"First Yamaha solid wood CPX (lower) and APX (upper) guitars. Spruce top w/Rosewood back/sides. $1299 for APX, $1349 for CPX."
Gig bag with 2-channel custom Marshall amp. Msrp $199
"Based on turn-of-the-century Dyer model. Includes solid spruce top, solid mahogany back and sides, bone pins and nut, ebony fretboard and bridge. and hardshell case. $1500."
1955-spec D-18 released in honor of Chris Martin's birth year.
Production version of the 25th Anniversary bass with multiple pickup and color configurations.
Lollar Imperial humbuckers and gorgeous fretboard inlays made of mother of pearl and reconstituted stone.
"Combining swept body designs, wild paint jobs, engine-turned chrome, Hipshot Baby Grand tailpieces, and a variety of Duncan, Lace, DiMarzio, and EMG single-coil and humbuckers, these retro-future guitars ooze vibe. "
Purple paisley sparkle Tele.
"The Tennessee builders unveiled their first original body shape, the Serpentine (silver)."
"Two channels of vintage-flavored oD, boost & tome for each channel."
Their take on the classic. A tri-tone generator with boost control.
"Solid Sitka spruce top, solid mahogany back and sides, and a traditional 18-style rosette"
Variation on the Janglebox 2 with added JangleBoost Tone control separate from the JangleBoost Gain. Late summer/early fall availability.
"Custom Reverend pickup based on mid-60s Supro single coil. Vol, Tone, Bass Contour pickup blend knob."
"Small bodied Taylor with NT Series neck, $499 street"
"44 Magnum Power Amp, Headphone Amp, Freeze Sound Retainer, Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi, Neo Clone"
"Custom Kent Armstrongs, set neck, Fiesta red, $2899 made in the US."
"22W, Class A, handmade, EL84, with carry bag"
Import guitar featuring EMG-designed P-90s. Retail $239. Axl also unveiled US-made line.
"Gus G. signature pedal, Fury channel for lead, Fire channel is classic high gain distortion."
"True bypass, stereo in/out, studio, multi, modern, boutique, analog, jazz, and vintage settings."
"Combo loaded with a 12"" Alnico Gold Celestion. 2-channels based on a 62 Brownface and 65 Blackface"
"Premier Builders Guild showed off multiple companies in their organization, including these solidbodies by Gene Baker"
Premier Builders Guild also displayed heavily relic'd guitars from Fano Guitars
"Mastodon ivory inlays and hardware, snakewood fretboard and pickup covers, bocote top, Honduran mahogany body, and walnut center back strip. "
"Easy mount system that drops your strings instantly. Tim has a bunch of neat inventions, including B & G string benders that are mounted to a bridge for routerless install."
High quality tremolo tone with a tap tempo option
"The two-channel, hand-wired DynaLead pays homage to both blackface and plexi-era amps."
"Shown on the Fret King Supermatic guitar, the bridge tunes the guitar to one of six presets, or five additional user-programmable tunings."
"Custom options: TV Jones pickups, Bigsby, and ""doghair"" finish"
"New company from the owner of the Felix the Cat trademark. Lots of body shapes, sizes, styles and graphics."
"The TV Jones TV Savalas Bridge Plate allows you to put a TV Classic, Power'Tron, Super'Tron or Magna'Tron dual-coil pickup into your traditional Tele with minimal routing."
ModTone's more transparent true bypass flange. Street $99.95
New company uses clay and natural materials ad molds them to make trippy designs on the guitars they build.
"UK-based, make replicas and original models in Korea. Sells to only smaller retailers. Original pickups but can do custom options. Higher-end streets at $849."
"Custom guitars from Peoria, IL. Piezos in all guitars, custom options, soft body carves, also build 7-strings, basses. Start at $2900. This one is hand-painted."
15-watt class AB head w/digital reverb and both 15-watt and 1-watt inputs.
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
“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
