The Melvins are not a joke. Don’t be fooled by frontman/guitarist Roger “Buzz” Osborne’s graying Sideshow Bob hairdo. Don’t dismiss the quirkiness of originals with titles like “Sky Pup” and “Rat Faced Granny,” or their haunting cover of Paul McCartney’s “Let Me Roll It” from last year’s Freak Puke, or the new Melvin-ized version of the traditional tune “You’re in the Army Now” off their brand-new album, Tres Cabrones. But if you do happen to laugh at the 30-year doom-grunge vets, just know they’re laughing, too.
“Sure, we want to be funny, but those songs are still very meticulously done when we’re recording them,” says Osborne. “It works because it’s good—it’s not just some joke. It has a melody, it’s well crafted, and they’re catchy as hell.” Therein lies the success of the Melvins—they’ve got the ying of Sabbath-style, oozing-tar riffs mixed with the yang of melodiously delivered, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and wonky song titles.
While they’ve never been known to dwell in the past, for Tres Cabrones—their 19th studio album—the Melvins opted to reconnect with original drummer Mike Dillard. “I’ve known Mike since probably 8th or 9th grade—we were partners in crime well before music,” says Osborne. “Now he’s an all-American guy with a union job, a wife, and kids, so I was just happy to get Mike on a real Melvins album. He’s a great guy, a solid drummer, and I’m happy that he can tell his kids when they’re old enough that their dad was a rock drummer.”
With Dillard sitting in on drums, longtime drummer Dale Crover moved to bass, and the change effected something of a nostalgic trip back to the group’s more simplistic hardcore origins. “It was fun because we played to our strengths with this lineup and we ended up making an album that sounds like a throwback to our early material,” says Osborne.
Osborne says the approach resulted in simpler, more digestible songs that sound like they’ve been excavated from the band’s late-’80s or early-’90s canon. To break up some of the heaviness, they also got their funny bones working on traditional covers of “Tie My Pecker to a Tree” and “99 Beers.”
“We worked as hard on “Tie My Pecker to a Tree” and “99 Beers” as we did anything on Tres Cabrones, but we were laughing our asses off while doing it—we had to redo takes because you could hear us in the background,” he says. “I think music has made us nuts.”
We recently spoke to Osborne about the making of Tres Cabrones, as well as all the crap he takes for his vibrato technique and why he opts for mainstream stompboxes. And don’t miss our interview with Crover (page 3) about relinquishing the drum chair and taking on bass duties for the new album.
Mike Dillard hasn’t been in the band since the early ’80s. What led to him joining you for Tres Cabrones?
A few years back we put out some original demos on [former Dead Kennedys frontman] Jello Biafra’s label, Alternative Tentacles. He had a 50th birthday party in San Francisco and he asked if the Melvins would play. Dale mentioned that we should have the original lineup—or close to it—play the show, since the demos they released were from that iteration of the group.
How did you parlay that performance into an album?
Well, before the gig we got Mike down from Washington and we recorded some of our rehearsals—and we sounded really good. We talked out loud how cool it would be to record new songs to perform as this de facto original lineup. All of us were onboard immediately. Obviously, Mike’s a very busy guy with a limited amount of vacation time, so it required some planning to make sure every time he would come down here to record we had material and ideas to work through.
Aside from flying Mike down for recording, how were these sessions different from previous Melvins sessions?
What you have to understand is that we do a lot of bulk recording. During our last recording cycle, on one day we’d do vocals for a [alternative band lineup] Melvins Lite song, bass parts for our Everybody Loves Sausages cover album, guitar overdubs for Tres Cabrones, and a solo for a song on Freak Puke.
Melvins' frontman/guitarist Roger "Buzz" Osbourne "ham-fisting" his Les Paul Custom during the band's set on the second stage at Ozzfest in 1998 at the Blockbuster Center in Camden, New Jersey. Photo by Frank White
Isn’t it kind of mind-boggling to work
that way?
Once you get the ball rolling, it’s easier to do more extra material than break everything down and start over again in a few weeks or months. I feel that creativity welcomes inspiration. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to working on Tres Cabrones. Like, if a song doesn’t fit in that format, we’re going to forget it. To me, that’s a counterintuitive mindset—follow the ideas and you’ll find a spot for them if they’re good.
Do you view recording and live shows differently?
I believe they’re completely different but equally important. I really enjoy and feel special when I go to a show and see a band that has prepared and practiced their set list the same as when they record an album. It should feel and be apparent to the audience that our show is rehearsed … because it is [laughs].
Every minute on a record and every minute onstage is valuable. If you don’t hook the listener at a show or on an album by the first song, you’re screwed—you have to remember that with track listings and set lists.
Let’s switch topics and talk gear a bit. You used to play a Les Paul with the neck pickup torn out. Was that so you could perform kill-switch-style stops and starts more easily?
I actually ruined the bridge pickup, probably doing something dumb or reckless. I didn’t have any extra money, so I took out the neck pickup and put it in the bridge. I still have that ’69 Les Paul Custom—a Fretless Wonder—and it’s all setup and rebuilt, so I still do play it on recordings all the time.
What other guitars do you use in the studio?
I’ll use anything when I’m recording. Most recently I used a Fender Mustang, a PRS, my Electrical Guitar Company models that are either Plexiglas or aluminum ... whatever is lying around in the studio. There’s no way that anyone can tell which guitar I’m using at whatever point in any song, because one song might have two to five different guitars on it [laughs].
Gear
Guitars
Electrical Guitar Company Custom DC models with Gibson 498T humbuckers
Amps & Cabs
Sunn Beta Lead heads (two)
Carver PM 1.5 Power Amps (two)
Effects
Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive
MXR Blue Box Distortion
MXR Dyna Comp
Boss DD-5 Digital Delay
Boss TU-2 Tuner
Strings and Picks
Clayton Acetal Rounded Triangular .63 mm picks
Dunlop Tortex Triangle .60 mm or .73 mm picks
Light Top/Heavy Bottom Strings (various brands) .010–.052
Stylophone
Can you hear the difference?
Vaguely, but I don’t worry about that too much. I’m most concerned with the finished product. Guitars are tools for the artist—that’s it.
I love when people come up to me and say “Your guitar sound was better on Stoner Witch, when you used a Les Paul.” I’m just, like, “What album do you think I only used a Les Paul on? Plus, I used a Fender Mustang reissue on that, dumbass!” [Laughs.]
The band has a dynamic range of sounds and volume levels. How do you manage such big, fast changes in a live environment?
I use my volume controls. I essentially have three volume/distortion levels: Full is with the volume on 10 in the bridge position, middle is with the selector in the middle position and the neck volume rolled off to five, and then the quietest is the neck position with volume at five. I change my tone and volume throughout a set by switching the pickup settings, because almost everything is on, all the time, on full. That’s why I always play a Les Paul-style guitar—or at least one with a similar control setup.
Recently, you’ve been using Electrical Guitar Company Plexiglas and aluminum models a lot live. What do you like about them?
I love the necks, because with it being aluminum, you don’t have to have a tapered neck since it’s so much stronger and stable than wood. It allows me to have a really small neck profile—the thickness is the same at the nut as it is at the neck joint—because I have baby hands [laughs]. I can play faster and more effectively with a thinner aluminum neck than I could ever dream of playing with a wooden neck.
Back to Bass-ics
Melvins' longtime drummer Dale Crover held down the low end on Tres Cabrones, the band's 19th album. Here, he's rumbling with Buzz's Electrical Guitar Company custom V-style bass.
Melvins’ Drummer Dale Crover Picks up the 4-String for Tres Cabrones
What was it like to see someone else play drums in the spot you’ve held for nearly three decades?
Mike is great. It was a joy to relinquish my seat and get him on our 19th record … we made him wait [laughs]. His snare beats in parts of the album were a trip to watch him record—it’ll be fun trying to figure that out for live shows in the future.
You’ve played in Fecal Matter and guitar in Altamont. How was it recording bass instead of drums?
It was easier. When you play bass, there are a lot less things you have to worry about, like miking and noises leaking into mixes. Bass is pretty straightforward, so I felt like I was a part-time employee. I did end up doing some percussion overdubs, but Mike laid out the backbone of all the drum parts on Tres Cabrones. Plus, I always knew if I sucked too bad, I could just punch my way through a track [laughs].
What gear did you use to record your bass parts?
I used a Mosrite Ventures bass for a lot of the parts. [Nirvana’s] Krist Novoselic came down and jammed with us, and he left one of his Gibson Ripper basses so I used that for a couple songs. The Mosrite has more of a midrange tonal frequency where it can sound like a really heavy guitar, but Krist’s Ripper was a beast. That thing brings the low end like you wouldn’t believe.
For amps, I mainly used a Gallien-Krueger 400RB through a single 15", and for an added dimension I ran my basses through Buzz’s setup with the Sunn Beta Lead heads and cabinets that have 12" and 15" speakers in them. That filled out the G-K’s basic tone frequency with some beefiness. Bass and guitar should never really take a long time to get a good sound. If it does, you’re probably doing something wrong or worrying about the wrong thing—if it doesn’t sound good, keep turning it up!
Were there some things you learned about yourself as a bassist or rediscovered during the sessions?
I play guitar quite a bit at home and I play bass, but I got to remember what it feels like to come up with a fresh, usable, complementary bass line or part. It’s a rush or appreciation that only another musician or artist can comprehend. Plus, I enjoy playing bass because there are only four strings, so it’s easier to tune than a guitar and it’s a hell of a lot easier to set up than drums—three of the bass strings are spares anyways [laughs]. Also, it gave me a fresh perspective and understanding for the musical landscape and where bass fits.
We played some faster, punk-rock-style songs to keep things simple and fun for Mike and me—I can show anyone those bass lines because they’re pretty basic. I reconnected with focusing on the rhythm, staying in the pocket, and not messing up. I just tried to come up with bass lines that didn’t sound like Buzz’s parts and to not sound like a drummer was playing bass.
You speak as if you’re a beginner, but the bass lines on “American Cow” are as good as any in the Melvins catalog. They really intertwine nicely with what Buzz is doing on guitar.
I’m proud of that bass line, because it’s different than what Buzz is doing on guitar and it reminds me of the Laughing Hyenas bassist Kevin Strickland, who almost took over as the lead instrument in the band. It’s my best imitation as a bassist … where I don’t sound like a guitarist trying to play bass. But I think my favorite song on Cabrones is “City Dump,” because it’s rocking and the song is still stuck in my head.
What did you use on the album’s heaviest songs—like “Dogs and Cattle Prods” and “Psycho-Delic Haze”—to get the overdriven bass tones?
For any of the super-overdriven stuff, I used Buzz’s Boss ODB-3. That’s what’s nice about playing in a band with a guy with so much crossover gear like Buzz’s rig with the bass distortion pedal, the 15” speakers, and those heavy Sunn heads. All that distortion on those songs helps covers up my sloppiness.
In recent years, you and Buzz have incorporated drummer Coady Willis and bassist Jared Warren of Big Business for live shows. What’s it like playing with two drummers in an already loud band?
It’s bombastic. It’s brutal. It’s fun. We’d had the idea to do that for a long time, since we played in Fantômas/Melvins Big Band and I drummed alongside Dave Lombardo. I don’t think it would work in a quaint jazz quartet, but for our raucous stuff it fits pretty well.
It’s just like two guitarists in a band, right?
Totally. People seem to think it’s hard to do because it’s two guys keeping time and all we’re doing is completely doubling all the parts, but where it gets interesting and the full power is felt is when we’re both doing different beats and fills but still complementing each other and the song. It’s like Thin Lizzy—about 50 percent of the time we’re playing in sync and the rest of the time one of us is following the other or playing our own parts that fit together, depending on what the song calls for.
You’ve recorded almost 20 albums with the Melvins. What were some of the highlights while working on this one?
I think just bringing Mike into the fold—and it being the first time we recorded officially together—was a blast. We always have fun working as a unit, but this time we did some really funny stuff. I had Mike rhythmically make spitting noises in parts of “Tie My Pecker to a Tree”—I filmed it, too—and having him do a Goofy-like laugh in time was hilarious. Those both were my ideas, and I made him do them like a little brother—I was cracking up and he kept messing up his takes [laughs].
King Buzzo with his trusty black Les Paul Custom at a show in '97 at the infamous club CBGB while supporting the band's 9th album Honky, the band's first after three major releases on Atlantic. Photo by Frank White.
Have you noticed any tonal benefits of that unique construction?
The Plexiglas and aluminum guitars have a more robust low end and a clearer, fuller high range. It blows me away when people tell me that my sound is less impactful and huge onstage. It’s like, “Don’t you think I took the time and resources to A/B my rigs? Geesh!”
There are so many fuzzes on the market these days, some new designs and a lot that try to capture the magic of old, rare pedals. You’re a huge fuzz fan, but you stick with your trusty MXR Blue Box and Boss ODB-3.
I realized a long time ago that gear has to last, especially when you take it on the road. If I’m in Omaha on a Thursday night before a gig and my vintage fuzz box goes to shit, can I go to the Guitar Center and pick up a new rare Big Muff? Probably not. So that’s why I opt for gear that is dependable and obtainable in most markets—and yes, it does have to sound good, too. For live gigs, I’ve gotten used to playing through pedals that you can get anywhere. On top of that, you could have the sweetest boutique rig ever but if you play a shitty club in Albuquerque with bad acoustics and P.A., your platinum rig will sound like dog shit. If my Electrical guitars go to shit, I know I can play a Les Paul and I can get Boss and MXR effects anywhere and still play a superb gig. My philosophy is a poor carpenter blames his tools.
And yet you opt for boutique brands like Electrical Guitar Company and Emperor for guitars and cabinets?
Initially, Kevin [Burkett, Electrical Guitar Company founder] didn’t know who I was—he just knew I was into his guitars and he was happy to make me the exact guitar I wanted. It’s a joy to work with him, and I have a feeling people will look at his work in 30 or 40 years and realize his excellence in the same manner that Travis Bean guitars are revered today.
The Emperor guys helped us out before our Melvins Lite tour because bassist Trevor Dunn plays standup and it was a feedback nightmare. They specifically built us a bass cabinet designed for a standup bassist. And because they’re rad dudes, they built me a matching guitar cabinet—and cases—with a 12" and a 15" speaker. And for my standard Melvins rig, I use an additional Emperor 2x15 cabinet.
“Dogs and Cattle Prods” is like a song trilogy in one jam: The first part is punk, with funky parts that warble with your vocals, the second part is a sludge fest, and the finale is an acoustic voyage. How did that come about?
That’s my favorite song on the record.I realized very quickly that the two first parts went together beautifully, and we planned the whole thing out with that in mind. The last part I wrote later as an extension of the second part.For overdubs I usually just dick around with the guitar, trying various things until I find a part and sound that fits in. Sometimes I get that in a matter of minutes, and others it takes a few hours. You never know, but I like searching—that’s what’s so fun about playing guitar!
How did you get that moaning feedback in the background of “American Cow” and “Dr. Mule”?
What I did for that song—and most songs with that type of a guitar overdub—is, once the hard part and the bulk of the guitar tracks are laid down, I’ll go back, listen, and sit around fiddling with my Sunn Beta Lead solid-state amps and guitar to get the appropriate sound or feedback to musically complement the song.
I used to play through a 4x12 and a 2x15, but the last few records I’ve found that just using the 2x15 for overdubs sounds better. The 15" speakers give it a unique tone within the mix. Obviously, it has more low-end oomph, and to my ears, it got rid of the high-end whistling feedback made by my 4x12 cab. Using just the 2x15 cab live doesn’t give me enough bite, but the 4x12-and-2x15 combination is unbeatable.
Here Buzz is rocking out during the band's set at the Apocalypse in Toronto, ON, on May 11th, 1990, with his aforementioned '69 Les Paul Fretless Wonder that has its neck pickup in the bridge position because he didn't have money to replace the original bridge pickup. Photo by Derek von Essen.
You’ve been using Sunn Beta Leads for a while. What do you dig about those?
I know everyone prefers tube amps—and I love my Marshall stack and my Mesa/Boogie TriAxis—but for my live tone, I can’t beat those Sunn heads. They’re amazing. They’re dependable. But tonally, when they’re paired with the Carver PM-1.5 power amps, they’re monsters with plenty of gain and a real tight low end that doesn’t cause my speakers to flub out—because those 15" speakers could cause it to lose some definition.
On The Bootlicker, we even recorded guitars direct out of my pedalboard into the mixing board, with no amp modeling or anything. We just messed with the signal afterwards. If you have the patience, you can make it work.
How did you create those carnival-gone-wrong sounds in “Dr. Mule”?
It’s a Stylophone. If people don’t know what that is, look it up. I use them all the time. I’ve made those things sound like giant organs, but I’ve barely even touched a keyboard. It’s a pocket-sized synthesizer that was, like, $30. It gets confused with an octave fuzz or a gnarly keyboard, but it’s just this little device I’ve had for a long time—it’s a great studio tool.
You play deep string bends extremely accurately, and you have a very unique left-hand vibrato technique—as evidenced on the new tracks “Dogs and Cattle Prods” and “Psycho-Delic Haze.” How did you develop those?
I always had a pretty good vibrato for some reason. I’ve had people give me shit about it in the past because they think it sounds generic, but I love it. Lately, I’ve really been into long string bends that sound like I’m using a Whammy pedal—long, unnatural-sounding bends ending with heavy vibrato.
As for how I learned that stuff, you won’t find it in the Roy Clark DeluxeBig Note Guitar book. I don’t read music, and I have no understanding of chords or how or why they work. For me, that knowledge is pointless, and after playing guitar for about 33 years I see no reason to seek that out now. In my opinion, technical ability and a broad understanding of musical notes written on paper has very little to do with making music. I love writing, recording, and performing songs. I spend about 70 percent of my waking hours doing just that. If you discount all of the hard work I do in this regard, then it’s all down to luck. There’s an old saying in golf that says the more I practice the luckier I get [laughs].
How exactly do you play those deep, Whammy-like bends?
I just used my fingers and played two different takes, and then combined them for the recorded solo. I’ve always been practicing and trying to improve my left-hand vibrato technique, because those are my favorite types of solos—the ones that sound like a pitch-shifting pedal or a guitar’s whammy bar. It sounds so expressive. To me, using pedals for those effects sounds sterile and rigid. I prefer the loose, fluid feel you can get with using your fingers. I think it also helps that I use custom-gauge strings with heavy bottoms and light tops.
Why do you prefer larger, triangular picks?
Because it’s three picks in one. I keep rotating it all night when I’m playing a show, trying to get the sharpest, pointiest edge. Because of my ham-fisted strumming, I am constantly wearing out the picks. After each show I’ll take the corners of the picks and rub them on the carpet, and that burns the burs off them and they’re good as new. I also like having the give of the thinner pick, because it gives a little thaw and snap to my tone since I attack so hard. If I used a thicker pick, I’d snap it.
What’s just as unique about your style is that many of your songs have odd time signatures and don’t follow conventional rock-song structures.
Someone like Captain Beefheart was never worried about song structure or standards, so why should we? We just write and construct what we’d like to hear. We’re not perverse or trying to do something different to be oddballs. People should expect the Melvins not to do those things. The Beatles are an overall easily accessible band loved by millions, but their songs “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” or “Helter Skelter” are completely unconventional songs not of the pop formula, but are absolutely beautiful. A good song is a good song no matter its meter or how many times the chorus appears.
YouTube It
Thanks to the internet, we're blessed with a plethora of Melvins live clips, so here are three to wet your appetite.
Feel the raw hours of power that ensues when the Melvins’ Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover mash up with Big Business’ Coady Willis and Jared Warren.
This clips proves that standup bass has a spot in sludge rock as Trevor Dunn (Fanotomas and Tomahawk) join Buzz and Dale for a raucous set as Melvins Lite.
Enjoy the Melvin’s Houdini—their ’93 tour de force—from front to back in this 2005 show.
Keith Urban’s first instrument was a ukulele at age 4. When he started learning guitar two years later, he complained that it made his fingers hurt. Eventually, he came around. As did the world.
He’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards, four American Music Awards, and racked up BMI Country Awards for 25 different singles.
He’s been a judge on American Idol and The Voice. In conjunction with Yamaha, he has his own brand of affordably priced Urban guitars and amps, and he has posted beginner guitar lessons on YouTube. His 2014 Academy of Country Music Award-winning video for “Highways Don’t Care” featured Tim McGraw and Keith’s former opening act, Taylor Swift. Add his marriage to fellow Aussie, the actress Nicole Kidman, and he’s seen enough red carpet to cover a football field.
Significantly, his four Grammys were all for Country Male Vocal Performance. A constant refrain among newcomers is, “and he’s a really good guitar player,” as if by surprise or an afterthought. Especially onstage, his chops are in full force. There are country elements, to be sure, but rock, blues, and pop influences like Mark Knopfler are front and center.
Unafraid to push the envelope, 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 mixed drum machines, processed vocals, and a duet with Pink with his “ganjo”—an instrument constructed of a 6-string guitar neck on a banjo body—and even a didgeridoo. It, too, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and climbed to No. 7 on the Pop chart.
His new release, High, is more down-to-earth, but is not without a few wrinkles. He employs an EBow on “Messed Up As Me” and, on “Wildfire,” makes use of a sequencerreminiscent of ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Background vocals in “Straight Lines” imitate a horn section, and this time out he duets on “Go Home W U” with rising country star Lainey Wilson. The video for “Heart Like a Hometown” is full of home movies and family photos of a young Urban dwarfed by even a 3/4-size Suzuki nylon-string.
Born Keith Urbahn (his surname’s original spelling) in New Zealand, his family moved to Queensland, Australia, when he was 2. He took up guitar at 6, two years after receiving his beloved ukulele. He released his self-titled debut album in 1991 for the Australian-only market, and moved to Nashville two years later. It wasn’t until ’97 that he put out a group effort, fronting the Ranch, and another self-titled album marked his American debut as a leader, in ’99. It eventually went platinum—a pattern that’s become almost routine.
The 57-year-old’s celebrity and wealth were hard-earned and certainly a far cry from his humble beginnings. “Australia is a very working-class country, certainly when I was growing up, and I definitely come from working-class parents,” he details. “My dad loved all the American country artists, like Johnny Cash, Haggard, Waylon. He didn’t play professionally, but before he got married he played drums in a band, and my grandfather and uncles all played instruments.
One of Urban’s biggest influences as a young guitar player was Mark Knopfler, but he was also mesmerized by lesser-known session musicians such as Albert Lee, Ian Bairnson, Reggie Young, and Ray Flacke. Here, he’s playing a 1950 Broadcaster once owned by Waylon Jennings that was a gift from Nicole Kidman, his wife.
“For me, it was a mix of that and Top 40 radio, which at the time was much more diverse than it is now. You would just hear way more genres, and Australia itself had its own, what they call Aussie pub rock—very blue-collar, hard-driving music for the testosterone-fueled teenager. Grimy, sweaty, kind of raw themes.”
A memorable event happened when he was 7. “My dad got tickets for the whole family to see Johnny Cash. He even bought us little Western shirts and bolo ties. It was amazing.”
But the ukulele he was gifted a few years earlier, at the age of 4, became a constant companion. “I think to some degree it was my version of the stuffed animal, something that was mine, and I felt safe with it. My dad said I would strum it in time to all the songs on the radio, and he told my mom, ‘He’s got rhythm. I wonder what a good age is for him to learn chords.’ My mom and dad ran a little corner store, and a lady named Sue McCarthy asked if she could put an ad in the window offering guitar lessons. They said, ‘If you teach our kid for free, we’ll put your ad in the window.’”
Yet, guitar didn’t come without problems. “With the guitar, my fingers hurt like hell,” he laughs, “and I started conveniently leaving the house whenever the guitar teacher would show up. Typical kid. I don’t wanna learn, I just wanna be able to do it. It didn’t feel like any fun. My dad called me in and went, ‘What the hell? The teacher comes here for lessons. What’s the problem?’ I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. He just said, ‘Okay, then don’t do it.’ Kind of reverse psychology, right? So I just stayed with it and persevered. Once I learned a few chords, it was the same feeling when any of us learn how to be moving on a bike with two wheels and nobody holding us up. That’s what those first chords felt like in my hands.”
Keith Urban's Gear
Urban has 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA Awards, and four Grammys to his name—the last of which are all for Best Country Male Vocal Performance.
Guitars
For touring:
- Maton Diesel Special
- Maton EBG808TE Tommy Emmanuel Signature
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior, TV yellow
- 1959 Gibson ES-345 (with Varitone turned into a master volume)
- Fender 40th Anniversary Tele, “Clarence”
- Two first-generation Fender Eric Clapton Stratocasters (One is black with DiMarzio Area ’67 pickups, standard tuning. The other is pewter gray, loaded with Fralin “real ’54” pickups, tuned down a half-step.)
- John Bolin Telecaster (has a Babicz bridge with a single humbucker and a single volume control. Standard tuning.)
- PRS Paul’s Guitar (with two of their narrowfield humbuckers. Standard tuning.)
- Yamaha Keith Urban Acoustic Guitar (with EMG ACS soundhole pickups)
- Deering “ganjo”
Amps
- Mid-’60s black-panel Fender Showman (modified by Chris Miller, with oversized transformers to power 6550 tubes; 130 watts)
- 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special (built with reverb included)
- Two Pacific Woodworks 1x12 ported cabinets (Both are loaded with EV BlackLabel Zakk Wylde signature speakers and can handle 300 watts each.)
Effects
- Two Boss SD-1W Waza Craft Super Overdrives with different settings
- Mr. Black SuperMoon Chrome
- FXengineering RAF Mirage Compressor
- Ibanez TS9 with Tamura Mod
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
- J. Rockett Audio .45 Caliber Overdrive
- Pro Co RAT 2
- Radial Engineering JX44 (for guitar distribution)
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx XL+ (for acoustic guitars)
- Two Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III (one for electric guitar, one for bass)
- Bricasti Design Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor
- RJM Effect Gizmo (for pedal loops)
(Note: All delays, reverb, chorus, etc. is done post amp. The signal is captured with microphones first then processed by Axe-Fx and other gear.)
- Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049; electric)
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012–.053; acoustics)
- D’Addario EJ16, for ganjo (.012–.053; much thicker than a typical banjo strings)
- D’Addario 1.0 mm signature picks
He vividly remembers the first song he was able to play after “corny songs like ‘Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.’” He recalls, “There was a song I loved by the Stylistics, ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New.’ My guitar teacher brought in the sheet music, so not only did I have the words, but above them were the chords. I strummed the first chord, and went, [sings E to Am] ‘My love,’ and then minor, ‘I'll never find the words, my,’ back to the original chord, ‘love.’ Even now, I get covered in chills thinking what it felt like to sing and put that chord sequence together.”
After the nylon-string Suzuki, he got his first electric at 9. “It was an Ibanez copy of a Telecaster Custom—the classic dark walnut with the mother-of-pearl pickguard. My first Fender was a Stratocaster. I wanted one so badly. I’d just discovered Mark Knopfler, and I only wanted a red Strat, because that’s what Knopfler had. And he had a red Strat because of Hank Marvin. All roads lead to Hank!”
He clarifies, “Remember a short-lived run of guitar that Fender did around 1980–’81, simply called ‘the Strat’? I got talked into buying one of those, and the thing weighed a ton. Ridiculously heavy. But I was just smitten when it arrived. ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the first thing I played on it. ‘Oh my god! I sound a bit like Mark.’”
“Messed Up As Me” has some licks reminiscent of Knopfler. “I think he influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player. ‘Tunnel of Love,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ ‘Telegraph Road,’ the first Dire Straits album, and Communique. I was spellbound by Mark’s touch, tone, and melodic choice every time.”
Other influences are more obscure. “There were lots of session guitar players whose solos I was loving, but had no clue who they were,” he explains. “A good example was Ian Bairnson in the Scottish band Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. It was only in the last handful of years that I stumbled upon him and did a deep dive, and realized he played the solo on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Eye in the Sky’ by Alan Parsons, ‘It’s Magic’ and ‘January’ by Pilot’—all these songs that spoke to me growing up. I also feel like a lot of local-band guitar players are inspirations—they certainly were to me. They didn’t have a name, the band wasn’t famous, but when you’re 12 or 13, watching Barry Clough and guys in cover bands, it’s, ‘Man, I wish I could play like that.’”
On High, Urban keeps things song-oriented, playing short and economical solos.
In terms of country guitarists, he nods, “Again, a lot of session players whose names I didn’t know, like Reggie Young. The first names I think would be Albert Lee and Ray Flacke, whose chicken pickin’ stuff on the Ricky Skaggs records became a big influence. ‘How is he doing that?’”
Flacke played a role in a humorous juxtaposition. “I camped out to see Iron Maiden,” Urban recounts. “They’d just put out Number of the Beast, and I was a big fan. I was 15, so my hormones were raging. I’d been playing country since I was 6, 7, 8 years old. But this new heavy-metal thing is totally speaking to me. So I joined a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror, just as their guitar player. At the same time, I also discovered Ricky Skaggs and Highways and Heartaches. What is this chicken pickin’ thing? One night I was in the metal band, doing a Judas Priest song or Saxon. They threw me a solo, and through my red Strat, plugged into a Marshall stack that belonged to the lead singer, I shredded this high-distortion, chicken pickin’ solo. The lead singer looked at me like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I got fired from the band.”
Although at 15 he “floated around different kinds of music and bands,” when he was 21 he saw John Mellencamp. “He’d just put out Lonesome Jubilee. I’d been in bands covering ‘Hurts So Good,' ‘Jack & Diane,’ and all the early shit. This record had fiddle and mandolin and acoustic guitars, wall of electrics, drums—the most amazing fusion of things. I saw that concert, and this epiphany happened so profoundly. I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. That’s what John did. I’m not gonna think about genre; I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’
“Of course, getting to Nashville with that recipe wasn’t going to fly in 1993,” he laughs. “Took me another seven-plus years to really start getting some traction in that town.”
Urban’s main amp today is a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, which used to belong to John Mayer. He also owns a bass amp that Alexander Dumble built for himself.
Photo by Jim Summaria
When it comes to “crossover” in country music, one thinks of Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton’s more commercial singles like “Two Doors Down.” Regarding the often polarizing subject and, indeed, what constitutes country music, it’s obvious that Urban has thought a lot—and probably been asked a lot—about the syndrome. The Speed of Now Part 1 blurs so many lines, it makes Shania Twain sound like Mother Maybelle Carter. Well, almost.
“I can’t speak for any other artists, but to me, it’s always organic,” he begins. “Anybody that’s ever seen me play live would notice that I cover a huge stylistic field of music, incorporating my influences, from country, Top 40, rock, pop, soft rock, bluegrass, real country. That’s how you get songs like ‘Kiss a Girl’—maybe more ’70s influence than anything else.”
“I think [Mark Knopfler] influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player.”
Citing ’50s producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who moved the genre from hillbilly to the more sophisticated countrypolitan, Keith argues, “In the history of country music, this is exactly the same as it has always been. Patsy Cline doing ‘Walking After Midnight’ or ‘Crazy’; it ain’t Bob Wills. It ain’t Hank Williams. It’s a new sound, drawing on pop elements. That’s the 1950s, and it has never changed. I’ve always seen country like a lung, that expands outwards because it embraces new sounds, new artists, new fusions, to find a bigger audience. Then it feels, ‘We’ve lost our way. Holy crap, I don’t even know who we are,’ and it shrinks back down again. Because a purist in the traditional sense comes along, whether it be Ricky Skaggs or Randy Travis. The only thing that I think has changed is there’s portals now for everything, which didn’t used to exist. There isn’t one central control area that would yell at everybody, ‘You’ve got to bring it back to the center.’ I don’t know that we have that center anymore.”
Stating his position regarding the current crop of talent, he reflects, “To someone who says, ‘That’s not country music,’ I always go, “‘It’s not your country music; it’s somebody else’s country music.’ I don’t believe anybody has a right to say something’s not anything. It’s been amazing watching this generation actually say, ‘Can we get back to a bit of purity? Can we get real guitars and real storytelling?’ So you’ve seen the explosion of Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who are way purer than the previous generation of country music.”
Seen performing here in 2003, Urban is celebrated mostly for his songwriting, but is also an excellent guitarist.
Photo by Steve Trager/Frank White Photo Agency
As for the actual recording process, he notes, “This always shocks people, but ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson is all drum machine. I write songs on acoustic guitar and drum machine, or drum machine and banjo. Of course, you go into the studio and replace that with a drummer. But my very first official single, in 1999, was ‘It’s a Love Thing,’ and it literally opens with a drum loop and an acoustic guitar riff. Then the drummer comes in. But the loop never goes away, and you hear it crystal clear. I haven’t changed much about that approach.”
On the road, Urban utilizes different electrics “almost always because of different pickups—single-coil, humbucker, P-90. And then one that’s tuned down a half-step for a few songs in half-keys. Tele, Strat, Les Paul, a couple of others for color. I’ve got a John Bolin guitar that I love—the feel of it. It’s a Tele design with just one PAF, one volume knob, no tone control. It’s very light, beautifully balanced—every string, every fret, all the way up the neck. It doesn’t have a lot of tonal character of its own, so it lets my fingers do the coloring. You can feel the fingerprints of Billy Gibbons on this guitar. It’s very Billy.”
“I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’”
Addressing his role as the collector, “or acquirer,” as he says, some pieces have quite a history. “I haven’t gone out specifically thinking, ‘I’m missing this from the collection.’ I feel really lucky to have a couple of very special guitars. I got Waylon Jennings’ guitar in an auction. It was one he had all through the ’70s, wrapped in the leather and the whole thing. In the ’80s, he gave it to Reggie Young, who owned it for 25 years or so and eventually put it up for auction. My wife wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I was trying to bid on it, and she made sure that I couldn’t get registered! When it arrived, I discovered it’s a 1950 Broadcaster—which is insane. I had no idea. I just wanted it because I’m a massive Waylon fan, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that guitar disappearing overseas under somebody’s bed, when it should be played.
“I also have a 1951 Nocaster, which used to belong to Tom Keifer in Cinderella. It’s the best Telecaster I’ve ever played, hands down. It has the loudest, most ferocious pickup, and the wood is amazing.”
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Urban plays a Gibson SG here at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Wait until the end to see him show off his shred abilities.
Other favorites include “a first-year Strat, ’54, that I love, and a ’58 goldtop. I also own a ’58 ’burst, but prefer the goldtop; it’s just a bit more spanky and lively. I feel abundantly blessed with the guitars I’ve been able to own and play. And I think every guitar should be played, literally. There’s no guitar that’s too precious to be played.”
Speaking of precious, there are also a few Dumble amps that elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” “Around 2008, John Mayer had a few of them, and he wanted to part with this particular Overdrive Special head. When he told me the price, I said, ‘That sounds ludicrous.’ He said, ‘How much is your most expensive guitar?’ It was three times the value of the amp. He said, ‘So that’s one guitar. What amp are you plugging all these expensive guitars into?’ I was like, ‘Sold. I guess when you look at it that way.’ It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
“It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
Keith also developed a relationship with the late Alexander Dumble. “We emailed back and forth, a lot of just life stuff and the beautifully eccentric stuff he was known for. His vocabulary was as interesting as his tubes and harmonic understanding. My one regret is that he invited me out to the ranch many times, and I was never able to go. Right now, my main amp is an Overdrive Reverb that also used to belong to John when he was doing the John Mayer Trio. I got it years later. And I have an Odyssey, which was Alexander’s personal bass amp that he built for himself. I sent all the details to him, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my amp.’”
The gearhead in Keith doesn’t even mind minutiae like picks and strings. “I’ve never held picks with the pointy bit hitting the string. I have custom picks that D’Addario makes for me. They have little grippy ridges like on Dunlops and Hercos, but I have that section just placed in one corner. I can use a little bit of it on the string, or I can flip it over. During the pandemic, I decided to go down a couple of string gauges. I was getting comfortable on .009s, and I thought, ‘Great. I’ve lightened up my playing.’ Then the very first gig, I was bending the crap out of them. So I went to .010s, except for a couple of guitars that are .011s.”
As with his best albums, High is song-oriented; thus, solos are short and economical. “Growing up, I listened to songs where the guitar was just in support of that song,” he reasons. “If the song needs a two-bar break, and then you want to hear the next vocal section, that’s what it needs. If it sounds like it needs a longer guitar section, then that’s what it needs. There’s even a track called ‘Love Is Hard’ that doesn’t have any solo. It’s the first thing I’ve ever recorded in my life where I literally don’t play one instrument. Eren Cannata co-wrote it [with Shane McAnally and Justin Tranter], and I really loved the demo with him playing all the instruments. I loved it so much I just went with his acoustic guitar. I’m that much in service of the song.”
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?”
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The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
