You could throw a dart at a board of all the world’s music genres, and chances are fair that you’d hit a sound that Melbourne band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have explored. King Gizz started life as a bluesy garage-rock outfit, but over the past 14 years, they’ve leapt into metal, jazz, folk, electronic, and even microtonal music. They’ve spread their adventures over 26 LPs—five of them released in 2022 alone.
On tour this summer in support of their latest, Flight b741, the band stopped at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater, where Premier Guitar’s Chris Kies caught up with guitarists Joey Walker and Stu Mackenzie for a look at how they navigate the Gizzverse onstage. Here’s a preview of some of the goods, but tune into the full Rundown to catch all the details—including Mackenzie’s famed Flying Microtonal Banana, the namesake of their 2017 album.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Turkish Delight
Walker’s Godin Richmond Dorchester has been subjected to a few changes. When King Gizzard entered their “microtonal phase,” influenced by Mackenzie’s travels to Turkey, the guitar was modified by a luthier friend with a fret arrangement (identical to Mackenzie’s Flying Banana) that permits microtonal intervals, like a Turkish bağlama. Walker explains that it’s like adding extra frets between the traditional 12 notes, so there are quarter-tone intervals rather than just semitone steps. It took some learning to figure out how to play, but at this point it feels like muscle memory for Walker.
The Jammer
This H-S-S Novo Idris does the heavy lifting for Joey Walker playing deep into King Gizzard's expansive, extended sets.
Samurai Sword
Mackenzie admits that he’s not picky with his guitars: He likes unpredictable gear, and he’s prone to impulse-buying weirdo axes. He picked up this Yamaha SG-2 in 2013, and it sounds like no other guitar he’s played. The weird, noisy pickups cause interesting microphonic glitches, and while it’s a bit of a pain to keep in proper playing order, Mackenzie knows his way around the guitar and trusts it. The SG-2 is strung with .011s and handles standard-tuning numbers.
Stu Mackenzie's Pedalboard and Amp
While Mackenzie’s guitar selections are rather offbeat, his pedalboard and amp setup are fairly straight-laced; in fact, 70 percent of the set is played with no effects on at all. His signal runs first into a Boss TU-3 tuner and DD-3T delay, then to a Devi Ever Aenima, a Jam Pedals Boomster, a Fender Tread-Light Wah, and a Dunlop Volume (X) Mini. His vocals run into a custom multi-effect pedal by EarthQuaker Devices, which features both overdrive and a gated echo, preventing ambient noise from triggering the effect. A VVco Pedals Time Box helps Mackenzie keep the set from running over.
From the board, his signal runs to a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, an amp he can pick up virtually anywhere in the world. He runs it fairly clean, but adjusts it between every song for varied gain-staging. A Mesa Boogie PowerHouse Attenuator keeps the stage volume in check.
Hefty Hitters
Joey Walker's Pedalboard
The guitarist's stomp station is surprisingly sparse for the melody and mite that swirls in a King Gizz performance. He has five key signal sizzlers: an Electro-Harmonix Flat Iron (fuzz), Wampler Faux Analog Echo (delay), Strymon Sunset (overdrive), Dunlop Cry Baby (wah), and Wampler Mini Ego (compressor). He uses a Death By Audio Echo Master for his vocals, a Boss LS-2 Line Selector & Radial Engineering HotShot to handle amp & mic switches, and the Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeps his instruments in check.
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Kurt Rosenwinkel’s new album is a trip nearly 30 years into the past, to a time when he and his collaborators found lightning in a bottle in a renowned New York club.
Fully saturated in bebop language, Kurt had created a modern, signature style grounded in stunning compositions. His band was full of what we now know as some of the most accomplished jazz musicians of the era: Mark Turner on tenor sax, Ben Street on bass, and Jeff Ballard on drums.
How interesting, then, to find out that this body of work was fully formed years earlier, as evidenced by his latest release, The Next Step Band (Live at Smalls, 1996). Between 1994 and 2001, the group had a weekly residency at Smalls, the West Village club that was becoming a proving ground for New York City’s straight-ahead elite. By 1996, they had already developed a remarkable chemistry, inhabiting Kurt’s challenging compositions with empathy and authority. A recording was made of one of the shows on Alesis Digital Audio Tape, or ADAT, which Kurt carried around with him for almost three decades.
“We were four very strong personalities. Would we survive on the road again?”
Why release it now? “My wife had been suggesting for several years that I revisit this era,” Rosenwinkel says. “I was resistant. I couldn’t see the point in looking back. Also, we were four very strong personalities. Would we survive on the road again? I finally had some time in my schedule and listened, and I knew it was time to share this history.”
Kurt Rosenwinkel & The Next Step Band - "The Next Step"
Rosenwinkel says that the development of the music was “part and parcel” with the room at Smalls. “It was a great room for music with a lot of detail; bebop-based things with quick turns,” he says. “We had the fortune of having this steady gig every week, and I was writing music all the time. We would rehearse at my place in Brooklyn. Ben and Mark lived close by, and Jeff was just over the bridge on Varick Street. I had already spent a lot of time playing duos with Ben, and when Mark and I met we had an instant connection. So from the start, we bonded. We would experience a kind of telepathy on stage. I wrote a lot of those songs in one week when I was housesitting at Chris Cheek’s house in Brooklyn. We rehearsed during the week, and it was an intense period of study where I resolved to learn as much as I could about the mechanics of the instrument.”
There are many remarkable aspects to what Kurt is doing. His compositions, from the start, demonstrate a fully mature, individual voice grounded in his forebears: Strayhorn, Coltrane, Bud Powell, Bill Evans. Kurt’s harmonic approach is extremely sophisticated. The changes can be profuse, surprises alight, and yet the music never feels overstuffed or pointlessly intellectual. As a soloist, his linear lines are charged with risk-taking drama, and his ability to accompany himself with perfectly placed chord shapes is uncanny. He never seems to run out of ideas. As if this isn’t enough, he manages to include several pieces on the record where he uses alternate tunings. It’s hard enough to play compositions with this much harmonic density in standard tuning. Doing so by relearning where the notes are on the neck is mind-boggling. (The tuning is B♭–G–D♭–A♭–B♭–E♭.)
“From the start, we bonded. We would experience a kind of telepathy on stage.”
Why retune? “I was shedding incredibly long hours in those days,” says Rosenwinkel. “It got to the point where my intellectual focus was overwhelming. There was so much critical analysis of the fretboard going on that I felt I needed a beginner’s mind. The altered tuning came about because I wanted to sabotage my knowledge. I didn’t want to know anything when I touched the instrument. All the codification and classification were getting in the way of my enjoyment of the music. It was beautiful to not know what I was doing, and many of these songs came out of that. It really served its purpose, in terms of putting the intellect in its proper place. The deeper senses, the heart, need to lead your music. That being said, when I came back to the conventional tuning, I was really happy to feel as if I knew something again!”
The Next Step Band (Live at Smalls, 1996) is a snapshot of the rare musical and cultural symbiosis that made Smalls a hotspot for era-defining up-and-comers in the ’90s.
The community around the venue was part of the experience, too. “The scene at Smalls was such that you’d meet hundreds of people, coming in and out all the time, a whole spectrum of musicians including people my age, and an older generation that stretched all the way back to the ’50s, to Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. We’d hang out in the back room just talking all night. There was no bar—it was BYOB—so it was all about the music. There was all the rice and beans you could eat, which for some of us was our main sustenance during the week. People would live at Smalls. A couple times someone crawled out of the wall where they were sleeping in back of the stage, had a good stretch, and traipsed between us as we were playing! A lot of people had strong experiences with the music at that time, and I think you can hear that in the music.”
Kurt has also just released a massive book of his compositions—594 pages, 150 songs. Some nine years in the making, it’s a compendium of his life’s work. Not content just to print lead sheets, he has included printable PDFs of band arrangements, Sibelius files so readers can make their own arrangements, musings and reflections on each of the songs, and pictures from each time period. It’s a beautifully crafted presentation, suitable for a coffee table. I asked Kurt about the epic journey leading to this profuse, diverse, and deep collection of songs.
“The altered tuning came about because I wanted to sabotage my knowledge. I didn’t want to know anything when I touched the instrument.”“I began composing songs when I was nine years old; I’ve always considered myself a composer first,” he says. “I try to use every means at my disposal to help the writing process, going back and forth between piano, guitar, and the computer software. About one in 10 songs seems to come out relatively whole. In other cases, I can start with something, and find that it takes years to finish. ‘East Coast Love Affair’ was like that. I wrote the A section, and didn’t find the B section ’til three years later, when it came from another song I was working on. It’s like archaeology. You’re digging around in the soil for the valuable artifacts—dusting them off, putting the pieces together. I find my harmony by feelingwhat chord wants to come next, experimenting with light and dark. There have been periods in my life where I’ve written longer forms with a lot of complexity, and other times when I’ve gone for simplicity. As I’ve gotten older, it’s easier to get right down to it and get at the essence of the piece right away. I don’t really plan to write anything. I tend to wait for it to come to me.”
Kurt Rosenwinkel's Gear
Rosenwinkel says he doesn't have just one signature guitar sound, and he’s proud of that—he’s always chasing something he can never quite catch.
Photo by Aleks Končar
Guitars
- D’Angelico Master Builder New Yorker
- Westville Kurt Rosenwinkel Signature Vanguard
- Yamaha SG500
- Moffa Maryan
Amps
- Fractal Audio FM9
Effects
- Pro Co RAT
- EHX POG2
- Xotic EP Booster
- Line 6 Echo Pro
Strings & Picks
- Thomastik Infeld BB111 Jazz BeBop Strings
- Westville signature picks (tortoise, smooth, polished, celluloid 1.5 mm pick in traditional teardrop shape)
Was there a line connecting these different eras and focal points, from over three decades of putting pen to paper? “A prism comes to mind, something that reflects various aspects of your soul at different times. I’ve never been a person that needed to have a strong identity that is connected to any external thing, I tend to flow in and out of different identities. That’s what led me to do all kinds of different music, whether with [A Tribe Called Quest rapper/producer] Q-Tip, a whole textural thing, free improv, jazz tunes, and I’m even planning on making a rock record. I was totally into the so-called downtown thing in the ’90s, the Knitting Factory. Very few people in my circle at Smalls crossed over into that terrain. Whatever comes out of me, that’s the way it is. With Caipi [Rosenwinkel’s 2017 release featuring guitarist/singer Pedro Martins], for instance, I didn’t set out to make a Brazilian record. I just started to hear songs that had some of that vibe. It wasn’t a conscious process, it was all completely natural.”
“It’s like archaeology. You’re digging around in the soil for the valuable artifacts—dusting them off, putting the pieces together.”
Sifting through this book allows us to see the breadth of Kurt’s output. It starts with those early formative pieces on this new live record, tunes that are exuberant, harmonically elaborate, bebop-based, sometimes pensive. They dig into the past and fly into the future. We see a more quiet, meditative side from Deep Song. The Caipi record takes us into new rhythmic territory with pieces that have vocals. Star of Jupiter offers virtuosity that suggests the influence of Allan Holdsworth.
It’s interesting to see Rosenwinkel’s guitar sound morph as well. In the early and mid-’90s, he played an Epiphone Sheraton through a Polytone—not an atypical setup for the era. As time goes on, he continually experiments with any available technology, all in service of his liquid phrasing. At this point, he uses a Fractal Audio amp modeler for most effects, while still retaining the EHX POG, a box he was early to champion.
Rosenwinkel’s new compilation book, adorned on the cover with this photo, gathers decades of the guitarist’s compositions into one profound, exciting work.
Cover photo by Greg Miles
“I don’t have a signature sound,” says Rosenwinkel. “I have many signature sounds. When I recorded The Next Step, part of what I realized was that my ‘sound’ was what I was doing with my voice. I was unconsciously singing along to what I was playing. I had often hated the sound I got in recording studios in the ’90s. I realized that it was the blend of the guitar coming out of the amp and my voice that was what the audience was hearing. So we began recording my voice in the studio. A lot of people tried to copy that. The thing is that I’m always going for the same sound; it’s always been in my head, but I can’t ever reach it, so that’s why you get all these different iterations. I’ve heard people say that I should play with a more ‘pure’ guitar sound. But there is no pure guitar sound. Every pickup, every amplifier, every guitar is different. What I would like is if the guitar sounded the way it does before it’s plugged in. That would be my ideal, but you can’t get that. It has less attack, all these qualities that I’m trying to achieve. I don’t consider what I’m using as effects. They are all just tools for matching what I have in my mind to the instrument.”
“I’ve heard people say that I should play with a more ‘pure’ guitar sound. But there is no pure guitar sound.”
Rosenwinkel discusses his legato phrasing and his left-hand pull-offs and hammer-ons, flourishes that are unique amongst his contemporaries. “If every one of Charlie Parker’s lines had a transient to it, it would sound terrible,” says Rosenwinkel. “It would be too much rhythmic information. There’s emphasis and there’s continuity, and in that continuity you can hear all the content in the line. It’s the same with Lee Konitz. It’s fluid, very articulate, but liquid. The melodies are clear. I don’t want to be fighting with the ride cymbal in these transients. A lot of people who copy me get it wrong, because they don’t have the same very specific phrasing goals as me.”
With the Next Step Band, Rosenwinkel would sometimes play songs in unconventional tunings, complicating the already complex arrangements in a sort of challenge to himself.
Kurt is also an eloquent teacher. During the pandemic, he began to release a series of master classes with troves of information, and he’s a perennial and beloved instructor at the Alternative Guitar Summit Camp that I run in upstate New York every summer. This year, he shared illuminating details of his work with Heartcore, his record label. It’s become a place not only for his own releases, but a platform for deserving new artists who’ve profited from his attention. They’ve released over 20 records in nine years, and instituted a program where an employee of the label visits refugee camps in Europe and records children’s songs. Rosenwinkel then recruits master musician friends to create parts and arrangements to fill out the recording. All proceeds benefit the children.
Kurt expanded on these ventures while teaching at the guitar camp in late August. “I always wanted to start my own business,” he said. “I decided to build Heartcore as a vehicle for representing the light in music, how it illuminates the contours of our souls. In 2017, when we started, the landscape was pretty desolate. Old constructs were crumbling. So I gathered my resources, not only to release my own work, but to experience the joy of finding some cat tearing it up for whom I could provide a platform. We work really hard to spread this incredible music around the world, and I’m truly proud of what we’ve done.”
YouTube It
This grainy video captures part of a legendary Rosenwinkel set at his homebase, Smalls, in March 1997.