While most music fans think of fiery blues heroes when considering Austin’s contributions to guitar, that Texas city once served as a cradle of psychedelic rock, most notably birthing Roky Erickson’s genre-defining cadre, the 13th Floor Elevators. Many music aficionados contend the Elevators played a role in defining psych rock equal to that of the bands emerging from San Francisco in the mid-’60s.
Today another Austin band, the Black Angels, is upholding the torch. Besides defining its own vision of psychedelic rock during the past 13 years, the group—which takes its name from a Velvet Underground song—spent time as Erikson’s backing band and has been chiefly responsible for curating the genre’s premier annual festival, which was known as Austin Psych Fest before being rechristened Levitation. Their sound recalls and respects all that was great about early psych, but is ultimately twisted into something unique—carrying the genre into the future without failing to revere its past.
With their fifth album, Death Song, the Black Angels again display an uncanny ability to delve deeper into creating timelessly imaginative, dynamic, and transportive rock ’n’ roll. The band calls Death Song the purest representation of its sound to date. The album is a masterclass in building mood and atmosphere: a rollicking, ethereal work that juts seamlessly from ambling organ-combo meditations to ecstatic, fuzz-addled guitar rave-ups. And the band spared nothing when it came to shaping an absolutely killer palette of guitar tones, dragging literally hundreds of pedals from Austin to do overdubs with producer Phil Ek in Seattle.
The four men in the band’s frontline—Alex Maas, Christian Bland, Kyle Hunt, and Jake Garcia—swap between instruments live and in the studio while Stephanie Bailey commands the drum kit. They share bass, guitar, and various keys between them, but guitar is the bedrock of the Black Angels’ sound. Sharing a penchant for esoteric vintage gear, an addiction to fuzz pedals, and a commitment to authentic tape echoes, Bland, Hunt, Maas, and Garcia all bring unique playing styles to the table. However, the squad approaches its guitar work as a weaving together of parts for the greater good of songs.
—Christian Bland
When PG met with Maas, Bland, and Hunt during a tour stop in Brooklyn, Bland was fawning over a vintage Silvertone acoustic he’d recently purchased and Maas was tinkering with the band’s harmonium. The conversation that ensued touched on everything from the Black Angels’ writing process to referencing the sounds of the past without getting stuck in it to, of course, the joys and maladies of collecting and maintaining old effects and rare guitars.
With so many band members, is there a go-to songwriting process for Black Angels? Christian Bland: Most of our songs are guitar-based and begin on guitar. We all bring stuff in.
Alex Maas: But it’s a riff first kind of thing, no matter where the riff comes from, and it’s often a melodic idea.
Having three guitarists can make for a very complicated dance. Do you have defined roles, or try to play to your individual strengths?
Bland: We switch it up all the time and try to do whatever’s best for the song.
Kyle Hunt: It works itself out, usually. I think “I’d Kill for Her” is the only specifically three-guitar song on this record, and everybody’s part fits within the song in a way that forms the whole, rather than standing out.
Maas: Everybody plays to their strengths. If somebody’s got a lead guitar part that only they can play, then they play it. If someone has some Sterling Morrison kind of rhythm guitar sound or their own vibe, it’s of course theirs to play. But it’s always what’s best for the song. Our strengths as players usually inform that.
If you had to define your strengths as players, who brings what to the table within the Black Angels?
Bland: I like writing riffs and phrases, in the classic sense.
Hunt: We call Jake the sponge and the kaleidoscope. He adds a lot of color. And I consider myself, guitar-wise, the glue or the gel between everyone. I add the bits that tie it together.
How does the band work with three guitarists and keep things uncluttered or overly dense, obviously other than when density is the goal?
[Everyone shouts.] Dynamics!
Hunt: Dynamics are the key and working with negative space is important. Also, trying not to kill the melody. We really try to enhance it and build a wall around it with support parts.
Maas: Really knowing when to be quiet and loud, and exaggerating those moments. That’s the thing we always go for collectively as a band.
Hunt: I also do a lot of work supporting the low-end foundation of songs as a guitarist. Thickening up bass parts is an important part of my playing. A lot of Jake’s guitar parts weave and dance around Alex’s vocals.
Maas: And vice-versa: A lot of my vocal parts are informed by Jake’s guitar parts. That part of the creative process is very back-and-forth. I’ll get inspired by a melody one of them is dicking around with, and it’ll spark something else.
Bland: Or the third voice!
Maas: We experience the third voice a lot as a band, which is when we’re writing and someone will go, “Are you guys hearing that?” And no one knows where it’s coming from, but we all stop and go, “Who’s playing that?!” And it’s become a real part of our process: mining things from the third voice.
TIDBIT: The Black Angels made their fifth album, Death Song, with producer Phil Ek, whose credits include Built to Spill, Father John Misty, Mudhoney, and the Fleet Foxes.
You have a reverence for the tones used to forge classic psych-rock. How do you paint with those colors without getting tunnel vision? Where do you draw the line concerning the use of modern gear, like DSP stuff—especially effects?
Bland: Well, they made things way better back then! And a lot of “new” effects are just revamped versions of old effects.
Hunt: To the base of your question, I don’t think “retro” or “classic” are really terms that I associate with our music. We really go for timeless and futuristic, and the vintage stuff just works well for that goal.
With the advances made in DSP tech over the last few years, there’s got to be some digital stuff that turns you on to some degree?
Bland: Oh, totally. I’ve dug very hard into anything that emulates a Binson Echorec. Literally any pedal that tries to mimic that, I’ve bought. My favorite so far is the Boonar, made by a Croatian company called Dawner Prince Electronics. It’s amazing, and it nails the multi-head sound of an actual Binson. It has a lot of output and sounds really fat. I have two: one for guitar and one for my Mellotron. We like the Gurus’ Echosex and have several of them between us, which are great and we use a lot. We find it does the warm, dark/long thing really well, rather than the multi-head vibe. I also have a Fulltone TTE, and the Gurus sounds almost exactly like it to my ears.
Was there any gear that was particularly integral to crafting the sounds on Death Song?
Hunt: We have a real deal Binson Echorec that played a huge role in recording the album, and there’s quite a story behind how we got it.
Bland: So, I’m on my second Fulltone Tube Tape Echo. The first one I sold in Ireland to get a discount on a real Binson Echorec at a shop. I got $500 off the Echorec for the TTE and I paid another $1,500 for the Echorec. The very next day, the Echorec broke at our show in Manchester. We went to Paris for the next show and we took it to someone local to fix it, and were told it would be sorted out by the end of the day, and it ended up sitting there for an entire year—and it was never fixed! We retrieved it eventually from Paris and I brought it to Austin Vintage Guitars, and it was there for three weeks until they finally said they had no clue what to do. So—finally—we flew to Los Angeles and took it to our friend, who has a company called Acid Fuzz, and he pulled it off and fixed the thing!
Hunt: We’re all huge fans of the things EarthQuaker Devices makes, too. Jamie Stillman from EQD has been very much in our corner for a very long time, and we love that company and their pedals.
For those that don’t necessarily buy into the cult of vintage gear, could you explain what makes it worth all that trouble?
Bland: Well, for starters, a lot of the components in old gear just don’t even exist anymore, and I find an honest difference in the sonic quality of vintage gear. It’s just impossible to get that out of most modern gear.
Hunt: It’s just such a difference in the three-dimensional quality of the sound—especially in effects. But more importantly, there’s a real difference between the way a real Roland Space Echo or an Echoplex reacts to the way you hit things and your playing dynamics, compared to DSP, which is so often just an on/off response. It gives you something tangible to vibe off of as a player, and it’s just so much more inspiring in that sense.
Kyle Hunt’s Gear
Guitars1972 Fender Jazz Bass
1965 Fender Jazzmaster
50th Anniversary Fender Jaguar reissue
1960s Fender Telecaster
Amps
’70s silverface Fender Vibro Champ
1966 Fender Princeton Reverb
1965 Fender Twin Reverb
Satellite 1484 prototype head w/2x12 cab
Benson Chimera Reverb
Ampeg B-15
Effects
EarthQuaker Devices Hummingbird tremolo
EarthQuaker Devices Hoof fuzz
EarthQuaker Devices Palisades overdrive
EarthQuaker Devices Disaster Transport modulation
JHS SuperBolt overdrive
JHS-modded Boss TR-2 Tremolo
Caroline Guitar Company Kilobyte Lo-Fi Delay
Death By Audio Echo Dream 2
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail
Union Tube & Transistor MORE boost
Foxx Tone Machine built from original parts
Benson Tall Bird All Tube Reverb
Toetags Electronics Fuzzrite clone
Shaftesbury Duo Fuzz
Strings and Picks
D’Addario or Gabriel Tenorio (.011 sets)
Dunlop Yellow Tortex .73 mm
For a band with several left-handed players that share an affinity for vintage gear, I imagine it’s pretty difficult finding old left-handed guitars?
Bland: Yeah, no kidding! All I can do is find them on eBay these days. If you hit a guitar shop, all you’re going to find is a Stratocaster or a Les Paul, and god knows we don’t want those! [Laughs.]
The band travels with a ton of guitars. Is that due to different tunings or different sonic qualities?
Hunt: I have two solidbody Fenders: a Jazzmaster and a Jaguar. I use the Jag for standard tuning and the Jazzmaster is my dropped-D guitar, and I have a 1972 Fender Jazz Bass that I grab for the songs I play bass on live.
Bland: I like to use the guitars I actually recorded the songs with for those songs live, because I really do want the parts live to sound as close as possible to the record. The main guitar I used is a Rickenbacker 345, but I also used a Gretsch Country Gentleman, a ’60s-style Gibson SG reissue, and a black Fender Esquire that looks just like the one Syd Barrett used. I’m something of a Rickenbacker connoisseur. My most recent acquisition is the black ’64-style Rickenbacker 12-string like the one George Harrison used for a long time. It’s an early ’90s reissue and I just love it!
Fuzz is an integral part of the band’s sound, and the selection of fuzz pedals available these days is endless. Which do you guys gravitate toward?
Hunt: For Jake, he digs Big Muff-style and Mosrite Fuzzrite-style pedals. There’s a guy that custom builds them for him in Spain who calls his company ThunderTomate. He names them stuff like “Muffin Man” and “Bender Tomato,” and Jake also loves the original Boss Hyper Fuzz, which is Boss’ version of the Univox Super-Fuzz circuit and does everything from loud, clean boost to a super-scooped My Bloody Valentine vibe to a mid-heavy ’60s fuzz. Jake also likes the Shin-Ei Companion fuzz a lot.
Bland: I like old Fuzz Faces, and I’ve gotten into the Analog Man Sun Face stuff—especially the NKT275 germanium variant. I also use Analog Man’s Peppermint Fuzz, which is the big, raunchy sounding fuzz I use, and I also have a Sun Face BC 108, which is like the blue Fuzz Face David Gilmour used on Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.
Hunt: We all agree on how much we like the Mosrite Fuzzrite. Various versions of that circuit are all over the record. I have an original Fuzzrite and I have a really great clone made by Toetags Electronics, out of Montreal. I’m also a big fan of the Creepy Fingers stuff, which is made by Brad Davis from the band Fu Manchu.
I have a vintage Shaftesbury Duo Fuzz, which is the Rose Morris version of the Univox Super-Fuzz, and when I got it, one of the transistors was broken. I went in myself to try to fix it and made it worse. I was really upset, because I spent $600 on this super-rare pedal, but I plugged it in and it was twice as loud, less fuzzy and more overdrive-y. What happened was those two transistors lifted from the board and it was just a whole new thing! I contacted Brad Davis and he immediately told me the broken/lifted transistor thing is actually a known modification for the vintage ones. So, I had him make me a new, reliable clone of the vintage one with that transistor lift modification on a switch, and it takes AC power and is functional for the road.
Jake Garcia channels some intensity through a Fender Jaguar reissue. “We call Jake the sponge and the kaleidoscope,” says Kyle Hunt. “He adds a lot of color.” Photo by Jordi Vidal
Tremolo effects are also a huge part of the band’s guitar sound. Are they typically amp-based or are you using pedals?
Hunt: Both. We all have EarthQuaker Hummingbirds, but we also use the onboard trem on a Fender Twin as well as the Boss TR-2. I use the new Hummingbird that can take an expression pedal, and you hear that at the end of “I Dreamt”—the part that slithers around.
Bland: There’s also some Vox Repeat Percussion on the album, which is that super staccato, pulsating trem sound.
I love the bass sounds on the album—particularly on “I Dreamt.” What was the setup for getting those cool bass sounds?
Hunt: We used an Ampeg B-15 flip-top and an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail for most of them.
Maas: Jake played that bass riff and it’s his own take on a demo I sent the band that’s a very cool twist on the original idea. I love the way that tone came out, too. It was a left-handed Fender Jazz Bass and it has a little overdrive on it, and it gives me an early Can or Silver Apples vibe. Our process for bass was we’d try everything when tracking and then pick at the end.
Hunt: So, we’d track with a DI into a Neve console, the B-15 flip-top, and an SVT—all together. And there was a Fender Twin in there, too. The strings sound like flats, but they’re actually just old, dead roundwounds. My rule of thumb with my ’72 Jazz Bass is don’t replace the strings until they break, because the old ones always sound better to us. We tried to get a deeper sound with flatwounds on “Life Song,” and they actually sounded brighter than the dead roundwounds I already had on the bass.
Could you detail the battery of amps used to track guitars?
Bland: There’s a ton of stuff, but mainly Fender Twins, and we also had a ’66 Fender Princeton Reverb that belongs to Kyle that we used a lot. We also used my vintage Selmer piggyback a bunch, and these solid-state Vox PathFinder amps, which just break up in this great, archaic way. Alex actually sings through them a lot.
Hunt: Surprisingly, a lot of the guitar is a hot-rodded ’90s Fender ’65 Twin reissue that has 75-watt Celestions in it and a three-spring reverb tank. The day before we were about to leave to record, I stumbled over this mystery Satellite brand amp head at Austin Vintage Guitars. I wrote Adam Grimm from Satellite and asked about it because it’s just so good, and he said it was a prototype clone of a Silvertone 1484 and that he had only made the one. So that amp through the Twin’s 75-watt Celestions is the guitar tones on “I’d Kill for Her” and a lot of other big-sounding spots on the record. It’s really trashy and rad.
Christian Bland’s Gear
GuitarsVintage Rickenbacker 345
Gretsch Country Gentleman (made in Japan)
’90s Rickenbacker 360/12 C64
Epiphone Casino
Gibson ’60s reissue SG
Fender Esquire
Amps
Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissue
Selmer head
Vox PathFinder
Effects
Binson Echorec
Analog Man Sun Face NKT 275
Analog Man Sun Face BC 108
Analog Man Peppermint Fuzz
Electro-Harmonix USSR Big Muff
Catalinbread Fuzzrite
Ibanez TS9DX Turbo Tube Screamer
Danelectro Back Talk Reverse Delay
Gurus Echosex 2
Dawner Prince Boonar echo-delay
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail
Vox V846-HW Wah
Big Tone Music Brewery Maggie stereo vibrato
Union Tube & Transistor Third Man Bumble Buzz
Fulltone Tube Tape Echo
Strings and Picks
D’Addario Pure Nickel (.011 sets)
Dunlop Orange Tortex .60 mm
Alex Maas’ Gear
Guitars1972 Fender Jazz Bass (Hunt’s)
Amps
Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissue
1971 Fender silverface Twin
1967 Ampeg SVT
Effects
Electro-Harmonix Memory Man
Honda Sound Works fuzz
It’s really cool how deep you guys are willing to dig into your tonal palette.
Hunt: Oh, no doubt! We shipped something like 1,500 pounds of equipment up to Seattle just to do overdubs.
Maas: We know how important guitar tones are, and on this record we really focused on getting the tone first so there wasn’t a lot of post-production, because we would get the sound we wanted from the start—which saves a lot of time. But more importantly, it really makes you focus on your performance. There are infinite possibilities sonically, and the way those tones affect your performance is a big thing!
Hunt: There were literally a couple hundred pedals piled up in the corner of the studio, which can seem overwhelming. The beauty of having 10 versions of a type of pedal that we all already have opinions about and experience with is that the trial and error is a quick process, because we all know immediately when it’s the right choice. We all know the variations and what they do, and we typically agree on what to go for when chasing a particular sound, so finding the right one was usually a 10-minute, trial-and-error process, and then it’d click in a unanimous way. Phil Ek also uses, like, four mics per amp and gives you submixes of that, and you can do a lot with those options.
Our experience with Ek was exactly the reason you hire a producer. His passion for the project and the fidelity he managed to achieve while retaining our sound was really everything we were after. It’s the cleanest, purest version of what we do that I think we’ve ever done. I think it’s a truly pure representation of the band.
Throughout the band’s discography, you’ve continued to grow and explore different facets of songwriting without sacrificing your distinct sonic personality. What’s the key to that?
Maas: The key is just keeping your radar on and always questioning your parts—always checking in with yourself about whether or not that’s the right part, or that’s the right tone. If we were to make a record way different than what people expect from us, it’d still sound like us because it’s still us. I learned to try and approach it as an outsider.
Hunt:Death Song to me feels like the least smoke and mirrors. There’s no reverb on the submix to get that big psychedelic mess we love. It’s all us. The first time I heard a playback of the masters, I thought, “This sounds just like us, exactly, playing together.” It’s a more deliberate record. Everything is played with intent; we didn’t waste parts.
Maas: When you listen to the record, it has its moments and it has something for everybody, but it’s not a deliberately tripped-out, psych-specific record. It’s about the melodies and supporting them more than making something trippy sounding. You can’t set out to make timeless music, but you can hope that what you’re doing is timeless.
Do you concern yourself with actively avoiding the guitar clichés of the genre?
Maas: Of course, we don’t want to be a character study of someone else’s work—regardless of how important that work was. Though we obviously pay some homage to some of our favorite bands. “Linda’s Gone” from the last album has a total Velvet Underground vibe, but that’s a huge part of where we come from as a band.
Bland: And it’s just fun to play that way, and if it’s fun, do it again! Stephanie is really good about keeping us honest and calling us out on parts sounding too much like other bands.
Hunt: You can do pastiche and it’s going to sound like pastiche, but if you really focus on borrowing and adding your own spin to things, adding in your element—that’s the music and art I really love and something we strive to for. It’s got a lot to do with how you borrow it.
YouTube It
In this live performance for radio, the Black Angels play it sweet, dark, and heavy—underpinning Alex Maas’ tenor vocals with the dark throb of Kyle Hunt’s bass lines, while Christian Bland stretches out on his Gibson SG and Jake Garcia provides cascading color.
Valerie June’s songs, thanks to her distinctive vocal timbre and phrasing, and the cosmology of her lyrics, are part of her desire to “co-create a beautiful life” with the world at large.
YouTube
If you’re familiar with June’s sound, you know how effortlessly she stands out from the singer-songwriter pack. Her equal-parts warm, reedy, softly Macy Gray-tinged singing voice imprints on her as many facets as a radiant-cut emerald—and it possesses the trademark sincerity heard in the most distinctive of singer/songwriters. Her music, overall, brilliantly shines with a spirited, contagiously uplifting glow.
Owls, Omens, and Oracles opens with “Joy, Joy!” with producer M. Ward rocking lead guitar over strings (June plays acoustic on nearly all of the tracks and banjo on one). It then recurringly dips into ’50s doo-wop chord changes, blends chugging, at times funky rock rhythms with saxophones and horns, bursts with New Orleans-style brass on “Changed” (which features gospel legends the Blind Boys of Alabama), and explores a slow soul groove with electronic guest DJ Cavem Moetavation on “Superpower.” Bright Eyes’ multi-instrumentalist Nate Walcott helmed the arrangements with guidance from Ward and June, and frequently appears on piano and Hammond organ, while Norah Jones supports with backing vocals on the folk lullaby “Sweet Things Just for You.” The entire album was recorded live to tape, which was a new experience for June.
June shares her perspective on the album and her work, overall. “It’s not ever complete or finished, your study of art,” she offers. “It’s an adventure, and it keeps getting prettier as you walk through the meadow of creating or learning new things. Every artist that you bring in has a different way of performing with you, or the audience might be really talkative or super quiet. And all of that shapes the art—so it’s ever-expansive. It’s pretty infinite [laughs], where art can take you and where it goes.... I kinda got lost there a little bit,” she muses, laughing.
June’s favored acoustic guitar is this Martin 000-15M, with mahogany top, back, and sides.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
June didn’t connect with guitar in the beginning, but discovered her passion for it later, when the instrument became a vehicle for her self-empowerment. She took lessons as a teenager but was a distracted student, preferring to listen to her teacher share the history of blues guitarists like Big Bill Broonzy and Mississippi John Hurt. “I didn’t pick it up again until I was in my early 20s, and my band that I was in with my ex fell apart,” she says. “I still was singing and I still was hearing these beautiful voices sing me these songs, and I didn’t want to never be able to perform them. It was a terrible feeling, to be … musically stranded.
“And I was like, ‘Now, I could go get a new band and get some more accompaniment, but how ’bout I get my tail in there and keep my promise to my granddad who gave me that first guitar and actually learn how to play it, so I’ll never feel like this again.’ The goal was that I would never be musically stranded again.”
She became a solo performer, learning lap steel and banjo along with guitar, and called her style “organic moonshine roots music.” Today, she eschews picks for fingers, even when strumming chords, and is a vital blues-and-folk based stylist when she lays into her playing–especially in a live,solo setting. After two self-released albums, 2006’s The Way of the Weeping Willow and 2008’s Mountain of Rose Quartz, she connected with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who recorded and produced her 2013 album, Pushin’ Against Stone, at Nashville’s Easy Eye Sound, which helped launch her now-flourishing career.
Valerie June’s Gear
Guitars
Amps
- Fender Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- TC Electronic Hall of Fame
- MXR X Third Man Hardware Double Down booster
- J. Rockett Audio Archer boost/overdrive
Strings
- D’Addario XL Nickel Regular Light (.010–.046)
- Martin Marquis Silked Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054
Photo by Travys Owen
As we talk about art being a shared experience, June says she can be a bit of a hermit at times, but “when it’s time to share the art, then there you are. Even if you’re a painter and you just put your painting on a wall and walk away, that’s an interaction that brings you out of your studio or your bedroom to understand this whole act of co-creating—which to me is a spiritual act anyway. That’s why we’re here, to really understand those rules and layers to life. How do we co-create together?
“And I think it’s so fun,” she enthuses. “I enjoy learning, even when it’s hard. I’m like, ‘Okay, this chord is killing me right now, or this phrase.... but I’ma stick with it. And then that likens to something that I might face when I go out into the world. I’m like, ‘All right, I can get through this.’”
I suggest, “When you say ‘co-creating,’ it sounds like you mean something bigger.”
“Both in the creation of our art, but also in the creation of a life,” June replies. “’Cause how can a life be something this artistic? You get to the end of it and you’re like, ‘Wow, look at what I co-created! With all these other people, with animals, with nature, with sound that’s all around....‘ All of my life has been a piece of art or a collective creation. I imagine them like books: different lives on a shelf. And you go pick one—‘Whoa! I created a pretty fun one there!’ or, ‘Oh, man, I had no hand in that....’ Close the book, next one!” she concludes, laughing as she illustrates the metaphor with her hands.
“So does that make all of your inspirations your co-creators?” I ask.
Valerie June at one of her several Newport Folk Festival appearances, with her trusty Gold Tone banjo
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
“Yeah! Even if they’ve gone before,” says June. “I was listening to some beautiful classical music the other day, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know who any of these artists are; they’re all dead and gone, but I’m just enjoying it and it’s putting me in a zone that I need to be in right now.‘ So, we’re always leaving these little seeds for even those who are coming after us to be inspired by.”
Some of her current non-musical co-creators are poets and authors, such as the poet Hafez, the philosopher Audre Lorde, poet Mary Oliver, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist whose works include Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.
“It’s not ever complete or finished, your study of art. It’s an adventure, and it keeps getting prettier as you walk through the meadow of creating or learning new things.”
“These books are so beautiful and show the relationship of humanity with nature and the way trees speak with each other; the way moss communicates to itself,” June explains. “Those ways of being can help humans, who always think we know so much, to learn how to work together better.”
As she’s sharing, I see her glance out her window. “Right now, I just saw a muskrat go across the pond,” she continues. “It’s about this big [holds hands about three feet apart] and it digs holes in the yard. It’s having such a great time and I’m just like, ‘Okay, you are huge, and I’m walking through the yard and falling in holes because of you [laughs]. I’m just watching you live your best life!’ And then there was a blue heron that came yesterday, and I watched it eat fish.... They’re my friends!” she exclaims, with more laughter.
Valerie June believes in the power of flowers–and all living thing–as her creative collaborators.
It might seem like we’re getting a bit off subject, but it’s residents of nature like these who are important in her creative process.
I share how, in my own approach to art, I feel as though we can always access creativity and our ideals, as long as we stay receptive to experiencing and sharing in them. June agrees, but comments that sometimes her best self only wants to sit and focus: “No more information; no more downloads, please.”
An encounter with Memphis-based blues guitarist Robert Belfour, who June frequently saw perform, expanded that perspective for her. She shares about a time she went up to him after a show: “I was like, ‘Hey, I would love to work with you on some music and maybe we could co-write a song or something.’ He was like, ‘Nope! I don’t wanna do it.’ And I said, ‘Whaaat?’ And he’s like, ‘No. I do what I do, and I do not do what anybody else does; I just do what I do.’”
Sometimes, she says, “I think that’s just as much of an outlook to have with creating as anything. It’s like, ‘Okay, I’m there, I’m where I wanna be. I don’t want to be anywhere else.’”
“That’s why we’re here, to really understand those rules and layers to life. How do we co-create together?”
Part of what’s so enjoyable about speaking with June is realizing that she truly exists on her own plane. She has no pretense, and in that, doesn’t hide some of the fears that weigh on her mind at times. But she doesn’t let those define her. It’s her easy, exuberant optimism that sparks a feeling of friendship between us, without having known each other before that afternoon. What are some of her guiding principles as an artist, I wonder?
“I sit with the idea of, ‘Who am I creating this for?’” she says, “and returning to the fact that I’m doing this for me, and, as Gillian Welch said, ‘I’m gonna do it anyway even if it doesn’t pay.’ This is what I wanna do. And reflecting on that and letting that kind of be my guiding force. It’s just something that I enjoy, that I really wanna do.”
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From there, the conversation meanders in other directions, and June even generously asks me a few questions about my own artistic beliefs. We share about trusting your gut instinct, and walking away from situations and people who don’t serve us. This reminds her of a bigger feeling.
“With everything that these times hold for us as humans,” she shares, “from the inequality that we face to the environmental change, the political climate, and all the things that could lead us to fear or negativity.... I started to think about it, and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, maybe we are fucked! Maybe the planet is going to eject us and all of the other things are gonna come true! Well, if that’s what’s gonna happen, who do I wanna be?’
“I want to go out in a way that’s sweet or kind to other people, enjoying this experience, these last moments, and building togetherness through music. I want to co-create a beautiful life even in the face of all of that. That’s what I want to do.”
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.
Every limited-edition pack also gives players a chance to win a Martin 000-EC 30th Anniversary guitar--a beautifully crafted instrument with a retail value of $4,999, inspired by the Martin guitars Eric played during his legendary MTV Unplugged performance. The guitar will be awarded to one lucky winner who finds a special ticket inside a pack of strings.
Fans can also enter a second-chance giveaway online for more opportunities to win exclusive prizes, including a Martin guitar strap, poster, collectible lanyard with three custom patches, or even a year's supply of strings.This contest is open to U.S. residents only and ends March 31, 2026. No purchase necessary.
Enter now and learn more at martinguitar.com/eric-clapton-giveaway.
The anniversary release also coincides with the upcoming arrival of Unplugged: Enhanced Edition on vinyl and CD, available May 9. The iconic installment of the MTV Unplugged series--and the greatest-selling live album of all time--returns over 30 years later in an all-new extended, remixed, and remastered version. Featuring never-before-heard commentary from Eric recorded just before the original 1992 performance, the release offers fresh insight into the inspiration behind the songs and includes tracks not featured in the original MTV airing.
Crafted from 92/8 phosphor bronze, Clapton’s Choice Signature Strings are known for their warm, rich tone, smooth feel, and long-lasting performance. They're the same strings Eric uses in the studio and on stage--including during his current eight-night residency at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo--and he calls them "the sound that I demand."
Whether you're chasing Eric's iconic tone or simply looking for strings that deliver great sound and playability, now is the perfect time to pick up a pack--available in a music store near you or online at
martinguitar.com--and celebrate two decades of signature sound.
