Dreamchaser

The best musician I know is addicted to gear.

No.

Not like that.

I mean kit. Caboodle. Stuff. Swag.

Instruments. Pedals. Amps. Outboard. Inboard. Digital. Analogue.

Now, when I say the best musician I know … I know a lot of musicians. I know a lot of really good musicians. This person is different class.

And when I say they’re interested in kit, I mean they’re obsessed.

The last time they counted they had 21 different guitars.

Why?

Because they all sound different. They all do different things.

21.

And that’s not counting mandolins, banjos, bouzoukis, basses, dobros, violins and other things with strings.

Or other instruments. Pianos. Organs. Accordions. Recorders. Mouth Organs.

And although he’s a guitarist by trade, and a world-class one at that, and although guitarists can be a little like magpies attracted to the shiny, shiny … it’s not just guitars.

(I have two guitars, in case you’re wondering. Two. Not twenty-two).

It’s everything.

Whenever we talk, we talk about music.

And when we talk about music, what he talks about is the latest thing he’s just got:

Hey, so you know I was recording acoustic guitars with the Shure SM81 - nice, woody, flat response? Well, I’ve picked up a couple of AKG C451 B’s as a matched set. I’m pretty sure that sound they got in the seventies, you know that Cat Stevens singer-songwriter vibe? I think it was this sort of mic. Anyway, I’ve been experimenting and if I run them through the Neve tube preamp then it’s pretty close …

And that’s not all. It’s everything.

Hey, I’ve just got the new Waves / Antares / Izotope / Spitfire Labs / Versilian Chamber Orchestra / Abbey Road Plate / T-Racks [insert name here] plug-in.

It’s led to some heated discussions. This person is a musical genius, but at times it feels like they’re more interested in stockpiling kit than actually doing anything with it. And to them, I seem like some kind of luddite - not because I’m not interested in kit (I’m a musician, right), but because I think that the important thing is not the kit, but what you do with it.

You can have every resource the world has to offer, and produce nothing.

Or you can have the urge to make music and a biscuit tin … and you’ll find a way to make music with it.

When this person found out that I’m recording another album using a quarter-inch four track last cutting edge in the late-seventies, a microphone, a guitar, and a bunch of analogue pedals, they thought I was joking.

But you have a computer?!

I know.

Doesn’t it have a DAW?

Yes. It appears to have several.

Well, why don’t you just use that?

Because …

And that’s where I do my long explanation of how I think art comes from choice, and choices are defined by choice, resources, intent and limitations and how only having a limited palette will make me work harder to create appropriate colours, and so on and so on.

Which cuts literally no ice with my friend, who, in case I haven’t mentioned, is the most talented musician I know. He can’t believe I could have access to the entire candy store, I could every colour on the palette, and every brush, and every scraper, and every type of canvas (the painting metaphor runs a little thin here … ), but I’m choosing to make an album in a way last seen when monkeys were coming down from the trees and experimenting with the possibilities inherent in banging two rocks together.

But, you could spend a week doing it using tape, or just do all of that in Logic by pushing a button? Do you want me to get you some plugins and some outboard or some instruments … Borrow the AKG’s? I’ve got a tube preamp you could use, and there’s the Helix if you don’t want to use real amps, and you could to the strings in …

No.

It’s a kind offer.

But no.

And here’s why.

Eddie Van Halen used to talk about being a tonechaser, meaning that his endless tinkering with amps and guitars and kit - the tinkering that created the Frankenstrat, the Super-strat and modded amp trends of the 80’s, and a whole style of playing - was driven by his attempts to realise the sound he heard in his head.

Now, if you read any of Ed’s comments about sound, there’s good reason to think that Ed might have been synaesthetic - or to put it another way Ed heard and felt sound in other ways than hearing it. Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon where the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway, like hearing something, prompts an involuntary experience in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Ed used to talk about sound as a felt experience, describing tones in terms of colours and physical feelings. Tone-chasing, like saying he never practised while also noting that he daily spent ten hours at a time lost in playing are, in this context, linked to and driven by a interrelated set of psychological and identarian complexes. But to put it simply, Ed was physically and emotionally connected to the sounds he made as well as being defined by them.

And I say this because as Songs for Separation goes through its process, I’ve been thinking about why we play and what we play. I know it’s a bad look for a musician to be seen thinking about what they do, and how and why. The accepted model is surly indifference and ‘we just felt it, man’ bs. But like a dog with an old bone, here I am, still worrying away at it.

I’m doing this on a shoestring, with equipment that no serious musician would ever touch because.

Because.

Because my first guitar was a 1969 EKO Ranger.

A 1969 EKO Ranger is not on anyone's list of classic vintage investment vehicle guitars.

Carter's isn't getting name bluegrass players in to demo them on their Youtube channel.

George Gruhn is not rhapsodising about them.

No-one is doing videos about their bracing patterns.

Now, none of this is a dig.

Billy Strings is a modern-date phenom. He can play like a demon, writes great songs, tours like a fiend, and has built a career from a standing start by nothing more than pure hard work. He knows and reveres the players of the past - go and check out his take on the music of Doc Watson if you doubt that - but is cutting his own path.

And if any modern-day shredder wants to talk about old-timey fiddle music, go and actually try and play some of those tunes. There’s none of the pickslant, three-notes-per-string, here’s my licks and tricks approach that the electric guitar crowd have developed. You have to be able to play the tune - which often doesn’t follow any rhyme or reason and will not bow to your strict alternate / sweep picking / pentatonics approach - and then you have to be able to cut loose and improvise when you’re nodded in. Believe me, writing and recording Flatpicker / Sam Bacon’s Blues for Test Pieces soon disabused me of that notion.

And you have to be able to drive the rhythm. There’s no laying back and laying out and hoping the drummer will do the heavy lifting for you, man. With nothing more than a box of air and some strings, you have to be able to jump start the party, get people dancing and keep them there as the hooch and the weed take effect.

Those cats can play.

As I found out while struggling to get to grips with Flatpicker / Sam Bacon’s Blues during the writing process, below.

Similarly, George has been flying the flag for guitars so long he’s saw the boom in the sixties come right back around again to now - and he’ll be the first to say that just because it’s old doesn’t make it a good guitar.

But no-one is shouting from the rooftops about the EKO Ranger 12 string as six string, and certainly not my example.

It might well have been first my guitar, but it was also knacked.

Someone had leaned it against a wall and someone else had stumbled into it and cracked the neck behind the nut.

History is silent on who knacked it.

It had been my Dad's, who remains the best acoustic player I've ever heard.

He was, as Northumbria also notes, a deep-sea diver. Divers were well paid then and he had a collection of guitars, instruments and recording gear that most pros would envy. Divers then also tended to be a rowdy wild lot, given to working and playing hard - a consequence of following a profession that could and did kill you at any moment - so the accident had probably happened on his watch. He wasn't precious about anything that he owned. He saw things as tools. But against that must also be weighed the reality that he was a time-served craftsman - a tribe who looked after their tools because they were how they made a living so it probably wasn’t him.

So I can't be sure how the EKO's neck became cracked.

I only know that by the time it came to me, it was, behind the nut, ending its career as a twelve-string.

But it could take six strings.

I'd started playing that summer because my Dad had got sick of me practising paradiddles on my knees. I'd been learning to drum, and six months in my drum teacher still hadn't let me see a drum, let alone hit one. I wanted to be Rick Allen with both arms. My drum teacher wanted me to use traditional grip and be able to count sub-divisions. Tired of my tapping, my Dad had sat my sixteen-year old self down, put the EKO in my hands and showed my fingers how to make E, A and B chords.

'There,' he'd said, once I could form them without him correcting me. 'You've got the basis of every blues ever written. If you learn three songs note for note, you can have your pick of any of my electrics and I'll get you an amp to get you started.'

Deal.

I had a reason to want to learn the guitar. Andy H, my best friend, and I had recently decided to start a band together, even though neither of us could play an instrument or owned one. We liked Iron Maiden - and to be fair, if you're a teenager, there's a lot to like about Iron Maiden if you start with the Live After Death album, as we did - and after that, anything with guitars in it.

So the prospect of actually getting an electric was a bit of a carrot.

The stick was learning the three songs note for note. My Dad could play, and while he was a generous man, he didn't mess about. If you shook hands on something, it was a deal - but you had do your bit of it.

So, over months, I let that EKO eat my fingertips, massaged cramp out after trying to hold down B and F major chords, developed calluses and slowly gained stumbling, hesitant fluency. For my three songs, I learned Stairway to Heaven (it's not as hard as you think ... ), Substitute (harder), and Johnny B. Goode (because without Chuck there's no roll in the rock ... ), played them for my Dad ...

... and passed my audition.

‘There you go. Which one do you want.’

I picked his Yamaha SC1200 over one of his Fenders or Gibsons or his Martin D-28 for a fairly simple reason that had nothing to do with collectability or what you're 'supposed' to want to play.

I picked it because I'd first seen that guitar when I was five, when he brought it home from working offshore, having picked it up in Japan. I'd come downstairs early in the morning when everyone else was asleep and found it propped up against an amp, as sleek and futuristic looking as if a spaceship had landed in the front room while I'd been asleep.

I didn't know anything about guitars. I'd just thought it had looked gorgeous and cool then, and I hadn't changed my opinion in the time in between.

'It's yours,' he said.

I’m still trying to work out why I ended up a guitarist because I’ve ended up spending a life making music with a guitar when what I really wanted to do was play the piano. Even though I’ve had time to master both, I’ve stuck with the guitar. It’s as much a part of me as my heart. It actually feels like an extension of my body. Parental expectations are complex things that work both ways; and both parties often take them on unconsciously without our parents knowing we are or wanting us to. No alcoholic wants their children to grow up to be alcoholics, surely? And yet 65% of children whose parents have substance abuse issues go on to have their own substance abuse issues.

Good and bad.

'Word of advice,' he added. 'If you ever go to buy an instrument, never buy the one you think you want, or the one you think you're supposed to have. Don't worry about the spec, or the name on the headstock or the model. Try everything in the shop, then buy the one you can't put down and keep coming back to.'

My Dad was as good as his word in other ways.

A few weeks later, he came into my room unannounced carrying a Custom Sound practice amp.

'There you go,' he said, plonking it down in my room along with a cable. 'Start annoying the neighbours.'

Which I did.

And then Andy H got a Squier 15 and a Sunn Mustang Strat … and we started annoying the neighbours together.

This story is not offered to outline my origin story when it comes to playing the guitar, although it sketches in some of the broader brushstrokes.

I'm writing it because ...

Because the EKO Ranger and the Yamaha SC1200 are on no-one's list of vintage guitars that Joe Bonamassa plays.

Because Tom Bukovac is not going into Nashville's premier studios and laying down an acoustic part with one.

Because they aren't coveted.

Because no-one is eulogising them as must-have instruments, and incidentally in the process bumping up the price of the ones they are selling as they do with a given Martin, Fender or Gibson.

Because no-one is spouting specious nonsense about tonewoods, heritage or history on Youtube.

Because no-one on a forum or social media group is working themselves up into a frothing apocaplectic frenzy while telling a new member that they have to have one if they want to play 'authentic' blues, bluegrass, insert roots music of choice here.

There's no such thing as authenticity.

Remember … ?

Authenticity comes from what you do, not what brand you play.

And yet …

And yet …

And yet no other instruments I've ever owned have ever made a more thrilling sound, made me happier, or made me feel more connected to the art and craft and love and joy of playing music than those ones.

Ever.

And before you start snorting and snuffling and saying 'well, my [insert instrument of choice here] is a vintage / vintage-spec / dove-tail jointed / hide-glued / handmade / handmade by factory processes / American-made / original / authentic (see above) / brand name / that so and so used / etc / etc / etc / insert all of the rubbish people talk about their instruments to justify the instrument they have ...'

And before you start snorting and snuffling and saying 'well, you've obviously never owned / played a [insert all of the above here ...] ...'

You're flat out and dead wrong.

I've owned and played and gigged and worked Fenders and Gibsons and many others.

I've owned and played and gigged and worked Martins and many others.

I've owned and worked and played and worked Class A classics.

I've been a cable and amp guy.

I've been a pedalboard guy.

I've done the latest digital.

You name it, I've owned it and I've played it.

Not in a weekend warrior way.

I've made my living playing and recording music.

That makes me a professional - and if you've never heard my name, well, that makes me like 99% of the professionals working in the music and indeed any other field you care to name. And as a professional, I knew those bits of kit inside out. I knew how each bit of kit related to each other bit of kit, how they worked together, and how to combine them to get every sound ever made and called for by the song, the gig, the band leader, the producer and the record company.

Or just me, playing for fun.

And yes, I am good enough to know the difference between a £6000 guitar and a £600 pound guitar, thanks.

I am good enough to know it can be the difference between latent and untapped headroom where an instrument will go anywhere you do, see you, and raise you … and being too good for the instrument you were playing.

And I am good enough to know that sometimes all the difference is is the name on the headstock and the price on the tag. 

I'm not blowing my own trumpet in saying that.

I'm not a world-class musician, by my estimation, although I can introduce you to a couple.

But I'm okay.

I'm saying it to counteract all of the 'yes, but ... ' arguments coming back for stating that the first bits of kit I had were better than any kit I subsequently had.

Because.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by a name on a headstock or a grill.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by Indian Rosewood or Adirondack spruce.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by handwound pick-ups, torrefication or a custom-shop.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by a spec sheet.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't dreamt up by a marketing department. It has nothing to do with heritage, history or what someone invented back before I was born.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by a price tag.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by scooping the mids or bumping the mids.

Because the sound I'm chasing isn't made by daisy-chaining this week's pedal with last week's, or combining old classics.

Because the sound I'm chasing is the sound I heard the first time I fretted an E major chord cleanly.

I want my guitar to sound like that.

The sound I'm chasing sounds like the first time I learned something all the way through and then played along with the record.

I want my guitar to sound like that.

I want my guitar to have as many songs in its soundhole as that EKO Ranger did - all of which are written down in my songbook.

I want my guitar to sound like playing together down the 'phone to Andy H after school, after six when local calls were free, for two and three hours a night.

I don't want my guitar to sound like an EL34 or a 6L6 or an AC 30 or a Princeton or a Dual Rectifier or a printed circuit board or a handwired boutique made by Shaolin monks in Tibet take on something that Leo mass-produced seventy years ago.

I want my guitar to sound like that little Custom Sound, wound up to bursting for the first time.

I want it to feel under my fingers like it did when I plugged in the Boss ME-5 my Dad also came through with, turned on an overdrive patch and hit an A chord.

Everything I've ever done, every spec sheet I've looked at, every name manufactured I've drooled over, every guitar I've ever tried, bought, gigged with, recorded with; every amp I've gone to from that first one thinking it was an upgrade, all of the Class A's and the EL34's and 6L6's and all of the COSM modelling and digital magic I've bought the smoke and mirrors of; all of the American-made, boutique-made, hand-made bits of kit I've bought, all of it ... all of it ... all of it ...

Has been chasing the sound I first heard.

Thousands.

Tens of thousands has gone into that.

Pounds and playing hours.

And it was right there all along.

We move on. We get and try different kit, but I think what we’re chasing is the thrill that those little amps and that first kit gave us back in the day - because the sound we made? That sound was us. You know, the sound that everyone tells us is the one to chase and which is the one we all try and get away from by copying everyone else?

It’s there from the first moment.

And that has nothing to do with kit.

And that’s why I’m recording an album with kit no other musician would touch.

©℗ A. I. Jackson

——-

Origin(al) Stories was first launched to show some of the thoughts, decisions and processes that went into the writing, recording and release of the Northumbria album.

Following the launch of The Landing Stage, which brings together some of the things I do, I’ve continued adding to Origin(al) Stories.

Origin(al) Stories has none of the features beloved of self-help and influencers: how-to guides, lists, essential hacks.

Drawn from my personal diaries and journals, the posts might often seem unconnected, elliptical and fragmentary. Showing, as they do, my explorations of ideas and approaches and processes as I do things, they are best viewed as glimpses of my workings.

They show my mistakes, the false trails I’ve followed, and the blind alleys I’ve gone down - all of which are intrinsic parts of finding a path through to doing something.

If you’ve liked an Origin(al) Stories post, or it’s helped you with something you’re doing in some way, please share it to your socials, and give credit. All content on this website is under copyright and attributable.

None of my work will ever appear on platforms or social media, for reasons I talk about here, but which can be summarised as: platforms don’t pay or sustain people who make things.

Buying an album or a book direct from me helps me to make the next one.

So please do.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day. Tell the people you love that you love them. Be a positive force.