Brent Mason has picked for the biggest and best names in country music: Alan Jackson, Willie Nelson, Shania Twain, Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton, and George Strait are just a few of the country stars on whose records you can hear Mason’s Fender-on-Fender fretwork. But his solo on “Southbound Train,” the closing track on Travis Tritt’s 2000 record Down the Road I Go, might be his hottest work of all.
As Mason explains, the song scoots along at his favorite country tempo—a Cajun two-step, Mason says—which provides the rhythmic framework for his face-melter lead. Mason says the melodic and structural components came in part from his familiarity with jazz, and the mixing of jazz and blues with his usual twangy conventions. In fact, Mason’s furious note barrages occasionally earned him some raised eyebrows (and some choice words from Conway Twitty) in the more traditionalist Nashville studio system.
This might be the toughest solo our host has taken on so far on Shred With Shifty. The key to wrestling it? “You gotta keep playing [it] til you wanna pull out all your teeth and hair,” says Mason. Which Nashville producers and stars would let Mason off-leash in the studio? How does a session ace deal with hand injuries? Listen on, shredders. And if you’re brave enough, send in your take on Mason’s solo.
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editors: Dan Destefano and Addison Sauvan
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.
I've been gigging in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, for over two decades. Here's an inside look at Music City's club scene.
Within Nashville's club scene, there are roughly 100 stages crammed into 40-plus clubs stacked side by side along and around lower Broadway. Every day, these bars run four consecutive, four-hour sets of live music starting at 10 a.m. and ending at 2:30 a.m. One band stumbles off and the next group is up and playing in as little as 15 minutes. The music and chaos never stops.
For Broadway musicians, it's as organized as a freshly stamped-on ant colony. There are frequent double-bookings, last-minute cancellations, and changeups. Sometimes a player doesn't show and a replacement is recruited on the street or from the band just leaving. I've been onstage when the cops arrested a singer who then left the stage in handcuffs, kicking and screaming. I've seen players pass out mid-performance. I've seen fights break out onstage and work their way into the crowd. Speaking of crowds, last week a man removed his full colostomy bag and swung it around his head during a friend's gig. It's a shit show.
Although the attrition rate is high, I've been playing these clubs for over two decades. There's never been a set schedule. I get a text and go if I'm available. Last week, I played five gigs in four days, which included a double shift on Saturday (2 to 6 p.m. on pedal steel at Johnny Cash's, followed by 6 to 10 p.m. on guitar at Tootsie's). There are no breaks, no soundcheck, no setlist. You'll be onstage with some of the best and worst musicians you'll ever play with. The gigs are fun, frustrating, grueling, rewarding, good for you, and bad for you. Here's the scoop.
Pay
Base pay in clubs ranges from $30 per player on the low end to as much as $150. That dough is augmented by tips that can run between zero and as much as $500 per person if an extravagant fan throws in big. Musicians usually walk with about $100, but there are times you'll be earning less than minimum wage at the end of four hours. Yes, this is exploitation, but the clubs know that if a musician grumbles, there are hundreds of players in line hoping to be exploited. I am one of them.
Gear
All of the clubs have a PA, sort of. There are usually floor wedge monitors and often offer options for in-ear monitors. If you want to go full nerd, some clubs allow you to log on with your phone and adjust your own mix. The clubs will provide mics but bring your own—some house mics are as clean as a bar's bathroom floor. Sometimes they mic your amp, sometimes you just blow and go.
"For Broadway musicians, it's as organized as a freshly stamped-on ant colony. There are frequent double-bookings, last-minute cancellations, and changeups."
Clubs all have a house drum kit—some rough, some surprisingly good. Drummers bring their own snare, cymbals, and kick pedal. Usually a bass amp is provided. Some spots like Tootsie's and Rippy's have backline guitar amps (solid-state Orange Crush Pro CR60C). Honky Tonk Central has a nice Marshall with a slant 4x12. I always opt for the house amp, to travel as light as possible. I bring one guitar and a modest pedalboard crammed into the front pocket of the gig bag, with extra strings, a slide, cables, and a capo stuffed in the other pocket. When I carry an amp, I usually use my Boss Katana. It's light, loud, and has built-in drive and effects if my pedalboard goes down. Downtown power is glitch: I've fried two tube amps down there. No cork-sniffing gear here.
Logistics
Parking is expensive and inconvenient, but the Nashville Musicians Association Local 257 gives vouchers to members for $5 parking at a downtown garage. Some clubs offer parking vouchers for players. Most players who have a lot of gear schlep it on a hand truck/dolly. Post-pandemic lockdown, the sidewalks are crammed with tourists. It's slow going when you're hauling gear behind a gaggle of bridesmaids teetering on high heels, but that's the gig.
Getting a Gig
If you want to jump into downtown Music City gigging, go to Broadway and spend a few nights listening to bands. Then go to the Spotify playlist The Sound of Lower Broadway, which currently has 264 songs that you'll likely be asked to play. Bands try to cover all requests from a good tipper. You'll need to know the old-school country classics as well as classic rock, modern country, and current pop/rap hits. There will be embarrassing train wrecks. Get on Facebook and check out Nashville Gig Finder and local musician community pages, where you can find people looking for players. Gigs lead to gigs, if you play well with others.
There are some downsides. That loud environment destroys your ears. There's a physical toll to these gigs. Hold a guitar for four to eight hours after hauling your gear and you'll wake up feeling like you've been beaten with a bag of doorknobs. And yet, I will play these gigs as long as I get the call, because players only love you when they're playing.
The Kentuckian singer-songwriter creates her own vision of the rural South in Old Time Feeling, with reverb-drenched guitars, bare-boned arrangements, and an intimate, haunting vocal style that ties the past and present.
Singer, songwriter, and guitarist S.G. Goodman is very much a product of the modern, rural American South. “I could easily portray things in a way that's disrespectful to my community," she explains. “But that's not the story I feel needs to be told." Photo by Meredith Truax
“I really don't think I could find any joy in not being honest with people," declares S.G. Goodman. “That's just the way I choose to go about my music. I try to represent my worldview, and the people in it, as respectfully and honestly as possible."
That philosophy imbues the songs on her Jim James-produced debut album, Old Time Feeling, with an empathetic perspective that manages to both celebrate and challenge many of the social and economic values commonly associated with her rural, small-town upbringing.
Raised in the 3.6-square-mile city of Hickman, Kentucky (population 2,395 in 2010), on the Mississippi River, in a strict, religious family, Goodman grew up in what many consider a quintessential Southern small town. Her music is sparse and unvarnished, each song a musical anecdote about life in rural America that seeks to debunk familiar stereotypes with incisive social commentary.
The songs “Space and Time," “Supertramp," “The Way I Talk," and “Burn Down the City" lay bare Goodman's personal tales of heartache, protest, estrangement, and reconciliation. And though these themes might be derived directly from her life in the South, they also manage to transcend such intimacy to resonate in ways that most Americans will find all-too-familiar. From the negative effects of corporate influence on local communities via the money pipeline to politics, to the challenges of revealing and addressing one's own sexual identity, to the belief that you can still love your neighbors, even though you might disagree with them, Old Time Feeling taps into the zeitgeist.
Goodman got her musical start singing in church three times a week. That likely accounts for why some of the deeper tendrils of her music appear extended from the gospel songs John and Alan Lomax recorded in Kentucky for the Library of Congress between 1933 and 1942, which can be heard online as The Lomax Kentucky Recordings. The lilt in the voices of long-gone singers like Hulda Roberts and Aunt Molly Jackson—along with much, much more—seems part of Goodman's DNA.
At 15 years old, Goodman was gifted a Larivée LV-03 guitar for Christmas, and a “little VHS tape," she says, by Herb Chapman, father of Christian artist Steven Curtis Chapman, called The Chapman Technique: Beginning Guitar & Vocal Method for Praise & Worship, that she learned to play from. She subsequently moved to Murray, Kentucky, for college, and became a politically motivated and musically active member of the town's post-punk indie scene, recording and performing under the Savage Radley moniker. Eventually, her impassioned and idiosyncratic voice caught the attention of My Morning Jacket's Jim James, by way of a song she placed on a local benefit album called Pine Mountain Sessions, Vol. 1.
Goodman's progressive identity infuses both person and performer, which is why she likely ditched the Savage Radley pseudonym. Just this past year, she was a staunch, vocal supporter of Charles Booker, and then went on to stump, somewhat begrudgingly, for Amy McGrath after her win in the 2020 Democratic primaries in Kentucky. She seems to have a clear grasp on the partisan nature of politics currently plaguing America, with keen insight into the influence of corporate money and how it directly affects local communities. And, after our conversation took a lengthy detour into Kentucky politics, she noted: “We will never have true representation unless we do some campaign finance restructuring."
TIDBIT: Although Jim James is credited as producer, he was intensely involved in preproduction while Goodman handled the hands-on studio work.
The reason to address this in a guitar magazine is because of how utterly essential it is to Goodman's artistry. To say she wears her heart on her sleeve would be a massive understatement. “There's something that is very noticeable, as an artist, when you're not being authentic," she professes. “And when you're singing songs and writing words, if they're not true to you, it's really hard to sell someone else on that."
Such authenticity allows Goodman to deftly bridge the gap between influence and inspiration on Old Time Feeling. Lyrically, each song may tap into the contemporary personal, political, and social issues of her life, but musically, her country-and-gospel-tinged balladry and alt-rock excursions often sound transported from other eras. The hauntingly familiar first track, “Space and Time," with its waltzy groove, hints at the Cowboy Junkies' “Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)." “Tender Kind" and “Red Bird Morning" conjure images of Patsy Cline in her prime, while tunes like the title track draw on Link Wray's 1971 self-titled album for fuel. There's also hints of Pop Staples in the spare note choices and reverb-soaked sound of her guitar.
“I could easily portray things in a way that's disrespectful to my community," she explains. “But that's not the story I feel needs to be told. You've got to speak out, but also realize that, when you're coming from a small community, you're better off presenting it how it is rather than the way people want it to be. A lot of people would love for me to really portray the South through the stereotypes of outsiders—the way it has been [portrayed] for a long time. But what I see when I walk out my door is, there's some small truth to that, but some truths are not being told as well."
Nowadays Goodman, who is primarily a fingerpicker, does much of her writing on a 1965 Gibson B-25 that she picked up in a guitar shop in Paducah, Kentucky. “I felt like it was calling to me," she says, describing the moment she first laid eyes on the guitar. “The Larivée never really felt right in my hands. And now, I've got a buddy with a Martin that just sounds like a cathedral. I always look at guitars like you need a little bit of a spiritual connection to them. And I do like my little B-25, but I don't play acoustic much live."
Guitars
1969 Guild Starfire IV1965 Gibson B-25
Amps
1973 Fender Princeton ReverbEffects
NoneStrings and Picks
D'Addario EXL115s (.011–.049)Onstage, she plays a 1969 Guild Starfire, tuned down a whole step—“not drop D, but across the board," she's quick to clarify, and strung with .011 sets to “make sure that there's some quality to the tone." And even though she demonstrates an admirable level of awareness about the craft of guitar playing, it's interesting to note, what with all this talk of honesty and authenticity, that Goodman doesn't consider herself a good musician. “I just get by with what I know," she says, somewhat self-deprecatingly. “I play by ear and I play by watching other people. But I do have the ability to totally produce a song in my head." So while the reverberating guitar part on album opener “Space and Time" was composed by Goodman, it is performed by guitarist Matt Rowan. “On that song, I actually did not play guitar," Goodman explains. “I was producing the track from the control room.
“Since I write the songs, no one knows how I want them [to sound] better than I do," she explains. “And why would I go in there and do something when I know he can do it better and quicker? Matt has more musical talent in his pinkie than I do in my whole body."
In the end, sometimes sacrificing her own guitar performance in the studio allowed Goodman to make sure they were on the right path—to be “quality control," as she puts it, for Old Time Feeling. “I directed from the sound room, where I could actually be listening through studio monitors instead of a weird mix on my headphones. It's also an economical decision. The clock is ticking when you're renting a studio."
So, if Goodman was often in the control room producing, what was Jim James doing? “He wasn't in the studio while we were recording Old Time Feeling," she clarifies. “We did preproduction with him, and then he came in one night and listened back with us. I just made sure I was following the notes that me and him had discussed." Speaking of James's input, Goodman brings up “Kitchen Floor," a tune that is so slow and sparse it's hard to imagine effectively capturing such a lingering quality in the studio, but the band did, and that is her ringing guitar playing the changes—along with some astonishingly hypnotic pedal steel by Mark Sloan, whose fantastic performances pepper the entire record. Before the song was recorded, Goodman says James told her he hated the original guitar arrangement. And I was like, 'Well, okay, let's just try to come up with something a little different. And so, we got in there and recorded what you hear on that track."
Goodman writes on a Gibson B-25, but her live instrument is a 1969 Guild Starfire IV. It has two humbucking pickups, tone and volume dials for each pickup, a Tune-o-matic bridge, and a semi-hollow body. Photo by Gregg Greenwood
As for translating Old Time Feeling to the stage, Goodman admits there are definitely things about the album that she, Rowan, drummer Stephen Montgomery, and touring bassist Nick Harley (Sloan also played bass on the record) may switch up when they play live. “There's a live version of me singing 'Space and Time' that I just put out. I like my vocal on it way better than what's recorded," she admits. “It's probably because, by that time, I was so much more comfortable with the song—I just really let loose."
She says that some musicians tend to freeze up a little bit in a studio environment, herself included. “When that red light goes on, there's pressure to do the thing, the right way, but oftentimes performance is best when we're not really thinking about it in that way. I think that artists start making their best records when they learn how to fight that studio monster." That's why she likes to track the band as live as possible, sans click track, to give her and the boys enough time to let the environment fade away, so it feels like they're just at practice.
“And then somewhere in the middle of that, there's some magic there," she says. “I have been known to be very much of a perfectionist, but I think that I'm kind of abandoning that philosophy when it comes to music, because I think the perfect stuff is probably what's imperfect about it."
As they play live in the studio, S.G. Goodman and her band share sonic traits the reverberate throughout many musical styles of the American South, including Mississippi hill country blues and the Gullah tradition. Listen for the sparse guitar melodies, the droning rhythm, the heavy use of reverb, and, in her spiraling, honeyed voice, 200 years of folk and church singing.