Q: Have you ever cried at a concert because it was so good? Who, what, when, where, why?
Photo by Jeff Mintline
Dave Brenner — Theory of a Deadman
A: I’ve never cried at a show, for good or for bad. But, sometime in 2002 or 2003, we played a show in Norfolk, Virginia, a few blocks away from where Jerry Cantrell was playing the same night. After our set, we raced to Jerry’s show and caught the entire set. During the song “Rain When I Die,” I came the closest I might ever come to shedding a tear at a show. I had goosebumps, and that tingle on the back of the neck. It was a true musical emotional experience! And I forever embraced William DuVall as a member of that band.
Current obsession: Old-time bluegrass. I love the banjo and slide, the harmonica, the violin. The beauty of hearing certain parts louder because that person took a step closer to the mic. The vocal harmonies delivering a story of some not-too-distant American folktale. The entire thing is just a beautiful marriage of songcraft, performance, and storytelling. I’m obsessed!
Jimmy Takacs — Reader of the Month
A: Tom Waits at the Ryman, 2006. I’d recently started seeing my wife and was there with my good friend. It all hit me as we were sitting in the Ryman (we’re from Michigan), watching Waits play “Take It with Me,” that there was a girl back home who I was excited to be seeing. (There was a period where I thought she was way out of my league.) I felt very fortunate and happy to be alive, and then I remembered all the dark times where I thought I wouldn’t see a moment like this. It became too much, and I began to cry and thanked God. I’m not a religious person, but that was a religious experience. I found it very fitting that Tom Waits in the flesh was the soundtrack.
Current obsession: I’m a pedal guy. My current/ongoing obsession is pairing octave pedals with fuzzes/heavy dirts. I like stacking dirts and placing octaves throughout the chain to see how they interact. Right now, my obsession on my home board is hitting the front end of a Danelectro Fab Tone with a one-off, one-knob fuzz by Pepers’ Pedals out of New Zealand. I start the chain with an OC-2 style octave and juice the output a bit with a CS-3, and then gate the dirts so the stops are clean. It’s crunchy and nasty, yet warm and round, and I absolutely love it.
Tessa Jeffers — Managing Editor
A. I saw Sigur Rós live for the first time in Kansas City in 2006. I brought my lifelong bestie, Emily, who didn’t know anything about the band, but she knew how much I loved them. I’d recently studied abroad in Australia and spent hours by the ocean listening to Sigur Rós whenever I missed loved ones or felt isolated. It’s hard to explain how impactful that was, but it’s about knowing there’s something bigger than you. True peace. Jónsi sings in a made-up language, and since you don’t know literally what he’s singing, you feel it. When Emily experienced this at the concert, I saw tears on her face. Witnessing that power of music was one of the most beautiful moments that I’ll never forget.
Current obsession: Passion. I’m examining what inspires me musically, and it comes down to uncontrolled emotion. Where is the raw truth? Give me the fire. That’s what I’m obsessed with.
Chris Kies — Multimedia Manager
A: A dear friend introduced me to the cosmic world of Explosions in the Sky. We spent hours listening to their records, silent, allowing the music to wash over us like an instrumental post-rock baptism. We never got to experience EITS because cancer took her away, but in 2016 I saw them at San Diego’s Observatory North Park. When our song “Your Hand in Mine” crested at its emotional peak, in a sea of strangers, the music connected me with her one last time.
Current obsession: Space—specifically Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. (We ain’t shit.)
![Jerry Cantrell Rig Rundown [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/youtube.jpg?id=53714787&width=600&height=600&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C560%2C0)
Diamond Pedals Dark Cloud
True to the Diamond design ethos of our dBBD’s hybrid analog architecture, Dark Cloud unlocks a new frontier in delay technology which was once deemed unobtainable by standard BBD circuit.
Powered by an embedded system, the Dark Cloud seamlessly blends input and output signals, crafting Tape, Harmonic, and Reverse delays with the organic warmth of analog companding and the meticulous precision of digital control.
Where analog warmth meets digital precision, the Dark Cloud redefines delay effects to create a pedal like no other
But by gosh, if delay—and its sister effect, reverb—haven’t always been perfect for the music I like to write and play. Which brings us to the Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay. The EchoBack, along with the standard delay controls of level, time, and repeats—as well as a tap tempo—has a toggle to alternate between analog, tape, and digital-delay voices.
I hooked up my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante to my Blues Junior to give the EchoBack a test run. We love a medium delay—my usual preference for delay settings is to have both level and repeats at 1 o’clock, and time at 11 o’clock. With the analog voice switched on, I heard some pillowy warmth in the processed signal, as well as a familiar degradation with each repeat—until their wake gave way to a gentle, distant, crinkly ticking. Staying on analog and adjusting delay time down to 8 o’clock and repeats to about 11:30, some cozy slapback enveloped my rendition of Johnny Marr’s part to “Back to the Old House,” conjuring up thoughts of Elvis trapped in a small chamber, but in a good way. It sounded indubitably authentic. The one drawback of analog delay for me, generally, is that its roundness can feel a bit under water at times.
Switching over to tape, that pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top. With the settings at the medium-length mode listed above, I could see the empty, glass hall the pedal sent my sound bouncing down. I heard several pronounced pings of repeats before the signal fully faded out. On slapback settings (time at 8 o’clock, repeats at 11:30), rather than Elvis, I heard something more along the lines of a honky-tonk mic in a glass bottle. Still relatively crystalline, which actually was not my favorite. I like a bit more crinkle—so maybe analog is my bag....“That pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear, pristine replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top.”
Next up, digital. Here we have the brightest voice, and as expected, the most faithful repeats. They ping just a few times before shifting to a smooth, single undulating wave. When putting its slapback hat on, I found that the effect was a bit less alluring than I’d observed for the analog and tape voices. This is where the digital delay felt a little too sterile, with the cleanly preserved signal feeling a bit unnatural.
All in all, I dig the EchoBack for its replications of analog and tape voices, and ultimately, lean towards tape. While it’s nice having the digital delay there as an option, it feels a bit too clean when meddling with time of any given length. Nonetheless, this is surely a handy stomp for any acoustic player looking to venture into the land of live effects, or for those who are already there.
