Keith Urban’s first instrument was a ukulele at age 4. When he started learning guitar two years later, he complained that it made his fingers hurt. Eventually, he came around. As did the world.
He’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards, four American Music Awards, and racked up BMI Country Awards for 25 different singles.
He’s been a judge on American Idol and The Voice. In conjunction with Yamaha, he has his own brand of affordably priced Urban guitars and amps, and he has posted beginner guitar lessons on YouTube. His 2014 Academy of Country Music Award-winning video for “Highways Don’t Care” featured Tim McGraw and Keith’s former opening act, Taylor Swift. Add his marriage to fellow Aussie, the actress Nicole Kidman, and he’s seen enough red carpet to cover a football field.
Significantly, his four Grammys were all for Country Male Vocal Performance. A constant refrain among newcomers is, “and he’s a really good guitar player,” as if by surprise or an afterthought. Especially onstage, his chops are in full force. There are country elements, to be sure, but rock, blues, and pop influences like Mark Knopfler are front and center.
Unafraid to push the envelope, 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 mixed drum machines, processed vocals, and a duet with Pink with his “ganjo”—an instrument constructed of a 6-string guitar neck on a banjo body—and even a didgeridoo. It, too, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and climbed to No. 7 on the Pop chart.
His new release, High, is more down-to-earth, but is not without a few wrinkles. He employs an EBow on “Messed Up As Me” and, on “Wildfire,” makes use of a sequencerreminiscent of ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Background vocals in “Straight Lines” imitate a horn section, and this time out he duets on “Go Home W U” with rising country star Lainey Wilson. The video for “Heart Like a Hometown” is full of home movies and family photos of a young Urban dwarfed by even a 3/4-size Suzuki nylon-string.
Born Keith Urbahn (his surname’s original spelling) in New Zealand, his family moved to Queensland, Australia, when he was 2. He took up guitar at 6, two years after receiving his beloved ukulele. He released his self-titled debut album in 1991 for the Australian-only market, and moved to Nashville two years later. It wasn’t until ’97 that he put out a group effort, fronting the Ranch, and another self-titled album marked his American debut as a leader, in ’99. It eventually went platinum—a pattern that’s become almost routine.
The 57-year-old’s celebrity and wealth were hard-earned and certainly a far cry from his humble beginnings. “Australia is a very working-class country, certainly when I was growing up, and I definitely come from working-class parents,” he details. “My dad loved all the American country artists, like Johnny Cash, Haggard, Waylon. He didn’t play professionally, but before he got married he played drums in a band, and my grandfather and uncles all played instruments.
One of Urban’s biggest influences as a young guitar player was Mark Knopfler, but he was also mesmerized by lesser-known session musicians such as Albert Lee, Ian Bairnson, Reggie Young, and Ray Flacke. Here, he’s playing a 1950 Broadcaster once owned by Waylon Jennings that was a gift from Nicole Kidman, his wife.
“For me, it was a mix of that and Top 40 radio, which at the time was much more diverse than it is now. You would just hear way more genres, and Australia itself had its own, what they call Aussie pub rock—very blue-collar, hard-driving music for the testosterone-fueled teenager. Grimy, sweaty, kind of raw themes.”
A memorable event happened when he was 7. “My dad got tickets for the whole family to see Johnny Cash. He even bought us little Western shirts and bolo ties. It was amazing.”
But the ukulele he was gifted a few years earlier, at the age of 4, became a constant companion. “I think to some degree it was my version of the stuffed animal, something that was mine, and I felt safe with it. My dad said I would strum it in time to all the songs on the radio, and he told my mom, ‘He’s got rhythm. I wonder what a good age is for him to learn chords.’ My mom and dad ran a little corner store, and a lady named Sue McCarthy asked if she could put an ad in the window offering guitar lessons. They said, ‘If you teach our kid for free, we’ll put your ad in the window.’”
Yet, guitar didn’t come without problems. “With the guitar, my fingers hurt like hell,” he laughs, “and I started conveniently leaving the house whenever the guitar teacher would show up. Typical kid. I don’t wanna learn, I just wanna be able to do it. It didn’t feel like any fun. My dad called me in and went, ‘What the hell? The teacher comes here for lessons. What’s the problem?’ I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. He just said, ‘Okay, then don’t do it.’ Kind of reverse psychology, right? So I just stayed with it and persevered. Once I learned a few chords, it was the same feeling when any of us learn how to be moving on a bike with two wheels and nobody holding us up. That’s what those first chords felt like in my hands.”
Keith Urban's Gear
Urban has 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA Awards, and four Grammys to his name—the last of which are all for Best Country Male Vocal Performance.
Guitars
For touring:
- Maton Diesel Special
- Maton EBG808TE Tommy Emmanuel Signature
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior, TV yellow
- 1959 Gibson ES-345 (with Varitone turned into a master volume)
- Fender 40th Anniversary Tele, “Clarence”
- Two first-generation Fender Eric Clapton Stratocasters (One is black with DiMarzio Area ’67 pickups, standard tuning. The other is pewter gray, loaded with Fralin “real ’54” pickups, tuned down a half-step.)
- John Bolin Telecaster (has a Babicz bridge with a single humbucker and a single volume control. Standard tuning.)
- PRS Paul’s Guitar (with two of their narrowfield humbuckers. Standard tuning.)
- Yamaha Keith Urban Acoustic Guitar (with EMG ACS soundhole pickups)
- Deering “ganjo”
Amps
- Mid-’60s black-panel Fender Showman (modified by Chris Miller, with oversized transformers to power 6550 tubes; 130 watts)
- 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special (built with reverb included)
- Two Pacific Woodworks 1x12 ported cabinets (Both are loaded with EV BlackLabel Zakk Wylde signature speakers and can handle 300 watts each.)
Effects
- Two Boss SD-1W Waza Craft Super Overdrives with different settings
- Mr. Black SuperMoon Chrome
- FXengineering RAF Mirage Compressor
- Ibanez TS9 with Tamura Mod
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
- J. Rockett Audio .45 Caliber Overdrive
- Pro Co RAT 2
- Radial Engineering JX44 (for guitar distribution)
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx XL+ (for acoustic guitars)
- Two Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III (one for electric guitar, one for bass)
- Bricasti Design Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor
- RJM Effect Gizmo (for pedal loops)
(Note: All delays, reverb, chorus, etc. is done post amp. The signal is captured with microphones first then processed by Axe-Fx and other gear.)
- Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049; electric)
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012–.053; acoustics)
- D’Addario EJ16, for ganjo (.012–.053; much thicker than a typical banjo strings)
- D’Addario 1.0 mm signature picks
He vividly remembers the first song he was able to play after “corny songs like ‘Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.’” He recalls, “There was a song I loved by the Stylistics, ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New.’ My guitar teacher brought in the sheet music, so not only did I have the words, but above them were the chords. I strummed the first chord, and went, [sings E to Am] ‘My love,’ and then minor, ‘I'll never find the words, my,’ back to the original chord, ‘love.’ Even now, I get covered in chills thinking what it felt like to sing and put that chord sequence together.”
After the nylon-string Suzuki, he got his first electric at 9. “It was an Ibanez copy of a Telecaster Custom—the classic dark walnut with the mother-of-pearl pickguard. My first Fender was a Stratocaster. I wanted one so badly. I’d just discovered Mark Knopfler, and I only wanted a red Strat, because that’s what Knopfler had. And he had a red Strat because of Hank Marvin. All roads lead to Hank!”
He clarifies, “Remember a short-lived run of guitar that Fender did around 1980–’81, simply called ‘the Strat’? I got talked into buying one of those, and the thing weighed a ton. Ridiculously heavy. But I was just smitten when it arrived. ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the first thing I played on it. ‘Oh my god! I sound a bit like Mark.’”
“Messed Up As Me” has some licks reminiscent of Knopfler. “I think he influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player. ‘Tunnel of Love,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ ‘Telegraph Road,’ the first Dire Straits album, and Communique. I was spellbound by Mark’s touch, tone, and melodic choice every time.”
Other influences are more obscure. “There were lots of session guitar players whose solos I was loving, but had no clue who they were,” he explains. “A good example was Ian Bairnson in the Scottish band Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. It was only in the last handful of years that I stumbled upon him and did a deep dive, and realized he played the solo on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Eye in the Sky’ by Alan Parsons, ‘It’s Magic’ and ‘January’ by Pilot’—all these songs that spoke to me growing up. I also feel like a lot of local-band guitar players are inspirations—they certainly were to me. They didn’t have a name, the band wasn’t famous, but when you’re 12 or 13, watching Barry Clough and guys in cover bands, it’s, ‘Man, I wish I could play like that.’”
On High, Urban keeps things song-oriented, playing short and economical solos.
In terms of country guitarists, he nods, “Again, a lot of session players whose names I didn’t know, like Reggie Young. The first names I think would be Albert Lee and Ray Flacke, whose chicken pickin’ stuff on the Ricky Skaggs records became a big influence. ‘How is he doing that?’”
Flacke played a role in a humorous juxtaposition. “I camped out to see Iron Maiden,” Urban recounts. “They’d just put out Number of the Beast, and I was a big fan. I was 15, so my hormones were raging. I’d been playing country since I was 6, 7, 8 years old. But this new heavy-metal thing is totally speaking to me. So I joined a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror, just as their guitar player. At the same time, I also discovered Ricky Skaggs and Highways and Heartaches. What is this chicken pickin’ thing? One night I was in the metal band, doing a Judas Priest song or Saxon. They threw me a solo, and through my red Strat, plugged into a Marshall stack that belonged to the lead singer, I shredded this high-distortion, chicken pickin’ solo. The lead singer looked at me like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I got fired from the band.”
Although at 15 he “floated around different kinds of music and bands,” when he was 21 he saw John Mellencamp. “He’d just put out Lonesome Jubilee. I’d been in bands covering ‘Hurts So Good,' ‘Jack & Diane,’ and all the early shit. This record had fiddle and mandolin and acoustic guitars, wall of electrics, drums—the most amazing fusion of things. I saw that concert, and this epiphany happened so profoundly. I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. That’s what John did. I’m not gonna think about genre; I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’
“Of course, getting to Nashville with that recipe wasn’t going to fly in 1993,” he laughs. “Took me another seven-plus years to really start getting some traction in that town.”
Urban’s main amp today is a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, which used to belong to John Mayer. He also owns a bass amp that Alexander Dumble built for himself.
Photo by Jim Summaria
When it comes to “crossover” in country music, one thinks of Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton’s more commercial singles like “Two Doors Down.” Regarding the often polarizing subject and, indeed, what constitutes country music, it’s obvious that Urban has thought a lot—and probably been asked a lot—about the syndrome. The Speed of Now Part 1 blurs so many lines, it makes Shania Twain sound like Mother Maybelle Carter. Well, almost.
“I can’t speak for any other artists, but to me, it’s always organic,” he begins. “Anybody that’s ever seen me play live would notice that I cover a huge stylistic field of music, incorporating my influences, from country, Top 40, rock, pop, soft rock, bluegrass, real country. That’s how you get songs like ‘Kiss a Girl’—maybe more ’70s influence than anything else.”
“I think [Mark Knopfler] influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player.”
Citing ’50s producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who moved the genre from hillbilly to the more sophisticated countrypolitan, Keith argues, “In the history of country music, this is exactly the same as it has always been. Patsy Cline doing ‘Walking After Midnight’ or ‘Crazy’; it ain’t Bob Wills. It ain’t Hank Williams. It’s a new sound, drawing on pop elements. That’s the 1950s, and it has never changed. I’ve always seen country like a lung, that expands outwards because it embraces new sounds, new artists, new fusions, to find a bigger audience. Then it feels, ‘We’ve lost our way. Holy crap, I don’t even know who we are,’ and it shrinks back down again. Because a purist in the traditional sense comes along, whether it be Ricky Skaggs or Randy Travis. The only thing that I think has changed is there’s portals now for everything, which didn’t used to exist. There isn’t one central control area that would yell at everybody, ‘You’ve got to bring it back to the center.’ I don’t know that we have that center anymore.”
Stating his position regarding the current crop of talent, he reflects, “To someone who says, ‘That’s not country music,’ I always go, “‘It’s not your country music; it’s somebody else’s country music.’ I don’t believe anybody has a right to say something’s not anything. It’s been amazing watching this generation actually say, ‘Can we get back to a bit of purity? Can we get real guitars and real storytelling?’ So you’ve seen the explosion of Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who are way purer than the previous generation of country music.”
Seen performing here in 2003, Urban is celebrated mostly for his songwriting, but is also an excellent guitarist.
Photo by Steve Trager/Frank White Photo Agency
As for the actual recording process, he notes, “This always shocks people, but ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson is all drum machine. I write songs on acoustic guitar and drum machine, or drum machine and banjo. Of course, you go into the studio and replace that with a drummer. But my very first official single, in 1999, was ‘It’s a Love Thing,’ and it literally opens with a drum loop and an acoustic guitar riff. Then the drummer comes in. But the loop never goes away, and you hear it crystal clear. I haven’t changed much about that approach.”
On the road, Urban utilizes different electrics “almost always because of different pickups—single-coil, humbucker, P-90. And then one that’s tuned down a half-step for a few songs in half-keys. Tele, Strat, Les Paul, a couple of others for color. I’ve got a John Bolin guitar that I love—the feel of it. It’s a Tele design with just one PAF, one volume knob, no tone control. It’s very light, beautifully balanced—every string, every fret, all the way up the neck. It doesn’t have a lot of tonal character of its own, so it lets my fingers do the coloring. You can feel the fingerprints of Billy Gibbons on this guitar. It’s very Billy.”
“I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’”
Addressing his role as the collector, “or acquirer,” as he says, some pieces have quite a history. “I haven’t gone out specifically thinking, ‘I’m missing this from the collection.’ I feel really lucky to have a couple of very special guitars. I got Waylon Jennings’ guitar in an auction. It was one he had all through the ’70s, wrapped in the leather and the whole thing. In the ’80s, he gave it to Reggie Young, who owned it for 25 years or so and eventually put it up for auction. My wife wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I was trying to bid on it, and she made sure that I couldn’t get registered! When it arrived, I discovered it’s a 1950 Broadcaster—which is insane. I had no idea. I just wanted it because I’m a massive Waylon fan, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that guitar disappearing overseas under somebody’s bed, when it should be played.
“I also have a 1951 Nocaster, which used to belong to Tom Keifer in Cinderella. It’s the best Telecaster I’ve ever played, hands down. It has the loudest, most ferocious pickup, and the wood is amazing.”
YouTube
Urban plays a Gibson SG here at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Wait until the end to see him show off his shred abilities.
Other favorites include “a first-year Strat, ’54, that I love, and a ’58 goldtop. I also own a ’58 ’burst, but prefer the goldtop; it’s just a bit more spanky and lively. I feel abundantly blessed with the guitars I’ve been able to own and play. And I think every guitar should be played, literally. There’s no guitar that’s too precious to be played.”
Speaking of precious, there are also a few Dumble amps that elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” “Around 2008, John Mayer had a few of them, and he wanted to part with this particular Overdrive Special head. When he told me the price, I said, ‘That sounds ludicrous.’ He said, ‘How much is your most expensive guitar?’ It was three times the value of the amp. He said, ‘So that’s one guitar. What amp are you plugging all these expensive guitars into?’ I was like, ‘Sold. I guess when you look at it that way.’ It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
“It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
Keith also developed a relationship with the late Alexander Dumble. “We emailed back and forth, a lot of just life stuff and the beautifully eccentric stuff he was known for. His vocabulary was as interesting as his tubes and harmonic understanding. My one regret is that he invited me out to the ranch many times, and I was never able to go. Right now, my main amp is an Overdrive Reverb that also used to belong to John when he was doing the John Mayer Trio. I got it years later. And I have an Odyssey, which was Alexander’s personal bass amp that he built for himself. I sent all the details to him, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my amp.’”
The gearhead in Keith doesn’t even mind minutiae like picks and strings. “I’ve never held picks with the pointy bit hitting the string. I have custom picks that D’Addario makes for me. They have little grippy ridges like on Dunlops and Hercos, but I have that section just placed in one corner. I can use a little bit of it on the string, or I can flip it over. During the pandemic, I decided to go down a couple of string gauges. I was getting comfortable on .009s, and I thought, ‘Great. I’ve lightened up my playing.’ Then the very first gig, I was bending the crap out of them. So I went to .010s, except for a couple of guitars that are .011s.”
As with his best albums, High is song-oriented; thus, solos are short and economical. “Growing up, I listened to songs where the guitar was just in support of that song,” he reasons. “If the song needs a two-bar break, and then you want to hear the next vocal section, that’s what it needs. If it sounds like it needs a longer guitar section, then that’s what it needs. There’s even a track called ‘Love Is Hard’ that doesn’t have any solo. It’s the first thing I’ve ever recorded in my life where I literally don’t play one instrument. Eren Cannata co-wrote it [with Shane McAnally and Justin Tranter], and I really loved the demo with him playing all the instruments. I loved it so much I just went with his acoustic guitar. I’m that much in service of the song.”
George Benson’s Dreams Do Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnonwas recorded in 1989. The collaboration came about after Quincy Jones told the guitarist that Farnon was “the greatest arranger in all the world.”
On that recommendation,Benson tapped Farnon for a 1989 recording project encompassing the jazz standards “My Romance” and “At Last” next to mid-century pop chestnut “My Prayer,” the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” and Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” among others.
Across the album, Benson’s voice is the main attraction, enveloped by Farnon’s luxuriant big-band and string arrangements that give each track a warm, velveteen sheen. His guitar playing is, of course, in top form, and often sounds as timeless as the tunes they undertake: On “Autumn Leaves,” you could pluck the stem of the guitar solo and seat it neatly into an organ-combo reading of the tune, harkening back to the guitarist’s earlier days. But as great as any George Benson solo is bound to be, on Dreams Do Come True, each is relatively short and supportive. At this phase of his career, as on 1989’s Tenderlyand 1990’s Count Basie Orchestra-backed Big Boss Band, Benson was going through a jazz-singer period. If there’s something that sets the ballad-centric Dreams Do Come Trueapart, it’s that those other records take a slightly more varied approach to material and arranging.
When it was finished, the Benson/Farnon collaboration was shelved, and it stayed that way for 35 years. Now released, it provides a deeper revelation into this brief phase of Benson’s career. In 1993, he followed up Big Boss Man with an updated take on the smooth, slick pop that brought him blockbuster fame in the previous two decades and delivered Love Remembers.
Love is Blue (feat. The Robert Farnon Orchestra)
This kind of stylistic jumping around, of musical discovery, is a thread through Benson’s legendary career. From his days as a young child busking in Pittsburgh, where his favorite song to play was “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” he evolved through backing Brother Jack McDuff and leading his own organ combo, into his soulful and funky CTI Records phase, where he proved himself one of the most agile and adroit players in the jazz-guitar game. He eventually did the most improbable—and in anyone else’s hands thus far, impossible—feat and launched into pop superstardom with 1976’s Breezin’ and stayed there for years to come, racking up No. 1 hits and a host of Grammy awards.
At this moment, deep into his career at 81 years old, Benson continues to dive into new settings. While anyone observing from the sidelines might conclude that Benson has already excelled in more varied musical situations than any other instrumentalist, he somehow continues to discover new sides to his musicality. In 2018, he joined the Gorillaz on their technicolor indie-pop single “Humility,” and in 2020 he tracked his guitar onBootsy Collins’ “The Power of the One.” Benson assures me that not only are there more recordings in the archive that he’s waiting to reveal, but there are more wide-ranging collaborations to come.
On Dreams Do Come True, Benson covers classic jazz repertoire, plus he revisits the Beatles—whose work he covered on 1970’s The Other Side of Abbey Road—and Leon Russell, whose “This Masquerade” brought Benson a 1976 Grammy award for Record of the Year.
PG: The range of songs that you’ve played throughout your career, from your jazz records to 1970’s The Other Side ofAbbey Road or 1972’s White Rabbit album to 2019’s Chuck Berry and Fats Domino tribute, Walking to New Orleans, is so broad. Of course, now I’m thinking about the songs on Dreams Do Come True. How do you know when a song is a good fit?
George Benson: Well, you can’t get rid of it. It stays with you all the time. They keep popping up in your memory.
All the stuff that Sinatra did, and Nat King Cole did, and Dean Martin, that’s the stuff I grew up on. I grew up in a multinational neighborhood. There were only 30 African Americans in my school, and they had 1,400 students, but it was a vocational school.
I remember all that stuff like yesterday because it’s essential to who I am today. I learned a lot from that. You would think that would be a super negative thing. Some things about it were negative—you know, the very fact that there were 1,400 students and only 30 African Americans. But what I learned in school was how to deal with people from all different parts of the world.
After my father made my first electric guitar. I made my second one….
You made your second guitar?
Benson: Yeah, I designed it. My school built it for me. I gave them the designs, sent it down to the shop, they cut it out, I sent it to the electric department, and then I had to put on the strings myself. I brought my amplifier to school and plugged it in. Nobody believed it would work, first of all. When I plugged it in, my whole class, they couldn’t believe that it actually worked. So, that became my thing, man. “Little Georgie Benson—you should hear that guitar he made.”“I can let my mind go free and play how I feel.”
George Benson's Gear
The Benson-designed Ibanez GB10 was first introduced in 1977.
Photo by Matt Furman
Strings & Picks
- Ibanez George Benson Signature pick
- Thomastik-Infeld George Benson Jazz Strings
Accessories
- Radial JDI Passive Direct Box
So, your environment informed the type of music you were listening to and playing from a young age.
Benson: No doubt about it, man. Because remember, rock ’n’ roll was not big. When the guitar started playing with the rock bands, if you didn’t have a guitar in your band, you weren’t really a rock band. But that was later, though. It started with those young groups and all that hip doo-wop music.
I was known in Pittsburgh as Little Georgie Benson, singer. Occasionally, I would have the ukulele or guitar when the guitar started to get popular.
What’s your playing routine like these days? Do you play the guitar every day, and what do you play?
Benson: Not like I used to. Out of seven days, I probably play it four or five days.
I used to play virtually every day. It was just a natural thing for me to pick up. I had guitars strategically placed all over my house. As soon as I see one, my brain said, “Pick that up.” So, I would pick it up and start playing with new ideas. I don’t like going over the same thing over and over again because it makes you boring. I would always try to find something fresh to play. That’s not easy to do, but it is possible.
I’m looking for harmony. I’m trying to connect things together. How do I take this sound or this set of chord changes and play it differently? I don’t want to play it so everybody knows where I’m going before I even get there, you know?
“I wasn’t trying to sound loud. I was trying to sound good.”
How did you develop your guitar tone, and what is important about a guitar tone?
Benson: Years ago, the guitar was an accompaniment or background instrument, usually accompanying somebody or even accompanying yourself. But it was not the lead instrument necessarily. If they gave you a solo, you got a chance to make some noise.
As it got serious later on, I started looking for a great sound. I thought it was in the size of the guitar. So, I went out and bought this tremendously expensive guitar, big instrument. And I found that, yeah, that had a big sound, but that was not it. I couldn’t make it do what I wanted it to do. I found that it comes from my phrasing, the way I phrase things and the way I set up my guitar, and how I work with the amplifier. I wasn’t trying to sound loud. I was trying to sound good.
George Benson at Carnegie Hall in New York City on September 23,1981. The previous year, he received Grammy awards for “Give Me the Night,” “Off Broadway,” and “Moody’s Mood.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts
When I think about your playing, I’m automatically thinking about your lead playing so much of the time. But I think that your rhythm playing is just as iconic. What do you think is the most important thing about rhythm guitar parts, comping, and grooving?
Benson: That word comp, I finally found out what it really represents. I worked with a man called Jack McDuff, who took me out of Pittsburgh when I was 19 years old. He used to get mad at me all the time. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? I can’t hear what you’re playing because you play so low”—because I used to be scared. I didn’t want people to hear what I was playing because then they would realize I didn’t know what I was doing, you know? I would play very mousy. He said, “Man, I don’t know if you play good or bad because I can’t hear you. Man, play out. People don’t know what you’re playing. They’ll accept whatever it is you do; they’ll think you meant to do it. Either it’s good or bad.”
So I started playing out and I found there’s a great truth in what he said. When you play out, you sound like you know what you’re doing. People say, “Oh wow, this cat is a monster.” It either feels good and sounds good or it doesn’t. So, I learned how to make those beeps and bops and things sound good and feel good.
The word comp comes from complementing. Whoever’s coming in to solo is out front. I gotta make them sound good. And that’s why people call me today. I had a record with a group called the Gorillaz. That’s the reason why they called me is because they realized that I knew what to do when I come to complement somebody. I did not have a lead role in that song. But I loved playing it once I found the space for me. I said, “Man, I don’t wanna just play it on an album. I wanna mean something.”
I did something with Bootsy Collins, who is a monster. I said, “Why is he calling me? I’m not a monster, man.” But he heard something in me he wanted on his record, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I said, “No, I don’t think I can do it, man. I don’t think I can do you any good.” He said, “Try something, man. Try anything.” So I did. I didn’t think I could do that, but it came out good. Now I’m getting calls from George Clinton.
You worked on something with George Clinton?
Benson: Not yet, but that’s what I’m working on now, because he called me and said, “Man, do something with me.”
That’s not going to be easy. You know, I gotta find something that fits his personality, and where I can enhance it, not just throw something together, because that wouldn’t be right for the public. We want something musical, something that lasts for a long time.
“I can let my mind go free and play how I feel.”
In the liner notes for Dreams Do Come True, you say that there’s always more to be discovered. You just mentioned the Gorillaz, then Bootsy Collins and George Clinton. You have such a wide, open exploration of music. How has discovery and exploration guided your career?
Benson: Well, this is the thing that we didn’t have available a few years ago. Now, we can play anything. You couldn’t cross over from one music to another without causing some damage to your career, causing an uproar in the industry.
When Wes Montgomery did “Going Out of My Head” and Jimmy Smith did “Walk on the Wild Side,” it caused waves in the music industry, because radio was not set up for that. You were either country or jazz or pop or blues or whatever it was. You weren’t crossing over because there was no way to get that played. Now there is.
Because I’ve had something to do with most of those things I just mentioned, my mind goes back to when I was thinking, “What if I played it like this? No, people won’t like that. What if I played it like this? Now, they won’t like that either.” Now, I can let my mind go free and play how I feel, and they will find some way to get it played on the air.
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George Benson digs into the Dave Brubeck-penned standard “Take Five” at the height of the ’80s, showing his unique ability to turn any tune into a deeply grooving blaze-fest.
Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley first connected in Nashville in 2013, after the two had individually established themselves as formidable players in the bluegrass scene.
“Three crappy gigs in Ohio had a lot to do with it,” Ickes recalls with a laugh as he recounts the story behind the title cut to Living In A Song, the duo’s fourth album together, and their second with Maher producing. “I remember I was sick that weekend, just wore out, and I was sleeping in the car between soundcheck and showtime. It was just a weird experience, and then a couple of weeks later, Trey started singing this song. In the end, I think it’s about persevering. It can suck out here, but this is what you do when you love something, you know?”
Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley - Thanks
To be sure, the journey to where they are now has covered a lot of miles. After moving cross-country from the Bay Area to Nashville in 1992, Ickes emerged as a fleet-fingered demon on the dobro, first as a founding member of bluegrass band Blue Highway, whose early albums were released on Dick Freeland’s Rebel Records, the original home of bluegrass heroes the Seldom Scene. (That band’s Mike Auldridge, a key influence and eventual collaborator with Ickes, is a dobro legend in his own right.) A long-time player of Tim Scheerhorn’s resonator guitars—with his Wechter Scheerhorn 6500 series signature model introduced in 2006—Ickes is renowned for his singularly wide range of expression on lap steel. Folding down-home blues, country, and jazz into his repertoire, he has shared the spotlight with such heavyweights as Merle Haggard, Earl Scruggs, Vince Gill, and Alison Krauss, to name just a few.
Rig Rundown: Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley
Full Rig Details: https://bit.ly/Ickes-HensleyRRSubscribe to PG's Channel: https://bit.ly/SubscribePGYouTubeClick here to check out their new album Living in ...In 2013, he connected with Hensley in Nashville. Then just 22, Hensley had already carved out his own path as a child prodigy, having made his Grand Ole Opry debut with Earl Scruggs himself at the tender young age of 11. Brandishing a stalwart ’54 Martin D-28, he’s a sterling and technically gifted flatpicker whose own contemporaries claim him as an influence, but one of his most endearing traits is undoubtedly his humility. Just ask him to tell the story of how he came to play at the Carter Family Fold for Johnny and June Carter Cash; he still sounds as bowled over by the experience as he must have been when he was a kid.
For Living In A Song, the picking duo worked with producer Brent Maher, with whom they collaborated on 2019’s World Full of Blues.
“Actually, I think we borrowed one of Johnny’s tube mics to record vocals this time,” Hensley says with a smile. In the same train of thought, he name-drops Luther Perkins, whose licks on Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” were an early inspiration, as well as Roy Nichols—the understated but precision flatpicker on Cash’s classic “Tennessee Flat Top Box,” and later known for his long and legendary stint with Merle Haggard’s band. When it comes to knowing his craft, Hensley is still just as much a student as he is an innovator of country, bluegrass, rockabilly, and good old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll.
All that experience came to bear on Living In A Song, which has its roots in the songwriting sessions that Ickes and Hensley took up in earnest with Brent Maher at his Blueroom Studios in Berry Hill, just outside of Nashville. “Mostly I come at it as a guitar player,” Hensley says with his usual modesty. “I’m a guitar player first, a singer way out in second somewhere, and a songwriter in distant third, you know? So from my perspective, here’s a guitar thing from me or Rob, and then all these cool melodies that Brent would just come up with, seemingly out of thin air. I mean, we wrote 30 songs or more, so that was a totally different experience, and I think that’s the overlying theme of this record. It’s just us being songwriters. That’s how this one is so much different.”
“I mean, we wrote 30 songs or more, so that was a totally different experience, and I think that’s the overlying theme of this record. It’s just us being songwriters.”—Trey Hensley
Maher has worked with all the major players—his biggest songwriting success was “Why Not Me” by the Judds, but he’s engineered and produced sessions with Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, Nickel Creek, Shelby Lynne and plenty more. “We had written with Brent a little bit before,” Ickes notes, referring to 2019’s World Full of Blues (which also features guest shots from Vince Gill and Taj Mahal), “but with this record, we definitely made a conscious decision to write most of it. Then when the pandemic came along, it was like okay, we’ve got a little bit more time now. And I wouldn’t say he taught us, but just by working with somebody like that, you learn a lot. I know Trey and I both gained a lot of confidence from the experience, because you just start with nothing, and then after a couple of hours, you’ve got something.”
Rob Ickes' Gear
Ickes has two resonator signature models: one from the Wechter Scheerhorn 6500 series and the other by Byrl Guitars.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Guitars
- Byrl Guitars Rob Ickes Signature Series resonator
- Byrl Guitars flamed-maple shallow-body resonator
- ’40s Oahu Tonemaster lap steel
- 1932 Rickenbacker Frying Pan
- Fishman Nashville Series Resonator Guitar pickups
Amps
- ’65 Fender Deluxe black-panel
Effects
- Fishman Spectrum DI box
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario Medium Bronze (.016–.056)
- BlueChip Reso thumb pick
- Cobalt BP gold-plated finger picks
The album jumps off with the title cut—a slow-building ode that quickly grows inspirational, channeling tastes of Kris Kristofferson and Beggars Banquet-era Rolling Stones. Playing Maher’s full-sounding ’80s Gibson J-200 acoustic (his main guitar throughout most of the album), Hensley captures the feeling of solitude from the first line: “Well, I’ve been on this highway for about eight hours now….” with Ickes following on one of several resonators made by Indiana-based luthier Byrl Murdock (who designed and debuted a signature model with Ickes just last year). When the rest of the band kicks in—Pete Wasner on keyboards, Mike Bub on bass, and John Alvey on drums—and Ickes proceeds to rip a lap-steel solo on a vintage Oahu Tonemaster running through Maher’s ’65 black-panel Fender Deluxe, it all becomes clear what they’re going for: a rich, tone-heavy experience, tracked mostly live in the studio with few overdubs, and harking back to a time when capturing the pure essence of the song was the only goal.
“It wasn’t like they got the tape measure out to see how close the microphone was to my guitar, you know?” Hensley jokes. “But there’s a lot of attention to detail. We even toyed around with the idea of cutting analog, but tape just breaks the budget before you even get started. In the end, it didn’t matter. With Brent and his engineer Charles [Yingling], it just seems like they get great sounds in that room without really thinking about it too much.”
And when they plugged in, the same principles applied. You can hear a taste of the Allman Brothers in the barrelhouse anthem “Moonshine Run,” where Hensley grabs a ’52 Telecaster copy, built by Bristol, Tennessee’s own Chuck Tipton. “I talked Chuck into building me a Tele because he had just taken all these blueprints of a real ’52, or maybe even a ’51 Broadcaster—one of these really killer guitars,” he explains. “It’s been my main electric up until recently, and the Fender Deluxe just crushes the damn thing. I hooked up my wah on the third verse for five seconds just to please myself [laughs]! That amp makes anything sound good.”
“We even toyed around with the idea of cutting analog, but tape just breaks the budget before you even get started. In the end, it didn’t matter.”—Trey Hensley
And once again, it’s this commitment to capturing a sound, always in service to the song, that makes Living In A Song such a compelling document. Whether it’s in the poignant Glenn Campbell-isms of “Backstreets Off Broadway” (with Ickes blending seamlessly on background vocals), or the rapidfire energy that propels their version of the Doc Watson classic “Way Downtown” (a Martin D-28 vehicle for Hensley, with bluegrass ace Stuart Duncan burning up his fiddle in tribute), or the spontaneous mischief that sparked “Louisiana Woman” (a jam inspired from-the-hip by Buck Owens’ famed “Diggy Liggy Lo,” and rounded out by Tim Lauer on accordion), Ickes and Hensley are so sympatico with where they’re headed, at this point it just seems to come naturally.
“Most of our favorite records are very live-in-the-studio,” Ickes observes, “so that’s typically the way we operate. And it goes really quick. I don’t think we’ve taken more than two days to make a record yet.”
Trey Hensley's Gear
Hensley made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, playing with Earl Scruggs, when he was just 11 years old.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Guitars
- ’80s Gibson J-200
- 1954 Martin D-28
- 2021 Martin D-41 standard (on tour)
- 1965 Harmony Sovereign Deluxe H1265
- Preston Thompson acoustic with Gene Parsons B-bender
- Chuck Tipton T-style
- L.R. Baggs Anthem SL pickup
Amps
- ’65 Fender Deluxe black-panel
- Fender Tone Master Deluxe (live)
Effects
- L.R. Baggs Voiceprint DI box
- Boss CE-2W Waza Craft Chorus
- Boss HM-2W Waza Craft Heavy Metal Distortion
- DigiTech Whammy Ricochet
- Electro-Harmonix Micro Q-Tron
- Grace Design ALiX preamp
- Keeley Reverb
Strings & Picks
- D'Addario Nickel Bronze (.013–.056)
- BlueChip TAD60 picks
For his part, Ickes also finds it easier to tap into a deeper level of expression, and some of that has to do with his main instrument. “I was playing Scheerhorns forever, but Byrl’s guitars have just a little more crispness,” he says. “What I like in a really good dobro—and I think a lot of this actually has to do with the way they do the bridge, but there’s a response time. I mean, this guitar is in your face frickin’ immediately. It just seems like it gets to my ear quicker than any other guitar I’ve played. And that’s exciting, you know? It’s like a force or something.”
The excitement becomes visceral on songs like A.P. Carter’s “I’m Working On A Building” and the haunting ballad “I Thought I Saw A Carpenter,” which Ickes wrote for his dying father. His flawless instincts on lap steel are beginning to reach that rarified zone where the chord choices that would ordinarily originate with a pedal-steel guitar have crept into his playing—sometimes unexpectedly, but always with a relaxed sense of intention that still keeps him grounded.
“Most of our favorite records are very live-in-the-studio, so that’s typically the way we operate. I don’t think we’ve taken more than two days to make a record yet.”—Rob Ickes
There’s one player he cites as a key influence. “Jerry Byrd, man,” he says without hesitation. “He had this way of playing that was like a voice, you know? Obviously on a slide instrument, the pitch is very critical, and very difficult, and he just never missed it. It came from his soul, and at the same time he was just a great technician. You never heard the bar; you never heard the pick. All you heard was the music.”
For Living In A Song, as the title suggests, Rob and Trey explored their songwriting abilities more earnestly than on previous records.
Photo by Jeff Fasano
“Technically on the dobro, we don’t usually give a lot of vibrato,” he continues, “but he did, and it didn’t sound nervous. To me, that opened up a whole new way of playing using my left hand that I had never considered, because I didn’t want that nervous sound. And I honestly don’t know how he does it, but it’s kind of rubbed off on me. Somehow I’m able to do it, and it just sounds more in tune.”
Of course, the act of songwriting itself describes an ongoing journey toward self-discovery—the “long and winding road” that can lead to enlightenment, or wisdom, or redemption, or any exalted state you can imagine when you’re tapping into what Harlan Howard called “three chords and the truth.” As if to accentuate the point, Hensley takes the album’s concluding song, “Thanks,” as an example of the serendipity that can unfold so suddenly when you attune yourself to what’s right in front of you.
“I mean, this guitar is in your face frickin’ immediately. It just seems like it gets to my ear quicker than any other guitar I’ve played.”—Rob Ickes
“A friend of mine, Lyle Brewer, had written the melody,” he recalls, “and he asked me if I might want to write something to it. And honestly, it just sat there for a bit, because I didn’t listen to it with enough intention to really focus on it, but the title of the song as he had written it was ‘Thanks.’ And of course I’m a big Tom T. Hall fan, and as soon as I heard it, it sounded like something he would have written. It just came to me and it was done. It was done before it ever began, really. I feel like that song always existed, and I just stumbled on it, you know?”
When the duo convened with Maher at the studio to record it, lightning struck again. “It was just us, me and Rob and Brent, sitting in the studio with a few mics up, with no real intention other than we’re gonna get this down as a demo. And I remember Brent—you can hear it. He picks up a guitar about a verse in, and starts hitting the back of it, as a percussion thing, you know? We got to listening to it, and Brent told us, ‘What do you think if we just use this version? It has a vibe to it, and it’s silly to try it again if we’ve already got it.’ And I love it, because that’s the version that made the record. Every time I hear Brent pick up that guitar, it just makes me smile.”
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Ickes and Hensley perform the title track from Living In A Song, with Trey leading with his rich vocal and acoustic textures before Rob enters with his signature resonator twang and harmonies.