
During a season of adversity, the psychedelic troubadour made his new album, Topaz, entirely on his own, playing all the instruments and teaching himself the ins and outs of recording in his Texas studio.
Israel Nash has crafted a life many artists would do almost anything for, from his successful career to his 15-acre Texas homestead and creative space. But the pointed lyrics on songs like "Pressure," from his new album Topaz, reveal his struggles.
Foremost, perhaps, is the inability to come together and create with other musicians, and to commune with audiences, due to the pandemic. "It's been hard to be disconnected from what's a part of my identity," Nash says. "Performance is something I deeply appreciate. It's human, and it connects people that would never be connected. I mean, when you're in a room of people at a rock show, those are people that will never be assembled in that room again."
That frustration is shared by millions around the world, of course. But just when Nash began seeing glimmers of hope for live music's return, he was hit with another setback. A very un-Texas arctic winter devastated his region, forcing him and his familyāwhom he'd relocated from New York City to rural Dripping Springs a decade agoāto overcome obstacles yet again.
Israel Nash - "Southern Coasts" (Official Video)
"A week ago, I had to learn how to fix our water pump that froze and exploded," he says. "Living out here, you just start buying tools, start getting things, and start doing some things yourself because you can't get anyone out there when you need it."
That self-relianceāNash's ability to adapt and growāinforms every note on Topaz, the first fully self-written, recorded, and produced album of his career. Nash's career started in New York City, when his original mix of psychedelic roots music springboarded from hip clubs like the Living Room and Rockwood Music Hall to catch ears around the world.
But even as his international success grew, the Missouri native was yearning for the slower lifestyle of his youth as well as a place to let his muse run wild.
"The guitar just doesn't feel right until it's up to about 4 on my Fender Bassman. No pedals. Just a hollow-body Gretsch."
"I was just drawn to the country and to live in a place that [my family] could build our own world," Nash says. "I needed to create a space that allows for anything to happen and allows those good things to happen."
The move to Dripping Springs, known as the "Gateway to Hill Country," really paid off. Settling on a 15-acre ranch about 30 minutes west of Austin, Nash found his forever home. He also slowly crafted an HQ for all of his creative endeavors, including hosting an annual music festival called From the Hills with Love. But most importantly, the ranch is where he built his studio, Plum Creek Sound.
Nash sees it as balancing the yin and yang of a musician's life. "You read about how many of our musical heroes had a little country space or home in the country. But music, except for this year, is also such a social thing. I love that. It keeps me alive! I really need that duality."
TIDBIT: Topaz is Israel Nash's sixth studio release, but it's his first entirely self-made album. It was recorded at Nash's own studio, Plum Creek Sound, located on his 15-acre homestead in the gateway to Hill Country, Dripping Springs, Texas. The album was co-produced by fellow Texan Adrian Quesada of the Grammy-nominated Black Pumas.
All of that, along with some urging by his wife, coalesced into Topaz. "Sometimes it takes someone outside of the business to see some of the absurdities of things," Nash says. "My wife saw just how much effort was put into other albums. So she basically encouraged me, saying, 'Hey, you have the studio. Do something different!'"
With that, work on Topaz began. Though it's Nash's first true solo album, it's actually the third album recorded in Plum Creek Sound. His original intent for the studio was to make albums the way he always had. He'd bring in his engineer, have his band join him for a couple of weeks, and hammer it out. But, without realizing it, he began to learn and absorb the recording process. The studio was becoming another instrument to play.
"I'd never thought that stuff that I would record by myself, without the blessing of an engineer, could be a professional, industry-standard album," says Nash. "But I found that the studio and the control room are just like a big guitar pedal. You got things going in and things going out. And you learn how to use it over time."
This realization opened the songwriting floodgates for Nash. Other than help from co-producer Adrian Quesada and some guest musicians, he could now create an unfiltered expression of the music swirling around his head. Nash didn't have to worry about album cycles, other musicians' schedules, or the business. If he heard something in his head, he was free to figure out how to get it to tape.
Israel Nash's Gear
Guitars
- Gretsch White Falcon
- Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster with White Falcon-style appointments and Clapton circuitry
- Les Paul Studio
- Gibson J-200
- Epiphone J-200 for Nashville tuning
Amps
- Fender Deluxe custom clone, made by bandmate Eric Swanson
- Fender '59 Bassman reissue
Effects
- Big Ear n.y.c. Frank Boost
- Roland RE-20 Space Echo
- Electro-Harmonix MEL9
- Vintage A/DA Flanger
- Maestro Rhythm King drum machine
- Jim Dunlop Volume Pedal
- Big Ear Pedals Elle reverb
- Ernie Ball Cobalt (.011 and .012 sets, for electric)
- Ernie Ball Everlast custom sets (.013, .017, .026, .035, .045, .056)
- Jim Dunlop .50 mm
- Jim Dunlop heavy brass slide or glass bottle
"On 'Closer,' I played everything except for the pedal steel," Nash says of Topaz's second song. "I played every instrument at some point on the whole record: piano, lead guitar solos, almost all the harmonies. Except for the ooh ooh, and shalala harmonies, it was just by myself, over time.
"It felt beautifully simple," he says. "I was growing with the space, the environment, and the resources I had. It gave me empowerment, just like the plumbing. That was an unknown. I didn't ever expect that I would do emergency plumbing out of necessity [laughs]."
Nash didn't waste his new-found empowerment. From Sam Cooke-style soul to the fuzzed-out melody driving "Down in the Country," Topaz feels remarkably personal and complete, even while paying tribute to his favorite bands from the 1970s. And it does so while maintaining his trademark troubadour-from-outer-space sound.
"Music is about creating an experience," says Nash. "Albums are like movies for the ears. And songs are like chapters in a book. You shouldn't get everything in one song. You get it in the collection of them. The collection is the experience."
Israel Nash thrives on connecting with live audiences. "Music, except for this year, is also such a social thing," he says. "I love that. It keeps me alive!"
Photo by Matt Condon
Nash's opinion is no doubt influenced by the bands from his favorite decade in music. Influences like Pink Floydāwhich he lovingly refers to as "The Floyd"āpervade the album. "The Floyd is the epitome of headphone records. You put on an album and get locked in," Nash says. "And maybe, on 'Dividing Lines,' someone will hear more of the soul or funk element. But by the end, it's full-on Floyd! There's a massive cacophony of stuff and guitar solos. The Stones did that, too."
Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones DNA doesn't stop there. Nash also makes heavy use of pedal steel and slide guitar throughout Topaz. The way he sees it, it's a key to finding his transcendental sound.
"There's just something so emotional about that instrument," says Nash. "It's like church in a box. I mean, you could just listen to Eric [Swanson, Nash's bandmate] play pedal steel by itself and feel you saw the face of God."
With such a high view of the instrument, it's no surprise that it's often front and center in Nash's music. But keeping with Topaz's DIY ethic, much of the slide you hear on the record is actually Nash running his trusty Gretsch White Falcon through a wash of delay.
"Guitar is pretty much always where a song starts," Nash says. "It's just such a beautiful instrument to find a melody and to find a rhythm. It's a powerful place to start. That's where you write a song. The kick-drum pattern usually comes from a strumming pattern.""When you're in a room of people at a rock show, those are people that will never be assembled in that room again."
From there, Nash begins to build. The first step is marrying his acoustic strumming with a cranked electric. Each tone is carefully crafted for the song at hand, but emanates from a surprisingly small collection of guitars and, usually, one very loud amp.
"Sometimes I like to pick up an electric guitar and just have it fucking cranked," he says. "The guitar just doesn't feel right until it's up to about 4 on my Fender Bassman. No pedals. Just a hollowbody Gretsch. That Gretsch White Falcon is as important to me as my acoustic."
Nash's White Falcon is ever-present. It's also the main guitar you'll see slung around his shoulders onstage. He loves it so much that when the Fender Custom Shop built Nash a one-off Stratocaster, it was decked out in a white body, gold inlays, and gold hardware. Add in a Les Paul Studio for most of his leads, and that's all he needed to craft Topaz's electric soundscapes.
Nash's other main guitar is his time-tested Gibson J-200 acoustic which lays the rhythmic foundation for nearly every song on Topaz. But unlike the White Falcon, the J-200 is generally only used in the studio.
"It's been all over the world," says Nash. "But live, it's only electric. I might have an acoustic and do a song or two. But I just can't get into it on a stage without the electric. I want to feel it in my feet."
"Guitar is pretty much always where a song starts," says Israel Nash. His Gretsch White Falcon is his live companion, as seen here in his performance at the 2018 Hopscotch Music Festival.
Photo by Matt Condon
Though it features Nash's tried-and-true stable of guitars, Topaz broke with previous albums in the amp department. A custom, handwired Fender Deluxe clone (built by Eric Swanson) converted Nash into a bona fide small-amp guy.
"I love big amps! That's what I want onstage," Nash exclaimed. "For years, I wanted only that. But when you start getting into smaller amps, you find the control and the tone that you can get out of them are a pretty big deal."
It was a big enough deal that Swanson's Deluxe clone was the only amp used on Topaz. And whether plugging straight into his Neve console for a Beatles-esque fuzz or pushing his low-gain Big Ear Frank Boost pedal to sound like a trombone, everything else was up to experimentation.
"Lately, I like running two delays together for a nice ambient thing," Nash says. "My favorite has got to be the [Roland] Space Echo. I love the analog stuff. I like to use that also on vocals, on tons of stuff. Just patch it through anything."
Nash's sonic adventures also translate to live performance. Watch his solo YouTube delivery of "Canyonheart" and you'll hear beautiful, ethereal textures not normally associated with acoustic solo acts.YouTube It
With a little creative guitar signal routing, Nash turns a solo acoustic performance of his song "Canyonheart" into an ambient and emotional journey.
"I'm getting tired of just being a guy with an acoustic guitar," Nash explains. "So I split the guitar's signal with an ABY pedal and ran into the Electro-Harmonix MEL9 pedal. I also had a DI and a mic on the acoustic. I used a volume pedal before the MEL9, so I could make little swells and control it."
This sort of sonic experimentation makes it clear that Nash puts the song and the experience first, and finds passion in the process of creation.
"I always looked at myself as a songwriter first. It was one of those things in my whole life that just felt like it was the only option," he says. "Happiness, being creative, using my talents, making a livingāall those things come down to making songs and albums."
Though the past year has been a struggle for everyone, Topaz is what can happen when an artist turns adversity and setbacks into art. But getting the album out into the world is only the first step for Nash. Now, it's about continuing to create and watching his music bring people together.
"I'm just starting to see a world that'll maybe look a little more familiar than it has been," he shares. "And the passions that inspired me and keep growing as I get older are to have fans that want to hear this and put it in their lives. I've had a fan that started playing guitar because he was inspired. Now, he and his dad play guitar every Thursday on the porch. It's beautiful. It's from those songs. They start so private and become collective, and I like that a lot. I like being a part of something."- Gretsch G6636TSL Silver Falcon: The Premier Guitar Review ... āŗ
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The country virtuoso closes out this season of Wong Notes with a fascinating, career-spanning interview.
Weāve saved one of the best for last: Brad Paisley.The celebrated shredder and seasoned fisherman joins host Cory Wong for one of this seasonās most interesting episodes. Paisley talks his earliest guitar-playing influences, which came from his grandfatherās love of country music, and his first days in Nashvilleāas a student at Belmont University, studying the music industry.
The behind-the-curtain knowledge he picked up at Belmont made him a good match for industry suits trying to force bad contracts on him.
Wong and Paisley swap notes on fishing and a mutual love of PhishāPaisley envies the jam-band scene, which he thinks has more leeway in live contexts than country. And with a new signature FenderĀ Telecaster hitting the market in a rare blue paisley finish, Paisley discusses his iconic namesake patternāwhich some might describe as āhippie pukeāāand its surprising origin with Elvisā guitarist James Burton.
Plus, hear how Paisley assembled his rig over the years, the state of shredding on mainstream radio, when it might be good to hallucinogenic drugs in a set, and the only negative thing about country-music audiences.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, heās championed sustainability and environmental causesāand he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, itās clear that the preservation of the Earthās forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. Youāll know just how big of a statement that is if youāve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest youāll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesnāt keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories heās collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relicāand stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levinās Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Marylandāhe discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how heās putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relicās cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the storeās house-specād Bedell parlors while we chatted.
āThe story of this guitar is the story of the world,ā Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, āIām gonna make up the story,ā Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregonās Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization processāin which the building team fine-tunes each instrumentās voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysisāand Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitarās warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acousticsāand of any Bedell Iāve had the pleasure to playādelivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, thatās what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. āWe have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,ā Bedell effused. āThere are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but thereās nobody on a production level.ā And he wants to spread that gospel.
āWe want to reach people who really want something special,ā he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores heās visited, āwho have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.ā
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
Iāve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitarāI still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEKād. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
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