod Snyder
One of Maiden’s trademarks is your harmonized melodies. Since you started out as a two-guitar band and later added Janick, how do you arrange your two-part harmonies?
Gers: Well, you can do three-part harmonies.
Murray: Yeah, none of us ever stops playing— even if the other guitarists are playing a harmony. It could be rhythm guitar behind the harmony, or a unison part.
If it’s a harmonized line, would you do a unison on the upper melody note or the lower harmony note?
Murray: Boy, you’re asking some technical questions! It’s hard to answer that exactly, because when we learn and do a song in the studio, usually after we’re done, we just move on to something else and forget about it. There’s really no set way, it’s more of whatever works. There’s no formula. In fact, we try to step outside of formulas. Sometimes, if one of us has parts worked out already on a demo, we’ll just show the parts to the other guys. That way we can get it close to the way we had it on the demo. Or, sometimes we’ll make up a part on the spot.
Smith: Whoever brings the song in usually plays the main solo, and whoever figures out the best part to go with the solo will play that part.
Gers: Sometimes, if we’re playing the same thing, I might play a note, say, on the 3rd string and Adrian would play the same note on the 4th string, which thickens the sound out. I mean, if we really want to sort it out, I’ll say, “I’ll play in unison with you, but on a different string.” If you listen to those old albums, there are more than one or two guitars on it. On Tattooed Millionaire [Brduce Dickinson’s first solo album, released in 1990], I recorded eight guitars playing one chord, but at different levels—high, low, a chord in between, etc. If you mix them all together, it sounds like one big chord, but it isn’t. It’s all about making the guitars sound bigger, like a wall of sound. These are little tricks of the game.
What acoustic guitar did you use in the intro to “The Talisman?”
Gers: I did all the tracks for that. It was a Taylor, which was very lovely sounding. There were probably three or four acoustics mixed in on “The Talisman.” Some had different tunings. When we play it live, it’s just me on the acoustic, however. I have to play one of the parts, and you have to imagine the other. In these cases, I have to decide which of the parts to play, and which harmony parts to leave to your imagination.
Janick Gers summons a “wall of sound” live at the PNC Bank Arts Center in
Holmdel, New Jersey, July 11, 2010. Photo by Rod Snyder
How do you keep Maiden fresh, yet still distinctly identifiable, after more than 30 years?
Murray: Whatever that magic ingredient is, we don’t know—it just comes out of the air. We don’t tour as much anymore, and we record an album every couple of years. It’s just about doing something that you really love doing. For example, after Rock in Rio, we took a couple of years off. When you’re off, it’s good to just step away from the band stuff so that when you come back, it’s totally fresh. I would jam here and there. I jammed with Alice Cooper and Mick Fleetwood at a charity function, and that was a lot of fun.
Gers: We look at each other and feel each other, because to me, bands are all about chemistry. It’s not about the individual players. You can get the best players in the world and still have a shitty band if the chemistry isn’t there.
Smith, Murray, and Ger's Gear Box
Adrian Smith
Guitars—Two Jackson Adrian Smith signature models, Gibson SG, Gibson Les Paul Deluxe, S-style Jackson
Amps and Cabinets—Marshall JCM2000, Marshall 9200 power amp, Marshall 1960A 4x12 cabs with Celestion Greenback speakers, two Randall Isolation cabs with custom Celestions
Effects—Lexicon MX200, original Ibanez TS808, Dunlop Crybaby wah rack system controlled by Boss FS-5L footswitch
Miscellaneous—Rocktron Hush noise reduction, Tour Supply Inc. Custom Whirlwind rackmount MultiSelector footswitch, Yamaha MFC10 MIDI foot controller, Shure UHF wireless with UR4D receiver, Peterson tuner, Fender padded guitar straps
Strings—Ernie Ball (.009 .011 .016 .024 .034 .044)
Picks—Custom, heavy-gauge Ernie Ball
Dave Murray
Guitars—Two Fender American Standard Strats, 2008 Fender Dave Murray Signature Strat with Floyd Rose, sunburst Fender California Series Strat, 2010 Gibson Les Paul Traditional
Amps and Cabinets—Three Marshall JCM2000 heads, two backup Marshall 9200 power amps, two 4x12 cabs with 75-watt Celestion speakers, Marshall JMP-1 preamp
Effects—Fulltone Clyde Standard wah, Fulltone Deja’Vibe, TC Electronic G-Force
Miscellaneous—Rocktron All Access MIDI controller, Pete Cornish switcher, effects loop, and power supply, Korg DTR-1 rack tuner, Fender padded leather straps
Strings—Ernie Ball (.009 .011 .014 .024 .032 .042)
Picks—Ernie Ball .70 mm
Janick Gers
Guitars—Fender Strat, Gibson Chet Atkins electric/ acoustic
Amps and Cabinets—Four Marshall 9200 power amps, two Marshall JMP-1 preamps, Mesa/Boogie Studio Preamp, Marshall JCM800 Bass Series 4x12 cabs
Miscellaneous—Korg A4 effects processor (used as MIDI controller), Boss TU-12 tuner, Pete Cornish power supply and switcher/EQ, Pete Cornish cables, Ernie Ball straps
Strings—Ernie Ball (.010 .012 .017 .026 .036 .046)
Picks—Ernie Ball
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.”
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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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MonoNeon, aka Dywane Thomas Jr., came up learning the bass from his father in Memphis, Tennessee, but for some reason, he decided to flip his dad’s 4-string bass around and play it with the string order inverted—E string closest to the ground and the G on top. That’s how MonoNeon still plays today, coming up through a rich, inspiring gauntlet of family and community traditions. “I guess my whole style came from just being around my grandma at an early age,” says Thomas.His path has led him to collaborate with dozens of artists, including Nas, Ne-Yo, Mac Miller, and even Prince, and MonoNeon’s solo output is dizzying—trying to count up his solo releases isn’t an easy feat. Premier Guitar’s Chris Kies caught up with the bassist before his show at Nashville’s Exit/In, where he got the scoop on his signature 5-string, Ampeg rig, and simple stomp layout, as well as some choice stories about influences, his brain-melting playing style, and how Prince changed his rig.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Orange You Glad to See Me?
This Fender MonoNeon Jazz Bass V was created after a rep messaged Thomas on Instagram to set up the signature model, over which Thomas had complete creative control. Naturally, the bass is finished in neon yellow urethane with a neon orange headstock and pickguard, and the roasted maple neck has a 10"–14" compound radius. It’s loaded with custom-wound Fireball 5-string Bass humbuckers and an active, 18V preamp complete with 3-band EQ controls. Thomas’ own has been spruced up with some custom tape jobs, too. All of MonoNeon's connections are handled by Sorry Cables.
Fade to Black
MonoNeon’s Ampeg SVT stack isn’t a choice of passion. “That’s what they had for me, so I just plugged in,” he says. “That’s what I have on my rider. As long as it has good headroom and the cones don’t break up, I’m cool.”
Box Art
MonoNeon’s bass isn’t the only piece of kit treated to custom color jobs. Almost all of his stomps have been zhuzhed up with his eye-popping palette.
Thomas had used a pitch-shifting DigiTech Whammy for a while, but after working with Paisley Park royalty, the pedal became a bigger part of his playing. “When I started playing with Prince, he put the Whammy on my pedalboard,” Thomas explains. “After he passed, I realized how special that moment was.”
Alongside the Whammy, MonoNeon runs a Fairfield Circuitry Randy’s Revenge (for any time he wants to “feel weird”), a literal Fart Pedal (in case the ring mod isn’t weird enough, we guess), and a JAM Pedals Red Muck covers fuzz and dirt needs. A CIOKS SOL powers the whole affair.
