Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian come together to release new music for the first time in seven years.
Black Country Communion announces the upcoming release of their highly anticipated fifth studio album, V, available worldwide on June 14. To celebrate, fans are treated to the immediate release of the album's heavy funk lead single, "Stay Free," out today on all major streaming platforms.
Black Country Communion - "Stay Free" - Teaser
Produced by longtime collaborator Kevin Shirley, V marks a monumental chapter in the band's career, "embodying a renewed spirit and an evolution of their unmistakable sound." Shirley captures the essence of the band's journey, stating, "For a band that started out as a collection of the best practitioners of their instruments, they very quickly found a unique sound. This time around, it has more purpose, the riffs are tougher, and there are hooks! Yes, hooks! It’s the most cohesive record, full of soul and grit, and I think this is the one that’s going to be the benchmark for Black Country Communion." Glenn agrees, “In my opinion, we had the best time recording this record at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, tons of fun & a magical recording. Meet you inside the Music.”
Black Country Communion's V
Cover art by Hugh Syme
Track Listing:
1. Enlighten
2. Stay Free
3. Red Sun
4. Restless
5. Letting Go
6. Skyway
7. You're Not Alone
8. Love And Faith
9. Too Far Gone
10. The Open Road
Kevin Shirley's insight into the recording process highlights the unique chemistry and camaraderie within the band. "When we convened in 2023 to start recording the album V, it really was like picking up the day after the most recent gig," Shirley reflects. "The camaraderie is immediately evident. Once they start playing, everyone is deadly serious, and the music sounds like this band, and nothing else sounds like it."
The news follows the announcement of the band’s upcoming performance at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale, FL on Sunday, March 17th. This rare appearance will be the first live performance in America from the band in over 11 years. Presented by Joe Bonamassa's Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation, all profits from the concert will be donated to support music education and musicians in need. The band is also set to appear on the Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea cruise, sailing from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico from March 18-22.
For more information, please visit blackcountrycommunion.com.
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Any working ’60s JMP Super Lead is an amazing amplifier, but the combination of Dave’s ears, experience, and quality time with his own Super Lead add up to a melding of twists and tradition that captures the richness, power, and dynamics of Marshall non-master-volume amps in a high-quality and, if you want, quieter package.
Stripped Down, Lowdown, Bright, and Brighter
True to lineage, the 50-watt Plex uses a pair of EL34 power tubes and a trio of 12AX7s pulling preamp and phase inverter duties. The familiar volume 1, volume 2, presence, bass, and mid knobs handle gain and EQ tasks. But the Plex deviates from tradition, too. An old Marshall Super Lead has four inputs—high and low sensitivity inputs for channel I and II. The Plex, however, uses a single pair of inputs that are hardwired in jumpered fashion—the same way you might jumper on the front panel of a 2-channel Marshall—effectively mixing the two preamp stages. A post-phase-inverter master volume helps keep the sound pressure level in check when you need to cool it without compromising feel and dynamics. And above each volume knob is a 3-way bright switch. The switches alter the frequency and gain response of the corresponding volume control, toggling between a darker bypassed setting, a mild treble boost enabled by a 100 pF bright capacitor, or a screaming third setting with a 4700 pF cap in the line. The power switch doubles as a high/low voltage selector, engaging an internal Variac that drops operational voltage from 120 volts to 90 volts, achieving the brown sound synonymous with ’80s hard-rock Super Lead applications.
The spartan back panel sports outputs for 4-, 8-, or 16-ohm loads and an IEC mains power input. The head weighs in at a reasonable 34 pounds with dimensions of 24" x 10" x 8.75"—just a hair smaller than a real JMP. The circuit is arrayed on a high-quality printed circuit board—a manufacturing method Friedman favors in many respects for quality control purposes.
But … Does It Van Halen?
Hell yes it does. Dime the Plex, flip it to low voltage, and you’re living in the Eddie zone. Recreating that high-octane, modded-Marshall aggression and kerrang with the most familiar Marshall-style knobs is easy and intuitive. But this amp is full of surprises, too, and many sonic possibilities hide behind the simple additional controls.
The lead channel, controlled by volume 1, is aggressive and edgy, capturing the cut and midrange growl most immediately associated with vintage plexis. Anything below 3 on the gain control is pretty clean. At around 4, hot pickups will induce breakup. And in the 5-to-6 range, it comes alive with rich saturation, enhanced harmonics, and sustain. Approaching 10, the Friedman blossoms into something furious and snarling. The 100 pF bright capacitor setting gently lifts the top end for a hint of jangle, while the 4700 pF cap boosts upper midrange and treble, adding even more chimey range and sharper bite.
The normal channel, controlled by volume 2, feels very much like the antithesis of the lead channel. It’s dark and brooding with lots of resonance in the bass. Keeping the gain below 5 still yields a woolly, forceful voice. Starting around 6 it slips into thick clipping, and as you move toward 10, the Friedman delivers progressively denser tonalities, more compression, and more sustain. The 100 pF bright cap mode adds a splash of air, while the 4700 pF setting significantly jacks the drive and boosts frequencies from 1200 Hz up. Each is a very different version of a cool color.
Sonic Structure
Much of the amp’s tone-shaping flexibility comes from using the volume knobs, not just for gain, but as tone controls to create a best match for a specific guitar. In a general sense, the normal channel adds fullness and body to single-coils, while the lead channel brings definition, bite, and clarity to humbuckers. With a Stratocaster, setting both channel volumes in the 3-to-6 range achieves classic Marshall clean that hints at Hendrix. Strat pickups sound zingy with bright caps bypassed, but the 100 pF setting adds even more attractive shimmer. Lead mode and high gain settings are a nice fit for a Strat, too. Setting the lead channel to 7-to-8 and backing the normal channel to 4 pushes the amp to full-bodied, blistering sustain, and adding the 4700 pF bright cap adds upper midrange urgency. P-90s in a Les Paul Jr. are a more extreme version of this recipe—gritty, snarling, and explosive. But if I ever sensed the signal was lacking, just rolling up the normal channel and using the 100 pF cap did the trick—evoking, more than once, the gritty style of the Pixies’ Joey Santiago.
The Plex’sdynamics and touch sensitivity are outstanding. Using just variation in guitar volume and picking intensity, I effortlessly moved from clean arpeggios to crunch and full-on shred. The low sensitivity input felt especially nice for working with these intensity adjustments, too. It predictably reduces gain, but it also darkens and mellows edgier pickups. The vintage-voiced tone stack is sensitive as well. Treble, mid, bass, and presence controls are accommodating, cover a lot of harmonic range, and even extreme EQ settings never seem to neuter the fundamental voice. If you use pedals, you’ll run them straight into the front of the amp. There’s no effects loop here. Still, a Riveter Electric Brass Tacks treble booster with dark amp settings conjured the sounds of early Sabbath, and the front end easily handled the extra level.
My Kid’s Asleep
Usually, implementing a master volume in this type of circuit can produce sonic anemia at low levels. But Dave Friedman’s addition of a unique post-phase-inverter master volume means you can preserve much more tone, character, and feel at tiny-venue levels. The low-voltage Variac mode offers interesting less-hot options, too, enabling spongier, more saturated, creamier tones at less deafening volumes.
The Verdict
The Plex offers a perfect balance of vintage Marshall-ness and a not-too-busy list of practical extra features—maintaining the essence of plexi tone while expanding tone-shaping functionality and increasing the amp’s useful volume range. But for all its enhancements, the Plex stays close to its vintage inspiration, giving it a brash, raw, unruliness that’s always exciting
Friedman PLEX 50-Watt Tube Amplifier Head
When he’s on the West Coast, Jim Campilongo feels something like a stranger in his own home. His latest record pays tribute to the city he misses when he’s there, and the one where he built most of his career.
He did this largely in his adopted home of New York City, where, for most of the 2000s, he was a mainstay—and, for music fans in the know, a must-see—of the downtown arts scene, with long-running and celebrated residencies at Lower East Side venues like Rockwood Music Hall and the now-defunct Living Room.
Campilongo left the East Coast to return West roughly two years ago. But his newest record, She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show, is very much a New York album—maybe his most New York one of all. It is also very much a rock album—maybe his most rock one of all. There are reasons for this. The roots of the record stretch back to the dark days of Covid, when words like “quarantine” and “distancing” were too much a part of the common vernacular. Life was weirder, quieter and, truth be told, often drearier. Campilongo found escape where he could, which manifested in daily 5 a.m. walks around his Brooklyn neighborhood. His companion was an old iPod playlist of classic-rock songs. “I’d go out, it’d be pitch black, there’d be no one around—it was like a science-fiction movie,” he recalls. “I had these old-school Vic Firth headphones, and an iPod that had a playlist of maybe 300 classic-rock tunes that I made back when iPods were the latest thing. And I would walk the streets listening to it over and over.”
The 4TET, from left to right: drummer Dan Rieser, Campilongo, bassist Andy Hess, and guitarist Luca Benedetti.
Some of the songs that, quite literally, got into Campilongo’s head? “It was ‘Mississippi Queen’ kind of stuff,” he says. “‘Hush’ by Deep Purple. Elvin Bishop’s ‘Travelin’ Shoes,’ which is an amazingly eventful track. There’s background vocals, there’s a little breakdown, there’s a melodic solo. There’s harmonies, a great rhythm.... I became obsessed with it.”
These songs, and the 297 or so others on Campilongo’s playlist, informed several of the tracks on She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show. One, a greasy, growly workout titled “This Is a Quiet Street,” was influenced by Grand Funk Railroad’s live version of the Animals’ 1966 single, “Inside Looking Out”—“a song I’ve been listening to since high school, and that I’ve been trying to write for 20 years,” Campilongo says. “This is about the closest I’ve gotten.” Another track, “Do Not Disturb,” he continues, “is like my interpretation of a ZZ Top tune.”
“I’d go out, it’d be pitch black, there’d be no one around—it was like a science-fiction movie.... And I would walk the streets listening to it over and over.”
But She Loves the Coney Island Freak Show is not all rock-influenced. Leadoff track “Dragon Stamp,” a dark, deep-in-the-pocket jam that Campilongo introduces by sounding a detuned open low string, and then hitting a harmonic and raising the pitch by bending the string behind the nut (something of a JC trademark move), came to Campilongo after repeated playings of “Step to Me,” a 1991 song from deceased New York hardcore rapper Tim Dog, on his early morning walks. “I think I listened to that 50 times in a row, numerous times,” Campilongo says. “I couldn’t get enough of it.” The emotive “Sunset Park,” meanwhile, in which Campilongo unspools languid, vocal guitar lines in a manner that is nothing short of a master class in the subtle art of touch, tone and phrasing, was influenced by a Maria Callas aria. Another track, “Sal’s Waltz,” by Frédéric Chopin. “Whether it’s successful or not, who knows?” Campilongo says self-effacingly.
Sunset Park
While many of the She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show songs have their origins in Campilongo’s early-morning walks and his iPod-provided soundtrack, bringing them into existence was in some ways a more immediate affair. To record the album, Campilongo got together with guitarist and longtime collaborator Luca Benedetti, bassist Andy Hess, and drummer Dan Rieser in a combo they dubbed the 4TET, and laid down the tracks live in the studio—two studios, to be exact. “We did two days recording at Bunker [in Williamsburg, Brooklyn], and then another two days at a different studio [Atomic Sound, in Red Hook, Brooklyn],” he says. “It was pure joy to play with those guys.”
“I always figured I could get all the sounds I want from the volume and tone knobs on the guitar, or from where I pick, and how hard; all those little variations.”
Campilongo, as is his way, kept his gear setup minimal: his trusty 1959 Fender Telecaster with a top-loader bridge, plugged straight into a 1970 silver-panel Fender Princeton Reverb fitted with a Celestion G10 speaker—no pedals required. “It’s so uninteresting for me to talk about gear, because it’s basically the same answer every time,” he says with a laugh. As for why he mostly eschews effects? “I always figured I could get all the sounds I want from the volume and tone knobs on the guitar—and on a Tele, those knobs are really dramatic—or from where I pick, and how hard; all those little variations,” he reasons. Another benefit of going sans pedals? “You kind of just accept the hand you’re dealt, and you can get down to playing music quicker.”
When it came to the playing, Campilongo stuck to another tried-and-true aspect of his guitar style—improvisation. “None of what I’m doing on the album was worked out beforehand,” he says of his solos on She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show. In his opinion, this makes for not only a better playing experience, but a better listening one, too. “If I play a perfect solo and it’s worked out, I generally don’t like listening to it, because it’s not a time capsule of that moment,” he says. “It’s like going out on a first date and having a script of what to talk about, instead of it just being a natural conversation. I want to hear the real talk, warts and all.”
Jim Campilongo's Gear
Campilongo performing at Rockwood Music Hall Stage 3, the same Lower East Side venue where he previously held a long-running residency.
Photo by Manish Gosalia
Guitars
- 1959 Fender Telecaster
- Lumiere Jim Campilongo Signature T- Model
- Fender Custom Shop Jim Campilongo Signature Telecaster
Amps
Effects
- Crazy Tube Circuits Splash Reverb
- Crazy Tube Circuits Stardust Overdrive
- JAM Pedals Wahcko
- Universal Audio OX Amp Top Box
- Boomerang Phrase Sampler
Strings, Picks, & Accessories
- D’Addario EXL120 Nickel Wound Super Light (.009–.042)
- V-Picks Fusion
- Klotz Titanium guitar cable
- Souldier guitar straps
Campilongo’s commitment to balancing on that creative knife edge informs every aspect of the album, and also his music in general. “I don’t want to ever put out the same record twice in a row,” he says. To that end, he is already plotting future challenges, including a “pseudo-jazz record where I’m playing standards in the way I would present them, which would be a little scary.”
For all his musical adventurism, one aspect of Campilongo’s artistic makeup that remains steadfast is his connection to the city that helped birth She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show. “Even though I’m back in California, in many ways I feel like a transplanted New Yorker,” Campilongo says. “It’s in my DNA,” he laughs. “It’s not like I’m returning home to the West Coast and, you know, I can’t wait to go surfing.”
YouTube It
For years, Jim Campilongo held court at New York City’s Rockwood Music Hall. Here, Jim and the 4TET tear through a She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show highlight: the Southern-rock-inflected, ZZ Top-inspired “Do Not Disturb.”
Photo by David James Swanson
Following the surprise unveiling of No Name, via a giveaway with purchase in Third Man stores on July 19, a blue indie vinyl edition will be available in Third Man Records retail stores on Thursday, August 1, and in select independent record stores across the world the following day. No Name will also be available on black vinyl via thirdmanrecords.com and jackwhiteiii.com; pre-orders begin Friday, August 2.
Jack White, No Name.
The album was recorded, produced, and mixed by White at his Third Man Studio throughout 2023 and 2024, pressed to vinyl at Third Man Pressing, and released by Third Man Records.
Tracklist
1. Old Scratch Blues
2. Bless Yourself
3. That’s How I’m Feeling
4. It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking)
5. Archbishop Harold Holmes
6. Bombing Out
7. What’s the Rumpus?
8. Tonight (Was a Long Time Ago)
9. Underground
10. Number One With a Bullet
11. Morning at Midnight
12. Missionary
13. Terminal Archenemy Endling
It didn’t take too long for Welsh guitarist Chris Buck to go from making YouTube videos to playing the legendary Royal Albert Hall. Earlier this year, he brought his band Cardinal Black to the U.S. for a short tour that included a stop at Nashville’s Basement East. That’s where PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with Buck before the gig for a look at what’s powering his blues-rock sound these days.
Buck’s trademark goldtop Yamaha Revstar is out for the rip, and he spared little space on his double-tiered pedalboard, but a special loaner Gibson and a modded Fender amp added some extra flair to the Nashville show.
Brought to you by D’AddarioRev the Engine
Built by Yamaha’s custom shop in Calabasas, California, this goldtop Revstar came to Buck during NAMM 2020. He likes that the newer style doesn’t have the “baggage” attached to it that a Strat or Les Paul does. This one was built mostly to typical RS502 specs, with two P-90 pickups, a 3-way selector switch, wraparound bridge, and a chambered body. Buck fits this one with Ernie Ball Mega Slinky strings (.0105-.048) and strikes it with Jim Dunlop Tortex 1.14mm picks—a choice he copped from his guitar hero Slash.
Black Bird
Buck was inspired by Rival Sons’ guitarist Scott Holiday to snag this Firebird-style Firehawk by French builder Springer, complete with a Vibrola system. It’s fitted with Sunbear Handwound pickups.
Loaner Les Paul
On his way into Nashville, Buck worried that he didn’t have a Revstar-style backup should his main axe go down, so he hit up Gibson’s Mark Agnesi for a suitable option. Agnesi came through with this 1958 Les Paul Junior Double Cut Reissue, a no-frills rock machine equipped with a single P-90 pickup.
Sweet Victory
Victory has helped Buck out on his American run by hooking him up with V40 Deluxe combos where they can. In Nashville, Buck ran the V40 in a dual-mono setup with a Fender Deluxe Reverb, which had been modded and loaned by Mythos Pedals’ Zach Broyles. The first channel emulates a Bassman sound, while channel two is classic Deluxe Reverb.
Two-Tier Tone Temple
Buck might’ve left his amps back home, but he made up for the absence with a shop’s worth of tone-sculpting tools. This stomp station houses two levels of pedals, with first in the chain being a classic Dunlop Cry Baby. Next is a ThorpyFX Electric Lightning, Buck’s signature drive pedal, then a 29 Pedals EUNA, Mythos Golden Fleece, Mythos Mjolnir, Mythos Air Lane Drive, Snouse BlackBox Overdrive 2, Great Eastern FX Co. Small SPeaker Overdrive, Analog Man King of Tone, Origin Effects Cali76, Universal Audio Golden Reverberator, and Keeley Katana.
Then comes Buck’s modulation section, starting with a Mooer Trelicopter and a Catalinbread Echorec. A Line 6 HX Stomp XL handles some more delay and reverb sounds, plus some chorus. A Universal Audio Starlight Echo Station and Boss RE-202 Space Echo finish off the chain. A GigRig G3 helps Buck switch things up without breaking a sweat. Bucks rests it all on a pair of Schmidt Array pedalboards.
Shop Chris Buck's Rig
Gibson 1958 Les Paul Junior Double Cut Reissue
Ernie Ball Mega Slinky Strings
Fender Deluxe Reverb
Dunlop Cry Baby
Origin Effects Cali76
Universal Audio Golden Reverberator
Keeley Katana
Catalinbread Echorec
Line 6 HX Stomp XL
Universal Audio Starlight Echo Station
Boss RE-202 Space Echo