It didn’t take too long for Welsh guitarist Chris Buck to go from making YouTube videos to playing the legendary Royal Albert Hall. Earlier this year, he brought his band Cardinal Black to the U.S. for a short tour that included a stop at Nashville’s Basement East. That’s where PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with Buck before the gig for a look at what’s powering his blues-rock sound these days.
Buck’s trademark goldtop Yamaha Revstar is out for the rip, and he spared little space on his double-tiered pedalboard, but a special loaner Gibson and a modded Fender amp added some extra flair to the Nashville show.
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Built by Yamaha’s custom shop in Calabasas, California, this goldtop Revstar came to Buck during NAMM 2020. He likes that the newer style doesn’t have the “baggage” attached to it that a Strat or Les Paul does. This one was built mostly to typical RS502 specs, with two P-90 pickups, a 3-way selector switch, wraparound bridge, and a chambered body. Buck fits this one with Ernie Ball Mega Slinky strings (.0105-.048) and strikes it with Jim Dunlop Tortex 1.14mm picks—a choice he copped from his guitar hero Slash.
Black Bird
Buck was inspired by Rival Sons’ guitarist Scott Holiday to snag this Firebird-style Firehawk by French builder Springer, complete with a Vibrola system. It’s fitted with Sunbear Handwound pickups.
Loaner Les Paul
On his way into Nashville, Buck worried that he didn’t have a Revstar-style backup should his main axe go down, so he hit up Gibson’s Mark Agnesi for a suitable option. Agnesi came through with this 1958 Les Paul Junior Double Cut Reissue, a no-frills rock machine equipped with a single P-90 pickup.
Sweet Victory
Victory has helped Buck out on his American run by hooking him up with V40 Deluxe combos where they can. In Nashville, Buck ran the V40 in a dual-mono setup with a Fender Deluxe Reverb, which had been modded and loaned by Mythos Pedals’ Zach Broyles. The first channel emulates a Bassman sound, while channel two is classic Deluxe Reverb.
Two-Tier Tone Temple
Buck might’ve left his amps back home, but he made up for the absence with a shop’s worth of tone-sculpting tools. This stomp station houses two levels of pedals, with first in the chain being a classic Dunlop Cry Baby. Next is a ThorpyFX Electric Lightning, Buck’s signature drive pedal, then a 29 Pedals EUNA, Mythos Golden Fleece, Mythos Mjolnir, Mythos Air Lane Drive, Snouse BlackBox Overdrive 2, Great Eastern FX Co. Small SPeaker Overdrive, Analog Man King of Tone, Origin Effects Cali76, Universal Audio Golden Reverberator, and Keeley Katana.
Then comes Buck’s modulation section, starting with a Mooer Trelicopter and a Catalinbread Echorec. A Line 6 HX Stomp XL handles some more delay and reverb sounds, plus some chorus. A Universal Audio Starlight Echo Station and Boss RE-202 Space Echo finish off the chain. A GigRig G3 helps Buck switch things up without breaking a sweat. Bucks rests it all on a pair of Schmidt Array pedalboards.
Shop Chris Buck's Rig
Gibson 1958 Les Paul Junior Double Cut Reissue
Ernie Ball Mega Slinky Strings
Fender Deluxe Reverb
Dunlop Cry Baby
Origin Effects Cali76
Universal Audio Golden Reverberator
Keeley Katana
Catalinbread Echorec
Line 6 HX Stomp XL
Universal Audio Starlight Echo Station
Boss RE-202 Space Echo
Robert’s Western World on Nashville’s Lower Broadway was home to the Don Kelley Band for as long as anyone can remember. Kelley’s band was an institution in Nashville, serving as a stepping stone for super-pickers like Guthrie Trapp, Brent Mason, Johnny Hiland, Daniel Donato, JD Simo, and more. “Slick” Joe Fick and Luke McQueary also came up through the ranks of the Don Kelley Band. After Don retired in 2020, Fick and McQueary enlisted drummer/vocalist Billy Van Vleet and kept Don’s old shift going, throwing down at Robert's Western World each night from Wednesday through Saturday. John Bohlinger and the PG team joined Kelley’s Heroes pre-shift at Robert’s to rundown their rigs.
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Bass
Tele
Amp
McQueary plays a 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb, which may still technically belong to his dad. He switched out the speaker to a Celestion Vintage 30.
Pedal
McQueary keeps it simple, and only plugs into an old modded Boss SD-1—which also belongs to his dad.
Hedvig Mollestad’s main guitar is a blonde 1988 Gibson ES-335 Showcase Edition, which she modified with ’57 Classic humbuckers, Bigsby tremolo, and gold hardware.
It's a logical progression. Over the course of seven albums for Rune Grammofon since 2011, the Oslo-based Mollestad remained focused on the decidedly rock-edged sound of the Hedvig Mollestad Trio, with Ellen Brekken on bass and Ivar Loe Bjørnstad on drums. Then came a shift in 2020, which led to the release of two solo albums, Ekhidna and Tempest Revisited (2021), also for Rune, that changed the sonic equation.
Instead of electric bass, Mollestad recruited two keyboardists for Ekhidna and added trumpet. On Tempest Revisited, the lineup grew to include three saxophonists and two drummers. She may not have known it right away, but she was laying the foundation for Maternity Beat and the expanded sound world made possible by the TJO.
Hedvig Mollestad & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra - All Flights Cancelled
“The title Maternity Beat grasps at our only common experience, that we are all born from someone. It’s not an homage to perfect parenting or motherhood, but it comes from an experience of deep caring, and a kind of awakening on the question of what makes us care, what makes us act.”
Part of the catalyst was motherhood and the huge personal and professional changes it can bring. “My first child was born in 2015 and the second in 2017,” she explains. But more than this, it was the plight of migrants, including many children, during this same period that triggered Mollestad’s artistic response. “At that time, it was mostly people fleeing the Syrian war,” she observes, “and a lot of them came to Norway. They were treated in a harsh manner, picked up in the middle of the night and driven up north where the weather was minus 40. It was so inhumane. This was happening while my children were very small, and it had a big impact on me.”
The disconnect between this hardship and her own relative comfort proved jarring for Mollestad and others in her circle, and it prompted a search for new modes of expression. “You go around in your perfect everyday mood, happy to play with your children while people are experiencing real traumas so close to us. I wasn’t doing anything in particular, except thinking about it. So, it made me wonder: What is caring for other people? What is it that makes us care? Do we have to be parents? What does it take to care for another’s child? The title Maternity Beat grasps at our only common experience, that we are all born from someone. It’s not an homage to perfect parenting or motherhood, but it comes from an experience of deep caring, and a kind of awakening on the question of what makes us care, what makes us act.”“It’s so dangerous to play in a band with Ståle because he’s such a box of extreme surprises and wonderfulness that you really have to step up and get your game on to match what he’s doing.”
To convey any of this, Mollestad realized, she needed words. And so, as a first, she wrote lyrics. More than sung melodies, they are mainly short spoken-word passages voiced by Mai Elise Solberg and Ingebjørg Loe Bjørnstad. At times the two also harmonize wordless melodies as part of the orchestra (joined by Mollestad herself on the culminating epic “Maternity Suite”). “Is there a boat on the horizon?” they intone on the album’s leadoff track. “With mothers and children and fathers? … / Life is all they bring / Life is all we bring.”
It wasn’t just the heightened turmoil of this period that led Mollestad away from the direction of her trio. “I’d always been true to this guitar-only concept,” she says, “but I found myself wanting to break it up a little more.” This didn’t necessarily mean downplaying the guitar, but rather featuring it in different settings to explore its capabilities more fully. In this respect, she mirrors the influence of a major role model, veteran ECM recording artist Terje Rypdal.
Hedvig Mollestad's Gear
Mollestad uses various Fender amps on tour, but her go-to setup is an early-’70s Fender Dual Showman Reverb atop a 2x15 cabinet.
Photo by Julia Marie Naglestad
Guitars
- 1988 Gibson ES-335 Showcase Edition (modified with’57 Classic pickups, Bigsby tremolo, gold hardware)
- 1970 Gibson ES-335 (for “On the Horizon, Part 2”)
- Gibson ES-345
Amps
Close to home:
- Fender Dual Showman Reverb, 2x15 cabinet (approx. 1972)
For the road (options requested for backline):
- Vintage Fender Super Reverb
- Fender Bassman with 4x10 cabinet
- Fender Deluxe Reverb
- Orange Rockerverb 100 MKIII
Effects
- EarthQuaker Palisades V2 Overdrive
- Vulk Audio Germanium Fuzz
- Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
- Moog Moogerfooger
- Empress Superdelay
- Boss DD-7 Digital Delay
- Ernie Ball volume pedal
- Roland EV-5 Expression Pedal
Strings and Picks
- Elixir or Ernie Ball, .011–.048
- Dunlop 1.0 mm (default)
- Dunlop Jazz III 3 mm (for jazz)
- Dunlop .73 mm (for strumming)
One priority was moving away from electric bass—and yet Brekken, who had always doubled on upright bass with Mollestad’s trio for the more jazz-oriented numbers, had made herself indispensable enough to get hired on upright for Maternity Beat. “It’s easy for a guitarist to play with bass guitar,” Mollestad maintains. “It’s the same kind of riffing, the same kind of fingering, and it’s beautiful, but I wanted to move away from that, which is why I first chose the double keyboards on Ekhidna. But I still needed Ellen’s presence on Maternity Beat. Her sound is so full, and her beat is so concise and steady, and I really needed her energy. It was also nice to involve her in such a personal project because we’re close friends.”
On keyboards, Mollestad brought in the formidable Ståle Storløkken, from the influential electro-acoustic improvising quartet Supersilent. Storløkken’s toolkit includes otherworldly synths, warm Rhodes textures and a raw, earthy Hammond organ that can recall Jan Hammer with John Abercrombie on Timeless (or perhaps Larry Young with the Tony Williams Lifetime).
When she spoke to Premier Guitar, Mollestad was on the road with Storløkken as part of a new trio called Weejuns (a play on “Norwegians”). “It’s so dangerous to play in a band with Ståle,” she says, “because he’s such a box of extreme surprises and wonderfulness that you really have to step up and get your game on to match what he’s doing. There are so many beautiful details coming out and he’s so musical. You can’t dwell on your choices when you play with him, you just have to act.”
Hedvig Mollestad’s Maternity Beat is a collab with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Mollestad was moved by the plights of refugees and wanted to explore themes of empathy and how that relates to parenthood.
While Maternity Beat is a departure, one thing that hasn’t changed for Mollestad is her main axe, the semi-hollow ES-335, chosen precisely for its versatility in jazz and rock settings. That plus vintage Fender amplification and a pedalboard full of fuzztones and delays keeps Mollestad in her happy place. “I need my tuner,” she clarifies, citing fairly extensive use of the Bigsby tremolo arm, which can wreak havoc during a set. “Also, with the trio there are songs where we have to tune to drop D in the middle of a song. In ‘Leo Flash’ Return to the Underworld,’ for example, we have to retune on the last drum break.”
In aesthetic terms, Mollestad wanted her encounter with the TJO to depart from a mainstream big band sound. To that end, she enlisted not only Storløkken but violinist Adrian Løseth Waade and flutist Trine Knutsen as prominent melodic voices to supplement the guitar, two saxophones, and trumpet. There are complex, meticulously-notated lines and counterpoint but also room for the breath and collective release of improvisation. Elements of chamber music, prog rock, and fusion intermingle as Brekken, drummer Torstein Lofthus, and percussionist Ingvald André Vassbø lay a robust rhythmic foundation.
“You go around in your perfect everyday mood, happy to play with your children, while people are experiencing real traumas so close to us.”
Mollestad’s guitar is a shapeshifting constellation of sound, from the crunchy overdriven speed-riff of “On the Horizon, Part 2” to the fractured, echoing wails of the markedly dissonant, slow-grinding “Do Re Mi Ma Ma.” Her glassy, expansive chording meshes with Storløkken’s eerie melodies in a marvelous five-minute duet that opens the title track, before a transition to some of the richest ensemble orchestration on the album. And on “Maternity Suite,” she goes full-on arena rock, with big anthemic chords that give way to a striking and truly imaginative flourish: a unison passage for fuzz guitar and flute.
“All Flights Cancelled” is an outlier, a song conceived for (and recorded by) Mollestad’s trio but reworked for Maternity Beat as the one track without the full TJO ensemble. “I felt that we really needed a combo piece,” she explains. “The album starts with dark, heavy emotional stuff and then this song is a little break in the middle, a fun song to play, focusing on Ståle with [Torstein and Ingvald] both playing drum sets.”
Mollestad switches up her picks depending on what she’s playing. Her default is Dunlop 1 .0 mm, but she’ll use a Jazz III for jazz runs, and a .73 mm pick for strumming.
Photo by Arne Haug
Amid the lyrical guitar balladry and lush ensemble adornment of “Her Own Shape,” the voices return, reciting words on what Mollestad calls parenthood’s “extreme gift and responsibility.” “My cell within me / Will split to become larger / Part to become stronger,” they speak about watching one’s offspring separate and blossom.
“It’s so strong and sad at the same time,” Mollestad says, “because they will always be your biggest concern and you will carry it with you everywhere. At the same time, they’re here to live their own life. And they are perfect as they are. You don’t have to interfere at all because they’re the most equipped to be perfect people. You just have to be yourself because that is what they need from you.”
But how to get through those difficult moments? On “Little Lucid Demons/Alfons” Mollestad recommends a way forward. In unison and with impeccable timing, Solberg and Bjørnstad offer a staccato pep talk of sorts for when the kids “pull your hair for you, and paint it gray.” Think of everything, they suggest, in terms of music:
look for swing
look for flow
look for beat
and then
take it away.Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Beastie, Beastie (Live)
The Hedvig Mollestad Trio goes hard during a Music in Refuge pandemic concert on the deep groove, “Beastie, Beastie” from their 2018 album, Smells Funny. Jump to 3:15 for a taste of Mollestad’s Bigsby-fueled soloing prowess.