“Think about the American and British rock bands trying to get into the Cold War Soviet Union to play rock music that Soviets had never heard—through their British tube amps, with tubes manufactured in Russia.”
That quote, from Sweetwater Senior Category Manager for Amps and Effects Darren Monroe, sums up how much culture and politics can impact every note you play. And that’s especially true regarding tubes. Let’s start with some deep background.
A Brief Post-War History of Tubes
Until the mid-1950s, the vacuum tube ruled the world of electronics. If something needed amplifying, there were countless high-quality variations to choose from. They were in TVs, radios, record players, etc. The world’s armies even got into the game, demanding military-spec options that continue to be among the most sought-after tubes today. So, the little glowing bottles were in high demand, and the industry thrived. But things were about to change.
Seemingly overnight, the solid-state transistor became the go-to platform for countless electronic products we still use today, literally changing the world. They were cheaper to make, smaller, more efficient, and more reliable. They also offered pure, uncolored sound—precisely what you want in a great stereo system.
Mike Matthews, the founder of Electro-Harmonix, had the foresight to acquire tube manufacturers, starting in the early 1990s, and today the brand names Tung-Sol, Electro-Harmonix, EH Gold, Genalex Gold Lion, Mullard, Svetlana, and Sovtek are all under the company’s umbrella.
Photo by Mike Chiodo
The First Tube Shortage
The demand for vacuum tubes dried up quickly. Factories that used to produce thousands of tubes daily had to close their doors as they watched orders disappear. Tube manufacturers all but vanished entirely from the U.S. Of course, guitarists still wanted their tubes, but, as Dave Friedman, owner/designer of Friedman Amplification, explains, there weren’t nearly enough 6-stringers to keep the giant industry afloat.
“The guitar tube market is really small in the scope of the tube industry,” he says. “Tubes used to be used in a variety of things, so these huge factories [suddenly] had no demand. They basically became obsolete. That’s when Mike stepped in.”
Friedman is referring to Electro-Harmonix Founder and President Mike Matthews. A legend in the musical instrument industry, Matthews helped write the template for many electric guitar effects pedals. His iconic designs—including the Big Muff, the Memory Man, the Electric Mistress, and the POG—are still going strong today. But many guitarists don’t know that Matthews is a massive presence in the world of vacuum tubes for guitar amplification, and helped save the industry.
It all started with the crumbling Soviet Union. “I took a rock ’n’ roll band to Russia in ’79 for the first exhibit they opened to companies around the world for consumer products,” Matthews recalls. “Only two companies from the U.S.A. went: us and Levi’s. And when I was there, I started thinking about how I could buy products from Russia [to import in the U.S.].”
“The EL34 everyone was using was the German Siemens tube. And in ’90 or ’91, those tubes went away. There were no other EL34s being made.” —Dave Friedman, Friedman Amplification
With his background in effects pedals, Matthews was familiar with integrated circuits (ICs), and dove head-first into importing Russian versions at 15 cents each. He says he made “a killing on them!” But it was only a short time before another trip east, and a respected friend’s approval, inspired the switch to importing tubes.
“In ’88, I saw vacuum tubes on the wall at the Ministry of Electronics [the Soviet Union’s state-run organization responsible for research, development, and production of electronic and electrical devices, from 1965 to 1985]. I took samples to Jess Oliver [famed amplifier designer and former vice president of Ampeg], and he said, ‘They’re good!’ So, I got early customers like Peavey, and the tubes took off!”
But the U.S.S.R. was failing, and panicked Soviet authorities demanded he commit big or leave it all behind. “Because the Soviet Union was starting to fall apart, the companies that made the tubes defaulted on their loans,” he explains. “So, the Russians told me that either I had to buy the factory for $500K or they’d sell to Groove Tubes. So, I sorta had to buy it.” And then he was in the vacuum tube manufacturing business for good.
“It has been a big deal,” says Sweetwater’s Darren Monroe. “In some cases, we even had to take products off the web.”
Building Back the Biz
The early ’90s were another dark time for the vacuum tube industry. Though Matthews was hard at work building his tube operation, he was far from full-strength, and other tube manufacturers continued to disappear. It got so bad that many of the day’s most famous amplifier designers adapted their amps for whatever tubes were available.
Friedman remembers, “When I started in the industry in ’88, Sylvania tubes were around but coming to an end. The EL34 everyone was using was the German Siemens tube. And in ’90 or ’91, those tubes went away. There were no other EL34s being made. Mike Matthews was just starting, so for a short time, everyone switched to the Sovtek 5881, which was a Russian military tube. Even Marshall had 5881s in their amps. EL34s didn’t exist!”
Thankfully, there was hope. As Matthews’ tubes were coming online, Svetlana (who would later be purchased in 2001 by Matthews under the name New Sensor Corporation) emerged as a player in the tube game.
Then came tubes from China. “Slowly, Svetlana came out, Mike came up, and then some Chinese EL34s showed up,” recalls Friedman. Availability stabilized with the entry of Chinese mega-manufacturers Shuguang and Psvane in the international marketplace. In Russia, Matthews grew to absorb the brands Tung-Sol, Mullard, and Sovtek, too. Also, newcomer JJ Electronic showed up in the early ’90s. They earned a name for quality and reliable tubes made in Czechoslovakia, and, after the division of that country, Slovakia.The world now had sufficient vacuum tube manufacturers to furnish guitarists, amp builders, and retailers everywhere. For nearly 30 years, you could get almost any tube from countless retailers and distributors. That changed in 2020.
“At the end of 2019, the Chinese government told Shuguang, ‘we’re closing you down.’ To make things worse, I don’t know if they will be able to open again. They lost all of their skilled workers.”—Mike Matthews, Electro-Harmonix
The Current Shortfall
If you’ve shopped for new tubes in the last couple of years, you might have noticed strikingly few options available, and even more striking price tags on some of the ones that were. Yes, the current tube shortage is real. Guitar amp builders and retailers haven’t been able to rebuild their stock of tubes.
Why? The current shortage began in late 2019/early 2020, when China’s Shuguang factory—then the world’s largest tube manufacturer—shut its doors seemingly overnight. The loss of Shuguang put the tube industry on its heels in a big way, plus the pandemic was looming right around the corner.
“That was big,” acknowledges Matthews. “At the end of 2019, the Chinese government told Shuguang, ‘We’re closing you down.’ To make things worse, I don’t know if they will be able to open again. They lost all of their skilled workers.”
Very few in the industry know the real reason Shuguang was shuttered. Still, with the Chinese government’s penchant for secrecy, theories abound. According to Matthews, the Peking government wanted the factory’s land. Friedman, though skeptical, heard a different story. “They had a fire a while back, but who knows if they were lying,” he says. “Anyway, their whole process still isn’t back. Right now, there is only New Sensor Corporation, JJ, and Psvane. Those are the only manufacturers [although their tubes are sold under many brand names]. So, all your tubes are only coming from three sources."
“The guitar tube market is really small in the scope of the tube industry,” says Dave Friedman. “Tubes used to be used in a variety of things, so these huge factories [suddenly] had no demand. They basically became obsolete. That’s when Mike stepped in.”
Fast forward to today, and the world continues to deal with Covid, labor shortages, international tensions, and all-out war. Varying government ideologies snarl and confuse the production of countless products, and importing and exporting of many products has ground to a halt.
While the Russia/Ukraine war and its political ramifications haven’t officially stopped Matthews and Russian tube production, they have introduced nearly insurmountable challenges to his ability to export goods. Matthews believes this explains the massive price increases, noting, “Western countries have high tariffs on things from Russia, so the costs are up.”
“A tube that used to wholesale for $9 now wholesales for $18,” adds Friedman. “Some 12AX7s are selling at retail for $30 or something! The wholesale side is not much less than that. Russian tubes are kinda off the table at this point.”
The two vacuum tube manufacturers that remained open for business with no limitations were JJ Electronic and Psvane. But both have struggled to keep up with demand. It got so bad that, according to Friedman, “JJ were so back ordered that they hadn’t taken any new orders for a couple of years.”
“A tube that used to wholesale for $9 now wholesales for $18. Some 12AX7s are selling at retail for $30 or something! The wholesale side is not much less than that.”—Dave Friedman, Friedman Amplification
Tube Supply Today
The tube shortage has weighed heavily on the entire guitar industry for a couple of years now. Labor shortages and trade tariffs are a major headache for tube manufacturers, amp builders can’t finish their products, and guitarists can’t keep their amps in working shape. Much of this comes to a head at music retail.
“It has been a big deal,” Sweetwater’s Monroe says, sighing. “In some cases, we even had to take products off the web. There was no way we could deliver. We even explored buying a container full of tubes and getting our own tube-matching equipment. But that was such a huge task that we decided not to do it.”
For large retailers, the problem is twofold. They must have after-market tubes for their customers. Plus, they understand the need to allocate tubes to amp manufacturers, ensuring the tube shortage doesn’t also become an amp shortage. If tube amp builders don’t have tubes, they’re out of business.
“It’s a difficult needle to thread,” Monroe says. “There are a lot of tube amp users out there that need to service their existing amp. We can’t provide that because all the tubes are going to new amps. Yeah, we want to sell more amps but, at the same time, we want to take care of those customers.”
According to Mike Matthews, making tubes in the U.S. "“would cost something like 500 to 600 percent more. The environmental and labor considerations…. It’s a handmade business, and the costs are just way too high.”
Photo by Mike Chiodo
The Cost Factor
Other than JJ Electronic, nearly every vacuum tube today originates from Russia or China. In the ’70s and ’80s, both were promising markets on the global stage. But today, both countries have volatile political climates and have economically distanced relationships with the U.S. that makes trade, including the tube trade, much more difficult and expensive. So, many guitarists in our hemisphere are asking, “Why not just make tubes here in North America?”
Matthews wades in: “You can’t make them in the U.S.A. It would cost something like 500 to 600 percent more. It’s just much too expensive. The environmental and labor considerations…. It’s a handmade business, and the costs are just way too high.”
With the U.S. being a no-go, what about other industrialized countries that manufacture high-quality products while still keeping costs down? Could we produce tubes in Mexico, Indonesia, or Taiwan?
Again, Matthews says no. It’s just too skilled-labor intensive. “It’s a handmade thing. A machine can’t just make the whole tube,” he explains. “There are a lot of different parts that go into one tube. Each of those parts is made separately; then, the whole tube is put together. Tubes require people who have those skills.”
“But it’s a lost art,” Friedman adds. “Almost no one knows anything about tubes anymore or how to build them. All the people that did are dead now. It’s like how houses used to be hand-troweled plaster. Try and find a plasterer today who can do that work. They almost don’t exist. Stuff gets lost over time.”
“I mean, there are still a lot of tube amps that are sold. If there’s a demand, they’ll fill the void.”—Dave Friedman, Friedman Amplification
Emerging Optimism
Just when things are looking very dark, there is a faint light at the end of the tunnel. JJ Electronic is still at it and should accept new tube orders soon. Matthews’ New Sensor Corporation fully expects to make it through Russia’s current political climate. There are even rumors of Chinese powerhouse Shuguang returning.
“I think things are improving,” Monroe says, optimistically. “We’re hearing, ‘We’re getting more tubes in,’ and, ‘We’re going to be able to supply you with tubes.’ So, hopefully, for anyone that couldn’t get tubes through us, we’ll have their tubes in stock soon.”
Also, tubes never entirely went away. Look at any large retailer and you’ll find a selection of EL34s, 6L6s, 12AX7s, and more. Your choices might be limited, and the prices higher, but they’re there. Why? Because the industry saw this coming, reached out to their suppliers, and prepared accordingly.
“We started talking to the Psvane company early,” says Friedman. “We were set up with them and in a good position when this all happened.”
“Guys like Mike Matthews did tell people early on, ‘I’m getting shut down. I’m not going to be able to deliver these,’” says Monroe. “That created a bit of a panic at the time. So, we were able to order ahead and keep sales going.”
Amp Makers Adapt to Survive
Amp builders have been able to adjust to availability the same way they always have—by embracing different tubes and brands. While the name on a tube might say Sovtek, Mullard, or Mesa/Boogie, there’s a good chance it was made in the same factory. And amp builders, unbeknownst to most guitarists, often jump from one brand to another to ensure their customers get the best-sounding and most reliable tubes currently produced.
Friedman explains: “Look, tubes have to sound great, but they also have to be reliable. That’s why I've changed tube makers several times over the years—because of reliability issues. So, whatever amp brand is on a tube [in our amps], it’s just whatever tube deemed the most reliable for right now. And that’s changed a million times over the years.”
While Friedman thinks each tube has its own magic, he also believes that right now there are better ways to spend your tone-chasing money. “There’s a big variety of tubes,” he says. “They have their own gain levels and tone. They all have a sonic signature, and you need to find out what you like. But I’m of the mind, ‘Don’t swap your tubes if they’re working.’ And, if you have an amp you like, figure out what’s in it and replace them with the same tube. Just look for a well-tested tube from a reputable source. There are a lot of great tube matching/screeners out there. So, know what you’re going for and get a screened tube that has a warranty.”
“I mean, there are still a lot of tube amps that are sold. If there’s a demand, they’ll fill the void.”—Dave Friedman, Friedman Amplification
The Future of Tube Amps
Although we seem to be emerging from the tube shortage, if history does repeat itself, this won’t be the last time it happens. Also, let’s not forget the rise of digital modeling and the new generation of solid-state amps that approximate tube tone that have entered the market in recent years.
This leads to the question, “Is this the end of the electric-guitar tube amplifier?” Not according to both Friedman and Monroe. “There is enough of a market that tubes will continue. There’s still money on the table,” Friedman says matter-of-factly. “I mean, there are still a lot of tube amps that are sold. If there’s a demand, they’ll fill the void. And remember, they asked the same thing in the early ’90s. It happens over and over again.”
“Tube amps are as hot as ever,” echoes Monroe. “I’ve been in purchasing for a long time at Sweetwater, and there are just too many amps out there. Someone is going to find a way to keep them going.”
In recent years, Samantha Fish’s most often-used guitar was this alpine white Gibson SG, but it ran into some issues last summer—“I ended up having to reglue the neck”—and it is now on hiatus.
If you’re already a fan of Fish’s tough Delta-mama singing and high-temperature guitar work, you’ll probably think that all this is just as it should be. You gotta reap what you sow eventually, right? And Fish has been sowing for a long time, from her bar-band days in Kansas City 15 years ago through eight rootsy, eclectic albums as a leader (not counting the two early-2010s discs she cut with Dani Wilde and Victoria Smith as Girls with Guitars, or her 2013 outing with Jimmy Hall and Reese Wynans in the Healers, or 2023’s tangy swamp-rock collaboration with Jesse Dayton, Death Wish Blues) to her current tour schedule of about 150 dates per year in North America, the U.K., Europe, and Australia.
Still, even with such a solid career foundation to draw on, mixing and mingling in the flesh with folks you’ve known all your life as names on record covers could be a little intimidating. Is it? “You know, I don’t ever think about it in those terms,” Fish says on the phone from her home in New Orleans. “So when you lay it all out there like that, it feels like, ‘Aw shit, that’s crazy.’ I mean, it is crazy. When I think about the goals that I’ve made over the years … honestly, I’ve crossed off a bunch of things that I thought were even ironic being on the list, because they just seemed so far-fetched. Every interview I’ve ever done, they were like, ‘If you could ever open up for somebody, who would it be?’ And I always said the Stones, ironically. Cause when the hell’s that gonna happen? I’m a guitar player from Kansas. That’s nuts.”
With her Stogie Box Blues 4-string, heavy hitting style, and wide array of blues and rock influences, Fish is an artist of a different stripe.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Fish spits out the sentences above in a fast, excited spray, one word tumbling over another. Then she pauses for a second, and it’s clear that wheels are turning in her head. Her voice gets more playful. “I’m gonna start speaking some even wilder things into existence just to see what happens,” she cracks, her grin nearly audible over the line. “A billion dollars!No, money’s evil, but you know what I mean.”
“I wanted to lean into superpowers.”
Given her formidable chops, it’s not that daring a leap to suggest that Fish could be capable of playingsome wilder things into existence, too. She’s certainly off to a good start with the just-released Paper Doll, her ninth solo album overall and third for Rounder Records. Whether your personal taste leans more toward nasty string-snapping riffs (the aptly titled “Can Ya Handle the Heat?”), sizzling slide escapades (“Lose You”), or high lonesome twang (“Off in the Blue”), you can’t deny that the album’s loaded with prime guitar moments. And its two longest tracks, “Sweet Southern Sounds” and “Fortune Teller”—“longest” being a purely relative term (they’re both under six minutes)—offer listeners just a taste of the neo-psychedelic fantasias that can occur when Fish stretches out in concert.
“People always come up to me and say, ‘You’ve got to figure out a way to capture the live feeling on a record,’” she reports. “Sometimes you go into the studio and it’s like, ‘Shit, I gotta make the song work for vinyl, so let’s cut it down,’ and you end up hacksawing away some of these parts that are kind of the feeling and heartbeat of the song. This time we set out to make something that felt live.”
Fish made her recording debut in 2009 as the leader of the Samantha Fish Blues Band, with the punny-titled in-concert indie album Live Bait.
Photo by Curtis Knapp
That’s one way in which Paper Doll differs dramatically from its predecessor, 2021’s Faster, which delved into a poppier territory of synths, beats, and high-tech production (and, in this writer’s opinion, did so with great effectiveness; one of Faster’s highlights, “Hypnotic,” sounds like it could have been recorded at a late-night dance club hang with Prince and the Pointer Sisters). In contrast, obviously electronic sounds are nowhere to be heard on the new disc, and the music referenced stays firmly in the American roots category: soul, rock, country, juke-joint blues. For some artists, a stylistic shift like this could be seen as a retrenchment, but for Fish, it’s the result of a major departure. This is the first time she’s ever used her road band—keyboardist Mickey Finn, bassist Ron Johnson, and drummer Jamie Douglass—to make a studio album.
“Everybody’s scratching their heads about what genre this falls into, but I know where every song started—with a blues riff.”
“Usually,” Fish explains, “I’ve worked in studio situations where there’s been a producer and they want to put the people they know together. So it was cool to bring in the band that I’ve been playing with for the last couple of years instead of session musicians. I feel like the dynamic was different—the familiarity, and just kind of knowing where the others were gonna go. It might be a minute difference to a listener, but for the players in the room, it helped breed another sensibility.”
Also helping in that department was producer Bobby Harlow, late of Detroit garage-rock revivalists the Go. Paper Doll is the second Fish album that Harlow’s produced; the first was 2017’s Chills & Fever. But whereas that album was all covers, the focus this time was on original songs, more than half of them co-written by Harlow with Fish before he was even considered to produce the album.
“Last March, Bobby came out to a show we did in Detroit,” Fish recalls. “We went out to lunch, and because I was working on writing songs, I asked him to do some co-writing with me, because I love the songs he wrote for the Go. He’s really fun to be in a room with when you’re making something, because he’s incredibly devoted to it. So we started writing, and then a few months later the label was like, ‘We gotta make this album, who’s gonna produce it?’ Well, we’re on the road all summer, so I don’t know when y’all expect us to do this record. But Bobby was available, and it was like the universe bringing us back together. He was passionate about the kind of songs I was writing, and he understood where I wanted to go with it.”
Samantha Fish's Gear
Before finding her SG, Fish’s main guitar was her Delaney signature model thinline style, with a fish-shaped f-hole.
Photo by Frank White
Guitars
- Alpine white Gibson SG
- Gibson Custom Shop ES-335
- Delaney 512
- Stogie Box Blues 4-string
- Danelectro baritone
Amps
- Category 5 Andrew 2x12
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
Effects
- Dunlop volume pedal
- Analog Man King of Tone
- JHS Mini Foot Fuzz
- Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
- MXR Carbon Copy
- Boss PS-5 Super Shifter
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power ISO-5
Strings, Picks, & Slides
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinkys (.010-.046)
- 1.0 mm picks (any brand)
- Various brass and ceramic slides
And where was that? “I wanted to lean into superpowers,” Fish quickly answers. “What are my strengths, what are the things that people know me for and recognize me for, and what can I amplify to make this a real statement record? It’s funny, because everybody’s scratching their heads about what genre this falls into, but I know where every song started—with a blues riff.”
Born out of the blues it may have been, but when the Paper Doll material reached the studio (actually, two studios: the Orb in Austin and Savannah Studios in L.A.), it went through some changes, partly due to the band’s contributions, partly due to Harlow’s conceptual leaps. “Bobby’s like a musicologist,” Fish says approvingly. “He’s deep. He pulls from so many different spaces, and he’s definitely introduced me to some things that I wasn’t hip to over the years. That’s done a lot to shape my musical tastes.” If you’ve had the significant pleasure of attending one of the many gigs in which Fish breaks out proto-punk nuggets like the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” and Love’s “7 and 7 Is,” well, now you know the guy to thank.
“This time we set out to make something that felt live.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, one of Paper Doll’s best tracks, “Rusty Tazor,” is a similar romp through the garage. In a rare case (for this album) of the producer bringing in someone he knows, Harlow tapped Mick Collins of cult faves the Gories and the Dirtbombs for backing vocals. “He adds such a personality to that song,” Fish says. “And I’m a punk rock fan. I love that whole era. I just love this raw, uninhibited way of playing. There’s nothing precious about it. Leaning into the edges—that’s where the real shit lies.”
Because the Paper Doll sessions took place in between periods of touring, Fish only brought her road instruments, including a new white Gibson SG and Stogie Box Blues 4-string cigar box guitar (see sidebar for more on her personal collection). But both the Austin and L.A. studios presented plenty of other options. “A ton of guitars,” Fish remembers with a laugh, “in varying degrees of disrepair. I used a rather unruly [Gibson ES-] 335 in Savannah for ‘Sweet Southern Sounds.’ You know how some guitars fight you when you play them? Well, I like a little bit of fight, but not so much that I’m pulling the strings out of the saddle, and it was fighting me like that. It was hard to push the strings down, I could only bend in certain places. But that just made the performance more intense, and it sounded good. There was also a Tele and a Strat that they had at the Orb. We had so many tools at our disposal, it was like, ‘Let’s go nuts and play with everything we can.’”That choice of m.o. also sounds like a positive way to respond to a career moment that Fish calls “an incredible ride. Especially in the last year-and-a-half, two years, it’s just upped the ante even more. There’s nothing more to do, really. I went out, I played to the best of my ability and I did the thing that I’ve been working hard to do for the last 15 years or so. And it’s awesome to be able to show up in that capacity and perform alongside people that I’ve really looked up to. I just feel grateful. I know I’m lucky.”
Fish’s Favorites
Fish has a brawling style of playing slide, often on her cigar box. “Lose You,” on her new album, is especially representative of her approach to the classic blues technique.
Photo by Jim Summaria
For nearly a decade, Samantha Fish’s primary stage axe has been a 2015 alpine white Gibson SG that she bought new online. She’s still got it, but last year it ran into some trouble. “I ended up having to reglue the neck over the summer,” she says, “and it’s been having tuning issues. So Gibson sent me another white SG that’s just beautiful, in great shape. The neck’s a bit fatter, which is cool, different from mine. I’ve been using that one a lot”—indeed, the new SG is all over Paper Doll. “I’ve hung onto it, and I feel bad about that. I don’t want to be the person who borrows a guitar and keeps it. But it just played so great, and it was like, ‘I need this thing. What can I do to keep it?’ Luckily, the people at Gibson have been so good to me over the years.”
An even more recent addition to Fish’s electric arsenal is a Custom Shop Gibson ES-335 in silver sparkle finish, purchased in the fall at Eddie’s Guitars in St. Louis. “Because I played a 335 on ‘Sweet Southern Sounds’ in the studio, I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna need one live, so of course I have to get this one!’ I’ve always wanted a silver sparkle, and this one is pristine. I’m so scared of the first scratch I get on it, or buckle rash. I’m probably gonna cry!”
Fish hasn’t been playing her Delaney SF1 Tele-style “Fish-o-caster” so much recently, but another Delaney model, the hollowbody 512, is still getting lots of action (often tuned to open D for slide use), as is her Stogie Box Blues 4-string, equipped with a P-Bass pickup. Her Danelectro baritone, Bohemian oil-can guitar, and clutch of Fender Jaguars are also safe at home, along with her current acoustic main squeeze, a new Martin D-45.
YouTube It
Samantha plays Jimi in this September 2024 performance from the most recent Experience Hendrix tour. The selection: “Fire.”
After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musician’s adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. “I just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,” he says. “It just feels kind of like you’re walking around a movie set all the time.”
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwin’s concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Booker’s self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. “I was just trying to find the things that I liked,” he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. “For a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,” says Booker. “I just wasn’t interested in it anymore. I hadn’t heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.”
“For a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasn’t interested in it anymore.”
LOWER is Booker’s most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoise’s Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Booker’s own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitar—more atmosphere, less “noodly stuff”: “This album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.”
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Booker’s creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener “Black Opps” is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. “LWA in the Trailer Park” is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of “Pompeii Statues” sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of “Heavy on the Mind” are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ’60s pop of “Show and Tell.” But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. “Slow Dance in a Gay Bar” and “Hope for the Night Time” intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didn’t use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. “It’s just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,” says Booker. For him, working digitally and “in the box” is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow people’s minds. “When I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,” he adds.
“When I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.”
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didn’t use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
“I guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.”
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, “three-dimensional world” they were seeking. “Because I was listening to more electronic music where there’s more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,” says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. “I like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,” says Booker. “Even if they don’t know what it is, they’re catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.”
On “Slow Dance in a Gay Bar,” there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer “Hope for the Night Time” features sounds from Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market. “Same Kind of Lonely” features audio of Booker’s baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. “I guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,” says Booker. “I wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.”
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. “You hear people talking about, ‘I don’t want to have kids because the world is falling apart,’” he says. “But I mean, I feel like it’s always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.”
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with “a troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.” That vision is present in the video for lead single “LWA in the Trailer Park.”
