Table of contents for Holiday 2022 in Guitar Player

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

HIGHER GROUND

LIKE SO MANY Red Hot Chili Peppers fans there at the beginning, I first heard John Frusciante on his debut album with the group, 1989’s Mother’s Milk. John was just 18 at the time of its recording, a fact unknown to me at the time. Listening to his muscular, confident playing on tracks like “Knock Me Down,” “Pretty Little Ditty” and the covers “Higher Ground” and “Fire,” I was sure the Chilis had snagged a guitarist a good 10 years older. But it was his work on the group’s followup, 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, that blew me away, just as it did every other fan. It was immediately clear that Mother’s Milk had barely scratched the surface of his talent, that there was so much more to come — and…

2 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

TIP SHEET

“I LISTENED TO MYSELF ON A RECORD, AND I WAS KIND OF CRUSHED. I WAS TRYING TO SHOW OFF TOO MUCH” I LEARN SO much from other players,” says acoustic guitarist extraordinaire Tommy Emmanuel. Emphasizing that point, he lets us in on a little secret: “I even steal from them.” He laughs. “No, really, it’s what we do, all of us. You have to have your antenna up all the time. If I spend a few minutes with people like Jeff Pearson or Steve Vai, they’ll do things that just knock me out. Before you know it, I’m playing the same licks, but I make them mine. And that’s okay. It’s part of the musical dialog we have as musicians.” Although he’s recorded dozens of albums of his own material,…

6 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

Music to Feed the Soul

PIANIST FEDERICO MOMPOU was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1893. Because of his basic shyness and reserved nature, he didn’t perform publicly. Instead, he found his true destiny: composition. His music, though totally unique, is somewhat reminiscent of Erik Satie and has some shades of Debussy, but his own indescribable and unique voice always shines through brightly. I initially discovered Mompou’s music on the Decca album Andrés Segovia Guitar, where the virtuoso classical guitarist performs “Cuna,” from Mompou’s Suite Compostelana. This is part of the Mompou story for me. Since I was diving into the wealth of Spanish guitar composers — Enrique Granados, Francisco Tárrega, Fernando Sor, Isaac Albéniz and more — I came to realize Spanish composers created a music that called my name. Their music was easy for…

3 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

BEING JOHN FRUSCIANTE

Back in April 2022, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Unlimited Love, their 12th studio effort and, more significantly, their first with John Frusciante, arguably their most fan-beloved guitarist, in more than 15 years. IF SOME LISTENERS felt like they had waited a lifetime for this reunion album — and it’s quite possible that a few younger ones actually had — they didn’t have to hang on too much longer for the next one. Rather, here we are just a handful of months later, and the Chilis — which also include singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith — have now followed up the 17-track, hour-plus Unlimited Love with the similarly 17-track, hour-plus Return of the Dream Canteen (Warner Records). The new record is culled from material recorded…

18 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

THE FIXER

AFTER SEVERAL WELL-RECEIVED U.S. tours, a striking self-titled A&M debut in 1970 and the critically acclaimed Rock On album in early 1971, British quartet Humble Pie were still largely an opening band in the U.S., with only a relatively modest following back in their native England in fall 1971. Still, expectations — and record company advances — were high. But despite being among the first bands ever dubbed a “supergroup” by the British press — owing to a lineup that included both the great singer/guitarist Steve Marriott of the Small Faces and a young phenom guitarist named Peter Frampton from a band called the Herd — Humble Pie were commercial underachievers. That all changed with a concert they recorded with engineer Eddie Kramer at the Fillmore East in New York…

13 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

TIME REMEMBERED

I FIND IT hard to imagine 1972 was 50 years ago. This is in large part due to the fact that I was born on June 5th of that monumental leap year. What? You didn’t know 1972 is the longest year by the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard? With the added day, plus two seconds, the six-string purveyors of the day took full advantage of the extra time on both electric and acoustic guitars. As this new decade was still revving its engines, rock and roll was expanding in 1972. With the guitar at the forefront, there was glam rock, shock rock, prog rock, southern rock and even jazz rock. What’s more, there was the further development of soft rock and heavy metal alongside the burgeoning reggae and country rock…

7 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

PRS

SMALL AMPS THAT kick ass are always welcome, and PRS just made it a whole lot easier to enjoy what their bigger HDRX 50-and 100-watt amps have to offer by introducing the new HDRX 20. It’s a smaller and lighter version of the behemoth 100-watt head that PRS based on a particular Marshall Super Lead amplifier used by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock and which now resides in Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. I tested the HDRX in the July 2022 issue, and at the time it was hinted that a lower-powered version would eventually be offered. Naturally, the reaction here was: bring it on! Right off the bat, the HDRX 20 threw me a curve. I expected to see EL84 or 6V6 output tubes, because they’re so ubiquitous to amps…

4 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

SWOPE GUITARS

THE MYRIAD QUIRKS of the Jazzmaster and Jaguar vibrato unit and bridge have occasionally frustrated offset players since these classic Fender guitars arrived in 1958 and ’62, respectively. Their main failing lies in the rocking bridge’s general instability and resultant tuning issues, as well as the poor sustain that sometimes results from both this and the low string tension, which is itself caused by the shallow break-angle from the vibrato plate to the bridge saddles. Enter the Descendant vibrato and Companion bridge by Swope Guitars. While the bridge is a solid and superbly functional improvement over the original, the patented Descendant vibrato is arguably the cleverest piece of engineering here. One past solution for the strings’ low break angle was to install a roller-bar between the vibrato and bridge to…

3 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

ANGEL MAKER

SIGNATURE MODEL ELECTRIC guitars with aged finishes have been around for a while, but I had not encountered a relic’ed signature acoustic until Martin announced the D-28 Rich Robinson at the 2022 NAMM Show. The model designed to capture every nuance of the 1954 D-28 handed down to the guitarist by his father, Stanley Robinson, a working musician during the ’50s and ’60s who played it at the Grand Ole Opry as well as on tour in the folk outfit the Appalachians. When he was a teenager, Robinson used the instrument to conjure the Black Crowes’ signature acoustic tune, “She Talks to Angels,” and he went on to write scores of classic Crowes, Magpie Salute and solo tunes on the historic dreadnought. Robinson has dubbed its re-creation the Appalachian. “If…

5 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

MY CAREER IN FIVE SONGS

THERE ARE “HIT” songs and there are “big” songs. Hit songs are popular for a while and resonate most with the young-adult music listeners of the era. Big songs — like “Shout,” “Sweet Caroline” and “Don’t Stop Believin’,” to name a few — stick around for generations, transcend music trends, become part of our pop culture lexicon, and are must-plays at parties, clubs and public celebrations. Big songs light up a room and get everyone from your nephew to your great-grandma singing along. The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” is a big song. Written by guitarist Dave Keuning with Brandon Flowers, the group’s lead vocalist/keyboardist, the 2003 modern-rock track has sold several million copies, been streamed hundreds of millions of times, topped numerous readers’ polls, appeared in multiple films and been adopted…

7 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

Atlas Strummed

I WAS ALWAYS intrigued by the look of the National Westwood, also known as the Map due to its upper bout, which resembles the U.S. Eastern coastline. I imagined it would be unwieldy to play, and since the National guitar company practically went out of business in the mid ’60s, examples aren’t easy to find. Plus, the numerous iterations of the National brand — including Supro, Valpro, Dobro, Airline and Valco — make it difficult to know which brand and model would be best. I finally bought the Map shown here, which was being restored and modified by my friend Ardy. This guitar started out as a single-pickup model 75 but was modified with a second pickup, along with some practical, if not clever rewiring. (VIsually, it looks to be…

3 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

THE JOHN FRUSCIANTE WORKOUT

EVERY GUITARIST LOVES to play. But not every player loves to practice. John Frusciante loves both. “I love the guitar, and I really love practicing,” he says. “I do it just for practicing’s sake. I always have. I don’t do it because I’m trying to get faster or because I think it’s going to make me smarter or anything like that.” For Frusciante, the benefits of practice are considerably bigger-picture. “It gets my mind straight in the morning,” he says. “And it tunes me to myself — my fingers to my body, my body to my mind. A lot of what I do is brain exercises as much as physical exercises.” The only thing he doesn’t like about practicing? Not having enough time to do it. “When I’m at home,…

8 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

FULL CIRCLE

“IT WAS TORTUOUS TO MAKE, BUT NONE OF OUR ALBUMS HAVE FELT EASY, FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER” BILLY DUFFEY THE CULT IT WAS 1984 when Billy Duffy defined his own idea of the indie guitar hero on the Cult’s debut album, Dreamtime. Playing a Gretsch White Falcon through a Roland JC-120, with a judicious use of delay and chorus, Duffy created epic soundscapes. It was but a prelude to the group’s next album, their 1985 commercial breakthrough, Love, where Duffy eschewed traditional blues-rock stylings for an approach that combined open drone strings and densely layered guitars. His sweeping aural pictures were the perfect backdrop for singer Ian Astbury’s thoughtful lyrical approach. The intervening years have seen the Cult adopt more of a hard rock approach, but for those who…

12 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

Recording Organic Rhythms

TALKING WITH FOLK blues musicologist Rory Block (see page 70) reminded me of another conversation I had with Eric Johanson on the subject of recording acoustic blues, prompting this consideration of perhaps the greatest factor when it comes to recording in analog versus digital: the click track. The upside in a digital audio workstation is unlimited editability, including the ease of creating a compilation of best sections from several cuts. Instruments can be layered separately and individually, with no peer pressure. The downside is the loss of a true performance feel. Unless you’re a “human metronome” like Tommy Emmanuel, your rhythm winds up sounding safe and robotic as you cling to the click track. So what to do? GET LOOPY WITH YOURSELF Instead of a click track, create a loop…

3 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

WARM AUDIO

WARM AUDIO IS known best for its high-end tube and solid-state studio equipment and microphones. But the Austin-based company has also produced a growing number of replica stompboxes that include the Jet Phaser, Foxy Tone Box (i.e. Foxx Tone Machine), and the new Centavo and Warmdrive pedals on review here. These two boxes clone a pair of famed ’90s designs, namely the Klon Centaur and the Hermida Audio Zendrive. Like the original Centaur, the Centavo has a large custom-cast “champagne” enclosure and black pointer knobs for gain, treble and output. The input, output and nine-volt adapter jacks are on the back, along with a mod slider switch that provides extended low-frequency response in the up position. Removing two screws is all it takes to remove the thick aluminum bottom plate…

3 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

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1 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

FLYING LESSONS

“HARMONY AND MELODY ARE JUST THINGS I’VE ALWAYS BEEN OBSESSED WITH” “I WANT ALL my songs to work acoustically,” Robert De Leo explains. “When it comes to songwriting, that’s essentially where everything starts out for me.” As bassist, co-founder and primary songwriter with Stone Temple Pilots, De Leo is responsible for penning some of the most rhapsodic modern-rock anthems of the past few decades including “Plush,” “Interstate Love Song,” “Down,” and “Between the Lines.” But behind the driving rhythms and pulsing guitar riffs, the band always displayed a keen sense of melody and sophisticated harmonic and sonic twists that distinguished them from most of their peers. Other songs such as “Wonderful,” “Hello It’s Late,” “Cinnamon” and “Glide” showed De Leo to be a learned student of ’60s and ’70s psychedelic…

6 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

Old Glory

ANY MENTION OF THE Epiphone brand today is likely to evoke thoughts of budgetfriendly, overseas-made Gibson alternatives that have worn that badge for the past several decades. But the brand began as a seminal American guitar maker and one of the “big three” of the early archtop, alongside Gibson and Gretsch. The subject shown here hails from the earliest days of Gibson’s ownership of Epiphone, a time when the maker’s own distinctive features were still prevalent throughout the design. At first glance, this 1959 Epiphone Sheraton might look relatively familiar, yet a closer probe reveals a wealth of unusual details that hearken back to its glory days. Only two decades earlier, Epiphone had been a premier brand serving the needs of volume-hungry jazz and dance-band guitarists with models that rivaled…

5 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

SHOW & TELL

MADISON CUNNINGHAM ACED her way through the whole “sophomore slump” thing in fine form with her second album, 2019’s Who Are You Now. That sublime set of musically adventurous and startlingly personal songs enchanted music fans and critics alike, and went on to earn the iconoclastic singer-guitarist a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album. Music is therapy for the 25-year-old California native, and as suggested by the title of her sumptuous new album, Revealer (Verve Forecast), songwriting is her way of making sense of feelings. “I actually had the title right at the beginning,” she explains, “so in many ways it was something of a guiding principle for me. As the songs came into form, the word sort of magnified itself as a through-line. I began to think of a…

13 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

RED-HOT GUITARS

1962 Fender Stratocaster HENRY TREJO This Strat was a big part of the two new albums. It was pretty much John’s main guitar for the bodies of most of the songs, if not all of the songs. Whenever he would do solos or really heavy parts he would use a different guitar, but the ‘62 is the meat and potatoes of everything you hear. DAVE LEE I seem to recall the ’62 first showing up during the Californication sessions. John had just come back to the band, and he did a few shows with them before they started writing and recording the record. I don’t think he had this guitar yet. I remember him only having the ’55 Strat, which was the only guitar he wanted to play. Then we…

4 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

Until Everybody Knows Who You Are

“BONNIE RAITT’S SLIDE PLAYING WAS A REVELATION ABOUT ALL THE THINGS I NEEDED TO WORK ON AND LEARN” RORY BLOCK REMAINS one of the premier purveyors of acoustic blues. In addition to honors received over her lengthy career, she won the Blues Foundation’s prestigious Koko Taylor Award for Traditional Female Blues Artist in 2021 as well as the 2019 Blues Music Award for Acoustic Artist of the Year. Taylor herself called her “Little Miss Dynamite.” Block loves to commemorate her heroes and predecessors, and to celebrate female empowerment. She’s recorded a host of tribute albums that pay homage to everyone from Robert Johnson to Bukka White to Bessie Smith. On Ain’t Nobody Worried (Stony Plain), the third volume in her “Power Women of the Blues,” she takes a slightly different…

10 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

TAYLOR

TAYLOR IS MAKING a huge move by introducing a new, sustainably sourced tonewood that the manufacturer has dubbed “Urban Ironbark,” which it’s offering on two re-imagined incarnations of its venerable 500 Series: the 512ce Grand Concert and, on review here, the 514ce Grand Auditorium. The 500 Series is a stalwart in the heart of the Taylor range, so they wouldn’t mess with it without good reason and high confidence. “Where we get our wood matters,” explains Andy Powers, Taylor’s chief guitar designer, president and CEO. The company sources red ironbark via its lauded urban wood initiative that gives old trees from city settings around Southern California a second life as guitars, hence the “urban” designation. The interesting development here, it’s replacing mahogany and being paired with Sitka spruce, rather than…

5 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

EARTHQUAKER DEVICES

THE SUNN LIFE Pedal is a collaboration between Akron-based effects manufacturer EarthQuaker Devices and the Seattle ambient metal band Sunn O))). It effectively reproduces the sound created when the group’s guitarists slam their multiple stacks of vintage 100-watt Sunn amps with excessive fuzz, overdrive, octave and boost, creating a demonic wall like no other. Now in its third incarnation, the Life Pedal has been modified to re-create the analog octave effect from a vintage Shin-Ei FY2 fuzz and FY6 octave-fuzz into a white-face RAT distortion, with a MOSFET booster following, to allow plenty of amp slamming from a single pedal. The controls can be a hair confusing, since, in the spirit of many old pedals, they don’t follow a logical right-to-left order. Amplitude, far left, is the output for the…

3 min

Guitar Player|Holiday 2022

How I Wrote… “The One I Love”

“IT WAS ABOUT fucking time!” R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck exclaims on recalling the group finally achieving its first U.S Top 10 hit with 1987’s “The One I Love.” “In America, it was like radio stations just weren’t interested in whatever we did. It was never the right thing. But we sold a lot of records, and that single definitely changed the way the world perceived us. And all of a sudden, our audiences doubled.” NOT LOVE, ACTUALLY It had been a long hard slog for the altrockers, who formed in 1980 and released four albums prior to 1987’s Document, which included “The One I Love.” Buck recalls coming up with the riff while on his front porch, noodling around on his guitar. “I remember just sitting there and playing almost the…

4 min