Music is the universal language
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” - Luke 2:14
General Interest
Learn a Slack-Key-Tinged Fingerstyle Arrangement of “Lady Athenry,” a Traditional Irish Jig
“A growly tone that no other pedal has": Robert Trujillo’s son, Tye, dips into the signature stompbox world for the first time with a pedal that combines wah, drive and distortion
“Even after four decades of high-gain amp design evolution, the Mark IIC+’s distortion tonesstill remain the gold standard”: Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ review
“I don’t know how he got my address. He sent me a videotape of him jamming his head off. I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’” Buckethead gives rare ‘interview’ to Bootsy Collins – but speaks through his Les Paul
“Some players will talk about wanting itto be a battle when they’re playing… I’m like, no, Iwantto make this fun. And I’m driving asports car”: Winona Fighter’s Coco Kinnon and Dan Fuson on the secrets behind their riotous punk guitar sound
“Some believe the slab ’boards have a different tone to veneer ’boards, but others think it’s more of a visual thing”: Everything you need to know about pre-CBS Stratocasters – the holy grail of vintage Fender guitars
“I called everybody! I looked at my heavy-metal Rolodex and just called up friends who Ozzy, Sharon and I had talked about having there”: Tom Morello on honoring Black Sabbath with the biggest metal show ever, and the all-star jam he is most psyched about
“I buy them from Sweetwater”: Vintage obsessive Joe Bonamassa’s pedalboard consists entirely of “standard-issue” modern effects
He’s got one of the biggest vintage guitar collections in the world. A reputation for being a certified gearhead and tone obsessive. He also purchases standard-issue pedals straight from Sweetwater.
Yes, we’re talking about Joe Bonamassa, whose pedalboard is surprisingly no-frills for someone with access to nearly any piece of gear imaginable.
Speaking on the new issue of Guitarist, Bonamassa reveals just how low-maintenance his effects setup actually is when asked if any of his pedals – like the MXR Micro Flanger, for instance – had been modded.
“Nope, standard issue – I buy them out of Sweetwater,” says the blues legend.
“There’s a Tube Screamer that is either an ‘80 or an ‘81. A Micro Pog and a Fuzz Face that goes through the Twins. Then the switcher and the wah and the Fulltone [Supa-] Trem and a Way Huge Conspiracy Theory.”
“The rest of it’s just junction boxes, you know: inputs for the amps, and a junction box, basically, to get to the switcher and out, and then there’s the two boxes that power everything.”
As with his pedalboard, Bonamassa prefers to keep his amplifiers simple as well.
Whether he’s sitting in for a night or flying in for a special appearance, the musician previously revealed that his priority is just to “bring something that’s appropriate” for the gig at hand.
“The older I get, the more I prioritise my general condition and the condition of my back,” he said. “If I’m in L.A., I have a lot of stairs. What goes down must come up.”
So when he’s just dropping in for a guest spot, Bonamassa keeps things light: “I just scale accordingly. It’s only one guitar, a gig bag, a protector case, and a cable.”
“If I’m just sitting in, I just prefer to play through whatever’s there,” he added.
“The only thing that will make me bring my own amp is if they go, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a Princeton Reverb’ and it’s a live band. Well, you can’t really move the needle there; it’s not loud enough. You’re just peaked.”
Meanwhile, Bonamassa is set to play a trio of Rory Gallagher tribute concerts in Cork next week – and in a move that perfectly sums up his guitar-obsessive spirit, he recently purchased a Fender Stratocaster from none other than Crowley’s Music Centre, the very shop that sold Gallagher his iconic 1963 Strat, in preparation.
The post “I buy them from Sweetwater”: Vintage obsessive Joe Bonamassa’s pedalboard consists entirely of “standard-issue” modern effects appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“I like grabbing something that I don’t think is the ‘right’ thing and seeing how that works”: Why Alex Lifeson still reaches for the $57 Japanese guitar his parents got him
When you’ve spent decades playing in front of stadiums with one of prog rock’s most sonically ambitious bands, you earn the right to reach for whatever gear you damn well please.
And for Alex Lifeson, that sometimes means bypassing his custom rigs in favour of a cheap, beat-up Japanese guitar he’s had since 1967.
Asked if he tends to stick with familiar tools or reach for new ones when recording, Lifeson tells Guitar World,
“There are definitely go-to’s that I prioritise, but I also just like grabbing something that I don’t think is the ‘right’ thing and seeing how that works.”
“Like, I have the first guitar I ever owned, which my parents bought for me in 1967 for $57. It’s just a cheap Japanese guitar that I had refinished. I pull it up for some things.
“It’s kind of like a Jack White sensibility, like, ‘I’ll take this crappy guitar and see what happens.’”
“So far, I haven’t had much success, to be honest,” he adds with a laugh. “But you get what I’m saying. Sometimes, I’ll go for a P90; I’m not normally inclined in that way with guitars, but now I realise that tonality is what it’s all about. I create different tones.”
As for his most-used gear today? “I’d probably say my ES-335, the Lerxst guitars, and a couple of my Teles,” says Lifeson.
“And then, on the amp front, I’ve got a bunch of them. I’ve got a Marshall, my Lerxst amps, Bogner, a Mesa Boogie Mark V and – like I said – I have an enclosure built with a single Celestion 12.”
“Then I’ve got my Universal Audio compressors and about a dozen good acoustics. I’ve been collecting gear for 50 years, so I’ve got a good arsenal of gear here in my apartment. I’m covered.”
Still, for all the gear and decades of experience, the Rush guitarist admits confidence hasn’t always come easily.
“I’ve never been very confident, to be honest with you, as a player,” he says.
“I’ve always felt like I had to work hard, and maybe I didn’t appreciate that I have a natural talent for playing guitar.”
The post “I like grabbing something that I don’t think is the ‘right’ thing and seeing how that works”: Why Alex Lifeson still reaches for the $57 Japanese guitar his parents got him appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“Weirdly wonderful”: Behringer’s back with another on-the-nose clone – this time of a cult Moog filter pedal from the 2000s
“My manager said, ‘Wow, you did a good job putting everything back.’ I said, ‘This is what I left behind’”: Joe Bonamassa on the evacuation of Nerdville – one of the world’s latest gear collections – following L.A. wildfires
“It sold out in two hours. The guy called back asking, ‘Who are you guys? How come people have bought every one of your tickets?’”: How Chris Buck and his band, Cardinal Black, took their first U.S. show by storm
“You don’t have to worry about the good retailers” Lee Anderton on why the recent spate of high-profile closures doesn’t mean that guitar shops are doomed
The last few years have been a brutal time for musical instrument retail across the globe. The enforced closures of the pandemic period might have been offset somewhat by a temporary boom in online musical instrument sales, but in many ways that shift just accelerated a trend away from brick and mortar stores that many retailers are still struggling to recover from.
In the last five years we’ve seen Guitar Center enter and exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and scores of smaller retailers go to the wall across the globe, but things seem to have accelerated in recent months. Last year the legendary US music chain Sam Ash filed for bankruptcy and closed all its stores, and earlier this year Dutch retailer Bax Music filed for bankruptcy only to be saved by a buyout led by founder, Jochanan Bax. The UK has been hit particularly hard, with the loss of GAK earlier this year followed up by the shocking collapse of PMT earlier this month.
Lee Anderton is probably the world’s most well-known guitar shop owner. But the Andertons main man has been moved to speak out by the crisis of confidence that seems to have gripped customers in the wake of all this, and wants to reassure the world that guitar retail isn’t going anywhere.
“We’ve been getting all sorts of comments coming through with orders saying, ‘Please confirm that you’ve definitely sent this today, because I’m a bit nervous that you’re gonna go bust tomorrow as well’,” Anderton reveals. “So it’s really important, I think, that we put some balance back into the debate.”
The death of PMT – one of the UK’s most recognisable and largest brick and mortar music retail chains – has sent shockwaves through the UK music scene, and it was a loss felt by their peers as well.
“Every single day the team at Andertons comes to work – and it’s the same at GuitarGuitar or PMT or anyone – and their job is to convince customers to buy something from them, as opposed to one of their competitors. That is the job. And yet, when you realise that something has happened and one of those competitors can’t continue anymore… ultimately you have to take some responsibility for their downfall, and it’s a validation that we must be doing something right. But then also it’s a moment of genuine sadness and sympathy for the people who now have to find other ways to pay the mortgage.
“It is a weird one, especially in the music industry, because above everything else, everybody in it just loves guitars and music, and it’s an industry where there’s quite a lot of camaraderie.”
Image: Press
Shop Talk
Anderton is at pains to explain that he has no special insight into what went wrong at PMT, GAK or any of the other retailers that have passed into memory over the last few years. But as someone intimately familiar with MI retail, and someone who has overseen a business that has, by his estimation, bounced back from the recent industry-wide downturn to almost the same level they saw during the Covid boom, he does have some feelings on where retailers that focused on brick and mortar might have struggled.
The enforced closures due to the pandemic are unsurprisingly one of the top culprits in this sad tale. “You just couldn’t have thrown a worse curveball, to a business with a large number of retail stores,” Anderton explains. “And then I think, honestly, it’s never recovered. I think Covid accelerated customers’ propensity to shop online, and probably accelerated what was going to happen anyway over a 10- or 15-year period, into a two-year period.”
Anderton’s point that it was always likely to happen eventually probably chimes with a deeper truth – and one that you probably relate with reading this. That the way people shop for things has changed dramatically, and it’s making it increasingly difficult for physical shops to compete.
“People like the selection and the freedom to shop online that bricks and mortar retailers just can’t compete with,” he admits. “I shocked myself with this stat, right? But if I add up the number of guitar amp and pedal products that you could order today on the Andertons website – I’m not even counting strings and cables, just guitars, amps and pedals – there are 14,000 different products. And 10,000 of them are in stock! How on earth is your average bricks and mortar store gonna get close to that? It’s financially not possible to have that kind of operation in every major city.”
Image: Press
The Power Of Passion
And yet, Lee Anderton still owns a brick and mortar store. The Andertons shop in Guildford, UK continues to offer an in-person retail experience that, while being as well-stocked as any shop of its size could be, still has to work with the same limitations and drawbacks compared to online – so why does he persist?
“Anybody who’s in the music business, we’re fundamentally trying to enable people to make music somehow,” Anderton explains. “And that’s quite an inspiring thing to do. I’m still a complete sucker for getting a lump in my throat every time I see parents with their 10-year-old kid coming in and buying a starter guitar pack. We mustn’t take for granted what a profound moment that could be for that kid’s life, you know? And if they go on to be a superstar, what a profound moment that could be for millions of people!
“So I never want to lose that. And I suppose to a certain extent, I do think it’s slightly sad when you periodically see [UK supermarket giant] Tescos selling guitar packs at Christmas. I do accept that if it reaches a wider audience and gets more people playing, it’s a good thing. But do I really think that the best way for you to start your guitar playing life is chucking it in with a half a chicken and a pound of potatoes in your shopping basket? No, I’m not about that.”
As an online retailer first and foremost, however, the challenge is to bring as much of the good stuff from shopping in person onto a digital platform.
“A big part of the e-commerce offering at Andertons was to try to replicate the store experience,” Anderton reveals. “Because I do still think that the greatest experience that you can have in retail is in an amazing bricks and mortar store. Doesn’t matter what you want to buy, a really amazing store with amazing demonstration facilities, and a vibe, and a great sales person and great after-sales service… if that can happen, it’s amazing.
“But when in reality did you last experience that? It’s so hard to consistently achieve that experience. I certainly think that part of the reason Andertons has never opened a second store is that it’s hard enough trying to do it most of the time in one store, yeah, trying to do it most of the time let you know, let alone all the time in 15 stores.”
The way that you can bring some of that magic to the fore however, is by reflecting the passion, knowledge and engagement of the store staff in a digital sphere – for Andertons, the most visible way this is done is through the brand’s hugely popular YouTube channel.
“I always describe our social media stuff as our foot in the door,” he explains. “And also, if you come and talk to the guys at Andertons, whether it’s someone who’s just joined yesterday, up to me and some of the team who’ve been here for 25-plus years, you’ll see that the YouTube stuff is quite genuine. That is what we’re all really like. And I kind of feel it’s still nice to know that you are shopping with people who really care, you know? And I buy lots from Amazon, and I don’t necessarily have a bad word to say about Amazon, but I don’t suppose Amazon is as passionate about music and instruments as we are.”
Image: Press
The Problem Of Choice
When talking about retail, it’s easy to forget that the people making the products have a part to play in all this. People assume that stores must be making huge margins, but in guitars especially this is not always the case. Anderton cites the example of a typical big-selling budget guitar, a Squier Classic Vibe Strat. With a retail price of about £379, Andertons’ margin on that guitar is around £50 – a hair over 15 per cent.
This might work if you’re selling these guitars by the hundreds, as big retailers like Thomann and Andertons surely do, but how does that work for a small local guitar store? If that guitar sits on the wall for a month or two, how much of that £50 profit is a shop going to actually make when you factor in the rent and other expenses accrued in the time it’s taken you to sell that instrument?
Another issue facing guitar stores is one of scale. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there have never been more products hitting the market in the history of guitar than there are right now. Anderton’s figure of 10,000 products is wild enough, but that scales up even further when you consider a mega-retailer like Sweetwater or Thomann. Thomann, for example, claims to have over 100,000 different products in stock and available for shipping from its cavernous warehouse in Germany at any time.
All this leads to a huge problem for brick and mortar stores, and even large chains. How can they possibly compete with the demand for choice that the industry has foisted upon them? Especially you have a thriving online guitar community that does a fantastic job of hyping and publicising these constant launches (and Guitar.com is absolutely part of that ecosystem, by the way), and driving a constant demand for the new hotness.
“Nowadays, you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of products in every manufacturer’s catalogue,” Anderton agrees. “You’ve got brands who are famous for making one style of guitar in search of more and more growth every year, going, ‘Let’s make other styles of guitar, or amps, or pedals, accessories.’”
It puts retail stores, especially smaller local ones, in an impossible position – because they just can’t offer the breadth of choice that the industry has created. “Any music store with less than 10 million quid to invest in inventory, you’ve got absolutely zero chance of being able to say to most customers, ‘Yes, I’ve got what you want today,’” he ruefully observes.
Image: Press
Forward To The Future
Anderton acknowledges that there are huge challenges facing the retail sector in general, and music instrument sellers are certainly not immune to this. Brands are bypassing retailers and selling direct more and more, consumers are finding themselves with less disposable income, and the basic costs of running a business are increasing exponentially. But despite all this, Anderton is optimistic about the future of your local small guitar store – provided that lessons are learned.
“It’s a fruitless task for that music shop to think they’re going to be able to service the same kind of customer that one of the big guys will be able to service,” he insists. “If I was starting again today, I’d be diversifying, I’d be shying away from anything mainstream – I wouldn’t be stocking any new Fender, Gibson, PRS or Ibanez.
“I still think that a small guitar shop that really, really specialises in what it does can work. There’s bucket loads of used gear around now, so just get into that – buy used gear, give it a really good overhaul, sell it for more than you paid for it. There’s a business there. And find all the weird and wonderful brands that are making really cool stuff, but just can’t get their voice heard because the big brands make so much noise.”
And while there are still people who pick up an instrument, music retail will continue to exist in some form or another.
“Fundamentally, we have to hope that human beings continue to want to make music and enjoy listening to music,” he reflects. “There are all sorts of retail challenges, but fundamentally, young bands are picking up guitars again. Schools have consistently carried on offering music tuition. And you’re still the coolest kid in school if you’re the guitar player in the band.”
The post “You don’t have to worry about the good retailers” Lee Anderton on why the recent spate of high-profile closures doesn’t mean that guitar shops are doomed appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 review: “if you’re looking for your first serious Les Paul-style guitar, you need to try this”
Editor’s note: Heritage Guitars and Guitar.com are both part of the Caldecott Music Group.
$699/£549, heritageguitars.com
Heritage has long been a cult favourite of the Gibson-inclined guitar connoisseur – after all the guitars have been made in the former 225 Parsons Street Gibson factory in Kalamazoo since the 1980s, using many of the staff who opted to stay in Michigan when the company relocated to Nashville. The problem with being a small, boutique, USA-made guitar company, however, is that there are limits to how many guitars you can make, and how affordable they can be.
A year or so back, however, Heritage decided to change that. The original Ascent collection was designed to create “modern, accessible guitars crafted with Heritage DNA”. In plain terms, that means making Gibson-inflected budget guitars in China, priced in similar territory as the very bottom of Epiphone’s range, or Harley Benton – but with some genuine US boutique bona fides to back it up.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – what is it?
The aforementioned original Ascent collection was aimed squarely at the entry level of the market and priced/spec’d to match. The new Ascent+ range however, is pitching itself more at the ‘first serious electric guitar’ market currently dominated by Epiphone and PRS’s SE in the non-Fender end of town.
In the case of this Les Paul-inspired H-150, what that means is you get a proper mahogany body and neck, which have been contoured at belly and heel for comfort. You get a maple top – which depending on the finish is either flamed – and a proper nicely dark rosewood fretboard. You also get a 12-15” compound radius neck, bound body, a tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece, a pair of Heritage’s own humbuckers and a classic four-control wiring setup – but one that’s actually hiding a push-pull pot for coil-splitting those pickups. And you get all that for under $700.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – build quality
Unboxing the H150 I was immediately impressed by what a good-looking instrument it is. The ‘Dipped in glass’ high gloss finish gleams over the dark blue to turquoise burst quilted maple top, bringing to mind wistful days by the summer pool perhaps.
While the finish and quilt level may be an acquired taste – it’s a bit more PRS than Gibson – there’s no denying the quality of the workmanship and classic timber selection. For those of more traditional tastes, traditional cherry and lemon bursts with flamed maple tops are available.
One of the most common issues with more affordable guitars is the weight of them. Corners cut either in wood selection or drying time mean that, especially when melded with a thick poly finish, you’re stuck with a boat anchor for life – it was one of the issues raised with Fender’s Asian-made Standard range, for example.
A good way to get around this with Les Paul-style guitars is to add some subtle weight relief underneath that maple cap, and that’s what Heritage has done here. It makes the Ascent+ H-150 an impressively lightweight and resonant instrument in the hands – tipping the scales at just under 8lbs, it won’t leave you sore after a long set.
Image: Adam Gasson
The significantly contoured heel may be visually off-putting to vintage purists, but it undeniably aids slick ergonomic playability and ease of access to upper frets that has my regular single-cut feeling a bit clunky in comparison.
The nicely bound genuine rosewood fingerboard could do with a touch of oil, but it’s well done and adorned with classic crown inlays – a treat to see, especially at this price point.
The gloss-finished classic C profile neck with 24.75″ (628mm) scale length neck feels great in the hand, nicely polished jumbo frets atop the 12” -16” compound radius board and genuine Graph Tech TUSQ XL all lend a professional and fast playing feel to the Ascent+ H-150’s impressive feature set.
Popping off the rear shielded control cavity, we find tidy wiring of the two 500K alpha potentiometers for volumes and the two 500K split-shaft push/pull potentiometers for coil splitting the humbuckers – each one controls its respective pickup.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – sounds
Giving the H-150 a strum straight out of the box I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent resonance of the guitar – it yields an airy unplugged tone with plenty of sustain, and bloom to single notes.
Plugged into my tweed combo, the pickups are nicely voiced with both reading around 8K in a traditional lower output PAF tonality. Okay, they may not quite have the articulation of a classic PAF from the 1950s – this is a $600 guitar, people! – but they are nicely musical. There’s plenty of snarl and honk at the bridge, smoother and darker at the neck and the classic middle position is always my underrated favourite on this type of guitar, offering perfect balance between the two.
Classic open chords and low-down riffs feel right at home, and as your solos take you further up the neck it’s easy to forget you’re playing a classic single-cut. That contoured neck joint really does disappear under your palm, facilitating speedy runs to the highest echelons of the fretboard, if only my playing could keep up!
The humbuckers offer a great range of classic rock tones, and while the coil split won’t turn your H-150 into a Strat, they are effective at adding a range of sparkly thinner tones to the available palette. I particularly enjoyed the middle position with both neck and bridge pickups split for funky rhythms and cutting country chicken pickin’.
And don’t overlook mixing a blend of one pickup in single coil split mode with one full fat humbucker, either. I think my favourite tone on the whole guitar was the combo of bridge humbucker with neck pickup coil split, producing a slightly hollowed out yet full bodied beautifully jangly rhythm tone and an articulate lead tone that slices through a mix brilliantly with a little fuzz. The opposite setting of a full neck humbucker and coil split bridge ups the midrange snarly and definition, perfect for those Andy Summers-esqe suspended chords and tight riffs.
The only gripe with the coil splits, is how tricky it is to actually access them. The gold bonnet knobs might look the part on a classic single-cut, but they’re very tricky to quickly pull up in the heat of battle – especially if you have large hands and fingers. If Heritage is determined to stick with these knobs, perhaps swapping the push-pull to push-push pots would make this less frustrating?
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – should I buy one?
This is a professional looking and sounding instrument – one that’s relatively lightweight and resonant with slinky playability that you could happily gig with tomorrow. Traditionalists may baulk at those quite extreme body and neck contours, but Heritage should be applauded for thinking outside the box a little – this is a great looking, superb playing and versatile single-cut for the more modern player.
The Ascent+ H150 develops the genre’s classic single cut DNA with some modern twists for increased comfort, easy playability and expanded tonal options all in a range of eye-catching finishes.
The one incongruity is perhaps the contrast here. Much of this guitar’s look and feel seems best suited to more technically-inclined, high-gain players – but the sounds on tap are much more traditional. Perhaps the next step for the Ascent+ is to add some options with higher output pickups to make a play for the heavy market? Regardless, this really is a lot of guitar for the money – if you’re looking for your first serious Les Paul-style guitar, you need to try this.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – alternatives
The sub-$1,000 set-neck single-cut category is a hugely competitive one, and the biggest beast in this weight class is undoubtedly Epiphone. The brand’s Les Paul Modern ($699/£749) is clearly the target for Ascent+, sporting as it does a sculpted heel, compound radius and coil-split pickups. If you want to keep the single-cut vibes but lean into the rock mentality, ESP’s LTD Eclipse EC-256 ($599/£599) is a good option. And you can’t really talk about quality guitars in this price point without mentioning PRS – the SE Singlecut McCarty 594 ($899/£829) is an absolutely monster guitar for the money.
The post Heritage Ascent+ H-150 review: “if you’re looking for your first serious Les Paul-style guitar, you need to try this” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“Peter Frampton messaged me, ‘I don’t understand, this sounds better than my ’39!’” How Gibson’s Murphy Lab acoustics fooled a seasoned guitar connoisseur
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Caitlin Canty Brings It All Back Home
Caitlin Canty’s guitar seems to have been around forever – it’s a battle-scarred Recording King Jumbo from 1939 – and her songs are the same way. Her melodies draw from the blues and folk tradition but in startlingly fresh ways and with lyrics as vivid and precise as Raymond Carver short stories. “They seem to exist without having been forced into existence,” says guitarist Rich Hinman, her frequent collaborator. Canty delivers them in a voice that’s clear, smart, ardent, sometimes aching yet always restrained, so that every quiver, burr and microtonal bend cuts deep.
Plenty of us already know Canty well. At 43, she has been building her sparkling indie-folk catalogue for 20 years: five full-length albums, four EPs, and million-streaming singles like her 2020 masterpiece, “Where is the Heart of My Country.” But for the rest, here’s your chance. Canty’s new album, Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, which is available to buy now and starts streaming Oct. 2, may be her best yet. To understand what makes this one special, it helps to know what the artist has been up to.
Canty’s last appearance in the Fretboard Journal multiverse came in March 2018, when she was set to release her winsome third LP, Motel Bouquet, produced by Noam Pikelny. (The Punch Brothers virtuoso put down his banjo to play slinky Telecaster on the album). In Seattle for a gig, Canty and Pikelny stopped by the FJ offices to tape a podcast. When Jason Verlinde asked them how they knew each other, they told him, sort of, but left out the part about falling in love and impending marriage. Canty didn’t want to exploit their romance to promote her music.
The seven years since have been tumultuous and wildly productive. In March 2020, the couple survived the Great East Nashville Tornado, which cut a swath of destruction down their block but somehow spared their house. They weathered the pandemic and brought their first baby boy into the world. In 2023, Canty released Quiet Flame, a glowing acoustic album produced by Chris Eldridge. It backed Canty with God’s-own’s East Nashville string band: multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz, fiddler Brittany Haas, and double bassist Paul Kowert. Around the same time, Canty and Pikelny left Nashville for a remote mountaintop cabin in Vermont, not far from the house where Canty grew up, where her mother grew up, and where her parents still live.
While Pikelny rode the Punch Brothers train and co-founded the bluegrass supergroup Mighty Poplar, Canty steered her own course below the music-industry radar, making transformative art for a hard-won fanbase without the help of a record label or manager. She mails out albums and merch from a little Vermont post office, tends to her bicoastal following on Substack and Patreon, and gigs whenever she can. “I need to perform my songs,” she says, “but I can’t drop my life to tour everywhere under the sun. Because now there’s another baby to care for.”
In March 2024, six weeks before giving birth to her second child and already so big she could barely hold her guitar, Canty booked four days at Sam Kassirer’s 1790 farmhouse studio in Maine and made an album that sounds like New England – flintier, bluesier, harder-edged than Quiet Flame or Motel Bouquet. Night Owl is a return to the percussive electric vibe of Reckless Skyline, the critically acclaimed album Canty recorded in Massachusetts in 2015. This time she co-produced (with Kassirer, who also played keys) and cut the tracks live with a band drawn from the New England scene where she got her start – Hinman and drummer Ray Rizzo, who both play with Kassirer in Josh Ritter’s Royal City Band; bassist Jeremy Moses Curtis and harmony vocalist Matt Lorenz (Suitcase Junket), who both played on Reckless Skyline. “I had one chance to get the songs down before the baby came,” she says.
“Caitlin was so pregnant when we made this record,” says Hinman, who has toured with Canty off and on for a decade. “But she was just trucking right through it. She’s really tough that way. It was kind of amazing.”
“I was sort of terrified when she showed up with three guitars and a carful of groceries,” says Kassirer. “But I couldn’t believe the energy coming off of this person. She gets right to work. She knows exactly who she is and what she wants. And before you know it, we’re listening to a playback and she’s smiling and saying, ‘Man, it really sounds like me.’ That made me so happy.”
“She’s scrappy,” says Hinman. “She just does it herself. I don’t think she came into music with any expectation that it would be different. She keeps her operation lean and portable but always has what she needs to do a beautiful job. I mean, I’ve seen her pull a Fender Pro Junior amp out of her suitcase.”
Canty’s albums tend to pair her voice and guitar with a musical foil: Pikelny’s Tele on Motel Bouquet, Haas’s incandescent fiddle on Quiet Flame. Hinman fills that role here with a mighty arsenal – a 1936 Roy Smeck Deluxe (a fine match for Canty’s old Recording King), a 1980s Tokai Strat strung with flatwounds, a Show-Pro pedal steel, and a baritone Tele. Across all those flavors and textures, he provides just what the songs need to reinforce the sense that they are found objects, not made ones.
“There are a lot of before and after moments in my life,” Canty says. “And they’re embedded in these songs. Before the tornado, after the tornado. Before I had a baby, after I had a baby. When I lived in Nashville, when I lived in Vermont.”
They say parenthood turns you into a morning person the way being chased by a bear turns you into a runner. Night Owl explores themes of motherhood and the search for home, but Canty is wary of saying so, partly because she doesn’t want to exclude people who aren’t parents, and partly because of fear. “The crazy thing about becoming a mom? I’ve seen great artists take a step back to have kids, and they get swallowed up and don’t return. So that was always scary to me. But parenting is such a big part of my life right now – as a touring musician and as a writer – so of course the songs are steeped in the realities of being a mother. But I don’t want to lead with that fact because it would narrow their meaning.”
The songs derive undeniable power from the deep experience of grown-up living, from life changes that refract through them in unexpected ways. The album’s title track, for example, begins with a very Vermont idea – “I might stay in the mountains/Never come down never come down” – but Canty wrote it in the flatlands of Middle Tennessee before she knew she’d be moving back north. “We started coming up to Vermont from Nashville during the pandemic for two months at a time, and I immediately felt like I’d never left. And then Noam fell in love with it here. So we started coming four months at a time, and finally left Nashville to be here full-time.
“We’re living in the literal clouds,” she says. “On a dirt road on top of a mountain. We see the full night moon coming up over the mountains, and we see it set the next morning on the other side – amazing. We’re very far from people, so we don’t have to listen to everybody mow their lawns around the clock. And the slower march of time here is helpful when the whole world feels like it’s on fire. But there’s a lot we miss about Nashville. It felt like home, too.” So on “Night Owl,” she doesn’t want to “leave the street where I met you/And leave the stair where we fell in love.” And in “Dear Home Again,” a slo-mo Celtic dirge with a thick, foreboding drone produced by Kassirer’s pump organ and Rizzo’s water-filled singing bowls, Canty sings about “setting off on a deep ocean” in a voice that cuts through the fog with sweet memories of “swaying fields … gentle woods … and laughing stream” while wondering “Oh will I see my dear home again?”
“I mean it quite literally,” she says. “What is home? Can you get back to it? The
idea of home is always morphing: my literal house, my neighborhood that was unrecognizable after a tornado, my country that does not look like the place I thought it was. Where will my boys call home? How long before the place you call home changes? I don’t know. To be determined.”
Taken together, the first three songs on “Night Owl” trace a progression from passion recalled to passion rekindled to passion squandered. The recollection comes in “Hotter than Hell,” the album’s first song and lead single, a rousing anthem of scorching young love that deserves to blare from car radios all summer long.
Way back in the mountains
Black cherry wood
Hotter than hell
Your heart in my hand
The thunder of blood
Drumming through the land
My body the land
The song gets across both the urgency of live-wire passion and the tattoo it leaves behind years later, “after the fever breaks.” Making his Tokai Strat sound like a lap steel, Hinman delivers a thick, broken-fever slide solo that staggers before it soars, gathering strength for a searing final flight that sets up a shattering bridge: Canty’s burnished voice tangled with Lorenz’s harmonies, the barest hint of rasp creeping in on the last word of the couplet to tell you she’s not making this up:
Years flash by faster than you think they will
The sweat on your neck I can taste it still
Passion rekindled is the subject of “Open the Window,” an R&B number about two people doing the dishes until one of them makes a demand: “Open the window, let the night roll in/tell me you love me, could stand to hear it again/Listen to the song/Spin me round the kitchen.” Kassirer suggested to Canty that she put down her guitar for this one and she sings with real power, letting herself go, trusting her upper register. Kassirer caught the performance live and spare with lots of room reverb, a B-3 throb and a 335 solo, and no backing vocals. He was going for a Muddy Waters’ Folk Singervibe, and got it.
That gives way to a story of passion squandered by familiarity, a slow waltz, powered by Kassirer’s muted piano, about a relationship gone so wrong that “we’d have to be strangers to be lovers again.” Imagining a life where she’d left him, she concludes, “I’d miss my dog the most.” Ouch.
After that three-song journey, the record clears the air with a busting-from-the-gate rocker called “Electric Guitar,” a wake-up call for anyone who ever put aside their dream to raise a family. “Did you put down that electric guitar you bought but never played?” The song came to Canty the day her toddler discovered her long-neglected early-‘60s Kay Speed Demon hollowbody in its dusty case under the bed. She held it upright so he could pluck it like a double bass and then, while he investigated the empty case, she tuned it up and started writing the song. She finished it at a 2021 songwriters’ retreat in New Hampshire, where she played it for friends one night, then came down to breakfast the next morning and heard them singing it together. (And yes, she strummed the hell out of her Speed Demon when she tracked the song at Kassirer’s studio.) “Electric Guitar” is one of the tougher songs on the record, along with “High on a Lie” (a guided tour through states of self-delusion) and “Bird Dog” (a swaggering rocker about being fed up with heartbreak). But with Canty, sometimes the softest songs hit hardest.
“Heartache Don’t Live Here,” the only co-write on the record (she composed it with singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson) is a stately song of liberation, a peaceful stroll through an old house that feels bigger and brighter since someone who’s never mentioned moved out. Old acoustic guitars chime and Canty sings, “Those old blues they still do come knocking/Nobody answers the door/That burden can just keep on walking/Heartache don’t live here no more.”
The emotional centerpiece of the album, “Don’t Worry About Nothing” is as gentle as anything on Quiet Flame. A fingerpicked lullaby – a hug disguised as a song – begins with Canty consoling her little boy after a bully wrecks his building-block castle, then pivots to Canty’s mother consoling her. “Don’t worry about nothing/a new day keeps coming/even the morning learned how to break.”
“I started writing it as a mom to my little one,” she says, “but the rest of the song is entirely written from my mom to me. In her voice, what she said to me after the tornado was a huge life event for us. So, don’t worry about nothing? Well, there clearly are some major real-life things to worry about, whether it’s a tornado or a pandemic or the results of an election. But the message is, Don’t let your mind get eaten by whatever’s chasing you. And so that’s my mom: She’s weathered some of the worst things that can happen, and she is the happiest, most stable person I’ve ever known. And so very wise.”
Even by Canty’s standards, the song is deliberately undersung, plainspoken and lovely. “Well, it feels like it’s my mom’s voice, so, yeah, Cathy Canty wouldn’t be out there showing off.” And neither would Cathy Canty’s daughter.
The post Caitlin Canty Brings It All Back Home first appeared on Fretboard Journal.
Taylor Guitars Expands Gold Label Collection With New Grand Pacific Models
Following the successful launch of its Gold Label Collection in January 2025, Taylor Guitars, a leading global builder of premium acoustic guitars, today announces the expansion of the collection with a suite of new Gold Label Grand Pacific models. The new models mark the second wave of guitar models in Taylor's exploration of warm, heritage-inspired acoustic flavors, featuring Taylor master builder Andy Powers' reimagined Grand Pacific body shape, a round-shoulder dreadnought, now with a deeper body design that delivers enhanced sonic fullness and low-end expansiveness.
Gold Label Grand Pacific: Deeper Body, Deeper Sound
The new Gold Label models feature a Grand Pacific body that's 3/8-inch deeper than Taylor’s standard Grand Pacific design, giving these guitars extra "lung capacity" and a deeper resonant frequency. This translates into more low-end power and projection — providing greater sonic push toward an audience or microphone while maintaining pleasing musical clarity. Even the treble notes have enhanced warmth and depth.
The Grand Pacific bodies are voiced with Taylor’s proprietary Fanned V-ClassTM bracing architecture — exclusive to the Gold Label Collection — a new variant of its award-winning V-Class bracing platform that here adds midrange richness, enhances the sonic depth, and creates the pitch accuracy that V-Class is known for. While Fanned V-Class is also used to voice the Super Auditorium body style that made its debut as part of the original Gold Label launch in January, the Gold Label Grand Pacific leans even more toward a warm, powerful sound.
"Compared to the Super Auditorium body, the curves and depth of the Grand Pacific produce even more volume and tonal dimension," says Andy Powers, Taylor's Chief Guitar Designer, President and CEO. "Its voice is earthy, honest and uncomplicated. It’s a reliable acoustic workhorse — both seasoned and soulful."
The Grand Pacific model offerings build around two classic tonewood pairings, Indian rosewood or mahogany coupled with a torrefied Sitka spruce top. Each wood pairing features three top finish/model options: natural, sunburst and blacktop. Mahogany 500 Series models include the Gold Label 517e (Natural), Gold Label 517e SB Cream, Gold Label 517e SB Firestripe and Gold Label 517e Blacktop; rosewood 700 Series models include the Gold Label 717e (Natural), Gold Label 717e SB Cream, Gold Label 717e SB Firestripe and Gold Label 717e Blacktop. Additionally, each of the two sunburst-top models is offered with a choice of either a firestripe or cream pickguard, bringing the count to eight Grand Pacific model variants.
The mahogany/torrefied spruce pairing produces a woody, warm voice with focused midrange character. The Indian rosewood/torrefied spruce combination delivers lush rosewood depth and complexity with enhanced warmth from the torrefied top. All models feature gloss-finish bodies.
Distinctive Gold Label Aesthetic
Fitting into the distinctive design aesthetic of the Gold Label Collection, all Grand Pacific models feature Andy Powers' modified headstock shape with an angled back cut and script-style Taylor logo inlay, a different pickguard shape, and a Honduran rosewood Curve Wing bridge. Clean, understated appointments reflect a down-to-earth, workhorse spirit, including:
- "Crest" inlay motif in cream featuring simple dot/diamond position markers in the fretboard crowned with a new headstock inlay
- Cream binding with simple black/white top purfling and a single-ring rosette in cream and black with black/white purfling
- West African ebony fretboard
- Taylor Nickel tuning machines
- 1-3/4" nut width and 25-1/2" scale length
- Fanned V-Class bracing
- LR Baggs Element VTC electronics
- D'Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light strings
- Taylor Deluxe Hardshell Case with "British Cocoa" vinyl exterior
Revolutionary Action Control Neck™ Technology
All Gold Label Grand Pacific models feature Taylor's patented Action Control Neck™, which combines the tonal benefits of a long-tenon neck joint with unprecedented ease of instant string height adjustment. The long tenon extends deeper into the guitar body and, together with the heel structure, enhances the wood coupling to produce greater low-end resonance and a sound comparable to traditional neck designs.
Unlike Taylor's existing neck design that incorporates tapered shims to calibrate the neck angle, the Action Control Neck™ is shimless. The string height can be adjusted in seconds by using a quarter-inch nut driver (or standard truss rod wrench) on a bolt in the neck block, accessible inside the soundhole. Neither the neck nor the strings need to be removed to make adjustments.
"The design serves players by allowing them to adjust their string height for different playing styles, applications or climate conditions as often as they like," added Powers.
Street pricing for the new Gold Label models are as follows:
- Gold Label 517e - $2,599
- Gold Label 517e Blacktop - $2,799
- Gold Label 517e SB - $2,799
- Gold Label 717e - $2,799
- Gold Label 717e SB - $2,999
- Gold Label 717e Blacktop - $2,999
For more information on the Gold Label Collection and more, visit taylorguitars.com.
Supro Airwave Review
With a tone vocabulary that spans clean, smoky, grinding, and growling—plus a Two notes speaker simulator—the 25-watt Airwave is a ferociously fun, potentially formidable amp for any size stage or studio.
Needless to say, the splashy news about Supro’s Airwave is its onboard Two notes cab sim that expands the amp’s studio and live capabilities, not to mention a player’s creative options. Having Two notes cab simulations onboard is a cool thing. It takes many of the cab sim tailoring capabilities of, say, the Universal Audio OX or Boss’ WAZA Tube Expander, and makes them part of the Airwave’s amp architecture, which is no small victory for convenience.
- YouTube
But the 2x6V6 Airwave is a very cool stage and studio amp before you ever touch the cabinet simulation capabilities. At 25 watts, with tube-driven tremolo and spring reverb, it’s a cool alternative for players considering a tweed Deluxe, Deluxe Reverb, Princeton Reverb, or, for that matter, any of Supro’s excellent low- to mid-power combos. But while it’s not quite the blank slate a Deluxe Reverb is (the Airwave’s voice is generally more compressed, with lower headroom), if I had to record or play a show with the Airwave, a delay pedal, and a guitar, I’d do so confident that I had about 4-zillion awesome, tender-to-gnarly textures to work with.
Little Basher
The Airwave is a handsome amp, designed with lots of vintage Supro motifs, a wide aluminum control panel, rocker switches, and a control layout that are more than a little evocative of the Rolling Stones’ early Ampegs. There’s also a little Stones swagger in its voice. For while it can do a very convincing approximation of bright, almost-cleanish Princeton Reverb or Deluxe Reverb sounds, it’s basically grittier than either of those. Not in a way that confines the Airwave to garage-rock trash realms, but which hints at sepia-tone speaker sounds and a loud, rowdy vintage Supro or tweed Fender edge when you dig in with a flatpick. These savage-around-the-edges facets of the Airwave’s personality are tempered, perhaps, by the 12'' speaker, which adds thickening counterpoint to the barky midrange growl and enhances bass frequencies. It helps make the 3-band EQ section feel more sensitive and interactive, too.
The tone variations available between just the EQ and master volume/gain control interplay are plentiful. But all those sounds can be dramatically recast and even made electrifyingly aggressive with the onboard, switchable boost and drive, which are activated by the two rocker switches on the front panel or optional footswitches.
Alternate Realities
To interface with the Airwave’s Two notes capabilities, you download the Torpedo Remote app. But you can obtain excellent sounds without going deep, thanks in part to the amp’s onboard boost and drive switches. They feel like pedals perfectly selected to work with the amp and each other. The drive in particular is tough and snarling. And though your results may differ, to me the effects feel organically enmeshed in the fabric of the amp’s output. Both effects can be gritty, punchy, and explosive extensions of the amp, and together they can make it sound huge for 25 watts. The Torpedo Remote app calls up more-or-less photorealistic representations of several studios and live spaces (ancient temples included!), microphones, and cabinets. As in many other cab sim applications, you can readily and easily change microphones, slide microphone positions back and forth, switch between virtual cabinets of various sizes, as well as add preamps and reverbs with easy-to-use analog-style interfaces. If the wealth of sounds here isn’t already everything you need to get a great recorded sound, they get you off to a great start. What’s important, though, is how seamlessly they function with the whole range of the amp’s tones.
The Verdict
Although $1.5K might seem like a lot to pay for an Indonesia-built tube amp, it’s noteworthy that amps like the Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue are now pushing the $1.8K barrier. But the Airwave includes a useful and well-integrated Two notes Torpedo cab sim solution worth several hundred dollars by itself. Most impressively, Airwave excels in both the purely analog and digital cab sim realms without compromising capabilities in either. The amp has loads of personality and range. It’s up for a punky Kinks/Ramones rumble or Alvin Lee rippage, but just as eager to please as a clean-cut extra in a Jaguar-and-spring-reverb surf party flick or vintage soul session. If you’re the kind of artist inclined to do a little of all that in your recording and performing life, the Airwave satisfies on every count.
Supro Airwave Review
With a tone vocabulary that spans clean, smoky, grinding, and growling—plus a Two notes speaker simulator—the 25-watt Airwave is a ferociously fun, potentially formidable amp for any size stage or studio.
Needless to say, the splashy news about Supro’s Airwave is its onboard Two notes cab sim that expands the amp’s studio and live capabilities, not to mention a player’s creative options. Having Two notes cab simulations onboard is a cool thing. It takes many of the cab sim tailoring capabilities of, say, the Universal Audio OX or Boss’ WAZA Tube Expander, and makes them part of the Airwave’s amp architecture, which is no small victory for convenience.
- YouTube
But the 2x6V6 Airwave is a very cool stage and studio amp before you ever touch the cabinet simulation capabilities. At 25 watts, with tube-driven tremolo and spring reverb, it’s a cool alternative for players considering a tweed Deluxe, Deluxe Reverb, Princeton Reverb, or, for that matter, any of Supro’s excellent low- to mid-power combos. But while it’s not quite the blank slate a Deluxe Reverb is (the Airwave’s voice is generally more compressed, with lower headroom), if I had to record or play a show with the Airwave, a delay pedal, and a guitar, I’d do so confident that I had about 4-zillion awesome, tender-to-gnarly textures to work with.
Little Basher
The Airwave is a handsome amp, designed with lots of vintage Supro motifs, a wide aluminum control panel, rocker switches, and a control layout that are more than a little evocative of the Rolling Stones’ early Ampegs. There’s also a little Stones swagger in its voice. For while it can do a very convincing approximation of bright, almost-cleanish Princeton Reverb or Deluxe Reverb sounds, it’s basically grittier than either of those. Not in a way that confines the Airwave to garage-rock trash realms, but which hints at sepia-tone speaker sounds and a loud, rowdy vintage Supro or tweed Fender edge when you dig in with a flatpick. These savage-around-the-edges facets of the Airwave’s personality are tempered, perhaps, by the 12'' speaker, which adds thickening counterpoint to the barky midrange growl and enhances bass frequencies. It helps make the 3-band EQ section feel more sensitive and interactive, too.
The tone variations available between just the EQ and master volume/gain control interplay are plentiful. But all those sounds can be dramatically recast and even made electrifyingly aggressive with the onboard, switchable boost and drive, which are activated by the two rocker switches on the front panel or optional footswitches.
Alternate Realities
To interface with the Airwave’s Two notes capabilities, you download the Torpedo Remote app. But you can obtain excellent sounds without going deep, thanks in part to the amp’s onboard boost and drive switches. They feel like pedals perfectly selected to work with the amp and each other. The drive in particular is tough and snarling. And though your results may differ, to me the effects feel organically enmeshed in the fabric of the amp’s output. Both effects can be gritty, punchy, and explosive extensions of the amp, and together they can make it sound huge for 25 watts. The Torpedo Remote app calls up more-or-less photorealistic representations of several studios and live spaces (ancient temples included!), microphones, and cabinets. As in many other cab sim applications, you can readily and easily change microphones, slide microphone positions back and forth, switch between virtual cabinets of various sizes, as well as add preamps and reverbs with easy-to-use analog-style interfaces. If the wealth of sounds here isn’t already everything you need to get a great recorded sound, they get you off to a great start. What’s important, though, is how seamlessly they function with the whole range of the amp’s tones.
The Verdict
Although $1.5K might seem like a lot to pay for an Indonesia-built tube amp, it’s noteworthy that amps like the Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue are now pushing the $1.8K barrier. But the Airwave includes a useful and well-integrated Two notes Torpedo cab sim solution worth several hundred dollars by itself. Most impressively, Airwave excels in both the purely analog and digital cab sim realms without compromising capabilities in either. The amp has loads of personality and range. It’s up for a punky Kinks/Ramones rumble or Alvin Lee rippage, but just as eager to please as a clean-cut extra in a Jaguar-and-spring-reverb surf party flick or vintage soul session. If you’re the kind of artist inclined to do a little of all that in your recording and performing life, the Airwave satisfies on every count.
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