For Marcus King, sharing about his music comes with a powerful openness about his mental health struggles and substance abuse.
Such war stories aren’t uncommon among musicians, especially rock ’n’ soul road warriors like King. But the good-natured 28-year-old isn’t smiling, or laughing, or inviting flattery. He isn’t reminiscing so much as taking inventory of past traumas. By the time he was 11, King shares, he’d started experiencing what he now recognizes as panic attacks; once, in an effort to soothe a nasty cough, he drank an entire bottle of Robitussin, which led to a hallucinatory episode that frightened him deeply, intensifying these bouts of anxiety. “I would just get worked up,” he says. “I’m still learning how to address those and recognize them.”
“I struggled with that. Bipolar disorder ran in the family,” he adds, “I’ve had abandonment issues and poor attachment styles—all the things that I research now [while trying] to become the best partner that I can be.”
This is, of course, the language of mental-health maintenance, of therapy sessions and self-help reading lists, and King speaks it with equilibrium, like a man for whom sharing or purging means healing. (How’s this for metaphor: King joined our interview from a sauna.) Today, he’s found love and remains committed to both his own wellness and his opportunities as an artist to advocate for mental-health awareness.
Marcus King - F*ck My Life Up Again (Lyric Video)
Yet, he is also keenly aware that the kind of transparency that he expresses himself with isn’t much of a Dixie tradition. “I grew up in a Southern household, and men just didn’t really share their emotions openly,” says King, who was raised by his father, Marvin, a blues guitarist and singer. “Only through music would they even get close.”
King’s new album, Mood Swings, produced by Rick Rubin, is a kind of “open diary,” the guitarist explains, “for everybody to be able to open it up and have a look, have a read.” It chronicles the nadir of those long-running struggles with mental illness and substance abuse, as well as the redemption that arrived in the form of Mrs. Briley King, whom Marcus married last year in Nashville.
Following the vintage boogie rock of 2022’s Young Blood, the new record sounds especially bold, even brazen. At times it features King—a last bastion of guitar-driven integrity amongst late-millennial smartphone culture—performing atop programmed or sampled beats and high-tuned snares, Philly-soul strings, and stirringly modern vocal backing. It summons up an ambiance of contemporary R&B, pop and folk, and the smartly grooving studio-centric vibe that descends from Prince, as well as the artier psychedelic soul of songwriters like Brittany Howard. Sampled dialogue, from the landmark 1959 documentary The Faces of Depression and from one of King’s own elated, drunken voicemails, crops up as candid experimental touches. Mood Swings also finds the guitar god streamlining his solos into concise melodic delights of varying textures, placing the song and the sentiment before the Allmans-styled flights with which he made his name. “If you stay in your wheelhouse and you do something just like you’ve done before, you don’t lose any fans, but you don’t gain any,” King says. “I wanted to do something new and venture my own path and take the guitar along with me.
“[So why not] try to pitch [my instrument] in a way that’s more digestible to a generation who didn’t grow up with guitar-prominent music?”
“I’ve had abandonment issues and poor attachment styles—all the things that I research now [while trying] to become the best partner that I can be.”
Those newer generations, currently facing down historic mental-health crises, should have plenty to connect with in King’s album-length act of catharsis: “Mood Swings,” “F*ck My Life Up Again,” “Soul It Screams,” “Save Me,” “This Far Gone,” “Bipolar Love.” Even “Cadillac,” its namesake an icon of goodtime American songwriting, is a haunting exploration of suicidal ideation. “Not a lot of metaphor in the song; it’s just kind of straight up,” King says. “It is what it is: Cadillac, garage—just kind of my exit strategy, as it were. And not in any way trying to condone, or trying to glorify or romanticize that in any way. Just trying to be truthful as to where I was at the time.”
The recording sessions for Mood Swings started at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, then later moved to Rubin’s facility in Tuscany, where King would pull 14-hour days working on the record.
Where had King been? To hear him recount the musician’s life that culminated in his version of rock bottom, he was in a kind of fever dream, shuttling between tour dates and writing and recording sessions, as his torment expanded and his ability to take care of himself withered. “I’m a mental patient, technically,” King says. “I seek treatment for mental, chemical imbalances.” But the day-to-day of a touring blues rocker didn’t square with what a therapist might call doing your homework. “I was medicated and then would be improperly medicated, because you’re not really home enough to see someone consistently,” he explains. “If you’re eating at all, you’re eating really shitty food and you’re just drinking your dinner, so your gut health is terrible, [and your] mental health is struggling as a result of it.” On the road nearly 300 days a year, King’s life was largely unfolding inside a van, without “a lot of shit to see between Colorado and St. Louis,” he says. “So you’re just kind of driving, and there’s a lot of ways to numb that—not only the pain, but the mundane as well.”
A few years ago, King started writing in Los Angeles, trapped in a soured relationship he was documenting in real time as new songs, some of which would end up on Mood Swings. He wrote about the “codependent nature of our relationship,” King says, “and the substance abuse that came with it and the excess in everything, passion included.” Later, after his partner suddenly moved thousands of miles away, a debilitating sense of isolation set in. “I couldn’t write; I couldn’t handle it,” he says. Idle time meant indulgence and the wrong kind of company. When concert schedules started up again following the pandemic, King had designs on the most desperate kind of farewell tour. “I had unfortunately made up my mind to check out of here in my own way,” he says, “on my own timeline.”
“I grew up in a Southern household, and men just didn’t really share their emotions openly. Only through music would they even get close.”
In 2019, prior to those writing sessions, the guitarist began talking to Rick Rubin. The super-producer had seen King perform “Goodbye Carolina,” an affecting midtempo rocker off 2018’s Carolina Confessions, in his Grand Ole Opry debut, and decided to make a cold call. “We spoke for quite a while about mental health and about viewing it as a writing partner,” King says, “allowing it to help me speak my truth.” A studied music fan whose knowledge belies his age, King had “always revered Rick,” he says. He recalls how Rubin’s late-career recordings of Johnny Cash were some of the last music that King and his grandfather, a country fan and performer, absorbed together. As a tween, the guitarist started digging into hip-hop, eventually making his way to the pioneering LPs that Rubin helmed for Def Jam, by the likes of Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and Run-D.M.C. He especially appreciated Rubin’s beaten-path-detour efforts to combine rap and rock. “I really liked the phrasing,” he says, “and the way [hip-hop MCs] would rhythmically say what they needed to say over breakbeats. And I loved James Brown, and everybody [in hip-hop] was sampling ‘Funky Drummer,’ so everything just kind of came full circle in those moments.”
Marcus King's Gear
The 28-year-old King grew up listening to Johnny Cash, then later, hip-hop artists like Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys.
Guitars
- “Big Red”: 1962 Gibson ES-345 originally purchased by King’s grandfather
- Gibson Custom Shop Marcus King 1962 ES-345 with Sideways Vibrola
- 1962 Fender Stratocaster
- Harmony Sovereign acoustic
- Gibson dreadnought owned by Rick Rubin (used on Mood Swings)
- Gibson ES-330 (Shangri-La studio backline, used on Mood Swings)
- 1939 Martin D-18
Amps
- Fender Super Reverb (studio)
- Fender Deluxe Reverb (studio)
- Orange MK Ultra Marcus King Signature 30-watt head (live)
- Orange slanted 8x10 cabs with Celestion speakers (live)
- 1968 Fender Bandmaster head/Bassman cab with two Celestion 15" speakers (live)
Effects
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Tru-Fi Colordriver
- Tru-Fi Two Face
- Tru-Fi Ultra Tremolo
- Dunlop EP103 Echoplex Delay
- Dunlop Rotovibe
- MXR Phase 100
- MXR M300 Reverb
- MXR Micro Chorus
Strings & Picks
- Elixir Nanoweb (.011–.049)
- Dunlop Jazz III
When the sessions for Mood Swings commenced at the Shangri-La studio in Malibu, King found himself jamming with one of the funkiest drummers alive, Chris Dave, at Rubin’s behest. Alongside King and Dave, whose credits include Robert Glasper, D’Angelo, Maxwell and Meshell Ndegeocello, was keyboardist Cory Henry, a jazz, R&B, and gospel ace who earned acclaim in the fusion collective Snarky Puppy. Rubin’s idea, King comments, was simply for the trio “to create. And I think one of the initial ideas to approach this album was to kind of sample ourselves.” For about a week and a half, in six-, seven- and eight-hour days, the trio jammed and explored using a handful of simple, folkish songs King brought in.
For his part, Rubin was nowhere to be found, though he was still overseeing the sessions. “I’ll tell you,” King begins, “Rick is such a truthful, and whimsical, fan of music. He loves music so much, and he’s such a sweet human. But some of the stories you hear about him, about his eccentric approach to producing, are true.” Like the “Producer of Oz,” Rubin had GoPro cameras and microphones set up around the band, to monitor progress from afar. “He was like, omnipresent,” King says. “His presence was there, but not physically. It was really kind of a trip.”
“I was in that situation, like, breaking bad habits,” King adds, “and trying to abandon the idea that the structure and the form needed to be there before we started experimenting.”
“If you stay in your wheelhouse and you do something just like you’ve done before, you don’t lose any fans, but you don’t gain any.”
About a year later, after the sessions had moved to Rubin’s facility in Tuscany, songcraft came further into focus. King pulled 14-hour days, and Rubin, in the flesh, offered his famously sage insight. “I was really pleased to find out that this is the most intimately Rick’s been involved in a project in some time. And we spent every day together,” King says. “We would just sit on adjacent couches and listen back to what I’d done the day before.”
King first connected with Rubin after Rubin made a cold call to the guitarist after having been impressed by his Grand Ole Opry debut performance.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
One of the more fascinating angles of Mood Swings is how it represents progress, not only for King, but for his producer as well. Part of the Rubin lore has been his unmatched ability to deliver great artists from periods of profound and often painful change, by having them tap into their quintessential sounds, as if harnessing their most vital contributions to rock history. Think of Metallica’s return-to-thrash-form on Death Magnetic, or John Frusciante embracing sobriety to rejoin Red Hot Chili Peppers for Californication.
With Mood Swings, Rubin helped King regain his footing in life by unsettling him creatively, urging him toward audacious work that is nonetheless streaked with King’s signature brilliance. “Delilah” evokes the kind of wistful, classic R&B ballad that the Greenville, South Carolina’s Marcus King Band delivered with period precision. On “Bipolar Love,” its chorus a hooky, soulful marvel, King plays a luminous solo of unerring taste on Big Red, the trusty Gibson ES-345 that belonged to his grandfather, through a Fender Deluxe Reverb. Elsewhere, the album renders Marcus King a consummate neo-soul rhythm player and a shrewd, sonically curious soloist. Rubin and King employed the 6-string “the way that we approach any of the instrumentation that we love. We would deconstruct everything to the point that it was foundationally sound,” King says, so that “the song could stand up on its own with just the vocal.” (This was judicious, as King can sound like an heir apparent to Solomon Burke, with bits of Joplin grit.)
“We spoke for quite a while about mental health and about viewing it as a writing partner, allowing it to help me speak my truth.”
Still, expect to find multiple Reddit threads offering both transcriptions and attempts to decode the masterfully dialed tones throughout Mood Swings. To start, King explained that his leads here “are a little more polished, just because I wanted them to be more like written solos, almost. They were improvised in the moment, but obviously I was stacking them or adding harmonies…. Then [the solo] kind of became a part, because you gotta play it the same way every time.”
King is a guitar obsessive, to be sure, but you’d never tag him a geek; he speaks about gear and technique with a meaningful, big-picture expertise that comes off as nonchalance. During the Mood Swings sessions, he didn’t have access to a massive arsenal of gear, but did smart work with some loyal axes, among them Big Red and his red Tele, his ’62 Strat, his Harmony Sovereign acoustic, and a Gibson J-45 or J-50 owned by Rubin. On “F*ck My Life Up Again,” he tracked the backwards solo on a Strat, “trying to go full Hendrix,” he says. Amp-wise there, he recalls a “Super Reverb in a big chambered hallway—get some natural ’verb, amp cranked,” along with what he believes was his Tru-Fi Colordriver for fuzz. (I’d like to rank this the second-finest Hendrixian backwards solo to go down on Rubin’s watch, following only Frusciante on “Give It Away.”) For “Hero,” a cowrite with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, he tracked a Strat slide solo on top of an acoustic lead. The slide work on the sanctified “Me or Tennessee” is a triumvirate of Strat, Super Reverb, and Tube Screamer, and finds King invoking the sacred-steel tradition, as turbocharged by Roosevelt Collier and Robert Randolph. For some of his favorite tones on the record, King decided to go straight “David Gilmour and hook the fuzz pedal up and play straight through the console and just high-pass it.”
The core performer trio on Mood Swings was made up of King, drummer Chris Dave, and keyboardist Cory Henry.
Mood Swings is still a kick-ass guitar record, even if it’s not a willfully “kick-ass guitar record” like King’s previous effort, Young Blood, produced by Auerbach with bloozy panache and released on Rubin’s American label. When that homage to the early ’70s was captured, King was still in a bad place. “I was really mentally detached during the recording process,” he admits, even as he takes pride in its ZZ Top swagger. And although certain songs foreshadowed the confessional bent of Mood Swings, King says he “didn’t feel as personally connected to some of the material.” In a way, he explains, his primary instrument became a crutch. “I felt like I leaned more heavily on the guitar, which had always been a safety blanket for me from when I was a kid, from young traumas to teenage traumas.”
“His presence was there, but not physically. It was really kind of a trip.”
Back in 2021, in the summer before Young Blood was announced, King returned to the road following the pandemic, opening dates for Nathaniel Rateliff. “On that first show back, I realized my actions and everything I was up to extracurricular-ly affected me performing,” King says. “I was having a hard time getting through the show.” The following morning, his health necessitated a doctor’s consult. “He said, ‘Just don’t quit everything at once, and just start putting things down,’” King shares. “And then that’s kind of when I started that process.” That same day, King met his wife, Briley, who sweetens “Delilah” and “Cadillac” with vocals. “I met her, and she had her shit together and I did not,” he says. “And I just wanted to have my shit together for her…. And I wanted to have my shit together for myself, for the first time in a long time.”
King’s focus these days, he says, is doing the heavy lifting of improving his physical and mental health. “It’s like anything else, man. It’s a skill and it’s not innate,” he argues. “I kind of [liken] it to reading music. I used to read music, but if you put something in front of me now, I couldn’t do it.”
Already his efforts are paying off. “I was out in L.A. recently, doing some work, and I got to the hotel I was staying at … and it was the same room that I’d stayed at when I wrote ‘Bipolar Love,’” he recalls. “Just being back in that same room … ’cause they say a man never stands in the same river twice, it felt like I was back in that river, I’d returned. And I just was completely different and water had already flowed through. It felt really full-circle and validating, the whole process.”
YouTube It
Watch King perform “Goodbye Carolina” in his 2019 Grand Ole Opry debut—the performance that captured the interest of super-producer Rick Rubin.
![Rig Rundown: Jason Isbell & Sadler Vaden [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/rig-rundown-jason-isbell-the-400-unit-with-sadler-vaden-2024.jpg?id=51106877&width=600&height=400&quality=85&coordinates=200%2C0%2C0%2C0)
The 15-year history of Rig Rundown has established that guitar gear fascination (and obsession) runs deep in our community. It’s the life blood of our show. But if there was ever antithetical example to guitar gluttony and equipment idolatry, it would be American Football. Their original self-proclaimed “bedroom college project” focused on self-expression, musical creativity, and working with what you had, which wasn’t much.
For the recording of their pioneering American Football album released in 1999, they borrowed most of their gear, shared a single guitar cable and tuner, didn’t use bass, and formulated odd open tunings that allowed for sinuously melodic cinematic passages between Kinsella and Holmes. Their exploration of unique open tunings inspire a legion of players include 6-string virtuoso Yvette Young. (She now ships all her signature Ibanez guitars in a tricky open tuning—F–A–C–G–B–E—derived from American Football.) Their ingenious and scrappy methods went on to inform the brand of Midwest emo that simmered a devoted fanbase waiting for their return after disbanding in 2000. First returning to the stage in 2014 and delivering two more American Football albums in 2016 and 2019, the band continues using minimal gear for maximum art.
Ahead of American Football’s headlining show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, cofounding members Mike Kinsella (vocals/guitar) and Steve Holmes (guitar) invited PG’s Perry Bean onstage for a refreshingly practical gear chat. Kinsella recalls the band’s basic beginnings and explains how he starts every American Football demo. Then, Holmes shows off his “gorgeous and favorite” Tele. Plus, we encounter a Rig Rundown first where the tech has veto power over setlists.Brought to you by D'Addario Trigger Capo.
A Fender From a Friend
American Football’s origins were aided by friends who borrowed them gear. The band recorded most of their earliest work on whatever equipment that worked and was loaned to them. (Guitarist/singer Mike Kinsella admits in the Rundown that he didn’t even own a guitar when they recorded the first EP.) Additionally, through their 26 years they’ve been ransacked several times depleting their gear collection, so they’re not too precious about anything. This Fender Player Plus Telecaster was recently given to him from pal Joe Trohman of Fall Out Boy. Kinsella believes Trohman gave Fender his specs or may have modded it before it was gifted to him, because the DiMarzio Chopper T was added before he got the T. Kinsella notes that he leaves the 3-way selector in the middle position most times.
Retail Therapy
“I really enjoying going to Chicago Music Exchange because their staff is so nice and helpful. I just have so much fun there,” states Kinsella. Every couple years Mike goes there with the intention of buying a guitar and most recently he got this Fender Vintera 70s Telecaster Custom that’s been upgraded with the DiMarzio Chopper T.
Dark and Dead
Another one of Kinsella’s causalities to crooks was a late-’90s Fender Tele-Sonic. He reacquired a different chambered Tele when visiting Texas. He uses this one onstage the least, but really enjoys his “dark, dead sound” that makes him feel in “total control.” This quirky Tele has a chambered mahogany body, a maple neck on a rosewood fretboard, a compact 24.75" scale length, and DeArmond Dynasonic single-coil pickups.
Keeping It Straight
Guitarists Mike Kinsella and Steve Holmes rarely play in the same open tunings. To make sure each set goes smoothly, the band’s tech Mike Garzon has veto power on song inclusion and order based on what he can pull off while also being an auxiliary member covering percussion and keyboards. Here’s a cheat sheet that helps map the choreography each song needs and where it could potentially work in the set.
Mike In Stereo
Fenders have long been part of the band’s tone and on this North American run Kinsella used a pair of Fender Deluxe Reverb reissues. He’s plugging into them both to give a fuller, spacier, dreamier stereo effect.
Mike Kinsella's Pedalboard
The band never used pedals when recording or performing their first EP and debut full length in the late ’90s. To achieve differing sounds, they would create open tunings, change pickup selections, and layer all guitars parts. Pedals didn’t enter the equation until they restarted in 2014 when they wanted to expound on their original ideas, or as Kinsella explains in the Rundown, “we wanted to make the dreamy part, even dreamier.” The embellishments are accomplished with a Keeley Caverns, an EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run, an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano, a Fat-Boost FB-3, and an EarthQuaker Devices Special Cranker. And an Ernie Ball MVP Volume Pedal is first in the chain before his Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner.
Steve's Squeeze
Before recording the band’s return album, LP2, Holmes secured this 2014 Fender American Elite Telecaster. “It’s a gorgeous guitar. It’s my favorite guitar. If I had three of them, that’s all I would play,” admits Holmes. He prefers to use the Elite for songs that require a more midrange sting.
Double Offsets
The Fender American Professional Jazzmaster gets stage time with Steve for the lowered tunings in their catalog, where the Fender ’60s Jaguar Fiesta Red works in the set for parts that require a more high-end, shriller attack.
Loud and Proud
Steve opted for the beefier, 85W Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissue for these summer shows because of its ability to provide the volume and stay clean.
Steve Holmes' Pedalboard
The double EQD Dispatch Master layout is giving Steve a reverb wash while the second dream box adds in delay on top of the reverb. He will occasionally engage them both to build a climactic moment in a song. The Walrus Audio Emissary parallel boost works to push the signal and the Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer adds in some snarl. Holmes relies on an Ernie Ball VP Junior 250K for dynamics and a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner to keep his Fenders in check.
Shop American Football's Rig
Fender Player Plus Telecaster
DiMarzio Chopper T Bridge
Fender American Professional Jazzmaster
Fender Vintera '70s Telecaster Custom
Fender Deluxe Reverb
Fender Twin Reverb
Keeley Caverns
EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run
EHX Holy Grail Nano
EarthQuaker Devices Special Cranker
EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
Walrus Audio Emissary
Both shredders first established themselves as top-level hired guns—Nita Strauss (left) with Alice Cooper and Jennifer Batten with Michael Jackson—before setting off on their long careers.
Batten established herself as the lead guitarist for Michael Jackson’s first solo world tour, in support of the album Bad. From 1987 to 1989, she was an integral part of Jackson’s live shows, with her distinctive guitar style and charismatic stage presence. And her 6-string prowess during performances of hits like “Beat It” and “Dirty Diana” (the former featuring Eddie Van Halen’s iconic solo on the record) displayed chops that easily rivaled her male contemporaries. Her work with Jeff Beck on his Who Else! album and subsequent tours further solidified her reputation as one of rock’s most exceptional guitarists. Though decades removed from the bright lights and big stages of those two major gigs, Batten’s career continues to thrive, and she remains an influential figure through the guitar clinics and workshops she conducts worldwide, as well as the solo albums she’s released and continues to tour behind.
Strauss famously cut her teeth with the Iron Maidens, an all-female Iron Maiden tribute band, where she performed under the stage name “Mega Murray.” In 2014, she became the touring guitarist for legendary shock-rocker Alice Cooper, replacing Orianthi, and her modern approach to shred remains the perfect foil to the more traditional classic-rock styles of her Cooper bandmates, Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen. In 2018, she released her debut solo album, Controlled Chaos, which showcased her diverse range of playing styles and songwriting chops, and solidified her reputation as a formidable guitarist in the modern metal scene. In 2022, she was tapped as Demi Lovato’s touring guitarist in support of Lovato’s Holy Fvck, and just this summer Strauss released her second solo album, The Call of the Void, featuring David Draiman (Disturbed), Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), among others, as guest vocalists. During NFL football season, she has a standing gig at Los Angeles Rams home games—and a Super Bowl ring to prove it—and has also received several She Rocks awards, including “Best Guitarist” in 2018.
NITA STRAUSS - Victorious ft. Dorothy (Official Music Video)
Premier Guitar hosted a conversation with Batten and Strauss, and got some insight into their similar histories, their work to overcome the status quo, and why it might be best for aspiring guitarslingers to just “chill the fuck out.”
You share strikingly similar career trajectories. Can you give PG readers the CliffsNotes versions of your respective backgrounds?
Jennifer Batten: I started playing when I was 8 years old and, fast forward, I saw an ad in Guitar Player magazine for GIT [now the Musicians Institute]. They had a weekend symposium, and I went up and participated—three really intense days—and understood about 1 percent of what the hell they were saying. I didn’t even know a major 7th chord. In fact, one of the things they asked me to play was Gmaj7. And you know me, I know a G with a 7, first-position cowboy chord [laughs]. So, I got my ass whooped with that. By the time I got the Michael Jackson gig in ’87, I was in five or six different bands, just trying to make it in Hollywood. I got out there and played with as many bands as I could, and said “yes” to every situation until I got an audition with Michael Jackson, and then it was like zoom. I almost got seasick making that big of a jump so fast. Once you play with the biggest pop star in the world, it’s kind of like….
Where do you go from there?
Batten: Well, to Jeff Beck.
Nita Strauss: The biggest guitar star in the world. I’ve said ad nauseam that Jennifer is the one that blazed the trail for the rest of us to follow—you went through with the sword, cutting down the barricades. I took the tour at GIT three times. I could actually never afford to get in, but I grew up in L.A. playing clubs, playing in multiple different bands. I went straight from a metalcore tour in Europe, straight into Jermaine Jackson’s band, straight into an Iron Maiden tribute band, all while doing my original thing, doing covers, doing solo shows, playing acoustic guitar with singers that needed accompanists—really anybody that would have me until I got picked up by Alice Cooper in 2014. And that was my introduction to the big leagues.
Batten: When I went to GIT, class of ’79, I was the only female. And that really shocked me because I didn’t expect that. I didn’t realize it was such an odd career choice for a woman. Fifty-nine guys and me. Crazy.
Jennifer Batten's Gear
Batten has been involved in music education in the form of teaching, workshops, and instructional materials. One piece of wisdom she shares: “If you’re going to be somebody that gets hired for different shows, it’s so important to be humble and be aware of what they need, because they don’t necessarily hire you to make you shine.”
Photo by Ana Massard
Guitars
- Suhr Modern Antique
- Washburn Parallaxe PXM10
Amps & Effects
- BluGuitar AMP1
- BluGuitar NANOCAB & FATCAB
- Line 6 HX Stomp XL Multi-effects Floor Processor
- MeloAudio MIDI Commander
Amps & Strings, Picks, & Accessories
- D’Addario NYXL (.008–.042)
- Gravity 1.5 mm
- Lock-It Guitar Straps
- D’Addario XPND Pedalboard
- ASI Audio 3DME in-ear monitors
- Audix i5 Microphone with CabGrabber Mic Clamp
Were there female guitarists you could look to for inspiration or was it just the typical male guitar heroes of that era?
Batten: Yeah, it was all guys. I don’t recall thinking, “Where are the women?” My ears just went to the music that I liked. Jeff Beck was on the radio, with Blow by Blow, and that was good enough for me. I didn’t need another gender to look at.
Strauss: As a young kid getting into shred guitar, it really was a boy’s club, and I was the same way. I didn’t seek out a female guitar hero to be inspired by. I gravitated towards the players that I liked. I was into Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Marty Friedman, and Jason Becker. And then, when I first discovered Jennifer, it was like a kid finding a Barbie that looked like her for the first time—there was somebody like me doing it, and here she is on the biggest stage in the world with the biggest star in the world, and it’s not a chick thing. She’s playing circles around all these guys. She’s not there because she’s beautiful. She’s not there because she’s a great performer. She is all those things, but she’s there because of the technique and the performance and just delivering night after night after night. And that was my biggest thing: If she can do it, I can do it too.
Ready to shred! Strauss poses with her Ibanez Signature JIVAX2, and Batten with her steampunk-styled Washburn Parallaxe PXM10.
Photo by Ana Massard
Batten: When I joined Michael Jackson in 1987, I thought, “Now’s the revolution.” Wendy [Melvoin] & Lisa [Coleman] were already with Prince. And I thought, “Okay, a big change is happening.” And then crickets for 10 or 15 years—it was nothing. It’s almost like it took the Internet to get up to speed. Now I tell people, “Not a month goes by that I don’t see some 7-year-old girl in Indonesia who could kick my ass [laughs].”
Strauss: And what’s crazy, when I see these kids coming up hot on our heels, someone always tags me and says, “You better watch out. They’re coming for you.” And I’m like, “No, I applaud them. I lift them up. This is what we’re here for. Women elevating women.” There’s no competition. I don’t have a sense of competition with anybody else out there. I want to see us all succeed. A rising tide lifts all boats, and women succeeding in this industry is a win for everybody. This is an amazing time to do what we do.
Nita Strauss' Gear
This past summer, Strauss released her second solo album, The Call of the Void, featuring vocalists David Draiman (Disturbed), Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), among others.
Photo by Ana Massard
Guitars
- Ibanez Signature JIVAX2
- Ibanez Signature JIVA10
- Custom Ibanez Signature JIVAJR
Amps & Effects
- Boss GT-1000 Effects Processor
- Kemper Profiler
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXLs (.010–.046)
- Grover Allman .60 mm
Can you share how playing smaller venues on your own helps you continue to evolve as yourself, versus the big arena gigs?
Batten: The only place you really get satisfaction is when you’re improving as a player. Nobody can take that away from you. Whether you’re doing great, or not so great, as far as the worldview—are you famous this week? Every once in a while, I get people going, “I didn’t know you were still playing.” Well….
Strauss: Well, here I am.
Batten: Michael Jackson’s been gone for quite a while, and I haven’t played with Jeff Beck in 20 years. I’m doing my thing on my level and still putting in as many frequent flier miles as I ever did.
Strauss: The mark of a great hired gun, no matter who you’re playing with, is that you maintain your own style, but you’re always able to execute that person’s vision. Whether I’m going out with Alice, or I’m going out with Demi, you can tell that it’s me on stage, but I’m not going to play the same way that I would with my solo band.
Batten: If you’re going to be somebody that gets hired for different shows, it’s so important to be humble and be aware of what they need, because they don’t necessarily hire you to make you shine. When I got the Jeff Beck gig, he was always going, “I should really give you 10 minutes on your own.” And I said, “Hell no [laughs].”
Jennifer Batten - Whatever
Strauss: You have to strike out on your own, especially when the majority of what people know you as “so and so’s guitar player.” You really have to take that stand and say, “I’m not only someone’s guitar player, I’m also my own identity. I have my own creativity. I have my own vision.” The only time that you have to really flex and be creative is when you’re doing your own thing. You’re not executing anybody’s vision but your own, so I think it’s super valuable.
Do either of you take a different approach to the craft when playing with other guitar players?
Batten: Jeff [Beck] is one of those guys—jump and a net will appear. The first time I played with him, I’ll never forget walking into the room expecting a keyboard player, because ever since the ’70s, he had keyboards. And I thought, “Man, this is not going to cut it.” All these songs that I grew up listening to, like “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” have these lush keyboard backgrounds. So, I took it upon myself to dive deep into guitar synthesizer because I thought those pads were necessary. Like we said before, you’ve got to realize what’s needed. I was there to support.
Strauss: I love to play with Ryan [Roxie] and Tommy [Henriksen]. I think it just fills out the sound so much, and we’ve been playing together for so long that we mesh. We even have this brain-meld where our vibrato syncs up in a way that we don’t plan. So, I think once you play with people for a while, you get sensitive to their tendencies. We don’t even really go over parts before the tour anymore. When you play with people for a long time, you just get a good sense of what they’re going to do.
Both guitarists have worked high-profile, hired-gun gigs while maintaining their own solo careers. “The only place you really get satisfaction is when you’re improving as a player,” says Batten.
Photo by Ana Massard
How important is music education to both of you?
Batten: It’s fun to show people stuff that you’ve learned. There’s an energy that just creates momentum. I’ve done a ton of teaching since my early days, and granted, most of the students don’t want to work, but when you get somebody that’s really into it, the momentum really grows.
Strauss: Just throw them in the deep end of the pool and say, “Figure it out kid, I did [laughs].”
Batten: I give them too much information. I send them PDFs and videos and all this crap that’s enough for six months of work. It’s no wonder they don’t come back every week [laughs].
Strauss: They’re like, “This guitar shit looked like fun, but it’s hard [laughs].” I taught myself how to play by watching DVDs, like Jennifer’s, and I had all the REH instructional videos, all the Shrapnel albums. I learned modes from Frank Gambale’s Modes: No More Mystery and Melodic Control by Marty Friedman. I don’t teach one-to-one, but I do clinics. I have an online course called Rock Guitar Fundamentals. I’ve done my Guitar World and Premier Guitar columns [and interviews], and I think that the way that I teach is really understandable because I’m stupid and I didn’t have anybody teach me [laughs]. I approach it from a very practical standpoint because I had to figure it out myself.
I know you each have creative outlets other than guitar. I’m curious about how that influences your music.
Batten: When I moved to Portland 20 years ago, I took stained glass classes, and I just went bonkers with it. But I moved on from doing glass art to steampunk art. One day I woke up and said, “Gears, I must work with gears,” and I started making these fantasy airships from junk. It’s a really fun place to be. When you get back to music, it’s a lot fresher and energizing. If I can focus on visual arts, I find that a real charge because it’s all the same muscle, it’s all creativity. And I find one muscle helps the other, as the workout queen will tell you [laughs].
Strauss: The workout stuff and the Body Shred challenge [an eight-week fitness challenge created by Strauss] isn’t as much of a creative outlet as a mental health outlet—the better you take care of the machine, the better the machine runs. And when I first started getting healthier and more involved in fitness, I lost some weight, I got sober, and people around me started asking, “What did you do?” I found myself writing Instagram captions and comments. When we created the Body Shred challenge, it was a way to get our community, the guitar and the rock and heavy metal community, more incentivized to get healthier and fit.
Strauss and Batten have outside passions that help fuel their creativity. Strauss does yoga and has her eight-week Body Shred challenge. Batten does steampunk-inspired art.
Photo by Ana Massard
Do either one of you have a secret weapon that isn’t overtly obvious to the average listener or concertgoer that is essential for you when performing?
Batten: I’d say a tremolo. I mean, it should be called an “expression bar” more than a “whammy bar,” but that’s a must-have.
Strauss: Same answer. I’ve gotten to the point where I do a lot of my vibrato with the bar, as a different color tone. When you get up into a really high bend and you get the vibrato on the bar, it gives you a little extra oomph.
Batten: The bar lets you go sharp and flat as opposed to a finger vibrato that’s only sharp. So, it’s not as rounded-sounding. I love it.
Has traveling, whether by air or bus, affected your gear choices?
Batten: My gear is super simple at this point. I’ve been using a Line 6 HX Stomp XL. It’s like I have 30 pedalboards that I can kick into at a moment’s notice. Now, everything I need for sound is in my carry-on. It’s a little heavy to carry, but at least I know, worst-case scenario, I have to borrow or rent a guitar and grab somebody’s jacket, so I don’t look like a hippie [laughs].
Strauss: My rig is so simple. I was a very early adopter of the multi-effect units, so my first pedal ever was a Zoom 505. Now, my touring rig is a Boss GT-1000 direct into the house. I have my tone super dialed into it, and I’m in the mindset of if it’s not broken, I don’t try to fix it. I’m not on a quest for tone unless my tone’s not good. And I love my tone with that pedalboard. They make a palm size one, the GT-1000 Core, so I can throw that in any gig bag and travel all over the world.
Jennifer, do you have a favorite piece of advice that you would give a young guitar player that wants to follow in your footsteps? Asking for a friend [laughs].
Shredding with a smile—Nita Strauss on stage earlier this year.
Photo by Ana Massard
Batten: I remember the angst and the pressure I put on myself to “make it.” And if the record doesn’t do it, my life’s over—that kind of bullshit. As long as you can plant a seed that the only thing that matters is getting better as a musician, things will happen as you put that energy out into the universe. I don’t think you need to stress, as long as you’re spending time with the instrument every day and playing with different people and doing a lot of listening. There’s so much that you can’t control. At the end of the day, if you’re getting better, that’s all that matters. I think the best compliment I’ve ever been given is if somebody comes up to me after a show and says it was inspiring. I go, “Man, that’s the shit.” Because when I go to a show, that’s what I want to get out of it. So that’s my advice. Chill the fuck out.
Strauss: Amen.