Amythyst Kiah began learning guitar at the age of 13, then later attended a creative arts high school, where she found her people among all the “misfits and weirdos.”
Amythyst Kiah - "God's Under the Mountain"
“I’ve stayed away from writing songs where I’m just strumming for a really long time,” she prefaces, “because I was worried that it was going to be too boring to not do fingerstyle. But then I realized, there’s so many [strummed] songs that are super powerful, and you can still make it interesting rhythmically.
“I started to listen to more rhythm guitar players, like Cory Wong, and reconfigured how I was viewing rhythm guitar,” she continues. “It was a matter of finding a way to do it that was exciting and interesting to me. Now, it’s really expanded the songs that I can write.”
All of the demos for Still + Brightbegan with strumming, says Kiah. When working on ideas, she would “play rhythmically as much as I could,” then open GarageBand, choose a tempo she felt comfortable playing to, and add programmed drums—often going with a modern R&B pattern. But when she brought her songs to the studio, she discovered that she was struggling to replicate the guitar parts she’d recorded at home.For Kiah, who’s always had a very strong sense of self and vision for her sound, that was a bit discomforting.
In the making of Still + Bright, Kiah’s fifth full-length album, the songwriter strengthened her skills as both a rhythm guitarist and a vocalist.
“I had a moment of, ‘I can either spend way too long trying to replay this part that I’ve been playing from muscle memory at this point,’” she shares, or hand it off to her session player, Nashville guitarist (and, coincidentally, Premier Guitarcolumnist) Ellen Angelico, and focus on her lyrics and vocal delivery instead. “I used to be very much like, ‘I have to be playing guitar on everything.’ But there’s a team of people here that can help, and make things go along more smoothly. My ego shouldn’t be getting in the way.”
She did, ultimately, play guitar—acoustic or electric, or both—on five out of 12 tracks, and banjo on two. Angelico performed on each track, alternating between mandolin, dobro, pedal steel, and acoustic, electric, and baritone guitar. (You’ll also hear Billy Strings, with his unmistakable, rapid-fire bluegrass licks, on “I Will Not Go Down.”)
The finished album exudes a spirit of triumph. It rings as one extended anthem, beginning with “Play God and Destroy the World,” a reflection on a childhood rejection of religious hypocrisy, and ending on “People’s Prayer,” an avowal of humanistic compassion. “S P A C E,” one of the more pensive songs in the collection, features Kiah playing clawhammer banjo. “God’s Under the Mountain” builds and undulates with a communion of syncopated vocal melody, fiddle, pedal steel, dobro, and background vocals by producer Butch Walker and Avi Kaplan. Then, the waltzing “Dead Stars” unwinds with simpler, judicious instrumentation supporting a mournful theme, before swelling with Morricone-like eloquence as it closes. “This is the first album where I really had a concept about everything, from the logo to the color palette, and everything else,” says Kiah, “and I had an incredible team who was able to really bring to life what I was envisioning.”
Amythyst Kiah’s Gear
Some of Kiah’s building blocks for her fingerpicking abilities came from classical training in high school and old-time studies at East Tennessee State University.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
Effects
- L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic DI
- TC Electronic Polytune
Strings, Picks & Accessories
- Acoustic: D’Addario light
- Electric: Ernie Ball medium
- Dunlop .73 mm picksPaige capo
Throughout the record, Kiah’s propulsive singing voice is the glowing flame to the hearth, acting as a centerpiece to the already luminous, Americana-fueled full-band arrangements. Like rhythm guitar, voice was another essential element that she cultivated while creating Still + Bright.
“I kind of diminished that power of having a voice,” she admits, explaining how she’s always been preoccupied with measuring up on guitar, and has long held multi-instrumentalists such as Prince in high esteem. But something shifted when a sentiment expressed by her manager, Dolph Ramseur, years ago, finally sunk in. “He said, ‘Amythyst, you know, you could just stand in a room and sing a cappella, and people would sit there and listen, and they wouldn’t get up and leave, and they would not be bored.’ And then it really dawned on me—it’s a powerful thing, people that can just sing; there’s a power and strength there, too. It’s just understanding where the power lies, and then embracing it, as opposed to feeling inadequate.
“It’s just understanding where the power lies, and then embracing it, as opposed to feeling inadequate.”
“I have this ongoing obsession in the back of my mind that I’m never doing enough,” she continues. “So, anytime I remove something from the equation, I worry. That stems from social anxiety, and being overly concerned with, like, ‘Am I making the right decision?’ But it doesn’t matter how long I agonize or rethink or redo something; at the end of the day, the decision I make is still going to be spontaneous. Because there’s only ever ‘now.’” She adds, laughing, “I’m a big Alan Watts fan.”
Now, she’s started doing vocal warmups before shows, “and through that, I’ve expanded my range and I’ve also been able to gain even more control over my voice. It also means that I can write more challenging songs. Those two things—expanding [rhythm] guitar and expanding voice—have let me open a whole new side to my sound.”
Spiritual themes appear frequently on Still + Bright, in both Kiah’s song titles and lyrics. The opening lines of “Empire of Love” include, “My religion is none at all / I build my own cathedrals and let ’em fall.” On “Let’s See Ourselves Out,” she sings, “So many matrices we create to escape / Sometimes I wonder if we’re just a mistake.” And, on more than one song, there’s mention of how “we’re all made from stars from above,” alluding to the scientific evidence that the elements of the human body were created by stars that went supernova.
Kiah was raised in a predominantly white, Christian suburb in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as part of a Black family who didn’t attend church. She identified as an “alternative” kid, vacillating between agnosticism and atheism, shopping at Hot Topic, and drawing inspiration from The Matrix’s theme of breaking free from societal constraints. (She remarks on her younger self’s “cognitive dissonance” of buying “‘alternative clothes’ at the mall.”) As a self-proclaimed introvert, she dealt with social anxiety, and spent a lot of her time at home alone on the computer. But when she began learning guitar at 13, and later started attending a creative arts high school, she finally felt like she fit in: “’cause everybody there was misfits and weirdos.”
Spirituality is a common theme in Kiah’s music. Her current beliefs draw mainly on principles of Zen Buddhism and Taoism.
Photo by Kevin King
Though still adamantly individualistic, her spiritual views evolved when she took courses in both Western humanities and Eastern religion in college: “I realized that people have created narratives about how to live our lives for thousands of years. So, this idea that only one group of people got it right and everyone else is wrong; that threw all of that out the window.” Today, she says that Zen Buddhism probably best captures her personal belief system, but, “I hesitate to call myself a Zen Buddhist because I feel like I still have more to learn,” she says. She also rereads the Tao Te Ching by Laozi “pretty regularly,” lauding the principles of Taoism as another strong influence on her philosophies.
At the beginning of our 1 p.m. Zoom call, Kiah shares that she typically spends her mornings alone and in silence, meditating, writing, and reading, and lightheartedly apologizes for enthusiastically “going on”—saying she’s had a lot of time to think before speaking to another person. When I ask her about what modern artists she’s listening to lately, she has more to say about what she’s been reading. One of the books in her current rotation is The Lost Art of Silence by Sarah Anderson.
Growing up, Kiah identified as an “alternative” kid, and was something of an “anime mall goth” who often shopped at Hot Topic.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
“It goes along really well with meditation and learning to live in the present,” Kiah says. “It’s been interesting to explore those different perspectives on silence, and make more of an effort to find time in my life to be quiet. I find that I’m getting more and more comfortable with myself and my thoughts, and I feel less like I always have to block out anxious thoughts. Or, if I have anxiety about something, I can come up with an idea of, ‘Okay, well, how can I alleviate this? Can I do anything about it?’, and solve the problem as opposed to starting the spiral.
“Impostor syndrome was the big driver for my social anxiety, and now, I feel like I’m on the other side of being an impostor,” she reflects. “I’m doing what I’ve been wanting to do for the past 12 years, making a living doing this. There’s stressful things that happen, but you have to decide, what are you willing to be stressed out about? To try to seek a perfect, happy life where nothing ever upsets you—that’s called emotional repression and it’s really unhealthy. It’s just about accepting the fact that, hey, some days, some weeks are gonna be shit, and to find ways to take care of yourself that are as least self-destructive as humanly possible.”
“It doesn’t matter how long I agonize or rethink or redo something; at the end of the day, the decision I make is still going to be spontaneous. Because there’s only ever ‘now.’”
And while she’s outgrown a lot of her social anxiety, she says it’s been a challenge adapting to the stress that comes with the unpredictability of touring. “When I would be at home, I would establish this really tight routine, and then I got completely knocked on my feet when I would leave,” she explains. “I had to get to this point where I would just be focusing more on the present and less on trying to micromanage how my day’s going to be, because it’s not gonna always go the way that I want things to go.
“That’s been also helpful in my creative process, because then I’m not as anxious and worried about all these other things that I don’t have control over, and I’m able to just … enjoy the process of living.”
Ellen Angelico's Gear
Guitars
- Dismal Ax Barnstormer
- Cervantes Telecaster
- GFI Expo S-10
- 1980s Kentucky KM-250S mandolin
Amp
- 3rd Power Dream 50 Plexi
Effects
- Peterson StroboStomp HD tuner
- Line 6 HX Stomp
- 1981 DRV
- MXR Timmy Overdrive Mini
- Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Boy
- Strymon Flint
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL
- Wegen picks
YouTube It
On WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, recorded in Knoxville, Tennessee, Kiah performs an evocative, stripped-down version of “Empire of Love” from Still + Bright.
![Idles Rig Rundown [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/youtube.jpg?id=54836554&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
Between 2016 and 2024, Bristol outfit IDLES have gone from being snarling, post-punk underdogs to being snarling, post-punk champions. Their debut LP, Brutalism, was an immediate hit, and since then they’ve turned out a string of full-length records that have expanded their creative vocabulary while increasing their popularity. It’s all come to a head this year with Tangk, their Grammy-nominated fifth album, which dropped in February.
Along the way, IDLES’ sound has mutated into experimental offshoots and outgrowths, so it’s little surprise that the rigs of guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, along with bassist Adam Devonshire, have done the same. While they still tour with some of the gear they showed off on our 2021 Rig Rundown, each player has fun new trinkets that contribute to their run of shows this year. But even with all the new toys, they keep an element of danger in the mix, and certain variables mean the set sounds different every night: “People come to see an IDLES show ’cause it almost falls apart all the time,” grins Bowen.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Bowen's Bari
Bowen had a baritone neck matched with this Dacota red Fender Stratocaster body. It’s got stock pickups, which split the difference between the twang of a Strat and the bassy tones of the bari. This one is tuned to either B standard or drop A#.
Triples Make It Safe
Bowen’s signal is blasted out via a trio of amplifiers: a Vox AC30, Orange AD200B MKIII, and a Hiwatt Custom 100. A Hiwatt and Orange cabinet duo lend different textures to the soundwaves.
Mark's Mothership
Bowen’s board setup is largely the same as he had in the 2021 Rig Rundown, but there are a few tweaks.
His primary guitar pedalboard remains mostly the same, with Death By Audio Reverberation Machine and Echo Dream 2, Adventure Audio Dream Reaper, Moog MF Delay and MF Ring, Death By Audio Waveformer Destroyer, Electro-Harmonix POG2, 4ms Pedals Mini Swash Full, Red Panda Particle and Raster, and a JHS Haunting Mids. His new tuner, though, is a Walrus Audio Canvas. It all still runs through a GigRig 3 switcher. Under the hood resides three signal sweeteners including an EQD Acapulco Gold and a pair of ZVEX boxes—a Lo-Fi Junky & Super Duper 2-in-1.
Next comes his modulation station, equipped with Moog’s Moogerfooger MF-107 FreqBox, MF-102 Ring Modulator, MF-108M Cluster Flux, and CP-251 Control Processor, in addition to another no-name glitch/synth device. The Electro-Harmonix 95000, Old Blood Noise Endeavors Minim, and EHX POG2 are still in the mix, but the Strymon TimeLine has been swapped for a Vongon Paragraphs. An Akai MPC One+ helps with sampling, and a Sequential Prophet-5 synth ties it all together. A pair of Strymon Iridiums are hidden under the Moog units, which handle all the signals from this electric jungle—as well as signal from Jon Beavis’ drums! “It’s the tension between the space-age mad stuff and the AC/DC guitar,” says Bowen. “I want both”
A third board, beneath the modular materials, is loaded up to with three Mission Engineering EP-1 expression pedals, a Walrus Canvas Re-Amp, a Moose Electronics Dobsky Fuzz, a GigRig Three2One, and another GigRig G3.
Tape Measures
Lee Kiernan’s Fender 70th Anniversary Esquire has become his go-to, a very versatile guitar which he’s left unmodified—save for the gaffer tape, of course. Despite the presence of strap locks under the tape, Kiernan’s learned you can’t be too careful.
Jackson Shredder
Kiernan calls this Jackson Soloist “one of the best-playing guitars he’s ever felt.” Enough said.
Triples is Best
This time around, like Bowen, Kiernan is running a trio of amps: a Hiwatt DR88, Marshall 1987x, and Peavey Deuce, which still has the original, square-magnet Peavey speakers. (A backup 2x12, loaded with Eminence Swamp Thangs, is on-hand in case things go wonky.) At this point, shouldn’t he just get a Kemper? “Nope,” he responds shortly.
Have You Met Gary?
Kiernan’s board has many of the same stomps as last time, but it’s been configured into a double-decker layout rather than a sprawling, side-by-side affair, and the newest addition is the EarthQuaker Devices Gary, a distortion/fuzz combo he made with the Ohio effects company from the green side of their now-discontinued Gray Channel. Aside from his new buddy Gary, Kiernan runs a Boss TU-3S, EQD Tone Job, Red Panda Raster, Death By Audio Micro Dream and Reverberation Machine, Eventide H9 Harmonizer, Warm Audio Ringer Bringer, Boss DM-2w, EQD Organizer, Montreal Assembly Count to Five, Drolo Twin Peaks and Stamme[n], Death By Audio Interstellar Overdriver Deluxe, Boss PS-5, Moog MF Chorus, Xotic EP Booster, Intensive Care Audio Vena Cava Filter, EQD Data Corrupter, and GigRig Remote Loopy 2. A smaller separate board is home to a DigiTech Whammy, two Mission Engineering expression pedals, a third expression pedal for the Drolo Twin Peaks, and a Mission Engineering Expressionator.
Out of sight, Kiernan also has a EQD Acapulco Gold, and ZVEX Effects Instant Lo-Fi Junky and Super Duper 2-in-1.
(American) Ultra Mono
This Fender American Ultra Jazz bass was made specially for Adam Devonshire. He was stoked about this unique colorway, but wanted it paired with a thin C-profile neck. Fender made it happen, bolting it onto the body. Devonshire strings it with Rotosounds.
Lollapalooza Lincoln
When IDLES was in Chicago to play Lollapalooza, bass builders Serek invited him to check out their shop. After a few minutes with this Lincoln bass, Devonshire had put in an order.
Fane Versus Fullerton
Taking a 33-percent-less approach than his bandmates on 6-string guitar, Devonshire runs just two amps: a Hiwatt DR201 and a Fender Super Bassman.
Sweaty Stomps
Devonshire has a problem: He sweats a lot. That’s not a big problem if your job doesn’t involve standing over rare, expensive electronics while dripping liquid onto them. So, he’s got a big fear that he’ll flood his favorite effects.
That said, these are the ones he feels are worth the risk: a Boss TU-3W, GigRig QuarterMaster, Darkglass Electronics NSG and Microtubes B7K Ultra, EHX Pico POG, Death By Audio Fuzz War, Baltimore Sonic Research Institute FZZ, Moog MF Chorus, Source Audio Spectrum, two Strymon Flints, Tronographic Rusty Box, and Tech 21 SansAmp Programmable Bass Driver DI.
Shop Idles' Rig
Electro-Harmonix POG2 Polyphonic Octave Generator Pedal
Moog Moogerfooger MF-104M Analog Delay
Moog Moogerfooger MF-108M Cluster Flux
Electro-Harmonix 95000 Performance Loop Laboratory 6-Track Looper
Mission Engineering Expressionator
EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold
Darkglass Microtubes B7K Ultra
Tech 21 SansAmp Programmable Bass Driver DI
Fender American Ultra Jazz Bass
EarthQuaker Devices Gary Automatic Pulse Width Modulation Fuzz/Overdrive Pedal
EarthQuaker Devices Tone Job V2 EQ and Boost Pedal
EarthQuaker Devices Organizer V2 Polyphonic Organ Emulator Pedal
EarthQuaker Devices Data Corrupter Harmonizing PLL Pedal