"Honestly, when people say 'You don't need all that stuff,' my response is, 'No shit! I want all this stuff,'" he proudly states. "Necessity is the dumbest argument in rock 'n' roll. For me, it has nothing to do with utility—playing guitar and using all of this [gear] gives me pleasure [laughs]."
And with that spirited passion, he's been Whores' ringleader since 2010 when he formed the swaggering, strutting power trio with bassist Jack Schultz and drummer Travis Owen. The band has released a pair of blistering EPs (2011's Ruiner and 2013's Clean) that were followed by a refined, groovier, raucous sound for the full-length debut (2016's Gold) that featured the current lineup of bassist Casey Maxwell and drummer Douglas Barrett.Carrying on the brash, boisterous tradition from '90s underground slobberknockers like the Melvins, Shellac, Swans, and Jesus Lizard, Whores churns out the loudest, most obnoxious (yet infectious) rock 'n' roll you won't hear on your dad's airwaves. "When rock music gets too fancy, it gets ruined. I know I'm not the world's greatest guitar player. I don't want to be," admits Lembach. "I just wanna play guitar, in a band—I just love fuzz pedals and big, loud music so much—nothing else on earth makes me feel like that."
Recently, Whores entered producer/engineer and longtime collaborator Ryan Boesch's Candor Recording to track their second album. During the process, Lembach virtually welcomed PG's Chris Kies to go over his simplistic-but-intense guitarsenal. Plus, we admire his plentiful pedal paradise (rivaling your favorite guitar store's inventory) that delivers both "flavor crystals" and "fire-breathing craziness," and he shares the two-pedal combination that "is the reason this band exists."
[Brought to you by D'Addario Auto-Lock Straps: https://ddar.io/AutoLockRR]Mid-2000s Fender Classic Series ’50s Esquire
You might not believe it (especially if you take a gander down at his feet and the three pedalboards), but Whores' ringmaster Christian Lembach likes to keep it simple … at least with guitars. His longtime No. 1 is this mid-2000s Fender Classic Series '50s Esquire (MIM). However, that wasn't always the case. He originally pulled the trigger on this reissue to serve as a backup for his then go-to axe (a Fender American Standard Telecaster). Before he trusted the Classic Series for the road, he had to replace the anemic stock single-coil. A friend offered a solution by way of a spare Schecter F520T. Christian wired it into the T and, wham-o, the Esquire instantly became his Excalibur. (Because of the F520Ts being out of production (it's connected with Mark Knopfler in the "Walk of Life" video), Christian has since opted for obtainable F520T recreations—wound and wired by German pickup maker Harry Häussel, and aptly called Walk of Life—in his stage guitars.)
In the Rundown, Christian breaks down the pickup's special DNA: "It's basically an overwound single-coil that has half of the winds in one direction and the other half of the winds in the opposite direction, so you could coil-tap if you want. I don't have it tapped. I have it on full blast, all the time."
He also revels in the Esquire's often misunderstood switching setup. (Why in the hell is there a 3-way switch for a one pickup guitar?!) In the back position, it's just the standard Tele bridge sound that bypasses the tone circuit. The middle slot is your standard Tele bridge setting that brings back in the tone control. And the "neck" or third position removes the tone circuit again and activates a bass boost. He loves how dark and loud that last setting is because, when smeared with fuzz, it balances out for a lively, laser-like tone. Other repairs, upgrades, and switches include an Amazon-purchased, 6-saddle brass bridge, a Mighty Mite maple T-style neck, Hipshot locking tuners, and a bone nut.
The band usually lives in drop-C tuning (CGCFAD), and he plays with light picks (.60 mm) paired with heavy strings (.013–.056). That sort of imbalance allows Christian to hammer on the strings without walloping them out of tune.MJT Musikraft VTM Telemaster
This Fullerton knockoff features all of the same ingredients as the T (Amazon bridge, Mighty Mite neck, Hipshot locking tuners, bone nut, Esquire circuitry, Häussel Walk of Life pickup), but with a MJT Musikraft VTM body. He admits that this one is closing in on the No. 1 slot, because the beveled body is easier on his picking-hand forearm, which gets shredded by the slab-bodied Esquire.
Acrylic B.C. Rich Mockingbird
During one of Whores' Canadian tours, Christian blew out his knee. (In true rock 'n' roll fashion, he continued the tour and performed sitting down.) While at home recovering from surgery, he was browsing online and came across this acrylic B.C. Rich Mockingbird. He screenshot the bodacious instrument and shared it on his social media because it was that cool. Well, friend and fan John Cooper bought the guitar and contacted Lembach, who appreciated the sentiment but said he had no spare cash for the instrument because of the surgery. Christian didn't realize that Cooper bought it for him as a gift. The below guitar might not see a lot of stage time (our necks hurt just looking at it), but it will always have a special spot in Lembach's boat.
1960s Marshall 100W Super Lead
For his auditory assault, Christian packs a one-two Marshall punch. Below is a late 1960s (or possibly early '70s) 100W Super Lead. He runs that through a Marshall JCM800 1960A Slant 4x12 cabinet filled with Celestion G12T-75s.
2000s Marshall 1959SLP 100W Plexi Reissue
The second part of the amp equation is this 2000s Marshall 1959SLP 100W plexi reissue. This one hits a Marshall JCM800 1960B straight 4x12 cabinet that's also loaded with Celestion G12T-75s. Both of the heads have lower gain than stock plexis, because Lembach put in 12AU7 preamp tubes. To give himself even more headroom, he plugs into the low inputs and both heads have been upgraded with Mullard or Tung-Sol EL34s. (He plugs into channel 1 of the original Super Lead, which is internally jumpered, while he plugs into the low-input channel 2 of the reissue.)
1960s Silvertone 1484
His latest gear acquisition before entering the studio was this 1960s Silvertone 1484 head and cab.
Christian Lembach's Pedalboard #1
We were lucky enough to swoop in to producer/engineer Ryan Boesch's Candor Recording while Whores tracked their new album. (Lembach does admit to traveling with a lot of pedals, but this amount is insane and for studio shenanigans.)
To try to make sense of this plethora of pedals, let's start at the end. Christian divides his pedalboards into two paths. The A loop is everything except what's in loop B. The B loop is the always-on, menacing combination of the ZVEX Super Hard On ("SHO" as Lembach calls it) and the green, tall "bubble font" Russian Big Muff. "That combination is literally on every song we've ever recorded and is used on every song we perform. It's the reason this band exists," he says.
Lembach has it set up this way so he can go from any sound conjured in the A loop to the aforementioned destructive duo on a dime. (In the next photo, you'll see a small, non-descript gray box in the lower-right corner that switches between A and B loops.) Everything else on this board (lower right) includes a pair of Devi Ever FX stompbox (a Soda Meiser and a Bit: Legend of Fuzz), a ZVEX Box of Metal, signature IdiotBox Effects Whores Fuzz/Filter, and an original Electro-Harmonix POG. A Morley ABY box switcher commands the Marshalls.
Enter to win Christian's signature IdiotBox Effects Whores Fuzz/Filter!
Christian Lembach's Pedalboard #2
Moving left, the pedal parade continues (bottom right) with a ZVEX Fuzz Factory, Jext Telez White Pedal (fuzz/overdrive), Spaceman Effects Sputnik III, and Chase Bliss Audio Automatone MKII Preamp. (Those last two pedals were both presents from his better half.) The middle row consists of a Caroline Guitar Company Somersault, EHX Micro POG, Boss NF-1 Noise Gate (because of Steve Albini), Keeley Nova Wah, and an Xotic AC Booster. And the top row starts with a Cusack More Louder clean boost, TC Electronic Ditto Looper, EarthQuaker Devices Hummingbird, Hungry Robot Pedals Stargazer (V1), Catalinbread Echorec, Dr. Scientist BitQuest, Alexander Pedals Radical Delay II Plus, JHS Stutter (small black box), an EHX Freeze, and an AMT Electronics Japanese Girl Wah. A Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner keeps his guitars in check. While he doesn't claim to have Eric Johnson's hear-the-difference-in-9V ears, Lembach does claim to distinguish differences between all his fuzzes and filters.
Christian Lembach's Pedalboard #3
This last board is specific to studio experimentation. It has an IdiotBox Effects Power Drive, Spiral Effects Yellow LM741 Overdrive, Bondi Effects Sick As Overdrive, Beetronics Swarm, seahagFX Zonk (clone), Jext Telez Dizzy Tone (OC44 transistors, for pedal nerds), and a Montreal Assembly Your and You're (fuzzy synth).
Matt Sweeney's career amalgamates an uncommon blend of indie- and roots-rock-cred, high-profile session gigs, membership in the Billy Corgan-led supergroup Zwan, and collaborations with Josh Homme and Bonnie "Prince" Billy.
Sweeney is passionate, and when given a soapbox he doesn't hold back when he's advocating for something he believes in. Otherwise, he's self-effacing and humble. For example, check out the Guitar Moves video series he did a few years ago for Noisey, the music site for Vice. Besides becoming something of a household name (at least in nerdy, guitar-obsessed households not already familiar with his extensive and impressive discography), in each episode he threw himself headlong into a situation that, at best, was painful and awkward as he learned a new concept or technique for the first time live and on camera.
"Being awkward and vulnerable, that's like being alive," he says. "I think music is all about harnessing your horrific, awkward vulnerability, and working on it and working on it and turning it into something that sounds confident and makes other people feel that they aren't so awkward and vulnerable. That's an illusion, but it's an illusion as much as art is an illusion, meaning that you work really hard to make it easy for somebody else. To make somebody else feel at ease."
Harnessing vulnerability may also explain Sweeney's particular guitar-related passions. In addition to fingerpicking, he has strong opinions about things like flatwound guitar strings—he loves flatwound guitar strings—and not using pedals.
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy "Make Worry For Me" (Official Music Video)
But his first passion is fingerpicking, which he learned how to do after he was already established. By that point, he was a seasoned road dog with thousands of miles under his belt with underground bands like Skunk and Wider. He also had a number of recording credits to his name and had gone on to greater recognition as a founding member of Chavez. But then he realized there was more than one way to skin a mudskipper.
"I was in Chavez, and on a lark I went to a festival called the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival—it's like a real old bluegrass festival in the middle of Michigan—and seeing people fingerpick blew my mind," Sweeney says. "A friend of mine, his name is Sam Dylan, had already figured out how to play a couple of Mississippi John Hurt songs, and he was also really adamant about fingerpicking. His attitude was, 'If you're not fingerpicking you're just fucking around.' He showed me two patterns, which are both Mississippi John Hurt patterns."
Fingerpicking for Sweeney was transformative, both as a musician and as a person. "At that point, I thought I was an okay guitar player, and I'd already made a bunch of records," he says. "But just trying to do those patterns was so humiliating that it definitely made me understand why rock guitar players don't fuck with fingerpicking. I decided to stick with it. It was such a challenge and so remarkably humiliating to sound incompetent on something that used to be my passport into feeling cool. But after seeing my friend do it, and after he showed me the patterns—I have a very clear memory of it—I thought, 'If I get this, I am going to have a voice and I am going to have a way of playing guitar that is undeniable, and it's going to sound really good, and not a lot of people can do it.' It took like a month, which is nothing. It's humiliating, but it doesn't take that long. I really do think that the undoing of your confidence is such a no-go zone for people, and so many people play music precisely for the reason that they can feel in control. Fingerpicking changed everything. I can't recommend it enough."
TIDBIT: The new follow-up to 2005's 'Superwolf' took 16 years but was recorded with immediacy in mind. "Eye contact is key for recording anything," Sweeney says. The album art is by Harmony Korine.
Sweeney's first recording without a pick is the song "Salty Dog," recorded with the singer Cat Power for her album The Covers Record. The song is a duet—voice and guitar—and his part is based on a pattern he learned from Dylan. It was also around that time that his interest in fingerpicking collided with his burgeoning collaboration with vocalist Will Oldham (who often records under the moniker Bonnie "Prince" Billy), and which led, eventually, to the birth of their duo, Superwolf.
"Chavez wasn't playing much anymore, and I had befriended Will Oldham," Sweeney says. "Will was one of the first people who heard me fingerpick. We became friends, a guitar was sitting around, I picked it up, played something, and Will said, 'That sounds good.' I said, 'Right, that's the whole point of fingerpicking … to make somebody say, 'That sounds good.'"
That revelation wasn't arrogant or self-centered. It was grasping a deeper truth intrinsic to music, which, for Sweeney, is inextricably linked to fingerpicking.
"Really, that's the point of music: to get people's minds off of whatever and to hypnotize them a little bit," he says. "That's when I thought, 'Cool, I did the thing that I wanted to do. I can fingerpick now and I can play with a really great singer who is working in an idiom that I hadn't worked in before.' I started playing with Will and that gave me the opportunity to keep developing the way that I was playing, because it went well with his singing. After a couple of years, that led to Will suggesting that we write songs together."
Matt Sweeney's Gear
Matt Sweeney's 1969 Martin D-18 (a gift from Neil Diamond)
Guitars
• 1969 Martin D-18 (a gift from Neil Diamond)
• 1976 Gibson ES-335TD
• James Carbonetti Savagist Bo Diddley-style guitar
Nuñez Amplification Dual Range Boost
Amps
• Austen Hooks converted Bell & Howell projector amplifier
• Will Oldham's Music Man HD-130
Effects
• Nuñez Amplification Dual Range Boost
• Echopark F-1 Germanium Fuzz
Strings
• La Bella Jazz Flats (.012–.052)
• D'Addario flatwounds (.012–.052)
Those songs became their first album, Superwolf, which was released in early 2005. Their duo is very much a modern take on the low-key, fingerpicked albums of yore. "Will's songs come out of that tradition of English-style and Appalachian fingerpicking," Sweeney says. "It's a nod to that. Will doesn't try to be a retro artist or throw around the term authentic, or anything like that, but his music is absolutely rooted in Scottish folk songs."
That first album also features the drummer Peter Townsend ("the real Pete Townsend," Sweeney says) and guest vocalist Sue Schofield. It took 16 years, but the follow-up, Superwolves, was released at the end of April. In addition to Townsend's return, it features a number of guests, including Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar, members of Moctar's touring band, and other friends from Nashville and Brooklyn. The music is understated and relies heavily on the interplay between Oldham and Sweeney. They tracked live and made sure they could see each other. "Eye contact is key for recording anything," Sweeney says.
The tuning Sweeney uses with Superwolf is an important part of the band's sound, too, even though he doesn't often stray too far from standard. "With Superwolf, most of the songs are in a tuning that Will and Lou Reed used a lot, which is just standard tuning, but it's in D," he says, noting that every string is tuned down a whole step, although otherwise it looks and feels like standard. "I don't understand why it isn't more of a normal thing to do, because it immediately opens up different possibilities, and that's sort of why the Velvets sound really cool."
Producer and industry legend Rick Rubin was a fan of that first Superwolf album and invited Sweeney to play on sessions. Over the years, Rubin has used him in numerous situations, including some you might not expect, like with superstars Neil Diamond and Adele. But Sweeney's first gig with Rubin wasn't as seemingly incongruous. It was on the first posthumous Johnny Cash release, American V: A Hundred Highways (Sweeney also appears on American VI: Ain't No Grave). It was through that project and hanging out in the studio with some of Cash's longtime sidemen that Sweeney encountered what was to be another passion: flatwound strings.
Matt Sweeney's career amalgamates an uncommon blend of indie- and roots-rock-cred, high-profile session gigs, membership in the Billy Corgan-led supergroup Zwan, and collaborations with Josh Homme and Bonnie "Prince" Billy.
Photo by Chris Shonting
"I got asked to do sessions for Rick Rubin, and I had no idea what to do at all," Sweeney says. "I chose to bring nothing with me—because I knew his studio had tons of guitars—and sure enough, all the players on the sessions were using flatwound strings. Okay, I won't say all of them, but certainly Smokey Hormel was. I think I picked up an acoustic guitar. It had flatwound strings on it, and I said, 'This sounds amazing.' Smokey said, 'Yeah, dude, you have to use flatwounds if you're going to make a good-sounding record.' I said, 'Nobody ever told me that.' He said, 'Nobody ever does.'"
For Sweeney, flatwound strings are an aesthetic link to the history of guitar-based music. "Roundwound strings weren't widely available until 1970," he says. "Every damn recording you've heard is on flatwound strings." [Author's note: Sort of. According to AcousticMusic.org, Pyramid, based in Germany, started selling the first set of pure nickel roundwound strings in 1954. In the U.S., roundwound strings became commercially available in the mid-1960s, and most manufacturers offered them by 1970. The Beatles, mentioned below—and this is argued endlessly in various online forums—most likely used flatwound strings on their early recordings, but by their final period were probably using .010-gauge roundwound strings, like many guitarists today.]
"Remember when you were first playing guitar and put on a new set of strings? Remember how cool it would sound? I don't really like that sound," he laughs. "But it's bright and shiny. String up your guitar with flatwounds and start playing along to Beatles' songs. 'Oh, there's the sound.' It's wild! It's such a quick hack to getting a cool tone. It also makes your guitar playing totally different, because there is zero resistance when you're moving up and down the strings. There's no squeak. You get this new lease on life on guitar. The tradeoff is you don't get the shiny bright sound and the action is a bit higher. But on the positive end, it sounds so good and it records really well."
Sweeney has an opinion about getting great tone, too, which, for the most part, doesn't involve pedals. "I don't know any other way to get a tone other than from your amp and fingers," he says. "Otherwise, you're not getting your tone, you're processing your tone. That's another thing that fingerpicking brought out: Your right hand is your mouth. That's what's making the sound come out. But again, speaking of tone, we seem to largely agree that the guitar recordings everybody freaks out about are usually from before the '60s. They're using flatwound strings, they're not using pedals, and it sounds really great."
The Superwolf duo of Sweeney and Bonnie "Prince" Billy, on the floor here, allows both players to explore their most traditional instincts, and was built on friendship that bloomed into a musical project. Any wolverines in the photo are purely coincidental.
Photo by MXLXTXV
But Sweeney isn't opposed to pedals, and, unlike fingerpicking, his relationship to pedals doesn't involve deeper philosophical issues. He also understands how sometimes they're essential to standing out in a mix. "I love pedals. Pedals are really cool, and they're fun," he says. "But I established the way I sound without relying on pedals at all. Although over the last couple of years, I've been amassing range-driver-sounding pedals, which I now have a bunch of. That's something I picked up from Josh Homme. He pointed out, 'Get any kind of pedal that will make the sound wave a little different.' Pedals that put things out of phase and make it poke out a little bit are cool."
Still, ultimately, he asserts your sound is in your fingers. "The whole thing is, turn up the amp really loud. Since you're not using a pick, you have a lot of control over your attack. You can bear down on it, hit it harder, hit it softer. That's the sound. You get shitloads of drama that way. You can get all these cool things that people talk about with tone that sound really beautiful because you're fingerpicking and the strings are ringing against each other and you're controlling the volume. It's cool, and it really works."
Fingerpicking, flatwound strings, coaxing great tones from an overdriven amp—none of those things are easy, but that, similar to purposefully filming himself in awkward, vulnerable situations, is how Sweeney operates. He's not looking for shortcuts. He's following his passions, and, as best he can, keeping it real.
"Definitely the reason I got into playing guitar was because I thought it would be kind of easy," he says. "It's easy to sound good on guitar, and that's what's really rad about the guitar. Other than being a good singer, I think it's probably the cheapest way to get musical and to start making a sound that feels good. You learn a couple of guitar chords and it's exciting. You could pick up a guitar and in a day you can sort of do a facsimile of whatever crappy song you think is good. But then you're kind of ignoring the fact that you're not really going for it, and not really challenging yourself. I've always found that guitar players will say, 'Oh, fingerpicking is like classical guitar.' But that's just a catchall term for all the guitar playing that you don't understand [laughs]."YouTube It
In this episode of his 'Guitar Moves' series, Matt Sweeney gets a typically humbling lesson in the style of Mississippi Fred McDowell from Dan Auerbach, on acoustic guitar.
This beauty cherry picks aspects from Jonathan Nuñez’s favorite guitars. It all started with his love affair with his friend’s G&L F-100 while recording Admission. The F-100 he borrowed had a smooth floating trem arm that bends and wobbles all over the new record. “The trem was too much fun to play,” Nuñez jokes. “But once we finished the record, I realized, shit, I need to pull this off live.”
So, with the task of reverse engineering a guitar that is suited for Torche’s established roar and new tones flexed on Admission, Nuñez turned to some more friends. To keep in tradition with bandmate Steve Brooks’ and Torche’s steam-locomotive sound, he got a metal neck from Robot Graves Industries and put it with a curvy, mahogany, Mosrite-style body built by fellow South Florida rocker Joe Koontz (formerly of Against All Authority aka AAA). Nuñez has always been partial to the Bill Lawrence L-500 humbucker and thanks to his buddy (and Rig Rundown alumnus) Bobb Bruno of Best Coast turned him onto the Mastery OMV Vibrato, so those features made into this custom piece. All of his guitars take custom-gauge Dunlop strings (.070–.052–.046–.017–.013–.010). The band’s main tuning is an octave tuning that consists of A–A–D–G–B–E.
On the heels of their fifth album, 2019’s Admission, Torche hit the road for an extensive tour that started out having the harmonious doomers open for Baroness before venturing out for their own headlining sets. We fortunately caught the band on the latter run and guitarist Jonathan Nuñez (who also has served as the band’s bassist for 13 years and producer/engineer for Admission) spoke to PG’s Chris Kies about his and Steve Brooks’ slim setups that center around custom-made, metal-neck instruments and explains why he started Nuñez Amplification, which has become a big part of the band’s sonorous sonic imprint.
This Fender Telecaster HH Rosewood (with a Lace Nitro Hemi in the bridge) is the “bomb-note” guitar that sees stage time for “Infierno,” “What Was,” and “Annihilation Affair.” It takes the same .010–.070 strings and is set to the aforementioned octave tuning, but (as you’ll hear in the video) the 6th string is, well, not exactly ready for battle. It flops and allows Nuñez and Brooks to thwap the dead string producing a huge bomb-drop note. This was first discovered when Brooks was recording with his first band Floor and someone busted a string mid song, causing a lightning-strike noise.
In 2017, Nuñez switched from bass to guitar and missed the blowing breeze that his Ampeg 8x10 stack stirred up each night. Feeling a void after trying countless amps, Nuñez got Overtone Works’ Gary Phillips on the horn and the first idea that came to fruition was the Annex Bass Channel pedal. After that, the tone-chasing duo set their sights on an Annex guitar amp. The way Nuñez describes this 130-watt behemoth is this: “a handwired, discrete class A/B, quad-voiced, dual-channel, all-tube head.” Each channel is independent, so you’re essentially getting two amps in one box. Channel one has symmetrical clipping, while channel two has asymmetrical clipping. This growler is brought to life thanks to a quartet of EL34s. The one shown above is a MkII variant.
Jonathan Nuñez’s pedal playground is host to a pair of EarthQuaker Devices stomps—Arpanoid and Avalanche Run—a Nuñez Dual Range Boost and Nuñez Tetra-Fet Drive (with custom Admission artwork), an MXR Phase 95, Catalinbread Echorec, and DigiTech HardWire DL-8 Delay/Looper. A Boss TU-3 keeps everything in tune.
Guitarist/singer Steve Brooks first got his hands around a JML Custom Guitar when Jay Lewis handbuilt a neck-through, SG-style ripper that was cleverly coined the SB. Steve always wanted a V so he commissioned the builder to create an oversized, neck-through version that’s approximately 1.25 the size of a standard model.
If you’re a loyal Torche fan, you’ll recognize this Electrical Guitar Copmany Standard as Steve Brooks’ longtime main ride that still sees plenty of stage time when the band goes through older material.
This Nuñez Annex MkII is from one of the first batches and been Brooks’ amp of choice since working on Admission. There are minimal differences between this head and the newer one Nuñez plugs into, mainly cosmetics (the company now offers more colors to not pigeonholed themselves into a specific musical genre or player), upgraded circuitry components, and an fine-tuned FX loop, but Brooks still plugs into the front of the amp.
Steve Brooks is more of a rhythm, meat-and-potatoes player and keeps an airport-friendly board. He has an MXR Carbon Copy, MXR Phase 90, and a Nuñez Tetra-Fet Drive. A Boss TU-3 keeps everything in check and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus brings the noisemakers to life.
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