L I S T E N W I T H Y O U R E Y E S

GREG EDWARDSFailure guitarist talks reunion,

new music and gear

RICH ROBINSONEx-Black Crowes guitarist talks

The Ceaseless Sight

SUMMER 2014Vol. 2, Number 4

SHOP TOURS:Collings Guitars and

Mojo Hand FX

PEDALS FOR CHARITYCircuits to Cure Cancer raises

money for St. Jude’s

GEAR REVIEWSCategory 5 Vera, BTMB Maggie

and more!

GUITARS GALOREThe Dallas International Guitar

Festival swings into gear

REB BEACHWinger guitarist talks about

new album, his sound

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Blake WrightPublisher/Editor-In-Chief

Contributing EditorsHolly Wright

Special ContributorsAlison RichterAdam GrimmBart Provoost

CreativeSeatonism - Josh Seaton

CartoonistRytis Daukantas

Design consultingRobert Macli

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Gearphoria is a free digital magazine published quarterly by WrightSide Media,

Houston, TX.

Mailing Address:WrightSide MediaATTN: GearphoriaPO Box 840035

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ON THE COVER: Chalkboard, TexasConcept by Blake Wright & Justice Fee

Art by Justice Fee

GEARPHORIA is the property of WrightSide Media. All rights re-served. Copyright 2014. No content of this digital publication can be republished without the express consent of WrightSide Media.

In this issue of GREETINGS gear faithful... and welcome to the summer of 2014! It’s going to be a hot one, and I’m not saying that just because I’m in Texas. In this issue of Gearphoria, we’ve gone a little Texas crazy with shop tours starting with the one of the state’s leading guitar brands in Austin’s Collings Guitars. We got the red carpet treatment from Alex, Bill and the rest of the crew via a private tour of the ever-growing Collings complex. We talked at length about wood, acoustics, electrics, cases... and hot rods! From Austin, we wound up in East Texas and within the walls of Mojo Hand FX world headquarters. We spoke with top man Brad Fee about the early days of the business and a pair of new pedals he has in the production pipeline. On the artist front, Rich Robinson (Black Crowes) filled us in on his new album and life following the loss of almost all of his gear in the floods fol-lowing 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. Failure’s Greg Edwards (born in Houston, TX...

Blake WrightPublisher/Editor-in-Chief, Gearphoria

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 9

by the way) gives us a preview of the band’s 2014 headlining tour and what it was like to re-team with his bandmates Ken and Kellii after a 17-year absence. Finally, Winger axe-slinger Reb Beach spoke with our Alison Richter about the band’s new album and his ‘sound’. Other features this time out include a trip to north Texas for the latest install-ment of the Dallas International Guitar Festival, while our effects guru Bart Provoost shows off a collection of the earliest effects pedals from UMI. In reviews, we take a look at the new 35-watt version of Category 5’s Vera combo amp as well as pedals from Big Tone Music Brewery and TC Electronics. Luke Johnson takes us to the Tool concert in Houston, while we take a closer look at new records from Big Wreck, Oz Noy Trio and Glenn Hughes’ new band Cali-fornia Breed. This issue brings to a close our second year here at Gearphoria... and changes are a-comin’. Volume 3, Number 1 will

still be published in early September, but it will have a fresh, new look as well as be the first on our new bi-monthly schedule. You heard right! There will now be six issues of Gearphoria per year. I guess I’d better stop typing and get busy. I have a lot of work ahead of me. To think, not 30 months ago the plan was to close my little effects website down and walk away. Life’s funny, ain’t it? Thank you for being a part of the Gear-phoria story so far... and I hope you’ll come along as we write the next chapter.

Convert your 6L6or EL34 ampto a Class-Aamp using

EL84s.

YellowJacketsTC.com

Tube Converters

GEAR QCategory 5 Amps Vera 54Big Tone Music BreweryMaggie 56TC Electronic Ditto X2 58

ContentsContents4Bill Collings has made guitars for four decades. He weathered many a storm, including the most recent economic tussle of 2008 and has come out of each stronger than before. Gearphoria visited the Collings shop recently to find the company back in growth mode...

THERE’S CUSTOM... THEN THERE’S COLLINGS

Pg. 24

DEPARTMENTS O 60-CYCLE HUM 12

POINT-TO-POINT 18

THE WAYBACK MACHINE 20w/ Bart Provoost

GRIMM’S REALITY 22w/ Adam Grimm

ALBUM REVIEWS 60

WHAT’S THAT DUDE PLAY? Eagulls 45

FEATURES D

INTERVIEW: RICH ROBINSONFormer Black Crowes guitarist talksabout making his new record and losinga ton of gear 32

PROFILE: MOJO HAND FXWe journey to Kirbyville, TX to talkbeginnings with the Mojo Hand crew 36

INTERVIEW: GREG EDWARDSFailure is back... almost two decadesafter they broke-up. We spoke with guitarist/bassist Greg Edwards about the reunion 40

WRAP-UP: DIGF 2014A venue change gummed up logistics,but the show was still guitar heaven 46

INTERVIEW: REB BEACHWinger guitarist tells us about hisrelationship with Kip and the new album 50

PHOT

O: M

ATT M

ENDE

NHAL

L

12 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

Circuits to Cure Cancer raises around $31kTiming snafu, big hearts benefit St. Jude’s in second annual charity auction

THE SECOND annual Circuits to Cure Cancer auction brought in about $31,000 to be donated to St. Jude’s Children’s Re-search Hospital. The auction consisted of effect pedals, guitar straps and other gear goodies donated by builders, retailers and others with 100% of the proceeds going to the hospital. The 2014 effort consisted of over 50 pedal companies and 120 effects pedals - more than double the total from the 2013 auction. The effort, spearheaded by Blakemore Effects’ top man Blake Hickey, experienced a bit of a hiccup during its first ten day run on Reverb.com when the listings ended a bit prematurely. However, a group of winning bidders offered to let the organiz-ers re-list their winnings in an effort to raise more money. The auction’s run looks to have generated about $26,000 in revenues. Reverb then stepped up to donate an additional $5,000, bringing the total around $31,000. Official tallies had yet to surface prior to Gearphoria going to press. “I’m just really pleased with how the entire event went,” said Hickey. “There are no words!” Top items in the auction included a pair of Fulltone Tube Tape Echo machines, which went for $1,100 and $960, an Analog-man King of Tone that went for $620 and a pair of Dr. Scientist pedals that closed over $400 each. In 2013, the group raised around $16,000 for St. Jude’s. While there is no official word, the effort will likely return in 2015.

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 13

Amp Show comes to Texas

THE RECENT Dallas Amp Show was a cozy affair both by demeanor and repre-sentation. Several of the manufacturers on the preliminary exhibitors list ultimately decided against setting up at the Embassy Suites near Love Field, leaving only about a dozen or so to for attendees to explore. Even with the smaller footprint, quality was not hard to come by. Regional build-ers like Category 5, Red Iron, Dynamo and Longhorn had plenty of amps to get excited about, including the latter’s El Diablo - a 6L6-fueled Dumble-styled fire-breather. Two other regional brands showing for the first time anywhere were Roach Amps and Square Amps. Amp builder Austin Roach brought his Sweet Elissa head/cab and combo tone generators. The sexy, curve-fronted amps were both long on looks and tweakabil-ity. The Sweet Elissa is a two-channel, 45-watt amp sporting a pair of 6550 power tubes, voltage (Loudness) controls and a series of boost switches that can dial up the gain. Artisan builder Matt Richards of Square

Amps showed off his vintage radio inspired builds. He builds Champ-styled guitar amplifiers into the housings of old radios and the results are both striking and affordable. Other notables at the show included PRS, with guitarists David Grissom and Lance Lopez in tow, Hovercraft Amps of

Portland, Oregon, Celestion with their new American-voiced A-Type driver, and Satellite Amps and their array of plug-and-play scorchers. It remains unclear if Loni Specter will bring another show to Texas after less-than-stellar results in both Austin a few years back, and now Dallas.

Fewer vendors, attendees don’t stop the rock

AMP SHOW WHISPERS: There is something pretty cool happening with this Hovercraft Amp. Unfortunately, under pain of death, that’s all we can tell you for now. As for the Archon, PRS’ new high-gainer... wouldn’t a 25-watt combo of this beauty be cool? Yeah... PRS thinks so too.

14 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

Neo Instruments ships Mk II of popular rotating speaker simVentilator II ships in June

FULDA, Germany-based Neo Instruments is set to begin shipping a revised version of its popular Leslie rotating speaker simulation pedal. The new Ventilator II is a second-gen-eration stompbox that goes after the famed Leslie Model 122 speaker sound. Housed in a rugged metal chassis measuring 6”x 5.25”x 2.25”, the Ventila-tor II boasts a smaller, pedalboard-friendly footprint than its predecessor. Three knob controls allow adjustment of rotor Speed Control (slow to fast), Balance, and Drive. Additional knobs control a unique virtual mic placement feature - one for the low bass rotor and one for the high rotary horn - that simulates close to distant microphone positions for each ‘driver’. Three footswitches provide By-pass, Speed Control, and Stop. The Ventilator II is distributed in North America by Gand Distributing of North-field, Illinois, and is expected to carry an MSRP of $499.

NEWS u

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 15

Moog updates the thereminThe new Theremini aims to marry old school feel with today’s technology

MOOG Music is now shipping its updated take on the vintage theremin - a quirky, no-hands electronic instrument used by the likes of Jimmy Page and Joe Bonamassa to bend and warp guitar notes and chords. The new Theremini sports a sound engine that captures the full, sonic vocabulary of Moog synthesizers and effects, allow-ing for a wide range of styles and tones. The front panel features a multi function LCD screen, which displays a chromatic tuner with real-time feedback of each note as it is played - a useful tool for correcting a player’s position and pitch for each note. The Theremini also features a portable design with tabletop feet, bottom nesting pitch antenna, and a built-in speaker for quick setup and rehearsal anywhere. “Learning to play a traditional Theremin is extremely difficult because there’s no tactile feedback, so you have to rely com-pletely on your ears,” said Moog Music chief executive Mike Adams. “The theremini has built-in tools that not only help users learn to play, but also teach pitch recognition and scales. Now anyone can play immediately.” The Theremini is priced at $319.

EHX teases organ sim pedalTHE CREW at Electro-Harmonix is continuing the roll they have been on since unleashing a rash of new pedals post-Winter NAMM 2014 with a tease of yet another future release. According to a post on the company’s web blog, this is the B9 Organ Machine. We’re short on details, but the name suggests it might cover similar ground to pedals like the EarthQuaker Devices Organizer. The blog post says if you dig The Doors Ray Manzarek’s combo organ tone on ‘Light My Fire’ or the tone-wheel organ tone of Booker T cooking up some ‘Green Onions’ with the M.G.s, you will like the B9. Stay tuned!

MIKE LULL has debuted his take on a classic tele body. Dubbed the TX Chubby, Lull took the basic tele shape in mahogany, hol-lowed it out, added thickness to the overall shape and a maple top for a unique feel and sound. The center section is solid, which leads to options galore from humbuckers to P90s to Bigsby trem-olo. The company calls the guitar light, as well as resonant and warm, lending itself to styles from jazz to rockabilly and beyond.

Blakemore EffectsPortland, ORNot only has Blake Hickey been the point man for the Circuits To Cure Cancer fundraiser the past two years, his pedal company has a new stomp on the way... the Motor City Fuzz.

Creation PedalboardsAsheboro, NCOne of the latest in the new breed of custom pedalboard builders, Creation does some eye-popping work that has a lot of pedal freaks itching for a real estate upgrade.

Neo InstrumentsFulda, GermanyThe rotating speaker sim specialists at Neo Instruments have released the Ventilator II - the successor to what many regard as the best Leslie sim pedal on the planet (see story left).

Stone Deaf FXManchester, UKThe company that brought you the PDF-1 over-drive returns with two new offerings - the Fig Fumb fuzz and Trashy Blonde distortion.

MU-FX/Beigel Sound LabEncinitas, CAMike Beigel is bringing the old gang back to tempt and entice a new generation of filter fanatics. If you haven’t heard his Tru-Tron 3X yet, what are you waiting for?

bnd / one : the world’s most portable guitar stand.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bnd/bnd-one-the-worlds-most-portable-guitar-stand

Guitar Pedals from Sublime Guitar Company: First Productionhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/683775433/guitar-pedals-from-sublime-guitar-company-first-pr

Ghost Effects Lunar Incantation Fuzz Pedal https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1834452670/ghost-effects-lunar-incanta-tion-fuzz-pedal

Artist Series Guitar - Custom Guitars Designed by Youhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/580938928/artist-series-guitar-custom-guitars-designed-by-yo

G.A.F. about D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1607754330/gaf-about-dilligaf

Help VFE Pedals launch a new, interactive custom shop service! https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-vfe-pedals-launch-a-new-interac-tive-custom-shop-service

(SUCCESSFUL)

WEEKS 20 and 21 of 2014

British Pedal Company Players Series The Zonk MachineBritish Pedal Company Players Series Tone Bender Mark IIIElectro-Harmonix Nano Bass Big Muff PiElectro-Harmonix XO Deluxe Big Muff PiHeavy Lid Effects Memphis OverdriveTC Electronic Mini Corona - Mini ChorusTC Electronic Mini Flashback - Mini DelayTC Electronic Mini Shaker - Mini VibratoTC Electronic Mini Vortex - Mini FlangerWampler Pedals Latitude - Tremolo Deluxe Allsound SCR-2 Stereo ChorusBlackout Effectors Special Twosome Deluxe

SOURCE: effectsdatabase.com

BRANDS ON THE RISE

KICKSTARTED

NEW PEDALS

16 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

http://www.bigtonemusic.com

18 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

‘The dark areas...’The knock-on effect of the Taylor McGrath Guitars hullabaloo is a bigger problem

WE’VE SEEN it a lot. Upstart gear build-ers, some with not much more than a soldering iron and a dream, start solicit-ing the interwebs for orders on their ‘new’ guitar, amp or pedal that is sure to revolutionize all of MI... or at the very least, the would-be customer’s playing. But somewhere in the murk between the initial enthusiasm over having a hot product and the widening grin once real money starts rolling in, something sinister lurks. A spark of an idea that, for some, can grow into a raging inferno of invincibility and greed. It is a temptation the internet provides much too easily. The right mix of upfront web marketing can secure a handsome payday... while

the benefits of selective anonymity can tempt a less-than-wholesome soul to a quick bolt, slipping out of the world of 1s and 0s and into a getaway car headed for Mexico. Now, these cases are few and far between, but they are out there and fairly well documented in gear circles. While the recent case against California-via-Australia’s Taylor McGrath Guitars (TMG) doesn’t appear to be a brazened smash-and-grab scenario, it has some of the some effects. I don’t know Antonio Taylor personally. Never met him. But his background has its ‘dark areas’... referred to in the company’s recent video inter-view attempting to clear the air... and

while he appears as if he will be trying to make good on the ills brought on by TMG, not many are ready to take that as a guarantee. While an awful thing to go through as a customer out the cash due to an outstanding, undelivered order, the whole debacle carries a more damaging flip side. Not 24 hours after the TMG stuff broke on the now epic, multi-part Gear Page thread, I had other boutique builders e-mailing and messaging about how they have to explain to others, their clients, how they are legit, how they are good to deliver on all of their pre-orders, how they, basically, are not TMG. Given that TMG is no fly-by-night operation

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 19

INTERVIEW: TMG posted an interview with Antonio Taylor (right), co-founder of the guitar company, to answer allegations of wrong-doing and questionable business practices.

- they’re established, they’ve been to NAMM, they’ve delivered product, re-ceived pro endorsements, etc... - makes it that much worse. Boutique gear con-noisseurs and others with high-end gear fetishes will start asking themselves just who is trustworthy out there? If this sup-posed established brand can pull this, is there any safe bet? It’s a natural question... and a frighten-ing one. It can give pause to anyone be-fore they click the ‘Proceed to checkout’ button on a small builder’s web store. It can prompt them to rethink, or even worse, abandoned the purchase. For the smallest builders just starting out... with a great product and a growing fan base... it’s a black eye they don’t deserve. TMG and others who have slid down this slippery slope need to keep in mind that the guitar-centric boutique MI busi-ness, while growing, is still fairly small. Missteps will not only impact your ability to generate business, it can hurt your fel-low builder as well... and while that might

not sound like such a bad thing (they’re the competition after all) on the surface, the consumer base - a small group too -

has a long memory, and if you turn them off to boutique builds today and in the future, everyone suffers. Everyone. G

20 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

with BART PROVOOST

IT’S ANOTHER eye candy edition for Gearphoria's Wayback Machine. This time I'd like to show you some pictures of pedals made by UMI (United Musi-cal Instruments). The company was founded in 1967 by high school student Richard Soloway

who later also founded (and still heads) NAPCO Security Systems. First, he made amps for Gracin's Music in Freeport, New York, but after meeting musicians (including Jimi Hendrix) he also started making ped-als. Here you can see three of them,

all owned by French collector Rafmax: the Buzz Tone & Volume Expander, the Treble-Bass Booster & Mute and the Wa Pedal. Besides these, UMI also made a Tone Booster which also exists with dif-ferent brand names, but I didn't find out who manufactured them. G

The earliest daysLate ‘60 treasures from one of the first pedal manufacturers... UMI

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 21

PHOT

OS CO

URTE

SY O

F RAF

MAX

22 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

GRIMM’S REALITYwith Adam Grimm

ONE OF MY all time favorite Fender amplifiers is the White Model 80, also known as the White Higher Fidelity. The main appeal, beyond sounding great, is that there is quite a bit of mystery and mystique surrounding these amplifiers, and their lap steel counterparts. Forest White was the production man-ager at Fender back in the 1950s. He was the guy that made everything happen. As the story goes, Leo Fender decided to make the White line as a surprise and a tribute to his friend. Forest did not know anything about the project until he was handed an amplifier as it came off the production line. There is a picture of Forest’s amplifier floating around. His had serial number AS0001. People have assumed that this was the first White amplifier ever pro-duced. While I am sure it is a very early one, I have seen at least two with an earlier style serial number, and earlier date code. Inside of each White amplifier, there was a schematic. It was almost identi-cal to the Fender schematics of the day, except it said White Amplifier company, instead of Fender. The schematic is very close to the 5F2A Princeton schematic of the same time period. This schematic was well and good, except that the amplifiers didn't always follow the schematic. So far, at least four different vari-ations on the circuit have been discovered. They aren't major changes, but it is enough

to alter the feel of the amplifier slightly. During this time period, Fender was using transformers from a number of manufacturers. Supposedly, Leo would use whatever was cheapest that fit what he needed. Schumacher, Triad, and New York Transformers (NYT) were the three more commonly used transformers. They could

be mixed and matched in any variation. You could have a Triad power with a NYT output transformer. Voltages have been clocked anywhere from a low of 320v to 480v on the B+. That is a huge difference. Speakers were usually the same as what was available in Princeton and Champs of the same time period. Most

The White mysteryA tribute? A learning tool? Just what was this odd-ball Fender build?

AMP TALK u

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 23

often was an Oxford 8-inch alnico speak-er. These all had orange-colored Los Angeles tax stickers on them. Occasion-ally, a Jensen P8T would be used. There doesn't seem to be much of a rhyme or reason to which would be used. The cabinetry was standard Fender, but the covering was most definitely not. The covering of a White Higher Fidelity is a thin, paper material. I believe this lends itself to a livelier cabinet, compared to the the thick blanket like covering of tweed. There were a few slightly different patterns to the covering, but all had a

similar coloring to them. The White's used similar grill cloth to Fender, but in a dark royal blue coloring. Blue leather handles finished out the look. To add an extra element to the confu-sion of the White amplifier saga, no one knows if they were ever actually sold. As far as I know, there were over 750 of the amplifiers made. I have seen date codes between 1955 and 1960. They might have gone into 1961. There is no printed information that has ever shown up. No catalogs. No price sheets. No signs. No banners. No

displays or advertisements. The more common theory is that these amps were used in schools, or simply for teachers. I don't know if we will ever know. G

Adam Grimm is the owner and founder of Satellite Amplifiers. The Southern Califor-nia-based amp shop specializes in high-qual-ity, no-nonsense tone machines. Grimm also is an avid amplifier collector with over 100 amps of various shapes and sizes to his name. Check out Satellite’s range here... www.satel-liteamps.com.

MADE

TOORDERBehind the scenes at one of the largest boutique guitar manufacturers in Texas... Collings Guitars

IMAGES & WORDS BY BLAKE WRIGHT

WE ROLLED into the Collings Guitars complex west of Austin, Texas, on Highway 290 the morning of ‘Salsa Day’. It was the day when employees would bring in their own secret recipe salsa for judging by their peers and company management and, we sup-pose, ultimately reign as the guitar maker’s Salsa Champion, at least for 2014. Regrettably, we were not asked to judge. Collings’ campus is made up of unmarked white buildings on a pretty good sized piece of land blanketed with wild grasses and dotted with oak trees. Walking in the main entrance, we were greeted with a well-appointed reception area with a meeting room off to the left. That room’s hand-built, solid wood conference table is representative of everything Collings stands for - the best quality mate-rials, uncompromised craftsmanship and a meticulous attention to detail. The buzz in the building is strong - a positive sign for the veteran luthier who, like many, is still trying to shake off the last, lingering effects of the 2008 recession. “Everything is doing ok,” says founder Bill Collings regarding the current state of play. “We have good people. We have a great place to work. It is better now than it’s been in the past five years, I’ll tell you that. 2008... that was tough. It killed people. It wouldn’t have killed us if it didn’t kill all of the dealers. There are some dealers that are really back now, but there are some who just haven’t seemed to recover. I’m not sure what that is about.” Currently, Collings employs around 95 people. Historically an acoustic guitar-focused operation, the company kicked off a successful mandolin business in 1995. Ten years later, Collings added electrics to its roster. When the recession started to choke off sales, the company added lower cost items, like ukeleles, to its offerings with hopes to ride out the storm and maintain its core staff by keeping them busy. The company builds about 3500 instruments a year, so it is not exactly a small operation, but it’s nowhere near the numbers of a Martin, Taylor, Fender or Gibson.

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 25

FEATURE u Collings Guitars

Into the shop. Exiting the front office area we entered the acclimating room - a moisture-con-trolled area of the shop where rafts of wood ‘hang out’ for at least two to three months to achieve the best balance be-fore it sets off on the road to becoming a Collings instrument. It is all here - mahog-any, alder, ash, quilted maple, rosewoods, koa... the list goes on. “Generally, when we come across nice, high quality wood, we stockpile it because you never know if you’re going to have that opportunity next time you need it,” explains Alex Rueb, director of marketing and business de-velopment for Collings. “We have a lot of wood out in the warehouse that we have been hoarding for a long time. The highest quality stuff is getting used up much faster than it is being replen-ished. Wood is getting more expensive. It’s getting a lot harder to source. Not only finding the best quality material, but you have to find somebody that knows how to cut it just right, which is also some-thing that can make as much difference as anything else. The woods need to be cut at the right angle to show off the wood, or maximize its strength. Surprisingly enough there are cutters out there that don’t un-derstand the best use... There are cutters that try and maximize volume, which I’m

sure is what a lot of them are going for, but actually making the material the best is a whole different story.” To the rear of this area is the worksta-tion of Bruce Van Wart, Collings’ master craftsman and the first person Bill Collings ever hired. Van Wart’s area is littered with yellow and green 8x5 cards, most slath-ered in red ink. These are Collings build

sheets. They travel around the shop with each build from the point of raw materi-als to instrument completion. The red on each card indicates customization choices made by the client. Off to the side, stacked 30 deep, are a variety of acoustic guitar tops. Van Wart is the person that picks out every single top for Collings’ acoustics, and has done so

WAREHOUSED: Wood is kept in the warehouse until needed (left), while other choice material has already been blocked out for necks (right).

“It is better now than it’s been in the past five

years, I’ll tell you that.2008... that was tough.

It killed people.”

- Bill Collings

for the last 20,000-plus guitars. “He’s the true wood expert,” says Rueb. “He’s the guy that decides what wood we use from our suppliers and what we send back. Every piece of wood is different. Picking the right wood for the body size and combination of features is hugely important. He does that... as well as the voicing of the all of the tops, getting them

to the right thickness to maximize the vibrations... which he does largely by feel at first. Judging stiffness... tapping it to see how it reacts to vibrations. Each gets sanded to a unique, uniform thickness and then we’ll taper the edges, which is done by hand, to really maximize how well the top is ringing out. That’s a big part of how we control the consistency. Trying to get as much as you can out of a piece of wood. Be-ing the size that we are and being able to have one person do this. It takes advantage of the wealth of knowledge amassed over time. Every acoustic

guitar goes through him.” Van Wart initiates the build on roughy 30 to 35 guitars per week. These instru-ments will spend about five to six weeks getting carved, sanded and otherwise prepped to be assembled as a body. As many as 30 Collings craftsmen and women will touch a single Collings instru-ment during the creation process. No one

26 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

FEATURE u Collings Guitars

person will build a guitar from start to finish. Everyone is an expert of their own discipline. Body builders will build the bodies. Neck specialists will only work on necks. This area also hosts the beginnings of each Collings mandolin and ukelele. The company ships between 300 and 400 mandolins per year. That’s a lot of maple and spruce. The ukelele craze has started to ebb a bit, but during the rush there was an 18-month period where the company had to stop taking new orders due to an inability to keep up with demand. Currently, Collings produces somewhere between five and eight ukes a week.

The mill. One of the larger areas of the Collings complex is the mill - the work area filled with CNC machines, benders, jigs, fixtures and other pieces of kit essential to the building process. It is here that most of the parts that make up Collings instru-ments are made. “It is a pretty challenging job that these guys have... to supply all of the parts for all of the product lines that we offer on a build-to-order basis,” explains Rueb. “Not everything goes through in a predictable schedule, but we try and operate as lean as we can when it comes to making the parts that we need when we need them. We have 90-plus base models and then lots of customization that goes in on top of that.” Certain machines in this area hold to certain tasks. Systems are in place throughout the shop area to keep things running as smoothly as possible as pieces move through the construction phase. It is not uncommon to start a part on a Monday and finish it on a Thursday. CNCs are a big part of Collings’ opera-tion. They do the leg work of getting most instrument components roughed into shape before the handwork takes over. “These machines will cut within a 1/1000ths of an inch of accuracy and are very critical to certain parts of the opera-tion, like cutting fret slots and shaping neck profiles,” says Rueb. “We definitely couldn’t do what we do without them, but they are not the only part of the equation. It’s about utilizing the tools that you have. Some things a machine can do better than a person and some things a person can do better than the machine.” To the left of the main work area is a row of stand-alone contraptions in

various states of readiness. These are the side benders that give the acoustics their shape. The old school method was to ap-ply heat and steam and work the curves by hand. Bill Collings sought a better solution and constructed his own benders with longer arms for added leverage and introduced pneumatics to more evenly apply pressure to the wood. Collings ap-plied a similar system on his hand-built

cutaway tools. In fact, he is responsible for many of the jigs and fixtures the com-pany uses on a daily basis. “Bill is quite the inventor,” says Rueb. “He is a metal worker as much as a wood worker.”

Bill’s junk drawer. Off the mill is a room filled with a fair bit of tech, CAD-populated computer

AROUND THE MILL: There is no shortage of grist and gadgetry around the Collings shop floor. From clamps to side benders, CNCs to cutaway tools. Fix-tures are a fixture... and a big part of the business.

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FEATURE u Collings Guitars

screens, a spanking new 3D printer... and the shell of an old hot rod stuffed with old guitars, cases, car parts and other dusty, bric-a-brac. Rueb refers to it as ‘Bill’s junk drawer’ - where the spark of future and current projects reside until retrieved in a fit of creativity... or simply discarded. Collings himself is here, hands covered in black paint he swears will not wash off, going over the particulars of the latest

company acquisition - a $1700 Makerbot 3D printer. He has already ordered a big-ger one. “It’s for prototyping basically,” explains Collings. “If we’re doing CAD work and we want to see what something looks like before we carve it and go through the hassle of making it, we can print the heel for a guitar... little stuff like that. Look at shapes... or mechanical things if we’re

making jigs and fixtures. We could print, say, a drill guide or something... all of the things we would have had to use the CNC for. It is going to pay for itself pretty quick-ly. It’ll be another month or two (for the bigger one to arrive)... and we’ll be able to do a neck upright... standing straight up. A whole neck if we wanted. Isn’t that funny? It’s quite a technology. For us, do-ing casting and stuff like that... even for tailpieces... if I would have done that, that would have got us a little closer. Knowing that we can use the print as a plug for the ceramic and then do lost-wax casting? That’s bizarre! So rather than wax, they burn out the plastic. That’s the wild part. That’s where it gets wild. Not a lot of parts like that on a guitar, but for the fixturing and a lot of that stuff it is really good for. Maybe pick-up covers... prototype it, mill it out and see if that’s what we want.”

Who is Mercury Charlie? Towards the back of the shop is a bonafide hot rod garage. Bill Collings love for guitars is matched only by his affinity for classic cars and hot rods. Mercury Charlie’s Hot Rod Shop moved into the building about a year ago, specializing in restoration work. Bill used to race Miatas, but doesn’t really have time for that any-more. That doesn’t mean however, that he doesn’t still love rebuilding and driving old classics. In fact, the 3D printer we just saw? It wasn’t printing guitar components. It was prototyping car parts. “Bill splits his time doing car stuff... fabricating and rebuilding engines, frames... bending the metal, getting the curves just right,” explains Rueb. “There are a lot of similarities between cars and electric guitars. The lines, the curves... they are all really important.” Collings says it’s about an 80/20 split, his time in the guitar shop versus the garage. He and Charlie are planning to show their first car at the Grand National Roadster Show next January in Ponoma, California. “It’ll be one of two,” says Collings. “Ei-ther my 1936 Ford or the 1955 Nomad - it’s a guitar hauler. One of the two... or maybe both. It depends on how well it goes over the next eight months or so.”

Mandos and electrics... and control. Around the corner and down the hall is the Mandolin shop and adjacent electrics build area. It is at this point where the instruments start to resemble the final products. Mandolin necks and bodies

THE MAN AND HIS TOYS: Bill Collings flips through paperwork related to his new Makerbot 3D printer while work at Mercury Charlie’s revs up... and ‘Bill’s junk drawer’ (right) could become street legal soon.

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FEATURE u Collings Guitars

THE CASE FOR CASES

get worked by hand and binding gets shaped. The company offers about a dozen different mandolin models, each tweakable with a slew of custom-izable options. “There is tons of hand work and detail work in an F-style mandolin,” reveals Rueb. “Some of them can get pretty ornate. Tons of sanding... for an F-style, there is eight or nine hours of hand sand-ing after everything is put together.” Over in the electrics assembly room next door, all of Collings’ set-necks go through there hand-work and are prepped for paint. “Right now we’re building about 15 electric guitars a week,” says Rueb. We do some solid wood, semi-hollow and fully hollow. We’ve got quite a few models at this point. There are probably 10 to 12 models that we’ve built up to since we started doing this in 2005.” With so many models, and so many possible variants, it would seem logical that there would be a documented set of controls for each step of the process,

but that isn’t exactly the case. Much like many art-based manufacturing operations, documentation is second to apprenticeships. Most learn by doing, not by reading. However, the company has implemented a plan to create more control documents to outline the specific and correct processes in the life cycle of each Collings instrument. “We’re trying to document as much as we can,” confesses Rueb. “A lot of this stuff gets developed so quickly that we can’t keep up with documentation. A lot of how these options present themselves is that we have a customer that says ‘Oh, I want to order this guitar, but I’d really like this, this and this.’ We probably get 10 requests a day for things that we don’t offer. We try and accommodate as much as we can, but at the same time the op-tions can get out of control if we don’t say ‘no’ to some things.”

Waterloo rising. At the 2014 NAMM show, Collings showed off a new, more affordable acous-

tic guitar. Dubbed the Waterloo (the old name for Austin, Texas), the parlor-style guitar takes its cues from the old Kalama-zoo brand and offers Collings’ attention to detail minus some of the bells and whistles that can go into making a more expensive acoustic. “There are a lot of guitars in history that are just wonderful guitars that have been passed up,” says Collings. “I have a Ka-lamazoo that I really like. Everybody that has played that guitar loves that guitar... so that was the beginning of that idea. ‘Oh, if I could have one of those for that much, I’d do that.’” The issue with many of the old Kalama-zoo’s and similar acoustics of the era is finding one in great shape. These guitars were built for players, not collectors. Those that are still around today would likely need some potentially costly resto-ration work. “I decided to make one... a guitar that fits that purpose,” explains Collings. “It’s got a minimal finish on it... it’s just a basic guitar. Very fun... and sounds great. There are lots

ONE OF Collings’ passion projects over the past few years is something a lot of guitarists (and guitar companies) probably take for granted - the guitar case. He is looking to revive the craftsmanship and care that was put into the classic Depression-era wooden cases, giving the instruments inside the support and protection they deserve. “I’m working on them right now,” explains Collings. “We worked through a few issues and I think finally we are going to be able to make them. They’re tough... believe me. We want to make it look like someone really cared when they made that case. We want to put a better fitting case on the inside. Everything has to fit very well. A lot of stuff is made so quickly, you need to have like 10 clasps to hold that lid on. Really, they started using those clasps because nothing fit well, so you had to cinch it down. I just use a folding clip... and it has to fit well to do that.” Collings is looking to achieve a level of standardization with the new cases even though he intended to make them for every differ-ent guitar size... including non-Collings models. “Your wood case has to be the same size and the padding has to be the same every time,” he says. “The smooth vinyl I use is hard to stretch around the radius corners and really make it look good. The seal that I use doesn’t have any stitching in it... it is nailed like the old ones used to be, and it looks like a fine suitcase rather than, you know, an afterthought.” Collings has some advanced prototypes (see photo) built up and the company is in the process of hiring and training staff that will be dedicated to building cases. A new area of the shop earmarked for case manufacturing should be ready to roll this summer.

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FEATURE u Collings Guitars

and lots of those guitars that have just passed us all by that are just wonderful instruments.” Collings is sitting on an inventory of Waterloos right now and is building about one per day. Once the company amasses around 50 of them,it plans to start selling them to dealers.

Set-up and ship out. Nearing the end of the line, Collings instruments reach the final set-up room, and ultimately, the packing shipping area. Most Collings acoustic instruments will spend about three days in the set-up room being prepped for playing... then checked and re-checked. Nearby, a hulking gray box is meticulously work-ing across the fretboard of a Collings I-35 electric. The machine is a Plek - a computer-controlled fret dressing robot. It can record fret height in relation to the fretboard. The Plek’s main job is to elimi-nate fret buzz and add out-of-the-box playability to a stringed instrument. “The Plek is a really great tool that has helped us take the precision of our fret work to the next level,” explains Rueb. “It’s nice to have a graph of everything that is going on with our fingerboard. It’s a great way to consistently measure things. It does save some time, but it has helped in other areas as well. We’ve had it for a couple of years now. It’s an expensive piece of equipment, but it has paid off so far.” The rest of the hardware dressing takes place post-Plek and soon the instruments will move into the shipping area. Here each Collings creation gets cased, boxed and loaded to begin their journey to a Collings retailer, but not before a few more once-overs to make sure everything is in tip-top condition. For example, acoustics get taken into an adjacent clos-et area with extremely harsh florescent lighting to expose any potential flaws in the finish. Collings currently has about 80 dealers in the US and another 40 to 50 interna-tionally. Roughly 20% of the company’s business is overseas with the UK and Japan being the largest non-US markets. “Almost everything we do is sold before it’s started,” says Rueb. “We operate on a build-to-order model. We don’t carry inventory to where people can just call us up and buy. It is nice to have more de-mand than we can produce, but we will only increase our production if we can keep the quality where it needs to be.” G

HUMAN TOUCH: There are some things a machine simply cannot do as well as an experienced pair of hands. Top, left is a prototype of the forth-coming Collings Waterloo acoustic.

Around the shop...Collings’ recipe for success is a potent mix of machines and manhours. While machines like CNCs and the Plek are employed to excute some of the more precise tasks, the human element is never lost on any guitar, mandolin or ukelele built. As many as 30 people have their hands on any single instrument working its way through the shop towards completion.

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FEATURE u Collings Guitars

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK: From washing wood finishes and troubleshooting with Bruce Van Wart (above) to CNCs and Alex Rueb showing off a finished acoustic (below), you can see it all in a day at Collings. The company offers shop tours most Fridays.

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FEATURE u Collings Guitars

SHOP SIGHTS: The Plek works its magic on an I-35 (top, left) while work by both human and machine take place all around it. Below is a shot across just part of the bustling Collings mill.

...After the flood

WHEN IT CAME time to record his third solo record, Rich Robinson had lost his father and a treasure trove of near-priceless gear, but not the pas-sion for music or the fire of creativity. He walked into Applehead Re-cording near Woodstock, New York about as unprepared as ever

How guitarist Rich Robinson took a nomadic spirit, the death of his father and a natural disaster and created the best album of his career...

at the beginning of a new project, but with the assistance of drummer Joe Magistro and keyboard wizard Marco Benevento, the month-long process yielded The Ceaseless Sight - a 12-track slice of bluesy Americana drenched in shimmering rhythms and deft fretboard work. It’s his most

mature and complete album to date. GEARPHORIA spoke with Robin-son about the recording process, his dad, his gear and the ‘Great Cleans-ing of 2012’ just prior to the former Black Crowes axe slinger hitting the road in support of the newly-released record.

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GEARPHORIA: You entered the studio to record the new album without much set material. In hindsight, how would you rate that decision?

RICH: I always like making different records. The Crowes were always able to do kind of whatever we wanted. We just either forced it or it fell into our lap. We never felt pressure to make any specific kind of record. Being able to do that for 20 some odd years and now bringing that to my solo stuff, it’s just a really good feeling. I love the energy of being able to create while I’m working. It’s cool to go in with set ideas and you kind of know you can map out where it will go and there is not too many surprises. To me, I had so much fun this time around just really saying ‘Well, fuck it, let’s try this... let’s do this. That didn’t work. This worked. Let’s do it.’ It was much more fast-flowing for me and I felt a lot more creative synergy with the whole thing. When it was done I was really happy with it. It really turned out great.

GEARPHORIA: You returned to Apple-head in Woodstock for this one. How long were you there and what is it about Woodstock that calls you back?

RICH: We were there a month total. I re-ally like the people that own it and work there... they are really good people. And for whatever reason, I really connect on a creative level with Woodstock. Every time I’m up there I just feel a connec-tion with it... creatively and just how it is and how it feels. There is definitely something up there. I kind of always go back. It takes me about two weeks to work through... there is strong energy up there. It is kind of like you have to ‘work through’ Woodstock... and then once you are through it really opens up energetically. I thought it was really cool in that sense.

GEARPHORIA: The ghosts of a lot of great music dwell up there.

RICH: Absolutely!

GEARPHORIA: You also brought in one of our favorite keyboard players for the session - Marco Benevento.

RICH: Oh man... he’s unbelievable.

GEARPHORIA: How did you two hook

up? Was that at the suggestion of the Applehead guys?

RICH: Yeah, it was Mike (Birnbaum) and Chris (Bittner). (John) Medeski was going to play on the record, but trying to pin him down was getting more and more difficult. We were looking around and trying to get him in, but he couldn’t come this day and couldn’t come that day. So we started looking around and Chris Bitner and Mike Birnbaum said ‘Hey man, fucking Marco is like... the guy. Medeski is great. Marco is like the new Medeski.’ So I was like ‘Ok, that’s really cool... let’s try him out.’ I talked to him on the phone and he was a really

cool dude... just great energy. He came on in and just killed it. I was like ‘Fuck, man, this guy is unbelievable.’ I was really, really happy with him. It was just one of those things where you just click. He knew what I was doing. I totally trusted him. I was just really happy about the whole thing. It could not have been cooler.

GEARPHORIA: Marco brings a fairly unique brand of alchemy to the piano.

RICH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Look, the Crowes old keyboard player Ed Harsh I always thought was just supremely talented. Just a really talented musician

INTERVIEW u RIch Robinson

IF IT AIN’T BROKE: Robinson hasn’t changed much from his more recent Crowes rig or this one from his last solo outing.

34 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

and a great dude. It is hard to find people that you connect with, because Ed and I really had a strong connection. When he (Marco) first started playing I was like ‘Holy shit man! This guy is it!’ And to be such a cool guy makes it better. But the guy playing with me on tour is also fucking unbelievable... Matt Slocum. He’s played with Colonel Bruce Hamp-ton, Susan Tedeschi, Jimmy Herring. He’s an Atlanta dude... really fucking cool, very gifted keyboard player. It is amaz-ing to be able to play with these people. I was trying to get Marco for the tour, but his schedule is just so crazy. I was like ‘Fuck man, how do I get someone that can get close to that?’ So I talked to Jimmy Herring and actually Tyler from Tedeschi Trucks Band and I was like ‘Do you know any keyboard players?’ and he brought up Matt. He can hang with Marco. He can take those things, and interpret them, and deliver.

GEARPHORIA: Where did the album title, The Ceaseless Sight, come from?

RICH: It’s a lyric in one of the songs... and it kind of represents what thematical-

ly I thought the record was more about. The song ‘Down The Road’ has the line ‘Ceaseless sight on the horizon’ and I really just liked that instead of holding on the past or always looking backwards or holding on to useless shit. I really like the concept of just looking forward and have everything move out of that place. I thought it was cool and it seemed to be a permeating theme throughout the whole record and I just said ‘Oh, fuck it, let’s just call it this.’

GEARPHORIA: You’ve been on the move quite a bit over the past few years your-self... from New York, back to Atlanta and now Los Angeles.

RICH: We moved to Atlanta to be with my dad for the last few years of his life. My wife is from LA and when it came time for me to go on tour last year we just said... we have two babies... and all of her family is out here and we just needed the help. They are 16 months apart. They’re a lot of work. I’d left Atlanta for 12 years, so moving back it was good to be up the street from my dad and be able to help out and spend

time with him. He was in a lot of pain for those last few years. I had always felt good about our relationship, but it is tough to see a parent, someone so close to you, in pain and suffering like that. Being able to be with him and help I would not have traded for anything in the world. I think it is what most sons and daughters would want to do. And it was cool in a weird way to have closure with Atlanta. To go back to where you came from is really interesting. You go back and there are all of these places that you’re familiar with, but you’re dif-ferent. You’ve lead a different life and had all of these different experiences... and be at peace about never going back there. As far as LA, it is definitely a differ-ent place for me. You can be in a place a thousand times, but when you live there it is different. It looks different and feels different. It is funny how every city had its own pace and flow that you have to tap into, but I feel like I’m getting there.

GEARPHORIA: Hurricane Sandy flooded the Crowes’ warehouse. How many guitars did you ultimately lose as a result of the storm?

INTERVIEW u Rich Robinson

“My new record follows the path of my musical journey I’ve been on for 25 years. I feel a strong connection to where I’ve been musically, but more importantly where I’m going.”

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 35

RICH: I think about 60... 50 or 60. Some of them lived (laughs). Some of them were like on top of wardrobe cases and floated. When the rush of water came in... the room was so packed with gear, what was in the cases was drenched. They would open my vault and seawater would pour out. For whatever reason because they were filled with air the whole room just floated up. I have the White SG that was one of my favorite guitars... it lived. Even about six guitars that were ‘destroyed’ were able to be saved. My 335, my Goldtop, they were both saved by this company RS Guitar-works. It took them over a year to fix them, but they saved them. I have this ‘60s Guild 12-string that was really cool that was fixed. They had to replace the back, but the bracings and the rest of the guitar was good. Steve Stern over at the Gretsch Custom Shop fixed my Country Gentleman and my ’56 Gretsch Stream-liner. That was amazing. The Country Gentleman was just on the floor. It took the brunt of it... and he fixed it... and it sounds great. It plays great. My Dan Armstrong that was able to be fixed.

The neck was redone and the pickups were kind of tweaked. One Zemantis that I had... we plugged it in and it just worked. We didn’t want to mess with it... didn’t want to touch it again. This works... don’t even talk about it! (laughs) So yeah, 50 to 60 guitars... I lost a lot of my amps. All of my Harry Joyces were destroyed. But, sitting in Atlanta and... that band (Crowes)... there is such a built-up negativity in the band... well, not everybody... really just me and Chris. Just bad feelings and bad blood and all of that shit. I really kind of felt really relieved. In a lot of cultures water takes away negative energy. I kind of felt like a huge burden was taken off my back.

GEARPHORIA: You see this act as a sort of cleansing?

RICH: Yeah, absolutely, 100%. It was just like, fuck, man, because at the end of the day they are great guitars to have and it’s cool to have all of that shit, but none of it means anything. It’s a piece of wood with some strings on it, and there are other pieces of wood out there that are

just as good. The important ones were restored and brought back to me, but after they were cleansed, the way I see it. All of that energy just left, and it felt so much better in a weird way, letting go of all of that shit. I felt really good about it. Now, obviously it is still a bummer. When I was making the record I only had about seven guitars to use when I would have normally brought in 30... and I would have 20 amps, but I only had three amps that worked. It worked out. It was a different way to make a record for me because the choices were limited.

GEARPHORIA: As you prepare to hit the road, do you know what your stage rig will be this time out?

RICH: Pretty much the same as the Crow-es. I have those Reason signature amps... the 50-watt head with a 2x12 cabinet... and I’ll take out either an AC-30 or re-cently I’ve been using a new Magnatone which have been great. One of those... and my pedalboard and that’s about it. I’ll take out about 10 guitars, probably.

GEARPHORIA: Is your board still domi-nated by Way Huge stuff?

RICH: Yeah. That stuff is great. I really like those guys. Those pedals are great. That stuff.. and my Echoplexes and a Fender reverb unit. I also have this Full-tone wah that I really like.

GEARPHORIA: What’s been your latest gear acquisition?

RICH: I just got the first guitar off the line of my new signature 335. That is really cool. A couple of weeks before that I got another Teye guitar called the Konstan-tinopolis. It is a fucking gorgeous guitar. He just makes great guitars. Amp-wise, the newest amp that I’ve been playing has been that Magnatone... it’s a 22-watt with slant speakers. It’s a got a really cool clean sound and it works really well with the Reason. GEARPHORIA: You got a couple of shows coming up. Then what?

RICH: We’re going over to Europe. I’ll be in England, Holland, France and Poland, actually. I’ve never been to Poland, which will be really cool. My grandfather was Polish. G

INTERVIEW u RIch Robinson

LOST AND FOUND: Robinson favorite 335 was salvaged from the wrath of Sandy.

MOJORisin’

East Texas pedal purveyor rides plug-and-play success

IT WAS NO sure thing in 2012, when Brad Fee took on his Mojo Hand brand of effects pedals as a full time gig. He had just sold his portion of popular boutique effects retailer Tone Factor and knew he had a tough road ahead to grow the small brand into a daily breadwinner for him-self, his family and staff. The seeds of Mojo Hand can be traced back to around 2006 and the beginnings of the Tone Factor Cus-tom Shop. Just a handful of years removed from blowing up his first PAiA tube sound fuzz kit, Fee had already befriended folks like Robbie Wallace (Bad Bob Boost), Bob McBroom (PedalWorx) and Brian Marshall (Subdecay) when the first Tone Factor pedal came into being - the McBroom-built Hellbilly.

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FEATURE u Mojo Hand FX

“I didn’t even plan on it being a custom shop thing, but when he sent me the picture of the pedal it had ‘Tone Factor’ instead of ‘Pedalworx’ on it,” recalls Fee. “I didn’t even ask him to do that. He just did it. Shortly after, Brian approached me about it. He was interested in doing something together. About that time, Radiohead was huge... so we came up with the idea of doing the Analog Filter 440. That was the next one. We did a ton of stuff. Little small runs of 20 pedals that never made it into big production at all.” Mojo Hand fully entered the picture once international dealers showed interest in carrying some of the Tone Factor ped-als. Fee felt a little weird about shipping a ‘store brand’ for others, his competition, to sell. The first iteration of Mojo Hand was actually three brands: Mojo Hand, Sinister Analog and Boomstick Audio. “We broke it off into three that was pretty much supposed to be subdivisions of Tone Factor,” says Fee. “Boomstick was bass-oriented stuff. Sinister Analog was like noise maker, crazy circuit-type stuff.

Mojo Hand was just supposed to be the middle of the road, classic rock, blues guy stuff. For whatever reason, Mojo Hand took off in a way that the other two didn’t. And I quickly discovered that I didn’t have the time or resources to juggle three brands. It would take three times the effort to promote and market. So we just con-solidated everything into Mojo Hand and registered it as a separate business from Tone Factor all together.” Fee was no genius circuit designer, but he was a bit of an artist. Prior to Tone Factor he would buy old Big Muffs and Rats off eBay, give them a custom paint job and flip them. He knew he would have to outsource Mojo Hand’s creations and approached it early on as a sort of a collective. The first few Mojo Hand pedals were rolled over directly from the Tone Factor Custom Shop. Those in-cluded the Copperhead overdrive/boost and the Huckleberry fuzz. “Then we had a whole lot of little ones that didn’t hang around long... just sort of came and went - the 75 Special, the

Fuzz Saw - several like that,” recalls Fee. “It’s hard for me to even remember which were labeled Tone Factor and which were Mojo Hand.” The first pedal that was completely original to Mojo Hand and never a part of the Tone Factor Custom Shop was the Rook overdrive - a highly versatile take on the TS-9 tube screamer. “That was the first one that really did well enough for us to really perk up and start taking this serious as something other than a hobby,” says Fee. “We’ve shipped over a thousand. We’re still not a huge company by any stretch. A thousand pedals for us is pretty good. We’ve since have pedals that have prob-ably passed the Rook. The Iron Bell... we sold over 1,000 of those last year. But the Rook was really the one that put us on the map as a distinct entity separate from Tone Factor. It and the Colossus both did very well initially, and they are still very good, consistent sellers.” After Tone Factor changed hands in 2012, Fee was faced with the prospects of either landing another job or plowing everything he had into taking his pedal brand to the next level. He had already relocated his family from Evans, Louisi-ana to Kirbyville, Texas, and, for a time, even had a small Tone Factor store front there, but the notion of stepping out into the ever-crowded-and-still-growing bou-tique pedal game as a full-time player was daunting at best. Coming from a known place in Tone Factor would help with recognition, but success on a life-sustaining level was far from guaranteed. Still, with co-worker Zach Early in tow, Fee set out to grow Mojo Hand. “My background helped for sure, but for the first year we did this full time I was nervous,” admits Fee. “When Zach and I left Tone Factor, it was a sink or swim situation. We had to make it work. There was no plan B, because neither one of us were at the retail operation anymore. We were doing this full time... immediately after we left there. Our production had to quadruple in only a matter of months just to make enough money for us to live on... and we did it. Thankfully, we had the support of a few key retailers... and we made it work. It was no sure thing by any means. There was some concern there. Tone Factor, at its highest point, was doing really well. It was a fairly lucrative busi-ness at one point.” Mojo Hand’s progress in 2012 was

THE BUILD: On the day we visited Mojo Hand HQ, Dewdrop reverbs and Mirror Ball delays were under construction.

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FEATURE u Mojo Hand FX

marked, and the Winter NAMM show in 2013 opened the brand up to a whole new base of retailers who might not have been familiar with the brand. The company picked up a number of new in-ternational dealers at the show and those have kept coming, keeping the Mojo Hand machine humming for the better part of half a year. Today, Mojo Hand has about a baker’s dozen worth of offerings, but that number will be changing soon both due to the ad-dition of new designs and the retirement of a handful of older ones. “We’re in the process of retiring a few pedals now,” explains Fee. “The One Ton

Bee is going away. The Zephyr is going away. The Analog Filter is going away. It’s just those three for now. The One Ton Bee is our most simplistic circuit and, to me, it is not full-featured enough. I like what it does and I think it’s cool... the fans of it really seem to get it, but it doesn’t have that broad of an appeal. It is definitely a niche thing more than anything else we make, for sure. It is kind of the same thing with the Zephyr. I just don’t think that the Sam Ash fuzz is a big seller for anybody that makes a variant of it. People want fairly traditional stuff... fuzz faces and tone bend-ers... and it’s not either of those. I think the Zephyr is a great pedal, but it takes some

explanation on how to use it properly. It’s just not an easy sell. The Analog Filter was one of the last pedals to still be made off-site. It was made by Subdecay. Every version has always been made by Brian, who I think is a genius as far as filters go. He’s busy enough to where he doesn’t need the work and just the way that we’ve grown the in-house operation, we want ev-erything to be made here. It was a logistics decision more than a sales decision.” The in-house operation still involves off-site circuit designers, chiefly former Kaden Effects top man Jason Carr... who is responsible for all but one current Mojo Hand circuits.

MOJOS ALL AROUND: Zach Early runs through the shop board under the watch-ful eye of mascot ‘Mojo’ the rooster and protection of the shop’s ‘mojo catcher’.

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FEATURE u Mojo Hand FX

NEXT UP for Mojo Hand is a pedal pair that have more knobs than the usual, and will be a bit more pricey than normal for the company. The first out of the gate will be the Magistrate - a sort of hot-rodded Marshall-in-a-box with a fully active three-band equalizer on board. “It has much more gain than the other Marshall-flavored pedals on the market,” reveals Fee. “It is definitely aimed at high gain sounds. It does ‘brown’ sound stuff really well. Because the EQ is active, you can boost or cut. You can scoop the mids and easily do old school Metallica. That kind of stuff.” The second pedal on the schedule is a filter tentatively called the Membrane. Currently envisioned in a five-knob, two toggle package, the pedal is described as a Mu-Tron inspired, advanced filter. “It’s not a straight-up clone... just definitely in that vein,” explains Fee. “It will please the Jerry Garcia guys... that crowd... I hope.” The Magistrate and Membrane are for-mally slated to debut at Summer NAMM, but could arrive earlier. Simplicity has always been a staple of Mojo Hand stomps. So why the turn to-wards more complex configurations? “We don’t want to be stuck in the rut of just making Big Muff clones or whatever, so we definitely want progress, but we still want to keep the goal of simplicity in mind,” says Fee. “While, both of the new pedals are more elaborate in terms of electronics, I don’t think they’re any more complicated to use than our current offerings. There’s more going on ‘under the hood’, but I think people will still find them to be intuitive and easy to use.”

Coming soon...

“The guy has got great ears,” says Fee. “He does the vast majority of our design work. My thing is promotion. The market-ing and promotion... the social media as-pect... that’s what I do. It always has been.” Even with a dozen plus products and more on the way (see sidebar), Fee still sees exposure as the biggest obstacle to growth. With so many people building pedals and new brands emerging every week, the space is over-crowded. Finding a niche, and a loyal base, is crucial. “It’s insane,” says Fee. “Just look at Effects Database’s weekly update of the new brands. It’s not uncommon for there to be six to 12 new brands... and that’s

probably not all of them. Bart is just one guy. It’s just what he has been able to track down. And I really don’t expect a lot of those to last in the marketplace, but just the amount of choices for the consumer are overwhelming... and how to make yourself the choice... the one that stands out... that’s the key. Having something that separates you enough... that’s distinct enough. For us, we just go for good sound primarily... that’s the most important thing... and simplicity. That’s a big thing for us. We try to have very ‘plug-and-play’ effects. Something a decent guitarist can plug into and get a good sound right away.” G

BOXED AND READY: New builds line one wall in the Mojo Hand shop. Every pedal here is already spoken for by the company’s dealer network.

AFANTASIC

RETURNIt had been over 17 years since Greg Edwards and his bandmates in Failure hit the stage. They were anxious, as well as curious about the prospect. What if the fans forgot? After selling out their comeback show at LA’s El Rey Theater in mere minutes, the results were in... and Failure was as popular as ever.

GEARPHORIA: Tell us about the El Rey experience. Did you expect the positive reception the band received after almost a two-decade absence?

GREG: Pound for pound, absolutely the most enthusiastic (crowd we ever played for). Almost the whole crowd was singing every lyric. The emotion in the room was palpable. It was really kind of over-whelming. We didn’t expect for the show to sell out the way it did and we didn’t expect for the crowd to be so tuned in the whole time. After this much time, you’d think that maybe people would get excited about the idea of it, but then the actual experience sort of... it’s more for the nostalgia and to say you did it. But it really seemed like that people were pro-found experiences... and we were too. It was great. One show after that many years... it was a lot of pressure. It wasn’t the loosest show for us, as far as really enjoying ourselves up there, but I think we’ve had some better shows than that with some of these opening gigs we did with Tool. With the upcoming headlin-ing tour, we’re really looking forward to that because we’re a lot more comfort-able now. We know we can do it. I think we’re probably better than where we were at back in the day.

GEARPHORIA: How long had the band rehearsed before the show?

GREG: We rehearsed for... we started pretty far out... working up songs, remembering parts, working through arrangements... figure out what the most salient or important element in some of the more overdubbed bass songs was for guitar, and stuff like that. We also did a few days of total production rehearsal where we ran though the whole set a couple of times. We were feeling pretty comfortable, but it still felt like such an unknown... but it really couldn’t have been any better.

GEARPHORIA: Was it tough to recall

some of the more intricate guitar parts at first or did you find muscle memory kicking in?

GREG: Some of the blocky chord changes that moved underneath a song or on the first note of a chorus, we totally forgot that stuff... but then we come up on... and this happened to Ken and it happened to me... we come up on this intricate figure in a bridge or something that is sort of an overlay part and our hands would just go to it. It was really odd. Then some parts we really battled to find what the part was. We’d go back and listen to the record. You could hear the notes and figure out the notes, but to find what the actual position was you played it in or if there was an alterna-

tive tuning going on... it can be mind-boggling. In the end though, when you do figure it out, you’re like ‘Oh yeah! That’s how I did it.’ A lot of things where in the studio... in the studio for Fantastic Planet in particular... a lot of the over-dubs we would be working and I would just strap on a guitar and put my fingers on the neck and throw something down that sounded good and then never think about that part again. Those were parts where we never played the songs or just never worried about those parts back when we were touring on Fantastic Plan-et. Now, as a point of pride, we wanted to do absolute justice to the songs and we wanted to learn all of that stuff.

GEARPHORIA: While Fantastic Planet

Guitarist/bassist Greg Edwards didn’t stand still for long after Failure, his band with Ken Andrews and Kellii Scott broke up in the mid-1990s. He worked with bands like Lusk, and continues to be the driving force behind Autolux. But when he and Andrews rekindled their friendship a few years back, talks soon swung to a possible Failure reunion. The band ended in a swirl of runaway drug use fol-lowing its most successful and critically acclaimed album, 1996’s Fantastic Planet. Today, the reformed Failure is on the road perform-ing its first headlining gigs in almost two decades. GEARPHORIA caught up with Edwards recently to talk about the success of Failure.

INTERVIEW u Greg Edwards

NEW MUSIC: Failure releases its first new song in 18 years last month. ‘Come Crashing’ appears on an EP the band is selling during its current tour.

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 41

is... fantastic, we’ve always been fans of Magnified. Can you take us back to the time after that record leading into the recording of Fantastic Planet? Where was the band at the stage?

GREG: There were label issues... and ultimately there were drug issues and disfunction in the writing relationship between Ken and me. Really, the over-riding thing was what we wanted to do creatively and the kinds of records we wanted to make. With Magnified... that was the first time that we realized that we could sit down in a room and get at what we wanted to get at and more... and be beyond satisfied. On Magnified... songs like ‘Small Crimes’. To me that was a song that I just thought had everything I wanted a song to do at that point. That’s really the tops for me on that record. There were a lot of other songs, espe-cially when your talking about parts... the arrangements... the guitars and bass working together and even with the drums. All of the original drums were programmed on a drum machine and then I went back and replaced them bit by bit in the studio. That way of finding

how parts work together... that’s when I think a lot of our ingenuity came in on that record. When we came to Fantastic Planet, we didn’t have to think about that so much. We covered that. We could just think about songs... and if the songs are good and we like them then the parts would be interesting. There are songs on Fantastic Planet where the parts, the bass and guitar, there is nothing special going on, but all things considered the sound of the band is still there. We were more comfortable with our sonic identity and we were able to just worry about writ-ing songs. As we wrote, as that album progressed, one thing that happened that I think we did very well is that we would look at what we had and then decide what else we would need to balance the record out. In the end, when we sequenced it, I feel like the record really has balanced from the pop end to the stranger, weirder end.

GEARPHORIA: Fantastic Planet might be one of the best sequenced albums of the era.

GREG: I spent a few days just doing the

sequence... and this was before iTunes and Pro Tools [sic]. It wasn’t so easy to just shuffle stuff around and listen to it. You really just had to imagine it in your head. You knew the songs so well you just had to imagine how the end of that song would sound going into the next one and make compromises to find the best bal-ance. In a way, doing it internally in your mind... somehow you get a better result than when you just shuffle them all in iTunes and listen down. Actually, the next few records I do, I’d like to remember that... and not default to the iTunes stuff.

GEARPHORIA: Are you a fan of the trio format live as opposed to having that fourth member there?

GREG: The trio is the ultimate I think when you’re a live band. Obviously you’re limited in what you can layer on, but I think when it’s three people... that triangulation of connection... it is very direct. When you add a fourth of fifth per-son you can’t just look to the side and be connected to the two other people. Also, it simplifies things. You can’t get into too much trouble... and the sound can actu-

INTERVIEW u Greg Edwards

“Almost the whole crowd was singing every lyric. The emotion in the room was palpable. It was really kind of overwhelming.”

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ally be more powerful with a trio. More layers and more sound doesn’t always equal more power. When you can actu-ally hear the dynamic of the bass. When you think of all of the classic rock bands... Zeppelin, essentially a three-piece plus the vocals. The Experience... Hendrix... that’s a three-piece. Zeppelin is a great example, because they used a lot of over-dubs that couldn’t be recreated live. Live they were just this raw, intense experi-ence. If you’d have added another guitar player there I think it would have taken away from something... with the clarity for the bass, the drums and Jimmy Page on top. I’m definitely a fan of the trio.

GEARPHORIA: Fans have now heard what a new Failure song sounds like in 2014 with the release of ‘Come Crash-ing’. How did the band approach the new stuff?

GREG: We got into it slowly. It was not like Ken and I got in a room after all that time and said ‘Ok, let’s put all of this pressure on us and make a record.’ We made a few exploratory excursions out into the void to see what would hap-pen... and it was pretty easy and I think that the material we were working on, the first few ideas, had a lot of depth and strength. We weren’t struggling in terms of that. Filling out a record? Finishing a complete record? From this point, that’s a challenge. To see where we take these core ideas and how we make a whole record from that. I know that the expec-tation is high from our core fans. They’ve stayed connected to the music we made. They’ve been connected all along. A lot of the songs on Fantastic Planet have aged pretty gracefully, but they also know what we’re capable of... or what they believe we’re capable of... and that’s a lot to live up to over the course of a whole record.

GEARPHORIA: We noticed from the El Rey show, and subsequent live shows, that there didn’t seem to be the old huge analog rigs for either you or Ken. What are you using on stage now?

GREG: We’re both using Fractals. The Autolux rig is huge and I’m still using it in Autolux. You know, conceptually I do not like the idea of a Fractal, but I have to say that I think that, at least in Failure, we’re losing nothing... and

probably gaining a lot with the Fractal. And when you take everything into consideration with the ease of set up, small footprint and being able to travel, I definitely think it’s the future. In 20 years, I don’t know how many guitar players, even in big bands, will be using huge analog systems. Maybe... I don’t know. The fetish for a great amp... the classic Fender Bassman or Twin Reverb... that will probably never die, but it’s like plug-ins in Pro Tools. All of the audio people at the top of their fields were saying it’s just not there. It doesn’t sound great... and then 10 years later they’re all saying they can‘t really tell the difference in a A/B test. I get fooled all of the time. Now, everybody is fine and will use digital plug-ins in Pro Tools, and if they have any objections to it, it is more emotional, theoretical objection rather than how it really sounds. That is how the Fractal has been for me. It is very responsive and dynamic. The sounds sound great and you can really tailor them to the sounds that were on the records. When we’re playing, if it feels great I don’t care how it is being created. I am actually amazed at how well it‘s worked out. There are probably 15 to 20 different scenes that I’m using between guitar and bass per show. Ken is probably the same... but more than that, it is really how you set up the blocks in the Fractal... which is what is so easy and allows for so much flexibility... the routing... you can set up things in parallel. There is a very nice,

pretty functional looper built into it. It covers everything.

GEARPHORIA: How did you get ex-posed to the Fractal rigs?

GREG: It was Ken. He knew somebody that used one. We actually tried both the Fractal and the Kemper. Ken knew some-body that had a Kemper too. The guy from M83 had a Kemper he let us bor-row. We used that at first and it seemed really pretty good... at first. Then we bor-rowed the Fractal and the Fractal just... the ability of the Fractal was just on a whole other level. In fact, the fidelity of the Fractal out of the box was almost too much. You have to shave off some of that high end. It is full bandwidth and you can get incredible, crystalline attack happening. It really mimics some acoustic-like sounds. It is totally versa-tile that way, but out of the box it didn’t sound as ready to record or play as the Kemper, but once you got into sculpting the sounds, there is no comparison. Just a straight, raw, distorted sound... or a straight Twin Reverb sound on the Fractal just blows away what the Kemper does.

GEARPHORIA: What is your #1 guitar?

GREG: My number one guitar in Failure is a Les Paul. In Autolux, it’s an SG. I also play a Telecaster on one song and I think that is about it. We have an acoustic for a few things too. It is mainly the Les Paul,

CIRCA 1996: (L to R) Edwards, Kellii Scott and Ken Andrews

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INTERVIEW u Greg Edwards

INTERVIEW u Greg Edwards

CIRCA NOW: Failure has already written new music with plans to release the long-awaited follow-up to Fantastic Planet in early 2015.

44 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

which was what was mainly featured on Fantastic Planet.

GEARPHORIA: Is it the exact same gui-tar that was on Fantastic Planet?

GREG: We have two now and it is the same guitar on some songs. Ken and I switch depending on how it works logistically from song to song, but yes,

one of the Les Pauls is the one we used on Fantastic Planet. I think it is a ’72. Early ‘70s.

GEARPHORIA: We suppose you’re look-ing forward to the headlining tour. What else are you looking forward to in 2014?

GREG: I’m looking forward to the tour. It’s a chance to play more shows like that

El Rey show were you get to really have that experience with all these people that have continued to enjoy your music for all of this time. Then I’m looking forward to finishing the Autolux record, which is just about finished which I’m really excited about. And then of course there is the Failure material... and see how that fleshes out. We’re looking at next year. Early next year hopefully. G

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EAGULLSFitzgerald’sHouston, TX

May 22, 2014

Leeds, UK-based Eagulls soared into Houston recently on the back of their debut self-titled album released in March. The band offers up reverb-drenched guitar post-punk sonics appointed by vocalist George Mitchell’s nihilistic lyrics. Guitarists Liam Matthews and Mark Goldsworthy relied on the club’s back line to push air, but each had a few stomps in tow to help fuel the band’s eardrum assault (...and we mean that in a good way). Matthews’ line (be-low) included a Boss Turbo Overdrive (OD-2), EHX Holy Grail Nano reverb, Boss Super Chorus and EHX #1 Echo. Goldsworthy’s rig (lower, right) also included an OD-2, a TC Electronic Hall of Fame reverb, a Boss Chorus and Flanger, a EHX Small Stone Nano and a Boss Digital Delay. Matthews’ guitar of choice was a Fender Squire Jazz Master, while Gold-worthy’s wielded a Squire Strat. Eagulls’ US tour continues on through mid-June before they head back across the pond.

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DESTINATION: DALLAS

DESTINATION: DALLAS

THE 37th Dallas International Guitar Festival held last month at Fair Park showcased a healthy portion of vintage and new six-strings, four-strings, pedal effects, amplifiers, accessories, sports memorabilia, pet adoptions, candied nuts, indian jewelry and an aire of over-all weirdness matched only by its new venue. To say that the Fair Park grounds produced a challenge over the show’s old home at Dallas Market Hall would be a bit of an understatement. Housed in two separate buildings on the fairgrounds... and those buildings separated by a large, ornate, unbreach-able fountain... moving freely between

Odd venue logistics and high price of admission mar experience at state’s biggest and best guitar show

the main halls should have been a lot easier. Unfortunately, the rather long structures could only be accessed by walking around the fountain that stretched the length of each building... making for a longer walk on a hot Texas weekend. Traffic on the Friday and Sunday was lighter than many vendors expected, with some arguing a lack of signage direct-ing guests to the second building might have kept some from knowing it existed. Logistical issues were compounded by the lack of strong identifiers for the main entrance to the show. Signs for ticketed entry hung near a few doorways, but it was unclear if those who already had

tickets could use those egresses or if tick-ets were available to purchase at those spots. Turns out it was both. While the main building was domi-nated by guitar retailers and vendors, the second was more of a catch-all for every-thing from guitar stuff to gummy bears... digital recording aids to dog shelters. It made for a truly bizarre bazaar! The price of admission was also steeper than in the past. A one-day pass on Sun-day rang up $24.50... and that’s without the extra $1 for the printed program. If the show remains at Fair Park, one would hope the crew at the helm will learn from the misfires of 2014. G

BRANDS ON HAND: Manufacturers at the Dallas show included Wampler Pedals, Magnatone and Steamboat Ampworks.

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We have to get these two kids togetherJOPLIN, Missouri-based Homegrown Tone brought its new range of hemp-tastic combo amps to the Dallas International Guitar Festival... and just across the way, Houston-based Steamboat Ampworks brought its brand new line of hemp-coned drivers. Only in Texas! (or Colorado... or Washington state.) The Homegrown Amps has two current models - the 420, a four-input 20-watt 5e3 circuit with a 1x12 speaker and The Roach, a 5-watt 5f1 circuit with a 1x8 driver. The Steamboat Hemp 100 is a 12-inch speaker remanufactured from a large cache of discarded, but valuable drivers and sports a hemp-woven cone. We have high hopes that these two will join forces. The good news is that we understand that both principals did talk at the show. Fingers crossed!

GUITARS...Troubles aside, there were plenty of sexy six-strings to ogle at the show, be it the retro F-style Fanos or the sparkle-riffic Tokai double necks on offer. A few small shop luthiers made the scene as well, including the retro-futursitc (yeah, we said it) stylings of Vanz Houser Custom Guitars (left) and the natural classics of Brian Paul Guitars (below). On the vintage front, the coolest thing we saw with strings was this Gretsch Bikini double-neck guitar and bass.

WRAP-UP u Dallas International Guitar Festival 2014

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AMPS...

WAIT, WHAT?!

There was a good mix of old and new when it came to amplifiers at the show. Premier Builders Guild had their Two-Rock and Tone King brands on display, while 3rd Power split time in the Visual Sound booth. Older classics included a good wealth of Gibson combos and this very likable Soundhouse Arbiter (right). Leave it to Guitar Center to pull out a handful of custom grill clothed Marshall half stacks that we’re pretty sure they had to pack back up at show’s end.

Besides guitars, visitors to the show could have walked out with a variety of non-gear related swag, including an autographed Johnny Manziel jersey from his days at Texas A&M. Autograph seekers of a more rock-and-roll lifestyle could queue up for a chance to meet a tired Johnny Winter. Gearphoria’s editor is always on the prowl for his next Ibanez Talman at these shows. Sadly, the only one he found during his Sunday search was already spoken for... and being played by Andy Timmons on the main stage.

WRAP-UP u Dallas International Guitar Festival 2014

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BetterDAYSHERE

Winger guitar slinger Reb Beach tells GEARPHORIA about making the new record Better Days Comin’ and about his relationship with the guitar and bandleader Kip Winger...

BY ALISON RICHTER + Special to Gearphoria

PHOTOS BY ANDRES MARTINEZ

GEARPHORIA: Vocal harmonies have al-ways been a big part of Winger’s sound. Was having that ability a prerequisite for joining the band?

REB: We came out in 1989 and big harmonies were the thing. That’s what everyone was doing, so you had to write a chorus with harmonies, and when it comes time to go out onstage, you’ve got to be able to sing those three-part harmonies. It’s really important to Kip that it be tight, because it brings us up another level as a band and it’s what people listen to. They listen to the vocal, and it’s the most important thing in the music. When Paul [Taylor] left the band, we were looking for a singer more than anything else. Winger music is not easy to play, so you have to be able to play it and sing. We found John Roth and he was perfect. It’s really hard to find a guy who sings his ass off and can play the complicated Winger stuff. The fact is that not many good guitar players can sing. As a matter of fact, most guitar players can’t sing, or suck at it. They say they sing and they’re not singers. Think about it. How many really good guitar players sing their ass off? There’s Richie Kotzen... and Richie Kotzen! There’s really not many. You need a guy who can sing like Kip, with that powerful, gutsy voice, be-cause I sound like Dennis DeYoung and that just doesn’t work. It’s really clean

IN THE 25 years since Winger released their self-titled debut album, everything and nothing has changed for guitarist Reb Beach. He still makes music with the band’s original members, vocalist/bassist Kip Winger and drummer Rod Morgenstein, now joined by guitarist John Roth. He still uses the same Suhr guitar and Marshall amp that he purchased over 20 years ago. He is still, in his words, “an ’80s rock guitarist,” and an in-demand one at that, always busy recording and performing with his bandmates, as a member of Whitesnake, and with his own group, The Reb Beach Project. What has changed, of course, is the music industry. Once dominated by MTV and high-gloss music videos, today, fans can simply go online and watch professional and audience-made clips of their favorite bands. Radio as we knew it during the so-called “hair band” days is long gone, and with it the mystique that surrounded recording artists. Beach remembers when everything changed, and how, almost overnight, Winger and other rock bands were cast aside as musical tastes made a 180-degree shift. He sold his house, his guitars, moved home, and rebuilt his career, beginning with a call to join Alice Cooper. Through it all, the members of Winger never lost their friendship or their desire to make music together. Even as poster boys in consumer music magazines, Winger earned respect and adulation from fans and gear publications. Beneath the surface of glossy press photos and videos that had the band fluffed and puffed for the cameras were schooled musicians, edu-cated and trained in the craft of playing, writing and performing. More than two decades later, Winger’s members have maintained and even expanded their credibility, and rightfully so. Reb Beach describes himself as “a pretty happy guy,” and it comes through in his interviews. Serious about his music, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s sharp, witty, quite the conversationalist, and clearly passionate about his work.

and not rock, so he has me doing all the falsetto stuff, so you can’t really tell. The reason I’ve kept my job in Whitesnake for twelve years is not because of my guitar playing. It’s because of my singing. It would be hard to find a guy to replace me. I couldn’t sing out of tune if I wanted to, and the vocals are a really important factor to ’80s music.

GEARPHORIA: Let’s go back to “We came out in 1989 and big harmonies were the thing. That’s what everyone was doing, so you had to write a chorus with harmonies.” Did you really feel pressured to write a certain way?

REB: Yeah, we did, from the label and from [producer] Beau Hill. There was a formula to the songs and we were defi-nitely pointed in one direction. On our second album [In the Heart of the Young, 1990], we branched out a little bit, and they told us they were going to release ‘Miles Away’ as the first single, which we put on the album for Paul. It was a good song, but we were worried about releas-ing it as a single at all because it was a schmaltzy ballad, and it was a time when bands were getting shot down in flames when they would release their schmaltzy ballad; they were all of a sudden known as a schmaltzy ballad band, i.e., Night Ranger, Extreme, and other bands. They’re known for their ballads.

The great thing about Winger is we’re not known for our ballads. We had six Top 40 singles that were mostly rock songs. Anyway, they told us, “We’re going to release ‘Miles Away’ first,” and we knew that was going to be the kiss of death, so we wrote ‘Easy Come Easy Go’ and ‘Can’t Get Enuff’ in one day. That was a good thing because they did really well. On the third album [Pull, 1993], we broke away from Beau Hill and we did whatever the hell we wanted. That album, to this day, remains the favorite of most Winger fans that are musicians. It is definitely a masterpiece. I’m not saying that I’m great. I’m saying that [producer] Mike Shipley, who died last year, was great. He did Back In Black, for God’s sake! The budget was $300,000 and we had two 48-track digital Otari tape machines running at the same time. It was just insane. But getting back to the harmonies and choruses, I couldn’t write a song that’s not catchy. That’s not my style. You want a good hook, you want people to sing along with it, and you want to make them feel a certain way, but if they can’t remember it, there’s no point in it.

GEARPHORIA: Speaking of Winger fans who are musicians, they all want to know what you use, every detail, from the guitars — everyone knows you’re a longtime Suhr player — to the picks and

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INTERVIEW u Reb Beach

the cables. Do some of them put too much importance in the gear that’s be-ing used? Are they obsessing too much?

REB: Yeah, for a lot of people. A lot of it is in your fingers, but if you’ve got a crappy amp and crappy pickups, it’s tough to make that sound good. It would still sound like me if I did that, but I use a pickup that sounds very fat. I use EMG pickups and always have, and they’re fat-sounding. That’s probably the most important key. If you want to get my tone, you’ve got to have EMGs, or else it won’t work. I use a John Suhr Custom Audio head. He modded the amp that I’ve been using; he’s been modding my same Marshall and it sounds exactly like the Custom Audio head. It’s the same thing; it’s the John Suhr mod that sounds humongous and amazing and you don’t have to touch any knobs. You can put them all at the middle and it sounds in-credible. I don’t use effects, really, espe-cially when I’m with Winger. I don’t even have a clean sound. I have one sound, and when I’m in the studio with Kip, all I use is a Suhr distortion pedal, the Shiba.

I go into the distortion pedal and into the amp and that’s it, and Kip adds a little delay. I really love making cool, crazy noises, like Tom Scholz [The Reb Beach Project was a month away from opening for Boston at the time of this interview], but I’m meat and potatoes.

GEARPHORIA: How long did it take you to find what you needed for your sound?

REB: If I plug into an amp, I know im-mediately if I can make it sound good or not. You just know right away. When we started, I was a session player first. I came in to do the first session of my life at Atlantic Studios and it was on a Fiona record. They had a Marshall there. All the Marshalls at SIR, Beau Hill would write down the serial numbers that were the good heads, and eventu-ally so did I. That first day, I had never played through a Marshall, so I didn’t know how to make a Marshall sound good. I didn’t even know how to make it have distortion. Beau called in Kane Roberts, who was the guitarist with Alice Cooper. They were in Studio B and we

were in Studio A. He taught me how to use a Marshall. He was like, ‘Gain on 6, Master Volume on 3, Treble on 6, Mid on 4, Bass on 10. That’s it. Just do that every time. You’ll be fine.’ And that’s what I did. I ended up being a session player for Beau and it wasn’t because I was so good. It’s because I did it for 500 bucks. I wasn’t in the union. I was a kid. I was real nice and totally green and easy to work with, but I was a good player. That’s how I ended up doing all those sessions, at least starting, because I didn’t know I was getting totally ripped off.

GEARPHORIA: In addition to being a good player, you need people skills in order to be a session player.

REB: Oh my god, yes! Oh my god! You’ve got to go in there and, “Man, this track sounds great! Oh man, this is rockin’!” even if it’s a piece of crap. If you want to work again, you’ve got to be a joy to be with and remain positive about everything.

GEARPHORIA: In listening to the new

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INTERVIEW u Reb Beach

“Kip and Mike Shipley taught me everything I know. I used to rush all over the place. I’d play after the beat. It’s a typical guitar player thing.”

album, there is definitely some differ-ent stuff going on there. The title track for instance. What can you tell us about that song?

REB: Some people hate it because it’s a departure for Winger, for sure. I had that lick, and Kip liked it because he’s an old hippie, so we started messing with it. I picked up the bass and said, ‘What if we did this?’ and Kip liked it. Then Kip wrote the chorus — it came to him, it beamed into him — and it’s on video in the ‘Mak-ing Of.’ That video [the DVD is available with the Deluxe Edition of the album] really shows how we write together. Basically, Kip hits the drum machine and plays a beat. Then he’ll play a single note, like E or A, something that guitar players like, and he’ll thump on the bass. It’s up to me to come up with a guitar riff. We always start with a guitar riff be-cause I’m really good at writing them. It’s something I’m great at. I can sit there and play and I don’t even know if it’s cool or not. I know at the end of the day if it is, but Kip’s the one who has to go, ‘That! What’s that?’ and I say, ‘I have no idea.’ We have to rewind, because he has to record me all the time because I play and I have no idea what I just played. It’s all improv and screwing around. He plays it back to me and I learn it. Kip is a master arranger. He studies arrang-ing, he arranges for 76-piece orchestras, so he knows exactly where to go, and that’s why it happens so quickly. We write a song a day, basically. Kip is a workaholic. We eat at 10:00, we’re in the studio at 10:30, and we work until we’re fried. We’ve been doing it the same way since 1989.

GEARPHORIA: How would you say your relationship with the guitar has changed over the years?

REB: Zero. It hasn’t changed at all. It’s exactly the same. I still play the exact same licks. I never practice. Guitar is the least important thing to me, hon-estly. I never play guitar unless I have to. I write songs on keyboards, mostly. I don’t take it for granted, though. I love the guitar. I just don’t have that spark that I had when I was a kid and my whole life was guitar. I played all day, every day. I know guys who are still like that, who carry a guitar around with them everywhere, and the whole thing

is just guitar, guitar, guitar, and all they do is talk equipment. I’ve had the same equipment for twenty years. I’ve never changed my guitars or changed my amps. Once I find something, that’s it. I’ve never found anything better.

GEARPHORIA: The musical complexity that people comment about regard-ing this album is nothing new. Those elements, which some people are now calling ‘prog rock,’ were present on the first album. ‘Seventeen’ is full of them. Had the lyrics not been about a girl, do you think that the level of musicianship would have been more obvious?

REB: Yes. That song is not easy to play. Guitar players have a really hard time with it because it’s all on upbeats, and for me, that’s really natural. I hear things in upbeats. If you watch me onstage, my head is going up while everyone else’s head is going down. That’s the explana-tion on ‘Seventeen’. Everyone does the lick wrong. There’s one note that every-one does wrong, and that’s the coolest part of the lick. Winger has always had a progressive side to it — always. Always. The stuff isn’t easy to play, but it’s a little

bit masked. The early stuff, especially, is totally masked by the poppy melodies. My thing was to write riffs that weren’t necessarily that easy to play, that weren’t that basic, and put the radio melody over it. ‘Rainbow in the Rose’ was on the sec-ond album and that’s progressive as hell. Even ‘Headed for a Heartbreak’ is kind of progressive in that it’s such a great arrangement. It’s actually better than typical Kip Winger arrangements. It’s one of his best arrangements, now that I think about it.

GEARPHORIA: How does Kip make you a better musician?

REB: Kip and Mike Shipley taught me everything I know. I used to rush all over the place. I’d play after the beat. It’s a typical guitar player thing. In Winger, es-pecially when you’re recording, you have to play perfectly in the pocket, or else Kip won’t accept it, so you have to play through the music. It took me a while to learn to do that. I had to train my ear, and Kip was a big part of that. I know so much more about music than I used to know and I didn’t learn it at Berklee. I learned it from Kip. G

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 53

INTERVIEW u Reb Beach

THE NEW ONE: Winger’s Better Days Comin’ was released in April, the first new studio album from the band since 2009’s Karma.

CATEGORY 5 AMPSVERA

Two channel, 35W all-tube amp Tubes: 12AX7s pre-amp tubes, Tung-Sol 5881power tubesDimensions: W: 24”, H: 20”, D: 10” Weight: About 50 lbs.Price: $3,295 combo ($2,995 head)

GEAR REVIEWS u Category 5 Vera

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CATEGORY 5 has been making their own special brand of classic-voiced fire-breathers in the Dallas area for the better part of decade, targeting the vintage punch and smoothness seen in earlier rock and roll era tones both stateside and across the pond. With many of the amps taking their names from storms, the company has not only been busy building amps for the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes and Tab Benoit, but also is a champion for chari-ties, including those that raise money for storm-ravaged areas. We visited with Don Ritter and Berry Dickson of Category 5 at the recent Dal-las International Guitar Festival and once again came away impressed with the vol-ume of new amp ideas springing from the shop. We also came away with the new 35-watt Vera combo... the cathode-biased design amp versus the company’s 50-watt Vera, which is fixed bias. The heart of the Vera is based on an amp the company did for Govt. Mule’s

Warren Haynes, who was looking for a single amp that could cover the ground of both his stalwart SLO and Diaz for shows where taking both amps wasn’t an option. The 35-watt Vera is a two-channel amp where Channel 1 offers higher gain sounds with robust sustain and a mid-boost option, while Channel 2 is a clean, open tone with a gain boost option. On the front plate, Channel 1 offers up knob controls for Gain, Volume, Treble, Middle, Bass, while Channel 2 boasts knobs for Volume, Treble and Bass. There are also global controls for Reverb and Voltage. On the back, you will find three toggle switches - Clean/Drive allows the user to switch between channels sans footswitch, Drive Mid Boost for Channel 1, and a Clean Mid Boost for Channel 2. There is also a separate 1/4-inch input allowing the user to operate the Clean Boost via a footswitch. Inside the 35-watt Vera, the tube complement includes Tung-Sol 5881 power tubes (but 6L6s can also be used).

The triple threat 35-watt Vera is a potent sonic stormHurricane force tones

EXCLUSIVE

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Our review combo was loaded with a 1x12 Jensen Neo speaker. Plugging into Channel 1, you quickly learn that the Vera smokes. At the lowest gain settings, the Vera offers up a solid crunch... and as you roll the Gain knob clockwise, the crunch morphs smoothly into a tasty distortion tone that hits its ceiling just south of ‘80s era metal ter-ritory. Hit the toggle on the back for an extra mids bump, if desired. Channel 2 offers a clean, open chime without a lot of compression, allowing chords to ring out a bit more. A gain boost, which is accessible via either backplate toggle or footswitch will add grit that sends the amp into a JTM-esque style overdrive neighborhood. Vera’s Channel 1, Chan-nel 2 and Channel 2 plus gain boost con-figuration gives the user three separate, footswitchable voicings to tap into. Dialing back the Voltage control reins in the power (and output) of the Vera... get-ting it down to bedroom volume levels. As the sound goes ‘brown’ it still preserves a lot of what makes the amp cool. The Vera’s versatility is matched by its

heft. Weighing in at around 50lbs, the stout combo might not be the ideal grab-and-go alternative for a player heading out to a quick club gig. This is a heavy amp... and we mean that both metaphys-ically, and physically. If the weight isn’t an issue, then the price

tag could be. At $3,295, the Vera combo is an investment, but one we believe would pay dividends for someone looking to add a bit of firepower to their tone arsenal. The 35-watt Vera combo huffed and puffed and blew us away. What more could we ask? G

GEAR REVIEWS u Category 5 Vera

BIG TONE MUSIC BREWERYMAGGIE

Controls: Intensity and Speed knob, Stereo/Mono toggle switchWeight:12 ozs.Dimensions: 4.75 x 3.7 x 2.7 inchesPrice: $219

GEAR REVIEWS u Big Tone Music Brewery Maggie

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Big Tone’s Maggie is the judicious, vintage-voiced vibrato you’d expectProthonotary warbler

TONE HOUNDS and sound-smiths have been chasing the Magnatone pitch-shift-ing vibrato for a long time... maybe even before the likes of Buddy Holly and The Beatles embraced the soft, lush warble effect fused into their vintage amps. With the resurrection of the Magnatone brand only two years ago, guitarists once again have the tone in their hip pocket, but like all things... it comes with a price. Pedal builders have sought the classic Magnatone 280 sound with mixed results over the years, but one of the best repro-ductions of the vintage sound we’ve ever heard comes from the Big Tone Music Brewery’s Maggie - a true-bypass stereo vibrato that pulls off that vintage Magna-tone warble with flying colors. The Maggie sports a simple control spread. A pair of knobs allow the user to adjust both Speed of the pitch bends and Intensity, or how far the pitch bends up and down. A mini-toggle between the knobs lets the user switch between stereo

and mono output, basically adjusting the phase of the Right output on top of the pedal. The jacks at the top include 1/4-inch Input and a pair (Left and Right) 1/4-inch Outputs. The Maggie’s outputs sport vibrato circuits that are independent of one another for a true stereo effect. You can plug both outputs into any amp that has two or more inputs and dial in the vintage tones of the Magnatone 280.

There also is a 9VDC power jack, but the Maggie will also run on a 9v battery. Plugged in mono mode, the Maggie can move from rapid-fire, pulsing trem sounds with the knobs dimed full right to subtle, ebbing vibrato once you backed off the Speed control. You can also achieve more ambient, warped record tones with the Intensity pegged and the Speed slowed down. We walked a

GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014 57

Telecaster through The Beatles’ ‘It’s Only Love’ and some obscure, 70s-era Neil Young hitting the sweet spots with a bit of tweaking. In stereo mode, the Maggie can either get you the 280 feel out of one cab or flow seamlessly across a pair of amps. The further you space the amp pair the wider and more impressive the sound field... a swirling whirlpool of thick, watery goodness. Of course, the question remains... is it dead on accurate to the classic 280 tone? Well, to our ears, it comes damn close. The Maggie might carry a touch more brightness, but that’s nitpicking. In a band setting, or mixed into a song, any differ-ence would very likely be indiscernible. Comparatively, the sound is pretty much apples to apples... but how about price? A vintage 280 would likely run you anywhere from $1500 to $2000, depending on shape. A new Magnatone? The most affordable new model with the pitch-shifting vibrato is the Twilighter at around $2200. The Maggie? She’s $220. Sounds like a helluva deal to us! G

SONGBIRD: The Big Tone Music Brewery Maggie is everything you’d want in a pitch-bending, signal-sending, heart-mending vibrato.

GEAR REVIEWS u Big Tone Music Brewery Maggie

GEAR REVIEWS u TC Electronic Ditto X2 Looper

tc electronicDITTO X2 LOOPER

Controls: Loop Level knob, backing track level toggle, FX toggle, loop footswitch and FX footswitchWeight: 1 lb, 2 ozs.Dimensions: 5.7 x 4.5 x 2.3 inchesPrice: $169

58 GEARPHORIA.COM SUMMER 2014

The Ditto X2 dials up the control while keeping intimidation factor in checkThe little looper’s big brother

LOOPERS are daunting prospects to legions of guitar players that would much rather ‘set it and go’ than muck around with footswitches, knobs and the like. The beauty of the original Ditto from TC Electronics was its streamlined controls and small footprint. It simplified looping to the bare essentials and won over many a loop-weary musicians. Loop fanatics loved it too, but wished it had a bit more control. After all, it is some-what tough to have a single footswitch in control of arming, recording, overdubs and wiping. Enter the X2 and its bounty of real estate that not only houses the sought-after second footswitch, TC has also added on-board effects (reverse and half-speed). The main control on the X2 is the Loop Level knob, bigger in size than on the first Ditto and thus easier to adjust on the fly with your foot. The left toggle allows users to store backing tracks and adjust backing track volume. The right toggle makes the right footswitch assignable to either a dedicated loop-stop switch or an

effect engagement switch. The X2, unlike its predecessor, also boasts stereo outs. Fresh from the box, the X2 is intui-tive enough to plug and play. The box showed off its song-writing assistance ability right away. There was no diffi-cultly in layering a pair of rhythms and a lead line inside of the first two minutes of use. The X2 gives you a healthy five minutes of loop time. The second footswitch was set up as a dedicated stop out of the box, but if you grew comfortable with the Ditto’s two-click stop procedure, you can reassign the right switch to engage the effects. The reverse function gives the user a fairly wicked tool to sculpt soundscapes either ambient or aggressive. The half-speed function can have a similar mind-warping effect, but is also useful for change-of-pace sections, like breakdowns and solos. The X2 runs about $40 more than the original Ditto, but for what you get with the new range of controls and functional-ity, it is money well spent. G

BAND IN A BOX: The Ditto X2 has stereo functional-ity to go with its USB port for file import and export.

Tool is simply one of the best live shows out there. Go.

ARTIST: ToolVENUE: Toyota Center Houston, TexasDATE: March 25, 2014

VERDICT:

SEEING TOOL perform live these days is, necessarily, a trip down memory lane... or maybe it’s more like a flashback. The band has not released any new material in more than eight years, but even with-out a new record to support, Tool can fill an arena in the blink of a third eye. That was certainly apparent when tickets went on sale at the Toyota Center in Houston -- within minutes, it seemed, the only seats left were behind the stage. For this brief tour, focused mostly on the West Coast with a stop in Mexico and a couple dates in Texas, Tool brought along old friends Failure, the recently reunited alt-rock stalwarts. In their open-ing set, Failure blasted through a handful of fuzzy mid-90s gems - ‘Dirty Blue Bal-loons’ and ‘Heliotropic’ were standouts - pulling generously from their 1996 clas-sic Fantastic Planet and filling the arena with their special brand of head-bang shoegaze. It was a welcome return. Tool took the stage to thunderous cheers and erupted with a razor-sharp rendition of ‘Hooker with a Penis,’ the band’s excoriating take on misguided sanctimony. Maynard updated some of the 18-year-old lyrics to encapsulate the evolution of his own professional ambi-tions, namely his burgeoning winery business: “In between sips of coke wine, he told me that he thought we were sell-

ing out,” Maynard growled, reminding the “dip shit” in question, “I sold my soul to make a record... Then you made me a millionaire!” There are many reasons to go to a Tool show, but on-stage antics by the band are not among them. Guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor rarely change position from their statuesque poses, plugging away at whatever polyrhythmic passage is in front of them. Maynard stands on a platform set back from the others, shrouded in shadow. His movements are hypnotic, but hardly ani-mated. Danny Carey, whose unmatched drumming prowess alone is worth the price of admission, was on this day donning a Rockets-era Tracy McGrady jersey as he sat perched high on a throne surrounded by a staggering array of skins. Carey makes the most convoluted drum riffs look effortless. The setlist was a sampling of some of Tool’s best work. Long-time standbys ‘Sober’ and ‘Schism’ set the stage for the emotional release of ‘Pushit,’ the original version from Aenima. It’s a song that has ripped my heart out on multiple occa-sions. By the time Maynard declares “I must persuade you another way!” in the song’s wrenching climax, there is no op-tion but full submission. The Fibonacci-inspired epic ‘Lateralus’ closed the first

IN CONCERT

half of the set in a stunning laser light show replete with the ever-present psy-chedelic imaging of Alex Grey. Carey emerged on stage after the 11-minute intermission to play a drums-only cover of King Crimson’s ‘B’Boom’ (Tool doesn’t do encores, but divides its set into two easier-to-digest halves). That was followed up by ‘Jambi,’ showcasing Adam Jones, rocking the talk box, and Maynard, crooning for the “benevolent sun” to “shine on forever,” in a display of ritualistic magnificence countered with heavy licks of dark metal. They wrapped up, as usual, with the defiant ‘Aenema’ -- a nod to the great Bill Hicks that took on special significance in the home town of the late comedian -- and the scatologically sardonic ‘Stinkfist’, always a crowd pleaser. It’s hard for me to watch Tool, simply because the music hits me so deeply that I spend much of the concert with my eyes closed, succumbed. As a result, I may have missed some of the transcen-dent visuals on stage - and there were countless - but the light show cascad-ing behind my sober eyelids lasted well beyond the show’s close. Tool live is nothing short of mind-expanding. Spiral out, keep going.

- Luke Johnson

ALBUM REVIEWS u

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ARTIST: Big WreckALBUM: GhostsLABEL: AEG/Rounder Records

FROM THE fuzz-drone opener ‘A Place To Call Home’ to the more pop-infused ‘I Digress’ and the Zeppelin-flavored acoustic stomp of ‘Hey Mama’, Canada’s Big Wreck covers a lot of ground with its fourth-studio album Ghosts. Ghosts is the second album with the current line-up of Big Wreck, which includes only front-man/guitarist Ian Thornley and guitarist Brian Doherty from the original band. As one would expect, Ghosts has more in common with 2012’s Albatross than the earlier material, but that’s not neces-sarily a bad thing. Thornley continues to grow from his early days as a tasty parts-writer to a full-fledged songwriter, as evident in new songs like ‘Still Here’ and ‘Off and Running’. The musicianship on Ghosts is ev-erything you’d expect from Big Wreck, from the 12-string strum to the accented shimmer and slide work on the stand-out ‘Diamonds’ or the barrel-roll chord progression and blistering snare thwack on ‘Come What May’. Ghosts feel like a more complete package than Albatross, and that’s not a knock on the 2012 record as much as it is praise for the new one.

ARTIST:California BreedALBUM: s/t LABEL: Frontiers Records

VERDICT: Mojo

FRESH from a run of albums with blues-rock quintet Black Coun-try Communion, frontman/bassist Glenn Hughes and drummer Jason Bonham recruited 23-year-old guitar upstart Andrew Watt and formed California Breed. The power trio dropped their debut self-titled album recently fueled by riffs ranging from vintage AC/DC as present in the single ‘Sweet Tea’ to the Zeppelin-like swirl of ‘Chemical Rain’ or the Stone Temple Pilot’s styled progression of ‘Spit You Out.’ For the 62-year-old Hughes, the album represents a statement of life and death, having survived complications from a heart procedure last year. Songs like ‘All Fall Down’ and ‘Breathe’ are evidence of his recent trials. On the whole, the debut is delivered raucous and raw without apology and gives Hughes exactly what he ultimately was after with his last band, a group bent on conjuring fire and mayhem, and bringing it to the masses in a live setting.

ARTIST: Oz NoyALBUM: Twisted Blues Vol 2LABEL: Abstract Logix

VERDICT: Mojo

THE prospect of sameness can be concerning to a creative artist. It can also mean a windfall. AC/DC anyone? But for New York-based guitar wizard Oz Noy, the sameness of his unique brand of taut rhythms and free-flowing, effects-ladened lead lines might be catching up to him on his new album Twisted Blues Vol 2. Upon first listen it was as if we had heard these tracks before... except that we hadn’t. Ok... two of them we had. Both ‘Get Down’ and ‘Just Groove Me’ appear of Noy’s 2006 live record. The sameness doesn’t mean there are not some stand-out tracks here. ‘Come Dance With Me’ might be one of Noy’s best, while ‘Slow Grease’ just feels right. Vol 2 also is ladened with guest spots ranging from Eric Johnson and Chick Corea to Warren Haynes and Allen Toussaint. We’ve never been big on these types of ‘all-star’ albums as it tends to take away and not add much to the host artist’s groove. It works more than not here, but overall Vol 2 comes off as a slightly mixed bag.

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If there is a weak link on Ghosts it is probably the spoken-word style slink of ‘War Baby’, a rambling tale of love gone sweet, and sour... but even this late track boasts a solid Thornley solo and tasty swells of guitar ambience. As thick, syrupy and foreboding as the album begins, it ends with a clean, crisp and stunted reprise of ‘A Place To Call Home’ fueled by har-monized lead vocals punctuated by the question ‘Where is the place that you call home?’ left hanging in the air at album’s end. There are no shortage of guitar champions out there, but Thornley and his crew bring a renewed spirit and drive to guitar-based rock music in a band setting that might only be rivaled today by Dave Grohl & Co. Big Wreck’s music is smart without being smart-assed... pomp without being pompous. Ghosts should be the album that puts Big Wreck back on the interna-tional radar and scores the band a ma-jor tour outside of their native Canada. They deserve it... and so do we.

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Gearphoria Magazine is wholly owned by WrightSide Media Group, Houston, TX. All rights reserved. Published June 2014