Micah Blue Smaldone
As musicians, we tend to put most of our mental energy into the “next thing”: that next song, show, tour, or piece of gear. The beauty of music-making is that there is always somewhere new to go, but it’s also important to remember that we all came from somewhere. In this column, I connect with some excellent acoustic players about the places that shaped their playing and their craft, where they started and where their music has taken them.
Micah Blue Smaldone
Micah Blue Smaldone has a story that in many ways mirrors my own. Growing up in the pleasant (but less-than-stimulating) atmosphere of a quiet New England town, Smaldone found his salvation in skateboarding and punk rock.... Sounds familiar!
Kennebunk, Maine, lit some kind of fire under Smaldone, and the road ever since has been long and winding, indeed. He went from being a founding member of the snappy and provocative punk group the Pinkerton Thugs, to producing a series of beguiling, mostly acoustic solo records that almost exist out of time: His phrases, both vocal and musical, are consistently poetic and graceful.
“The beauty of music-making is that there is always somewhere new to go, but it’s also important to remember that we all came from somewhere.”
After 20 years of continuous touring, Smaldone credits his approach to neither his hometown nor his current digs, where he builds excellent amplifiers under the moniker Arkham Sound in South Portland, Maine. Rather, he says, “The strongest memories are the ones where I felt that I was part of a moment that called upon everyone present. A performer is only part of the equation. Scenes, movements, even just circles of friends who are all feeling something together at a certain time, place, era, stage of life—for me that’s what gives urgency to a musical experience. I am so lucky to have felt that so many times already in my life.”
Micah has reconnected with his roots in a big way in the last couple years, forming the rock trio Wake in Fright and releasing a new eponymous album that offers a set of confident, Clash-inspired tunes that might just get you back in the pit!
Charlie Rauh
Photo by Andrew Golledge
Charlie Rauh didn’t just take the road less traveled; he cut his own very unique path. Growing up in the South, first in Huntsville, Alabama, and then Herndon, Virginia, Rauh began forming his musical personality in the gathering clouds.
“I remember the scent in the air before the intense storms we would get, and the shade of green the sky turned before a tornado. I didn’t play an instrument at this time in my life, but the atmospheric elements of the environment had a massive emotional impact on me.” Nature’s push and pull are all over Rauh’s playing, which centers around a measured, intimate, fingerpicked style that is truly his own. I still have the business card that he gave me when we first met, and the tagline still puts a smile on my face: “Charlie Rauh—Won’t Play Loud. Can’t Play Fast.”
Rauh is now an in-demand session player in his current home of New York City, and recently participated in a first-of-its-kind residency at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine. “I was brought in based on my solo guitar work, with the directive of translating the intention of interspecies wellness through my music. The experience was completely life-changing for me, and the music I composed for solo acoustic guitar and 6-piece choir would become my album, Theoria. In addition to performing the music live, I have been presenting guest lectures on the process as well as publishing written pieces and lessons on the process I used to create it. The way I think about music has been deeply impacted by my time spent with the animals and doctors I worked with.”Rosali
Photo by Jamie Davis
I first became aware of Rosali when she released her excellent second album Trouble Anyway in 2018. This year, her ascension continues with Bite Down, her Merge Records debut. The album is full of masterful melodies, rollicking alt-country backing, and no small amount of artsy, homespun guitar goodness. Originally hailing from Michigan, Rosali considers Philadelphia to be her hometown: “I spent 12 years there—my formative adult years. The scene was cross-genre, tough—in a good way—and psychedelic. So many intelligent players, intricate and also bone-headed. I think there was a beautiful mix of approaches and appreciation for one another, at least in the early days. I think of Jack Rose and Meg Baird, Mary Lattimore, Weyes Blood. I went to a lot of noise and DIY shows in West Philly. Not to mention the energy of the city itself. Just rough and raw and very real. It toughened up this midwestern girl in an invaluable way. I owe a lot to that place.”
James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg
Photo by Joan Shelley
Of all the musicians I spoke to for this column, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg have probably logged the most miles. Elkington grew up in the English village of Chorleywood, about an hour outside of London, while Salsburg spent his youth in Louisville, Kentucky. To date, the pair have produced three outstanding records of guitar duets (their latest, All Gist, is out now), and have also collaborated on several albums for Joan Shelley, a top-tier singer-songwriter who happens to be married to Salsburg.
Despite musical excursions in and out of London from the age of 16, Elkington’s imagination was truly captured by the Chicago scene of the early 2000s, with bands like Gastr del Sol and Tortoise being his guiding lights.
“I had got it into my head that Chicago was a musical wonderland where everyone played on each other’s records and labels really supported each other, and when I came here that turned out to be sort of true.” Indie music in Chicago is historically known for being some shade of “post”—post rock, post hardcore, etc.—but Elkington’s expansive playing takes in the past, present, and future. He can effortlessly conjure contrapuntal folk baroque, fuzzy, abstract expressionism, and pretty much everything in between! Elkington carries the musical influences of his place of origin, as well as those from his current home, with equal aplomb.
The connection that Elkington found with Nathan Salsburg is of a rare and wonderful kind. Like Elkington, Salsburg is something of a musical polymath. He came up in the vibrant punk and post-rock scene of ’80s and ’90s Louisville, where bands like Slint, Rodan, and Squirrel Bait were redefining rock for a new generation. All the while, Salsburg was absorbing the Bob Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt, and Dave Van Ronk records played by his parents. After stints in a handful of local bands and a few years in New York City, Salsburg returned to Louisville with “a desire to make music with focus, rigor, thoughtfulness, and peace of mind.” He developed a highly melodic and animated fingerpicking style that has put him at the top of his class in the world of guitar soli.
But if one guitar is great, can’t two be greater? Enter Elkington, and a wonderful partnership was born. Not since John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman have two players cooked up such a heady brew of English and American folk-guitar concepts, and the transcribers of the future will surely be scratching their heads trying to untangle Elkington and Salsburg’s playful, harmonically dense lines.
Whether we realize it or not, the places we are from, the places where we are, and the places that we’re going play a huge role in the music we make. We can even look at our individual journeys like we might look at the structure of a song. Is your hometown the intro, the overture, or is it actually the theme that runs through the whole piece? Is your song carefully composed, or are there a few extended improvised sections? How different will the ending be from the beginning? To paraphrase author Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Wherever we go, there we are.”
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The Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah taps into the vibrant, melodic character of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most gifted songwriters. Few guitar players have been able to combine a keen musical instinct with a profound grasp of how to bring a composition together like Mick Ronson. Laden with expressive resonance, his arrangements layered deliberately chosen tones and textures to build exquisite melodies and powerful riffs. The Cry Baby Wah, set in a fixed position to serve as a filter, was key to the tone-shaping vision that Ronson used to transform the face of popular music through his work with David Bowie and many others as both an artist and a producer.
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Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah highlights:
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Over the decades with Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and solo, Bob Mould has earned a reputation for visceral performances.
Mould’s album landed in a world of cloistered listeners, so he never knew how it impacted people. For a musician from punk and hardcore scenes, it was a disquieting experience. So when he got back out on the road in 2023 and 2024, playing solo electric sets, the former Hüsker Dü and Sugar frontman was determined to reconnect with his listeners. After each show, he’d hang out at the merch table and talk. Some people wanted their records or shirts signed, some wanted a picture. Others shared dark stories and secret experiences connected to Mould’s work. It humbled and moved him. “I’m grateful for all of it,” he says.
These are the in-person viscera of a group of people connecting on shared interests, versus, says Mould, “‘I gotta clean the house today, so I’m going to put on my clean the house playlist that a computer designed for me.” “Everything has become so digitized,” he laments. “I grew up where music was religion, it was life, it was essential. When people come to shows, and there’s an atmosphere, there’s volume, there’s spilled drinks and sweat–that’s what music ritual is supposed to be.”
His experiences on tour after the pandemic heartened Mould, but they also gave him traction on new ideas and direction for a new record. He returned to the simple, dirty guitar-pop music that spiked his heart rate when he was young: the Ramones’ stupid-simple pop-punk ecstasy, New York Dolls’ sharp-edged playfulness, Pete Townshend’s epic, chest-rattling guitar theatrics. In other words, the sort of snotty, poppy, wide-open rock we heard and loved on Hüsker Dü’s Flip Your Wig and Candy Apple Grey.
Mould’s time on the road playing solo in 2023 sparked the idea for Here We Go Crazy.
Photo by Ryan Bakerink
Mould started writing new songs in the vein of his original childhood heroes, working them into those electric solo sets in 2023 and 2024. Working with those restraints—guitar chords and vocal melodies—put Mould on track to make Here We Go Crazy, his new, 15th solo record.
Lead single and opener “Here We Go Crazy” is a scene-setting piece of fuzzy ’90s alt-rock, bookended by the fierce pounding of “Neanderthal.” “When Your Heart is Broken” is a standout, with its bubblegum chorus melody and rumbling, tense, Who-style holding pattern before one of the album’s only solos. Ditto “Sharp Little Pieces,” with perhaps the record’s chewiest, darkest guitar sounds.
“It’s a very familiar-sounding record,” he continues. “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould,’ and a lot of that was [influenced by] spending time with the audience again, putting new stuff into the set alongside the songbook material, going out to the table after the show and getting reactions from people. That sort of steered me towards a very simple, energetic, guitar-driven pop record.”
Of his new album, Mould says, “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould.’”
Mould recorded the LP in Chicago with longtime bandmates Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster at the late, great Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio. Then Mould retreated to San Francisco to finish the record, chipping away at vocals and extra guitar pieces. He mostly resisted the pull of “non-guitar ornamentation”: “It’s a rhythm guitar record with a couple leads and a Minimoog,” he says. “It’s sort of cool to not have a 64-crayon set every time.”
Mould relied on his favorite, now-signature late-’80s Fender Strat Plus, which sat out on a runway at O’Hare in 20-below cold for three hours and needed a few days to get back in fighting shape. In the studio, he ran the Strat into his signature Tym Guitars Sky Patch, a take on the MXR Distortion+, then onto a Radial JD7. The Radial split his signal and sent it to three combo amps: a Fender Hot Rod DeVille, a Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb reissue, and a Blackstar Artisan 30, each with a mic on it. The result is a brighter record that Mould says leaves more room for the bass and kick drum. “If you listen to this record against Patch the Sky, for instance, it’s night and day,” he says. “It’s snug.”
Mould explains that the record unfolds over three acts. Tracks one through five comprise the first episode, crackling with uncertainty and conflict. The second, spread over songs six to eight, contrasts feelings of openness with tight, claustrophobic tension. Here, there are dead ends, addictions, and frigid realities. But after “Sharp Little Pieces,” the album turns its corner, barreling toward the home stretch in a fury of optimism and determination. “These last three [songs] should give us more hope,” says Mould. “They should talk about unconditional love.”
The record closes on the ballad “Your Side,” which starts gentle and ends in a rush of smashed chords and cymbals, undoubtedly one of the most invigorating segments. “The world is going down in flames, I wanna be by your side/We can find a quiet place, it doesn’t need to be the Albert Hall,” Mould starts. It’s a beautiful portrait of love, aging, and the passage of time.
Bob Mould's Gear
Mould paired his trusty Fender Strat Plus with a trio of smaller combo amps to carve out a more mid-focused rhythm-guitar sound in the studio.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Late 1980s Fender American Standard Strat Plus (multiple)
Amps
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
- Blackstar Artisan Series amps
- Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- Tym Guitars Sky Patch
- TC Electronic Flashback
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
- Wampler Ego
- Universal Audio 1176
- Radial JD7
Strings, Picks, & Power Supply
- D'Addario NYXLs (.011-.046)
- Dunlop .46 mm and .60 mm picks
- Voodoo Labs power supply
And though the record ends on this palette of tenderness and connection, the cycle is likely to start all over again. Mould understands this; even though he knows he’s basking in act three at the moment, acts one and two will come along again, and again. Thankfully, he’s figured out how to weather the changes.
“When things are good, enjoy them,” he says. “When things are tough, do the work and get out of it, somehow.”
- YouTube
Many of the tracks on Here We Go Crazy were road-tested by Mould during solo sets. Here, accompanied only by his trusty Fender Strat, he belts “Breathing Room.”
Reader: Federico Novelli
Hometown: Genoa, Italy
Guitar: The Italian Hybrid
Reader Federico Novelli constructed this hybrid guitar from three layers of pine, courtesy of some old shelves he had laying around.
A few years ago, at the beginning of Covid, an idea for a new guitar flashed through my mind. It was a semi-acoustic model with both magnetic and piezo pickups that were mounted on a soundboard that could resonate. It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many power tools and using old solid-wood shelves I had available.
I have been playing guitar for 50 years, and I also dabble in luthiery for fun. I have owned a classical guitar, an acoustic guitar, and a Stratocaster, but a jazz guitar was missing from the list. I wanted something that would have more versatility, so the idea of a hybrid semi-acoustic guitar was born.
I started to sketch something on computer-aided design (CAD) software, thinking of a hollowbody design without a center block or sides that needed to be hot-worked with a bending machine. I thought of a construction made of three layers of solid pine wood, individually worked and then glued together in layers, with a single-cutaway body and a glued-in neck.
For the soundboard and back, I used a piece of ash and hand-cut it with a Japanese saw to the proper thickness, so I had two sheets to fit together. Next, I sanded the soundboard and bottom using two striker profiles as sleds and an aluminum box covered in sandpaper to achieve a uniform 3 mm thickness. A huge amount of work, but it didn't cost anything.
“It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many electric tools and out of old solid-wood shelves I had available.”
The soundboard has simplified X-bracing, a soundhole with a rosewood edge profile, and an acoustic-style rosewood bridge. For the neck, I used a piece of old furniture with straight grain, shaped it to a Les Paul profile, and added a single-action truss rod. The only new purchase: a cheap Chinese rosewood fretboard.
Then, there was lots of sanding. I worked up to 400-grit, added filler, primer, and transparent nitro varnish, worked the sandpaper up to 1,500-grit, and finally polished.
Our reader and his “Italian job.”
For electronics, I used a Tonerider alnico 2 humbucker pickup and a piezo undersaddle pickup, combined with a modified Shadow preamp that also includes a magnetic pickup input, so you can mix the two sources on a single output. I also installed a bypass switch for power on/off and a direct passive output.
I have to say that I am proud and moderately satisfied both aesthetically and with the sounds it produces, which range from jazz to acoustic and even gypsy jazz. However, I think I will replace the electronics and piezo with Fishman hardware in the future.
