Somewhere on a two-lane blacktop between Detroit and Indianapolis, Samantha Fish is cruising along with her band, thoroughly in her element as she looks ahead to her next gig. “On the road, always!” she says over the crackle of her cell phone. “But yeah, that’s why we do this: Music is the universal language that we all speak and can understand, and there’s something people need in that, you know?”
She’s just 28, but after a decade of playing in front of all kinds of crowds, from the smallest clubs to the biggest festivals, Fish radiates an upbeat worldliness that has seeped into her music—a rangy mix of garage rock, blues, country and soul. Along the way, she’s opened for Buddy Guy at his Legends club in Chicago, shared bills with Johnny Winter, George Thorogood, Corey Harris, and Tab Benoit, and garnered praise from The New York Times as “an impressive blues guitarist who sings with sweet power.” It’s been quite a journey from her hometown in Kansas City, Missouri, where she started out jamming on drums with her father, her uncles, and their friends before switching to guitar when she was in her mid-teens.
“My father played guitar,” she says, “and it’s funny because the style of music would change based on whoever was over at the house. We listened to the radio growing up, so there was all this rock ’n’ roll, and if his brothers were over, they’d be playing guitar to Black Sabbath or Black Label Society—some kind of metal. And then some friends might play bluegrass or West Coast swing or country music—Americana, songwriter-type stuff. And my mom sang in church, so you can see how the lines are connected.”
Primarily self-taught, she picked up everything she could from her idols—Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, Angus Young, Slash, the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell—before she discovered the North Mississippi hill country blues sound of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and the Fat Possum label. At 17, she started hanging around Knuckleheads, the hottest blues-country saloon in Kansas City, and eventually drew the attention of owner Frank Hicks, who got her time onstage and the chance to cut her teeth with a slew of different blues and roots artists, including Benoit and Michael Burks. In 2010, on the recommendation of St. Louis blues guitarslinger Mike Zito, she landed a deal with the late Luther Allison’s label Ruf Records (founded in 1994 by Allison’s manager, Thomas Ruf), and she’s been making her mark ever since.
Belle of the West is Fish’s latest album, with a history of its own. Recorded near the end of 2015, the sessions were produced by the North Mississippi AllStars’ Luther Dickinson at his father Jim Dickinson’s famed Zebra Ranch studio in Coldwater, Mississippi, just south of Memphis. At first, Fish and Dickinson had conceived of a more acoustic-based follow-up to 2015’s Wild Heart, which they’d also worked on together in the fall of 2014. But as more guest musicians came into the fold—including singer and fiddle player Lillie Mae, known to many for her high-profile stint in Jack White’s Lazaretto band, as well as Mississippi roots guitarists Lightnin’ Malcolm and Jimbo Mathus—the album took on a larger scope. [See sidebar, “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch.”]
During the session, with plenty of encouragement from Dickinson, Fish made some discoveries while playing hollowbody guitars—particularly the Gibson ES-390. The fat, feedback-hugging tone is a departure from the thinline Tele-style sound she gets with her custom Delaney “Fish-o-caster,” and the new tonal direction inspired her to dig deeper into the underlying melodies of the songs before she tracked her solos.
While cutting guitar tracks for Belle of the West, Fish’s Category 5 amp was in Zebra Ranch’s small room, and she would stand close to the large room, where Luther Dickinson would crank the backing tracks to simulate a live atmosphere.
“You know, we went into the studio with the best intentions of making an acoustic record,” Fish says with a laugh, “but I’ve got Luther in there with me, and we’re both guitar players, so we ended up with something a little heavier, and I’m glad we did. He introduced me to hollowbody guitars and the different feedback you can get when you ring out certain notes, and that really influenced my solos a lot. So it’s a semi-acoustic record—that’s the term we finally landed on when it was all said and done.”
As luck would have it, Belle of the West was tracked quickly—often just first or second takes with the full band, which also features Amy LaVere on upright bass and Tikyra “TK” Jackson (of Southern Avenue) on drums, playing live on the floor. But almost as soon as the album was mixed, Fish sensed the urge to get another project out of her system.
“As a little time passed, I felt like we needed something higher octane to put out beforehand,” she says. She hooked up with Detroit-based producer Bobby Harlow to tap into the no-frills, garage-rock spirit that inspired her as a kid. “That’s how the Chills & Fever concept was formed. We recorded with members of the Detroit Cobras, brought in a horn section from New Orleans, and put together this really high-energy big band to do soul and rock ’n roll covers from the ’50s and ’60s.” When stacked against Belle of the West’s rootsy, soulful sound, Chills & Fever, which was released in March 2017, sounds unusually punked-out and jagged. “I know they’re dramatically different,” Fish explains, “but that was the idea. It’s two different concepts, Detroit and Mississippi, but it made sense to put out these two albums in one year for just that reason—because they’re such concept records.”
Having recently relocated to New Orleans, Fish is poised to expand her musical horizons even further, but she still feels the pull of the Mississippi blues, no matter where she calls home. “To me, it’s the core of rock ’n’ roll music. It’s this unpolished, guttural, raw sound that people seem to gravitate to over and over again. It just gets redone and modified. It’s weird how we kind of remove all the slickness every few years, and come back to this real, almost aggressive, thing. I think it’s just because that’s where our hearts are, you know? That authenticity resonates with people.”
Samantha Fish digs into one of her Delaney custom guitars: a 512 hollowbody that she had built after the sessions for Belle of the West. Her other Delaney is her signature Fish-o-caster. Photo by Dan Locke/Frank White Photo Agency
What was it like for you to be in the same room with all these great players to record Belle of the West?
I think for that session, the first day, I walked in feeling just super-intimidated, because I knew all these really great musicians were there to make my record, so I felt like I had to get my shit together. But once you settle into it, you learn a lot from those kinds of sessions. I’m just watching and taking it in: like, how do they approach a song? I think I’m a live player—I mean, that’s what we do all the time—so I’m not as seasoned in the studio. Obviously there’s a different approach to making records than playing live. You have to think more melodically, and I’m starting to do that more in my live show, too. That’s something Luther taught me.
Do you mean thinking outside a traditional blues pentatonic scale, or something different?
Like, not so many freaking notes, really. Quit with all the licks and all the tricks, because they have no place on the record. That’s just the way it is. And Luther has such a great way of leading the song and letting the melody grow into something really beautiful and big and dynamic. That’s one of my favorite things about him. He plays so dynamically and melodically, and I learned that from watching him. It’s something I’m still working on.
How did you meet Luther for the first time?
Well, before Wild Heart was even a concept, my manager and I were talking about who we would want to work with next as a producer. We ran down a list of key people, and I’d just heard the North Mississippi Allstars’ World Boogie Is Coming for the first time. I found out that Cody and Luther [Dickinson] had done it themselves, and I liked the sound of it—how they utilized different guitar tones, and how everything has this modern, contemporary sound, with drumbeats that are really danceable and exciting. So we just made a couple of phone calls, and he was into it. [Laughs.] I couldn’t believe how easy it was. So we did Wild Heart in 2014, and then we came back together for Belle of the West.
Did your signature Delaney thinline figure into the making of this album?
I’ve got a couple of them that I use a lot live. But my newest guitar, the Delaney 512 hollowbody, I got because of the Belle of the West sessions. After making the album, I thought I needed a big hollowbody guitar that really resonates, because the guitars Mike Delaney had made for me in the past were the Telecaster-style thinlines. For the acoustic stuff, everything you hear is my Taylor Koa, the K24ce. And with Chills & Fever, I branched out again and got the Alpine White Gibson SG. That was a gimme for my childhood self, because I was a big Angus Young fan, and still am. So now the guitar arsenal is so vast, it’s ridiculous!
Guitars
Delaney signature SF1 “Fish-o-caster” (thinline T-style, with Amalfitano humbuckers and fish-shaped soundhole)
Delaney 512 hollowbody
Gibson SG (late model, Alpine White)
Fender Blacktop Telecaster
Bohemian oil can guitar
Stogie Box Blues 4-string cigar box guitar with P-bass pickup
Dean thin-body electric resonator
Taylor Koa K24ce acoustic guitar
Amps
Category 5 Amplification Andrew 2x12 combo with matching extension cabinet
Effects
Analogman King of Tone overdrive
CAST Engineering Casper delay
CAST Engineering Pulse Drive tremolo
Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
MXR Carbon Copy
ZVEX Fuzz Factory
Strings and Picks
D’Addario Regular Light strings (.010–.046)
1.0 mm picks (no brand preference)
Various brass and glass slides
And you’re endorsed by Category 5 Amplification.
Yeah, for about five years now. I’m a creature of habit, when I find something I really like. I have people tell me, “Oh you should try this, or try that,” but I’m just stuck on this one. I feel like it gives me a really natural amplified tone. That’s just my tone. Don Ritter does a really good job with old-school wiring and tubes. I mean, to me nothing sounds better. I used a Fender Super [model 5F4] before I had a Cat 5, and it’s funny, I bought that amp for like $300. All the knobs were broken off, and I couldn’t afford to fix it for a long time. I was 18 years old, and I played with the reverb up to 10 for like a year. It was awful! So I was really happy when I finally got the Cat 5.
It sounds like you’re using effects pretty sparingly—maybe just a fuzz on the solo for “Blood in the Water,” for example?
Yeah, it’s there, but Tab Benoit got in my brain about this, like, “I don’t use pedals, I just make the sound I need,” and that was some of the most important advice I got. I did away with my pedalboard for a long time, but I just started venturing back into it. Now I’m finally starting to reincorporate pedals for actual effects, and not as crutches like I used to use them.
You play “Poor Black Mattie” with Lightnin’ Malcolm on Belle of the West. How influenced were you by R.L. Burnside’s original version?
A lot, definitely. You know, the North Mississippi Allstars were a big influence on me when I started to play guitar, too, and the whole North Mississippi sound played a huge part in my musical upbringing, just with the Fat Possum [label] roster. I think it’s because I was so into rock ’n’ roll that when I started listening to blues, and especially when I found Mississippi blues, it bridged that gap between punk and rock. It had that rawness of what I really like in blues music, plus it has that danceable groove. I started out on drums, and I realized that everything I like basically flows through Mississippi. So when I finally discovered R.L. Burnside, it blew my mind because he was doing exactly the kind of stuff that I was into. And they’ve inspired so many modern contemporary artists—Jack White, the Black Keys, and all these incredible alternative artists. All that music stems from Mississippi, but yeah, that song in particular is definitely an R.L. Burnside, North Mississippi Allstars mash-up.
Fish says she purchased her Gibson SG because she’s an Angus Young fan: “That was a gimme for my childhood self.” Photo by Steve Kalinsky
“Cowtown” is another song that jumps out, especially because it has such a groove to it. There’s a Texas twang in there, too—a little Steve Earle maybe?
That song is pretty personal. I was in Europe and the Kansas City Royals had just won the World Series, and this was the funny part, because I was like, “I’m gonna write a real anthem about what it feels like to be from this cowtown, and how great it is.” Baseball had always been pretty depressing in Kansas City, but for the first time in my life, I witnessed the demeanor of my town change. Everyone held their heads a little bit higher. It’s amazing what something like that can do for a city.
But like everything I write, it turned out to be angsty and pissy and negative [laughs]. I started out with the best intentions to write this beautiful, positive song, and it just turned brutal. You just follow where the song takes you, and that took me to more of a “I’ve gotta get out of this town” kind of vibe. I mean, I love my hometown. Kansas City is a great place, but I think everybody has a love-hate relationship with where they grew up. And for the musical structure, I just wanted something upbeat. I was feeling really good after the Royals won, so I loaded it with upbeat country vibes, and then it all fell apart lyrically.
“Gone for Good” is a real foot-stomper that recalls Led Zeppelin III. It’s not too much of a leap to imagine a young Robert Plant singing it.
Wow, thanks! You know, I wrote that back in 2013. It was right after I recorded my second album, Black Wind Howlin’, but it didn’t make it onto Wild Heart, really because we’d been playing it live. I have this really odd oil can guitar that I tune to an open G, and it has this raspy, resonator quality, and that’s the only song I used it on. We tested it out live for a couple of years, but I just couldn’t find the right album for it. Every time I tried to go into the studio and redo it, thinking it had to be this certain way, it just didn’t vibe right.
So for Belle of the West, I wanted to completely reconstruct the song. I mean, the chord structure is similar, but the vibe is different. We slowed it down a little, and Malcolm is playing this staccato, off-kilter guitar in the background, and we’re doing the slide thing back and forth. He’s one of my favorite guitarists because he adds this whole extra element to everything. There are so many great guitar players on this record! But that was a fun one to do. I feel like it’s one of the higher-energy cuts on the album.
How does it feel when you get a groove like that locked up live?
Oh man, if it’s ever perfect, I’ll get goosebumps. It means you’ve transcended everybody counting with each other, and you’re really feeling the groove together. I mean, that’s why I play music, for just that kind of a moment. And when the band feels it with their whole heart and you’re moving as one entity, then the whole audience can join in on it. That’s really a connecting, unifying thing.
And I think that’s something that you won’t ever be able to reproduce. Everybody in the music industry can complain about their album sales dropping, but we just have to adapt to the current climate of what we’ve been given. It sucks, but it is what it is. I still value live performance, because that’s what inspired me the most when I started playing guitar. Going to see live shows inspired me to choose this career path. Records always felt a little far away. I couldn’t even touch them. But seeing this stuff happen in front of me, that’s what did it, and I don’t think that’ll ever change.
Samantha Fish puts her Delaney Fish-o-caster and Electro-Harmonix Micro POG to work onstage in France, summoning a Jimi Hendrix/Buddy Guy-inspired tone during a Jan. 4, 2017, performance.
Check out our Rig Rundown with Samantha from 2013.
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Photo by Don Van Cleave
There’s an aura of legend that surrounds the juke-joint-styled studio named Zebra Ranch. Tucked away in the rural surroundings of Coldwater, Mississippi, the small complex was founded by Jim Dickinson, known as a musician for his keyboard and piano work on famed sessions with the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, and everyone in between. He also made the leap into production in 1966, crafting albums for Big Star, Alex Chilton, the Replacements, Delta blues singer-guitarist T-Model Ford, Memphis country-rockers Lucero, and a host of others, and he opened Zebra Ranch as his base of operations.
After Dickinson’s death in 2009, his sons Cody and Luther, cofounders of the North Mississippi Allstars, took over the running of the studio. “There was really no formula to how we did it,” says Luther Dickinson, describing the initial approach to recording Belle of the West. “In part, that’s just because of the way the studio is built. There’s no control room; there’s a large room with three rooms that shoot out of it. And we always like to record with ambient mics, so we can capture those random encounters.”
Above all, with a tight schedule to keep, they had to record quickly. “Her vocals are live, so she’s playing and singing her heart out, you know?” Dickinson explains. “It makes it easy and fun to record when you have a great artist who’s ready to do that going in, all blood and guts and making a moment. So we cut the band tracks—drums, upright bass, keyboard, second guitar if necessary, and her acoustic—and then we overdubbed tons of backing vocals.” With singer Sharde Thomas joining Amy LaVere, TK Jackson, and Lillie Mae, many of the songs on Belle of the West have four- and even five-part vocal harmonies, all richly layered and mixed so that a song like the hauntingly soulful “Blood in the Water” takes on an even deeper sense of bluesy foreboding.
When it came to tracking guitar solos, Dickinson sought first and foremost to document Fish’s newfound embrace of the hollowbody sound. “It was really fun to watch her come up with a different lead guitar sound with the Gibson,” he says. “I love hollow bodies for their sustain, and she’s such a good player, I wanted to capture the first time she ever got that. It was a wonderful feeling, you know? It’s a whole ’nother world to someone who plays Telecasters. After that it was like, ‘Okay, we know that you can shred it, so let’s play some melodies.’ She got to reveal that side of her artistry, as opposed to just being a gunslinger.”
For the most part, Fish didn’t use headphones to track her overdubs. With her Category 5 amp set up in the studio’s small guitar room, she would stand close to the large room, where Dickinson would crank the backing tracks to simulate a live atmosphere. “For the mics, we probably used a Royer 121,” Dickinson recalls, “and the second mic varied anywhere from a [Sennheiser] 409 to a [AKG] 414 or a Telefunken. We may have had a vocal mic on Samantha, too, along with the room mics in the big room.”
To capture the woody presence of Fish’s Taylor Koa acoustic, Dickinson went with a tried-and-true method. “Usually we put a DeArmond pickup in the soundhole, and then we take a direct signal or a clean amp. That’s what we did with Patty Griffin [on her 2013 album American Kid]. Guitar players tend to like it. It was good enough for Elmore James and Lightnin’ Hopkins, right? You put that through a clean amp, and it just sounds fat.”
Dickinson is quick to point out that the goal is always to maintain the unvarnished spirit of the performance. The very idea of going back to “fix” something in the mix, whether through editing or enhancing, would be an act of sacrilege. “My disclaimer is: This is not pop music,” he insists. “I’m not trying to make anybody into anything they’re not, or cross over into anything. But if you want to make some realistic roots music that sounds good and has a good energy, that’s what I specialize in.”
- Samantha Fish on Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' "American Girl" - Premier Guitar | The best guitar and bass reviews, videos, and interviews on the web. ›
- Samantha Fish on Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' "American Girl" - Premier Guitar | The best guitar and bass reviews, videos, and interviews on the web. ›
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.”
“The Player II Series represents our continued evolution in design and functionality,” said Justin Norvell, EVP of Product, FMIC. “We listened to the feedback from musicians around the world and incorporated their insights to refine and innovate our instruments. The re-introduction of rosewood fingerboards is a restoration of the ‘original Fender recipe’ and will no doubt be a fan favorite - but we didn’t want to stop there. We’ve also incorporated our rolled fingerboard edges for a broken-in feel, upgraded hardware, and have some new body options as well- which underscores our commitment to providing players and creators with the tools they need to express their unique sound and style. The Player II Series is not just an upgrade, it's a detailed re-imagining of our core silhouettes, highlighting our dedication to quality and the continuous refinement of our instruments.”
Additionally, Player II offers new options for chambered ash and chambered mahogany bodies for the Player II Stratocaster and Telecaster models, which will be available in October. Designed for musicians ready to elevate their craft, the Player II Series sets a new standard for quality and performance in the mid-price range.
Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS Electric Guitar - Coral Red
Fender Player II Jaguar Electric Guitar - Aquatone Blue
The 2018 CCL Deco Custom, in all its Pelham blue glory.
Anyway, we became friends and I started working on him pretty early—my 40th birthday was approaching, and that meant it was time for us to start designing his first solidbody build. If you stopped on this page, it’s because the photo of the finished product caught your eye. Beautiful, right? The 2018 CCL Deco Custom: Never shall there be another.
Old National Glenwood guitars were my design inspiration, but I wanted a slim waist like a PRS and the like. We used a solid block of korina to start, routed like MacGyver to get the knobs and switches where I wanted them. Dale builds all his own lathes and machines (usually out of lumber, y’all), as the task requires. This beast took some creativity—it’s tight wiring under that custom-steel pickguard. Many were the preliminary sketches. Four coats of Pelham blue, 11 coats of nitro. Honduran mahogany neck, Madagascar ebony fretboard with Dale’s signature not-quite-Super-400 inlays. He designed the logo; I just said, “Make it art deco.”
We sourced all the bits and bobs from StewMac and Allparts and Reverb and the like, mostly to get that chrome look I so adore. Graph Tech Ratio tuners, Duesenberg Radiator trem (had to order that one from Germany), TonePros TP6R-C roller bridge. The pickups were a genius suggestion from the builder, Guitarfetish plug ’n’ play 1/8" solderless swappable, which means I have about 10 pickups in the case to choose from: rockabilly to metal. And both slots are tapped, with the tone knobs serving as single- to double-coil switches. I put the selector on the lower horn to accommodate my tendency to accidentally flip the thing on Les Pauls—definite lifesaver.
Reader and guitar enthusiast, Cody Lindsey.
Dale offered to chamber this monster, but I said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It weighs in at 11 pounds, if it’s an ounce. We carved the neck to match a ’60s SG, so it’s like the mini bat you get at the ballpark on little kids’ day. Easy peasy. 1 11/16" nut, 25" scale, jumbo frets, just 2 1/8" at the 12th fret.
Delivery in its lovely, hygrometer-equipped Cedar Creek case actually happened a month or two shy of my 41st, but hey, you can’t rush these things. We ended up with a studio Swiss Army knife; it does a bit of everything and does it effortlessly. A looker, too. Dale didn’t spend his career doing this kind of thing—he was in IT or some such—and I imagine he’s winding this “hobby” of his down these days, enjoying retirement with a bottle of Killian’s and a lawn chair at Duluth Blues Fest. But this guitar will live on as a marker of his skill and otherworldly patience. It sits at the head of the class in my practice room, welcoming any visitors and bringing a smile to my face every day. And Dale, my friend, I’ll be 50 before you know it....
Cody requested that Dale design an art deco logo for the guitar’s headstock.