After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musicianās adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. āI just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,ā he says. āIt just feels kind of like youāre walking around a movie set all the time.ā
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwinās concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Bookerās self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. āI was just trying to find the things that I liked,ā he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,ā says Booker. āI just wasnāt interested in it anymore. I hadnāt heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.ā
āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasnāt interested in it anymore.ā
LOWER is Bookerās most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoiseās Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Bookerās own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitarāmore atmosphere, less ānoodly stuffā: āThis album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.ā
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Bookerās creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener āBlack Oppsā is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. āLWA in the Trailer Parkā is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of āPompeii Statuesā sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of āHeavy on the Mindā are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ā60s pop of āShow and Tell.ā But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. āSlow Dance in a Gay Barā and āHope for the Night Timeā intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didnāt use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. āItās just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,ā says Booker. For him, working digitally and āin the boxā is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow peopleās minds. āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,ā he adds.
āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.ā
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didnāt use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.ā
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, āthree-dimensional worldā they were seeking. āBecause I was listening to more electronic music where thereās more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,ā says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. āI like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,ā says Booker. āEven if they donāt know what it is, theyāre catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.ā
On āSlow Dance in a Gay Bar,ā there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer āHope for the Night Timeā features sounds from Los Angelesā Grand Central Market. āSame Kind of Lonelyā features audio of Bookerās baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,ā says Booker. āI wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.ā
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. āYou hear people talking about, āI donāt want to have kids because the world is falling apart,āā he says. āBut I mean, I feel like itās always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.ā
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with āa troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.ā That vision is present in the video for lead single āLWA in the Trailer Park.ā
Note the cavity cover on the back, which houses the components of Andy Summersā mid-boost system.
In general, you can use any Telecaster and convert it to Andy Summersā specs. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original guitar, the way to go is an alder bodyājust like Andyās, which is 2-pieceāwith a 3-tone sunburst finish and white double binding.
The neck should be quarter-sawn, 1-piece maple with a C profile, 21 vintage-style frets, and a 7.25" fretboard radius. Of course, you can choose your own specs here, too. The original guitar has a brass nut rather than bone or plastic, and it should be no problem to find a brass nut blank for a Telecaster. You will need different tools to work on it compared to bone, plastic, or graphite, so keep this in mind. If you do not have the right tools or donāt feel comfortable making nuts, you should leave this task to your local guitar tech. Summersā guitar has Schaller M6 tuning machines, which are still available from the German Schaller company, and two chrome butterfly string trees. You may not really need two of themāusually one for the B and the high E string will do the trick, especially with a well-made nut.
The original has a heavy brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles, which will increase overall weight significantly. You can still buy this type of brass bridge from several companies, but there are much lighter bridges on the market.
The stereo output jack is installed in a rectangular chrome plate, like on a Les Paul, which I think is superior to the typical Telecaster jack cup. Interestingly, the plate on Summersā guitar is only held by two of four screws, but do yourself a favor and use all four to make this spot as strong as possible. You should attach the plate really tight, especially when you use an output jack with a tight grip for the plug.
āElectronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls.ā
The rest of the hardware is chrome and standard: two regular strap buttons, a standard Telecaster control plate, ā60s Telecaster flat-top knobs, a black ā60s-style top-hat switch knob on the 3-way pickup selector switch, and two flat-lever mini-toggle switches. You should have no problem getting all of these parts from any guitar shop. The pickguard is a 3-ply mint green pickguard with a standard humbucker routing for the neck pickup.
Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls: a standard 3-way pickup selector switch, two 250k audio pots for master volume and master tone, a gain control pot for the booster, and two additional mini DPDT on-on toggle switches for switching the booster on and off and for the phase control of the bridge pickup. The resistance of the gain control pot depends on the booster you want to use: e.g. for the Fender Clapton mid-boost kit, a 500k type will work great.
For the bridge pickup, there is a standard early-ā60s-style Telecaster single-coil pickup, and every pickup company will have something like this in their catalog. Because the bridge pickup is installed to an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch, your pickup will need three conductors, with the metal base plate separated from the pickupās common ground, and a third wire that connects the bridge plate individually to ground. If you have a regular two-conductor model, you need to break this connection, soldering a third wire directly to the base plate.
Interestingly, the bridge pickup on Summersā Tele is installed directly into the wood of the pickupās cavity. I see no reason why you shouldnāt install it the regular way on your guitar.
Hereās a close-up of the bridge on Summersā historic Tele.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
In the neck position, there is a ā59 PAF humbucker with a conventional two-conductor wiring installed directly into the pickguard in the standard way, with the open pole pieces facing towards the neck. The choice of late-ā50s PAF copies has never been better than it is today. You can buy excellent versions from a lot of companies, just make sure to choose the correct string spacing, which is usually called āF-spacingā or something similar, and is usually 2.070" (52.6 mm). (Gibson spacing, or G-spacing, is 1.930" or 49 mm.)
Youāll need humbucker routing on your body to make it fit. If you donāt have a body with humbucker routing and donāt want to get your Tele body re-routed, you can consider one of the numerous stacked humbuckers that will fit into a standard Telecaster neck pickup cavity. My experience is that there is a noticeable difference in tone compared to a full-sized humbucker, and it will be a compromise.
Next is the active booster. Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body. There are a wide range of available booster options. There are complete DIY sets available that include the PCB and all of the necessary parts to build your own, and there are also drop-in PCBs that are already populated, like the well-known Fender mid-boost circuit kit. You can also find mini-sized booster modules using high-quality SMD parts, which only require a fraction of space compared to the regular PCBs.
āFinding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body.ā
The available options include treble boosters, mid-boost circuits, full-range boosters, etc. Choose what you like best. The problem will be that you need to stuff it into a Telecaster body. As you know, there is not much space inside a Telecaster, and you need to add the booster itself, the 9V battery, an additional pot for controlling the booster, and two additional mini-toggle switchesāone for turning the booster on and off, and the other to get the bridge pickup out of phase. This is a lot of stuff! On Summersā guitar, this problem was solved by adding a large cavity on the back and closing it with a plastic back plate, as on a Gibson Les Paul.
A look inside the cavity for the mid-boost unit.
Photo courtesy of TeleManDon from Vancouver Island, BC (https://tdpri.com)
You can clearly see the two big routings for the boosterās PCB and the 9V battery, plus the additional pot to control the amount of boost as well as the mini-toggle switch to turn the booster on and off. If you are not afraid of routing two big chambers into your Telecasterās body, this is a suitable way to go.
On a Telecaster, there are not many alternatives I can think of to fit all these parts. One possible way of saving space would be to use a stacked pot with two 250k pots for volume and tone, so you have the second hole in the control plate available for the gain control pot of the booster. Between the two pots, it should be no problem to place the two mini-toggle switches. Or you use a push-pull pot for the gain control to save one of the mini-toggle switches. The guitar will look much cleaner, at least from the front side. But you still have to put the booster PCB and the battery somewhere. A customer of mine did this by completely routing the area under the pickguard. But even with only a regular single-coil neck pickup, it was a really tight fit, so with a regular-sized humbucker, it will be close to impossible. So, you or your luthier will have to be creative, and I wouldnāt be surprised if a company offers Andy Summers Telecaster bodies with all chambers already routed.
Here we go for the wiring. Wherever possible, I tried to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring of the booster is only an example and depends on the booster you want to use, but the basic wiring is always the same.
Hereās a helpful schmatic of the Andy Summersā Telecaster wiring.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
Thatās it. Next month, we will take a deep look into guitar cables and wires, what really makes a difference, and how you can use this to reshape your guitar tone. So stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
