I had an interesting grandpop. The guy stood about 5'6" and was hardy as hell. He was a WWII army vet and had the scars and tattoos to prove it. Man, he was a tough dude. Looking back, I idolized him, but I was also sort of scared of the guy. I’d seen him get into a few scraps—even getting into a fight with my other grandfather! One thing I really enjoyed about him was his love of auctions, flea markets, and sales. He had an eclectic taste for nostalgia and indulged himself with all manner of beer memorabilia, war artifacts, tools, and musical instruments.
His family was from Austria, and he truly enjoyed drinking beer and listening to polka music (which always seemed to go together really well). As a kid, I remember going to local carnivals and festivals where polka bands drew a rambunctious and happy crowd. Those were some great memories and, even today, I enjoy seeing polka bands because I think the music is just so darn upbeat and happy. And most of the lyrics are about drinking beer! Though my grandpop couldn’t play any instruments, he did have an interesting collection of accordions, drums, guitars, and these totally crazy percussion contraptions called a “boomba.” You really need a boomba in your arsenal.
Why am I describing my grandpop and polka music? Well, back in the day, there were many prized Italian accordions and concertinas used by these bands. One of these makers was the Excelsior company, which was started in America in 1924 by brothers Egisto and Roberto Pancotti. Eventually, the family returned to Italy and set up a factory in the famous Castelfidardo area, which became the home of many instrument manufacturers after WWII. One of the crazy accordions owned by my grandpop was a particularly sparkly Excelsior, and I recall him really admiring it. In fact, it had a special place on the wall behind his basement bar. Anyone else had a grandfather with a barroom in his basement?
Years later I would find myself visiting flea markets and estate sales to search out old oddities, just like my grandpop. One day I came upon a truly kooky electric guitar with the brand name of Excelsior. And wouldn’t you know it, the guitar and my grandpop’s accordion came from the same factory. See, by the early 1960s, many accordion companies were sensing the profit potential in electric guitars, and Excelsior jumped into the boom with a full line of 6-strings. Of those, the most expensive model was the Jamaica III (Photo 1), which retailed for $189.50.
Photo 2
These guitars are interesting in several ways. First off, many of the components were exclusive to Excelsior electrics. The bridge is a thing of engineering beauty, and it’s very effective. The pickups are excellent mini-humbuckers, but the pickup covers have this hard plastic (or ceramic) black insert (Photo 2).
The pickups are rather hot: The neck and middle pickups read in the high 8k range, but the bridge pickup measures a mighty 11k. When your pick hits those black covers, it creates this plinky, dinky, tapping sound that translates through the amp. You definitely can’t be sloppy when playing this guitar.
Photo 3
The headstock on these Excelsior solidbodies has to be one of my all-time favorite designs. It’s simple (Photo 3), but looks really cool in an understated way. My particular example has a black painted headstock, though the guitar sports an extra thick natural finish that resembles melted polyester. The bodies of these guitars were apparently made of maple, as were the necks, so the guitar feels substantial. All the Excelsior fretboards have a very rounded radius, but the extra odd carving at the lower strap button sets this model apart from the company’s other offerings.
So there you have it: an Italian guitar with an island name made at the same factory as a sparkle accordion hanging in the basement bar of my polka-loving grandpop. So throw one back this weekend in memory of this fine fella, and then go find a boomba. Consider it homework, due next month.
Watch the video demo:
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
LR Baggs HiFi Duet High-fidelity Pickup and Microphone Mixing System
"When a guitar is “the one,” you know it. It feels right in your hands and delivers the sounds you hear in your head. It becomes your faithful companion, musical soulmate, and muse. It helps you express your artistic vision. We designed the Les Paul Studio to be precisely the type of guitar: the perfect musical companion, the guitar you won’t be able to put down. The one guitar you’ll be able to rely on every time and will find yourself reaching for again and again. For years, the Les Paul Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without some of the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models."
Now, the Les Paul Studio has been reimagined. It features an Ultra-Modern weight-relieved mahogany body, making it lighter and more comfortable to play, no matter how long the gig or jam session runs. The carved, plain maple cap adds brightness and definition to the overall tone and combines perfectly with the warmth and midrange punch from the mahogany body for that legendary Les Paul sound that has been featured on countless hit recordings and on concert stages worldwide. The glued-in mahogany neck provides rock-solid coupling between the neck and body for increased resonance and sustain. The neck features a traditional heel and a fast-playing SlimTaper profile, and it is capped with an abound rosewood fretboard that is equipped with acrylic trapezoid inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius makes both rhythm chording and lead string bending equally effortless, andyou’re going to love how this instrument feels in your hands. The Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons add to the guitar’s classic visual appeal, and together with the fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, andGraph Tech® nut, help to keep the tuning stability nice and solid so you can spend more time playing and less time tuning. The Gibson Les Paul Studio is offered in an Ebony, BlueberryBurst, Wine Red, and CherrySunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes and arrives with an included soft-shell guitar case.
It packs a pair of Gibson’s Burstbucker Pro pickups and a three-way pickup selector switch that allows you to use either pickup individually or run them together. Each of the two pickups is wired to its own volume control, so you can blend the sound from the pickups together in any amount you choose. Each volume control is equipped with a push/pull switch for coil tapping, giving you two different sounds from each pickup, and each pickup also has its own individual tone control for even more sonic options. The endless tonal possibilities, exceptional sustain, resonance, and comfortable playability make the Les Paul Studio the one guitar you can rely on for any musical genre or scenario.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Introducing the Reimagined Gibson Les Paul Studio - YouTube
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.