
Wherever they go, there you are! With Lee Brice's band, columnist John Bohlinger (in top hat) gets to play the big joints, like Heinz Field in Pittsburgh … and then chill out in his sweatpants while Brice, center, keeps on working.
The lowdown on this sideman’s life: It’s sweet!
I've been a sideman for most of my adult life. Not surprisingly, a dozen people recommended that I Netflix Hired Gun, a documentary about musicians who play for major artists.
Hired Gun, though entertaining, earned a B-minus from me. To give you some idea of my Netflix music-doc grading scale, "A" music documentaries include:
• Anvil! The History of Anvil
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream
• Muscle Shoals
• The Wrecking Crew
• Searching for Sugar Man
• History of the Eagles
•Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
So, what's my beef with Hired Gun? It felt like one-third of the musicians interviewed saw themselves as victims, not getting a fair deal compared to the artists in front. To paraphrase their chief complaint, "One day you're a rock star on tour, living the life, checks deposited every Friday. Then suddenly, it's over and you're an anonymous schmoe with a mortgage you can't pay, while the artist you worked for remains a star."
Here's why that's nonsense. There's an expiration date on every career. That said, in the music industry, the average sideperson's shelf life is considerably longer than that of the people in front. During my quarter of a century hired-gunning it, more artists than I can remember paid me to play for them. They did all the work, had their time fighting for the spotlight, and then, for the most part, faded away. When their runs ended, somebody else took their place in the spotlight and hired me. That's the beauty of being a hired gun: When the gig is over, you take your gear and what you've learned and move on to the next artist.
The most soul-crushing struggle I ever experienced as a musician was during my two ill-fated record deals, (or, to put it more accurately, record ordeals). During deal one, I had a publishing contract that paid me enough to live on: $2,000 per month for a family of three. The publisher dropped me when the record deal ended, correctly assuming they'd wasted enough money on me.
In the music industry, the average sideperson's shelf life is considerably longer than that of the people in front.
When the second record deal rolled around, I had to take a job driving a bread truck at 5 a.m., because I had to give up hired-gun gigs to work on my own project. The label's advance money was spent on the recording. I could've gotten another pub deal, but I wanted to keep my publishing, thinking it would make me rich when the album came out. The album never came out. By the time I was dropped, I'd sold all but a few favorite guitars to survive. It was a great relief to realize that I'm not star material.
Being an artist requires real work, which does not jive with my hippie-Zen-cowboy leanings. On my current touring gig with Lee Brice, I only need to show up for a soundcheck and a show. The rest of the time, I'm playing guitar, riding my bike, exploring the city we're playing, trying to write this dumb column, and enjoying a long, pre-show siesta. My boss, Lee, works all day doing meet-and-greets, talking to radio, strategizing with management, and working on the next album and the next tour while promoting the current album and tour. After the show, I'm shoving pizza down my gullet in my sweatpants while watching Mike Judge's Tales from the Tour Bus. Lee is signing autographs or talking to program directors or promoters. He puts in 16-hour days all the time. I work two or three hours, tops. Best of all, my work isn't even work. I just play music. I wouldn't trade places with my boss for anything.
Jon Small, a film producer I worked with for six years on NBC's Nashville Star, began his career as Billy Joel's drummer in a band called the Hassles, and later, in Atilla, a duo with Joel on B3 and Small on drums. When an injury ended Jon's playing career, he took what he learned in music and turned his focus to film, where he became one of the most successful video producers of all time, producing all of Garth Brooks' work as well as groundbreaking videos for Taylor Swift, Aerosmith and Run-DMC, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert, Janet Jackson, Billy Joel, and a long list of others. Jon gave me the best career advice ever when he said, "Never look for security in the person you're working for. You are your own security."
It's empowering to know you're the only security you need. When I hit my expiration date as a sideman on tour, TV, and recordings, I will happily transition to the small time with my own little band, schlepping my gear to play sticky-floored clubs with crap PAs and dim stages. It's liberating when your only real ambition is to play music. If you want more than music out of the music business, you're going to be disappointed.
In front, the flame burns bright and fast. On the side, it's less bright, but can burn for decades. I love being a sideman and am forever grateful to the people in front who paid me to share their stages. They did the real work. I just play. This sideman scam is the sweetest apple on the tree.
[Updated 8/5/21]
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After decades of 250 road dates a year, Tab Benoit has earned a reputation for high-energy performances at clubs and festivals around the world.
After a 14-year break in making solo recordings, the Louisiana guitar hero returns to the bayou and re-emerges with a new album, the rock, soul, and Cajun-flavoredI Hear Thunder.
The words “honesty” and “authenticity” recur often during conversation with Tab Benoit, the Houma, Louisiana-born blues vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. They are the driving factors in the projects he chooses, and in his playing, singing, and compositions. Despite being acclaimed as a blues-guitar hero since his ’80s days as a teen prodigy playing at Tabby Thomas’ legendary, downhome Blues Box club in Baton Rouge, Benoit shuns the notion of stardom. Indeed, one might also add simplicity and consistency as other qualities he values, reflected in the roughly 250 shows a year he’s performed with his hard-driving trio for over two decades, except for the Covid shutdown.
On his new I Hear Thunder, Benoit still proudly plays the Fender Thinline Telecaster he purchased for $400 when he was making his debut album in Texas, 1992’s Nice & Warm. After that heralded release, his eclectic guitar work—which often echoes between classic blues-rock rumble-and-howl, the street-sweetened funk of New Orleans, and Memphis-fueled soul—helped Benoit win a long-term deal with Justice Records. But when the company folded in the late ’90s, his contract and catalog bounced from label to label.
Tab Benoit - "I Hear Thunder"
This bucked against Benoit’s strong desire to fully control his music—one reason he settled on the trio format early in his career. And although his 2011 album, Medicine, won three Blues Music Awards—the genre’s equivalent of Grammys—he stopped recording as a leader because he was bound by the stipulations of a record deal, now over, that he deemed untenable.
“I wanted to make records that reflected exactly how I sounded live and that were done as though we were playing a live concert,” Benoit says. “So, I formed my own label [Whiskey Bayou Records, with partner Reuben Williams] and signed artists whose music was, to me, the real deal, honest and straightforward. I couldn’t do anything on my own, but I could still continue putting out music that had a positive impact on the audience.”
Benoit’s new album, which includes Anders Osborne and George Porter Jr., was recorded in the studio at the guitarist’s home near the bayou in Houma, Louisiana.
Those artists include fellow rootsers Eric McFadden, Damon Fowler, Eric Johanson, Jeff McCarty, and Dash Rip Rock. Benoit also spent plenty of time pursuing his other passion: advocating for issues affecting Louisiana’s wetlands, including those around his native Houma. His 2004 album was titled Wetlands, and shortly after it was issued he founded the Voice of the Wetlands non-profit organization, and later assembled an all-star band that featured New Orleans-music MVPs Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, George Porter Jr., Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Johnny Vidacovich, Johnny Sansone, and Waylon Thibodeaux. This ensemble, the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars, has released multiple CDs and toured.
Essentially, Benoit comes from the bayous, and when it’s time to record, he goes back to them, and to the studio he has in Houma, which he refers to as “the camp.” That’s where I Hear Thunder came to life. “George and Anders came to me and said, ‘Let’s go make some music,” Benoit offers. “So, we went out to the camp. They had some songs—and George and Anders and I go back so many years it was really a treat to put everything together. It only took us a couple of days to do everything we needed to do.”
“George Porter and Anders Osborne and I saw this alligator sitting around the boat where we were writing the entire time. I guess he really liked the song.”
I Hear Thunder has become his first number one on Billboard’s blues chart. Besides the fiery-yet-tight and disciplined guitar work of Benoit and Osborne, the latter also an esteemed songwriter, the album features his longtime rhythm section of bassist Corey Duplechin and drummer Terence Higgins. Bass legend Porter appears on two tracks, “Little Queenie” and “I’m a Write That Down.” Throughout the album, Benoit sings and plays with soul and tremendous energy, plus he handled engineering, mixing, and production.
Once again, that ascribed to his aesthetic. “My main reason for taking on those extra duties was I wanted to make sure that this recording gives the audience kind of a preview of how we’re going to sound live,” he declares. “That’s one of the things that I truly don’t like about a lot of current recordings. I listen to them and then see those guys live and it’s like, ‘Hey, that doesn't sound like what was on the album.’ Play it once or twice and let’s run with it. Don’t overdo it to the point you kill the honesty. All the guys that I love—Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert King—they played it once, and you better have the tape machine running because they’re only going to give it to you that one time. That’s the spontaneity that you want and need.
“One of the reasons I don’t use a lot of pedals and effects is because I hate gimmicks,” he continues. “ I’m playing for the audience the way that I feel, and my attitude is ‘Let’s plug into the guitar and let it rip. If I make a mistake, so be it. I’m not using Auto-Tune to try and get somebody’s vocal to seem perfect. You think John Lee Hooker cared about Auto-Tune? You’re cheating the audience when you do that stuff.”
Tab Benoit’s Gear
Benoit in 2024 with his trusty 1972 Fender Thinline Telecaster, purchased in 1992 for $400. Note that Benoit is a fingerstyle player.
Photo by Doug Hardesty
Guitar
- 1972 Fender Telecaster Thinline
Amp
- Category 5 Tab Benoit 50-watt combo
Strings
- GHS Boomers (.011–.050)
The I Hear Thunder songs that particularly resonate include the explosive title track, the soulful “Why, Why” and the rollicking “Watching the Gators Roll In,” a song that directly reflected the album’s writing experience and environment. “George and Anders and I saw this alligator sitting around the boat where we were writing the entire time. I guess he really liked the song. He’d be swimming along and responding. That gave it some added punch.” As does Benoit and Osborne’s consistently dynamic guitar work. “I’m not one of these people who want to just run off a string of notes or do a lot of fast playing,” Benoit says. “It has to fit the song, the pace, and most of all, really express what I’m feeling at that particular moment. I think when the audience comes to a show and you play the songs off that album, you’ve got to make it real and make it honest.”
When asked whether he ever tires of touring, Benoit laughs and says, “Absolutely not. At every stop now I see a great mix of people who’ve been with us since the beginning, and then their children or sometimes even their grandchildren. When people come up to you and say how much they enjoy your music, it really does make you feel great. I’ve always seen the live concerts as a way of bringing some joy and happiness to people over a period of time, of helping them forget about whatever problems or issues they might have had coming in, and just to enjoy themselves. At the same time, I get a real thrill and joy from playing for them, and it’s something that I always want the band’s music to do—help bring some happiness and joy to everyone who hears our music.”
YouTube It
Hear Tab Benoit practice the art of slow, soulful, simmering blues on his new I Hear Thunder song “Overdue,” also featuring his well-worn 1972 Telecaster Thinline.
The ’60s Were Weird and So Were the ’90s—Thanks, Santana
Was Supernatural his ultimate gift to the world?
Carlos Santana’s career arc has been a journey. From blowing minds at the far edges of psychedelia at Woodstock to incendiary jazz experimentalism with the likes of John McLaughlin and Alice Coltrane to later becoming a chart-topping star with some of the biggest collaborators in pop and rock, his guitar playing has covered a lot of ground.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re covering everything about Santana’s playing we can fit in one neat package: How did Santana’s sound evolve? Has any other rock star mentioned John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme on morning network television? Was Supernatural his ultimate gift to the world?
In our new current listening segment, we’re talking about a Bruce Hornsby live record and a recent release from guitarist Stash Wyslouch.
This episode is sponsored by PRS Guitars.
Learn more: https://prsguitars.com.
Lollar Pickups introduces the Deluxe Foil humbucker, a medium-output pickup with a bright, punchy tone and wide frequency range. Featuring a unique retro design and 4-conductor lead wires for versatile wiring options, the Deluxe Foil is a drop-in replacement for Wide Range Humbuckers.
Based on Lollar’s popular single-coil Gold Foil design, the new Deluxe Foil has the same footprint as Lollar’s Regal humbucker - as well as the Fender Wide Range Humbucker – and it’s a drop-in replacement for any guitar routed for Wide Range Humbuckers such as the Telecaster Deluxe/Custom, ’72-style Tele Thinline and Starcaster.
Lollar’s Deluxe Foil is a medium-output humbucker that delivers a bright and punchy tone, with a glassy top end, plenty of shimmer, rich harmonic content, and expressive dynamic touch-sensitivity. Its larger dual-coil design allows the Deluxe Foil to capture a wider frequency range than many other pickup types, giving the pickup a full yet well-balanced voice with plenty of clarity and articulation.
The pickup comes with 4-conductor lead wires, so you can utilize split-coil wiring in addition to humbucker configuration. Its split-coil sound is a true representation of Lollar’s single-coil Gold Foil, giving players a huge variety of inspiring and musical sounds.
The Deluxe Foil’s great tone is mirrored by its evocative retro look: the cover design is based around mirror images of the “L” in the Lollar logo. Since the gold foil pickup design doesn’t require visible polepieces, Lollartook advantage of the opportunity to create a humbucker that looks as memorable as it sounds.
Deluxe Foil humbucker features include:
- 4-conductor lead wire for maximum flexibility in wiring/switching
- Medium output suited to a vast range of music styles
- Average DC resistance: Bridge 11.9k, Neck 10.5k
- Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
- Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF
The Lollar Deluxe Foil is available for bridge and neck positions, in nickel, chrome, or gold cover finishes. Pricing is $225 per pickup ($235 for gold cover option).
For more information visit lollarguitars.com.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.