carl-verheyen

The new string set features a unique blend of gauges and features the new Helix patent-pending hyper-elliptical windings.

Santa Clara, CA (July 24, 2012) ā€“ Dean Markley today announces the release of the new Carl Verheyen Balanced Bridge Helix Electric strings. This partnership brings a unique string set intended to balance the six screw and two screw Strat-styleĀ bridges. The new string set features a unique blend of gauges and features the new Helix patent-pending hyper-elliptical windings.

The Helix string uses a precise elliptical shape for the winding wire. The shape then had to be paired with the correct winding process. The hyper-elliptical winding process results in an increased number of wraps along the length of the string. This increases the mass of the string, without changing its diameter or material. More mass makes a fuller tone; more windings give a smoother feel as well as a brighter, more resonant tone.Ā  Additional benefits of the hyper-elliptical windings are a relaxed feel and less unwanted noise.Ā  The strings last much longer without sacrificing tone and performance.

Read MoreShow less

Carl Verheyen talks about working with everyone from Joe Bonamassa to Steve Morse and Robben Ford for his latest release, Trading 8s.

So imagine youā€™re at the NAMM show and you hear this guy playing an old Strat through a cool piece of gear. The guy is simply wailing as he flawlessly ties together a buffet of diverse guitar styles and colors. A crowd forms. Youā€™re hearing the lexicon of all that has become 21st century guitar. From bebop to country, fusion to rock and roll, heā€™s doing it all with a craftsmanā€™s touch and an artistā€™s flair for the melodic. Itā€™s a wide interval ear fest until he stops, hands you his guitar and asks you if youā€™d like to try it out.

I think not! Iā€™m not following Carl Verheyen! No way! How do you follow a guy who has recorded guitar for icons such as Dolly Parton, Stanley Clarke, Supertramp and The Bee Gees? Thatā€™s the short list. Recently heā€™s played on the soundtracks to Land of The Lost, Star Trek and Up. He even played in the house band of this yearā€™s Academy Awards and performed ā€œMoon Riverā€ with host Hugh Jackman in front of 68 million people.

With a bunch of solo records under his belt, Carl Verheyen has been doing his thing for a long time. Iā€™m not the guy to play guitar right after Carl Verheyen at a NAMM show, but he found some heavyweight cats to join him on his new release titled Trading 8s. Itā€™s a rockinā€™, diverse and earthy record featuring guest pickers Joe Bonamassa, Rick Vito, Steve Morse, Robben Ford, Albert Lee and Scott Henderson. I caught up with Carl so he could tell me all about it.

Iā€™m really enjoying your new record. How did this all come together?

It really started when I wrote a handful of tunes. I talked to Joe Bonamassa about two or three years ago about doing a record together. We always said, ā€œYeah, letā€™s do it in September.ā€ Then September would come around and then Iā€™d be on the road or heā€™d be on the road, so that never happened. When I wrote ā€œHighway 27ā€ I asked Joe to play on it. He said, ā€œIā€™m coming to town Tuesday and I can do it on Wednesday.ā€ It just happened overnight. We spent about an hour and fifteen minutes together in the studio tracking our solos. It went down super fast. That included getting the sounds. He picked out one of my 100-watt Marshalls that he liked and played his signature Les Paul. We put a baffle between the two 4x12 speaker cabinets and we both sat in the studio facing each other. If he made a mistake it would ruin my track, so what we did was completely live. That inspired me to pull the rest of this together in terms of guests.

Iā€™ve always enjoyed your Beatles cover of ā€œTaxman.ā€

Thanks. I was going to play the entire solo but I thought, ā€œHow fun would it be to trade 8s with Scott Henderson!?ā€ Heā€™s a buddy of mine from the Musicianā€™s Institute. Weā€™d show up every once in a while, hang out in a room and play. He kept saying, ā€œLet me do one more take! One more take, but stop me when itā€™s good!ā€ I used my ā€™58 Sunburst Strat on that.

I take it you had everything recorded before you brought in the guests.

Pretty much. I had tunes that I had been playing on the road, and we went in and tracked six or seven of them at once. Basically what I was looking for was getting solos out of people. In the case of Robben Ford on ā€œNew Yearā€™s Day,ā€ he played solos and played fills throughout, which really wasnā€™t something I was planning on. I turned him loose and he sounded so good. Thereā€™s not one lick that I would take away. He did a runthrough just to figure out where the changes are, and it was every bit as good as anything that he did after that. Itā€™s a shame we didnā€™t record it. Robben Ford has a wonderful touch thatā€™s uniquely his own.

The songs are solid and the guests really bring their individual personalities to each track.

I agree. In the case of Rick Vito and Steve Morse, I didnā€™t actually get a chance to play with them in the studio because of our schedules. Steve was on the east coast in his studio. He had me send him the track and sent it back with his stuff on there. I asked him for a solo and some harmonies on the melodies. This is on the song ā€œOn Our Way.ā€ Iā€™ve been a huge fan of Steveā€™s since the ā€˜70s so I know his playing pretty well. I figured since the song is a pretty ballad, heā€™d give me the beautiful lyrical side of his playing with a clean guitar tone. He might even do an acoustic guitar solo. It wonā€™t be the blazing, shredding Steve that we all know. Itā€™ll be a different part of his playing.

When the track came back my jaw literally dropped. He was able to play the most beautiful, singing, lyrical, melodic solo, but itā€™s got that burning Steve Morse shredding edge too. It was so musical it just blew my mindā€”it was the last thing I expected. I couldnā€™t stop listening to it.

[On that song] I used an acoustic twelve-string, an acoustic six-string capoā€™d and my ā€™65 Strat for the main melody stuff. For my solos I was looking for something somewhat clean, and I actually used my Flying V through a Princeton. On the second half of that solo I slipped in an Xotic BB Preamp pedal.

When youā€™re trading solos with guitarists of this caliber, do you find yourself soaking up a bit of their style?

I really do. I listen to Joe Bonamassaā€™s vibrato for example and it reminds me a little of the old Cream-era Clapton vibrato. Iā€™ll spend hours after just being in a session with a guy like that, working on my own vibrato and making it as exciting as Joeā€™s. When I played with Robben I went home and spent many hours just trying to get a few of his little bends and phrasing things together. I played along with the recording until the phrasing sounded identical. But Iā€™ve been doing that for years with everybody, people like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, you name it.

Allan Holdsworth. That must have been pretty cool to sit around with a guy like that.

We hung out together back in the ā€˜80s. I would go down to his house and we would jam. He turned me on to some chord voicings that my hands just would not reach. [Laughing] So I just went into a room, shut the door and said, ā€œIā€™m not coming out of here until my hands can play that chord.ā€ [Laughing] I think getting kicked in the butt by fellow players is always healthy. Every one of those guys on Trading 8s kicks my butt in some way and that makes me want to work on more stuff.

I canā€™t imagine what it would be like to trade solos with Albert Lee.

Al came back from the road and the next day he was in the studio with me. I used a crunchy Telecaster tone. I think I played my 1960 Tele custom through a Victoria Tweed Deluxe. I did that because I knew his guitar tone would be pristine clean. He never uses any distortion, ever. So I thought to really contrast it, a Telecaster is what you need here and a dirty sound would be best. He played through his Music Man 1x12 combo that heā€™s been using for years along with his Ernie Ball Music Man Albert Lee model guitar. My only fear was that most of my country playing had been copped directly from records of his. [Laughing]

I notice you like small amps in big rooms.

Yeah, itā€™s an old trick of mine. I use little amps that are not very distorted. On one side Iā€™ll use my SG, and then in stereo Iā€™ll use a Les Paul through a different small amp, but cranked. No pedal, but Iā€™ll take my little ā€™63 Gibson Falcon and turn it all the way up. The other side will be like a Tweed Deluxe and crank it up too. Instead of having a lot of distortion, which would turn things into mush, itā€™s better to double it for your sonic girth and not use so much distortion. I think almost all microphones like small amps better. When you have a huge amp itā€™s just beating up a microphone and doesnā€™t deal with it as well. I like small amps with a close mic and something in the distance. Maybe twenty feet away for that ambient room sound. Itā€™s really great way to record.

Whatā€™s it like being a referee for all these guys?

Everybodyā€™s bottom line is just stellar and itā€™s fresh and new to me. Iā€™m just like they are in the studio when Iā€™m on the other side of the glassā€”ā€œI got one better! I got one better!ā€ The thing is, you know what you were going for and whoever is listening and producing has no idea. Theyā€™re digging whatā€™s happening but you tried for something that didnā€™t happen, so you need one more. Somebody has to say, ā€œWhat you did is every bit as valid as what you may have been going for.ā€ Thatā€™s how the happy accidents happen.

Carl Verheyen is a guitar chameleon whose whose adaptability puts him in high demand has made him in high demand for everything from TV commercials to major recordings.


I canā€™t imagine a guitarist more bonafide than Carl Verheyen. Sure, thereā€™s a boatload of badass guitarists out there, but few of them can nail such a broad variety of styles like they were born to it. On top of that, he gets paid for it! Despite Verheyenā€™s freakish ability to effortlessly bust out be-bop, blues, country, classical, bluegrass, metal and good oleā€™ rock nā€™ roll, Verheyen retains his own inimitable signature sound. Donā€™t you just hate guys like that?

Then thereā€™s the resume. Heā€™s played on a bazillion sessions with such diverse artists as Dolly Parton, Little Richard, Stanley Clarke, Christina Aguilera, The Bee Gees and Allan Holdsworth, to name a few. Heā€™s played on film and TV soundtracks like Samantha Who?, The Crow, The Usual Suspects, Scrubs, Ratatouille and Moscow on The Hudson. Thatā€™s the short list. He even played guitar on the iconic sitcom Happy Days. His resume goes on and on. Solo records, instructional books, videos, DVDs, gigs galore and heā€™s the touring guitarist for the band Supertramp.


I caught his gig at Hollywoodā€™s legendary fusion hang, The Baked Potato. I heard an eye-bulging fusion of great tunes and styles and that made me want to run home and practice. Verheyen uses the kind of gear that makes guitar freaks need a drool bucket. He uses a mix of vintage amps and guitars married with modern technologyā€”to great effect. Verheyen has the coolest toys. When he agreed to this interview, I knew this was going to be the perfect opportunity to pick the brain of a great virtuoso. He also turned out to be one hell of a nice guy.


What in your mind distinguishes you from other guitarists who put out records with chops for days?

The problem is that there are so many guitar players nowadays that love to use their home studios and spend hours and hours on their solos. Iā€™m an old school guy sonically. Iā€™ve got to use a real studio. You never listen to your amp with your ear down near the amp. You listen to your amp in the room. The best studios in town, like Capitol Records and Sunset Sound and some of these old school places, have amazing rooms. We mic the amp, but we also mic the room. Thatā€™s the sound of the guitar and thatā€™s what I want to hear. Iā€™m not a home studio guy. I pretty much just do little demos for myself on an old hard drive recorder, and mic amps and mic acoustic guitars and work out parts, so I rarely have to use a real studio.

So instead of my records costing $5000 to $6000, they cost $25,000 or $30,000. Which is dangerous nowadays in this climate where people arenā€™t buying CDsā€”theyā€™re downloading. But thatā€™s ok, too.

The sound on your records is very organic.

I never use plug-ins, and I always mic an amp no matter what. I like to mic it through some of that old API gear that they have at Sunset Sound, but Iā€™m paying two hundred bucks an hour (laughs) so itā€™s a little dangerous. You want to be able to listen to it five to ten years from now and say, ā€œMan, this still holds up,ā€
whereas that plug-in stuff may not.

When I go into the studio, I have four to five hours to get this tune completely in the bag. That means the 12-string part, the Gretsch part, the SG part, the two acoustic parts and the solo. The modern art of the guitar records is in the orchestration, because at some point everybodyā€™s got monster chops.

I was listening to Greg Howeā€™s new record and thinking, ā€œOh man, this guyā€™s chops are insane!ā€ There are a lot of people on a level thatā€™s pretty high in terms of that. Now it becomes, how do you layer? How do you orchestrate? My concept has always been, ā€œHow do I pick whoā€™s going to be Frank Sinatra? Which guy is going to have that main voice?ā€ On those Frank Sinatra records the whole orchestra comes in and itā€™s beautiful. Thereā€™s this huge level of glorious sound. Then Frank comes in and itā€™s even more glorious!

So when youā€™re orchestrating all the guitars you have to figure the rhythm part is going to be this clean Strat, but Iā€™m going to back it up with this acoustic. Iā€™ll put the Strat in the middle of the two acoustics to give it a little more sonic girth. Right in the pre-chorus this Tele has to come in with a little hair on it. When the chorus hits Iā€™m going to put the Les Paul here and the SG here through little amps, and theyā€™re going to play the same unison line. Little amps are key because they can give you that cranked tone. When the solo comes in, thatā€™s a 4x12 in the middle of the room with a mic far away and you get this big huge sound. You can hear the room, and thatā€™s really important.


1969 Marshall 100-Watt head, 1964 Fender Twin, 1963 Vox AC30 and two THD 2x12 cabs.
How did you develop your current live rig?

In the eighties, just like everybody else around 1981, I met Bob Bradshaw. So I got the big rack. That rack grew and grew, and then there were two racks, an amp rack and an effects rack. One day in about 1989, when all that stuff was going strong, I remember plugging my seafoam green Strat into one of my Fender Princetons and thinking, ā€œYou know what? This sounds better to my ears than $50,000 worth of rack gear.ā€ In those days we were listening to the sound of the reverbs and the delays and the choruses. When you turned all that stuff off, the sound of the basic guitar through the rig was kind of sterile. I realized that the marriage of a great-sounding guitar with an amp is very important. I had a Vox AC30 and some Marshalls
and stuff like that and I thought, ā€œMaybe I can use these things.ā€

It started to come together with an A/B system. I would say right around 1990 I started putting together that kind of clean and dirty rig. I remember talking to Allan Holdsworth and he said, ā€œYou donā€™t play clean and dirty out of the same speakers do you?ā€ And I said, ā€œYeah.ā€ He said, ā€œHow can you do that? I want a real papery warm sound from my lead tone, like Celestions. From my clean sound I want something a little more bright and pingy.ā€ Then I thought, ā€œWell so do I!ā€ Thatā€™s what kind of started me thinking down the road of having two separate rigs.

At one point I was playing a show at Billboard Live in Hollywood, and I had my rack stuff and the entire bandā€™s show was programmed in. I just had to go to number one, number two, etc. Somebody walked by the power source and kicked the cable and it came out of the wall. It wiped out all ninety-nine programs! So Iā€™ve got ten minutes until show time, and the other band had a Fender Twin. I thought, ā€œIā€™ll just pull out some pedals, plug into this Fender Twin and go for it.ā€ Really, when you get into all this changing of parameters of each sound, the only person who knows it is you, unless itā€™s super radical. I realized at that point that itā€™s better to have two amazing sounds than ninety-nine okay sounds.

That rackmount preamp/power amp period was sometimes an eight, but never a ten. My two favorite clean sounding amps are the Fender Twin and the AC30. I get all this nice midrange and fatness from the Twin. With the AC30 I get all this high-end sparkle. As a stereo pair itā€™s pretty cool.


Dr. Z SRZ-65 head, with Carl's rack.
You have a nice wall of vintage amps on stage, yet you still have the rack under your Doctor Z head.

What I do is come off the A/B pedalboard, and for the clean Iā€™m going through one pedal. It goes into a Robert Stamps reverb unit, which he made custom for me back in 1997 when I was about to do a Supertramp tour. I needed spring reverb, but in rack form, and he did that for me. It comes out of that and goes into a stereo chorus, but I almost never turn it on. When I do, itā€™s very subtle. That comes out in stereo to the left and right inputs of a Lexicon MPX 100 Stereo Delay. I use that ping-pong delay just to give myself some imaging on stage. Iā€™ve got a few settings for various tempos, and all my rack effects are before my clean amps. For the dirty sound, I come off the B-side of the pedal board after going through the three distortion pedals and go into the Doctor Z head. Itā€™s a replacement for my old Marshall. Theyā€™re becoming $5000 to $6000 for those Plexi heads. Doctor Z made it so that if you turn the master volume all the way up itā€™s out of the signal path. Itā€™s basically acting like a non-master volume amp using the power tubes to the fullest. Then I come into one of those THD Hotplates. That has a direct outā€”I feed that to a cabinetā€”and it also has a line level out that I feed into a Lexicon PCM-41. Itā€™s a line level reverb, and the only way you can get into that is by turning the speaker out into line level, which the Hotplate does really well.

The switching is seamless.

An A/B system like that is going to be organic, whereas if you do channel switching or MIDI or any of that stuff, it cuts off. That little millisecond is not organic. If I have a rhythm part going and Iā€™m singing, and I feel like slamming in a little lead line, the rhythm part hangs over in the air while I switch. Thereā€™s no pop or anything with those Lehle foot switches.


Carl's pedalboard.
Do you have any new stomp boxes in your arsenal you could tell us about?

Yeah, thereā€™s a really nice distortion pedal Iā€™ve been using called the Cream pedal by Andy Fuchs of Fuchs Amplification. Itā€™s kind of a cross between a saturated Fuzz Face type of pedal and a Tube Screamer. Itā€™s somewhere in the middle, which is nice because I find Tube Screamers sometimes arenā€™t saturated enough to get that creamy tone. Fuzz Faces are a little hard to manage for me. Theyā€™re a little out of control. Iā€™ve been using that quite a bit lately.

Doctor Z recently got me a new Carmen Gia head. Thatā€™s a really nice head. Itā€™s only 18 watts, but for recording or a small blues gig itā€™s great. Iā€™ve been able to use that head to get the sound Iā€™ve never been able to get before, real beautiful sounding.

How did you become such a successful session cat? What separates you from other guitarists?

I looked at the guys who just did record dates. They were maybe non-readers. Then I looked at theses other guys who seemed to be able to do everythingā€¦ records, movies, jingles, TV, all that kind of stuff. The guys who can do everything get a lot bigger piece of the pie. To me the number one requirement for that was a thorough understanding of the ornamentation of the styles.

When you really get down to it, blues, blues-rock, rock, country, country-rock, bluegrass, jazz, heavy metal, be-bop, all these different styles of music use the same twelve notes. The only difference between the jazz guys is how they ornament the style. Theyā€™ll play a certain feel so itā€™s a rhythmic ornamentation. Theyā€™ll play a certain choice of notes so itā€™s a harmonic thing and a sonic thing. You take that be-bop style of Charlie Parkerā€”itā€™s really in many cases the mixolydian mode. Then you go to these blues guys like B.B. King. Heā€™s also playing the mixolydian mode, along with minor pentatonic and various things, but so are the jazz guys. So itā€™s the phrasing and what I call the ornamentation of styles.


I had an awakening one day around 1980. Iā€™d been studying jazz really hard, practicing five to eight hours a day for maybe six to seven years to try to be able to play through changes in the style of Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, Pat Metheny and all those guys. I wanted to be a jazz guy. One day, Iā€™m driving my car and I hear this Joe Walsh solo on the radio. It was from The Eaglesā€™ tune, ā€œThose Shoes.ā€ It was just a soulful solo. I think he was using a voice box. I had to pull my car over. The state of the art of rock guitar has come so far. It made me think, [laughing] ā€œThis is the music of my people!ā€ It made me really think, ā€œI could play twenty-six choruses of ā€˜Stella By Starlight,ā€™ but who cares? I really like this.ā€

Come to think of it, I love that Chet Atkins stuff I was hearing the other day. And I really like the way my friend plays classical guitar, and Iā€™d really love to learn some of those Bach pieces. And I love the way Albert Lee plays. I need to get into everything. It made me come to realize that if you dig it, you must learn it. I just want to be a great guitar player, and not a great jazz playerā€”not necessarily a great one thing or another. I think that really helped me in the studios.

Give me an example of how this works for
you in the studio.


I come into a session on a country thing, so I pull out this great Fender Tremolux amp Iā€™ve got, and plug my Telecaster in and get the perfect country sound. Then the producer says, ā€œYaā€™ know, I think itā€™s a little too country. Can we rock out?ā€ So I say, ā€œYeah.ā€ So I get a Strat and play through a THD head that has some crunch to it. So the artist says he wants to go more acoustic and he wants to take it up a step. So now weā€™re in a different key and weā€™re thinking bluegrass or folk-rock.

If youā€™re the hat-wearing, boot-wearing, country picker guy, once they start changing it youā€™re sent home. That day is over. They need different guys because that country guy can only play one thing. Anybody who wants to be successful in the world of producers and songwriters really needs to have all that versatility. Itā€™s even more important than reading, unless of course you get into movies.

You seem to embody those styles a lot more than what I hear from people coming out of academia. You sound like the real deal.

Youā€™ve got to separate your artistic career from your sideman career. Your sideman career is about you being a well-listened craftsman. I was called into a session once where they said, ā€œI need that ZZ Top thing.ā€ Thatā€™s Billy Gibbons playing a Les Paul, probably through a little tweed Fender amp. Pinch harmonicsā€¦ a Texas shuffle is very different than a Chicago shuffle so the sound adjusts, the feel adjusts and hereā€™s my impersonation
of Billy Gibbons. That is being a well-listened craftsman, as opposed to an artist. I separate the two in order to make a living. When you are a sideman youā€™ve got somebody elseā€™s musical vision that youā€™re trying to bring out. When Iā€™m making my own records itā€™s my musical vision.

The styles come through in your solo work.

I hear all that country stuff in my own playing, the jazz stuff as well as the fusion of rock and blues. Itā€™s all part of the expression of the whole. With the well-listened craftsman, youā€™re kind of like a plumber who looks under the sink and says he needs a 5/8ā€ wrench.

Knowing your guitar tone history is just as important as knowing the fret board.

Every real serious student of the guitar is also a musical historian. You think back to those old records and you know what they played. Seymour Duncan can name every guitar from every track from the fifties, sixties and seventies. He knows every pickup. He knows it all.

What do you do to further your craft in terms of practicing?

Iā€™m a serious practicer. To me, practicing is where I find my center as a person. If I go a day without practicing, I feel useless. I donā€™t feel like Iā€™m doing what Iā€™m here to do. I donā€™t feel like Iā€™m on the level of where I want to be. To practice, Iā€™ve always kept a lick book. Itā€™s an ongoing musical diary thatā€™s always on my music stand.

Iā€™ve got lines for Emaj7th chords, harmony lines, pentatonics in D minor, chord voicings and anything that comes to mind. Iā€™m always writing stuff down. Iā€™m getting ready to do a DVD, so Iā€™m writing five minor, five dominant and five major lines. I have old lick books that are completely full of lines. Iā€™ve transcribedĀ Brent Masonā€™s ā€œHot Wiredā€ and then start working on ideas from that. Itā€™s a great way of practicing. Iā€™ll say, ā€œI need a line in F# minor that starts on the low F# and ends on the high C#.ā€ Iā€™ll come up with something new and original, then write it down. Then Iā€™ll transpose it into a major version, and then a dominant seventh version. Then Iā€™ll practice itā€¦ to see if it fits. Then Iā€™ve got new materialā€”or I could go back ten pages. I can try it again and it might lead me to new stuff.

Youā€™ve discussed your lick book on your Intervallic Rock video. Itā€™s invaluable.

My personal style is a direct result of the lick book. My intervals are always larger than minor seconds, major seconds and minor thirds. I think in terms of fourths, fifths and sixths. It relates to my lines and my chords.

I would say itā€™s a key element of your style.

Carl's Gearbox
When it's time to plug in, this is what he's reaching for:

Guitars
Fender '61 Stratocaster
Fender '58 Stratocaster
Avalon Carl Verheyen Signature Acoustic

Amps/Cabs
1964 Fender Twin
1963 Vox AC30
1969 Marshall 100-Watt Head
Dr Z SRZ-65 Amp
Marshall 4x12 Cab
THD 2x12 Cab
Effects/Accessories
Lexicon PCM-41
Lexicon LXP-1 Reverb
Lexicon Stereo MPX 100 Delay
Dunlop Wah
Lehle A/B Box
Stamps Tremolo Reverb
Voodoo Labs Pro Octavia
Landgraff Perfect Distortion Pedal
THD Hot Plate
TC Electronic Chorus
Hermida Audio Zendrive
VDL Professional Analogics II Distorsore
Fuchs Plush Cream Pedal
Peterson StroboStomp 2
Boss Digital Tuner

The interval thing. It relates not only to my lines, but also to my chords. I construct my chords out of bigger intervals, so that when the bass player is down here, Iā€™m stretched out. The lick book was instrumental in that development.

People who are full-time musicians run the risk of picking up the guitar after work and relaxing with it. They end up playing the same stuff they play every night to relax. Itā€™s like the glass of wine. They play a lick, maybe a couple of chords, improvise in D major and it just kind of flows along. That isnā€™t practicing.
Practicing is finding new things or getting the impossible stuff you already know down better.

Improving. Do you play every single day?

Yeah. Not playing for a couple of days would be really bad.

Whatā€™s your favorite Strat?

The one you saw me play live is a ā€™61 seafoam green Strat. Itā€™s my favorite rock guitar.