Guitars heroes don’t just play guitar. They live it, breathe it, and love it. And their lifelong fandom extends not only to the instrument but to the players they share it with. We asked 17 of today’s most interesting, inventive guitarists in a wide span of genres about their favorite peers. Their answers are thoughtful, heartfelt, and fascinating—providing insight into not only who they admire but the qualities in their heroes’ playing that inspire them, which in turn reveals much about what they love about guitar. So, plug in and read on!
Buddy Miller on Marc Ribot
Snarky Puppy’s Chris McQueen on Isaiah Sharkey
John Bohlinger—Nashville Correspondent
Traveller
When Chris Stapleton left the Steel Drivers I thought it was a huge mistake. The band had a Grammy nomination and a bright future. Why jack with that? Then I caught Stapleton at a festival in Canada. He was the opener, playing before five more successful acts. With his Jazzmaster and an old Deluxe, Stapleton and his band—his singing hippie-mama wife, Morgane, a bass player, and a drummer—tore up that stage. No light show, no backing tracks, no smoke machines or big production—just killer songs played by people who felt every note. I immediately bought their latest album. The rest is history. Just goes to show that following your heart—even if it seems crazy—is the right thing to do … if you’re that talented.
1989
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit you like Taylor Swift. What self-respecting guitar dude listens to the breakup songs of a young, rich, white girl? But that shows what a true artist Ryan Adams is—he recognized Swift’s songs for what they are: well-crafted, beautiful, insightful tunes that are catchy as a cold in January. Adams rocks where he should rock and goes dark as he tends to do, but he still taps into the relentless fun of a great album.
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: the Rolling Stones, David Bowie
Ted Drozdowski—Senior Editor
Hey Joe Opus Red Meat
Otis Taylor’s been almost single-handedly keeping blues sonics and songwriting relevant and contemporary for years, and this is his psychedelic masterpiece—with an epic conceptual sweep comparable to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Taylor paints tales about addiction, sex change, isolation, infidelity, and devotion with his spare poetry, majestic baritone voice, and a swirling tapestry of guitar, banjo, and violin, often drawing on the powerful, one-chord trance music of Africa and Mississippi hill country for inspiration. A former bandmate of the legendary Tommy Bolin, Taylor has a unique, driving, edgy approach to guitar, typically played on his Stratocaster in open G (or related banjo tunings) with a dollop of digital delay on top. Warren Haynes joins in for three numbers, including an imaginative reworking of the Billy Roberts tune in the album’s title that Hendrix cast in stone in 1966. It’s proof that deep roots music needn’t be covered in dust.
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Ava Mendoza, Tool, Lucinda Williams, Lush, Richie Owens and the Farm Bureau, Tedeschi Trucks Band
Chris Kies—Associate Editor
Dying Surfer Meets His Maker
All Them Witches prove that finding memorable stoner psych-rock east of Rancho De La Luna is possible. The powerful quartet’s third album shows all the members hitting their respective peaks. Bassist/singer Charles Michael Parks Jr.’s slithering-yet-thunderous bass lines rumble like John Paul Jones and Geezer, and his vocals add mystic touches to haunting jams like “Call Me Star” and “Dirt Preachers.” Meanwhile, guitarist Ben McLeod harnesses fuzzed-out fury with restraint and precision, making the impact of his twisted blues-meets-Sleep riffs that much more powerful. But lighter psych-folk passages like those in “Call Me Star” and the opening of “Talisman” also show a musical maturity not seen on the band’s previous work.
Honorable mentions: Jason Isbell's Something More Than Free, Tyranny is Tyranny's The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism, and Courtney Barnett's Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Tool, Frank Ocean, Explosions in the Sky, Nikki Lane
Andy Ellis—Senior Editor
Here in the Deep
Best known for playing fuzzed-out electric guitar in Baltimore’s alt-rock Arbouretum, Dave Heumann reveals a more introspective, meditative side with his debut solo album. He hasn’t completely abandoned his psych-rock soloing—great news for those of us who dig his stoner leads—but acoustic guitar and shimmering electric provide the foundation for most of the 10 songs on this album. As always, Heumann reaches back to the late ’60s for inspiration, but this time instead of paying homage to Blue Cheer, Heumann subtly channels Bert Jansch, the Grateful Dead’s Working Man’s Dead, and early Traffic. The songwriting, artfully layered guitar textures, and superb mixing make this an album I return to again and again for satisfying aural immersion. Headphones recommended.
Nashville Obsolete
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings make acoustic music that’s spare, honest, and starkly beautiful. On this outing, Rawlings’ vintage Epiphone archtop gets plenty of space to release its tinkling, almost resonator-like tones. Of course, were anyone else to play his diminutive instrument, it wouldn’t sound remotely the same: No one flatpicks like Rawlings. It sounds like he chisels his lines from 100-year-old oak using the finest, razor-sharp blades and a master engraver’s touch. And those chromatic approach notes! How does one find a voice so unique, so immediately identifiable?
Slide Guitar Ragas from Dusk Till Dawn
If you’re familiar with Hindustani slide, which is played lap style on a guitar configured with both sympathetically vibrating and plucked drone strings, you’ll be delighted with Bhattacharya’s latest collection of ragas. If this “secret” world of slide is new to you, Slide Guitar Ragas offers an excellent introduction to the hypnotic sounds pioneered by Brij Bhushan Kabra on his 1967 album Call of the Valley. On Slide Guitar Ragas, Bhattacharya plays several instruments of his own design, including the 24-string chaturangui guitar. He also plays Kabra’s modified Gibson Super 400—the instrument that arguably started the entire Indian slide guitar movement—on “Roshni,” a 17-minute early-morning raga. Anyone coming to this music with an open mind and the patience to absorb unfolding overtones and melodies will come away transformed by Bhattacharya’s stunning musicianship.
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Let Me Get By
Shawn Hammond—Chief Content Officer
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Nightsoundtrack
Ana Lily Amirpour’s noir-Western A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night isn’t just the best vampire flick since Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (tying with Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s hilarious mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows)—it’s also a sheer musical delight. The Iranian-American director of this Persian-language film shot in the desert just outside Bakersfield, California, chose a stunning array of tunes that perfectly suit the stark cinematography and the duality of the protagonist’s dark walk among the living. Highlights include Radio Tehran’s delectably throbbing “Tatilat” and soaring indie-rock slow-build “Gelaye,” Iranian singer-songwriter Dariush Eghbali’s lilting nylon-string lament “Chesme Man,” the breathy vocals and acoustic-and-accordion interplay on Kiosk’s “Charkhesh E Pooch,” and a handful of avant spaghetti-western pieces from Portland-based outfit Federale.
Something in the Water
On his seventh studio LP, St. Louis singer-songwriter Pokey LaFarge pulls off at least two minor miracles with his mélange of American roots music. He and the other six members of his band are virtuosos in the truest sense of the term: Although they’ve got chops up the kazoo (literally), LaFarge’s gang (including fantastic Gypsy-jazz guitarist Adam Hoskins and upright bassist Joey Glynn) always uses these skills to instill their infectious blend of old-time folk, Western swing, country, and ragtime blues with an irresistible groove and a nonstop sense of fun. It’s a concoction that’s simultaneously retro and modern, combining bygone genres in unique ways while updating them with witty, tongue-in-cheek lyrics too risqué to have been mainstream in decades past.
Thunder Lizard's Reprieve
Though not as filling a feast as last year’s Annabel Dream Reader, this EP from U.K. trio the Wytches is chock-full of the sort of reverb-drenched surf-punk mayhem that made that outing such a delight. On the album opener, “DADFAC#,” vocalist/guitarist Kristian Bell pumps out fuzzy, primitively discordant bends, while bassist Daniel Ramsey and drummer Gianni Honey plod between heightened tension and free-flowing release before the three devolve into a snarling, feedback-soaked grunge/speed-doom outro. “Gettin’ Lucky” juxtaposes that mayhem with wistful vocals, crunchy Jazzmaster strumming, and a tortured, swirling solo that’s equal parts Tony Iommi and Kurt Cobain. The third track, “If Not for Money,” gets even mellower, with trippy Mellotron flutes draping a gauzy haze over a backdrop of laidback fingerpicking, loose drums, and strung-out vocals. Album closer “Wasteybois” begins with guitars that sound like a young Pete Townshend blowing up his Vox, but quickly froths into fits of shrieking, psychedelic thrashing before crashing to the floor in a heap and staring at the ceiling spinning above its own glorious mess.
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Division of Laura Lee, the Raveonettes, Radiohead
Tessa Jeffers—Managing Editor
The Helio Sequence
I was instantly blown away the first time I heard this album’s opening track, “Battle Lines,” wafting through an East Nashville record store. “Who is this?” I asked the guy behind the counter. I took extra time browsing so I could hear more of the record, then I bought the vinyl edition on the spot. This is psychedelic rock with evolved, compositional instrumentation—and oh, how it moves! I’ll go out on a limb and say Helio has the songwriting depth of Radiohead (sue me) and an orchestral groove like the Beta Band. It’s all the more impressive when you realize this band is a duo. On standout tracks “Red Shifting” and “Upward Mobility,” the lush soundscapes are framed with catchy, minimalistic guitar ostinatos that build tastefully into a cloud of feel-good vibes reminiscent of the album’s beautiful cover artwork. Helio keeps it uplifting but goes deep.
1989
Looking back over the year, this was the album I was giddily counting down the days for. Even if you’re not a Taylor Swift fan, it’s difficult to deny the original collection of catchy tunes on 1989 shows real growth for her. It won’t change your life or anything, but I’m in love with the idea of an artist doing something controversial and not caring if everyone dismisses it. Many accused Adams of merely having a crush on a girl. If that’s the case, he is an absolute romantic badass. He took a stripped-down album of big-production pop songs and gave them a different life. They breathe and brood, and it feels like he got inside these songs and experienced his own birth. Father John Misty was so jealous he copied the concept right after. Eat your heart out, Father John!
Run
I was shocked when I learned Aaron Bruno made an entire album with just one other person in the room. I’ve been a fan of Awol since Megalithic Symphony, but I thought it was a traditional band. Regardless, I love what Bruno is doing—making edgy music that gets played on the radio. Maybe “Sail” is all you know, but Awol experiments with raunchy bass lines and guitar sounds never heard before with confrontational abandon. It’s fearless and speaks to your primal instincts, and that’s something I’m constantly searching for in the music of our times. Bruno played piano, drums, guitar, and everything else you hear on Run, but he’s also using digital technology as a legit instrument in itself to make complex songs that he can still recreate live with a full band.
Honorable mention: Wolf Alice's My Love Is Cool
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Haim, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Kanye West, Gorillaz
Rich Osweiler—Associate Editor
Mind Out Wandering
This record has remained at the very top of my list since I got my hands on it last spring. The 10 soulful jewels that frontman/singer/keyboardist Anthony Ferraro put together with his troupe of jazz players oozes ’70s soft rock, but in a modern and funkified manner. Think Bread meets Ben Folds meets Remy Shand—although you can also feel a bit of a Toro y Moi vibe (which should be no surprise since Ferraro splits his time as keyboardist for the latter). It’s stellar songwriting with some especially gorgeous guitar work from Derek Barber.
DMA’s
Since releasing their debut EP this year, these lads from Down Under have amassed a number of comparisons to Oasis. I get it—a little—but there’s much more to DMA’s than Britpop. Excellent melodies, great hooks, and big choruses fed by glittery guitars are usually a great recipe for something special, and that’s what you get here. But the acoustic-fueled ballads “Delete” and “So We Know” also bring a nice balance. A full-length effort called Hills End is due in February.
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Lush, Radiohead, Robin Nolan
Charles Saufley—Gear Editor
Hexadic II
What do you do when you get in a guitar rut—buy a new phaser? Ben Chasny decided to invent a whole new freaking system for approaching the instrument. While the esoteric origins of the system run deep, it is fundamentally rooted in letting chance reconfigure the fretboard and guide composition. He field-tested the system first on Hexadic I, an electric, often heavy band piece. Hexadic II, however, represents a more focused, personal, acoustic-based application of the system. Not surprisingly, the results sound unlike any other guitar record out there, and the songs weave like tendrils of vine around a lattice made up of Morton Feldman’s modern minimalism, Japanese koto pieces, and Eastern European folk melodies.
Goes Missing
One of these days Emmett Kelly—long the right-hand man and guitar slinger for Bonnie Prince Billy, and now Ty Segall’s Muggers—will receive his due as one of the most versatile and classy guitar players alive. This LP, performed and sung almost entirely by Kelly, also showcases his protean voice and formidable songwriting chops. This particular batch of songs veers from ecstatic Meet the Beatles! and Beau Brummels-inflected pop jewels peppered with Herb Ellis-meets-George Harrison chord moves, to Guided by Voices-style nuggets that sound conceived by some lonely genius plying his craft in a dim garage at the end of a lost suburban cul-de-sac.
Honorable mentions: Flying Saucer Attack’s Instrumentals 2015, Laura Cannell’s Beneath Swooping Talons, Peacers’ Peacers, Daniel Bachman’s River, Howlin Rain’s Mansion Songs, Kurt Vile’s B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down…, Sir Richard Bishop’s Tangier Sessions, Kelley Stoltz’s In Triangle Time, Moon Duo’s Shadow of the Sun
Jason Shadrick—Associate Editor
Something More Than Free
It’s official—Jason Isbell is no longer “the guy who used to be in the Drive-By Truckers.” With Something More Than Free, he plants his flag as the best Americana songwriter of his generation. The overall tone on these 11 tracks is a bit happier than on his breakthrough album, 2013’s Southeastern. This time around Isbell brought his band, the 400 Unit, into the studio to help shape and craft the album. Producer Dave Cobb returned to help capture amazing guitar tones, such as the ethereal slide solo at the end of “Children of Children.” Isbell’s Muscle Shoals roots come through on “Palmetto Rose,” a swampy, blues-inflected number that moves between a stomp-your-foot jam and a lilting, power-pop chorus with ease. If this ends up being Isbell’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, it will only mean the best is yet to come.
Mixtape of the Open Road
Many of Martin Sexton’s fans come to his shows for the otherworldly vocals—and rightfully so—but it’s his unbelievably percussive, harmonic-fueled, flat-out grooving rhythm playing that brings me in. And on his latest album, Mixtape of the Open Road, you hear this type of amazing fretwork spread amongst a fully realized vision that goes from the bouncy soul of “Pine Away” to the Laurel Canyon-esque folk-rock of “You (My Mind Is Woo)” to the retro stomp-rock of “Dandelion Days.” The cumulative result is a varied collection of soulful, heartfelt songs that—just as the album’s title suggests—will inevitably lead to a lot of repeat listening.
World's Fair
Although Julian Lage gets lumped into jazz circles, his ability to transcend style and expectations is rather stunning. Armed with a 1939 Martin 000-18 and a mic, he sounds as comfortable as ever navigating through this collection of original compositions. The intimacy of the recording is engaging and the pre-war Martin sounds full and dynamic, thanks to co-conspirators Matt Munisteri and Armand Hirsch. The deft picking on “Gardens” has peripheral classical elements and counterpoint, but soon moves to a melody that’s served several different ways—and with striking dynamics. The album closer, “Lullaby,” has moments where you hold your breath while Lage pulls everything he can out of a series of minimalist fragments that ache with melancholy beauty. This isn’t a reinvention of Pass’ Virtuoso series—it’s a snapshot of a virtuoso inventing an entirely new vocabulary.
Most-anticipated 2016 releases: Jimmy Page, Metallica, Lake Street Dive, and anything produced by Dave Cobb.
But as fixated on sadness, loss, damnation, and missed opportunities as many of the Grammy-nominated duo’s compositions are, you’ll also find joy in these refracted tales from America’s past. The jig “Candy,” for one, grabs the sweet promise of life in a rural town just after World War II—a time when bluegrass was born from the melting pot of British and Appalachian folk music, blues, jazz, and chiming string bands.
Rawlings and Welch first crossed dusty paths as students at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where they formed their songwriting, performing, and romantic partnership after meeting at an audition for the school’s only country band. Born in the small colonial town of North Smithfield, Rhode Island, Rawlings fell under country’s spell in the ’70s.
“That music invaded the AM and FM radio stations to some degree, so I heard story songs and country songs since the time I was 3 years old,” he says. “I remember hearing Jim Croce, and Kenny Rogers with ‘The Gambler.’ Those songs came out of the American folk music tradition. I’m also sure that as a kid I heard ‘John Henry’ somewhere. Songs like that pulled me in.”
So did the guitarists who played them. But unlike many 6-string-fixated Berklee students, Rawlings developed a highly personal sonic perspective. The subtleties of jazz hornmen Miles Davis and Chet Baker stoked an interest in unusual intervals and subtle dissonant touches that enliven harmonies. And his guitar instructor, Lauren Passerelli, helped Rawlings bare the secrets of the mountainous multi-tracked tones of the Smiths’ Johnny Marr, another of Rawlings’ heroes.
Guitarist David Rawlings met his musical and life partner, Gillian Welch, when they were students at
Berklee College of Music. Photo by Henry Diltz
That opened Rawlings up to the world of textural music informed by harmony. And that world is where he and Welch have resided ever since. It’s the key to the rich vistas their blend of voices and guitars paints on Nashville Obsolete and elsewhere.
“I think of myself as an arranger who happens to play guitar enough that I have passable technique,” Rawlings allows. “The blend of Gillian’s guitar and my guitar is an arrangement in itself. My guitar playing is built to work with her guitar playing. Without her, I don’t know what you’d have left of me. If I started working with a different guitarist, I’d probably have to change my own playing to make it fit.”
Recorded in the duo’s Woodland Studios in East Nashville—a legendary facility with a long history of recording classic country hits—Nashville Obsolete was a mantra for the duo before it was an album title. “It crosses our minds that virtually everything we do and every tool we use is obsolete,” he observes. “The microphones, the tape we record on, the tape machines, and even the recording studio is obsolete because music is no longer supposed to be something you should spend any money making, because you can’t make any money off of it. Nashville Obsolete was a phrase we’d kicked around for a long time, so we thought it was appropriate for this batch of songs.”
We dug deeper into the making of the album when we spoke with Rawlings on a recent sunny day in Nashville.
How do you record your acoustic guitar?
The method that Matt Andrews, who has engineered most of the records I’ve done, and I came up with has been gradually dialed in over the years. I’ve always used a Sony C-37A microphone—a tube microphone made in the late ’50s and early ’60s—and an old Neve 1055 preamp module.
The sound of my and Gillian’s guitars is a combination of what bleeds through the vocal mics—we use a Neumann M49, usually—and the mics we use on our guitars. We’re usually sitting close enough that every sound blends through every microphone. So the sound is a composite.
The only other constant in my guitar chain is a Fairchild compressor I bought years ago that has a particular tone. I’m not interested in the compression as much as the sound its transformers add to the chain. It gives a little point to the midrange that makes it easier to poke out from Gill’s guitar and be present under the vocals.
Rawlings developed a hybrid-picking style where he grips a flatpick between his thumb and index finger and also plucks with the nails on his middle and ring fingers. “I can’t wear a thumbpick, so I learned to fingerpick like that,” he shares. Photo by Lindsey Best
Describe your flatpicking approach.
It would all be crosspicking, at least on this record. It’s hard on songs like “Bodysnatchers” to differentiate what I’m doing with what Gill’s doing, because we’re both arpeggiating. So you’re hearing a composite. There are times when I play with a flatpick between my thumb and index finger and then will play with my second and third fingernails. I do that on “Elvis Presley Blues” [from Welch’s Time (The Revelator)]. I can’t wear a thumbpick, so I learned to fingerpick like that.
How do you decide to hybrid pick on a song?
It’s compositional, really. When I decide to fingerpick, I’m going for a particular feel I can’t get any other way. “Elvis Presley Blues,” for example, started as a minor-chord cycle and the whole thing was strummed and slower. We didn’t end up loving that. I rewrote the song to amuse myself, in a John Hurt style. Because I was playing like John Hurt, it was fingerstyle. With Gillian and me both fingerpicking, it gave the song a really natural sound. If either of us were flatpicking, that part would have sounded more like a lead guitar, and we really like the idea of the composite sound of both our guitars as the main instrumental voice for what we do.
I hear crosspicking, Travis picking, and some of Mother Maybelle Carter’s low-note-melody-with-brushed rhythm style on the albums you and Gillian do. What made you focus on those fundamentally rural techniques when you were developing as a guitarist?
My goal was to develop a style of picking that would fill in the sound for our duo and complement the way Gillian plays, which is alternating a bass line and a top string in a backbeat kind of way, and there’s space in between.
I play using crosspicking on the middle strings to fill in that space. I was never particularly good at stealing stuff from people. I had to come up with things I like that I can play. One of the only guitar players that I can point to whose licks I still might play is Norman Blake. Norman fingerpicks beautifully and flat-picks incredibly well. There are certain passages of crosspicking I learned from him that fueled my ideas when Gillian and I were arranging our first songs together.
How do you hold your pick and attack the strings?
I tend to grip the pick primarily with my second finger and thumb. The first finger is a support. I kind of hold it like a pen. I play with the back of the pick, not the tip—the fat edges. I anchor with my palm behind the bridge a little bit and my pinky is resting on the top of the guitar. John McGann in Boston is a really good flatpicker who I took a few lessons with when I was young, and he’s the one who encouraged me to experiment by playing with the back of the pick. I tried it and it gave me a really fat tone, so I immediately took to it.
You have an affinity for dissonant intervals and passages. What drew your ear to these sounds?
I don’t really think of it as dissonance. Those notes sound pretty to me. Some people think I do this to put a fly in the ointment, but I don’t. I’ve liked that kind of sound for as long as I can remember hearing music. When I was at Berklee learning about harmony and the language of music, I was happy to learn the names for it. Like, if I’m in a minor chord, I like the sound of that 9 playing against the minor third and making that minor second. I also learned I liked the sound of an 11 on a minor chord really well—a wider interval than might commonly be used, or to use the fourths and fifths more than the thirds and sixths if you’re singing with somebody, and letting that stretch things out. I often think of those things visually, envisioning an arrangement as a panorama. I think about making sounds “wide” and me and Gillian stacking up notes.
Dave Rawlings' Gear
Fretted Instruments
1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop
Early ’50s Gibson F-12 mandolin
Strings and Picks
Martin Darco 80/20 Bronze light gauge strings (.012–.054)
Fender heavy picks
Gillian Welch’s Gear
Guitars
1956 Gibson J-50
1939 Martin D-18
Strings and Picks
D’Addario EJ17 Phosphor Bronze medium strings (.013–.056)
Vintage tortoise shell picks
Do you use open or alternate tunings?
I don’t usually. I like to find fingerings in standard tuning that make people think I’m using alternate tunings. Other than dropping an E string to a D, I haven’t often gone far down that tunnel. To me, getting into an alternate tuning was playing mandolin.
So let’s talk about your mandolin, which plays a prominent role in several songs on Nashville Obsolete.
I always wanted one and enjoyed playing them, and finally got a mandolin I like, which is an early ’50s Gibson F-12. It took some time with the tuning [four courses of doubled unison strings, G–D–A–E], but I do like that my ear is what’s always pulling me. I was switching back and forth on “Pilgrim,” between the guitar and the mandolin, trying to figure out which instrument worked, up until the moment we cut it. I liked the way the mandolin made the song move, so I went with that. But the solo at the end just sounds like me making the same choices I would make on the guitar. My attempts to play differently by playing other instruments don’t often work. When I play organ, I usually find I play the same notes I would play on the guitar.
How do you and Gillian determine which of you will cut the songs you write together?
We don’t have to think about it all that much. When we were first working on songs, we’d both be singing them as we wrote, but in the end Gillian took all of them because she’s just such a great singer. We’re more concerned about the songs moving us than who’s going to sing them. Even in our earliest days, when people like Emmylou Harris and the Nashville Bluegrass Band were cutting our songs rather than us, we considered a song to be its own creature. We thought about it more like songwriters than performers. You’re trying to create this thing that, if it’s worth its salt, is not going to need you anyway. You do want to be the best vehicle for the song. That’s the dream as a performer. But I think it’s good for the song that you don’t make that the most important thing.
You play Hammond B3. What other instruments do you play?
I play drums, although not very well. I have a couple fills I do okay. My greatest honor as a drummer is that John Paul Jones had me play on a track he was producing for [songwriter] Sara Watkins. I played bass on Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker a little bit. I’m not a great bass player, but there are certain feels I can get away with. I play a little lap steel, and a tiny bit of fiddle. I played saxophone when I was a kid and can still play a bit of that. I can play a little piano, relying on musicality rather than technique. It’s the same with the B3.
Most guitarists think of vocals as their weak card, but you and Gillian seem to harmonize effortlessly while doing some complex, intertwined picking. How did you arrive at that place?
“Practice” is the easy answer. The earliest part of learning to sing harmony is singing along with records. When I was a kid in the car listening to music, I would always add a tenor or baritone part.
There was a time when, if a song was complicated vocally, like “Long Black Veil,” one of the first songs we sang together, I didn’t play guitar. Gill played guitar and sang lead and I concentrated on a good harmony part. The key is to not do more than you can until you can. The fact that we think of the notes we’re both playing on guitar and the notes she’s singing and I’m singing as one thing has really helped us find the harmony that sounds natural. But after all these years of performing with Gillian, I can tell you I’m a way worse tenor singer than I was when I was 20 years old, and a way better baritone singer. My ear naturally pulls me underneath now, because that’s where I’ve been living.
YouTube It
In this recent clip, performed immediately after accepting a Lifetime Achievement in Songwriting from the Americana Music Association, David Rawlings displays his penchant for picking and strumming the middle strings on his 1935 Epiphone Olympic. Skip to 5:15 for an expressive solo into an outro that’ll knock your socks off.
How different is your approach to electric versus acoustic guitar?
Overdrive and sustain change my playing more than anything else. I usually play flatwound strings on an electric. An old ’50s Esquire is my main electric guitar. I haven’t developed my style on that instrument as much as I’d like to. I do hear myself sounding more like Neil Young when I play electric. I considered playing electric guitar on this album, but I’ve already come far enough on the acoustic that I’m afraid I wouldn’t do as good a job without paying some dues.