Buffalo Nichols believes in the power of acoustic country blues. He also believes it’s not a fossil, trapped in amber, but a living, breathing musical genre. Which is why he blends elements of the tradition—slide guitar, resonator, open tunings, themes of loss, redemption, and struggle—with loops, samples, drum machines, myriad effects, and modern-day narratives. His new album, The Fatalist, is the culmination of his art to date. Listening to its echoes of Skip James, John Hurt, Pink Floyd, and Dr. Dre is an even stranger experience when you know Nichols started his career in the thundering, downstroke-chiseled trenches of the Midwest metal scene.
When you watch this Rig Rundown, Nichols will explain, and play, it all—it's a fascinating story. And the gear! Get ready for a feast, full of the trad and the rad.
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Adirondack Rose
Those two woods dominate this Recording King RO-328, with its solid Adirondack spruce top, solid rosewood back and sides, rosewood fretboard, and herringbone purfling in classic rosette. In fact, this guitar would not look out of place in a photo from the early ’50s, and the brand itself has been available since the ’30s. Nichols keeps this 6-string tuned to open C# minor, a Skip James tuning, with a Seymour Duncan Mac Mic pickup. His preferred sting gauge is .016 to .056.
Sweet 'n' Elite
Nichols’ parlor guitar is a Recording King Tonewood Reserve Elite Single 0, with a spruce top, rosewood back and sides, a mahogany neck, and an ebony fretboard. Note the inlays and distinctive binding. It also has the Duncan pickup system. Nichols keeps this guitar tuned in standard with a medium string set (.013s).
Steel and Gold
This Gold Tone GRS Paul Beard metal-body Resonator puts a brushed aluminum cone and biscuits inside an all-steel body with a 19-fret maple neck. With a stock lipstick pickup, Nichols uses it as one of his essential electrics. He prefers it to the more traditional thick resonator body, for ease of performance and weight relief.
Get Behind the Mule
Nichols’ tunings include C#m, open F, and standard, tuned down a half-step. This guitar is a Mavis model, by Mule Resophonic Guitars—an open tuning classic. Dig that pickguard and the warm patina on the body. “It’s taken on a life of its own,” says Nichols. “Some people will show up at my gigs just to look at it.” The mini humbucker sounds sweet, with its basic volume control. The neck isn't too thick or too thin. "Kind of in the middle,” Nichols says. And it mostly gets played clean, or with a nice flavoring of delay.
Banjo
The banjo is one of the oldest African-American instruments, and this one is a Recording King, with a scooped fretboard and two pickups (a K&K and a Fishman) that he sometimes uses to split the signal. Without a resonating back, Nichols notes that it caters more to old-school music, with its bright, ringing tone.
Travelin' Amp
These days Nichols’ road amp of choice is a Fender Tone Master Super Reverb. He likes the compression he gets from its four 10" speakers, as well as its back-saving weight. He also points out that he uses so many effects that his guitars sound the same regardless of his amp choices.
The Board's Big Brain
Nichols jokingly describes his pedalboard as "very confusing,” but, running through his chain, he starts at a TC Electronic PolyTune to an Origin Effects Cali76 compressor—"and after that’s where it gets pretty weird.” But also onboard, for drive, are a Wampler Tumnus and Belle, and a Fuzzlord Octave Master (“for my Jimi Hendrix kind of tones”). To control various effects and chains, there’s a Boss GT-1000 Core. Those are involved in the guitar-to-amp signal, versus the acoustic.
But the “weird stuff,” as he puts it, starts with an Old Blood Noise Endeavors Signal Blender for switching between the acoustic, banjo, or amp. While the Fuzzlord can color everything, a cluster of his boxes are used to conjure pads and other ethereal sounds. These include the EHX Superego, a Fishman Aura, a Hologram Electronics Microcosm Granular Looper and Glitch Pedal (he calls it his red herring), an EHX Mel9 Tape Replay Machine, a TC Electronic Death Rax3, and a lot more. Listen while Nichols displays his entire array of delays in the Rundown. There’s an SPD-ONE Kick for stomping, and drum machines—an Akai Professional MPC Live II and an Elektron Analog Rytm MKII—too!
Shop Buffalo Nichols' Rig
Recording King RO-328
Recording King Tonewood Reserve Elite Single 0
Recording King RK-R20 Banjo
Fender Tone Master Super Reverb
TC Electronic PolyTune
Origin Effects Cali76 Compressor
Wampler Tumnus
Wampler Belle
Boss GT-1000 Core
EHX Superego
Fishman Aura
EHX Mel9 Tape Replay Machine
SPD-ONE Kick
Akai Professional MPC Live II
Elektron Analog Rytm MKII
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Way back in 1965, Taj Mahal left his Massachusetts home and headed to California in search of a 17-year-old blues phenom named Ry Cooder. The rest, as Mahal puts it, is “our-story.”
The two legends sound less like they’re making a record in a studio and more like they’re hanging out and catching up over some music. Mahal describes this feel as “ragged, but right.” It’s the same kind of collective sound that historic blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee often possessed. But on Get on Board, it’s unique to these two old friends, who set out on their journeys long ago. “We’re bouncing off one another, we’re bouncing off the music, and we’re bouncing off the joy of being able to play this stuff, having the opportunity,” says Mahal.
Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder - The Making of 'GET ON BOARD'
That “ragged, but right” vibe pervades each track on Get on Board, from the opening thump of “My Baby Done Changed the Lock on the Door” to the springy call and response of “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” to the closing ritardando on “I Shall Not Be Moved.” And it’s why, as Mahal explains, Get on Board transcends its recorded form: “It’s the kind of thing, when you listen in on it if you have the record playing in the other room, you’re sure those guys are in the other room,” he says. “Even though you know they’re not there, you gotta go and look.”
There are plenty of blues and folk albums that celebrate the genre’s early heroes—tribute projects that offer a feel-good time for musicians and listeners alike. And Get on Board is a masterfully produced, creative take on fantastic old music. But it’s also a one-of-a-kind reunion of two musical polyglots who, it’s fair to say, have explored the depth of the blues, following it on separate paths to the ends of the Earth and delving into the music from every angle—maybe more than anyone else. Now, five decades after their initial career-starting collaboration in 1965, they’ve come back to their roots together.
The Early Days
The short-lived Rising Sons kickstarted the careers of both Mahal and Cooder. From left: Taj Mahal, Jesse Lee Kincaid, Gary Marker, Ry Cooder, and Kevin Kelley.
Photo from KRLA Beat
Each player’s early history is essential to their music as a duo. “Both of my parents were musical, and their culture was extremely musical and at a very high, sophisticated level,” Mahal explains. “We’re talking Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Billy Eckstein, Billy Daniels, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald … this kind of music. But there was also swinging, dancing music that was happening. Jitterbugging, all kinds of different stuff.”
He began forming his own tastes in the nascent days of rock ’n’ roll, which Mahal says “was a step way down” from the music he was exploring—music by artists from the 1930s and ’40s, who, he points out, were still alive and recording. “I was getting their juice as it was coming through—not as an echo. By the time I came around to hear it, I kept thinking, there’s gotta be some older form of the music. And I would hear a little bit of it; my mother would sing some songs from South Carolina.” And thus began his lifelong search for deeper and deeper musical connections: “Once I found out that you could jump into that river, even into the ocean, and keep on finding it, it’s like fish in the sea. The more you find, the more there is—and you’ll never get to the end of it.”
“We’re bouncing off one another, we’re bouncing off the music, and we’re bouncing off the joy of being able to play this stuff, having the opportunity.” —Taj Mahal
A young Ry Cooder was simultaneously on his own version of this quest, digging deeper into the history of American music. At just 12 years old, Cooder found a record called Get on Board by the duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, along with percussionist Coyal McMahan. It was just one point in a long line of musical discoveries that would inform his life and music. Cooder points out that Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee “must have been the most recorded blues act ever.” But his interest set him apart from his pre-teen peers in California, and he soon developed a reputation that reached Mahal—five years his senior—all the way in Massachusetts.
Mahal tells the story of hearing a guitarist perform one night early in his career and says, “It was obvious this guy was listening to something else and played the instrument in a different way.” They struck up a friendship, and Mahal learned that this guitarist had studied with a Californian named Ry Cooder. Upon learning Cooder was just 17 years old, “I blew my top!” he exclaims. Soon enough, he packed up, booked a few gigs across the country, and headed west to find the young guitarist and start a band.
TIDBIT: To capture the feel of a vintage Folkways-style album, Get on Board was recorded live in Joachim Cooder’s living room in just three days, with a fourth day for overdubs.
Despite their quick demise, Mahal looks back favorably on the Rising Sons: “Ry’s work on that album is still, to this day, stellar,” he says. “I could listen to it any time in any joint. Anything that he plays. There was never nothing that he ever played that I did not like. Nothing. He heard the music.” Mahal struck out on his own, with Cooder in the band for his 1968 self-titled debut. But they soon went their separate ways on long and fruitful careers.
Together, After a Lifetime of Achievement
It wasn’t until decades later, in 2014, when the Americana Music Association awarded Mahal a lifetime achievement award, that Mahal and Cooder would collaborate again. Backed by an all-star band at the AMA awards show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the two former Rising Sons revisited “Statesboro Blues,” which they recorded almost a half-century prior. But this version sounds nothing like the quick, youthful version on the ’92 reissue. Instead, the mid-tempo groove—driven in part by Don Was’ bass and Joachim Cooder’s drums—is slower and deeper, Mahal’s voice lower and stronger, and his dry, percussive fingerpicking is complemented by Cooder’s dark, fuzzy slide work.
While this warm, rousing reunion lasted just under five minutes—and got a serious standing ovation—it reconnected Mahal and Cooder and planted a seed. Soon enough, Mahal says he “took three or four instruments and a suitcase and a handbag and got on a train and went down to L.A. We got together and did some playing.” Mahal pitched Cooder on the idea of doing a project together, trusting Cooder to come up with the concept. “He knows what he likes, and he knows what I like,” Mahal says. Encouraged by his son, Cooder formulated the Get on Board idea, and as Mahal explains, “Next thing you know, I’m on the train again back to L.A.”
Taj Mahal's Gear
Taj Mahal—seen here at Bonnaroo with a D’Angelico archtop—brought just one guitar to the Get on Board sessions. Taking the train to L.A. from his Northern California home, he opted for his Gibson Keb’ Mo’ Bluesmaster, because he loves that instrument and it is light to carry.
Photo by Douglas Mason
Guitars
- Gibson Keb’ Mo’ Bluesmaster
Strings
- D’Addario
Cooder built his concept not just around the duo, but included Joachim. “There’s Taj and me. There was Sonny and Brownie,” he explains. “Duet music, right? But the original Get on Board included the mysterious Coyle McMahan on bass vocals and maracas. I always thought the trio was more interesting. So, Joachim stepped into the McMahan chair, and that gave us a wider range.”
When considering songs, Cooder points out that Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee “had a huge repertoire for us to consider. You have to figure out what will work best, and a record can’t be all blues shuffles—for that kind of music you need Otis Spann or Memphis Slim, and a horn section, etcetera. So, we listened for songs more rural in feeling, like ‘Hooray Hooray,’ and ‘I Shall Not Be Moved.’ Folk-blues, as it used to be called.”
“A record can’t be all blues shuffles.” —Ry Cooder
“This music was making a fleeting disappearance from the inside of the music I was listening to,” says Mahal, adding that “something about the rural music was more connected with the African in it.” But he refutes the idea that their goal was to keep Sonny and Brownie’s music alive. Instead, he insists the music is already alive and he and Cooder are just helping it find new ears. “What you ain’t seen ain’t passed you yet,” he quips.
Cooder says they aimed to capture an “old-style” sound, “like a Folkways record,” the natural environment for these songs. To cultivate an authentically comfortable, low-key vibe, they set up in Joachim’s Altadena, Calfornia, living room for four days—three for live tracking and one for overdubs. And things proceeded simply, with “live singing—one take, maybe two at the most,” according to Cooder.
Ry Cooder’s Gear
Ry Cooder played a variety of instruments on Get on Board, including the Gibson F-4 mandolin that he used on Mahal’s debut album.
Photo by Abby Ross
- Adams Brothers acoustic (circa 1900)
- Fairbanks long-scale custom banjo (circa 1900)
- ’60s Fender “Coodercaster” modded with an early ’60s Teisco pickup (neck) and a Valco lap-steel pickup (bridge)
- 1919 Gibson F-4 mandolin
- 1946 Martin D-18
Amps
- White amplifier (made by Fender)
Effects
- Echoplex
Strings
- D’Addario
Get on Board isn’t a genre exercise, but it feels vintage, thanks in some part to the select gear they chose. Mahal switches instruments, playing a Steinway piano, harmonicas, and fingerpicking his Gibson Keb’ Mo’ Bluesmaster. Cooder brought along some vintage items. “I played a 1946 D-18, similar to Brownie’s—light and twangy,” he says. “Also, a peculiar Adams Brothers guitar, circa 1900. It’s rowboat size and super resonant. Check it on ‘Beautiful City.’ And my old Gibson F-4 mandolin on ‘Hooray Hooray.’ Taj commented that I had played the same instrument on his first solo record. The lead instrument on ‘Packing Up’ is a giant gut-string Fairbanks banjo, probably a custom order.”
Although most of the record is acoustic, the opening track features a driving electric slide part that bears Cooder’s unmistakable sonic thumbprint. “I overdubbed my usual bottleneck Stratocaster on ‘Changed the Lock,’” he explains. “That’s a White amp with a busted speaker, and a tape Echoplex which belonged to the great Leon Rhodes.” [Rhodes played guitar in Ernest Tubb’s Texas Troudabours.]
“What you ain’t seen ain’t passed you yet.” —Taj Mahal
Except for the tight, driving version of “Packing Up Getting Ready to Go,” there aren’t any particularly radical reinventions on Get on Board, so the biggest differences in Mahal and Cooder’s versions of Terry and McGhee’s songs are what the individuals bring to the music. As Mahal points out, Sonny and Brownie were the original purveyors, and he and Cooder are “a couple guys who have spent their lives bringing back these nuggets of great music for all to see and hear.”
But Mahal and Cooder both bring a warmth to the music, and it’s easy to think that stems from their mutual appreciation—a feeling that was missing from the original duo, who were famously at odds. In 1982, The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Terry, the harmonica player and singer, and Mr. McGhee, the guitarist and singer, are staunch individualists whose partnership has been marked by feuds, splits, and reunions.” Mahal and Cooder, as individual as they may be, are quite the opposite. It’s friendship that brought them back together after all these years, and helped fuel the creative energy on Get on Board, which Mahal says “felt exciting.”
And if that’s not enough, he adds: “I can’t think of anyone else I’d really wanna play this kind of music with.”
Taj Mahal Ry Cooder Statesboro Blues
When Taj Mahal received a lifetime achievement award from the Americana Music Association, he joined the award show’s house band, which featured Ry Cooder, onstage for this performance. Not only is the performance stellar, it also put the two back in touch and catalyzed the Get on Board project.