On this episode of Dipped in Tone, Rhett and Zack are joined by Wales-born guitarist Chris Buck. Buck is gearing up for a string of US tour dates with his fast-rising rock band Cardinal Black, including a date at Nashville’s Basement East after the original venue sold-out within a few hours.
Luke Ottenhof HED: How Chris Buck Went From YouTube to the Royal Albert HallTEASER: From the tough economics of touring to building a personal style without theory, the Welsh guitarist talks about his journey from social media to sold-out shows.On this episode of Dipped in Tone, Rhett and Zack are joined by Wales-born guitarist Chris Buck. Buck is gearing up for a string of US tour dates with his fast-rising rock band Cardinal Black, including a date at Nashville’s Basement East after the original venue sold-out within a few hours.Buck starts off digging into the details of his custom Yamaha Revstar and why he chose the versatile guitar over better-known offerings from legacy brands. Buck’s rise has been nearly meteoric: He started off posting videos on Facebook and Instagram before his wife suggested he give YouTube a try. His channel now counts 226,000 subscribers, thanks to his popular Friday Fretworks videos. But as Buck explains, his content is a tool to help fund his original music—a very successful tool.
Still, it’s not all sunshine. Buck details how he and his band navigate the brutal economics of touring, including some horror stories of how they ended up losing money on merch sales. Later, we learn how Buck built his signature playing style—mostly by ear and by accident. “I don’t think anyone has ever ended up sounding like themselves through sitting down and going ‘Right, im gonna try to sound unique,’” he says. “It just happens over time.”
He’s gone from YouTube to the Royal Albert Hall, but Buck reveals a quiet concern that he’s peaked too early. What do Rhett and Zach make of that fear? Tune in.
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He continues: “I know that we need to feel magic. I like it too.… But I love that element of proving simplicity of all this stuff and making it digestible to younger players and taking the chaos out of decisions. So, for me, that’s where the collecting started happening. Everything I’d ever heard anyone say about a pedal, I immediately needed to find the pedal and see if it was true.”And while the trio have plenty of inside-baseball stuff to cover, from how they’ve approached their YouTube content to how they tackle endorsement cold calls to branding—“products are not that important in the long term. Brand is more important than products.” But Josh is here to talk about his relaunch of the Ross brand and his YouTube documentary about the brand. The story, he says, is “more important than the pedals even. I just love the stories and stuff."
The pedal circuits were the easiest part of the whole thing. It’s awesome to have worked so hard and to see the impact that just a good story has. We got inundated with messages … saying, ‘Man, I cried about pedals.’”“I just really love the history element,” he says later, “so much that it feels like this really natural piece of being able to tell those stories and then move the story forward … One of my favorite things to do is taking some classic thing and replicating it perfectly. Like, I love the science of that.”
Alt-Tuning Curious with Ariel Posen
Posen and Rhett swap horror stories from working on film sets, where they were expected to do way more than their job descriptions covered. Both agree that the film life is infinitely worse than touring. “I don’t know shit!” protests Posen. “I’m just a guitar player, dude!”
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Posen discusses how he got into playing slide in standard tuning by learning George Harrison leads (blues slide guitar was never his thing), but Canadian guitarist Kevin Breit inspired him to try open tunings, a process with “a lot of trial by fire, lots of, ‘oops, sorry!’” Blake Mills’ 2014 record Heigh Ho prompted Posen to chase lower tunings, although Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Big Wreck lit that same candle years earlier. For the open tuning-curious, Posen suggests starting in open E.
Posen talks about how he wrote his new record, and the honesty and simplicity behind his favorite lyricists like Jason Isbell. Finally, the trio dig into how to stack and squeeze the best sounds from your fuzz pedals. (Is a mini version of the Mythos Argo fuzz pedal coming? Zach doesn’t say yes—but he doesn’t say no, either.) Finally, the crew dips a slick Americana rig that draws near perfect scores.
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On this episode of Dipped In Tone, Rhett and Zach chat with special guest Warren Haynes. The Gov’t Mule leader talks about the band’s latest, Peace… Like a River. This record of originals was recorded simultaneously with 2021’s Heavy Load Blues, in the same studio, using a completely different set of gear. “We setup all our normal Mule toys in the big room with the high ceiling, we setup a bunch of vintage gear, small amps, and old guitars … in the small room,” Haynes shares, as he details the differences in each rig and talks about his go-to blues rig, which includes vintage Gibson amps—“they were flying by the seat of their pants, a lot of it was experimental,” he says on why they’re some of his favorites—a Supro, Alessandro, and more, plus a slew of vintage guitars, including Danelectros and Gibsons. “The surprise factor was part of it,” Haynes says. In the course of talking amps, Haynes might have let the cat out of the bag about a special project.
What does it take to be effective when sitting in? “A lot of times,” Haynes explains, “I’m just trying to find something that fits and stay out of everybody’s way.” Pragmatically, he later adds, “Really, the most important thing to remember is that the song’s gonna be fine without your part, so there’s no reason to feel like you have to do anything. When it comes time to solo, that’s a little bit of a different story.” He later reminisces about sitting in with Bob Dylan, and, during his time as a member of the Allmans, having Eric Clapton join the band onstage.
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This episode starts off with Zach and Rhett catching each other up on their 4th of July festivities. Rhett’s was classic: he treated some visiting European friends to fireworks off a dock, barbecue, smoked wings, more fireworks, and a bunch of beer. Zach, meanwhile, was knocking on doors to tell neighbors to knock off the mortar shelling in the middle of the night. To each their own.
Then they’re joined by Nathaniel Murphy, the Chicago-based guitarist who has racked up nearly 400,000 followers on Instagram with jaw-dropping videos of solo guitar work. Rhett doesn’t mince words—he says Murphy is “one of the best players out there.” Murphy’s videos break people’s brains, they say: no one can work out how he’s playing all the parts by himself at the same time. Plus, Murphy works full-time now with Chicago Music Exchange, where he brushed shoulders with Noel Gallagher and Carlos Santana within a few days of one another this summer.
Murphy shares how he came to the U.S. to coach soccer for nearly a decade before being hired to do video demos for CME. He was busking downtown Chicago, too, and within a few years, CME brought him on full-time to cut videos. When it came time to join Instagram, he registered with his infamous handle, ZeppelinBarnatra. Murphy breaks down how the moniker came to be when he entered a contest to win tickets to Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion concert. Murphy names his favorite all-time guitar—Noel Gallagher’s Gibson J-150, which Gallagher recently signed for him—before the crew reflects on how to behave when meeting your guitar heroes.
That leads to a discussion of U2’s The Edge, whom Rhett and Murphy defend from detractors. They also agree that Teles are the most versatile guitars out there, but Zach, ever the contrarian, dissents: “To me, there’s a reason why all the dudes that played Teles back in the day switched to Les Pauls,” he shrugs. Murphy talks about his current favorite players, like Justin Derrico, Stephen Taranto, and Michael Romeo, then the trio dissect different picking techniques and go long on Blue Chip pick manufacturing processes.
Rhett, who groans that he has the touch of a blacksmith when it comes to guitar playing, praises Murphy’s sensitive playing. But even Murphy, with his prodigious playing, says he gets overwhelmed watching other players’ styles. In guitar playing, as in life, the grass is always greener.