![Rig Rundown: Alter Bridge [2023]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/rig-rundown-alter-bridge-s-mark-tremonti-myles-kennedy-2023.jpg?id=45529149&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy take PG through their Alter Bridge road rigs.
PGās John Bohlinger hung with Alter Bridgeās two-man guitar army, Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy, before their sold-out show at The Orpheum Theater in Memphis. Tremonti and Kennedy showcased some beautiful signature Paul Reed Smith guitars, as well as a not-yet-released PRS signature amp.
Thanks to techs Dave Pate and Scott Davis for their help with the details.
Brought to you by DāAddario Strings.
Brown Sound
Not surprisingly, Tremonti exclusively plays his Paul Reed Smith Mark Tremonti Signature.
The first is an early model from around 2002, sporting a signature brown burst with a tremolo bar. All guitars have DāAddario strings, though gauges vary by tuning. This one is tuned to Eb with 49ā38ā 28ā17ā13ā10. Tremonti uses Dunlop Tortex 1.3 mm picks.
Spare Some Change?
This is Dimeāshort for DimebagāTremontiās second PRS single-cut with a whammy bar.
Don't Call Me Daughter
This is Stella, named after Tremontiās two-year old daughter. Tremonti and Paul Reed Smith came up with the body design together. PRS isnāt set up to mass-produce this shape, so there wonāt be a wide-scale production.
Bearded Beauty
This āFentonā graphic guitar is one of 20 produced. This was a 20th anniversary model with original art painted by Joe Fenton.
Outlaw Style
H.A. (Hellās Angels) was the second prototype Tremonti signature made by PRS. The pickups are early prototypes.
Mark Tremonti's Pedalboard
Tremontiās signal starts with an Evidence Audio āThe Revealā cable from his guitar to his pedals, and Mogami W2319 and Square Plug SP5 plugs for patch cables. Pedals include a Morley āMark Tremontiā Signature Wah, Ibanez TS808HW, Boss TU-3, Boss OC-5, Digitech The Drop, MXR Smart Gate, Mark Tremonti prototype signature chorus/vibrato, and a Lehle Little Lehle III true bypass loop pedal. Thereās also a G-Lab SD-1 running into the ampās effects loop.
The Big Reveal
The PRS MT 100 Mark Tremonti Signature 100-watt three-channel head has not been officially released yet, but Tremonti has been touring with it for a while, as a shake-down cruise.
Crushin' Cabs
He runs this tube-driven beast into two oversized Mesa 4x12 cabs, loaded with Celestion British V30s wired at 8 ohms. The amp uses a Kikusui PCR1000M voltage regulator/power conditioner, plus thereās a Lehle P-Split for splitting signals to main and backup heads.
The Four Horsemen
Kennedy tours with four of his new PRS Signature guitars. The ones finished in natural and white are both tuned to Eb or Eb with a dropped C#, depending on the song. The signature is a bolt neck, T-style guitar with 10ā radius, and Narrowfield pickups. All guitars are strung with DāAddario Light Top/Heavy Bottom Strings (.010-.052).
Dr. Hoo
Kennedy reveres owls for their wisdom and adaptability. PRS has a long-standing tradition of using bird silhouettes for inlay markers, so it only made sense that Kennedy and PRS would incorporate their collective avis admiration in the signature model.
Green Machine
Kennedyās green Signature is tuned to A#āG#āC#āF#āAā#D#, and Gā#Gā#C#āF#āA#āD#, depending on the song.
Back(up) In Black
Kennedyās black Signature is strictly a backup in case there are problems with any of the others.
Diezel Power
Kennedy runs two Diezel heads: a Diezel VH4 and a Diezel Herbert. The amps run into two Diezel 4x12 cabs loaded with green Tone Tubby Hempcone 40/40 Ceramic speakers.
Myles Kennedy's Pedalboard
Kennedy runs his MXR Carbon Copy and an EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master in the VH4ās clean loop. Over on his pedalboard, thereās a Dunlop MC404 CAE Wah, Boss TU-2 tuner, Electro-Harmonixās Nano POG, Lizard Queen, and Freeze, a Ceriatone Centura, Strymon Deco, Line 6 MM4, and a Boss RV-6.
Shop Alter Bridge's Rig
PRS Mark Tremonti Signature
PRS SE Mark Tremonti Signature
Taylor 514CE Acoustic-Electric Guitar
Lehle Little Lehle
DigiTech Drop
MXR Smart Gate
Ibanez TS808HW Tube Screamer
Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
Radial Big Shot ABY
Electro-Harmonix Freeze
Strymon Deco
EHX Micro POG
EHX Lizard Queen
PRS Myles Kennedy Hunter Green Signature
PRS Myles Kennedy Natural Signature
PRS Myles Kennedy Tri-Color Sunburst Signature
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- Mark Tremonti and PRS Guitars Unveil New Signature Amp - Premier Guitar āŗ
- Discover The End Will Show Us How: Emotional Journey - Premier Guitar āŗ
- Mark Tremonti Wong Notes Episode Interview - Premier Guitar āŗ
In recent years, Samantha Fishās most often-used guitar was this alpine white Gibson SG, but it ran into some issues last summerāāI ended up having to reglue the neckāāand it is now on hiatus.
If youāre already a fan of Fishās tough Delta-mama singing and high-temperature guitar work, youāll probably think that all this is just as it should be. You gotta reap what you sow eventually, right? And Fish has been sowing for a long time, from her bar-band days in Kansas City 15 years ago through eight rootsy, eclectic albums as a leader (not counting the two early-2010s discs she cut with Dani Wilde and Victoria Smith as Girls with Guitars, or her 2013 outing with Jimmy Hall and Reese Wynans in the Healers, or 2023ās tangy swamp-rock collaboration with Jesse Dayton, Death Wish Blues) to her current tour schedule of about 150 dates per year in North America, the U.K., Europe, and Australia.
Still, even with such a solid career foundation to draw on, mixing and mingling in the flesh with folks youāve known all your life as names on record covers could be a little intimidating. Is it? āYou know, I donāt ever think about it in those terms,ā Fish says on the phone from her home in New Orleans. āSo when you lay it all out there like that, it feels like, āAw shit, thatās crazy.ā I mean, it is crazy. When I think about the goals that Iāve made over the years ā¦ honestly, Iāve crossed off a bunch of things that I thought were even ironic being on the list, because they just seemed so far-fetched. Every interview Iāve ever done, they were like, āIf you could ever open up for somebody, who would it be?ā And I always said the Stones, ironically. Cause when the hellās that gonna happen? Iām a guitar player from Kansas. Thatās nuts.ā
With her Stogie Box Blues 4-string, heavy hitting style, and wide array of blues and rock influences, Fish is an artist of a different stripe.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Fish spits out the sentences above in a fast, excited spray, one word tumbling over another. Then she pauses for a second, and itās clear that wheels are turning in her head. Her voice gets more playful. āIām gonna start speaking some even wilder things into existence just to see what happens,ā she cracks, her grin nearly audible over the line. āA billion dollars!No, moneyās evil, but you know what I mean.ā
āI wanted to lean into superpowers.ā
Given her formidable chops, itās not that daring a leap to suggest that Fish could be capable of playingsome wilder things into existence, too. Sheās certainly off to a good start with the just-released Paper Doll, her ninth solo album overall and third for Rounder Records. Whether your personal taste leans more toward nasty string-snapping riffs (the aptly titled āCan Ya Handle the Heat?ā), sizzling slide escapades (āLose Youā), or high lonesome twang (āOff in the Blueā), you canāt deny that the albumās loaded with prime guitar moments. And its two longest tracks, āSweet Southern Soundsā and āFortune Tellerāāālongestā being a purely relative term (theyāre both under six minutes)āoffer listeners just a taste of the neo-psychedelic fantasias that can occur when Fish stretches out in concert.
āPeople always come up to me and say, āYouāve got to figure out a way to capture the live feeling on a record,āā she reports. āSometimes you go into the studio and itās like, āShit, I gotta make the song work for vinyl, so letās cut it down,ā and you end up hacksawing away some of these parts that are kind of the feeling and heartbeat of the song. This time we set out to make something that felt live.ā
Fish made her recording debut in 2009 as the leader of the Samantha Fish Blues Band, with the punny-titled in-concert indie album Live Bait.
Photo by Curtis Knapp
Thatās one way in which Paper Doll differs dramatically from its predecessor, 2021ās Faster, which delved into a poppier territory of synths, beats, and high-tech production (and, in this writerās opinion, did so with great effectiveness; one of Fasterās highlights, āHypnotic,ā sounds like it could have been recorded at a late-night dance club hang with Prince and the Pointer Sisters). In contrast, obviously electronic sounds are nowhere to be heard on the new disc, and the music referenced stays firmly in the American roots category: soul, rock, country, juke-joint blues. For some artists, a stylistic shift like this could be seen as a retrenchment, but for Fish, itās the result of a major departure. This is the first time sheās ever used her road bandākeyboardist Mickey Finn, bassist Ron Johnson, and drummer Jamie Douglassāto make a studio album.
āEverybodyās scratching their heads about what genre this falls into, but I know where every song startedāwith a blues riff.ā
āUsually,ā Fish explains, āIāve worked in studio situations where thereās been a producer and they want to put the people they know together. So it was cool to bring in the band that Iāve been playing with for the last couple of years instead of session musicians. I feel like the dynamic was differentāthe familiarity, and just kind of knowing where the others were gonna go. It might be a minute difference to a listener, but for the players in the room, it helped breed another sensibility.ā
Also helping in that department was producer Bobby Harlow, late of Detroit garage-rock revivalists the Go. Paper Doll is the second Fish album that Harlowās produced; the first was 2017ās Chills & Fever. But whereas that album was all covers, the focus this time was on original songs, more than half of them co-written by Harlow with Fish before he was even considered to produce the album.
āLast March, Bobby came out to a show we did in Detroit,ā Fish recalls. āWe went out to lunch, and because I was working on writing songs, I asked him to do some co-writing with me, because I love the songs he wrote for the Go. Heās really fun to be in a room with when youāre making something, because heās incredibly devoted to it. So we started writing, and then a few months later the label was like, āWe gotta make this album, whoās gonna produce it?ā Well, weāre on the road all summer, so I donāt know when yāall expect us to do this record. But Bobby was available, and it was like the universe bringing us back together. He was passionate about the kind of songs I was writing, and he understood where I wanted to go with it.ā
Samantha Fish's Gear
Before finding her SG, Fishās main guitar was her Delaney signature model thinline style, with a fish-shaped f-hole.
Photo by Frank White
Guitars
- Alpine white Gibson SG
- Gibson Custom Shop ES-335
- Delaney 512
- Stogie Box Blues 4-string
- Danelectro baritone
Amps
- Category 5 Andrew 2x12
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
Effects
- Dunlop volume pedal
- Analog Man King of Tone
- JHS Mini Foot Fuzz
- Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
- MXR Carbon Copy
- Boss PS-5 Super Shifter
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power ISO-5
Strings, Picks, & Slides
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinkys (.010-.046)
- 1.0 mm picks (any brand)
- Various brass and ceramic slides
And where was that? āI wanted to lean into superpowers,ā Fish quickly answers. āWhat are my strengths, what are the things that people know me for and recognize me for, and what can I amplify to make this a real statement record? Itās funny, because everybodyās scratching their heads about what genre this falls into, but I know where every song startedāwith a blues riff.ā
Born out of the blues it may have been, but when the Paper Doll material reached the studio (actually, two studios: the Orb in Austin and Savannah Studios in L.A.), it went through some changes, partly due to the bandās contributions, partly due to Harlowās conceptual leaps. āBobbyās like a musicologist,ā Fish says approvingly. āHeās deep. He pulls from so many different spaces, and heās definitely introduced me to some things that I wasnāt hip to over the years. Thatās done a lot to shape my musical tastes.ā If youāve had the significant pleasure of attending one of the many gigs in which Fish breaks out proto-punk nuggets like the MC5ās āKick Out the Jamsā and Loveās ā7 and 7 Is,ā well, now you know the guy to thank.
āThis time we set out to make something that felt live.ā
Perhaps not surprisingly, one of Paper Dollās best tracks, āRusty Tazor,ā is a similar romp through the garage. In a rare case (for this album) of the producer bringing in someone he knows, Harlow tapped Mick Collins of cult faves the Gories and the Dirtbombs for backing vocals. āHe adds such a personality to that song,ā Fish says. āAnd Iām a punk rock fan. I love that whole era. I just love this raw, uninhibited way of playing. Thereās nothing precious about it. Leaning into the edgesāthatās where the real shit lies.ā
Because the Paper Doll sessions took place in between periods of touring, Fish only brought her road instruments, including a new white Gibson SG and Stogie Box Blues 4-string cigar box guitar (see sidebar for more on her personal collection). But both the Austin and L.A. studios presented plenty of other options. āA ton of guitars,ā Fish remembers with a laugh, āin varying degrees of disrepair. I used a rather unruly [Gibson ES-] 335 in Savannah for āSweet Southern Sounds.ā You know how some guitars fight you when you play them? Well, I like a little bit of fight, but not so much that Iām pulling the strings out of the saddle, and it was fighting me like that. It was hard to push the strings down, I could only bend in certain places. But that just made the performance more intense, and it sounded good. There was also a Tele and a Strat that they had at the Orb. We had so many tools at our disposal, it was like, āLetās go nuts and play with everything we can.āāThat choice of m.o. also sounds like a positive way to respond to a career moment that Fish calls āan incredible ride. Especially in the last year-and-a-half, two years, itās just upped the ante even more. Thereās nothing more to do, really. I went out, I played to the best of my ability and I did the thing that Iāve been working hard to do for the last 15 years or so. And itās awesome to be able to show up in that capacity and perform alongside people that Iāve really looked up to. I just feel grateful. I know Iām lucky.ā
Fishās Favorites
Fish has a brawling style of playing slide, often on her cigar box. āLose You,ā on her new album, is especially representative of her approach to the classic blues technique.
Photo by Jim Summaria
For nearly a decade, Samantha Fishās primary stage axe has been a 2015 alpine white Gibson SG that she bought new online. Sheās still got it, but last year it ran into some trouble. āI ended up having to reglue the neck over the summer,ā she says, āand itās been having tuning issues. So Gibson sent me another white SG thatās just beautiful, in great shape. The neckās a bit fatter, which is cool, different from mine. Iāve been using that one a lotāāindeed, the new SG is all over Paper Doll. āIāve hung onto it, and I feel bad about that. I donāt want to be the person who borrows a guitar and keeps it. But it just played so great, and it was like, āI need this thing. What can I do to keep it?ā Luckily, the people at Gibson have been so good to me over the years.ā
An even more recent addition to Fishās electric arsenal is a Custom Shop Gibson ES-335 in silver sparkle finish, purchased in the fall at Eddieās Guitars in St. Louis. āBecause I played a 335 on āSweet Southern Soundsā in the studio, I was like, āWell, Iām gonna need one live, so of course I have to get this one!ā Iāve always wanted a silver sparkle, and this one is pristine. Iām so scared of the first scratch I get on it, or buckle rash. Iām probably gonna cry!ā
Fish hasnāt been playing her Delaney SF1 Tele-style āFish-o-casterā so much recently, but another Delaney model, the hollowbody 512, is still getting lots of action (often tuned to open D for slide use), as is her Stogie Box Blues 4-string, equipped with a P-Bass pickup. Her Danelectro baritone, Bohemian oil-can guitar, and clutch of Fender Jaguars are also safe at home, along with her current acoustic main squeeze, a new Martin D-45.
YouTube It
Samantha plays Jimi in this September 2024 performance from the most recent Experience Hendrix tour. The selection: āFire.ā
After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musicianās adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. āI just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,ā he says. āIt just feels kind of like youāre walking around a movie set all the time.ā
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwinās concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Bookerās self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. āI was just trying to find the things that I liked,ā he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,ā says Booker. āI just wasnāt interested in it anymore. I hadnāt heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.ā
āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasnāt interested in it anymore.ā
LOWER is Bookerās most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoiseās Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Bookerās own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitarāmore atmosphere, less ānoodly stuffā: āThis album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.ā
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Bookerās creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener āBlack Oppsā is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. āLWA in the Trailer Parkā is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of āPompeii Statuesā sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of āHeavy on the Mindā are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ā60s pop of āShow and Tell.ā But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. āSlow Dance in a Gay Barā and āHope for the Night Timeā intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didnāt use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. āItās just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,ā says Booker. For him, working digitally and āin the boxā is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow peopleās minds. āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,ā he adds.
āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.ā
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didnāt use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.ā
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, āthree-dimensional worldā they were seeking. āBecause I was listening to more electronic music where thereās more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,ā says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. āI like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,ā says Booker. āEven if they donāt know what it is, theyāre catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.ā
On āSlow Dance in a Gay Bar,ā there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer āHope for the Night Timeā features sounds from Los Angelesā Grand Central Market. āSame Kind of Lonelyā features audio of Bookerās baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,ā says Booker. āI wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.ā
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. āYou hear people talking about, āI donāt want to have kids because the world is falling apart,āā he says. āBut I mean, I feel like itās always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.ā
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with āa troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.ā That vision is present in the video for lead single āLWA in the Trailer Park.ā
