The Valeton GP-5 is a compact multi-effects processor and amp simulator designed to offer tremendous sonic versatility in a pocket-sized format—ideal for practicing guitar or as part of a pedalboard. It features a high-quality digital processing engine (24-bit/44.1 kHz) and includes over 100 effects, amp, and cabinet models that can be combined into up to 100 presets (50 factory and 50 user presets), each incorporating up to 9 simultaneous modules in customizable chains.

It features intuitive controls on its physical panel for quick parameter adjustment, as well as a clear display for navigating presets. It can load up to 20 IR files from third-party cabinets and import NAM (Neural Amp Modeler) files using SnapTone technology, and it can store up to 80 NAM files in total. It also includes essential practice features such as a drum machine with 100 built-in patterns, a stem splitter, and a precise chromatic tuner.

To manage presets and edit parameters, you can connect the GP-5 to PC/Mac software and an Android app. All of this is complemented by a 1/4″ (TR/TRS) mono/stereo combo output for use with headphones or for direct connection to an amplifier or mixing console, or for integration into a pedalboard.

Connection to PC/Mac and Smartphone

The Valeton Suite software allows you to connect the GP-5 to a PC or Mac to manage NAM and IR file slots and presets. It also allows you to back up presets and update the firmware. 

The Valeton Suite app for Android/iOS connects to the pedal via Bluetooth and allows you to edit presets (enable, disable, and edit the 9 modules in the effects chain), manage presets, load IR files into internal memory, and load/convert NAM files. It also lets you use the drum machine and stem splitter, configure the Valeton GP-5’s settings as an audio interface, and set the pedal switch’s operating mode.

NAM File Compatibility

SnapTone compression technology converts large NAM neural network files by extracting and distilling their key tonal characteristics (frequency response, dynamic saturation, and nonlinear behavior), transforming them into a lighter, optimized digital file. Since the Valeton GP-5’s processor has limited DSP resources and memory, the original NAM files—which require significant processing power on a PC—cannot be run natively. During this conversion process, the NAM file undergoes a slight reduction in the mathematical resolution of the amplifier model. This subtly affects the microdynamics and the feel of the pick response, though it preserves the essential tone and character of the original amplifier. Thanks to this technical optimization, the pedal can store up to 80 of these advanced captures without overloading its internal system or introducing perceptible latency during performance.

IR and NAM files are permanently loaded into the GP-5’s memory: once the files are transferred to the assigned slots, they are saved in the pedal’s internal memory. Once transferred, you no longer need to be connected to computer software or your phone. You can integrate these slots into your user presets via editing and access them directly using the pedal switch. Note: Make sure the native NAM file includes, at a minimum, an amp and cabinet simulation. In the effects chain, these slots appear when editing the N-S module; activating this module automatically deactivates the amp and cabinet modules.

Other Useful Features

Audio Interface: The Valeton GP-5 includes a built-in USB audio interface with 2 inputs and 2 outputs (2 In / 2 Out) that allows you to record directly to a PC, Mac, iOS, or Android device via the USB-C port. It operates at an audio resolution of 24-bit / 44.1 kHz, with adequate dynamic range and low latency for real-time monitoring. On Mac, iOS, and Android, it’s plug-and-play; on Windows, it’s recommended to install Valeton’s official ASIO drivers to minimize latency when recording within a DAW. The USB-C port transfers audio while simultaneously powering the pedal (5 V minimum), so there’s no need to connect the 9 V power supply when using it with a PC or laptop. Its direct monitoring feature lets you hear the processed signal in real time through the 1/4″ headphone output without the latency of the computer’s processor.

Stem Splitter: This is an AI-powered feature that allows you to separate an already mixed song (a complete audio file such as an MP3 or WAV) into its individual tracks or instruments (stems). The components that are separated are: vocals, drums, bass, and harmonic instruments (guitar or others). Although this feature is not built into the hardware or firmware of the Valeton GP-5 pedal itself, it is very useful for practicing or creating backing tracks.

Valeton GP-5 User Community

Unlike other guitar processor manufacturers (such as Line 6 or IK Multimedia), Hotone does not maintain a cloud-based GP-5 user community for sharing presets. It’s a shame that Hotone doesn’t recognize the enormous added value that maintaining a user community could bring to the GP-5. There are several Facebook groups for sharing Valeton GP-5 presets. The native NAM files (more than 750,000) are available for free at www.tone3000.com

Retail Price: $79.99

More info at https://www.valeton.net/product/gp-5/

Carlos Martin Schwab would like to thank Nick Huang of Hotone for his help in writing this article.

Ken Avis – photo credit: Bill Crandall

The Washington, D.C. area has a very robust music community where musicians weave their ambitions and altruism into a basket of working strategies in order to build an audience of followers, a fan base. One of the most prolific and successful musicians in the D.C., Virginia, and Maryland area is Ken Avis, who has set the standard for developing a music career over a lifetime.

Ken’s multi-faceted approach to build an audience is more philosophically based than “strictly business,” as you’ll discover in our interview. And it sounds relatively simple, however, it demands a strong work ethic, a passion for music, and a desire to live an adventurous life, that’s ultimately and intentionally well-balanced.

Ken Avis, is singer-songwriter, a guitarist, composer, author, and a music curator with a passion for breaking down cultural boundaries between many spheres or genres of music. He and his French-Canadian wife, Lynn Veronneau, have developed and nurtured their own duo, Veronneau, that allows them the flexibility to run solo, as well as assemble some of the finest musicians in the area to join them for performances.

“The kind of thoughtful artistry one can expect from masters of the music.”  – Washingtonian Magazine

In the nation’s capital and surrounding area, they’ve performed at an array of venues that include elementary schools, senior communities, nightclubs, house concerts, as well as internationally acclaimed places like D.C.’s legendary Blues Alley, the Creative Cauldron, The Strathmore Music Center, and The Kennedy Center. And Veronneau can count coup adorning the stages of the DC Jazz Festival, the Takoma Park Jazz Festival in addition to the U.K.’s Beat-Herder festival. 

By establishing their own independent Antidote label, they have championed folk, blues, jazz and world music, creating a  work and promotional space for highly talented artists, whose own work and ambitions might otherwise not be fully appreciated and realized in a competitive and commercially-driven industry.

“Alchemists of cool jazz, bossa nova, and folk”  – Capital Bop

Hailing from the English Midlands, Ken performed in earnest when his family moved to England’s music-centric, Blackpool, where he played in local hotels, bars, as well as when he ventured about northern England to perform. He joined in with some known artists as Dave Ball (Soft Cell) and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys and more before pursuing a formal education at Sussex University and the prestigious London School of Economics.

Still, he didn’t leave music behind and found himself in a number of bands, as well as working with London’s now legendary Otis Grand’s Big Band, a WC Handy Blues Award winning group. But Ken also had a more traditional career in mind and he got on track to work in jobs in the world of international development. He would find himself in Paris, Geneva, and finally land in Washington, D.C., working for the World Bank.

“Inspiring & joyful…excellent performers”  – Washington Post

Ken and Lynn would soon release their debut album, “Joie De Vivre” (“Joy of Living”), that included their hit “La Mer,” that nailed down over a million views on Spotify, followed up by four Top 10 studio albums, two live albums and the duo worked with others releasing a number of singles. As Veronneau the couple has satisfied their love of travel, adventure and music by touring the U.K., France, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and have appeared on BBC radio, international festivals and won seven Washington Area Music Awards with their original songs, as well as won many songwriting awards.

Ken Avis & Lynn Veronneau – photo credit: Bill Crandall

In his interview with Guitar International, Ken discusses his journey navigating the worlds of blues, jazz, and world music; the philosophy behind Antidote Records and what it means to champion artistic diversity, as well as what he’s learned from performing across such an eclectic spectrum of venues and audiences. It’s a conversation about artistry, community, and the quietly radical act of making music that matters. As what sometimes happens, our interview began with a technical glitch that we soon figured out and we carried on from there…

******

Ken Avis: That reminds me of one of my favorite guitar stories, actually. Dominic Miller, who’s been playing guitar for Sting for, like 25 years. He was an unknown, went for his first audition with Sting, and couldn’t get any sound out of his guitar, and there were techs all over the stage, messing with the amp, changing cables, doing all these things. For like 10 minutes, he says, “I was absolutely dying. I was sweating. I was so embarrassed. I’m thinking, “Sting’s never gonna hire me.'” And he said that the techs had tried everything and couldn’t make it work, and then Sting walked over to him, turned  up the volume on his guitar, and that was it. He had the volume button on his guitar down.

Rick: Oh, yeah. All those techs in the room.

Ken Avis: He said, that kind of endeared him to Sting. Yeah, he said Sting laughed so much and he still didn’t think he had the job, but it turns out he did.

Rick: That’s kind of typical, I think, the small things that sometimes affect you, and you don’t realize it. So, yeah, that’s a good story. We’ve only met a couple times, and always briefly, so let’s go through some basics, then move into different things like your label Antidote.

Ken Avis – Photo credit: Lynn Veronneau

Ken Avis: It’s the record label and the events organization. We do a lot through Antidote. Started off as a radio series.

Rick: Oh, really? How about we start out with what it was like for you growing up in England?

Ken Avis: I grew up in the north of England. I was born in a little town right between Manchester and Liverpool, called Wigan, which was one of those classic coal mining towns like you’ve got in America. Died in the 1960s. So, we moved to a local holiday resort on the Irish Sea called Blackpool, a very special and unusual place. It’s like at the top of the deprivation index for the U.K. at the moment, in every measure. And it was pretty bad even then, but it was a holiday town for a few months of the year, and so we had so much music and so many shows going on there that there was opportunities for me to be playing from the age of 10 or 11. I was in talent contests on the end of the pier and things like that.

Rick: So, you must have started playing guitar when you were pretty young.

Ken Avis: Yeah, very much inspired by The Beatles because as a northern English guy they were everything, you know? It was more than just music. It was politics and culture. To have people with an accent like me being on the TV was rare, unless they were being laughed at. And so we all wanted to be Beatles, and I got a guitar when I was about 10. Take lessons. Again, because Blackpool was a show town there were musicians there who played in the pit orchestras of summer theaters. And so I had lessons with a jazz player, when I was about 11 ’til the age of 14.

Rick: Oh, that’s a good way to start.

Ken Avis: It was a good way. I should’ve kept going, you know? It’s kind of only afterwards you realize how much you were learning and how much was still left to learn.

Rick: There’s always more.

Ken Avis: Yeah, of course, I wanted an electric guitar and I wanted to play rock and roll, so I quit the lessons.

Rick: So what was your first guitar?

Ken Avis: Well, it was an acoustic guitar, I think probably made in Germany, very inexpensive. My brother had a guitar before me and never touched it, so my parents were unwilling to spend any serious money on a guitar. And my very first lesson with that guitar teacher, I never touched the guitar. He just made it playable. He got his tools out and shaved down the bridge and things ’cause the strings were about an inch and a half off the neck, you know? It was a disaster.

Rick: It was typical too, back then.

Ken Avis: You can’t get a bad guitar anymore.  It was some kind of a Strat copy. We did a tour in England earlier this year, and we played back in Blackpool, and somebody gave me some photographs from when I was about 14 or 15 playing this guitar. I put them up on Facebook and Graham Drew, who was a luthier and guitar repairer based in the area said, “Oh, I know exactly what that is. It came out of Italy.” And they weren’t bad guitars, they were okay copies of Strats. But he said,  he’d seen a lot of those in the U.K. during his youth, and practiced his art on them,

Rick: Yeah. I guess everybody wanted Hank Marvin’s red Strat.

Ken Avis: Yeah. And it’s funny ’cause I moved up from all of that. I loved acoustic guitar, so I bought a Yamaha acoustic which was a good guitar. And then the first good electric that I got was I went into the local guitar store, and there was a guy there who used to go to America every year, buy guitars in America, like Guild and Gibsons and Fenders, which were cheap in America in those days, fill a trailer, put it on a ship, bring it back to the U.K. and sell the guitars. Apparently, he also had cocaine in the tires of the wheels, so he went out of business after a while.

Rick: Back in the day!

Ken Avis: Back in the day. But, I walked into his shop and I said, “You know, I’d like a, an electric guitar. I have, like, £100.” And he says, “The best thing you can buy in this shop is that Guild Starfire,” like an old-fashioned looking thin line semi-acoustic. “No, well, I had in mind a Telecaster or a Strat or something.” So I hesitated, and the next time I went in the shop it was sold. So it took me a while, to find one of those when I came to America. I paid a lot more for it when I came to America. You know, things change. That would’ve been around 1978, something like that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: So, what kind of amp were you playing?

Ken Avis: Oh, I’ve always played solid state amps,  so I’m used to that sound and I like that. And there was a brand in Britain called H&H, and they did PAs. And so the first amp that I was using on stage was, it was actually a vocal monitor from a PA system. Super clean sound. And 100 watts, easy to carry around and so on. Before that I had a valve amp, which I’d bought for £15 in a secondhand store, which probably dated back to about 1960. And it was probably about 10 watts. And the strange story with that is a friend of mine at the time, we were at school together and we used to play music together at our houses, was Dave Ball, who became the synth player in Soft Cell. So he did songs like “Tainted Love”, and he borrowed that amp one day and I never got it back. And he died about a year ago, so I’m never gonna get it back. Like a little suitcase it was.

Rick:  I know that you play a lot of the blues. How did you get into the blues arena?

Ken Avis: That’s what I’ve always liked. So, while Dave Ball was playing synth-pop, and that was the music that was happening in Britain at the time, you know, first punk and then the synth-pop, neither of which I was interested in, I was getting deeper and deeper into acoustic American blues from the 1920s and ’30s. I was listening to Stefan Grossman doing his interpretations and doing the albums with the the tab inside.

I was listening to that and then Muddy Waters and other people. So blues was my thing, and then when I was about 20, I moved to London and found myself in a great band there called, Otis Grand and the Dance Kings, who were pretty big in Europe. After I left them, they became pretty big. Maybe, I was holding them back.

But, Otis Grand was this amazing Lebanese guitar player who’d fled Lebanon to live in L.A. and then came back to London. But when he was in L.A. he really got into people like Robert Cray, Duke Robillard. And in contrast, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. So the first time I went for an audition with this band, I mean, first of all, I was English, I was very, you know, basic English. I’d never met anyone from Lebanon. I couldn’t have pointed to it on a map in those days. They were all Mexicans ’cause they had American accents and big beards. And they were doing this Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys music with pedal steels and fiddles and a horn section.

Rick: Oh, great music, yeah.

Ken Avis: Great. I loved it. And so for about five years I was playing all around the clubs of London with that band, so getting more into blues, contemporary for the time, crikey, that was, that was 40 years ago! And it’s not changed that much. It’s still the same sound. Robert Cray’s still out there doing it in the same way.

Rick: You were playing the blues. So the music that you were listening to when you were growing up, I would guess you were listening to people like Slade.

Ken Avis: Oh!

Rick: Slade was great. You know, David Bowie back in ’71, ’72. You would’ve been fairly young at that point. And who else was playing? All the Beatles and then I’ll call them northern British folk musicians, like, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Roy Harper, those folks.

Ken Avis: You’ve just absolutely nailed it. That’s exactly who I was listening to. You know, when I was 14, 15, I was listening to Slade, Mott the Hoople, bands like that. But then John Martyn was one of the major influences on me. I absolutely loved John Martyn. To this day, I probably play John Martyn albums more than any other.

Rick: He started out, I think, with the Yamaha, and then he moved to a D-28. What a great musician.

Ken Avis: Yeah. I mean, I bought the Gibson SG a few years ago just because that was the electric guitar that John Martyn used. I love what he does, absolutely love what he does. That’s one of the things I say, when I retire I’m gonna really study John Martyn and his tunings and how he does it, but the voice that he sang in as well, you know, the songwriting is actually really, really simple. But what he does within it, a lot of it is blues-based, as well.

Rick: Also doing things like, “I’d Rather Be the Devil,” which his a phenomenal Echoplex driven guitar style. And, on his early stuff it was so simple, like, “May You Never”.

Ken Avis: Totally clean, absolutely beautiful folk song. And then he would be doing the stuff off the later albums with the Echoplex, which is just… What’s it called? In the Silent Hours?

Rick: “Quiet Hours?” (“Small Hours”) So, you’ve been to the Midlands.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ken Avis: When I think back to the bands that I went to see in those days as well, and they were smallish venues. They weren’t arenas. People didn’t go to arenas in those days. It was universities. I would go to Lancaster University, Preston Guild Hall, Manchester Free Trade Hall all within an hour of where I lived. And I would see bands like Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Supertramp. Tim Buckley, I think was opening for Supertramp, if I remember rightly. And we were all sitting cross-legged on the floor. Which I thought was a very British thing, and then I saw a video of Roy Buchanan playing at Georgetown University and everyone’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, so it was universal.

Rick: Yeah, I used to go to Grande Ballroom in Detroit, and the stage was probably three feet tall, and you’d see Cream, Vanilla Fudge, the MC5.

Ken Avis: Music was everything in those days. You know, you were waiting for the next album. You and somebody would buy it and say, “Have you heard it yet?”  And then you’d get the new Musical Express on a Thursday afternoon and read the reviews. I think we’re hearing more music than we ever heard. It’s in shopping malls and everywhere else. But, it’s so splintered now, and you don’t really follow music in the same way. And I wondered, “What does Genesis sound like?”

And I went to Spotify and put on, “What was the big Genesis album that I like so much?” [Selling England By The Pound] Like, “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)”and all that. And I listened to it and I thought, “Actually, this is really good.” And then I read about them on Wikipedia, ’cause we’re very modern and I went, “Oh, they were, like, 22 when they did this music. How were they so musically competent?” And the songwriting was so advanced and progressive.

Rick: Do you miss what we had before, when we had, like, maybe three or four stations that were playing music?

Ken Avis – photo credit: Lynn Veronneau

Ken Avis: I refer to it as the democratization of music, and I think that’s great. I think there should be lots of citizen musicians. We’ve been working full-time as musicians for 15 years, Lynn and I, 15 years.  And so we have a different perspective and a different approach to people who are just, citizen musicians, who might play once a month in a band with friends at a small venue for friends. But, I think it’s fantastic that that’s going on. I think it’s great that everybody has access to doing that. So on the one hand, I think that access that people have got is fantastic.

On the other hand, I think that the lack of a focus on music, for me, and possibly for our generations, ’cause there’s a few generations where music was everything, we feel we’ve lost something. We feel that it’s hard to track what’s going on because everything’s so splintered. And when my kids play music and I go, “God, I really like that. Where did you hear that?” Because I can’t understand where they’ve heard it, how they came across it, and, you know, it’s usually something on TikTok, and they know one song. They don’t know an entire album and things like that. So, it’s hard to keep track.

I genuinely try to keep track, partly because we used to have a weekly radio program. And I wanted it to be relevant. I knew there was good music out there. And we present music as well now, so I’m always looking in this local area or where’s the new talent, where’s the new ability, and there’s loads of it. They’re fantastic.

So I don’t for a second say music’s dead, but there’s something about the accessibility as a listener and the culture around music which is so splintered. I think the fact that people can pick up a guitar, relatively cheap, and it doesn’t need to have the bridge shaved down and be made playable and then they can go to YouTube and learn anything they wanna learn.

Rick: That’s incredible.

Ken Avis: I think amazing. I think that’s great. And they’ll always be better musicians than me or you or anybody else, because there are some people who, that’s their thing. And they might not even go out and perform. They might just do it in their bedrooms, and that’s great.

Rick:  Going back to your splintering idea, Joni Mitchell once wrote a song, I think it was on her Court and Spark album.  I think it was called “Just Like This Train.” And talked about going crazy because there’s too much choice, and I think that’s probably from the listener’s perspective, it’s splintered. But then you listen to it and you’ve got so much choice, sometimes you just don’t listen to anything.

Ken Avis: Yeah. And the algorithms don’t help, because the algorithms make you listen to more of what you’re already listening to. So, that’s a strange aspect of it. But, I’m so engaged in music, it’s 24 hours a day, not just playing, but listening and finding out what’s going on. And I look at the list of who’s playing at, say, The 9:30 Club, and I’ll recognize one. Like, I just finished a book about the history of  popular music in Northern Virginia. And in the preface to the book, I said, “I’m stopping this at the year 2000. I’m gonna leave it to a future generation to write the history since 2000.” And I make the point there, I say, “And good luck to them, because I don’t think it’s gonna be an easy job.” I think it’s gonna be super challenging, because I’m writing about people from Northern Virginia like Roberta Flack, people who made a national and international impact.

Rick: Tim Buckley. Tim Buckley was born in D.C.

Ken Avis: I didn’t know that.  So, that’s the next book, the D.C. one.

Rick: When you talk about it being so difficult, we’ve got AI now, which is another interesting phenomena that we’re dealing with right now. And you’ll probably have a book written by AI, which can readily grab all that information from the worldwide web, as we used to call it, and come up with a book, you know pretty instantly, I would guess.

Ken Avis: But then the challenge for the future generation is who’s the household name anymore? I mean, how do you define national and international impact? There was just a thing about a single by some people in the U.K., which has broken the record for the most weeks at number one, and they did a poll in the street, and 98% of the people have never heard the song and never heard of the artists.

America’s in a worse situation than England in this sense because there’s virtually no music on the TV in America. In terms of live performance. You get one artist on the Jimmy Kimmel show at 11:00 at night, maybe.Whereas in England, even to this day, Channel 4, we only have four national channels in Britain. And Channel 4 is all music from 5:00 until midnight every Friday. And it’s mainly live music, documentaries about music, all of this stuff. So at a national level, people have got a shared experience around what’s going on and it’s not all old Led Zeppelin films, you know? It’s bang up-to-date stuff, as well.

But in America, this vast, massive country, I was gonna use a very English phrase there. There’s bugger all local radio playing local music. There’s bugger all music on the TV. So, there’s no national conversation around it anymore. The only national conversation is old blokes like you and me, talking about how good Van Morrison was in the day. The whole thing about vinyl, people buying vinyl, 80% of the vinyl is the old records by Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell. It’s not new.

Rick: A lot of kids are starting to listen to the singer-songwriters back in the ’60s and ’70s.

Ken Avis: Yeah, yeah.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: I think there’s a resurgence in this, this new generation, that they’re going back and listening to them just like you listened to old blues players after you discovered the blues, I guess through the Brits who really promoted it, and then everybody started listening to Muddy Waters and guitar player, Magic Sam, and a bunch of others.

Ken Avis: You’re absolutely right. You know, my youngest son is listening to music and I’m going, “Where did you hear that?” He’s listening to Labi Siffre from 1972, a British artist from Nigeria. And he’s hearing this music, and so they do have access to everything. There is democratization in that sense. And to be honest with you, his friends think he’s really weird ’cause he listens to gypsy jazz and Labi Siffre and things like that.

Rick: Yeah. We did have opportunities if we would go and search stuff. But you mentioned algorithms, and so we’re fed stuff.

Ken Avis: Another thing similar to that is Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist, who lived in Arlington (Virginia), created a massive library of old recordings from all around the world which is at the Library of Congress, and they’ve put that onto a website now, which has also got a globe so you can actually go and identify which part of the world he recorded it in. So it’s global music.

To me right now, I’d say for the past 10 years the most interesting music for me is the music that falls between the cracks, the music which merges. like there’s a kora player who’s been doing a series of albums with a Welsh harp player.And the kora is considered like an African harp. And the two of them interweaving, it’s a sound like you’ve never heard before. And that to me is the interesting thing, when you’re mixing Celtic music with salsa, so you mix those two musical styles. I’ve not heard that before. That’s cool. And, the local band, just ’cause it’s a thing I haven’t heard often is, The Guitar Renegades, five guitars, no bass, no drums.

Rick: Really? Don’t know ’em.

Ken Avis: It sounds awesome and they do everything from the Brandenburg Concerto to “Smells Like Teen Spirit, with Simon and Garfunkel and The Beatles in between.

Rick: I’ll have to check ’em out. You mentioned Alan Lomax. I wanna show you something. This guitar it’s a 1950, it was actually made in 1949, but it’s a 1950 first year of the, Gibson CF-100. Are you familiar with them?

Ken Avis: Not at all. Beautiful guitar, though.

Rick: Yeah, it’s a great guitar. Anyway, I bought this from a fella named Mark Lundy Randolph, and it turns out that his great-grandfather was interviewed by the Lomaxes back in 1941. I know that you’ve written some songs and you’ve won some awards. Can you talk about the songs and your songwriting process.

Ken Avis: I think from a starting point, I have certain philosophies. A collection of philosophies. One of them, I stole from Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney once said, the thing he’s most proud of about The Beatles, when they were The Beatles, was they never really wrote negative songs. It was always positive. No matter even if they did a thing like “Blackbird”, which was about segregation and so on. You had to know it to work out that that was what it was about. And there was a positive beauty to it. So in the current times, with the current politics, I felt I’d like songs that I write to be relevant. They don’t all have to be heavy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some of them are ditties, but I wanted to do some relevant stuff. I wanted to take a thing from Paul McCartney and make them positive. And so if I find myself falling into the moaning and complaining mode, I stop myself and rip that one up and start it again. So the song that has had the biggest impact at the moment is, “Make The World A Better Place”, which is a very political song, but people, it’s political with a small P. And it’s still positive, you know what I mean? It’s about making the world a better place. Sure, I critique the problems, and then make the world a better place. So for me, more often than not, I need to have an idea before I start the song. I need to think that there’s a point to this.

I don’t write many songs. So, I want there to be a point to the song. Even if it’s a love song, I want there to be something new and original that I can put in there or super honest. So I come up with tunes pretty easily on the guitar, noodling around and they sound passable, but what’s the point if the song doesn’t have a point? And so that slows me down a little bit and hopefully improves the quality of what I do.

The next bit of the process is, once I’ve actually come up with the song, I give it to my wife, Lynn Veronneau, who is a great vocalist. And honestly, eight times out of 10 she’ll say, “Hmm, it’s good, but it’s un-singable for a normal singer. There’s too many words in there.” And so she actually just chops out words without changing the sense, and she edits the songs and makes them more singable. And the more you take out the words, the more people can sing it.

Rick: What about the vocal range? Do you try to keep it so people can sing it?

Ken Avis: Yeah, ’cause a lot of the songs that I’ve written, Lynn sings. And she tends to like keys around the key of B. I tend to sing in the key of E, which doesn’t sound that far away, but I’m in a much lower register and things like that.  It’s a pity we’re not both in the same key. Occasionally we can do it, but I play solo sometimes as well, sing and play solo, and it’s only one tone away from what I would sing it in naturally.

But, like all guitar players, I find E’s, A’s, G’s nice keys to play and I can leave open strings. I can play that while I’m doing it. So, at the end of the day, I don’t strum either. That’s the thing. I hardly ever strum the guitar. I’m constantly fingerpicking. And so that allows me to kind of put the bass, the chords, and a little bit of a lead riff in there all at the same time. I want the guitar to have something interesting going on. And if I’ve got those things going, it’s okay. I also write short songs and because I haven’t one idea per song, I can only restate it so many times. But then when we get to performing it live, I leave space there for somebody like Dave Kline (violinist).

Rick: Oh, that’s a good idea.

Ken Avis: An entire verse or so. So a song like that, a two and a half (minute) song on a recording becomes a five to six minutes live.

Rick: Yeah. I was reading that today, now some songs are only a minute long. I’m reading this songwriting book, if you’ve heard of him, by Steve Gillette. And he talks about keeping vocals in a certain range so your audience can sing along with you. And Jimmy Webb wrote a really good book about songwriting called, Tunesmith. They both get into music theory, beyond my knowledge base.

Ken Avis: You know, the thing about music theory as well is I did a TED Talk once about improvisation in jazz. And I used that phrase at the beginning of our talk today about democratization. That was my message;  I want music to be as democratized as possible. I want everybody to have access to enjoying playing the way I enjoy playing and you enjoy playing.

It makes life better and a couple of the points I said, there’s some myths about jazz and about improvisation. One of the myths is that you’ve gotta know everything. You’ve gotta know all the theory, all the scales, all the modes and all of that kind of stuff. And honestly, it’s interesting because that went up onto YouTube and I said that there’s a bunch of people who hate what I said and there’s a bunch of people who love it. I’d say the comments are 50/50, which I took very personally initially, but I decided not to respond.

Rick: It’s hard not to…

Ken Avis: Which was wise. It’s hard, but I sat there. And, the people who hated it were the ones who know the theory and who believe you can’t do it unless you’ve got the theory. And I was saying, like one of the greatest guitar players in the world, Django Reinhardt, couldn’t even write his own name, couldn’t read. You know, he learned to do his signature. Stephane Grappelli taught him to sign his name. He didn’t know any theory, whatsoever, and was so creative and so on. But, I did also make the point all the way through this, that if you do know that stuff, fantastic. You know?

Ken Avis – photo credit: Lynn Veronneau

Maybe it gives you access to things that I don’t know, and for sure there are guitar gigs that I won’t take because the person wants to put a chart in front of me. I can read a chart, but I can’t sight read. I can’t sit there with an audience and play it perfectly, unless it’s just chords. I need a week to sit at home and work through where I’m gonna play that and all of those things.

So, if you’re a guitar player, like locally, a Cristian Perez, a Jan Knutson, a John Lee, all of these people who’ve been to university and know that stuff, they can play those gigs. Pete Kennedy, and they can do more besides. So, I’m not anti-theory and anti-education, but I hate that to be a stumbling block stopping people. Some people are dyslexic, and the idea of dots on stave lines…it’s impossible for them, you know? So ease up.

Rick: I like what you said about accessibility. I use that with the folks in my band. I said, “I want the songs to be accessible, so people will wanna listen to them, wanna be able to sing them, and other musicians will wanna do them as well. John Martyn didn’t know how to read music and he was asked about that, and he said, “I don’t wanna know that. Danny Thompson (bassist) can do that for me. If I have a question, I can ask Danny Thompson, because I don’t wanna be limited by that structure.” And he wanted to be able to imagine whatever sound he wanted to do. He was gonna figure it out on his guitar. I’m paraphrasing what he said. So, I think there’s some value in not knowing it. I think there’s a lot of value as well to know it.

I don’t know it. I write the songs. My band knows it, and then I’ll say, “I’m on the third fret,” and they’ll go, “Oh, that’s a”, whatever it is. I go, “Okay, we’ll play it.”

Ken Avis: Yeah, I just agree with you so totally on that. I wish I knew it, you know? It’s a little embarrassing, or I used to feel embarrassing. You know, “Thanks for inviting me to come and do that. I’m not that kind of guitar player.” I’m at ease with saying that now. You need Christian, if you want here’s his phone number. Pay him.

Rick: Well, that’s how we can be generous to other people, because we know that they can do something we can’t. But generosity, I help people and get them gigs or whatever that I can’t do, or opening acts. I’ve been getting opening acts and helping talented folks get some stage time.

Ken Avis: And you’ve had Dave Kline playing violin on your recordings, as well, and Dave’s a guy who, when he was at senior school he was playing violin, and he learnt what the notes were on the stave. But Dave, amazing as he is, admired by Chick Corea and and all the rest of it, he’s not a guy who would be comfortable, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this, with sheet music in front of him and saying, “Great, go Dave.” It’s not been his priority. He’d been making efforts somewhere along the line to improve in that area, but not to the extent of, you know, just so that he could communicate it to other musicians what he was doing.

Rick: When He and I got together for him to play on the album, I went to his house a couple times, and I think we spent probably five hours on… It ended up being two songs. I think he mentioned that he really didn’t know music theory and all that, that he plays kind of organically. And he’s just absolutely brilliant. So, the last time I saw him at Blues Alley, I turned to my friend, Ron Goad, and said, “You know, we’re watching history right here. This guy’s like Stephane Grappelli back in France back in the 1940s.” I said, “We’re here now. This, in the future people are gonna be looking at that guy, and say, that’s the guy!”

Ken Avis: Even Stephane Grappelli, I don’t know what his knowledge of theory was, but his mother died early. His father brought him up and left him in a brothel because, he had to sleep somewhere. So, I’m not sure his theory was that great. But Dave tells a story of Yehudi Menuhin playing with Stephane Grappelli ’cause they did a lot of shows together at one point, and Yehudi Menuhin, the ultimate classical violinist was in awe of Stephane Grappelli. He said, “How do you do that? How do you make things up like that? You know, I can’t make things up. I need music in front of me.”

Rick: .What guitars do you have now? Do you have a certain guitar that you noodle on, one that you go to the studio in, or do you have, like a Trigger…Willie Nelson’s, you got one guitar that people kind of relate to you?

Ken Avis: A bit of… I have way too many guitars. If I count ukuleles and lap steels and Weissenborns, I did count them, and there were 38, which is ridiculous. Nobody needs 38 guitars, or do they? So the main guitar that I play live on stage with Veronneau is a Korean copy of a 1942 Gretsch Symphonic.

It’s a Gretsch, but it’s a Korean-made Gretsch. One pickup, and it just sounds great. Big bodied guitar. And, and I love that. And I paid, I think, $250 for it on Craigslist during COVID. I plug that straight into a $250 50-watt, Bose Katana combo which is an awesome amp. No pedals, just that. And that’s plenty. And we’re playing with Dave Kline so much, he fell in love with that, and that’s what he puts his violin through as well. He’s bought the Bose Katana. We’ve both got more expensive amps at home, which we never use.

Rick: Well, the older ones are too heavy.

Ken Avis: Yeah. The truth, and particularly Dave, he’s got these really boutique-y ones. So that’s the main one. And then acoustically, gosh, $200 is my sweet spot for guitars. I picked up a guitar that I found in the dump. I refer to it as my dumpster guitar. It was by the side of the road. And there’s not a single indication of where it was built. It doesn’t say Made in America, Made in China. There’s nothing on it at all. It’s beaten up to hell. I just cleaned it up, put new strings on it, bunged in a pickup, and that’s been my main acoustic guitar. But then we’ve been traveling a lot in the past two years.

We’ve toured in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Scotland, the U.K., Florida twice, Canada. And so getting on planes, I couldn’t stand that anxiety of “Will they let me put it on the plane or won’t they?” And so I bought one of these carbon fiber guitars that you take the neck off and it all fits into an Aviation Authority approved backpack. And standing in line as we’re about to board, seeing other people with guitars and feeling very smug … knowing how much anxiety they’re going through and I know mine’s gonna get on there.

And it’s not the most amazingly great guitar to play. But it’s pretty damn good, and it stays in tune perfectly, and it’s indestructible. I can use it as a weapon if necessary. So it’s good. It’s by a company called Journey. They come out of Texas.

I actually had a slightly bigger version of it, a wooden version of it which I sold to Pete Kennedy and his wife Maura. And they love it. They wrote to me the other day and said, “We’re still playing that guitar you sold us. It is an awesome guitar.” They make good guitars. And I’m able to take off the neck and put it on in a minute, 60 seconds.

Rick: Yeah, that’s amazing.

Ken Avis: It’s  so handy.

Rick: I’ll check them out. Do you find that you end up going back to some of the same people that you listened to back when you were in your 20’s or 30’s, and they still sound good?

Ken Avis: Yeah. I mean, John Martyn, as I mentioned is something I’ll put on. I’ve always been a big fan of Van Morrison. I mean, everything he does has got my stamp of approval. I love the It’s Too Late to Stop Now double live album which I probably heard when I was about 15. Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass, “Take Love Easy,” just guitar, just vocal. Love that album, one of my favorites. When I put on The Beatles, which is not as often as I should do, every single time, I’m amazed. Every single time I go, “I should be hearing this more often.”

And I don’t go to see tribute bands very often, but we were just up in Quebec, and there was a Supertramp tribute band. Supertramp is one of Lynn’s favorite bands from when she was a teenager. They were massive in Quebec. Not all of Canada, but specifically Quebec. And so we found ourselves in this theater holding about 400 people, all French Canadian, all French first language. They were singing every word of Supertramp. It was a great evening. But some of those albums from bands I used to listen, 10CC, I used to think that they were a great band, and their albums have dated. You know, some of them, the ones who were trying to be clever and modern, kind of seem to date a little bit.

Rick: What about grunge bands? Were you listening to grunge?

Ken Avis: No, here’s my situation, so I was listening to the blues stuff. I was listening to James Taylor. Always loved James Taylor from the age of 16. I illegally held an employment agency’s license with a friend, and we created a music agency. And we were doing pretty good ‘cause we were promoting all of those. We had a couple of venues that we brought bands into. We had a few bands that we sold onto tours and things. We were making decent money. When I quit school at the age of 18, senior school, I didn’t go to university. I was making money. I had my own business. And about a year later, when I was 19, that all ended ‘cause punk happened. And as I say, punk killed everything.

I didn’t get it. Just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand it. It made no sense to me. I couldn’t see the appeal. And we actually booked the Sex Pistols, put the Sex Pistols on one time. I put The Stranglers on. I didn’t even go down to listen to the music. My ears were attuned to acoustic guitars and things like that. I turned my back on the whole thing and we dropped the agency because we couldn’t catch it cold. We couldn’t make any money and that’s when I went to university at that point, because in England I was facing the alternative of go to university, the government will pay for it and give me a grant to live on or go on the dole, ’cause unemployment was running at about 15%, 16% and higher in the North. And the dole was less than the money they would give me to go to university, so I made a good economic decision.

Rick: Well, it worked out, didn’t it?

Ken Avis: I moved to the south side. I moved all the way down to the south coast of Brighton.

Rick: So you also started your own record label, Antidote. How did that come about? Why did you decide to start your own label?

Ken Avis: There was a little journey that happened. We became very connected to Strathmore Music Center and they invited us to become mentors to the Artist in Residence program. Very prestigious program. They take six local area young artists who are really good musicians and wanna be professional musicians. And as a mentor, my job was not to critique their music as such. I mean, my first mentoring role was with a string quartet, and I know nothing about that. But to talk to them about how to become a professional musician how to make money, how to get a gig, how to record a CD. All of those things that I knew about.

So that connected me over a series of years with these young upcoming musicians who were great. And as an old bloke I wasn’t as old, but I’m still old compared to them. It was awesome to be able to reach into the generations and befriend these people. It was fantastic. And then around the same time, we were asked to curate the music series at the Creative Cauldron, the Passport to the World Music Festival. And so I had to put my feelers out into the community as well to find not just who was good, but who was good and could sell 80 tickets at $25. And so that kind of built us into the community.

And then we started the radio program in, say, 2016 on local radio, Antidote, every week, and we mixed local music with national. So, we had guests like Steve Earle who was a guest. The next week we’d have Bobby Thompson or Griefcat or Yasmin Williams, all of these people. Before they became big, we had them in the studio. So I had the radio, the mentoring, the the Creative Cauldron presentation of music all of these different things, in addition to performing. And it became a thing for Lynn and I that we’re saying, “You know, we really enjoy what we’re doing and building this community together.” And so we said, “Why don’t we release a record?” And we were kind of more linked into the jazz world than anything at that point, so we created a compilation album called, Capital Jazz.

And we simply approached a dozen of our favorite jazzy, jazz-related, jazz-adjacent artists and said, “We wanna do this compilation. We’ve got no money. If you’ll give us a track, and you own the track, and we don’t make a penny off this, we’ll put you on the compilation album.”

Rick: Oh, nice.

Ken Avis: “And we’ll pay for it too… And if we all put in $100, we’ll print this up, and you can all have 100 copies of the CD each. Sell at your shows or to package with your other CD sales. And, the D.C. Jazz Festival’s already said they want 200 copies, and they’ll pay us for those to give away to their VIP guests.” And all of a sudden we were a record label. And it was fun to do it, and again, it built community. We created two live events around that record release, as well. We nearly got sued in the process. But, that’s another story. I had fun with that, but it’s a long story.

And then we said, “Look, if there’s bands that we really believe in, who we think are great, why don’t we release their records? And because they don’t know how to do that.” And we’d already released five CDs. We’d had three or four of them in the top 10 of the world charts or the jazz chart. And so we had these conversations and said, “Look, here’s the deal. We think you’re great. We’d love to produce a record. We’ll basically offer you mentoring and knowledge, and you’ll have what we refer to as the bullshit value of our own, a record label. And what do you pay us? Nothing. What do we take in royalties? Nothing. What do we give you? Nothing financially.” So, a couple of people thought, “That’s too good to be true.” And kind of shied away from us, but we released Project:Locrea. We’ve only released about a dozen albums so far of other artists.

Rick: Good for you. That’s great.

Ken Avis: But all the genres were really jazzy, jazz, jazz people. Irene Lalenti, a great jazz singer from Baltimore, got a four-star review in DownBeat for the album. Valeria Stewart’s just had her album at number one for three months on the World Music Chart.

Rick: Yeah, she’s wonderful.

Ken Avis: Yeah, we got the Spanish acoustic, Spanish language acoustic music of Valeria. We’ve got the classical folk traditions of Project:Locrea. We’ve got the jazz, all these different styles. You know, we’re not saying we’re only doing blues or anything like that.

Rick: Diverse, yeah.

Ken Avis: And it’s fun. It’s work. It’s a lot of work, but it’s nice to be involved and to be involved in the community and you kinda quietly get recognition for that. That’s all that you get, but that’s enough.

Rick: Yeah. So how do you manage your time in between performing, trying to find the time to write, which can take some time, working with all these other musicians, and you’re traveling a lot. Well, I guess you’re on tour, so how do you balance that and maintain a normal life, in quotes?

Ken Avis: My wife, Lynn, would say I don’t balance it, but honestly, there’s nothing I would rather be doing. And so it really isn’t work to me. You know, promoting shows is the thing which probably takes more time than anything, marketing the shows that we do. And that’s the bit that is a little bit tedious, but it’s gotta be done. If you don’t market the show, nobody’s gonna come. If nobody comes, you don’t get rebooked.

It’s not necessarily about money, it’s about building audiences in order to be able to sell out places where you do make the money. But that’s another thing, talking about venues and making money and so on, we’ve been 15 years doing this full time. This is our 15-year anniversary year. And we’ve never been ripped off. No venues have ever treated us badly. The worst that we’ve ever been treated is venues who don’t do any promotion, and you’re thinking, “Really? Why are you paying us if you don’t tell anybody we’re playing?”

You know, at least put a poster up in your window.” That’s the worst treatment. And they’re busy. You know, the reason is they’re busy doing other things. They’ve not thought about it. They don’t know what they don’t know. We work on the basis that most venues are probably not gonna promote, and so we better do it.

Rick: That’s a good point, ’cause, I think a lot of people, musicians expect that the venue’s gonna do something, but you’re right, it’s usually just something in the window, or on their website, and that’s about it. So, people have to actually find it rather than trying to do a public outreach in some fashion.

Ken Avis: Yeah. The worst one for me is when a venue says, “Live music!” I mean, if I see the words live music, I think, uh-oh. The daddy’s daughter or something. That doesn’t attract me, that chases me away.

Rick: How did  you assemble your ensemble, Veronneau?

Ken Avis: It came together by accident, I mean, me and Lynn are married. And that came about through music. We were both living in Switzerland at the time. And we both got a phone call from a promoter one day. To cut a long story very short, he told us, “I don’t want your band, I just want you.” And he put us together to perform at a festival. And the rest is history. That was 32 years ago.

Rick: Wow.

Ken Avis:  So, I gave her the Joe Pass and Ella Fitzgerald album. I think we could do something like this. Not as well as them, but something like this.

Rick: Very romantic.

Ken Avis: Very romantic. It was a global romance. A French Canadian woman and a Liverpudlian, in Switzerland. After that, we were doing duo stuff, very much folky, not jazzy. But Lynn had this aspiration to do jazz. And one day I met a guitar player. I used to work at the World Bank, and people would say to me, “Oh, do you know David Rosenblatt? He’s apparently a very good guitar player. You should play with David Rosenblatt.”

And I’m thinking, “I don’t think so. You know, he probably only plays Eric Clapton songs or something.” And I went to his house and played with him one night. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Brazilian jazz player. And so David and I were the band for a while. We both played nylon strings, finger style. So I was kind of covering the bass and the rhythm. He was doing the rhythm and the lead, and that was the trio. And we got into that jazz which Lynn always wanted to get into. And then a drummer came along, inserted himself in, and he was a very quiet drummer, so we liked him. You know, we didn’t want a drummer because of the noise. He was into brushes and things. So he came in, and we worked without a bass player for five years. We never had bass because we were covering it with our thumb and it sounded fine. People liking it. And that was another mouth to feed, you know? You gotta feed all those mouths.

Rick: It’s true.

Ken Avis: There’s a lot of gigs you have to turn down. Then when COVID came along, both the drummer and David, we stopped playing together. It was just the COVID thing. And they got involved in other stuff. Not music, but just life. And we found that during COVID Lynn and I were working as a duo again, but doing the same jazz and bossa novas, and acoustic stuff and blues, doing outdoor shows, doing live streaming to the U.K., and festivals, and all kinds of stuff. And we went, “Damn, this works.” So the only person who’s been a constant throughout that was Dave Kline (violinist). And the way we met Dave Kline was, remember we had an acoustic duo in the pre-jazz days?

We played a Focus show in D.C., and I won a CD. I knew it was a CD. It was wrapped, but it was that square shape. I thought, “That’s a CD.” And I opened it when I got home, ’cause I never win anything, and I was excited, and I went, “Oh, bloody hell. The only thing I’ve ever won, and it’s a bloody violin player’s CD.” And I never listened to it for like six months, and I was about to throw it in the bin one day. I thought, “You know, out of respect I ought to listen to it before I throw it away.”

And it was awesome. It was absolutely fine and good. And then I looked him up and discovered he lives five miles down the road. And he’s English.

Rick: Serendipity!

Ken Avis: So I said, “Hey, you know, we’re trying to put a jazz thing together, and we’re thinking we might record an album just so we can get as a demo to get gigs at wineries and breweries.” That was my ambition and to say we’re still working. And I said, “If  you’re interested, I’d love you to play on a track or two in the studio.” And he did on that first album. We did the first album six months after we formed the band. We wanted those wineries, and we’ve only ever played at one winery. So that was bad career planning. We went on to other things. Dave’s been with us, but he’s not part of the band. He’s always been independent ’cause he has his own thing. He’s been a special guest for 15 years now. And we’re special guests in his band as well, and it works out beautifully.

Dave Kline and Ken Avis at the Washington Area Music Awards – photo credit: Lynn Veronneau

Rick: Yeah, he’s a great guy, and he’s played with us. He dropped into JVs and played two or three songs with us. What projects do you have going at the moment and are they ready for prime time? Do you know when you’re gonna launch them? And can you even talk about them?

Ken Avis: Yeah. The project right now, I’ve been doing these history talks. I’ve been talking about the history of music in Washington, D.C., the greater Washington, D.C. area for 10 years now. I’ve done it for the Smithsonian, I’ve done it for George Mason University, for American University. I’ve done it in breweries, libraries, all over the place. And, Fairfax County (Virginia) had me during COVID doing on-line live streaming, a 12-part series. There’s that much history, 12 90-minute sessions, and subdivided into genres, eras, topics like guitars or women in D.C. And it’s been a lot of research and putting together. What’s spun off from that is I also do guided walking tours of Black Broadway, of U Street, explaining the history of U Street music, and Georgetown, as well.  So, the upshot of all of that is I was asked to write a book covering all of this, and honestly, I really don’t wanna write a book. Books have been written, fine books have been written about the local music scene of D.C., and they’re that thick.

And I’ve never got from start to finish, so I feel guilty I’ve even bought them ’cause I never finish them. I’m writing a 100-page book maximum, full of photographs. And I’ve written it about Northern Virginia first, so it’ll be the first of a series of books. And the whole point is accessibility. Again, I’m not writing these for historians and experts, I’m writing these so that people can go, “Oh, I’ve just moved to Arlington or Alexandria or Reston, that looks like it might be interesting. Is there a music history of Reston?”

I’m for the inquisitive music lover. I’m writing these to kind of excite them and make them go, “Oh my God, I never knew.” And so, that’s what I’m putting out in October.  So, and there’ll be more talks lining up to promote that side. That kind of brings that research to a close ultimately when I’ve done what I think is gonna be four or five books in total. I’m excited about that. And then the other thing is Lynn and I have been touring more and more, and we like it.

You can only play so much locally, before you’re, as Harry Schnipper (owner) at Blues Alley calls it “cannibalizing your own audience.” So, that’s one of the reasons we’ve been touring more. I’m gonna be looking into tours of countries I wanna visit. We don’t make a lot of money doing this. If you break even and call it a working holiday you’re winning. I’ve never been to Japan. I wanna do a tour in Japan. I wanna do Germany. Which I find a fascinating country. Most of us think of Germany and we instantly think of war, the Second World War and the First World War. There’s a lot more to German history.

Rick:  Very artsy.

Ken Avis: Yeah. And then all of the places we’ve played are asking us to go back as well, so we’ll do that. And then sometimes it makes really good strategic sense, like we are booked up to do another Florida tour in March when the snow might be falling here. So, we’ll be in the Keys, thinking fondly of you all breaking up the snow drifts. So those are the plan. In terms of new recordings, a lot of ideas at the back of my mind, and honestly that’s a thing of Lynn and I coming together to say, “We both like this idea,” or, “We don’t like this idea.”

There are things I wanna do. I’d like to do a solo album, ’cause I’m doing more and more solo stuff. I just wanna be playing all the time. I love it. And, there are gigs I can take solo, which we couldn’t take as Veronneau, because if you’re selling tickets at $35 and then you’re playing for $5 and you devalue what you’re doing and some venues are not interested in doing it that way. So, I can play for $5 under my name. But we got the 20, 30, 35, 50 dollar tickets for Veronneau. Luckily we’ve reached that stage. But I still feel guilty about it because tickets are crazy expensive. And I’d like everybody to have access to the music, so we still do some shows for charity and things like that. Three or four times a year we’ll do a fundraiser.

Rick:  And we’ve started doing, senior communities, and we really enjoy them. Have you done those?

Ken Avis: We do. Yeah. You know, they pay quite well. And so that’s very much a Lynn and Ken duo thing, that we’ll show up and do some of those. Again, we don’t do a lot and we do them through an agency, so I think there’s grant money involved and things like that. I gotta confess, the first time I did… And there’s all kinds of senior communities, there are really active seniors and there are people who, they’re on their last legs. And the very first time I did it, I felt pretty awkward about it. I felt, “You know, I don’t know if they’re listening or not.”

And then what I realized is, I’ve used the word accessibility more with you than I ever do. But, I’m talking about accessibility. These people can’t go to Blues Alley. And so, in my mind it’s important that people get entertained and get exposure to music and to culture, and if I’ve gotta go to a place like that and play to them, that’s great.  Maybe some of them won’t get anything out of it, but some of them do, and they don’t have an alternative.

And so my attitude to it totally changed after doing it the first time. And occasionally the agency also put us into schools, like elementary and junior school, what do they call, middle schools. And it was the same thing. “Why am I playing to five-year-olds and six-year-olds? I’m a rock star.” And then you actually discover that these are the best audiences you can possibly play to. There is no filter. And you go, “Who in the audience can sing?” And every hand goes up.

Rick: That’s great.

Ken Avis: You do that in Blues Alley and two people will put their hand up.

Rick: As far as accessibility, have you thought about going to individual rooms, “Okay, I’ll do 10 rooms of people who can’t get out of their rooms, and you pay me the same amount of money and I’ll do that.” For, I don’t know, an hour or two”?

Ken Avis: Never thought about that. Never crossed my mind. We did sort of do something like that one time. It was very, very special. We got invited to go and perform a solo show for Roberta Flack. And we got on the bus. This was, like a year or two before she died, and she was in her own apartment, with a nurse, but really stuck in bed. We got on the bus on a cold snowy day, and went all the way up to Manhattan, walked from the bus stop. The tip of Manhattan where she had this beautiful high-rise overlooking the whole bay and water. And we performed for about, 30, 40 minutes. And, and she had, I think it’s called ALS, which is paralyzed to some extent.

Rick: Yeah. My grandfather had that.

Ken Avis: But there were certain songs on the way there I discovered that she loved, the music of Carole King, and that she’d recorded lots of Carole King songs. And of course, we’d just done an album which included Carole King songs. So, the second we started to sing “You’ve Got a Friend” she lit up. She absolutely lit up, and it was a very moving thing to do it and to be involved in that. And, that was it. But the school thing as well, this has become a little bit of a mission, you know, with AI you can’t AI a live performance yet.

Rick: True.

Ken Avis: Even if they do the holograms, it’s not gonna be the same. So, I actually feel really good about going into schools where kids have never witnessed live music and giving them a show. And we tailor it a little bit in the way we present and the way we talk, but we’ll be playing the same songs to those kids that we play at Blues Alley.

Rick: Oh, really?

Ken Avis: And we’ll talk to them about it, ‘cause our music is multilingual and songs in English and Spanish, Portuguese. Even sang in Wolof [West African] once. We talk to them about the cultures and what the songs are about, and we try to pick songs where they can join in and sing along. We did “Mas Que Nada” once, which is that pure samba thing, and Lynn invited this room of 200, I don’t know, five to 10-year-olds to dance. You should have seen the looks. The teachers looked terrified. They knew this was a bad idea. And once we did it that first time, we knew it was a bad idea. So, we’re careful about that kind of thing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick:  I’m still surprised how robust the music community is in D.C. Have you find that it’s grown a lot since you’ve been playing here?

Ken Avis: Hmm. I’m not sure it’s grown. I think it gets renewed. I mean, I think the path into music is very different now for a lot of people than it was for us, because a lot of people now are going to university to study music. Which I think is great in terms of the training it gives them. I think it’s terrible in terms of value for money for the investment. But that’s where I see the renewal happening. And maybe that’s just the microcosm of music that I’m involved in, because I think there are different micro-climates of music in D.C. I’m sure there’s a whole Indie scene going on that I know next to nothing about and that’s a thing that’s going on. But the growth, I don’t know. And there are fewer venues, so that doesn’t help in order to see it. Maybe people are playing more at home.

But, I’ve mentioned Blues Alley a few times. Blues Alley  is virtually the only full-time five-day-a-week jazz club in D.C. now. Slims is gone. Bohemian Caverns is gone. People tell me the JoJo Bar on U Street, but I don’t think they put jazz on every night, and it is more of a kind of an eating and drinking place with jazz. Rather than the kind of the jazz place approach of Blues Alley, where thou shalt not speak in there. It’s all about listening. So less venues. And I’ve spoken to people like Victor Dvoskin, the bass player who plays at the Tabard Inn, and has done for 30 years. If you’ve never been there…

Rick: I haven’t.

Ken Avis: Oh, we’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta look into it and invite you to go. There’s this beautiful little room, tiny audience, but the best quality of music. Two days, like Sunday and Monday, they’re usually a duo or a trio. And Victor once said to me, “Oh my, when I first came to this country from Russia, I would be doing two, three gigs a day.”

Rick: Wow.

Ken Avis: “There was so much here,” in the ’80s, and he says, “You know, now I’m lucky if I do two or three a month.” So, it has all changed. Is there a new growth? I’m not seeing it. I’m seeing different things, things like SoFar Sounds has opened up, and venues come and go as well, and the house concert scene I think is probably healthier than it’s ever been.

Rick: Yeah. I used to host them.

Ken Avis: We’re playing a house concert in I think March, out in Herndon, which we booked last February, and he said, “The first date I’ve got available is next March.”

Rick: And wineries are busy, so yeah.

Ken Avis: An excellent point. When I look at Facebook, there’s a couple of Margarets who every day put up the list of what’s going on in D.C., and it’s amazing. Margaret Pierce is one of them, and Virginia, 90% of the gigs are wineries and breweries.

Rick: Have you played the Barns At Hamilton Station? We just played there, great venue!

Ken Avis: We have played there. Yeah, we’re doing another Barns in Purcellville in October or something like that. We’ve got a lot of different things that we’ve now got. For the first time, we’ve got the Virginia Commonwealth Touring Artist Grant which encourages us to go out deeper into Virginia. You’ve gotta be at least 50 miles away from your home base, and it’s encouraging you to go and play; we’re down in Suffolk, which is near Norfolk. So we’re gonna be playing all the way down there, a couple of shows.

And the other areas that are opening up are libraries. That’s awesome. Libraries are trying to become more relevant and so they’re putting a little bit of a grant money into having a live music performance. So, the ultimate listening room, a library. Falls Church has been doing it. Loudoun County’s doing a beautiful job on that. You talk about balancing time. For years, Lynn and I’ve been saying we ought to start a house concert series, and we’ve just not got around to it ’cause we don’t have the time. But it doesn’t need much to do a house concert, you don’t need a lot of space.

Rick:  We had them here at my place for probably three years, and I’ve been able to host great artists, like the legendary Johnny Farina from Santo and Johnny. Then Craig Bickhardt, Tim Grimm and during COVID we hosted driveway concerts.

Ken Avis: Yeah. But that’s it, you know, creating our own shows is the way music used to be, isn’t it? Beethoven used to go and play  in people’s living rooms.

Rick: And that’s an old blues thing, as well. Besides juke joints, you know, they’d go to somebody’s house and just jam and dance.

Ken Avis:  It’s funny, when you mention, Johnny Farina and “Sleepwalk’, the other thing that we do, again, because Veronneau can’t play all of the gigs, is me and Dave do a duo, the Ken and Dave Duo. Me and Dave Kline. And it gives us total freedom to do anything. So, I’ll say to Dave, “Hey, you remember that Sleepwalk song?” And so we did a guitar and violin version of “Sleepwalk”. We only ever did it once. It didn’t work out brilliantly. But we do all kinds of stuff. We’ve done Pink Floyd songs just with guitar and violin and vocal.

Rick: Ah. Oh, that’s great.

Ken Avis: … and lots of storytelling in between. When we tour, by the way, that’s the other thing, is we take battery-powered amps with us. And you can fit two of them into a suitcase that goes into the cargo. And, fingers crossed, it gets there in one piece, but so far they always have. So we actually have a PA. In one large suitcase we have two Bose S1 speakers. We take a microphone stand in pieces so that fits in, ’cause otherwise it’s too long. Then a bunch of cables. So we dedicate one suitcase to the gear, the carbon fiber guitar in the backpack in the overhead, all of our clothes and belongings and everything else we need in the other suitcase, and that’s how we tour Portugal and Spain for a month.

Rick: Sounds like a lot. But it sounds like it’s all compressed so that you can get it on the plane and you’re not paying too much for it.

Ken Avis: The Bose S1 Pro is about quarter of an inch too big in one dimension to be guaranteed to go in the overhead locker. They need to fix that in the next design.

Rick: You’ve found more than one revenue stream in your life to be able to be a working musician. It’s difficult to not have other revenue streams, but is sounds like you’ve been successful and driven to be able to figure out where you can gather more income to keep moving forward.

Ken Avis: Yeah. When you express it like that, it sounds a little bit like there’s a plan. Somebody once asked me, “What’s your business plan around all these things?”And I said, “There isn’t one.” I said, “The first thing is, does it sound like fun?” That’s my first business plan. Even if it’s gonna make no money, but if it sounds like fun and worthwhile, I’ll do it.

But then what I realized is it builds audience. If I’m talking to 100 people and talking about music, of course I’m gonna tell them that I am a musician and that my band and at the end I’ll go, “Oh, by the way, if you wanna come and see the band, we’re playing at The Creative Cauldron next Friday.” And it’s amazing the number of people who come up to us in shows, all kinds of shows, and say, “You probably don’t remember me, but I was in the talk that you gave at George Mason University.”

There’s different values to everything. And I think our biggest challenge as musicians is not do we know the theory? It’s not can we play fast, but can we connect with people and build audience?

Ken Avis: So, everything I do, in a way I’m thinking, most things that I do, I’m thinking about building audience. Will this build audience? I did a diagram one time of overlapping circles, and I’m sure I didn’t invent this, about the reasons whether you accept a gig or don’t accept a gig. Number one, it’s a good hang. You like the people. Number two, the money. Number three, the quality of the music and the place where you’re playing the music. And if any two of those three overlap, it’s worth doing the gig. So, the money might not matter. Or if you’re playing in a crappy place, then yeah, you want to be playing with nice people and getting paid.

Rick: Well, that’s good. I’m working with a group that’s revitalizing an old folk society that was established in 1913 and thought you might be interested in joining a proposed board of advisors. I doubt it would pay anything.

Ken Avis: Wow. Let me apply my three circles to it. Is it gonna pay? No. Is it gonna be with nice people? Sounds like it. So that’s gonna be fun and worthwhile, so is it gonna be in a decent place, a place that interests me, a topic that interests me? Yeah. So two of the circles overlap. I’m in. Does it build audience? Potentially, yeah. You might want me to come and do a talk one day, or some of those folks might come to my talk. I’m so analytical.

Rick: But, you didn’t mention the money part.

Ken Avis: Yeah. That’s the third circle.  I’m intrigued because the history of folk music in America is so fascinating. And D.C., because of the Lomaxes and the Library of Congress, and Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger,Peggy Seeger, Mike Seeger, Woody Guthrie’s linkage to those people. I mean, it’s Big Bill Broonzy was here in Rosslyn, Virginia. Hank Williams was living in Falls Church for a little while. And where folk ends and begins, and hillbilly music ends and begins, there’s another overlap with all of that. So it’s a fascinating subject.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: What advice would you give musicians who are trying to move forward  in their careers, especially young people, I suppose. Lessons learned, what have you learned, and how can they keep a balanced life, and how can they be happy becoming musicians, whether they’re successful in the traditional sense or not. What kind of what is success? Is it writing the song, coming up with a phrase, or is it making money? Is it having an audience that you enjoy? That’s a lot of stuff in one question!

Ken Avis: It is, it is…Making money is a low-ish priority. You know, Lynn and I are full-time musicians. We make a living, but we’d paid off our mortgage already long ago. And our kids have gone to university and we’ve covered all those costs. So, we don’t need a lot of money. And we have a tiny little wee pension from the World Bank, but if you’re young, you don’t have those things. So there’s so much to do on the money side. My son, by the way, my eldest son, who’s 39, is a full-time musician and a music publicist, so he makes his living at music, as well. So it can be done.

On the one hand it can be done. On the other hand, it’s not a safe bet, so have a plan B. But then the competition is so stiff. The opportunities are there, particularly in this area. We are really well-served in this area with venues. Even though I’ve said there are fewer than there used to be, there are still a lot of opportunities to play here. And let’s not complain about that because we’re way luckier than a lot of other places in that regard.

And you can create your own gigs. Be connected, build audience, promote, market, if you’ve got any aspirations whatsoever to building a career, whether it’s money related or just playing more regularly and doing better gigs. I can’t market you for a gig if I don’t have a website. If I don’t have a good video, and good video is hard to do, but live video. I’m not talking about you go to AI and feed in a song and a few instructions and it creates, you know, crashing waves and stuff. A live video.

I need to see a live video. I need a story to tell, which, please God, not another story about how difficult life is for you and your anxiety that you’ve overcome. That’s been done to death for the past 10 years, you know? Just who you are, what you’re about, and something positive ideally. Where you’ve played, all of those things. I need that to market you. Otherwise, no matter how good you are, I can’t do it. The audience, focus on the audience. It’s all about the audience.

Unless you’re happy to be playing avant-garde music with three friends, you’ve got to pay attention to them. You’ve gotta be nice to them. You’ve gotta talk to them, before and after the show. Don’t be the first musician to leave and the last one to arrive,  ’cause you want them to come back again. That’s the only way to build audiences is for them to accidentally hear you or be intrigued enough to come and accidentally hear you, and then to come back and for them to bring friends. And that’s, in a way, that’s the ultimate success.

We did two shows in Bristol, England in May, the Blue Tapestry show. But the shows went really well, and in the second show there was a couple who came back and they’d brought four friends with them to see it again. They’d rushed out and said, “You’ve gotta come and see this.” I was over the moon. To me, that was success.

You need a website, you need photos, you need video, you need a short story. Oh, the biggest thing of all, and I say this as a presenter…read your bloody emails, respond to your emails. The biggest problem I have is people who will send me a message on text, on email, on Facebook Messenger, you know, on multiple things, and… Well, the biggest one is the ones who don’t respond. After a while I don’t even contact those people anymore, no matter how much I wanna put them on.

Be business-like about and professional about how you communicate, what you communicate, but above all, communicate. And communicate doesn’t mean just tell, it means listen…then tell. It means read your email and respond to the email. That’s not just about music, that’s about professionalism in every job you can imagine. Even if you’re a plumber.

Rick: And, everything, everything you mentioned is the undercurrent of accessibility. Your music needs to be accessible. You need to be accessible.

Ken Avis: I think we’ve come up with something today. Accessibility in music. Why is accessibility important and how is it important? That’s a whole talk.

2026-2027 Schedule!

Veronneau Albums!

Source: Gold Atlas

Many have said, Boys Noize is on a “generational run,” but this is inaccurate. Yes, there was a world tour with Nine Inch Nails last year, Boys Noize’s co-production of the TRON: Ares soundtrack, and the top-billed, critically exalted Coachella debut of the artists’ collaborative project Nine Inch Noize before the drop of their self-titled LP. That was in April. Then came a summer of non-stop Boys Noize performances in clubs and festival main stages on multiple continents.

What’s next, however, complicates things.

Boys Noize will release 7LLVSION – his first solo album in five years – this fall, with the ZEP-fronted single “1+1+1” announcing its arrival. Expect the full 7LLVSION album track listing to come shortly, but besides ZEP, other artist features include Brutalismus 3000, Taichu, Maya Alkhatari, Abra etc..The track “1+1+1” drives an intimidating, key-shifting EBM bassline over a hyperactive new wave backbeat, a sound both positively fresh and decidedly analogue, occupying an uncanny valley between raw and processed, past and future. Rather than being the default metronome, four-on-the-floor kicks arrive to signal the transition from mosh pit to dancefloor with electrifying results.

After exploding out of Rotterdam’s underground scene, Dutch artist and multi-instrumentalist ZEP has built a rapidly expanding world of precision-tuned chaos. Here, ZEP is the industrial ringmaster, the tone of his voice shifting with unpredictable urgency as he snarls, wails, and shouts. The lyrics allude to a guest list gone wild, but “1+1+1” also suggests the duo is greater than the sum of their parts. Add it up, and you get a track that sounds like no one – and nothing – else.

With “1+1+1” offering a taste of what the 7LLVSION LP will bring, it’s clear that Boys Noize is on a multi-generational run. Then again, hasn’t he always?

ABOUT BOYS NOIZE:

Boys Noize (Alex Ridha) is a singular figure in 21st-century electronic music culture. The German-Iraqi artist, DJ, producer, and composer embraces and transcends contradictions—a cross-genre bridge-builder respected by techno purists, and a global headliner who never left the underground. Ridha is masterful on the decks and inimitable in the studio, crafting songs for strikingly diverse talents including A$AP Rocky, Bon Iver, Frank Ocean, Arca, Virgil Abloh, Lady Gaga, and Brutalismus 3000. He has been featured alongside Keinemusik, Shygirl, Kelsey Lu, Rico Nasty, and VTSS; remixed Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, Miley Cyrus, Tame Impala, The Chemical Brothers, and A.G. Cook; and scored the hit German hacker film Who Am I (2014), Oliver Stone’s Snowden (2016), and the forthcoming Replacer, starring Halsey. He co-founded the duo Octave Minds with Chilly Gonzales, and actively produces and performs with Skrillex as Dog Blood.

ZEP & Boys Noize

For Ridha, this long, accomplished career was merely the foundation for something bigger. In 2025 and 2026, Boys Noize performed alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross throughout Nine Inch Nails’ Peel It Back tour, and co-produced the near-entirety of the TRON:Ares soundtrack, including the GRAMMY® Award-winning single “As Alive As You Need Me To Be.” The trio’s collaboration was formalized with the announcement of Nine Inch Noize, debuting with a top-billed, viral Coachella set that SF Gate called “one of the festival’s greatest performances of all time.” The Nine Inch Noize LP was released the same week to critical acclaim. Perhaps Pitchfork’s review said it best: “Every song on the album slaps.”

As a solo artist, Boys Noize continues to be an active presence in the culture, with his eighth solo album 7LLVSION arriving in the fall of 2026. Throughout his rise from clubs to festivals to stadiums, Ridha has ceaselessly supported the underground through his labels Boysnoize Records and the recently launched ONES and ZEROS, focusing on a new generation of global talent from the Global North and South alike. His punk ethos has kept him fully independent, raw talent keeps him in-demand, and obsession keeps him future-proof. No other artist traverses musical worlds like Boys Noize, and while his sound cannot be replicated, his formula is simple: embrace everything, compromise nothing.

ABOUT ZEP:

ZEP is a Dutch artist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for his raw energy, boundary-pushing sound, and uncompromising DIY ethos. Emerging from Rotterdam’s underground rave scene, where he built a devoted following through his independently organized “FUGAZZI” parties, the drummer, DJ, and producer turned singer-songwriter has developed a singular style that fuses rap, punk, hardcore, techno, and R&B into something entirely his own. Fully hands-on across both his music and visuals, ZEP writes, produces, co-directs, and edits much of his creative output, pairing high-impact sonics with a distinctly self-made visual identity. On his latest project, NO ENEMIES, released via PULSE Records, ZEP balances fierce individuality with a broader message of connection, self-awareness, and togetherness.

BOYS NOIZE ON TOUR

September 26 – San Francisco, USA @ PORTOLA – DOG BLOOD (= BN + Skrillex)

September 26 – San Francisco, USA @ PORTOLA AFTER PARTY

September 27 – San Diego, USA @ CRSSD FEST

September 27 – San Diego, USA @ CRSSD AFTER DARK

October 02 – Porto, PT @ SWITCH CLUB

October 03 – London, UK @ THE CAUSE – OAZ TAKEOVER

October 09 – Bologna, IT @ ROBOT FESTIVAL

October 10 – Malaga, ES @ BRUNCH ELECTRONIK

October 16 – Paris, FR @  MIA MAO – OAZ TAKEOVER

October 23 – Barcelona, ES @ NITSA  – OAZ TAKEOVER

October 24 – Amsterdam, NL @ MELKWEG – OAZ TAKEOVER

October 30 – Alameda, USA @ GOLD BAR HANGAR

November 06 – Phoenix, USA @ OBSIDIAN

November 07 – Mexico City, MX @ ULTRA MUSIC FESTIVAL

November 08 – Orlando, USA @ EDC ORLANDO

November 14 – Miami, USA @ FACTORY TOWN

November 28 – Zhuhai, CN @ VAC FESTIVAL 

December 28 – Perth, AU @ RADAR FESTIVAL

December 30 – Hesse, AU @ BEYOND THE VALLEY

December 31 – Sydney, AU @ ABERCROMBIE (TBC UNDER EMBARGO – till?)

January 01 – Sydney, AU @ FIELD DAY 

January 01 – Melbourne, AU @ LET THEM EAT CAKE  

January 02 – Brisbane, AU @ RADAR FESTIVAL 

LINKS:

https://www.boysnoize.com

https://instagram.com/boysnoize

https://onesandzeros.com

Spotify

https://www.whatszep.com/

https://www.instagram.com/whatszep

https://www.tiktok.com/@whatszep

https://www.youtube.com/@whatszep

Spotify

Source: DB PR

Witness trees are living beings who have experienced incredible historical events beyond the lifespan of any living person. Over the course of two years, Bachman interviewed/collaborated with 16 of these remarkable trees in Virginia using a biodata sonification device and his guitar.

Self-recorded in the field over the span of nearly two years (11/13/24 – 06/24/26), The Witness Tree is Bachman’s latest effort in multimedia storytelling. The result is a nearly two-hour long album, and documentary film, that takes the participant through intersections of history, power, people, and place. From the eroding beaches of the Chesapeake Bay and its former plantation grounds, through the Civil War battlefields, old growth groves, and river bottoms of the Piedmont, to the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, the trees speak for themselves.

The Witness Tree

When site visits were in isolated private settings, such as in “Dogwood Mountain Valley Pipeline Blast Zone” or “American Boxwood Barboursville Ruins”, Bachman tuned his guitar and played along to the biodata coming from each tree. When this was not an option, pre-recorded material was played for the tree and later used in assembling the music.

While environmental audio of each location and the witness tree living in that space make up the core of each track, many non-musical samples find their way into this sylvan soundscape, such as text to binary code to MIDI synthesis of history texts, and a visual to auditory translator that transforms digital images of each location or tree. Processed, and at times heavily abstracted YouTube videos, and other miscellaneous A/V material related to each location can also be heard throughout the entire project, as well as Bachman’s stylized guitar playing/digital editing and renditions of obscure site-specific folk tunes. 

The Witness Tree has as much to do with public history, folklore, and documentary work as it does with modern American experimental music and fingerstyle guitar, with the liner notes, film, and album, all saying things each individual piece could not on its own. 

Truly all trees bear witness. As they live and grow alongside us, they experience the everyday experience of human and non-human life, as well as our most cataclysmic moments in history. The Witness Tree attempts to include not only the lesser-known historic narratives but also acknowledge the effects of climate breakdown currently accelerating on Earth and the trees that are living through these defining experiences of our time.

ABOUT –  Daniel Bachman is an artist, musician, and independent scholar primarily interested in the folk histories of Virginia. Bachman has released 14 full length records since 2011, and toured extensively internationally and throughout the U.S., garnering wide acclaim. Daniel’s unique perspectives and his music that fuses with the Virginia ecosystem was recently featured in The Smithsonian Magazine. His latest record, The Witness Tree, is out Oct. 2, 2026.

Daniel Bachman

LINKS

by Dr. Matthew Warnock

McCoy Tyner – photo credit: John Abbott

The year 1960 found two of jazz’s rising stars in a moment of flux. After finding world-wide recognition for his contribution to the classic Miles Davis quintets of the late 1950s, and experimenting with different lineups for his own group, saxophonist John Coltrane was in search of a new quartet to help propel his music into a new and ground-breaking direction.

At the same time, pianist McCoy Tyner, then a member of Benny Golson and Art Farmer’s famous Jazztet, was also looking for a new group of musicians to help him explore the post Kind of Blue music that was drawing his attention as a composer and improviser.

When these two jazz giants came together, alongside bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, both legends in their own right, the results were other worldly. Over the next five years these four musicians would change the way people thought about jazz, about improvisation and about music itself. Opening what was to become the first chapter in the long and successful career of one of jazz’s brightest stars, pianist McCoy Tyner.

Known simply as “The Quartet,” these four musicians recorded some of the most enduring and game-changing jazz albums of the 20th century. Exploring the new modal sounds that had been brought to light in Miles Davis’ tune “So What”.

The Coltrane Quartet pushed the limits of chord substitution, reharmonization and modal harmony on such albums as My Favorite Things, Crescent, Live at the Village Vanguard and the album which many consider to be the groups magnum opus, A Love Supreme.

Throughout these recordings, and the extensive touring the group embarked on between 1960 and 1965, Tyner began to quietly revolutionize the way people thought about, played and heard the piano in a jazz context. His extensive use of fourth voicings, modal planning, lightning-fast chops and heightened sense of communication within the group opened the doors for the later explorations by pianists such as Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau.

Though Tyner was open to experimentation within the context of the quartet, and the modern-modal music they were exploring, when Coltrane began expanding the group by adding extra percussionists, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of modal jazz to the point where it began to evolve into free jazz, Tyner felt it was the right time to leave the ensemble and strike out on his own. In 1965 he left The Quartet and embarked on one of the most successful solo careers in jazz history.

Teaming up with many of the eras top players, including Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, Lee Morgan, Joe Chambers and Billy Cobham, Tyner’s solo albums during his post-Coltrane years have consistently met with acclaim from critics and fans alike. Beginning with his highly influential album The Real McCoy (Blue Note 1967), Tyner continued to develop his own personal approach to jazz composition and improvisation. An approach that would lead him to experiment with many styles of music, most notably the music of Africa, on such albums as his 1972 release Sahara, which features Tyner playing a Koto, as well as piano, flute and percussion. Since leaving the Coltrane quartet in 1965, Tyner has consistently produced new recordings of his music at a rate of almost one album per year from 1967 to the present day. A remarkable feat that continued with his 2008 release Guitars.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tyner’s second release for the McCoy Tyner Music Label, Guitars features a wide array of today’s finest pickers performing alongside Tyner’s trio of Ron Carter, bass, and Jack DeJohnette, drums. The guitarists that Tyner has chosen to perform with on this release represent a variety of musical styles and approaches. Featuring modern jazzers John Scofield and Bill Frisell, avant-garde picker Marc Ribot, banjoist Bela Fleck and slide guitar virtuoso Derek Trucks, the album showcases Tyner’s diverse music tastes, as well as his ability to blend perfectly with musicians from different backgrounds and musical styles. The album marks Tyner’s first major collaboration with the guitar, and upon hearing the results the only question that lingers is “when will he do it again?”

Tyner recently sat down with Guitar International magazine’s Good Life section to reflect on his long and successful career, give his thoughts on the current state of jazz, and discuss his latest album, Guitars.

******

Matt Warnock: Historically, you have not recorded with guitarists as part of your ensemble. Why did your latest release, Guitars,  feel like the right time to bring that instrument into your compositions and ensemble?

McCoy Tyner: Well,  it was an idea that I discussed with the producer of the album, and we felt that since I hadn’t done a lot with guitars before this would be a good opportunity. They all have something different to bring to the table which made the album really unique, I feel.

Matt: The guitarists you chose for your new album reflect a wide variety of backgrounds and musical approaches. Did playing alongside guitarists as distinct as John Scofield and Derek Trucks, as well as others, cause you to approach the music from different angles in response to their musical diversity?

McCoy: No, I don’t think I changed my approach, but I made sure that my ears and mind were open enough to allow my style to meet with theirs somewhere in the middle. I allowed the guitar players to choose some of my music, or theirs, that they felt would mesh well with my musical style, and I think that helped to bridge the gap.

Matt: When playing with a second harmonic instrument (guitar) on your new album, did you make any adjustments in your comping and soloing to fit the guitar/piano format?

McCoy: It’s all about listening. You have to listen to what someone is doing and help them get to where they want to go, musically speaking. I play a supporting role if someone else is soloing, and a guitarist will do the same for me while I am soloing.

Matt: What was the inspiration behind offering the behind-the-scenes portion of the Guitars DVD?

McCoy: Well, I think it was nice to be able to see how a record is put together in a studio. After listening to a recording, someone might ask, “How was this all put together?” Here you get to see some of the process.

Matt: Now that you have done a recording with guitarists, do you have plans to do other similar projects with other instruments such as different singers, saxophonist or trombonists for example?

McCoy: I would like to do something like that. I really do enjoy accompanying people – it’s a challenge and a joy when you get it right. I look forward to doing more of that and I’ll just try to keep my mind open to whatever comes my way.

Matt: Can you talk about your first musical experience with the John Coltrane Quartet? Did it immediately have a musical spark to it, or did it take some time to feel each other out before things began to really gel?

McCoy: Well, John used to come over my house. We had mutual friends. I remember when he was working on different chordal progressions, like “Giant Steps,” he would come over to my house and show me what he was doing. I was really young at the time, but I think he knew even then that he wanted me to be in his band eventually. I would try to internalize the concepts he was working on, and by the time he hired me for his band, I was ready.

Matt: During the time you spent with Coltrane you were exploring various pentatonic scales, advanced harmonic substitution and advanced rhythmic concepts. Did these concepts develop from a study of the music from a theoretical standpoint, or were you hearing these sounds in your head and then leaving it up to the academics to figure out what labels they fit under?

McCoy: I think John chose Elvin, Jimmy and I because when combined, the way we played naturally created the sound he envisioned. It was more about the overall sound and less about the theory. It was about listening and playing together.

Matt: When you joined Trane’s quartet you were already an accomplished musician in your own right. What did you feel Coltrane took from you as far as musical inspiration is concerned?

McCoy: I think we all inspired each other. John was the leader of the group, but he was a very humble person. Being in that band was an incredible experience.

Matt: How did you approach comping with Elvin Jones? Did you focus on locking in with what he was doing rhythmically or did you try and find counter ideas to compliment his style or was it a combination of both?

McCoy: Elvin was a force. He used to play so loud – sometimes I would just drop out and let him go with John. With Elvin, you had to play loud or else you weren’t going to be heard. He was such a keen listener too – just a great, great drummer.

Matt: How do you feel that playing in Coltrane’s quartet changed your approach to music, both as a composer and as an improviser?

McCoy: John was like a big brother to me. He was such a kind and humble person. His music was so strong, melodically, harmonically, spiritually, it taught me so much.

Matt: After playing with Coltrane during one of his most productive and creative periods, as well as being one of the most famous and important groups in jazz history, how difficult was it for you to move on to play with new musicians and develop your own identity apart from his quartet?

McCoy: Well, I think it was a natural step to start recording my own music. I was with John by the time Bob Thiele approached me about recording for Impulse, and John was very supportive of that. Because I had been recording already, by the time I left John’s band, it was a smooth transition for me.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Matt: On your album, Trident, you play the harpsichord and celeste, which were rarely used outside of the classical genre, and even until today are rarely heard. What was the inspiration behind bringing these two instruments to your music at the time of this recording?

McCoy: Using those instruments just allowed me to express myself in a different way. Sometimes it’s nice to try different instruments because they have a different sound to offer and therefore your approach changes a little bit. But, I always come back to the piano. The piano is like an orchestra – I’m very fortunate that I chose it as my instrument.

Matt: In the late ’80s and early ’90s, you recorded three solo piano albums for the Blue Note label. Why did that time feel right for you as the moment in your career to produce a solo collection, and what were some of the musical challenges and benefits you found playing solo as compared to playing in an ensemble? Were there things you wanted to accomplish that you felt you couldn’t do as a member of someone else’s band?

McCoy: Well, playing solo is difficult because you have to keep the momentum yourself. You have to continue to create and develop, so it forces you to stretch in a variety of ways.

Matt: Your improvisations have a very organic and natural feel to them and have been this way right from your earliest recordings. How much of what you play when you are soloing is thought through on the spot and how much is just letting go and having the music flow through you?

McCoy: I try to play what comes naturally at the moment and let it happen.

Matt: What is your favorite album that you’ve played on and what makes it stand out to you compared to the others in your catalogue?

McCoy: It’s hard to say. I try not to look back too much, but sometimes it’s nice to reflect. One album I enjoyed making was The Real McCoy. I think that one came out well.

Matt: You have been at the top of the jazz world for almost fifty years as both a leader and a sideman. How do you see jazz’s role in society changing over that time and where do you see it headed in the near future?

McCoy: Well, I think that as long as young people are playing jazz and learning about this music, its future is secure. I’ve been playing quite a bit with some young people lately. Over the last few years I’ve done some concerts with a young people and I know there are plenty of others out there who play at a very high level.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Matt: Sonny Rollins has said that he feels an hour on the bandstand is worth a month in the practice room. How much of your musical development would you say was formed in the practice room and how much would you say was formed on the bandstand?

McCoy: With all the travelling and performing I’ve been doing, it’s hard to find time to practice! But seriously, I probably did most of my practicing when I was younger. I remember coming home from school – I couldn’t wait to get to the piano so I could play and practice. I really love the piano and I feel very fortunate that I am able to play and travel all over the world as my career.

Matt: As a performer you have appeared in small jazz clubs, concert halls and festival stages across the world. Do you have a venue preference when you are performing? Do you like the intimacy of a small club or the energy from a large festival crowd, or do you find all of these venues have something unique to offer your music?

McCoy: Every performance is different, but I try to approach them in the same way and give it my all.

Related Sites
McCoy Tyner
John Coltrane
McCoy Tyner Guitars (CD/DVD) on Amazon

Danny Garwood

Hailing out of Music City USA (Nashville, Tennessee), there’s a young guitar slinger, Danny Garwood, rolling out some heavy hitter blues, getting stage time with the likes of the legendary Buddy Guy, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and other world-class artists.

While checking out Danny’s video that captured the scene with Mr. Guy, I was reminded of an older video with a young Joe Bonamassa being invited to show his chops alongside the great Danny Gatton. It seems each new generation produces newcomers to the world of guitar that sometimes get to count coup with their guitar heroes, and gain some early career traction.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Lang are others come to mind. The power and magic of music can merge generational gaps, fusing young and older musicians together in ways that honor the elders, and inspire the passion of talented and driven young axe masters.

50/Fifty NOW AVAILABLE!

Enter, Danny Garwood, who took a turn in 2022 at the Dallas International Guitar Festival’s ’10 Under 20′ festival where he impressed and met Ally Venable who pulled him on stage, and has since invited him to open for her several times. In keeping with generational power shifts, Ally’s own professional entry to the music scene happened when she released her first EP at 14 years old, and since then has gone on to become an internationally acclaimed touring artist.

Inspired by those who came before, that include Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer and Jeff Healey, Danny’s blues licks are nuanced by his guitar idols’ good works. And his new EP, 50/Fifty, hits the bulls-eye offering us skilled grit and passion, with the releases only short-coming being leaving us wanting for more, much more. Without a doubt, Garwood has plenty more in his quiver to send our way. 

Danny’s a member of the Brotherhood of the Guitar established by the legendary rock photographer, Robert M. Knight, and “hot off the press” he just became an Ernie Ball endorsee artist! Things are moving fast for Mr. Garwood!

Guitar International is pleased and honored to present, Danny “Guitarwood’ Garwood, to our pages and we look forward to much more from this very special world-class artist.

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Rick Landers: Some of my friends spent countless hours alone learning and trying to master  the guitar, and I wonder at what cost to their social lives, schooling and relationships? Did you or do you still find a total immersion necessary to develop your talent; what have the joys and  challenges been so far for you?  

Danny Garwood: I can totally see how that can happen, music being a time consumer, but I’ve  been very lucky to have a family that supports balance. I go to public school and ensure that I  have enough time for friends and being a kid. Which is something that’s super important to my  parents and management.

First starting out it was a total challenge, so I spent tons of time in my room practicing. Eventually I just kept on going and it got to a point where I was having so much fun I didn’t realize how long and often I was practicing. At this point I practice daily and honestly can’t even walk into the living room without picking up an acoustic. 

Danny Garwood

Rick: Your EP, 50 Fifty, is a catchy honking guitar album, tell us how you chose the songs that  you covered, and the kinds of songwriting processes you use to come up with your own tunes? 

Danny Garwood: It all came together in a very neat way. In June of 2024 I made the trip to Sweetwater Studios in Fort Wayne, Indiana and cut a handful of songs, which led to me  releasing a single months later in October called “Two Wrongs.” I returned back to Sweetwater in November of 2025 and redid vocals and guitar parts on the tunes. My voice had changed and I wanted to enhance the guitar parts a bit.

As for the decision making on covers, let’s start with “Them Changes” originally done by the late great Buddy Miles. I was in the car and my dad had Eric Clapton’s and Steve Winwood’s Live At Madison Square Garden on. Their cover of  “Them Changes” came on.

As soon as I heard that riff I was immediately hooked. I found the  original done by Buddy and it blew my mind, not only because of how amazing the music  sounded, but that the person who was singing was also playing drums. I looked him up some more and found out he was the drummer on the Band of Gypsy’s album, which is now one of  my personal favorites. The influence the song had, inspired me to do something with it, and I  knew this would be one that I would cut.

The other cover, “As the Years Go Passing By,” originally done by Albert King, I discovered from Jeff Healey’s version. I’ve always been a huge  fan of slow blues songs, but this one just had a different feel. Healey has always been a huge  inspiration to me and that was one of the songs that introduced me to him as well as his role in  the movie “Roadhouse.” It was a song that made its spot on my setlist and I loved it so much I  wanted to record it.

Now, for the originals: “50/Fifty,” “Up Your Sleeve,” and “387 Delta”. “50/Fifty” and “Up Your Sleeve” were written in a very natural way that was made to sort of fit the theme of the  instrumentals, but “387 Delta” goes deeper than that. I wrote that song about one of my favorite  venues, “Ground Zero Blues Club,” in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There’s some sort of energy there that I don’t think I’ve found any place else.

I’ve been playing there ever since I was around 13, and  I’ve met so many great people. I couldn’t resist writing a song about it. I needed to figure out a title, and I originally intended it to be called “Ground Zero,” but that just felt a little too basic. I  gave it some more thought, and someone suggested I look up the address and “387 Delta  Avenue” came up. Something about 387 Delta just had a ring to it, so that’s when I knew I had  my title.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: What’s your rig for performing – guitar, amp, effects – who are some of the guitarists that have inspired you, and what sounds draw you in by them that you incorporate into your own  playing? 

Danny Garwood: I get pretty versatile with my collection, but I’m totally a Stratocaster guy at heart. For amps I’m running a Category 5, which is a company out of Texas. I’m playing  through the TBR-35 model, and it sounds excellent.

In terms of pedals, I’m always running a Tube Screamer and an MXR pedal called, Timmy Overdrive, for extra grit. On occasion I’ll turn  on a chorus or a smidge of delay. And for certain songs I use a wah or an octave pedal.

To name a few influences I definitely incorporate a lot of Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd licks into my playing. I do venture off a bit though, Steely Dan has become a huge inspiration for me, more specifically both albums, The Royal Scam, and Aja gave me a  whole different lens towards music.

An incredible drummer I work with, Dale Myers, introduced  me to drummer, Jeff Porcaro, and gave me a book about him to read called, The Man and His Music, which had so much valuable information and taught me a lot of things about the music  industry. Even though Porcaro is a drummer, as a musician and a person he’s a huge influence on me and this sparked a deep connection to his music and a lot of songs from Toto’s  discography.  

Rick: Along the way, musicians who get traction tend to have supporters who help move their passion forward into a professional career path. Who’s been on your side and what have they brought to you, to help keep things moving ahead and/or helping you keep your life well  balanced?  

Danny Garwood

Danny Garwood: Too many to list. To start, my parents, and especially my Dad, have been here for everything. I wouldn’t have gotten to places I’ve been, let alone meet my management, Curation, who are also nothing but amazing towards me.

To name another, this incredible keyboard player and even more amazing human, Eric Robert, I’ve had the privilege of working with. I met him shortly after moving to Tennessee and he’s supported and inspired me both on and off stage. Not to mention he gifted me the sickest watch. I always sport it on stage. 

Rick: The arena of business in the music industry has a a few potholes to be aware of and to  try to avoid. Are you cautious to not jump the gun when it feels that your ambitions might lead  the way to decisions that end up with disagreeable results? 

Danny Garwood: I’ve got an amazing support system, and we always really think through  decisions. For example, I cut those tracks at Sweetwater intending for an album, but I  discussed with management on what to do and decided on holding off for an album until I was a little older.

After that recording process, tons of people would come to shows asking if we had CDs or music they could stream. Further down the road this prompted me to piece together my EP. It’s important for me to do things right and not fast.  

Rick: Tell us about the production of your album, the recording, engineering and packaging of  it. Were you hands on or were there others you relied on heavily to pull it all together?  

Danny Garwood: Sweetwater is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. And if you haven’t  been, figure out how to get to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I had a great first experience recording with producer, Shawn Dealey, and his studio partner Jason Peets.

My first experience with them in  2024 was nothing but amazing. I made the choice to hold off, and returned when my voice changed a little over a year after. I redid the parts to sound more up-to-date. Shawn pulled  some really awesome things out of me just by talking to me and honed in on a lot.  

Rick: A career in music can be tough and some have what many would call a “normal” job or  career, often to be able to pay the rent. Are you also pursuing an education or another career that might be a more traditional path to your idea of success?

Danny Garwood: I will do whatever it takes to continue on this path, I can’t see myself doing anything else. I love connecting with other people through music, and the stage just feels like home to me.  

Rick: Have you found other musicians competitive or helpful to give you ideas, get gigs, or offer up lessons learned for you to reach your potential?  

Danny Garwood: It’s definitely a competitive market, but I feel like you can find that in any  path. There have been so many people that are extremely helpful, whether it’s mentors or people I’ve shared the stage with. To name one, Mr. G, my very first mentor. This was when I  was living in Illinois, where I am originally from.

I showed up to a jam in a small town in Wisconsin, called Zenda. I was around 10 years old at the time and had never experienced an open jam before. The host “Mr. G” had let me come up and play with the house band for a few. This experience ignited my passion even more, and he ended up taking me under his wing as his very first guitar student. He taught me stage etiquette, and to always let others shine, which I think is key when playing onstage. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: How did you end up on stage with Ally Venable at the Dallas International Guitar Festival  in 2022, and do you consider it a milestone in your career so far?  

Danny Garwood: I saw Ally perform in early 2022 opening for Kenny Wayne Shepherd in  Chattanooga, Tennessee. Needless to say, I was absolutely floored. A few months later I found out that I was going to be going to Dallas to compete in the Dallas International Guitar Festival “10 under 20” competition. The day of our arrival we went to go see Ally perform.

After the show I  introduced myself and took a picture with her. That very next day, she had another slot performing. Before we left to go to the festival I almost didn’t bring my guitar. But, my dad just  had this gut instinct and told me to bring it, just in case. So I did.

When we went to go see Ally play, we received a message from her Dad through Facebook asking if we were still there and if  I had my guitar. Luckily, yes. I rushed to the front of the stage and before I knew it 13 year old  me was up there jamming on Freddie King’s “I’m Going Down” which was a song I did not know at the time.

Ever since, Ally and her crew have been so good to us. I’ve had the privilege  of opening for her and spending time with them on numerous occasions. And I’m beyond grateful for that. Not to mention there was a woman in the audience, Natasha Cornblatt, who is  a videographer. She filmed the performance and posted it on YouTube and it is now standing at  8.6 million views.  

Rick: Sharing the stage with the legendary Buddy Guy and Christine “Kingfish” Ingram, at the Ryman no less, must have been a dream come true. How were you able to corral that opportunity, what was that experience like, and has it led to even more opportunities?  

Danny Garwood: Around mid-February, 2023, we had tickets to go see Buddy Guy in Evansville, Indiana. Ally Venable and Eric Gales were opening for him which they were fantastic per usual. Near the end of the show, Buddy did his signature crowd walk, and eventually came up  to me.

I was wearing this very vibrant blue suit jacket, with shiny silver polka dots. Buddy handed me a pick and let me strum his guitar. There’s a picture of it, and a video from my point  of view, it’s always fun to go back and watch on occasion. Buddy asked if I played guitar, of  course I said, “Yes”. He asked if I wanted to jam on stage at the end of the show, but it never  happened, that night at least.

Danny Garwood

I was working with an outstanding drummer at the time, Paige  O’Rourke, from Chicago, Illinois. She had jammed with Buddy before, and happened to know Buddy’s guitar tech, Connor Korte. Connor had spoken to Buddy and he said he had  remembered me from the Evansville show, and he was informed that we’d be seeing him in late March at the Ryman Auditorium here in my hometown, Nashville, Tennessee. We weren’t entirely sure  on whether I was going to jam with Buddy, but either way I was excited to see him live and I wore that blue jacket again.

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram was playing the opening set who I had  previously met before. When we were waiting in line, we saw his van, and his bass player at the  time, Paul Rodgers, recognized me. He invited me in the van and I got to chat with Christone for a bit.

This meant the absolute world to me. When it came time for the show, we still weren’t sure on whether or not I’d be jamming with Buddy. When he did his crowd walk, he didn’t walk  up to me, so I had a feeling it wouldn’t happen. Near the end, I see Connor. He’s pointing at me to head backstage. My mom came with me, as well.

It was funny when Connor handed me a guitar, we couldn’t adjust the strap height to fit me because I was so much smaller at the time. Then before I knew it I was on stage with Buddy Guy, Kingfish, and all the other incredible  musicians on stage. It didn’t really hit me till afterwards what had just happened. I couldn’t  believe it.

This experience opened the door for opportunities to play with Buddy yet another  time, jam with Kingfish again at Ground Zero, and play at Buddy’s blues club in Chicago, Illinois, “Legends.”  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: Are you winging it or have you developed a career strategy, with goals and objectives,  that you check off, then once interim goals have been reached, do you update your plans with more things you want to experience and accomplish?  

Danny Garwood: I’m definitely a go with the flow type of person. A lot of things have just sort of came to me, and I let the universe do its thing. Not to say it isn’t important to have a plan or strategy. After I finish my senior year of high school, I’m planning to record my debut album. It’s  been a goal of mine for a while, create a killer debut album and tour and I’m really excited to  see what the future has in store.  

Rick: Giving back is always a good thing to do and I see that you’ve helped other musicians  starting and facilitating the Youth Blues Jam at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Memphis. What was that like and are you still involved in that annual event? Have you plans to do any more “giving back” ventures?

Danny Garwood: Being able to start, and host the Youth Jam at Ground Zero was such a treat. My last time hosting this year was very bittersweet, but it felt amazing to pass the torch and let other young artists experience what it’s like to be in that spot. I’m no longer involved in that event since I’ll be 18 soon, but I’m excited to see what the future holds for it.

Giving back  always feels good, and I am 100% open to doing it as much as I can. Gary Hoey had Ally Venable sit in on “Going Down” when she was younger, and she paid it forward to me. So, I  know one day, I’ll find someone young that I see potential in and do the same.  

Rick: What’s next on your “to do” platter and what can your fans expect for the rest of this year and in 2027?  

Danny Garwood: My biggest focus is to enhance my writing skills. So, definitely expect more original music, as well as more shows, so you can catch the new material live, further down the road! 

Source: PRS Guitars

Paul Reed Smith – image courtesy of PRS Guitars

PRS Guitars and Guitar Center today announced that the national retailer is inducting Paul Reed Smith into the Hollywood Rockwalk, the handprint-and-signature tribute outside Guitar Center’s flagship Hollywood store on Sunset Boulevard. This pedestrian path and industry-recognized music landmark is dedicated to honoring the musicians and industry pioneers who have made significant and lasting contributions to the growth and evolution of music, through an exceptional level of talent, outstanding innovation and creative ingenuity.

John Mayer will give the induction speech to honor Smith. The handprint ceremony will take place September 26th at the Dell West Plaza Rockwalk Stage at the Moody Center during the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Austin, Texas. The completed handprint will later be installed at Rockwalk outside Guitar Center’s flagship Hollywood store.

“The first time I saw a Rockwalk induction, Ted McCarty was getting inducted and Eddie Van Halen was one of the people in attendance to witness it. I was very pleased for Ted. That I’ll be in the middle of another induction is an honor and leaves me without words. I look forward to seeing everyone,” said Paul Reed Smith, Managing General Partner of PRS Guitars.

“There are very few people in the history of the electric guitar who have pushed the design and perfection of the instrument forward more than Paul,” said Gabe Dalporto, CEO of Guitar Center. “He has inspired generations of musicians and instrument makers and is a living legend in our industry.”

Since its founding in 1985, Rockwalk has celebrated some of the most recognized names in rock, blues, soul and popular music through signature and handprint ceremonies outside the Guitar Center Hollywood. More than 150 artists and innovators have been inducted, including gear pioneers Jim Marshall, Robert Moog and Les Paul, as well as music icons including Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Aerosmith, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Alanis Morissette, Black Sabbath, The Ramones, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Located at the entrance of Guitar Center’s flagship Hollywood store on Sunset Boulevard, Rockwalk is a permanent public destination where fans and musicians connect with music history year-round.

For all of the latest news, visit www.prsguitars.com and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.

About PRS Guitars:
PRS Guitars is a leading manufacturer of high-quality instruments in Stevensville, Maryland and has provided some of the world’s most renowned musicians with instruments since 1985. The PRS team of highly skilled craftspeople design and build a wide variety of musical instruments and gear for worldwide distribution, including electric and acoustic guitars as well as boutique-style guitar amplifiers and effects pedals. The PRS SE Series complements the Maryland-made PRS line by offering highly approachable and more affordable electric and acoustic guitars. David Grissom, Jimmy Herring, Mark Holcomb, Myles Kennedy, Mark Lettieri, John Mayer, Orianthi, Carlos Santana, Ed Sheeran, Rhonda Smith, Mark Tremonti and Keith Urban are among the artists currently playing PRS instruments and/or amplifiers.

About Guitar Center:
Guitar Center is the leading retailer of musical instruments, lessons, repairs and rentals in the U.S. With more than 300 stores nationwide and one of the top direct sales websites in the industry, Guitar Center has helped people make music for more than 60 years. Guitar Center provides a range of musician-based services, including Guitar Center Lessons for players of all ages and skill levels, GC Repairs, an on-site maintenance and repair service, and GC Rentals, offering easy access to instruments and gear. Guitar Center’s family of brands includes Music & Arts, which operates more than 250 stores specializing in band and orchestral instruments for sale and rental, serving teachers, band directors, college professors, parents and students, and Musician’s Friend, a leading direct marketer of musical instruments in the United States. Guitar Center Business Solutions is the company’s commercial division, delivering professional audio, video, lighting and integrated technology solutions for businesses, institutions and creators nationwide through a portfolio of brands including AVDG (Audio Visual Design Group), GC Pro and Custom House at Guitar Center. The Guitar Center Music Foundation is a national nonprofit that expands access to music through instrument donations and support for communities in need.

Launched in April 2025, these headphones were designed primarily as a closed-back circumaural model for Audeze’s professional studio line—with a particular focus on tracking monitoring—introducing the brand’s planar magnetic technology to a more affordable pair of closed-back headphones.

The construction of the Audeze LCD-S20 headphones stands out for its distinctly professional and industrial design, based on a robust chassis that combines aluminum forks, magnesium parts, steel spring arches, and glass-reinforced nylon components. They feature closed-back ear cups with internal acoustic damping and 90-mm planar magnetic transducers, complemented by a headband with a suspension strap that distributes pressure and incorporates a magnetic system for easily swapping out the gel-filled ear pads.

Audeze’s patented SLAM (Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator) technology integrates precision-engineered channels into the coupling ring between the ear cups and its 90 mm planar-magnetic transducers to manage internal air pressures, tuning the low frequencies to deliver an extremely impactful, deep, and distortion-free bass response.

By balancing airflow dynamics in a closed-back design, SLAM dramatically improves instrumental separation and delivers outstanding stereo imaging. Among its pros are the exceptional durability of its metal components, excellent passive isolation (ideal for studio recording without sound leakage), ease of maintenance thanks to its replaceable components, and the great functional versatility of its interchangeable cable input, which allows it to be connected to either ear cup.

On the downside, the closed-back design and planar driver system bring the total weight up to 550 grams, making them a fairly heavy model that can cause some fatigue due to weight or pressure after very long sessions. Additionally, the headphones aren’t foldable, and no hard case or carrying pouch is included, which makes them less practical for taking them outside a fixed location. In other words, forget about using them in different recording studios or for field recordings. In this regard, Audeze cut corners where it shouldn’t have.

The Audeze LCD-S20 has a dark sound profile. The bass is deep, fast, and punchy, without interfering with the midrange thanks to SLAM-controlled airflow, maintaining impact without distortion. The mids are clean, direct, and natural, with a wide, three-dimensional stereo image. In the treble, the response is somewhat subdued, characterized by an intentional roll-off at the highest frequencies; this gradual roll-off softens harshness and sibilance, ensuring fatigue-free listening (check the blue line at the graphic below).

One misleading feature is their low impedance (18 Ω), which, according to Audeze, allows them to be used with laptops and portable players. When I first started using them, I realized I needed to adjust the monitoring output on my audio interface to nearly the same level as my 250 Ω Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro or DT 1990 Pro headphones. Here’s why: to determine a headphone’s volume performance, you need to consider both impedance and sensitivity. The Audeze LCD-S20 has relatively low sensitivity (93 dB/1 mW), while the 250 Ω Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro and DT 1990 Pro have 96 dB/1 mW.

For a headphone to be “easy to drive,” it requires low impedance (electrical resistance) and high sensitivity (efficiency in converting milliwatts into actual volume). Even if you can achieve a high volume with a portable player, the headphones will lack dynamic headroom: the bass loses impact, and the stereo soundstage becomes narrower. In other words, they fall short in dynamic performance if they don’t receive enough current. Since the LCD-S20 are planar and have low sensitivity, they require a lot of electrical current (milliamps). In conclusion, these headphones require a dedicated amplifier or a high-quality audio interface to deliver the sound they’re capable of.

There’s something audiophiles need to understand about recording studios: 1) despite the risk of listener fatigue, we prefer to listen with full detail in the midrange and high frequencies because we protect ourselves from listener fatigue by taking silent breaks, and 2) both hardware and software are work tools where it’s far more important for the user to understand their sound and limitations in detail than their quality, and that there are specific tools for specific tasks.

And that’s why there are many cases where, in numerous studios, you’ll find equipment that has become an industry standard, such as the Sony MDR 7506 headphones for tracking and the 250 Ω Beyerdynamic 1990 Pro headphones for mixing. In my recording studio, I always make the tracking using headphones. For this task, my go-to headphones are the Sony MDR 7506, which are a standard in tracking monitoring because their boost in the 2–10 kHz range acts like a magnifying glass for imperfections, bringing unwanted noise to light: lip smacks, harsh sibilance (annoying “S” sounds), background noise, out-of-tune notes, or editing clicks. Considering that the Audeze LCD-S20 has a dark sound profile—the opposite of the Sony MDR 7506—I don’t recommend them for studio tracking.

In large recording studios, tracking headphones have always followed two simple rules, regardless of their sound: 1) they must be quickly and easily adjustable for any user, and 2) the cable enters the left earcup. Given the difficulty in adjusting the Audeze LCD-S20, they are intended for use in small recording studios where the interchangeable cable input is a useful feature.

The width of the stereo image in closed-back headphones is determined primarily by the internal acoustics of the ear cup, the orientation and size of the transducer, and the frequency response tuning. Because this is a sealed design that traps air and reflects sound waves within the chamber, the width depends on the headphone’s ability to manage internal sound pressure and control resonance. The angled placement of the drivers mimics the natural arrival of sound at the outer ear, while damping technologies and fine-tuned equalization in the treble and upper-midrange create the spatial illusion of separation and stereo imaging. In this regard, the Audeze headphones are unrivaled in my studio.

I don’t like to mix using headphones, but I always check my mixes with my Beyerdynamic 770 Pro and DT 1990 Pro—both 250 Ω models—to review the details, especially positioning within the stereo image, and keeping in mind that many people listen to music using headphones. For years now, it’s been common to use headphone calibration systems to flatten their frequency response curve, especially when using headphones for mixing. The most popular ones are Sonarworks SoundID Reference (software-based) and IK Multimedia ARC ON-EAR (hardware + software).

I use the latter because its hardware allows me to work with zero latency. The ARC ON-EAR correction enhances the Audeze LCD-S20 to such a high standard that they have replaced the 770 Pro in my closed-back headphone mix checks. In the graph, shown above,  the blue curve shows the frequency response of the Audeze LCD-S20, and the orange line shows the response corrected by the ARC ON-EAR system.

Conclusion: The Audeze LCD-S20 studio headphones have a sturdy construction, great passive isolation, and an excellent stereo image, which are three very useful characteristics in recording studios. Regarding the sound profile, they are only useful in a recording studio if used with a headphone calibration system that works well with them, such as the IK Multimedia ARC ON-EAR.

Price: $499.00

More info at https://www.audeze.com/products/lcd-s20

David Lindley Interview

By Joerg Kliewe.

David Lindley playing Weissenborn slide guitar. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

Guitarist David Lindley is a pioneer of international music who led one of the first world music rock groups during the ’60s called Kaleidoscope. He would later work with singer-songwriter Jackson Browne starting in 1971 and his staggering solos can be heard ripping through such hits as Jackson’s classic “Running on Empty”.

Whether playing switchbacks on his lap steels, hot rodding through six-string riffs, or grooving on his collection of Middle Eastern stringed axes, David’s extraordinary cauldron of musical talent captivates musicians and fans around the globe.

David Lindley’s show at the Alladin Theater in Portland, Oregon, was the perfect spot to get out of a cold winter rain. Stepping inside the theater, I caught Lindley’s sound check while he tweaked his gear to fit the old vaudeville house’s acoustics. I was caught by surprise and stopped in my tracks when he unleashed an exquisite rendition of the late Warren Zevon’s “The Indifference of Heaven”.

David Lindley backstage with a bouzouki. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

A short while later, I found myself sitting across from David as he answered questions between sips of hot coffee and talked about his amazing instrument collection, songwriting, and the world of independent music production.

Although, we now know Lindley as a gifted multi-instrumentalist and for his classic licks on some of the best music produced during the past 40 years, he began his music journey as a banjo player. As a teen he was a five time winner of California’s Topanga Banjo – Fiddle Contest.

A musician’s musician, David can be found ripping it up on tracks with such formidable talents as Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Terry Reid, Rory Block, James Taylor, David Blue, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby and Nash, Iggy Pop, Little Feat, Linda Thompson, Warren Zevon, and a long impressive list of fellow artists.

El Rayo-X

Lindley’s eccentric spirit has led him to classic Danelectros, Tiesco Del Reys, Kays, Nationals, as well as a grouping of exotic instruments with names like oud (Middle Eastern), bouzouki (Greek) and saz (Turkish).

After releasing his solo album El Rayo-X, he formed a band of the same name with Bernie Larsen (guitar), Jorge Calderon (bass), Ian Wallace (drums), and Ras “Baboo” (percussion), who interwove traditional American roots music, world beat, and reggae.

In 1991, Lindley landed in Antanarivo, Madagascar, with avant-garde guitarist and innovator Henry Kaiser that resulted in a durable collaboration based on a series of field recordings. The visit to the island nation yielded six albums of Malagasy music, including an award winning two-volume set A World Out of Time. Later, the two would head to Norway where they pulled together two more CDs, Sweet Sunny North (Vol. 1 and 2).

David Lindley on stage at the Alladin with his Weissenborn. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

When Lindley stepped out on stage at the Alladin the audience was rewarded with the flash of his very “Mr Dave” outfit that included a flamboyantly hep ‘70s shirt, a pair of funky polyester pants, and “soft like buttah” blue alligator shoes. His set roamed the earth with tunes from all over the planet that began with a short warm up on his bouzouki. He later switched to a Weissenborn guitar to deliver Zevon’s “Seminole Bingo”. The sound he conjured was as wide as a semi-trailer with a thick bass chop that had us thinking that there were two players on stage.

He ventured into performing highlights from his three Twango Bango albums mixed with traditional tunes on the oud and later on some songs he recorded during the ‘90s with Jordanian percussionist Hani Nasser.

Lindley’s Alladin show was a retrospective of over 40 years of playing by one of America’s finest players of stringed instruments. The honesty of his performance and his quirky humor illustrate that he is, indeed, a giant in American music and entertainment.

It’s good to see you back on the West Coast. The last time we met you were performing with Wally (Ingram) in Cologne, Germany, during an extensive European tour.

David Lindley backstage. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

David Lindley: Yeah, the last German tour has already been a while ago. Anyway, we had serious problems with the promoter during that tour and didn’t go back since. But yes, I have many friends abroad and I would love to play in Europe again.

Are the current dates that you’ve played the start of another world tour?

DL: No, no, no, the U.S. dates will, however, continue until the summer and even into the summer. In between I will finish the new album.

What will be on it? More covers or your own songs?

DL: Ha ha, nice try! I’ll only say this much, everyone will love it! I just finished the basic recordings and I’ll take those to Jackson’s [Browne] studio for the final production.

Is Jackson a part of the project too?

DL: We’re using his studio only, which includes absolutely the best gear you could imagine. I think lending me his studio for free is being involved.

Did you record using microphones or amplify the instruments first?

David Lindley backstage with 12-string Guild. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

DL: No, by microphone. We were using ProTools and I was catching the signal by four mics on four tracks at the same time to give it more room and depth. The sound will blow you away!

Your concert program is a well balanced set of your own songs and tunes written by other great artists, like Warren Zevon and J. J. Cale, and they blend together just fine. Where and how do you find these songs or do they find you?

DL: Warren’s stuff is great music that I just love and have to play, man. Anyway, I get songs from all over. Often my daughter finds me tunes and if If I don’t find the kind of song I’m looking for I write them myself. It’s actually pretty easy.

You seem to hold close control over the management side of things. Isn’t it still quite difficult to produce and market your music independently in the US?

DL: Yeah, no record company involved other than myself! Actually it isn’t difficult and marketing my music by myself works pretty well for me. I sell my records directly, especially to smaller stores, more the mom and pop kind of stores. And I even sell them in Canada, Europe and Japan .

Not only are you a multi-instrumentalist but you are also known for your huge collection of guitars and stringed instruments. Add any new treasures to your collection recently?

David Lindley backstage with an oud. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

DL: I became totally devoted to my ouds and I can’t get enough of them! I already keep thinking of what I’m going to buy to reward myself [for touring] when I get back home. Hmmm, maybe another oud?

During a visit to Turkey I noticed that the oud players were pretty obsessed by their instruments.

DL: I really love these instruments. Maybe because they are so challenging. They are tuned in quarts [fourths] and the traditional music that has been conserved is written for them and includes a special phrase for almost every note. Oud players like Necati Celik Üsta from Turkey started playing when they were kids. These players achieve their title of “Master of The Oud“ from many years of hard practice and play.

You play John Lee Hooker kind of riffs on the oud.

DL: You can play everything on an oud! Isn’t that great? I remember when I received my flat back oud made by Viken Najarian, I plugged it into an amplifier, turned the volume to 10, what is sometimes a good thing to do, and it sounded like [pauses] crap. So, I called Ry Cooder who I knew was working at a studio downtown. I played it to him over the telephone. Ry asked, “Shit. What is this thing? You better get down here with it right away!”

When I got there Ry checked it out and said, “Hmmm, whatever it is, it sounds really good. Can I borrow it for a while?” After a couple of weeks I called him and said: “Ry, I want my oud back.”

You see, this is what these instruments do to you!

What other instruments are you going to play during the concert?

DL: I brought two Weissenborn guitars made by Paddy Burgin in New Zealand, which are mind blowing! The quality is just incredible. I’m also going to play an oud made by Dimitris Rapakousios and, of course, I brought my Guild 12-string. Guild actually had it measured recently because they didn’’t have records on these instruments any more.

Your website shows a respectable part of your collection. And you also own quite a few vintage instruments. How do you feel about the current market situation when it comes to vintage guitars?

David Lindley in concert. Photo by Joerg Kliewe.

DL: Look what the ’60s Strats are selling for these days, $30,000 and over! It’s unbelievable! Actually, I have a ’60s Strat and the pickups had even gotten rewound by Doc Kaufmann. I don’t think I’m gonna sell that one!

Do you know exactly how many instruments you currently own?

DL: I will not tell! They are so many by now that I have to keep them safe at different locations.

Related Links
David Lindley
Paddy Burgin Guitars
Dimitris Rapakousios

formatting was a bit disrupted when migrating to a new host and publishing software. There are dozens upon dozens

more to repair. Stand by for more!

by: Rick Landers

Michael G. Stewart – 2007

Maryland-based photographer and illustrator, Michael G. Stewart,  always gets the shot. Whether he’s backstage in dim light with a laconic subject or in the middle of a frenzied crowd of fans at a rock show with blinding stage lights, he nails it.

Artists he’s covered include Les Paul, Neal Schon, Steve Howe, Martin Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Johnson, Sonny Landreth, Dick Dale, Nokie Edwards, Marshall Crenshaw, Bucky and John Pizzarelli, Doc Watson, Frank Vignola, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Jimmy Bruno, Deke Dickerson, among a large group of rock, jazz and traditional roots musicians.

Although Stewart didn’t begin his artistic career in photography, it must have been a natural inclination to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather who all established themselves as professional image makers in the Washington, D.C. area.

Michael serves as the principal photographer for the National Council for Traditional Arts and has worked with the National Endowment for the Arts. Earlier in his career he was the Chief Photographer for DC’s off-beat magazine Quirks. His work has been featured in the Washington Post, Modern Guitars (Guitar International Magazine),  Guitar Player, Vintage Guitar, the Discovery Channel online, Just Jazz Guitar, Chamber Music, Scoot Quarterly, The Classic Motorcyle, and the Strad.

Most of the time, Stewart can be found traipsing along the beaten paths of America in his quest to capture vintage diners, motorcycles, classic cars, guitars and musicians at work and play. He’s covered rock shows, jazz clubs, guitar and music conventions and can occasionally be seen leaning out of hovering helicopters shooting the world below.

His imaginative work as an illustrator can be found in three successful childrens’ books written by author and entertainer Barry Louis Polisar. Michael also illustrated a guide to the Scottish steel string harp and has published a coffee table book on the restoration of St. Mathew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Stewart and his teenage son, Spencer, have gathered enough shots of classic diners and roadside America that they will soon publish an account of their travels and those beloved and vanishing features of the American landscape.

I first met Michael back in 1985 at a party where he was courting his future wife who is a classically trained professional violinist. At the time he and a friend were enthusiastically immersed in a plan to start their own rock band and they had already arrived at an appropriate name, Mid-Life Crisis. Twenty years later, we crossed paths again when Modern Guitars magazine was on the prowl for a photographer in the D.C. area. Bob Shade, president of Hallmark Guitars, and I were discussing the magazine and his guitars when he offhandedly mentioned that he knew a great photographer named Michael Stewart.

I’ve since discovered that Michael’s talents have been embraced by the top jazz musicians on the East Coast, as well as have earned him the respect and admiration of musicians rooted in the traditions of old time Appalachian music. I was able to catch up with Michael between a whirlwind of photo gigs to talk about his career, the art of photography and his love of music and all things guitar.

Michael G. Stewart in 1980

Michael G. Stewart: Actually I started out for a career in art and illustration. My father was a photographer, but died at a very young age, so the direct connection to photography was out of grasp. I came to photography in my early teens and twenties.

Rick: You’re schooled in photography?

Michael G. Stewart: No, I started out pursuing a career in art at the Maryland Institute of Art College Art in Baltimore [Maryland] and I had training as a film maker. Somewhere along the line I took up photography. Most of that was self-taught.

Rick:What type of rig do you use?

Michael G. Stewart: I’ve always been a Canon person. Since the early ‘70s I’ve used Canon equipment and have always found that as a film camera and digital camera they’ve been of outstanding quality. They’re very easy to use, very durable and just very good equipment overall.

It was a big change after using film for 25 years, both 35mm and larger format. It was rather scary diving into the deep water of the digital field. A very different type of technology, but having switched to fully digital over the past three years in terms of shooting in the music and entertainment fields I’ve actually found it a much more versatile medium. It’s much faster to work with covering a much wider range of applications, especially in the print field as well as with applications like CD and cover designs for the web.

Rick: Most artists seem to favor Macs.

Michael G. Stewart: That seems to be true. I work in a pc environment, however, most of the designers I work with use a Mac. I expect to switch pretty soon. The imaging industry is pretty much Mac-based in the professional world. It’s just easier to go to for technology for any image work.

Rick: Do you focus on the entertainment business or do you handle a broader spectrum of assignments?

Michael G. Stewart: During the past 28 years, I’ve made my living as an architectural and aerial photographer. That’s been the focus of the family business that I recently left. Music and roadside America are the things that I truly love. Apart from the aerial portion from my former career, I don’t miss that so much. It would be nice to make entertainment my full-time work. I’m not sure that’s possible. Having come from a lifetime of listening, creating and interacting with the music entertainment business, I really love and enjoy and believe I have a fine feel for it as a photographer making images.

I’ve also been a performer and I’m married to a full-time classical musician. Both have given me contacts and close working relationships in the music world, so I understand and appreciate that world.

Jimmy Bruno. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: Your website reflects an interest in music, motorcycles and roadside America, specifically diners.

Michael G. Stewart: Yes. My son Spencer actually has a website on roadsideonline.com and he’s probably the youngest acknowledged diner expert in the country. I’ve gone to diners for years and years and have felt that it’s a wonderful piece of vanishing America and a vanishing community. Pretty much independently my son Spencer developed that love and has taken that much further. He’s in contact with every major diner expert and artist in America. So we’ve been on many road trips in search of forgotten diners.

Rick: You met Stevie Ray Vaughan before he exploded on to the music scene.

Michael G. Stewart: Yeah, I met him at a party after he came back from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The first time I’d seen him was before he’d become a known name. But, it was immediately apparent that this was somebody who was going to be well known in a very short time. He was a tremendous talent and a very nice guy. And even though he worked in a very traditional genre of blues and blues rock, he had that personal touch that set him apart. And although there have been many people coming since, in that same vein, he was just someone special that I don’t think anyone since his passing would be where they are musically had it not been for his taking up the torch and carrying it on.

Stevie Ray Vaughan. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: When we’ve been covering a performance you always disappear.

Michael G. Stewart:Yeah, well it’s always good to have a sense of where the performers are going to be when they’re on stage so you’re able to access those areas to get those shots and not be obtrusive to the audience. As a photographer you should be unseen! You don’t want to be a distraction to the performer or the audience. It’s important to get the angles and the views you want to make the performer look his best, but at the same time, you want to be as unobtrusive as humanely possible. Photographers aren’t the focus and they aren’t the event. I’m there to capture the moment and not be part of that moment. You say I disappear and that’s exactly right. I should be someone that no one knows is there.

Vintage Mosrite guitars. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: You’re particularly well known for your jazz and folk photography.

Michael G. Stewart: For years and years I was strictly a rock guy doing photos for bands and concerts throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, but I grew up listening to jazz. Over the years I’ve made some great contacts within the jazz world. I think that love for that music has helped make me the “go to” guy for that type of photography, at least on the East Coast. I’ve made a lot of personal contacts with wonderful players who are also wonderful people.

For the past ten years, I’ve also been affiliated with the National Council for the Traditonal Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts, who put on the National Folk Festival and the Irish Folk Festival and primarily with the folk and traditional arts that run the spectrum classical blues to folk traditions. By folk traditions we’re not talking about Peter, Paul and Mary. We’re talking about old traditional mountain or roots Appalachian, Zydeco and Celtic music. I’ve been able to establish a strong rapport with musicians in those worlds.

And I’ve met some phenomenal guitar players who are lost to the main stream and don’t get the credit they deserve. I get the opportunity to work with those folks and with traditional jazz players, as well as rock and the avant garde world as well.

Rick: Who have been some of the most memorable guitarists you’ve shot?

Michael G. Stewart: Well, certainly Les Paul was a “must remember” moment. He is just the greatest guy in the world, very funny, personable, with loads of stories and even at his advanced age is still a great player and an inspiration to any of us who pick a guitar.

Les Paul. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

I’d have to go back to my younger years and talk about some of my definite favorites from the heyday of the San Francisco sound and psychedelic players. There was Jerry Garcia who everyone knows, but others like Jorma Kaukonen of Hot Tuna who’s always been a favorite guitar player of mine. Lesser known people like Randy Holden of Blue Cheer who has gone on to an interesting career. I also liked John Cippolina from Quicksilver Messenger Service who has been pretty much forgotten. He’s definitely a favorite. I’ve always liked Tony McPhee of The Groundhogs, a British blues band.

Recently, I’ve been hanging out with a lot of superb jazz guitarists including Steve Abshire and Paul Wingo who were both in military bands. Steve was with the Navy’s jazz ensemble, the Commodores, and Paul was with the Army Blues Band. These guys are phenomenal players, just killer guitarists.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet some fabulous folks. One of my favorites was Pop Staples who had phenomenal sound and touch. He was also one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet.

John Cippolina. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: What about fellow Marylander Danny Gatton?

Michael G. Stewart: Danny Gatton was a tragic loss to all of us. I started seeing him in the early ‘70s when he played every week at the Italian Gardens restaurant in Maryland. He kept that up for years. I’m still in touch with members from some of his bands. Danny was the most unassuming guy and he could play anything. Literally play anything. His records don’t do him justice. I’d see him in little bars just wailing away. He could play jazz, hillbilly music, straight away blues and no one could touch him.

Deke Dickerson (left) and Larry Collins. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

The tragedy was that he wasn’t playing one commercial genre, so he really wasn’t given the attention that he deserved. I suppose the hardest thing was that he got so close to recognition, but it was never truly granted to him except from a very narrow group of guitarists. Danny Gatton was a colossal talent who’s sorely missed.

Jorma Kaukonen. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: Did you know him?

Michael G. Stewart: No, I didn’t know him personally. I wish I had and think we would have had a lot to talk about beyond guitars, especially hot rods. No, I was just another guy in the crowd.

Kenny Burrell model Bendetto guitar. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: Jazz and folk music seem to have lost their audiences during the past fifty years.

Michael G. Stewart: For what I do, the core definition of folk may be different. My focus has been on traditional roots music. For both jazz and traditional folk artists you’re talking about people who are outside the commercial mainstream. Jazz, at one time, was a huge influence on commercial culture during the ‘30s and ‘40s, but certainly since the dawn of the ‘70s has been a musical form that has not been fully appreciated.

Jazz and traditional artists share the burden of not being able to make a living at it. These are individuals who spend their lives studying and playing who are largely left unappreciated and unrewarded when it comes to sales.

For better or worse the new commercial music outlets available to them are limited to downloads to iPod or MP3 players. Most of these guys are self-produced, not making any money and any recognition they do get tends to be from a very small community. I know a number of hugely talented jazz performers who are big names in the jazz field, but when it comes to supporting that talent, they’re pretty much left out in the cold.

CD cover by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: You’ve been designing music cover art for some time now.

Michael G. Stewart: Yeah, I’ve been doing this for over twenty years as far as album cover design. Most of the work I get is from word of mouth. I’m either asked to do something from artists that I know or from artists who know artists that I know. A lot of this comes from shooting live performances. I get a great deal of satisfaction from live gigs and especially being allied with fabulous musicians.

The creative process depends largely on the individual artist. Some have very specific ideas and some come in with absolutely no idea. In the rock and pop world it is a little easier because there’s usually a manager or promoter involved where we work in concert, no pun intended, to make sure the artist is easily recognized in the marketplace.

Many of the jazz and traditional folk artists, those on small labels, don’t realize that packaging is crucial. Sometimes they’ll arrive and just say “Here take this picture and put it on the cover.” I try to steer away from that and try to complement the music by trying to make the cover say what they’re trying to say with their music.

Some do need to be educated and I try to make that part of working with any artist. I like to make the packaging as wonderful as the music inside. It shouldn’t be skimped upon and I try to work with some really good graphic designers and art directors to ensure that the published package looks professional and reflects the music. It should all be married together. You don’t want a CD or album cover that’s not in keeping with the quality and standards of the music.

Rick: CDs give a much smaller point of sales space to grab buyers.

Michael G. Stewart:  In the past you had a large canvas for the art work. You’re right the packaging isn’t what it used to be. You now work with a five inch square rather than a twelve inch square. I use to buy records based solely on covers! Really! I could look at a King Crimson or a BeBop Deluxe album or a Stanley Mouse studios cover and I’d buy the album strictly based on the cover. You don’t see that much in the era of CDs, but that’s one of things that was exciting for me starting out. You had a large canvas that everyone could see and it could be associated with the music.

Archtop guitar by Bill Commins. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: With people now downloading their music, do you think CD packaging will go the way of the dinosaur?

Michael G. Stewart: I hope not! I think that you will see some of that happening. But, I think there will always be a place for art to complement the music. For any kind of music marketing you see it tied to some type of visual whether it’s a CD cover or a video or a video cover. It will migrate and turn into different things. Of course, I think with the huge number of opportunities for music distribution on-line that it will change from an in-hand CD, perhaps to images on a website that can be downloaded and disseminated. I think and I hope that there will always be opportunities for imaging even though that’s liable to change in the next five years.

Bucky Pizzarelli. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick:How does a professional photographer nail a cover on a music magazine?

Michael G. Stewart: It’s very difficult. I’ve got several and it’s largely by connections at this point. There are a lot of amateurs out there, but knowing when and how to get that great shot is very important. The thinking on intellectual property rights has also changed over the past thirty years.

When I started out anyone could carry a camera into a concert and take pictures. Today, many artists try to keep control of their images. Still people sneak in with point and shooters or camera phones. Still, I don’t think anything can compete with a pro image. Most magazines need a certain level of resolution.

The tough thing for a professional photographer today is the technology leaps ahead making it easier for amateurs to get decent shots. In the long run I think that will hurt the industry. When an amateur turns pro, they find that what they’ve been offering for free will come back to hurt them because their images, in practical terms, no longer belong to them.

Hallmark Sweptwing guitar. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: What’s been the most challenging part of your career?

Michael G. Stewart: Well, working with this one guy from Modern Guitars has been pretty challenging! [Laughs]

A big challenge is shooting live jazz performances in small clubs because of bad light. It’s hard to get a good image in a club with very low lighting and tungsten lighting. Pros rarely use flash and we like to rely on natural light. It just makes getting good shots a lot harder. Most commercial rock and pop venues have fabulous lighting and it’s hard to get a bad shot! But when working in a crowd of 10,000 or more people getting access to the front of the stage is tough. If you’re on the job and have access then it’s a lot more fun.

I remember back in ’72, a relative of mine was an on again, off again roadie with the Allman Brothers. This was the emergent era of Southern Rock when Wet Willie was the opening act for a guitarist named Jeff Beck! I was trying to get up close to the stage and tried to find someone to give me good access when some guy hauls off and punches me square in the face and knocks me on the ground. That was probably the nastiest occasion I experienced.

Steve Howe (left) and Martin Taylor. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

It’s changed a lot from being a shooter in a crowd to now having to get confirmed access and sometimes a press or photo pass. Smaller jazz and traditional folks gigs aren’t so problematic. But certainly the big name rock acts always require formal access before getting those great shots, as well as typically calling for no flash and limiting the time that you can get shots.

Rick: Ever dealt with a performer who didn’t want to be photographed?

Michael G. Stewart: I’ve covered lots of people like that. It really depends on the individual on how to best address those situations. That’s when it is particularly important to be unobtrusive and to get the shots as quick as possible. They obviously want you there because it’s advantagous for their careers. But they have private lives and want to keep at least a part of them under the radar. It can be difficult. Luckily, most artists are very nice and enjoyable to work with. The important thing is to maintain a professional demeanor and remember that the people on stage are professional, you’re a professional and you’re not there to be a pal and hang out, but to create your art in an environment that allows them to create theirs.

Microfrets Harlequin guitar. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Microfrets Wanderer guitar. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: Do you approach a live performance much differently than a CD cover?

Michael G. Stewart: The final product drives different demands. If you’re shooting in a journalistic capacity to document a particular situation or performance, then you keep it as straight as possible. In a live setting I think the most important thing is to accurately report or document the performance. When it comes to CD packaging I think the more creative that you can be, the better it is for everyone. If the project dictates straight documentation then that’s appropriate, however, if it allows you latitude to be creative then your creativity as a photographer comes into play. Why not be as creative as you can be? There are two very different situations there between journalism and packaging.

Rick: Do you know how a shot’s going to turn out once you take it?

Michael G. Stewart: As a professional you try to be prepared to create that perfect shot every time. I think that’s truly the definition of a professional photographer. But any photographer who’s been around will tell you that some of your best shots are completely unscripted, completely a surprise. You don’t know what’s going to happen, there are surprises and there are contraditictions, a crap shoot. Some are complete serendipity. But on the onehand you should be ready to make that perfect shot. That sets you apart from the guys who are shooting for the fun of it. Whether you shoot ten or one hundered you shoot for the perfect shot.

CD cover by Michael G. Stewart

Rick: An area we haven’t covered is guitar photography?

Michael G. Stewart: Yeah, I’ve done a lot of that. There are some superb guitar builders out there that are building some incredible guitars of all types.

Rick: Any new CD cover projects in the works?

Michael G. Stewart: Yes, I have a number of guitar CDs coming out soon. Most of them are jazz releases. I have one with the fabulous Philadelphia-based bebop guitarist Jimmy Bruno, as well as one for Gene Bertoncini up in New York who’s coming out with an album with a stringed quartet that should be quite interesting. I’m talking with Frank Vignola about the possibility of some cover work for an album he’s doing with the Gypsy Grass ensemble that, I suspect, will feature some great gypsy, jazz, and possibly bluegrass fusion.

CD cover art by Michael G. Stewart.

A couple folk things with some blues people Rick Franklin and Michael Baytop who’ll be covering some work of an old blues guy named Frank Stokes. That should have some nice National steel resonator work on it. I’m working on a concept for the Seldom Scene one of the best bluegrass groups around that will feature their fabulous guitarist Dudley Connell. That’ll be a CD to definitely check out! And I’ve been collaborating with a great rockabilly player Deke Dickerson on some things. I am looking forward to getting some more rock guys in there.

D’Aquisto guitar. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: We’ve talked a bit about guitarists, but what about the tools of the trade that we all covet so much?

Michael G. Stewart: Yeah, we should touch on the guitars themselves! I do a lot of work with luthiers. We don’t want to forget about the people who build fine guitars. We all can’t wait to get our hands on another guitar. One guitar is never enough is it?

There are so many fabulous builders today and some young guys who are just incredible. The quality of many of these guitars is staggering and prices are really low if you compare them with the cost of high quality violins and the time that goes into building a great guitar. I’ve worked with some of the best including Bob Benedetto, John Buscerino, Roger Sadowsky and Bill Comins. All of them build beautiful archtops. There’s a little known guy from Baltimore named Gary Flowers who’s making a name for himself.

I’ve worked some graphics design and images for Bob Shade over at Hallmark Guitars, a company that resurrected the old designs from the ‘60s that still look cool. A few years back I did some stuff with Paul Reed Smith Guitars and recently I’ve been talking to MicroFrets that has come a gone a couple of times and is getting ready to get back into the business very soon with some of their quirky, bizarre and innovative designs.

I got some photos of guitars built by a young guy named Matt Artinger and ended up buying one of his guitars. His quality is nothing short of phenomenal and he’s a heck of a nice guy. He’s another guy to watch. He was working out of his parents’ basement in this tiny space, but was coming out with some exquisite guitars. Now, he’s building rock guitars, archtops and basses.

Rick: How did you end up working with guitar aficionado and collector Scott Chinery?

Michael G. Stewart: A few years ago, I did some work with Scott. The Smithsonian was running his Blue Guitar exhibit that initially featured some of his vast and awesome collection that dovetailed with the museum’s exhibition on the evolution of the guitar in America. Afterwards he commissioned a group of about twelve of the best luthiers in the world to build some blue archtops.

During that time I shot the first of concerts featuring some of his blue guitars. He saw them and invited me up to New Jersey to see his collection and to cover the Blue Guitar concerts. That was certainly a terrific experience for me, not only to see some of the rarest and finest guitars on the planet, but to meet first hand some of the top luthiers in the world. What a thrill!

Part of the Scott Chinery guitar collection. Photo by Michael G. Stewart.

Rick: What advice would you like to offer to young photographers who are just beginning their careers?

Michael G. Stewart: Always be as professional as possible as your conduct reflects on all of us. That’s the reason there are so many restrictions. You have to remember that this is a performance and it’s the audience that counts and the artist’s comfort level. The worst thing in the world is to have a flash going off all the time. It’s a real pain for the audience and it’s a real pain for the musicians. Nobody wants to be blinded every 30 seconds. It’s a very competitive field, so just be as professional as you can.