With their new record, Playing Favorites, Sheer Mag pays homage the best parts of ’70s and ’80s disco and funk, set in the band’s usual streetscape of classic hard rock and power pop.
Seely, who plays lead guitar in Philadelphia band Sheer Mag, is the designer and engineer behind the guitar sounds for the arena-gone-garage-rock outfit. Matt Palmer, his rhythm guitar counterpart, smirks. “Every single tour, Kyle is like, ‘I’ve finally figured it out, I’m going to simplify it.’ It’s never simpler,” he chuckles.
Seely’s self-described “endless tone quest” and the tight, gritty weave of his and Palmer’s guitars have helped grow Sheer Mag into one of the most beloved independent American guitar bands of the past decade. The core quartet, with vocalist Tina Halladay and bassist and producer Hart Seely, Kyle’s brother, emerged from Philly’s punk scene in 2014 with a string of bare-knuckled EPs. Their first full-length, 2017’s Need to Feel Your Love, scored spots on plenty of reputable year-end lists, and the track “Expect the Bayonet” was featured at one of Bernie Sanders’ 2019 rallies. That year, the band released A Distant Call, another fan and critic favorite, via their Wilsuns label.
Sheer Mag signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records for their new release, but they still did things their way, recording in an industrial warehouse jam space on the edge of Philadelphia.
Now 10 years in, they launched their third LP, Playing Favorites, in March with Third Man Records—their first step into “the proper label world,” says Seely. The record is a lo-fi riot, a hyper, tireless romp through the gasoline-slicked back alleys of disco, punk rock, glam, and metal.
But on Playing Favorites, more than any of their other records, the band is open about their compositional ambition and commitment to making songs that are just a blast to listen to. (The record’s title winks at this.) The thrifted and dirtied-up disco of “All Lined Up” is one of the band’s most impressive compositions to date, topped only by the Boston-ish funk-rock odyssey of “Mechanical Garden.” After a vintage metal intro, the track warps into a string section that slows and then, thanks to some careful tape trickery from Hart Seely, gradually melts upward to a new key and swaggering groove. Later, a scorching, treble-blasted solo from Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar streaks across the stars. But the record’s highlight has to be the delicious strut of “Moonstruck,” which might have the best chorus of the year, and sports some of Kyle Seely’s most exciting lead work yet. (Seely’s Southern rock tendencies and the round, percussive tone of his Nashville Tele are virtually calling cards for the band at this point. “I can’t not add a ton of vibrato,” he says. “I love the Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, a lot of the major, mixolydian kind of soloing.”)
Kyle Seely's Gear
Kyle Seely handles the bulk of the band’s tone-sculpting, digging for sounds between his JCM800 and his brother Hart’s effects units.
Photo by Joanna Roselli
Pedals
- TC Electronic Mimiq
- Ensoniq DP/4
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario XL Pure Nickel strings
- Dunlop Jazz III nylon picks
Despite the label association, the band recorded Playing Favorites in true Sheer Mag style, in a warehouse in Philly that doubles as a practice space for a bunch of bands. The space’s wiring produces an audible hum on any amp that plugs in there, a stamp that Kyle says can be heard at the very start of “Moonstruck.” Hart engineered the sessions using a 16-channel mixer to a Tascam tape machine—another piece of Sheer Mag’s rough-edged charm. And Hart’s bass lines, which often form a unique melody on their own, cement the band’s signature dual-guitar growl. Though they haven’t been quite as audible until now, disco and funk have always been cornerstones of the Mag sound, alongside classic rock and power-pop. Kyle and Palmer agree that the give-and-take of Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards was particularly instructive. “They would do this stuff where they were just filling in the space between each other, so they weren’t all just playing the same riff, but there’d be a groove,” says Seely.
“We’re almost like a mashup band, where it’s original content, but we’re essentially mashing up different philosophies of rock.” —Kyle Seely
Those influences are especially present this time out—Playing Favorites is certainly the band’s most danceable record yet. But it’s still a hard-rockin’ power-pop record, and Sheer Mag are still jacking the best vibes from Duke Jupiter, Stampeders, the Records, Neil Diamond, Quiet Riot, Badfinger, and other oddities from the borders of ’70s and ’80s guitar music. Somehow, those sounds haven’t lost their luster. When Palmer returned to Philadelphia from a stint living in Australia, he started playing old Thin Lizzy, Bee Gees, and Twisted Sister records to prepare for making the new album. He was pleasantly surprised to find those classics still moved him. “It was a really special feeling to be as excited about the original influences of the band 10 years later,” says Palmer. “The initial Mag feeling was still there.”
Matt Palmer's Gear
Palmer, seen here with his Peavey T-60, revisited the band’s original influences to prepare for Playing Favorites. They hadn’t lost any of their magic.
Photo by Joanna Roselli
Guitars
- Peavey T-60
Amps
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille III 410
Pedals
- Boss TU-3
- Boss ME-90
Strings & Picks
- Tortex Standard Pick .60mm
- D’Addario .011s
But unlike some of the big-budget, one-note arena- and glam-rock records of the ’80s—which has become one of the most passé and snickered-about genres of the past 100 years—Sheer Mag bookend their hooks with production flourishes that deepen their impact: a weirdo delay here, a doubled vocal there, a grimy sonic palette flickering in the background, all rendered with delicious imagination and precision.
“You do want to punch them in the face with something memorable, but also, I think the record is built to reward repeat listening, and you can dig into the deeper textures and complexity the more you listen to it,” says Kyle Seely. “We’re almost like a mashup band, where it’s original content, but we’re essentially mashing up different philosophies of rock. I get excited when people are like, ‘That sounds like Jackson 5 meets Aerosmith.’”
Sheer Mag - Expect the Bayonet [Live at Urban Lounge]
Sheer Mag rip through their Bernie Sanders-approved warning cry, “Expect the Bayonet,” in Salt Lake City in 2022.
Dickey Betts plays one of his many Les Pauls. This model, and the SG, were the Gibsons that were the cornerstone of his distinctive tone.
Magic happened when Dickey Betts and Duane Allman played together. Their sinuous, twined, harmonized guitar lines—inspired in part by Western swing and Miles Davis—were like nothing else in rock when the Allman Brothers Band’s debut album was released in 1969. And their Les Paul and SG partnership led the way in creating the Band’s reputation as the finest rock ensemble players of their day. Although that partnership was short-lived, due to Duane’s fatal motorcycle accident in 1971, that transcendent dual-guitar sound, best captured in the heroic performances on the live At Fillmore East double-album, continued throughout the band’s career and became a hallmark of Southern rock, largely thanks to Betts. And it will endure as one of the most recognizable dialects of electrified guitar-based music.
Betts soldiered on with the Allman Brothers Band until 2000, living in the shadow of Duane, whose early death cemented his legendary status. But Betts’ playing was equally commanding—the yin to Duane’s fat-toned, slide-driven yang. As a composer, he minted melodies and riffs that endure. “Jessica,” “Blue Sky,” “Ramblin’ Man,” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” are Betts’ work. As a player, he was unerringly melodic, with a Gibson and Marshall tone that blended clarity and heft with the tang of distortion. He played loud. Really loud. But that volume fueled his expressive dynamic touch and his supremely articulate 6-string language was always worth hearing.
“The band was so good we thought we’d never make it. It was so amazing I don’t even know how to put it into words—even now.”
Dickey Betts died on April 18, reportedly from cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He’d been sidelined since 2018, when he had a mild stroke which was followed by an accident at his home, which necessitated surgery to relieve swelling of the brain. He was 80 years old.
Like the Allman Brothers over the decades, Betts’ own career had its hills and valleys, but his musical character and abilities remained intact until recent years. When I spoke with him a decade ago at Nashville’s Hutton Hotel, the then-70-year-old observed, “I’m amazed that at my age I’m still effective. I have a formidable band together and I write new songs, although mainly we just do renditions of things like ‘Jessica’ and other hits.
Those are fun to play and people enjoy those songs. I’ve got a full catalog of instrumentals that I could play all night if I wanted to. A rock ’n’ roll career is supposed to last about as long as a professional football player’s—five years and you’re done. But I’m still out there swinging, filling theaters, and playing festivals.”
Passing the torch: Betts onstage with his son, Duane Betts, who leads his own band today. Here, they recreate the dual-guitar sound first cast in bronze by Betts and Duane Allman in 1969.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
Betts was in Music City on that occasion to celebrate the launch of the Gibson Custom Shop’s Southern Rock Tribute 1959 Les Paul, based on an instrument he owned, and was about to embark on one of his annual summer tours with his band Great Southern, which he’d been leading in various configurations since 1977. He also had his Dickey Betts Band, which he started in 1988 and included Warren Haynes, whom Betts drafted into the Allmans when the Brothers reformed in 1990 after a near-decade hiatus. I’d been warned by Betts’ handlers that he could be difficult, and Allman Brothers Band lore contains enough stories of his wicked temper and edge-of-violence outbursts to serve as warning. He was arrested for assaulting a police officer in 1993, and reportedly held a knife behind his back during a band argument shortly before he was dismissed from the Allmans. But, sipping a glass of wine while wearing a sleeveless white tee shirt, a straw cowboy hat, and a necklace of alligator’s teeth, he was cordial, funny, and thoughtful.
He reflected on his role in bringing jazz influences to the early Allman Brothers, which tapered well with Duane and Gregg Allman’s blues sensibilities. “I got that, initially, from Western swing,” he recalled. “My dad did play fiddle, but we didn’t call it bluegrass. It was called string music and he also played Irish reels and things. So, I think I got my sense of melody from Western swing and my dad.
“I also got my sense of tone from my dad. I saw how my dad would pay attention to his fiddle sound. He knew how to tune a fiddle by putting a tone post in, to push the top of the fiddle up. He would move that post around until he had just the right tone. So, I think that search for tone is just in my disposition. I always wanted my guitar to have a little edge on it, but with a clear sound. I experimented with different speaker combinations until I found it. Part of your tone is in your hand, too.”
After playing in a series of bands from his native Florida into the Midwest, including an outfit called the Jokers that Rick Derringer name-checked in his hit “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo,” Betts was recruited for the Allmans by Duane in 1969. “We didn’t do it consciously,” Betts said of their conflagrant dual-guitar sound. “We knew that when we started improvising, things fit, and we didn’t analyze it. Duane was more real militaristic into urban blues. And then I had a Western swing lilt to my rock playing, and it fit together beautifully. A lot of older folks said they thought we sounded like Benny Goodman, and it made sense to me later on when I listened to Goodman. He was pretty hip for his day, and would interweave his instruments together, too. We also listened to Miles Davis, who we thought was one of the greatest composers and bandleaders.
“Right from the beginning, we knew what we had,” Betts continued. “The band was so good we thought we’d never make it. It was so amazing I don’t even know how to put it into words—even now. With Duane, Berry Oakley, Greg and me as the songwriters, with everybody’s musicianship … it developed like a Polaroid picture. Nobody knew what it was going to be. They tried it at first as a trio, with Duane, Berry [Oakley, bass] and Jaimoe [Johnson, drums], and they cut some demos that were okay but they knew it wasn’t the Cream or Jimi Hendrix. And Berry told Duane the magic was happening when Betts was around, jamming, and from there we just grew into a six-piece naturally.
“We were elated with our sound, but every record company in the country turned us down. ‘All the songs sound the same.’ ‘They don’t have a frontman’… all this corny junk. So, we just started to travel around the country playing for free. In Boston, I remember we moved into a condemned building and ran an extension cord from the next building. We played in the park there. We’d get some hippies together and build a stage.”
While ’69’s The Allman Brothers Band sold poorly at first, it received critical acclaim, and the band’s grassroots mentality and love for playing—often relayed live via extended versions of their songs with plenty of improvisation—took hold in the potent American youth culture. The follow-up, Idlewild South, fared a bit better commercially, but At Fillmore East became their breakthrough. Sadly, Duane died just three months after its release.
“When we started getting killed off, well, there was nothing we could do about that,” Betts reflected. “It was tough times after we lost Duane and then we lost Berry. But then we had our biggest record [Eat a Peach, from 1972]. We figured. ‘Why quit when you’re losing?,’ and it worked out.
“And then, of course, the whole thing came apart,” Betts said of his 2000 ouster from the band. He was removed by the other charter members for the transgressions he was notorious for: drug and alcohol abuse, aggressive behavior. “But the Allman Brothers weren’t like the Rolling Stones, where we toured every five years. We were a working band. Thirty years is a long haul—especially when you’re doing something where your emotions are on your shirtsleeve all the time. The social dynamics just blew apart.”
Regarding the Southern rock mantle, Betts said, “We didn’t like it at first. It was kind of a reckless business label put on us by record companies. We thought of ourselves as progressive rock. We wanted to be more sophisticated than Southern rock sounds. We also didn’t think Southern bands sound that much alike, so why categorize them that way? As I get older I understand it was about record company marketing, but the difference between Marshall Tucker and the Allman Brothers Band is vast. They were more Western and we had a lot more jazz and blues, and improvising. My favorite was Molly Hatchet.”
Until his stroke and other illnesses waylaid him, Betts settled into his own music, seemingly content to be out of the heavy cycle of touring and recording required by a major band, settled into his life on Florida’s Gulf Coast. “I like fishing,” he said. “We live on the water and I’ve got a boat. I’m an archer. I can shoot stuff out of the air. We hunt wild hogs on the islands. It’s good to have something to do when you go home besides take dope [laughs]. I’d always get in trouble. On the road you’re busy; you go home and you don’t know what to do. Now I have some other good ways to apply myself.” Betts is survived by his wife, Donna, and four children: Kimberly, Christy, Jessica, and Duane, a skillful guitarist and bandleader in his own right.
Brothers Chris and Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes have been playing under that name, on and off, for the past 40 years.
That consistency of their rousing brand of rock ’n’ roll—blessed by rhythm and blues swagger, injected with more than a touch of gospel, and steeped in the traditions of American music—was likely buttressed by the reunion tour they set out on to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Shake Your Money Maker in 2021. And, by the fact that at least three of the members—Rich, his brother and lead singer Chris, who co-founded the band, and bassist Sven Pipien—all came up together in Atlanta. It could, above all, come from their pure desire to never stop making music.
The Black Crowes - "Wanting And Waiting"
But at least one of the primary driving forces behind the band’s vitality is Rich Robinson’s guitar playing—distinctive but also familiar in the last 30-plus years of rock; always nuanced and natural, frequently stirring, and just as compelling in blistering electric riffs as it is in delicate and expressive acoustic arrangements. It’s a palette that Robinson has nurtured since his early teens when he first picked up a guitar, and one of the things, of course, that has tied the Crowes’ sound together throughout their long career. It informs Robinson’s solo albums and his work with the Magpie Salute as well.
“There’s always that common thread,” Robinson says over the phone from Nashville. “There’s always the language. There are certain writers and they choose the phrasing or the pacing of how they write, and their paragraphs and their words. A painter, you know; you’ll see people who have a signature to the way they paint. That’s why we love them. In movies you see that same thing. So, all creative endeavors have that element in them. Chris sounds like Chris. He’s never gonna not sound like Chris. And I play like me, and I’m never gonna not sound like me.”
“You’ll see people who have a signature to the way they paint. That’s why we love them.”
With his ear first tuned to his dad’s music of choice—Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Sly Stone, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan—Robinson eventually started sculpting the beginnings of his own sound with his dad’s 1954 Martin D-28 in the early ’80s (Martin’s Rich Robinson Custom Signature Edition D-28 is based on the same guitar). He gravitated especially toward The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and remembers the first time he saw Angus Young being impaled by his Gibson SG on the cover of AC/DC’s If You Want Blood You’ve Got It: “There was something really special about it to me. I was drawn to it.” He and Chris listened to a lot of Prince, and got into punk rock, too—X, the Clash, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Black Flag. Next came the alternative stuff, like the dB’s, Rain Parade, and fellow Georgians, R.E.M.
Rich Robinson's Gear
A few years ahead of the release of Happiness Bastards, the band reunited in 2021 to embark on the 30th anniversary of the release of their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker.
Photo by Jason Kempin
Guitars
- 1956 Gibson Les Paul Special
- 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior TV
- Custom Shop Gibson Les Paul Junior
- Bonneville Les Paul Junior
- Bonneville Strat
- 1968 Les Paul Goldtop
- 1961 Gibson ES-335 Cherry
- 1962 Gibson ES-335 Sunburst
- 1968 Gibson ES-335 Cherry
- 1967 Fender Telecaster
- 2015 Custom Shop Black Fender Telecaster
- Custom Shop Sunburst Fender Telecaster
- Custom Shop Fender Telecaster with B-Bender
- 1999 Custom Shop Mary Kay Strat
- 1964 Rickenbacker
- Stephen Stern Custom White Falcon
- Stephen Stern Custom Magpie
- 1969 Dan Armstrong
- 1972 Dan Armstrong 341
- Zemaitis Disc Front
- Zemaitis jumbo acoustic
- Martin D-28 Appalachian
- Martin 0000
- Martin parlor
- Martin 12-string
- 1967 Guild 12-string
- Piers Crocker Crockenbacker
- Gibson Custom Shop Firebird Pelham Blue
- Gibson Firebird
- Gibson Custom Shop Firebird
- Teye El Dorado
Amps
- 1966 Marshall bluesbreaker
- 1968 Marshall bluesbreaker
- 2023 Muswell 50-watt
- 1987 Marshall Silver Jubilee
- 1956 Fender Deluxe
- 1950s Fender White Model 80
- 1971 Marshall JMP 50-watt
- Handwired Vox AC30s
- 1961 Fender Twin
- 2009 Reason Combo
- 1965 Fender Bassman black-panel
Effects
- RJM MIDI Controller
- Ebo Customs E-verb
- Fulltone Tube Tape Echo
- Fulltone Clyde Deluxe Wah
- Lehle volume pedal
- Way Huge Angry Troll
- Way Huge Red Llama
- Black Volt VFUZZ
- Strymon Lex
- Strymon Flint
- JHS Ruby Red RR Overdrive
Strings, Slides & Picks
- D’Addario strings
- D’Addario Rich Robinson signature slides
- Dunlop picks
“And then it kind of worked its way through us back to our foundation, where we loved roots rock ’n’ roll music,” Robinson says. “But all of that journey shaped how I wrote songs. The first thing I did was write songs. You know, I was never someone who just kind of played all day and learned scales and shredded. I always thought the song was the gift. And that was the thing that was lightning in a bottle, so to speak.”
Robinson was never trying to learn everything about the guitar as fast as he could. He played when he wanted to play, which still remains the case. “And every time I play it, I feel joy, because it’s never laborious or forced,” he says. He cautions against the “apprentice effect”—getting stuck in the lines and grooves of the people you learn from and forgetting to explore the untrodden paths you might be interested in. Through his time playing the guitar, he’s picked up something new here, something new there; his learning process has evolved naturally for him, and continues to do so in the present day.
“I always thought the song was the gift. And that was the thing that was lightning in a bottle, so to speak.”
“I think there’s a time when you peak, and then it just kind of starts going down,” Robinson elaborates. “It’s like you’ve learned everything you can on that instrument. And people play that way. You can kind of tell—it’s almost like people know too much. Every time I learn something new, I think about how I can do that in writing a song, first. I’m like, ‘Oh, man, this is great. I can write this into something.’ But then it also expands how you play and how you see the guitar.”
On Happiness Bastards, the Black Crowes sound as strong as ever, proving they haven’t wavered in their rock vitality since their last release in 2009.
All of the disparate influences, filtered through roots and Southern rock traditions, have helped to build a Black Crowes sound that explores plenty of different sonic territory, but remains singularly theirs. Eventually, the direction in which those sounds went became dictated by the tone of the instrument; the right acoustic guitar, with a certain stunning kind of resonation, can bring hundreds of songs out of Robinson, as can the right guitar with the right amp. The tone, for him, has always been an essential part of the overall mosaic of the song, and if the tone isn’t there, the recording can be a letdown regardless of how great the song is. For example, he says, some of Prince’s records—though the songs and the playing are brilliant—could have benefited from a sound more in line with the unmediated electricity of Sly and the Family Stone albums.
“I just don’t like those tidy, neat, sort of clean things,” Robinson says. “There’s a humanity involved in all of it. There’s a humanity in music, in the sound of the music, and in the composition of the music. And by ‘humanity,’ I mean there are flaws, or perceived flaws, that actually turn out to be the magic. You want to try to get it as good as possible. But you also want to leave that space for a breath, or for anything that shows the human organism that’s growing and breathing and behaving.”
“Every time I learn something new, I think about how I can do that in writing a song, first. But then it also expands how you see the guitar.”
Every guitar, amp, and pickup influences the tone Robinson arrives at, and on Happiness Bastards, he employs many different combinations to get where he’s going. For the punchy and jagged “Cross Your Fingers,” he’s on his 1962 Gibson ES-335 and a Muswell amp; the wiry “Dirty Cold Sun” features a Muswell again, powering a custom shop Tele; a dense Gretsch White Falcon through a ’56 Fender Tweed Deluxe fills out “Flesh Wound”; and “Follow the Moon” showcases his 1956 Gibson Les Paul Special through the same amp.
Rich Robinson, seen here playing his Zemaitis Disc Front back in 2021, owns more guitars than your average collector.
Photo by Frank White
In his search for great tone, Robinson founded Muswell Amplification after building one of his own amps—based on his 1968 Marshall bluesbreaker—with his guitar tech, Roland McKay.
“It’s basically an exact, or almost exact, duplicate of my bluesbreaker,” Robinson says. “It’s a 1968 bluesbreaker I bought that, when I heard it, I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ When you buy one amp that is amazing, you kind of want another one just in case. So I was like, ‘Man, can we do this?’ The guy that I’m building the amps with was like, ‘Yeah, I can get all these transistors, I can get these tubes, I can get everything exact and do this.’ And so we did it. And side by side, it’s incredibly close and sounds amazing.”
Mostly, on Happiness Bastards, Robinson flips between his faithful Muswell and the Tweed Deluxe, pulling the textures of the past and contextualizing them here and now for 21st-century rock ’n’ roll. But perhaps one of the more essential elements of the Crowes’ recording process is making room for the human quirks and dynamics that are more akin to the previous century; Robinson laments the uncanny valley feeling that poorly done autotune affects in him, or the stilted nature of songs played to a click.
“You want to leave space for a breath, or for anything that shows the human organism that’s growing and breathing and behaving.”
“It seems weird to me, because, it’s a natural human response—if a chorus is coming, you’re getting a little excited, you speed up a little bit,” Robinson says about the experience of playing live and loose. “And then after that, you kind of slow it back down. That adds to the dynamic of the song and to the humanity of the song.”
Brothers Chris and Rich Robinson formed the Black Crowes in 1984, while still attending high school.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
The building blocks of the Black Crowes’ sound, then, are kindred to those that have helped create any of the great Southern rock bands—a melting pot of diverse influences, close attention to tone and timbre, a motivation that comes from love of the game, and brotherhood. It all seems to make a joyful sound, and could hardly be recreated by putting together all the right technology. Ultimately, the formula can only remain a mystery. “There’s always more to it than something as simple as what an amp might sound like or what a mic or effect might do,” Robinson says.
What makes a compelling guitar player is similarly enigmatic; again, of course, there’s no recipe for a Jimi Hendrix or a Duane Allman. But Robinson says his favorites, the players who he looked to when he was learning—Jimmy Page and Peter Green, for example—all have a few things in common with the other greats: freedom, abandon, and passion.
“I think they’re just unapologetically themselves," Robinson says about what sets the singularly voiced apart from the masses. “They’re not trying to be safe. They’re just doing what they do. They’re artists, you know?”
YouTube It
The Black Crowes rip through the fan favorite “Twice As Hard” during their 2021–’22 Shake Your Money Maker tour.