Even at 79, the folk and bluegrass legend feels compelled to make his flattop ring and write songs that speak truth to power.
On Norman Blake’s new album, Brushwood: Songs & Stories, the acoustic music legend covers a lot of ground. Over the course of 17 songs and two spoken-word tracks, he shines a light on fascinating lesser-known historical figures, empathizes with the plight of the poor and downtrodden, provides some pointed and timely critique of our current political climate, and takes on Wall Street and the NRA. And as always in the world of Norman Blake, there are train songs.
But what may be Brushwood’s greatest accomplishment is evident within the first 23 seconds of the album, before Blake has uttered a single word. He fingerpicks an elegant intro to the opening track, “The Countess Lola Montez,” and at the 13-second mark, he effortlessly slurs and sweeps through the sort of split-second flurry of notes that makes aspiring guitarists hit rewind countless times, and leaves transcribers scratching their heads as they struggle to notate it. It’s a beautiful musical embellishment by any measure, but what’s most astounding about it—and the album as a whole—is that Blake was 78 years old when he recorded it. He turned 79 on March 10.
Never mind that over the past few years he’s been a more prolific songwriter than at any time in his six-decades-plus-long career. Between Brushwood, released in January, and Wood, Wire & Words, released in early 2015, Blake has recorded 29 new songs that he wrote or cowrote with his wife and longtime collaborator Nancy Blake. This is all material he wrote after suffering a transient ischemic attack (often referred to as a mini-stroke) in 2012 at age 74. In fact, Blake credits that medical emergency with lighting a fire under him and providing a sense of creative urgency.
Not that Norman Blake has anything left to prove. By the late 1970s, he’d already garnered what most would consider a lifetime’s worth of laurels. He’d been a fixture in Johnny Cash’s band for a decade. He’d released several acclaimed albums of his own—among them Back Home in Sulphur Springs, The Fields of November, and Whiskey Before Breakfast. He’d left his mark on several of the most significant musical touchstones in the history of American roots and popular music: Bob Dylan’s revelatory Nashville Skyline, John Hartford’s groundbreaking Aereo-Plain, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s roots-music masterpiece Will the Circle Be Unbroken. And he’d already amassed plenty of other credits, recording with Tut Taylor, Doc and Merle Watson, Earl Scruggs, Joan Baez, and Kris Kristofferson.
Yet Blake has never shown much interest in slowing down. He’s now recorded about three dozen albums, including a couple of acclaimed duet projects with bluegrass icon Tony Rice. He played on Bill Monroe’s 1981 album Master of Bluegrass. And T Bone Burnett, a huge fan of Blake’s, called on him to play on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, including a stirring instrumental version of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.” Burnett also tapped Blake for the Cold Mountain, Walk the Line, and Inside Llewyn Davis soundtracks.
Despite his storied career, Blake has never quite received the recognition many of his peers have. “Doc [Watson] was a revelation,” says renowned bluegrass multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien. “He was a real great entry into bluegrass because it was just easy access, the sound of it, his voice and everything. Norman was a little more a connoisseur’s version of that. The record Back Home in Sulphur Springs was kind of mind-blowing. It wasn’t bluegrass, it wasn’t old-timey. It was very old-sounding music, but it just had this ... it was very artful. He always had a real integrity with that. Just a sense of who he was, and his place in time. He was really strutting his stuff back in those days.”
Bluegrass guitar giant Bryan Sutton first became aware of Blake through the duet records with Tony Rice. “My initial response to Norman wasn’t as deep as it is now,” Sutton says. “I was a teenager and was a little more blown away with the fireworks of Tony Rice. But as I’ve grown more into a songwriter and a big-picture kind of guy, and as I got more into the stuff that Norman did in the early days with John Hartford, that just opened up this whole other level of appreciation and recognition of how his musicianship ultimately wins.”
One thing that stands out on Brushwood is the contrast between the old-time music and the very current subject matter of many of the songs. It’s not often you hear such traditional-sounding acoustic music that references social media, Wall Street, the Koch brothers, and climate change. But Blake clearly feels compelled to sound the alarm, and nowhere is this more evident than on “The Truth Will Stand (When This World’s on Fire).” After calling out “fascist politicians and war profiteers,” Blake sums up the state of our nation simply and effectively: “Now wealth and power are ruling our nation/the billionaire brothers and the blood-stained NRA.”
Other songs that address similar issues include “High Rollers,” which takes a hard look at the world of the super-rich; “The Target Shooter,” a direct rebuke of the NRA and the culture of gun obsession; and “How the Weary World Wears Away,” one of the album’s highlights, in which Blake takes aim at greedy developers, climate-change deniers, and the like.
There’s plenty of lighter fare too. On “Bunk Johnson (Trumpet Man),” Blake shares the tale of a relatively obscure but colorful character from the early days of New Orleans jazz, over a buoyant ragtime groove. “Cripple Charlie Clark” is a moving recollection of a musician Blake played with when he was “just a shirt-tailed boy.”
“Waitin’ for the Mail and Social Security” may be the most stirring song on Brushwood. Blake ties together many of his passions—storytelling, trains, old-time melodies, giving voice to those who’ve been crushed under the wheels of progress—as he paints a vivid portrait of an elderly man marking time and reminiscing about what was once a thriving railroad town.
Though Blake’s guitar work shows few signs of age, his singing voice is clearly that of a man in his 70s. But that only makes the music more affecting, and it’s appropriate, since one of the defining aspects of Blake’s career has been his unrelenting dedication to being honest, real, and true to the moment, while refusing to follow trends or succumb to commercial considerations. In fact, all his Brushwood performances were recorded in one take, with Blake singing and playing guitar at the same time. He did some violin overdubs, and his wife Nancy added some lovely backing vocals on several tunes.
Premier Guitar recently spoke with Blake, who was at his home in Rising Fawn, Georgia. He discussed the new album, the state of the nation, and 12-fret guitars (instruments with necks that join the body at the 12th, rather than the 14th fret). He also shared the surprising saga of his experience recording Will the Circle Be Unbroken.
For your most recent two albums, you wrote 29 songs and two spoken-word pieces. You are in your late 70s now. Where did that burst of creativity and inspiration come from?
We spent a lot of time on the road playing, my wife Nancy and I. There was less time to feel creative. We were just working too hard.
We stopped touring in 2007. We’re getting older and everything, and wanted to come home. We’ve always had a place here on the farm. I suffered a little medical thing there about four-and-a-half years ago. After that, it just turned out that way, that I started writing all that stuff. I’d written, of course, earlier on in my career. I guess I just opened in that direction when I had less to do as far as roadwork and all that. And maybe the medical emergency kind of cleared my head into a different direction.
Were there other periods in your career when you had been that prolific as a writer?
No, I don’t think I ever wrote as much in one spurt as I did in the last two or three years.
Obviously, these songs were all written before the election, but they seem even more relevant now. I hear “High Rollers” and I think of our current president.
You can speak freely. You’re not going to offend me. There’s nobody that’s more against him than I am. You’re talking to the choir here.
“The Truth Will Stand” seems to address today’s political situation.
My wife and I are both politically aware, and we’re Democrats, what they used to call “yellow dog Democrats”—we would vote for a yellow dog before we’d vote for a Republican. I’m totally against what has happened. My wife and I both think it’s the worst thing that’s happened to this country in quite a long time. I’m appalled by it. We don’t have enough time. The phone line would burn up before I said everything I wanted to say about it.
For Brushwood: Songs & Stories, Norman Blake took a time-honored approach to capturing his voice and guitar. “I sang all that stuff in one take. I’ve always felt the old bluesmen had the right approach to that. You sing off the guitar, and you play off the singing.” Photo by Christi Carroll
In that song, and “How the Weary World Wears Away,” I sense almost a resignation that humans are going to screw this world up and we just need to make the best of things while we can. Do you feel that’s accurate? Do you have hope for the future?
I always have hope for the future. I am an optimist that things have to get better. I think we were going in a much better direction. It has to get better—the old saying, “This too shall pass.” But it’s a dark time, definitely a dark moment in our history. I hope I live long enough to see it pass. That’s for sure.
Norman Blake’s Gear
Guitars
• 1907 Maurer
• 1928 Martin 00-45
• 1933 Gibson L-Century
• 1937 Gibson J-35
• 1938 Martin 000-42
• 1941 Martin 000-21
• 1960s Yamaha FG-160
• 2004 Martin 000-28B Norman Blake Signature Model
Strings and Picks
Blake typically doesn’t use standard string sets, preferring to mix and match gauges depending on the guitar, situation, and his mood. And he sometimes uses electric strings on acoustic guitars. Though his choice of gauges can vary, he favors .012, .015, .024, .032, .042, and .054 or .056 for strings 1-6. His three main sets are GHS White Bronze, GHS Boomers Dynamite Alloy (electric), and Martin Retro.
He also uses the back edge of his 1.5 mm D’Andrea Pro Plec Teardrop picks, rather than their point, although sometimes he uses a triangle pick and rounds off a corner to make it more like a teardrop’s back area.
I notice trains figure prominently in a lot of your songs, whether it’s “The Fate of Oliver Curtis Perry,” “The Wreck of the Western & Atlantic,” or the story “The Lantern Thru the Fog.” Why is that?
I was raised way down in the sticks here, in Dade County, Georgia, right next to the Alabama line. We had nothing but dirt roads where we lived, and the railroad. We lived very close to the railroad tracks, the Southern Railroad. The trains were the big thing. When I was a child, 22 of them a day ran through here, all steam. We didn’t have a lot of excitement, so the trains figured pretty heavy in it. It’s something I treasure very dearly, those memories.
Is “Cripple Charlie Clark” based on a real person?
Yeah. He had an influence on me. And the first time I ever saw him he was sitting under a tree at the Baptist church, as it says in the song. He was crippled. He had to lean back in a straight chair and stretch his feet out, and he laid the guitar on his knee, the butt-end of the guitar, and the peghead went over his left shoulder, and he strummed it with his right hand, and noted in the usual way with his left hand. He’d make runs up and down the neck, even with his knuckles—he was really messed up physically. He had a sound, and he sang gospel songs.
Did you do some shows with him?
Yeah, and he’d give me money. I was just a kid. I remember one time, I had an old Gibson guitar, a J-45 or something. I had a silver dollar stuck up between the tuning keys on the front of the peghead, just under the strings. We were going to play at a church and he says, “You take that silver dollar off of there. They see that, they won’t give us any money.”
I noticed you included a couple of ragtime instrumentals on the album.
Yeah, I like rags. I’ve gotten to where I play them without any picks. You can do so much more [with your fingertips] than you can with fingerpicks, too.
I’m not using any picks, just bare fingers.
Are you using your nails at all, or just skin?
Mostly the skin. When I’m flatpicking, I use my nails on two fingers to pull harmony notes. When I’m fingerpicking, I suppose I may be getting a little off of the nails, but not like a classical guitar player would.
When recording Brushwood, did you sing and play guitar at the same time?
Yes, and I sang all that stuff in one take. If you’re gonna perform with just a guitar, I’ve always felt the old bluesmen had the right approach to that. You sing off the guitar, and you play off the singing. It all gets to be one thing.
You’re a big fan of 12-fret guitars. Why?
To me they have a more open tone with a little more separation between the strings. I’ve always been kind of clumsy, and a wider neck can be advantageous on the fretboard. It can be not advantageous as far as reaching around the neck.
The 12-fret guitar joins the body at the octave, and I’ve always maintained, though I’ve never heard anyone else say it, that helps create harmonic things. When you have two more frets sticking out there, you haven’t got that octave right on the body. I think there’s some kind of juju that happens when the octave does sit there.
What flatpicks do you use?
I like a 1.5 mm [D’Andrea] Pro Plec. And I use Dunlop some. Sometimes I use the teardrop, and sometimes I use the three-cornered ones. For those, I usually round off a corner. I use the rounded edge of a teardrop pick more than I do its point, but you don’t get as much projection on a microphone. I tend to use a sharper pick when playing on microphones than I would use just sitting around.
Why use the rounded edge?
It just moves through the strings a little easier for me, and it’s a warmer sound, too.You do that on a mandolin a lot, use the back edge. I played mandolin too over the years, and you’re always looking for a warmer tone.
What was your experience like working on Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
I was playing with John Hartford and we’d been off on a tour, and we came into Nashville on a red-eye flight, and I was sick. I had the flu. I went to bed at home, and they called wanting me to come over and maybe play some Dobro, and I said, “I just don’t feel like it.” I said, “Get Tut Taylor,” who was playing Dobro with John and me in the band. So Tut went over there. And they weren’t into what he did or something, so they called me again. By that time I’d gotten waked up pretty good, and so I went on over there. It was with Earl Scruggs that they were going to use me.
Bill McEuen was producing it and in the control room, and kept telling me how to play a certain thing. I couldn’t ever please him, either. He kept wanting something that I wasn’t doing. I got pissed off because I had gone over there and I didn’t feel like it anyway. So I threw the earphones up against the control room glass and told him to go to hell. Earl Scruggs stepped in and told Bill—Earl had that real shaky voice—he says, “Well, if you leave him alone, he’ll play something good.”
So that was how it went down. It was not as much of a fun thing at the time. I’m glad for the experience in the long run. It probably didn’t hurt my career at all.
You did some music for O Brother, Where Art Thou? Apparently T Bone Burnett is a big fan of yours.
He’s been very kind, some of the things he’s said about me. And he used me there. I appreciate him. In artistic ways and financially it’s been good. O Brother was a good thing for us.
I almost didn’t do that. I was living down here where I am now, 140 miles from Nashville. I said, “I don’t want to go over there for a session.” I figured it was just a three- or four-hundred-dollar session, like most of them are. And they finally called me back with a real good figure—“We’ll give you so-and-so to come over here and play”—and I said, “Well, I’ll be there.”
Gillian Welch was helping him out a lot at the time, and I think she might have been responsible for me getting as much out of that as I did. Cuts on the record and all that. I don’t know that for a fact, but I think she was definitely in my corner.
YouTube It
In this 1980 performance clip, the Rising Fawn Ensemble—featuring Norman Blake, his wife Nancy on cello, and fiddler James Bryan—performs Blake’s composition “Randall Collins” and the traditional fiddle tune “Done Gone.” As he accompanies his own singing on “Randall Collins,” notice how his strumming hand and arm stay loose and relaxed. But when he picks a fast single-note passage (see 4:30 for an example), his right forearm barely moves and all the action comes from the wrist.
Blake recorded his newest album at Cook Sound Studios on Lookout Mountain in Fort Payne, Alabama, which is also where he cut 2015’s Wood, Wire & Words.
Gathering Brushwood
When it comes to recording Norman Blake, the old saw “less is more” is the guiding principle, says recording engineer David Hammonds, who helmed the controls for Brushwood at Cook Sound Studios on Lookout Mountain in Fort Payne, Alabama. (The facility is owned by Jeff Cook, lead guitarist for country music juggernaut Alabama.) Hammonds has been working with Blake since 2006.
“We used all Neumann microphones,” Hammonds says. “A U 87 on his vocals, and Norman brought some really old mics—two Neumann guitar mics, those pencil [condenser] mics. It was a pretty simple setup. We used a Universal Audio 1176 compressor and some really cool preamps. We just did a little X pattern with the microphones on the guitar and close-miked his vocal with that U 87. You run into phasing issues like that, but it is what it is. It’s a live setup, and it’s as simple as it can get from an engineer’s perspective. You hit the record button and Norman Blake delivers.”
You might think an old-time acoustic music purist like Blake would prefer recording to tape, but that’s not the case. “We didn’t do anything to tape,” Hammonds says. “It all went down to Pro Tools. Norman seems to think that the Pro Tools rig sounds more like LPs than actual tape does. He’s a connoisseur of collecting the old mono LPs and things like that from back in the day. And he likes the sound of Pro Tools as well or better than tape. We do have tape available.”
When describing what it’s like to record such a renowned musical force, Hammonds’ enthusiasm is palpable. “This guy’s not like anybody else,” he says. “I swear to God I watch him play and I’m thinking, how does he get all that to come out of a guitar at the same time?”
This legendary vintage rack unit will inspire you to think about effects with a new perspective.
When guitarists think of effects, we usually jump straight to stompboxes—they’re part of the culture! And besides, footswitches have real benefits when your hands are otherwise occupied. But real-time toggling isn’t always important. In the recording studio, where we’re often crafting sounds for each section of a song individually, there’s little reason to avoid rack gear and its possibilities. Enter the iconic Eventide H3000 (and its massive creative potential).
When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
The luthier’s stash.
There is more to a guitar than just the details.
A guitar is not simply a collection of wood, wire, and metal—it is an act of faith. Faith that a slab of lumber can be coaxed to sing, and that magnets and copper wire can capture something as expansive as human emotion. While it’s comforting to think that tone can be calculated like a tax return, the truth is far messier. A guitar is a living argument between its components—an uneasy alliance of materials and craftsmanship. When it works, it’s glorious.
The Uncooperative Nature of Wood
For me it all starts with the wood. Not just the species, but the piece. Despite what spec sheets and tonewood debates would have you believe, no two boards are the same. One piece of ash might have a bright, airy ring, while another from the same tree might sound like it spent a hard winter in a muddy ditch.
Builders know this, which is why you’ll occasionally catch one tapping on a rough blank, head cocked like a bird listening. They’re not crazy. They’re hunting for a lively, responsive quality that makes the wood feel awake in your hands. But wood is less than half the battle. So many guitarists make the mistake of buying the lumber instead of the luthier.
Pickups: Magnetic Hopes and Dreams
The engine of the guitar, pickups are the part that allegedly defines the electric guitar’s voice. Sure, swapping pickups will alter the tonality, to use a color metaphor, but they can only translate what’s already there, and there’s little percentage in trying to wake the dead. Yet, pickups do matter. A PAF-style might offer more harmonic complexity, or an overwound single-coil may bring some extra snarl, but here’s the thing: Two pickups made to the same specs can still sound different. The wire tension, the winding pattern, or even the temperature on the assembly line that day all add tiny variables that the spec sheet doesn’t mention. Don’t even get me started about the unrepeatability of “hand-scatter winding,” unless you’re a compulsive gambler.
“One piece of ash might have a bright, airy ring, while another from the same tree might sound like it spent a hard winter in a muddy ditch.”
Wires, Caps, and Wishful Thinking
Inside the control cavity, the pots and capacitors await, quietly shaping your tone whether you notice them or not. A potentiometer swap can make your volume taper feel like an on/off switch or smooth as an aged Tennessee whiskey. A capacitor change can make or break the tone control’s usefulness. It’s subtle, but noticeable. The kind of detail that sends people down the rabbit hole of swapping $3 capacitors for $50 “vintage-spec” caps, just to see if they can “feel” the mojo of the 1950s.
Hardware: The Unsung Saboteur
Bridges, nuts, tuners, and tailpieces are occasionally credited for their sonic contributions, but they’re quietly running the show. A steel block reflects and resonates differently than a die-cast zinc or aluminum bridge. Sloppy threads on bridge studs can weigh in, just as plate-style bridges can couple firmly to the body. Tuning machines can influence not just tuning stability, but their weight can alter the way the headstock itself vibrates.
It’s All Connected
Then there’s the neck joint—the place where sustain goes to die. A tight neck pocket allows the energy to transfer efficiently. A sloppy fit? Some credit it for creating the infamous cluck and twang of Fender guitars, so pick your poison. One of the most important specs is scale length. A longer scale not only creates more string tension, it also requires the frets to be further apart. This changes the feel and the sound. A shorter scale seems to diminish bright overtones, accentuating the lows and mids. Scale length has a definite effect on where the neck joins the body and the position of the bridge, where compromises must be made in a guitar’s overall design. There are so many choices, and just as many opportunities to miss the mark. It’s like driving without a map unless you’ve been there before.
Alchemy, Not Arithmetic
At the end of the day, a guitar’s greatness doesn’t come from its spec sheet. It’s not about the wood species or the coil-wire gauge. It’s about how it all conspires to either soar or sink. Two guitars, built to identical specs, can feel like long-lost soulmates or total strangers. All of these factors are why mix-and-match mods are a long game that can eventually pay off. But that’s the mystery of it. You can’t build magic from a parts list. You can’t buy mojo by the pound. A guitar is more than the sum of its parts—it’s a sometimes unpredictable collaboration of materials, choices, and human touch. And sometimes, whether in the hands of an experienced builder or a dedicated tinkerer, it just works.
Two Iconic Titans of Rock & Metal Join Forces for a Can’t-Miss North American Trek
Tickets Available Starting Wednesday, April 16 with Artist Presales
General On Sale Begins Friday, April 18 at 10AM Local on LiveNation.com
This fall, shock rock legend Alice Cooper and heavy metal trailblazers Judas Priest will share the stage for an epic co-headlining tour across North America. Produced by Live Nation, the 22-city run kicks off September 16 at Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi, MS, and stops in Toronto, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and more before wrapping October 26 at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands, TX.
Coming off the second leg of their Invincible Shield Tour and the release of their celebrated 19th studio album, Judas Priest remains a dominant force in metal. Meanwhile, Alice Cooper, the godfather of theatrical rock, wraps up his "Too Close For Comfort" tour this summer, promoting his most recent "Road" album, and will have an as-yet-unnamed all-new show for this tour. Corrosion of Conformity will join as support on select dates.
Tickets will be available starting Wednesday, April 16 at 10AM local time with Artist Presales. Additional presales will run throughout the week ahead of the general onsale beginning Friday, April 18 at 10AM local time at LiveNation.comTOUR DATES:
Tue Sep 16 – Biloxi, MS – Mississippi Coast Coliseum
Thu Sep 18 – Alpharetta, GA – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre*
Sat Sep 20 – Charlotte, NC – PNC Music Pavilion
Sun Sep 21 – Franklin, TN – FirstBank Amphitheater
Wed Sep 24 – Virginia Beach, VA – Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
Fri Sep 26 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center
Sat Sep 27 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Broadview Stage at SPAC
Mon Sep 29 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
Wed Oct 01 – Burgettstown, PA – The Pavilion at Star Lake
Thu Oct 02 – Clarkston, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre
Sat Oct 04 – Cincinnati, OH – Riverbend Music Center
Sun Oct 05 – Tinley Park, IL – Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre
Fri Oct 10 – Colorado Springs, CO – Broadmoor World Arena
Sun Oct 12 – Salt Lake City, UT – Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre
Tue Oct 14 – Mountain View, CA – Shoreline Amphitheatre
Wed Oct 15 – Wheatland, CA – Toyota Amphitheatre
Sat Oct 18 – Chula Vista, CA – North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre
Sun Oct 19 – Los Angeles, CA – Kia Forum
Wed Oct 22 – Phoenix, AZ – Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
Thu Oct 23 – Albuquerque, NM – Isleta Amphitheater
Sat Oct 25 – Austin, TX – Germania Insurance Amphitheater
Sun Oct 26 – Houston, TX – The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
*Without support from Corrosion of Conformity
MT 15 and Archon 50 Classic amplifiers offer fresh tones in release alongside a doubled-in-size Archon cabinet
PRS Guitars today released the updated MT 15 and the new Archon Classic amplifiers, along with a larger Archon speaker cabinet. The 15-watt, two-channel Mark Tremonti signature amp MT 15 now features a lead channel overdrive control. An addition to the Archon series, not a replacement, the 50-watt Classic offers a fresh voice by producing retro rock “classic” tones reminiscent of sound permeating the radio four and five decades ago. Now twice the size of the first Archon cabinet, the Archon 4x12 boasts four Celestion V-Type speakers.
MT 15 Amplifier Head
Balancing aggression and articulation, this 15-watt amp supplies both heavy rhythms and clear lead tones. The MT 15 revision builds off the design of the MT 100, bringing the voice of the 100’s overdrive channel into its smaller-format sibling. Updating the model, the lead channel also features a push/pull overdrive control that removes two gain stages to produce vintage, crunchier “mid gain” tones. The clean channel still features a push/pull boost control that adds a touch of overdrive crunch. A half-power switch takes the MT to 7 watts.
“Seven years ago, we released my signature MT 15 amplifier, a compact powerhouse that quickly became a go-to for players seeking both pristine cleans and crushing high-gain tones. In 2023, we took things even further with the MT 100, delivering a full-scale amplifier that carried my signature sound to the next level. That inspired us to find a way to fit the 100's third channel into the 15's lunchbox size,” said Mark Tremonti.
“Today, I’m beyond excited to introduce the next evolution of the MT15, now featuring a push/pull overdrive control on the Lead channel and a half-power switch, giving players even more tonal flexibility to shape their sound with a compact amp. Can’t wait for you all to plug in and experience it!”
Archon Classic Amplifier Head
With a refined gain structure from the original Archon, the Archon Classic’s lead channel offers a wider range of tones colored with gain, especially in the midrange. The clean channel goes from pristine all the way to the edge of breakup. This additional Archon version was developed to be a go-to tool for playing classic rock or pushing the envelope into modern territory. The Archon Classic still features the original’s bright switch, presence and depth controls. PRS continues to stock the Archon in retailers worldwide.
“The Archon Classic is not a re-issue of the original Archon, but a newly voiced circuit with the lead channel excelling in '70s and '80s rock tones and a hotter clean channel able to go into breakup. This is the answer for those wanting an Archon with a hotrod vintage lead channel gain structure without changing preamp tube types, and a juiced- up clean channel without having to use a boost pedal, all wrapped up in a retro-inspired cabinet design,” said PRS Amp Designer Doug Sewell.
Archon 4x12 Cabinet
As in the Archon 1x12 and 2x12, the mega-sized PRS Archon 4x12 speaker cabinet features Celestion V-Type speakers and a closed-back design, delivering power, punch, and tight low end. Also like its smaller brethren, the 4x12 is wrapped in durable black vinyl and adorned with a British-style black knitted-weave grill cloth. The Archon 4x12 is only the second four-speaker cabinet in the PRS lineup, next to the HDRX 4x12.
PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40 th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year. For all of the latest news, click www.prsguitars.com/40 and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.