Left to right: Joe Lally. Brandan Canty, and Anthony Pirog
So you might be surprised to learn that such an accomplished low-ender didn’t always feel confident about his own musical knowledge. “I spent all that time in Fugazi not formally being able to articulate about music very well with the other people in the band,” Joe says. “It was very frustrating at times. There were times I wanted to leave the band because it felt like I couldn’t even talk about what I wanted to do.”
It was only after Fugazi went on indefinite hiatus that, realizing he wanted to keep making music, Joe decided to get some education. “I took a few lessons at Flea’s school in L.A., the Silverlake Conservatory. I studied with Tree, the dean of the school, who showed me some things about songwriting on piano. I was looking at it like I was getting piano lessons, but really he was showing me the sound of major, the sound of minor, and the sound of the dominant 7 chord. Those three chords are the basic beginnings of learning music theory.”
As Joe learned it, the major sound was “Here, There, and Everywhere" by the Beatles, the minor was Santana’s “Evil Ways,” and the dominant 7 was “I Feel Good” by James Brown. “I learned to play those chord changes on piano, and came to understand more about songs and completing my own song ideas.”
Joe mainly learned by asking questions. “To a degree, that’s what I want people to get from the lessons I give,” he continues. “There’s so much you can go into theory-wise, but you don’t really need to to be able to write music, play music, and figure out other people’s music.”
Joe went on to write and release three solo albums, as well as two with Ataxia, his project with Red Hot Chili Pepper guitarists John Frusciante and Josh Klinghoffer. In 2016, he formed instrumental jazz-punk fusion trio the Messthetics with Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty and genre-spanning guitar virtuoso Anthony Pirog. They’ve since toured heavily and released three full lengths. He also joined Ian Mackaye—Fugazi’s and the Evens’s singer-guitarist—along with Evens drummer Amy Farina to form Coriky.
Lally’s humble online flyer.
“I foolishly never picked up a book because I thought it would ruin what I did know. When I told a friend I was teaching theory, he asked, ‘Has it ruined your playing yet?’”
When off the road, Joe worked different jobs in DC’s independent music scene to pay the bills. But when the pandemic lockdown came, he decided to start giving online lessons. He made flyers and posted them on social media.
“I’m not teaching formal theory, which I think is weird and abstract and doesn’t show people everything,” says Joe. “It takes years of learning formally to see how everything is connected to see how this thing is part of that other thing we learned years ago. Most of my students are adults who have been playing but now want to know more about what they’ve been doing.”
But music theory is something we all operate within, says Joe, whether we’re knowledgeable about it or not. “We are engaged in theory. We just may not know it. When you’re playing or writing a song, you might think ‘that note sounds right’ or ‘that note sounds wrong.’ It's because we are relating it to something in theory that we’ve picked up from all the music we’ve listened to.”
Joe recognizes that some people are apprehensive about learning music theory, and he admits that when he was in Fugazi, he was, too. “I foolishly never picked up a book because I thought it would ruin what I did know. When I told a friend I was teaching theory, he asked, ‘Has it ruined your playing yet?’
“But formal study should use your thinking mind, and when you play, you’re outside of thinking. Creativity is outside of thought. You hear about jazz players who practice scales over and over, and what they’re really practicing is the sounds of these things that they want to hear. But when they play, they let go of all of that. So I realized my playing is never going to change. I’m always going to write the way I wrote.”
To immerse yourself in Joe’s creative world, check out the Messthetics’s 2024 album, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, which adds saxophonist Lewis to the trio, bringing together Fugazi’s powerful rhythm section with two players from the creative improv world.
To inquire about bass lessons with Joe Lally, contact him on Instagram at @joelally898.
With the Messthetics, Anthony Pirog is a melodic and harmonic wildcard, who has few peers in the scope and imagination he brings to the instrument.
But the Messthetics can, and do, which makes their three albums and live performances joyful journeys through the inner and outer sanctums of sound and melody. Like the Mahavishnu Orchestra or ’80s King Crimson, they create instrumental landscapes that astound, punch, and transport.
The heartbeat of the band is the rhythm section of Brendan Canty on drums and Joe Lally on bass, who were already legends in the indie-rock world before the Washington, D.C.-based trio formed in 2016, thanks to their history in Fugazi. The melodic and harmonic wildcard is guitarist Anthony Pirog, who has few peers in the scope and imagination he brings to the instrument. He is an omnivorous student and musician, with a command of rock, jazz, blues, folk, ambient, and contemporary classical music. The documentation is in his substantial catalog of recordings, which, besides the Messthetics’ releases, range from solo albums and various duos including Janel & Anthony; guest turns with drummer William Hooker and other cutting-edge players; the Mahavishnu tribute Five Time Surprise with fellow outsider-guitar-giant Henry Kaiser; and the Spellcasters, a project steeped in the styles of Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan.
The Messthetics—bassist Joe Lally, drummer Brendan Canty, and guitarist Anthony Pirog—onstage with James Brandon Lewis at Washington D.C.’s Black Cat in March 2023.
Photo by David LaMason
Recently, Pirog has been gigging and touring behind two new keystone works: Janel & Anthony’s New Moon in the Evil Age and The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis. His partner in Janel & Anthony, and in life, is Janel Leppin, a cellist and composer with an equally free-ranging sensibility. And New Moon in the Evil Ageis an entrancing double album that balances melodic exploration with a modernist folk-rock sensibility. It’s easy to get lost in its 20 compositions. On The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, the band enlists the saxophonist, who is deep in the post-Coltrane-and-Ayler school of free-jazz horn and composition, as Pirog’s melodic and harmonic foil. And the results are astounding. Imagine Sonny Sharrock’s ’60s-inclined Ask the Ages with a more bare-knuckled but equally exceptional rhythm section. The balance of beauty and brutality is perfect within its jazz-informed structure. Some pieces, like “Moreso,” are essentially heads with plenty of space for these daring improvisors to unfurl. Others, like “Railroad Tracks Home,” are textural beasts with strong melodic spines.
“We took two or three months to write and arrange the record,” explains Pirog, who brought Lewis into the fold after he and Lewis metworking with William Hooker. “When the Messthetics are not touring, we usually meet twice a week to rehearse, and the rehearsals are essentially writing sessions—a good chance to just bounce ideas around and get a kind of group vocabulary going. So, this album is different from our first two records, where we were trying to explore the possibilities of what the guitar trio can do, in more of a through-composed way. As soon as we knew James was involved, that opened up the whole realm of different textures where I could be part of the rhythm section, or I could stop playing altogether.
“Being in the Messthetics has fueled me to do what I wanted to do,” Pirog continues. “Joe and Brendan play with an intensity I find very inspiring. And the same is true with James. He’s the perfect fit, energetically. We have a similar approach to melody—a kind of free playing and weaving in and out, so when we’re soloing together it’s amazingly fun. That’s really what it amounts to: Everyone’s having a great time and you have an understanding that you’re on the same page and things just flow, without any discussion. I could step on an Octavia and double a melody with James with a close tone that really balances well with the sound of his saxophone. At some points on the album, I can’t even really tell where the line is between James’ sound and my sound.”
On their new album, the band enlists the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis as Anthony Pirog’s melodic and harmonic foil. The balance of beauty and brutality is perfect within its jazz-informed structure.
And as any guitarist knows, sound is an important element of the magic—arguably more important than the notes plotting its course. Pirog is an avid and highly attuned pedal user, with a huge vocabulary of tones and effects at his disposal. He is quite precise in how his stompboxes are deployed. Pirog can turn his Abernethy Sonic Empress, which he runs through a flexible, punchy two-channel, 30-watt Benson Vincent head (“It has incredible clarity and presence to every aspect of the tone”) and cab, into a spacecraft or a growling tiger, utterly annihilate his tone or make it buttery and voice-like, or simply rock out like a maniac, with the push of a few buttons and carefully set dials.
For that reason, and because of the wide range of playing styles under his command, we asked Pirog to share his pedalboards for various gigs: rock, improv, jazz, and roots. “When I’m putting a pedalboard together,” he explains, “there’s nothing too crazy going on. I’m thinking about the source material, which can kind of be pitch-related or timbre-based. Then sometimes I’ll add compression or noise pedals. I’ll put anything that I want to control as the source sound before the volume pedal. Sometimes that can oscillate and create feedback, so I use the volume pedal so it won’t just be blaring. What comes to mind is William Hooker. I did a duo show with him in D.C., and he wanted me to play feedback. So, I put my fuzz pedal on with the gate wide open. Then I’ll consider gain pedals, distortions, sometimes modulation. I don’t have an exact method for modulation. Sometimes it’s before drive and sometimes it’s after, based on the pedal or the pedal type. Then, ambient delay, reverb, and I’ll get into looping stuff at the end of my chain. That’s the basic idea.”
While Anthony’s preferences might change gig to gig, as he’s always on the lookout for new pedals, here are his current pedalboard setups by genre.
Messthetics/Rock Board
Some of Pirog’s favorite pedals include the Strymon Flint, JAM Pedals Delay Llama, Red Panda Tensor, JAM Pedals Rattler LTD, and Greer Amps Lightspeed.
Since the Messthetics’ recent compositions from The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis are essentially heads with lots of room for free-ranging improvisation, Pirog has to be ready to create sounds and travel in different musical directions at less than a moment’s notice. To that end, he needs a wide array of overdrive/fuzz, pitch shifting, modulation, and volume effects.
This is currently what’s at his feet:
• Collector Effectors Zonk Machine (octave fuzz)
• DigiTech Whammy
• Classic Amplification CV-2 (Uni-Vibe clone)
• Klon Centaur
• Lehle volume pedal
• Greer Amps Lightspeed Organic Overdrive
• JAM Pedals Rattler LTD
• Red Panda Tensor
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama
• Strymon Flint (’60s reverb and ’61 harmonic tremolo setting)
• Eventide H9
• Neunaber Immerse Reverberator
Experimental/Improv Board
While the Lehle volume pedal is a staple, the Neunaber Immerse Reverberator and Eventide H9 show up on Pirog’s rock and experimental/improv pedalboards.
Of course, experimentation is a big part of the Messthetics’ aesthetic, but for free-improv gigs, Pirog needs some additional, very specific tools for layering sounds and generating atmospheric elements.
Let’s call this pedal roster his improv/experimental board:
• Collector Effectors Zonk Machine (octave fuzz)
• 4ms Nocto Loco (oscillating octave pedal)
• DigiTech Whammy
• Classic Amplification CV-2 (Uni-Vibe clone)
• Klon Centaur
• Lehle volume pedal
• Gamechanger Audio Plus (sustain)
• MASF Possessed (glitch/oscillation)
• Greer Amps Lightspeed Organic Overdrive
• JAM Pedals Rattler LTD
• Red Panda Tensor
• Montreal Assembly Count to 5 (delay/sampler/octave)
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama
• Strymon Flint (’60s reverb and ’61 harmonic tremolo setting)
• Eventide H9
• Neunaber Immerse Reverberator
• 4ms Noise Swash (oscillating noise pedal)
• EHX 16 Second Digital Delay reissue with additional foot controller (sound-on-sound looper)
• Zvex Lo-Fi Loop Junky
Jazz Board
Excuse the pun: This Klon Centaur is Pirog’s workhorse pedal—part of all his stomp rigs.
Sure, the Messthetics are a rock band, but they often border on jazz—or cross that border. And Anthony’s playing, along with fellow guitarist Henry Kaiser’s, is stellar in the Mahavishnu Orchestra tribute fusion band Five Times Surprise, who’ve so far made just one album, also called Five Times Surprise. But Pirog is also an ace at playing traditional, post-bop jazz as well as the more radical approaches minted by his musical heroes Bill Frisell and Sonny Sharrock.
“When I was in my 20s, playing jazz gigs around the D.C. area and improv gigs in New York, I would just bring my entire, huge pedalboard,” Pirog relates. “Now I’m trying to be more mobile. I can use the Klon’s tone knob to dial back some of the top end even more than I probably would in any other setting. And I will sometimes use the gain knob to boost the signal, which also increases some low end, And then I like to use delay and reverb.”
His pedal array for jazz gigs:
• Klon Centaur
• Lehle volume pedal
• Pro Co RAT
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama (set at 16 ms, to fatten tone)
• Strymon Flint
Roots Board
Roots Board
Pirog is among the rare guitarists who can play in the style of Danny Gatton with the same finesse, touch, and balance of emotional restraint and blues-and-country-based wailing. And gorgeous tone. You can hear him exercise this side of his playing as part of the Spellcasters, in the group’s tribute to Gatton and another D.C.-area Tele giant, Roy Buchanan, on the album Anacostia Delta.
His board for Gatton-style gigs:
• Lehle volume pedal
• Klon Centaur (gain set at 10)
• JAM Pedals Delay Llama
• Strymon Flint (’60s reverb and ’61 harmonic tremolo settings)
And his amp of choice in this playing mode is a ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb, with volume on 3, approximately.
Rig Rundown - Henry Kaiser's Five Times Surprise
Although he’s currently using a different array of pedals and amps, and a different guitar, too, this look at Anthony Pirog’s rig for the Five Time Surprise recording session is nonetheless fascinating. He leads us through it, at the start of this Rig Rundown.
