Two weeks ago, I got a call to MD (music direct/bandlead) for CMT Campfire Sessions: Christmas Edition. It’s a fun series where country music artists perform an intimate acoustic set around a rustic campfire at night … surrounded by an army of camera operators, lighting techs, stage hands, hair/makeup artists, PAs, producers, and audio hidden just outside of the camera’s view.
For this Christmas special, CMT enlisted four fabulous singers—Caitlyn Smith, Brittney Spencer, Priscilla Block, and Tenille Townes—to perform two of their holiday favorites as well as one to-be-determined all-sing. I’ve played the CMT Awards with Caitlyn, Priscilla, and Tenille before, which made this a bit more comfortable. I hadn’t met Brittney but loved her work and couldn’t wait to hear her live.
The CMT network does music really well in that they give artists a lot of creative freedom and don’t micromanage every music decision. I’ve been MDing for CMT for 16 years, and it usually goes like this:
They tell me what they need, tell me the budget, then trust me to work out the musical details. We went with a four-piece including Rob Cureton for bass/BGs; Tori Allen (fresh off a long tour with the Killers) for fiddle/mandolin/BGs; Duran Crone to cover percussion/BGs; and your humble scribe on guitar/BGs.
Once the artists chose their songs, the production team, artists, and I discussed instrumentation, song keys, and what feel/vibe we wanted on each song. Then I wrote charts, sent them to the band, and we all talked over instrumentation and arrangement ideas.
At 10 a.m. the day before the shoot, the band had two hours to run the songs sans artists at Nashville’s Soundcheck rehearsal studio. Then, Caitlyn Smith, Priscilla Block, and Tenille Townes joined us individually for about 30 to 45 minutes and we worked out the nuances and harmonies. The main challenge in a show like this is to bring the singer’s artistic vision to life, while keeping it fun under pressure. If it’s stressed or forced, the audience will hear it. The artists are total pros with great ideas, and we had it sounding roughly ready for broadcast by the third run through.
“One of the artists also had her heating pad dimed and had to stop her performance because, as she put it, ‘My ass is on fire.’”
Brittney Spencer was in London, missing our rehearsal. She chose “White Christmas” and “Someday at Christmas” by Stevie Wonder, but her European tour left her incommunicado, so we had to come up with the arrangements as we were dialing in a mix around the campfire. When we finally met, I asked Brittney what she was thinking about for “White Christmas.” My instinct was to swing it, but she described an R&B groove that Cureton immediately picked up. The whole arrangement formed around Rob’s driving bass line (waaaay cooler than my idea). Next, we jumped into “Someday at Christmas,” which was complex with several modulations. Because Brittney missed rehearsal, she brought along her own guitarist, Bobby Wesley, who really helped shape the sound. I was grateful to have the second guitar so we could do that Motown thing of one guitar playing the percussive chinks and the other, the more open, strummy arpeggios.
The last part of the puzzle was the all-sing. They decided on “Silent Night,” but because the singers were not together until our soundcheck, we had to come up with something on the spot. There are four singers, three verses, so I pitched the idea of Priscilla and Caitlyn splitting the first, Brittney and Tenille splitting the second, and all four hitting the third acapella. They immediately fell into their harmony parts, and by the third time through, it was a genuinely moving performance.
Filming outdoors on an October night in Tennessee is usually a pretty safe bet. Tonight as I write this, it’s 65 degrees at 11:30 p.m., but last night when we filmed this show, it was in the low 40s by the time we wrapped. (The arctic melts, oceans rise, but Tennessee freezes: Thanks for nothing, global warming).
We were sitting out in it for roughly five hours between rehearsal and filming. The gas fire looked warm but produced as much heat as five 100-watt bulbs, though there were blankets on the seat with heating pads hidden beneath them. I kept mine cranked uncomfortably hot in hopes the heat would spread to my iced hands. A producer gave me some fingerless gloves that helped a bit. I switched to a thumbpick as I was having trouble holding the flatpick. One of the artists also had her heating pad dimed and had to stop her performance because, as she put it, “my ass is on fire.”
It’s the unexpected, out-of-our-control elements that make art and life so much more interesting. A well-rehearsed performance in a controlled environment can be great, or it can feel like a well-rehearsed performance in a controlled environment. But when things are not easy or predictable, you can have magic, or a catastrophe. Either way, that’s the stuff I like to watch.
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Neil Young’s ’70s hits are some of the most recognizable radio rock jams of all time. But Neil’s guitar playing continued to grow over the ensuing decades, as he traversed styles from blues to country to electronic to rockabilly and beyond, eventually developing one of the most tonally decadent, fully formed improvisational voices in the entire guitar universe.
Like any discography that’s been growing over the course of more than half a century, it can be hard to decode Young’s work. And with such an adventurous spirit, it could be easy to make some missteps and miss out on his best guitar works. In this episode, Nick guides Jason through some of his hero’s finest moments.
More news from Neil always seems to be on the horizon, so here’s your chance to catch up.
This episode is sponsored by Gibson.
This Japan-made Guyatone brings back memories of hitchin’ rides around the U.S.
So, as I’m prone to do, I started digging around hitchhiking culture and stories. Surprisingly, there are organized groups that embrace the hitching life, but the practice remains on the fringe in the U.S. Back in the 1950s, writer Jack Kerouac wrote the novel On the Road, which celebrated hitchhiking and exposed readers to the thrill of maverick travel. Heck, even Mike Dugan (the guitarist in all my videos) hitched his way to California in the 1960s. But seeing that fellow on the side of the road also sparked another image in my brain: Yep, it always comes back to guitars.
Let me present to you a guitar that’s ready to go hitching: the Guyatone LG-180T, hailing from 1966. The “thumbs-up” headstock and the big “thumb” on the upper bout always made me think of thumbing a ride, and I bought and sold this guitar so long ago that I had forgotten about it, until I saw that hitchhiking dude. Guyatone was an interesting Japanese company because they were primarily an electronics company, and most of their guitars had their wooden parts produced by other factories. In the case of the LG-180T, the bodies were made by Yamaha in Hamamatsu, Japan. At that time, Yamaha was arguably making the finest Japanese guitars, and the wood on this Guyatone model is outstanding. We don’t often see Guyatone-branded guitars here in the U.S., but a lot of players recognize the early ’60s label Kent—a brand name used by an American importer for Guyatone guitars.
With a bit of imagination, the LG-180T’s “thumbs up” headstock seems to be looking for a roadside ride.
Kent guitars were extremely popular from the early ’60s until around 1966. The U.S. importer B&J fed the American need for electric guitars with several nice Kent models, but when the Guyatone contract ended, so did most of the Kent guitars. After that, Guyatone primarily sold guitars in Japan, so this example is a rare model in the U.S.
“Unless you are a master at guitar setups, this would be a difficult player.”
This headstock is either the ugliest or the coolest of the Guyatone designs. I can’t decide which. I will say, no other Japanese guitar company ever put out anything like this. You have to give the Guyatone designers a thumbs up for trying to stand out in the crowd! Guyatone decided to forgo an adjustable truss rod in this model, opting instead for a light alloy non-adjustable core to reinforce the neck. Speaking of the neck, this instrument features the most odd-feeling neck. It’s very thin but has a deep shoulder (if that makes any sense). Totally strange!
Another strange feature is the bridge, which offers very little adjustment because of the three large saddles, which sort of rock back and forth with the tremolo. It’s a shame because these pickups sound great! They’re very crisp and have plenty of zing, but unless you are a master at guitar set-ups, this would be a difficult player.
This could be why the LG-180T only appeared in the 1966 and 1967 catalogs. After that, it disappeared along with all the other Yamaha-made Guyatone electrics. By 1969, Guyatone had gone bankrupt for the first time, and thus ended guitar production for a few decades. At least we were blessed with some wacky guitar designs we can marvel at while remembering the days when you could play in the back end of an explosive 1973 AMC Gremlin while your mom raced around town. Two thumbs up for surviving our childhoods! PG
