Throughout his over-30-year career, Keith Urban has been known more as a songwriter than a guitarist. Here, he shares about his new release, High, and sheds light on all that went into the path that led him to becoming one of today’s most celebrated country artists.
There are superstars of country and rock, chart-toppers, and guitar heroes. Then there’s Keith Urban. His two dozen No. 1 singles and boatloads of awards may not eclipse George Strait or Garth Brooks, but he’s steadily transcending the notion of what it means to be a country star.
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 Communiqué. 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.”
The spirit of a high-gain legend lives in a rangeful and elegant stompbox.
Captures much of the essence of the SLO-100. Great gain range. Nice dynamics. Excellent value.
Could use more range in the lower gain settings.
$229
Soldano SLO Pedal
soldano.com
In 1987, Mike Soldano created the SLO-100, a fire-breathing amp that, to this day, remains influential to those who build modern high-gain amps. Though the amp arrived at the peak of the hair-metal age, the SLO-100 appealed to players in many styles. Dokken’s George Lynch and Eddie Van Halen used it, but so did Mark Knopfler. That versatility is a big part of what made it iconic.
Decades later, the SLO-100 remains legendary. But at just south of $4,000 for a new one, they are not cheap. So, it’s cool that Soldano distilled so much of the essence of the SLO-100 into the SLO Pedal, a stompbox that sells for a mere $229. It’s a pretty nice stand-in for a player that doesn’t have the real deal on hand.
Streamlining Again
Several years back, Soldano released the Supercharger G.T.O., which essentially offered the preamp section of the SLO-100 in a pedal equipped with two 12AX7 tubes. I have an early edition of the Supercharger G.T.O., and it is, indeed, fantastic. It’s also pretty big. While it’s a very different stomp, the SLO Pedal is much more compact and practical in many respects. It’s built around a more straightforward, tubeless design. It also uses much of the gain section topology from the SLO-100.
While the SLO Pedal lacks the independent overdrive controls for preamp and master that you see on the SLO-100, Soldano users will recognize the 3-band EQ, presence control, and side-mounted deep switch, which stands in for the SLO-100’s depth knob and adds low-end oomph. It’s an easy-to-read and streamlined set of controls. And though it might look complex to a 3-knob-overdrive type of user, it’s easy to work with.
Hot-Rodded Hellraiser
When the SLO Pedal arrived on my doorstep, all the knobs were dialed to 7 (approximately 1:00 on a clock). Taking that as a lucky omen, I plugged it in, and right off the bat, without any adjustments, it sounded fantastic.
As much as I might have been inclined to play the SLO Pedal forever at lucky 7s, it offers many, many more tone-shaping possibilities. Just engaging the deep switch takes the edge off the highs and adds more body. Set this way, it almost walks the line between amp-style drive and woolly fuzz. When I adjusted the EQ to get a darker, creamier lead sound, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to bring extra clarity in and out of the blend in precise amounts. Darker sounds also don’t seem to squash dynamic range in the way other drive pedals might. There’s less discernible compression and, even at a fairly dark setting, pick attack tends to cut through.
I was similarly impressed that the pedal didn’t squeal out of control at maximum-gain settings. It was also dead quiet when I muted the strings. In general, I probably wouldn’t use that level of saturation, but the way the SLO Pedal holds it together in that zone is impressive. There’s also a ton of clean headroom available. And even with the volume knob around 1 it was plenty loud.
SLO-Hand Stylings
Soldano amps were, of course, also used by very non-metal players, like Eric Clapton and Mike Landau, and the SLO Pedal shines in this context, too. With the gain rolled all the way off and the pedal volume cranked hard, the SLO Pedal delivers mid-gain sounds with a rich, overdriven amp feel. And though it might sound weird, I enjoyed the SLO Pedal’s lower gain sounds so much that, at times, I longed for even less than what I got at the minimum gain setting. I’m sure Soldano didn’t imagine this pedal as a boost. But with so much mid- to high-gain range, it’s hard to not imagine how a few cleaner sounds could make this a complete drive solution.
The Verdict
There are many other factors that give an amp its sound and feel, and Soldano nailed a lot of intangibles when they built the SLO-100 amp. But the way the SLO Pedal captures the personality of the SLO-100 is impressive. And even if you’re not specifically looking for the SLO-100 sound, the SLO Pedal can add a lot of that mid- to high-gain, with the headroom to get it across.
In an exclusive interview with Premier Guitar, the Stradivari of archtop lutherie reflects on a lifelong synthesis of art and guitars, while discussing the new film that documents his journey.
Woody Mann loved John Monteleone’s guitars so much, he thought there should be a movie about them.
After years of playing Monteleone’s legendary archtop guitars, Mann, the great fingerstyle player who died in January 2022, pitched his filmmaker friend Trevor Laurence on a documentary following Monteleone’s work. Laurence agreed, and when Mann shared the idea with Monteleone, the luthier had just one condition.
“I said, ‘Sure, sounds good, as long as we can do it in a way that allows me to express the artistic side of creating these instruments over the years,” says Monteleone over the phone from his home in Long Island, New York. “Not only the fine art of instrument making, but the fine art of art itself.”
This, in a nutshell, is the story of John Monteleone: The Chisels Are Calling, the new feature-length documentary directed by Laurence and produced by Laurence and Mann. The film burrows through Monteleone’s life story, from childhood tinkerer to world-revered archtop luthier, but it also serves as a profound rumination on what moves people to build and create.
John Monteleone: The Chisels Are Calling
Even the documentary’s title reflects this depth. It’s a phrase that Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, a Monteleone fan, saw the luthier use often while signing off his emails: “The chisels are calling, it’s time to make sawdust.” One day, Knopfler was stringing together new chords and melody. Words began to fit together, and he realized he was writing a song about John Monteleone.
It’s an eyebrow-raising trivia tidbit, but it also suggests something about Monteleone and his work. It’s not just that Knopfler liked his guitars. Monteleone’s process and total commitment to his craft stirred something in Knopfler. At a performance in 2009, he discussed the song and his appreciation for Monteleone. He describes witnessing the luthier in his shop, tapping on different pieces of wood and navigating an array of chisels. Knopfler gathered that something stirred Monteleone to do this work. It was more than a job.
“I realized he has this compulsion to be with his chisels and his work,” Knopfler told the audience. “It was inspiring, so I wrote this song.”
The Chisels Are Calling is a window into Monteleone’s workshop, but it’s also a window into the soul of a creator.
The Operating Table
The Chisels Are Calling documents John Monteleone’s life story, from childhood tinkerer to world-revered archtop luthier, but it also serves as a profound rumination on what moves people to build and create.
Photo by Rod Franklin
Early in the documentary, Monteleone says one of the greatest things that ever happened to him was his family getting a piano. Three years after they bought it, he says, the piano started breaking down, and he convinced his parents to buy a new one. Before it was to be delivered, Monteleone, age 10, asked his mother to “have his way” with the old one: He wanted to tear it apart and study it. She consented, and the young Monteleone set to it, disassembling and diagnosing the marvelous old instrument. Then he started fixing it. By the time the new piano arrived, he had the broken-down beauty fully operational again. Later, he’d use the smash-’em-up tactic again to gain access to the innards of an acoustic guitar sitting around their house.
These were Monteleone’s initiations into a lifetime of repairing, building, and creating. His father was a sculptor, so, from a young age, Monteleone had an appreciation for tools, the people that use them, and the things they make. By 14, he had built his first guitar, a Martin-esque dreadnought. And he just kept building. “Once you start, you just can’t stop,” he says in the film.
In college, he operated on a Harmony 12-string acoustic, repurposing his spruce study desk drawer for tone bars and bracing inside. The guitar lasted a month before it began to “fold up like a banana,” he laughs. But that wasn’t the end: Monteleone took it back to the operating table, cut it open, and fixed it up. After graduating, he got his first professional gig doing repair and restoration for a vintage mandolin shop in Staten Island.
A stunning closeup of John Monteleone’s Grand Central archtop.
Photo to Rod Franklin
The rest of the story is fairly well known. Over the years, inspired by legendary archtop luthiers John D’Angelico and mentor and friend Jimmy D’Aquisto, Monteleone has become, according to former Martin Guitars designer Dick Boak, the “patriarch of the archtop guitar community.” His guitars have been celebrated as works of art and are on permanent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s been a pretty swell ride. Monteleone admits in the film, “I always thought of it like I’ve been retired for the past 45 years.” So, what drew him to the jazzy archtop over other guitars?
“The archtop guitar as an acoustic instrument was not really as well-defined as it could be,” says Monteleone. “When I started building them, there was something else I wanted to hear from them.” As the documentary shows, Monteleone came of age in the American folk renaissance of the 1960s. Fingerstyle guitar playing was exploding in popularity, but it was almost entirely heard on flattop guitars. Monteleone thought it would sound great on an archtop.
“I could hear it, I could imagine it,” he says. So, he set out to build an instrument that would be sensitive enough to satisfy and inspire the flattop acoustic player. He wanted to soften the traditionally metallic treble of archtop guitars and introduce a high-end that was fatter and thicker tonally.
“The harmonic balances became a real issue of focus as well as the extreme other ends, the bass,” says Monteleone. “An archtop guitar tends to do fairly well responsively through the whole mid-section, but to extend the treble and bass regions of the instruments and bring them into a harmonic balance was more challenging.”
In 1995, a collector commissioned John Monteleone to build a guitar with just one condition: It had to be blue. The luthier created the Rocket Convertible, a blue archtop with two ebony-bound soundholes built into the side, with sliding doors so the player can modify how much of the sound is directed to them versus listeners.
Photo by Vincent Ricardel
Monteleone succeeded, as demonstrated through the film by the scores of fingerstyle and hybrid players who have taken up Monteleone archtops for their sensitivity and touch. From Mann to Knopfler to Julian Lage to Anthony Wilson to Ben Harper, Monteleone’s guitars are revered among masters of the craft. But one glimpse of a Monteleone reveals that the instruments aren’t just about function. They’re about form and aesthetics, too. Monteleone has created guitars based on architecture, Art Deco locomotive design, even the four seasons.
In 1995, a collector commissioned Monteleone to contribute a guitar with just one prompt: it had to be blue. The luthier initially set out to build one of his classic Radio City models in blue, but deviated from the path and created the experimental legend Rocket Convertible, a blue archtop that skipped the popular F-hole design in favor of an updated traditional oval soundhole in its spruce top. Monteleone built two ebony-bound soundholes into the flamed maple side facing the player, then fitted both with sliding doors so the player can modify how much of the sound is directed to them versus listeners. They worked like a monitor for the unplugged player, letting them hear more clearly what their audience was hearing. Just like in a classic convertible, a guitarist could roll the top down or put it back up as they pleased.
Archtop Alchemy
Monteleone’s Grand Artist guitars are inspired by his mandolin-making years and feature an elegant scroll on the bass-side bout.
Photo by Rod Franklin
Monteleone’s approach turns a practical instrument into a gesamtkunstwerk: a total work of art. Though it feels novel in a world of mass-production pragmatism, Monteleone is quick to note he’s not the first to elevate form alongside function in musical instruments. It’s a tradition that goes back centuries. “We can go back and look at keyboard instruments, we can look at organs in cathedrals, where the basic instruments had been ornamented to a degree that goes beyond the basic idea, to express or make a connection to what that musical idea is all about,” says Monteleone. Indeed, late in the documentary Monteleone traces the archtop back to its ancestral roots in violin making in northern Italy, where Antonio Stradivari made his masterpieces in the 17th and 18th centuries.
This somewhat luxe approach might strike some as extravagant amid a cultural era structured on planned obsolescence, instant gratification, and minimalism. But for Monteleone, this extra element is the basis of a fuller experience. “The guitar is so accessible, you can pick it up and have at it right away,” he says. “But the musician will sit there and observe, for years, and look at their instrument, and just enjoy the material that it’s made from. That’s a kind of satisfaction that relates to an enjoyment of the instrument beyond what they’re hearing. Now they’re seeing something that is connected to that idea of what they’re hearing.”
He likens it to having a dinner party with friends in a beautiful environment: When the food is great, the company is comfortable, and the setting is pleasing, an evening can be elevated from fine to perfection. Those are the rare evenings that stay in our minds for the rest of our lives.
Monteleone’s archtops serve as a reminder that we are surrounded by and indeed entitled to experiencing beauty and spectacle and wonder—things which often feel impossibly out of reach in the sprint of 21st century life.
“There’s a completion of the experience that really begins to tie it all together when everything is just right,” says Monteleone. “Musically, that’s what we’re doing, trying to express ourselves. We do that with music and also in conversation and many other forms of art. It makes the experience that much more dynamically enjoyable.”
The Thrill of the Hunt
Among their many other functions, Monteleone’s archtops serve as a reminder that we are surrounded by and indeed entitled to experiencing beauty and spectacle and wonder—things which often feel impossibly out of reach in the sprint of 21st century life. So rarely do the stars align to produce a complete harmony of sensory experience, but that’s exactly what Monteleone has been chasing for nearly five decades.
He says his routine hasn’t changed much over time. He’s still dreaming up new sounds and expressions to squeeze out of pieces of tone wood. “I continue to do what you see [in the documentary] every day,” he says. “There’s vision in what I do, and that vision includes what I hear and what I want to hear.”
In his own way, this is Monteleone’s thrill of the hunt: a tense, invigorating pursuit of the sound and feeling in his head. “It’s always maybe a little challenge of expectation,” he says. “I can’t wait to hear if it measures up to what I think I’m gonna hear. When it all turns out right, it’s very rewarding. It’s an exciting thing.”