With the Messthetics, Anthony Pirog is a melodic and harmonic wildcard, who has few peers in the scope and imagination he brings to the instrument.
The Messthetics overrun the barriers of genre—rock, jazz, textural music, and whatever else gets in their creative path—like the bulls of Pamplona. That is … if those bulls could musically pirouette direction and dynamics in an instant. Which, of course, they can’t, because bulls are exclusively vocalists, and of limited range, unless you also count the thundering of their hooves as percussion.
But the Messthetics can, and do, which makes their three albums and live performances joyful journeys through the inner and outer sanctums of sound and melody. Like the Mahavishnu Orchestra or ’80s King Crimson, they create instrumental landscapes that astound, punch, and transport.
The heartbeat of the band is the rhythm section of Brendan Canty on drums and Joe Lally on bass, who were already legends in the indie-rock world before the Washington, D.C.-based trio formed in 2016, thanks to their history in Fugazi. The melodic and harmonic wildcard is guitarist Anthony Pirog, who has few peers in the scope and imagination he brings to the instrument. He is an omnivorous student and musician, with a command of rock, jazz, blues, folk, ambient, and contemporary classical music. The documentation is in his substantial catalog of recordings, which, besides the Messthetics’ releases, range from solo albums and various duos including Janel & Anthony; guest turns with drummer William Hooker and other cutting-edge players; the Mahavishnu tribute Five Time Surprise with fellow outsider-guitar-giant Henry Kaiser; and the Spellcasters, a project steeped in the styles of Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan.
The Messthetics—bassist Joe Lally, drummer Brendan Canty, and guitarist Anthony Pirog—onstage with James Brandon Lewis at Washington D.C.’s Black Cat in March 2023.
Photo by David LaMason
Recently, Pirog has been gigging and touring behind two new keystone works: Janel & Anthony’s New Moon in the Evil Age and The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis. His partner in Janel & Anthony, and in life, is Janel Leppin, a cellist and composer with an equally free-ranging sensibility. And New Moon in the Evil Ageis an entrancing double album that balances melodic exploration with a modernist folk-rock sensibility. It’s easy to get lost in its 20 compositions. On The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, the band enlists the saxophonist, who is deep in the post-Coltrane-and-Ayler school of free-jazz horn and composition, as Pirog’s melodic and harmonic foil. And the results are astounding. Imagine Sonny Sharrock’s ’60s-inclined Ask the Ages with a more bare-knuckled but equally exceptional rhythm section. The balance of beauty and brutality is perfect within its jazz-informed structure. Some pieces, like “Moreso,” are essentially heads with plenty of space for these daring improvisors to unfurl. Others, like “Railroad Tracks Home,” are textural beasts with strong melodic spines.
“We took two or three months to write and arrange the record,” explains Pirog, who brought Lewis into the fold after he and Lewis metworking with William Hooker. “When the Messthetics are not touring, we usually meet twice a week to rehearse, and the rehearsals are essentially writing sessions—a good chance to just bounce ideas around and get a kind of group vocabulary going. So, this album is different from our first two records, where we were trying to explore the possibilities of what the guitar trio can do, in more of a through-composed way. As soon as we knew James was involved, that opened up the whole realm of different textures where I could be part of the rhythm section, or I could stop playing altogether.
“Being in the Messthetics has fueled me to do what I wanted to do,” Pirog continues. “Joe and Brendan play with an intensity I find very inspiring. And the same is true with James. He’s the perfect fit, energetically. We have a similar approach to melody—a kind of free playing and weaving in and out, so when we’re soloing together it’s amazingly fun. That’s really what it amounts to: Everyone’s having a great time and you have an understanding that you’re on the same page and things just flow, without any discussion. I could step on an Octavia and double a melody with James with a close tone that really balances well with the sound of his saxophone. At some points on the album, I can’t even really tell where the line is between James’ sound and my sound.”
On their new album, the band enlists the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis as Anthony Pirog’s melodic and harmonic foil. The balance of beauty and brutality is perfect within its jazz-informed structure.
And as any guitarist knows, sound is an important element of the magic—arguably more important than the notes plotting its course. Pirog is an avid and highly attuned pedal user, with a huge vocabulary of tones and effects at his disposal. He is quite precise in how his stompboxes are deployed. Pirog can turn his Abernethy Sonic Empress, which he runs through a flexible, punchy two-channel, 30-watt Benson Vincent head (“It has incredible clarity and presence to every aspect of the tone”) and cab, into a spacecraft or a growling tiger, utterly annihilate his tone or make it buttery and voice-like, or simply rock out like a maniac, with the push of a few buttons and carefully set dials.
For that reason, and because of the wide range of playing styles under his command, we asked Pirog to share his pedalboards for various gigs: rock, improv, jazz, and roots. “When I’m putting a pedalboard together,” he explains, “there’s nothing too crazy going on. I’m thinking about the source material, which can kind of be pitch-related or timbre-based. Then sometimes I’ll add compression or noise pedals. I’ll put anything that I want to control as the source sound before the volume pedal. Sometimes that can oscillate and create feedback, so I use the volume pedal so it won’t just be blaring. What comes to mind is William Hooker. I did a duo show with him in D.C., and he wanted me to play feedback. So, I put my fuzz pedal on with the gate wide open. Then I’ll consider gain pedals, distortions, sometimes modulation. I don’t have an exact method for modulation. Sometimes it’s before drive and sometimes it’s after, based on the pedal or the pedal type. Then, ambient delay, reverb, and I’ll get into looping stuff at the end of my chain. That’s the basic idea.”
While Anthony’s preferences might change gig to gig, as he’s always on the lookout for new pedals, here are his current pedalboard setups by genre.
Messthetics/Rock Board
Some of Pirog’s favorite pedals include the Strymon Flint, JAM Pedals Delay Llama, Red Panda Tensor, JAM Pedals Rattler LTD, and Greer Amps Lightspeed.
Since the Messthetics’ recent compositions from The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis are essentially heads with lots of room for free-ranging improvisation, Pirog has to be ready to create sounds and travel in different musical directions at less than a moment’s notice. To that end, he needs a wide array of overdrive/fuzz, pitch shifting, modulation, and volume effects.
This is currently what’s at his feet:
• Collector Effectors Zonk Machine (octave fuzz)
• DigiTech Whammy
• Classic Amplification CV-2 (Uni-Vibe clone)
• Klon Centaur
• Lehle volume pedal
• Greer Amps Lightspeed Organic Overdrive
• JAM Pedals Rattler LTD
• Red Panda Tensor
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama
• Strymon Flint (’60s reverb and ’61 harmonic tremolo setting)
• Eventide H9
• Neunaber Immerse Reverberator
Experimental/Improv Board
While the Lehle volume pedal is a staple, the Neunaber Immerse Reverberator and Eventide H9 show up on Pirog’s rock and experimental/improv pedalboards.
Of course, experimentation is a big part of the Messthetics’ aesthetic, but for free-improv gigs, Pirog needs some additional, very specific tools for layering sounds and generating atmospheric elements.
Let’s call this pedal roster his improv/experimental board:
• Collector Effectors Zonk Machine (octave fuzz)
• 4ms Nocto Loco (oscillating octave pedal)
• DigiTech Whammy
• Classic Amplification CV-2 (Uni-Vibe clone)
• Klon Centaur
• Lehle volume pedal
• Gamechanger Audio Plus (sustain)
• MASF Possessed (glitch/oscillation)
• Greer Amps Lightspeed Organic Overdrive
• JAM Pedals Rattler LTD
• Red Panda Tensor
• Montreal Assembly Count to 5 (delay/sampler/octave)
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama
• Strymon Flint (’60s reverb and ’61 harmonic tremolo setting)
• Eventide H9
• Neunaber Immerse Reverberator
• 4ms Noise Swash (oscillating noise pedal)
• EHX 16 Second Digital Delay reissue with additional foot controller (sound-on-sound looper)
• Zvex Lo-Fi Loop Junky
Jazz Board
Excuse the pun: This Klon Centaur is Pirog’s workhorse pedal—part of all his stomp rigs.
Sure, the Messthetics are a rock band, but they often border on jazz—or cross that border. And Anthony’s playing, along with fellow guitarist Henry Kaiser’s, is stellar in the Mahavishnu Orchestra tribute fusion band Five Times Surprise, who’ve so far made just one album, also called Five Times Surprise. But Pirog is also an ace at playing traditional, post-bop jazz as well as the more radical approaches minted by his musical heroes Bill Frisell and Sonny Sharrock.
“When I was in my 20s, playing jazz gigs around the D.C. area and improv gigs in New York, I would just bring my entire, huge pedalboard,” Pirog relates. “Now I’m trying to be more mobile. I can use the Klon’s tone knob to dial back some of the top end even more than I probably would in any other setting. And I will sometimes use the gain knob to boost the signal, which also increases some low end, And then I like to use delay and reverb.”
His pedal array for jazz gigs:
• Klon Centaur
• Lehle volume pedal
• Pro Co RAT
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama (set at 16 ms, to fatten tone)
• Strymon Flint
Roots Board
Roots Board
Pirog is among the rare guitarists who can play in the style of Danny Gatton with the same finesse, touch, and balance of emotional restraint and blues-and-country-based wailing. And gorgeous tone. You can hear him exercise this side of his playing as part of the Spellcasters, in the group’s tribute to Gatton and another D.C.-area Tele giant, Roy Buchanan, on the album Anacostia Delta.
His board for Gatton-style gigs:
• Lehle volume pedal
• Klon Centaur (gain set at 10)
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama
• Strymon Flint (’60s reverb and ’61 harmonic tremolo settings)
And his amp of choice in this playing mode is a ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb, with volume on 3, approximately.
Rig Rundown - Henry Kaiser's Five Times Surprise
Although he’s currently using a different array of pedals and amps, and a different guitar, too, this look at Anthony Pirog’s rig for the Five Time Surprise recording session is nonetheless fascinating. He leads us through it, at the start of this Rig Rundown.
- The Stompbox-Builder’s Secret Weapon ›
- Switching It Up with an Effects Loop Box ›
- Confessions of a Pedal Nerd ›
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
