It goes without saying that curiosity is essential for any artist. For guitarists, it’s often curiosity that leads us to spend our time noodling around on our instruments, recording songs, starting bands, searching far and wide for the perfect piece of gear, and it’s probably the thing that led us to pick up our instruments in the first place.
Talking to Marisa Anderson, it becomes quite clear that her music has been the result of her own curious nature since day one. At 10, she exchanged her recorder lessons for classical guitar lessons in her hometown of Sonoma, California. After eight years of study, Anderson was ready to move on and discover more creative ways around the instrument and dropped out of an undergraduate classical guitar program. She explains, “When you get into a more involved classical guitar piece, it does the same thing as a crossword puzzle. It taps into something that I like, but at a certain point the payoff wasn’t enough. I was meeting all these people who were jamming on Neil Young songs and stuff like that, and I was like, ‘How do you do that? How do you just play a solo in the middle of a song?’ I had no idea how to do that. So I dropped out after a year and started pursuing my own thing.”
After a couple years of lessons with Bay Area guitarist Nina Gerber, Anderson gained what she calls a “three-dimensional understanding of the guitar neck” for improvisation, and she began making her way through a string of bands. From country groups to a circus band to an open-minded jazz band and much more, Anderson has had a broad range of first-hand musical experiences—all of which seem to come through in some form throughout her solo work. To put it another way, listening to Anderson’s albums, it’s clear that she has the history of guitar music in her fingertips.
Anderson’s most recent effort is this year’s The Quickening, an improvised duo album with drummer Jim White, best known for his work with Dirty Three as well as a veteran of many high-level collaborations with artists from Jim O’Rourke to PJ Harvey to Marianne Faithfull. The Quickening documents the first recorded improvisations between Anderson and White, who decided to work together after Anderson toured as an opening act for Xylouris White, the drummer’s band with Cretan laouto player and singer, George Xylouris. Anderson explained the genesis of her collaboration with White as such: “It was very informal, based on friendship and a mutual admiration for each other’s style of playing and a musical curiosity: If I play with Jim White, what comes out in my playing?” The result is a remarkable conversation between two master instrumentalists exploring and creating a shared musical language.
In a time when live, improvised musical collaborations are rarer than ever, The Quickening is truly a treasure, so we called Anderson at her home in Portland, Oregon, to discuss this album as well as her thoughts on improvisation, alternate tunings, and lots more.
In 2015, you were touring as an opener for Xylouris White. How did the idea of forming a duo with Jim White arise?
We just became friends and said that it would be fun to play together someday, as you do. The tour was probably three weeks long, in a van—George, Jim, and I and a driver—so we got to know each other pretty well and hit it off. After that tour, we just stayed in touch, and “someday” became a little more tangible and it happened.
Was there anything new that you found did come out in your playing with Jim?
I played much more texturally, which really surprised me because he’s such a textural drummer. I kind of expected that I would veer in a different direction.
Yeah, Jim has such a good way of using the frequency range of the drums to great effect.
One thing that Jim and I geek out on is that we both love technique, and how making a slight adjustment to your technique can open up a whole new world of sound. He’s a master of that.
Were there any ways that you played with a different technique on this album?
There are a couple songs, and it goes back to that textural thing, where I was trying to play a chord that would put the guitar in unison or fifths as much as it possibly could be and get this amorphous wall of some tonality that you can’t tell what it is. Stuff like that—weird, geeky, theory tricks just to steer away from scale or even melody. Obviously there’s some melodic pieces as well, but [I was] trying to figure out how to fill space in a similar way that he does.
You recorded in two sessions and hadn’t played together before or between. Have you played since?
We had the two recording sessions, and afterwards we played a show in Portland and a show in Chicago. This year we were going to play a bunch of shows and tour around. Hopefully, it’ll happen in the future.
What guitars did you use on The Quickening?
I was a little bit limited, because we recorded [the second session] in Mexico, so I couldn’t bring everything that I would normally bring. The main guitar on that is a Gibson ES-339, a newer one, and I have a handmade nylon-string guitar by Ramos-Castillo.
I can’t remember which guitars I had for the first session we did, which was in Portland. When I hear one of the songs, I hear a Bigsby, which means I was using this weird Gretsch that I got at a pawnshop years ago, which is basically not a Gretsch anymore. It’s some kind of ’50 Anniversary model, semi-hollow, thin with humbuckers installed in it—the tone controls don’t work on it anymore. It was a pawnshop mutt. I do often hold the body and shake the neck, so it could be me doing that but I feel like there’s one song where it could be that Gretsch.
While this album is improvised, it’s hard for me to tell how much of your previous albums are improvised. They all seem to have their own approach to the material.
Some of them are and some of them aren’t. The first two guitar records, The Golden Hour [2011] and Mercury [2013], are improvised with maybe one exception on Mercury. Obviously, for Traditional and Public Domain Songs [2017], I didn’t write the songs. They exist. Into the Light [2016] was fairly improvised, but it was multi-tracked, so at a certain point you’re committing to a thing that already exists. I think that record was me just trying to teach myself to play pedal steel a bit better. It was the first time that I multi-tracked. I never charted anything, it was all happening spontaneously, and the same with [2018’s] Cloud Corner.
TIDBIT: Marisa Anderson and Jim White entirely improvised their new album in two sessions—in Portland, Oregon, and in Mexico. “The songs start off much more improvised than they become,” Anderson says. “If they get adapted into a performance version, I tend towards keeping those performance versions more structured.”
In light of your background with classical guitar and improvisation, do you have any thoughts about why improvisation is important to you?
More than important, it’s natural. It doesn’t come natural to me to commit to the same thing every time. That just feels like having a boss. When I’m performing, I’m playing songs that are based on the songs on the record—at a certain point they do take a form and I do play to that form. I’m free to do it or not do it as I wish to. Most of my stuff is built with some launchpads in it, so if on any night I’m like, “I’m gonna go over here for a little while,” it’s great to do that.
The songs start off much more improvised than they become. If they get adapted into a performance version, I tend towards keeping those performance versions more structured, for sure. I like improvising in front of people, but not solo. That requires collaboration for me. I’ve done it solo and that’s how I know that I don’t think it makes my best show, and I want to put on a good show. We all listen to records and are like, “I like that song,” so it’s nice to get in front of an audience and be like, “Here’s that thing you like.” Maybe it’s a little different than what it sounds like on the record, but I think that’s awesome, and, personally, I would prefer that as a listener.
Recording, for me, is a very in-the-moment, heartfelt, spontaneous, exciting process, and if I go into that process already knowing exactly what I’m going to do, that just takes the fun out of it. I’m making music that feels fun and that’s what I like to do—make it up as I go. After this many years of doing it, I feel like I apply some critical thought to my technique and to my compositional chops, so it’s not just free jamming.
I never have something in my head that I think it’s supposed to sound like. I think the process of recording is the process of revealing what it does sound like.
Since you grew up playing classical guitar, what got you into playing electric?
It’s about sustain—that’s the main thing to me with the electric guitar. The notes ring out for so much longer, and that provides all these sonic possibilities.
At some point probably 10 years ago, in my solo work, I left standard tuning and pretty much haven’t been back. I mostly play in open D or D minor, and part of that is so I can really take advantage of drone strings and sustain. I really try to not play the tuning and play songs, so you might listen and not realize I’m not in standard. That’s the goal that I have for sure.
This mongrel Gretsch Anniversary model with a Bigsby vibrato is one of Marisa Anderson’s main guitars. She also achieves vibrato by shaking the neck of this pawnshop find. Photo by Klaas Guchelaar
Is that when you first started exploring open tunings, or you gave up standard all together?
That’s when I gave up standard tuning. When I play with other people—if I’m in an ensemble situation or someone wants me to play on their thing —I’ll play in standard because it’s just easier and quicker. That’s what I’m educated in and other people can read as well. But in my own work, I pretty much don’t play in standard.
What inspires you the most about a tuning? What is it about open D and D minor that speak to you?
I like that it’s modal. I feel like because I play exclusively in those tunings, and one string is a half-step away from each other, I can lump them together. I’ve developed my own system of thinking about them, and they’re not an open tuning for me anymore—if that makes sense. It’s not that I’m experimenting with different tunings. That’s the one that works for me and that’s what I play in. I can play chords, I can play scales, I know the tuning in the same way that someone might know standard, and I know standard tuning, too.
If you were to spend 10 years in any tuning—DADGAD or open G—you would find your voice in it. For me, when I go into DADGAD it’s fun, but I sound like I’m playing British, and when I go into open G, I just can’t get away from hearing Keith Richards, because I just haven’t spent the time in it. I haven’t made those tunings mine. I can be a tourist in them and have fun and make pleasant music, but it’s not home.
You record most of your stuff at home—obviously not The Quickening, as we discussed. What’s your recording setup at home?
It’s super simple. I usually run two amps, three mics. I’ll do a room mic and a close mic on each amp. It’s usually a Princeton Reverb set to have a lot of tremolo, a lot of reverb, very high-end shimmery. Then I have another amp, usually a Swart amp—a custom AST Mk II HP that I like a lot—and I set that with a clean, solid tone. Then a room mic that blends the two and adds a little room body to it. That way, when I record, I’m not too worried about picking an exact tone. Both are available later.
I don’t have a lot of effects. I have a clean boost and sometimes I’ll throw a little reverb in, because I like reverb on reverb. In general, there’s basically no effects and I just try and make really good sounds with the equipment and sort it out in the mix.
What kind of mics do you use?
I have an SM57 on the Princeton and a little Oktava on the Swart cabinet, which is not a Swart, just some 2x12 with Celestions in it. For the room mic, I just got this Mojave large diaphragm condenser and I love it. If I’m recording on nylon-string guitar or acoustic guitar, I’ll combine the Oktava and the Mojave, and I think that works really well. All of those mics are under $500. Keep it simple.
You have to shop around. I’ve bought mics and used them and realized, “I don’t like this mic,” and had to wait around till I had a chance to buy another one. It’s a process of discovery, and everyone has their own taste and their own sound. I definitely have had mics that I’ve had to use because those are the mics I had that I didn’t really like, but I like my setup right now.
Guitars
Custom S-style
Custom T-style
1930s Dobro
1940s Gibson ES-125
2015 Gibson ES-339
Modified 1950s Gretsch Anniversary Model
Ramos-Castillo custom nylon string
Amps
’70s Fender Princeton Reverb
Swart Custom AST Mk II HP
2x12 cabinet with Celestions
Effects
Dunlop EP101 Echoplex Preamp
Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail
Strings and Picks
Various Ernie Ball and D’Addario styles and gauges
What kind of room are you recording in?
It’s kind of a long, rectangular-shaped room with a ceiling that’s not flat. I don’t know how to describe the shape, but it has all these angles. It’s kind of a large room.
With a simple setup, every element really matters. What kind of strings are you using?
As a person who plays fingerstyle on an electric guitar, I will say … you know how some sets have heavy bass/light treble? What works is to go opposite that and go light bass/heavy treble, because the thumb is really strong. It doesn’t need more. The thumb can be overwhelming in fingerstyle playing, so having strings that are bigger is not necessarily a thing. Often, I’ll switch the gauges to accommodate a richer treble sound to make up for the thumb-thumping sound. My gauge range is between .010, .011, and .012—mixing from those packs.
So it’s the treble side of a pack of .012s and the bass side of a pack of .010s?
Yeah.
How about for nylon string?
As a kid, I liked Augustines. That guitar, right now, has half a set of Ernie Balls in the bass and half a set of D’Addarios in the treble, and I think I’m going to switch back to D’Addarios in the bass, but maybe a different gauge!
You notice a difference between the bass and treble in different brands?
Yeah, for sure.
Your pedal setup is very simple and I get the sense that all the sound is really coming from your hands and the amp.
I love to play with different stuff, but it goes back to what we were talking about with tunings. You can play the tuning or you can play the tune. Pedals are kind of similar to me, where I would just rather play guitar. In the amount of time allotted to me to make music, I feel better when I’m playing guitar than when I’m manipulating sound through pedals. Not to say there’s not super cool shit you can do, and some of it I wish I could do, but I don’t resonate there. If someone is doing something with a pedal or a whole set of pedals, whatever sound someone is making, I want to feel and hear that sound completely, and I want to replicate what that feels like without using the pedal. That’s a challenge that I enjoy.
Especially coming from playing classical, where you learn so much very subtle right-hand technique. I feel like that gets lost when you start putting all these things in the signal chain. The real subtleties of dynamics or of certain techniques—which is just how I grew up playing and what I do—can get lost because you’re obscuring the attack or you’re obscuring the decay or you’re obscuring the harmonic frequencies or enhancing them or whatever. It becomes a sound that is manipulated after it’s being made, rather than a sound that’s just been made. I’m not saying one is better than the other, because everyone should do their thing.
Marisa Anderson performs in the perfect rustic setting for her song “Cloud Corner,” which serves as a great introduction to her melodic and rhythmic style. It’s easy to observe Anderson’s skillful approach to right-hand technique as she masterfully guides the song’s dynamics, building up in the middle of the piece and bringing it down for a gentle landing while maintaining her warm, clear sound.
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.”
YouTube
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.”
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.