Hard riffin’ retro rocker John Notto revs up his Sunset Strip-ready setup. Plus, don’t miss the holy-grail cameo!
Rock ’n’ roll has a long tradition of building on the work of previous stars and reinterpreting their influences. The Beatles honored the Isley Brothers, Elvis covered Little Richard … up to contemporaries like the Black Keys celebrating hill country blues beacons R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, and Greta Van Fleet echoing Led Zeppelin and Motown. Dirty Honey is reenergizing the hard-rock sound of the 1970s and sleazy Sunset swagger of the 1980s with their amalgamation of heroes that range from Prince and Queen to AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses.
Before Dirty Honey’s headlining show at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works, PG’s Chris Kies popped onstage to witness the power and might of guitarist John Notto’s Appetite-ish assault. Notto shows off a pair of old-soul Les Pauls, explains his intermittent two-amp approach (and where he stole it from), and we enjoy a treat encounter with a very special ’burst.
[Brought to you by D’Addario XS Electric Strings]
It’s a Jimmy Thing
John Notto is an ardent follower of Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin. (Check out his Hooked video, where he explains how Page’s storytelling riffs still impact his playing.) And while it’s clearly documented that Pagey often played Teles and low-powered amps in the studio, when it came time to rock onstage, he brought out the big guns. Continuing the Les Paul-into-a-Marshall heritage, Notto brings a pair of both on the road. His longtime No. 1 is a 2003 Gibson Custom Shop Historic Collection ’58 Les Paul Standard he bought in 2011. It features both Tom Murphy’s relic’ing handiwork and some natural wear-and-tear applied by Notto himself. The only change he’s made to this ’burst is swapping out the stock pickups for a set of Righteous Sound RAFs that offer a low-output purr, allowing the amp to do the heavy lifting. All his 6-strings take D’Addario NYXLs (.010–.052).
Tobacco Tone
While Notto has owned the ’58 reissue longer and it’s been on more Dirty Honey recordings than any other guitar, he admits that, in the live game, this 2019 Gibson Les Paul Standard ’50s has taken first prize. It was upgraded with Righteous Sound RAF-2s. (Notto says these pickups are a tad hotter, providing more stank, and they have a spike in the 1-3k range.)
Greenie’s Brother
Let’s be clear: This is not John Notto’s guitar. This real-deal 1959 Gibson Les Paul (Gemini 9 2204) belongs to Gibson Brand President Cesar Gueikian. It was lent to Notto for the Nashville gig, and we’re sure Gueikian had private security watching Notto’s every move while it was in his possession. Besides being an iconic instrument from the legendary year, this Gemini started its life on the Kalamazoo workbenches alongside Peter Green’s famous “Greenie” ’burst, as they’re sequential serial numbers. (If we’re splitting hairs, this Gemini was built ahead of Green’s axe. Here you can see a cool photo of Greenie’s current owner, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, and Gueikian posing with their treasures.) Notto mentions that the playing experience with this ’burst is like controlling an “electric eel,” because it’s so alive and reactive to everything he feeds it. Another takeaway from his time with the guitar is how “notes feed back but still stay sweet and desirable.”
The Real Deal
No relic master can match 63 years of aging.
Badge of Pride
Imagine the stories this headstock could tell if it could talk…. And, in a way, it can.
Marshall, Marshall!
Notto packs a punch when he hits the road. He travels with a potent pair of Marshalls. On the left he has an original 50W 1987 Marshall Silver Jubilee 2550, and on the right, he’s got a 2018 Marshall 1987X that’s essentially a 50W plexi reissue. The 2018 carries the load for most of the show (including taking all his pedals), but whenever it’s solo time, Notto engages (via a Radial BigShot ABY) the Silver Jubilee. He took the amp-for-solos trick from current Black Crowes’ lead guitarist and Earthless leader Isaiah Mitchell, who he saw use this setup when Dirty Honey opened for them in 2021. Both heads hit their own Marshall 1960BX 4x12s, loaded with Celestion G12M Greenbacks (25W).
Main Mule
Here’s how he dials in his plexi reissue.
Solo Stinger
And here’s how the Silver Jubilee complements the plexi when Notto hits the gas and steps into the spotlight.
Pedals for Pleasure
Keeping in the tradition of rock royalty, Notto tours with the essentials (aside from his Electro-Harmonix Nano POG that has the octave-up dialed down a bit and is only used on the band’s cover of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”). The bulk of the night gets colored by four tone-tailoring tools: an MXR Uni-Vibe, MXR Echoplex, MXR Reverb, and an Xotic SP Compressor. The Dunlop 535Q Cry Baby Q Mini Wah gets sprinkled in throughout the set. The Radial BigShot ABY switcher controls the amps, while the TC Electronic PolyTune 2 Noir keeps his guitars in check.
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
