Transcription
Hey everybody, I have two special guests today. If you watch guitar and you watch the internet, like especially YouTube, you'll know Tom Bukovac and Guthrie Trapp, two old friends of mine. I see Guthrie; we go out to dinner a lot, like for years, right? Tom and I have known each other for years. We did a video of a, uh, the session. I love that; that was a great video. I'll put a link in the description for that. We had a good time that day. We had a great time; that was really good, and it was fun to see how Nashville sessions are. You basically, I just stood there and watched them play because everybody kind of knows amazing production ideas.
Well, my, my friend, come on, Tom, you don't have to tell Nashville guys what to play; you just call—I just suggest things—you just call them. Well, I, Tom presented me with a few different songs and everything, and I was like, "Let's do this one." I'm pretty picky. I like when you told her to sing out more. Remember that? That was cool, cuz she was very inside, and you told her to really—well, probably because there was a camera right in there, and it's kind of unnerving. When they have a new record out here, we don't usually promote records, cuz this video will be seen for years and years and everything. They'll, there'll be like 10 records from this they will have done. But, uh, but they do have a record. I, we'll listen to something in a bit, but I want to ask you, what is your go-to lick that you're playing right now? What are you working on? Give me, give me a lick. Who wants to go first? Go first.
What's some you're practicing? You know the old blues turnaround, the simplest blues turn. I know a lot of blues turns. So the, the step one is like, if you're playing blues 1, 4, 5 in E, yeah, the easiest one, you know, coming out the five chord to the four chord to the one. You everyone go. Right? That's, that's 101. Yeah, 102. [Music] is um, 103. This is where it starts getting good. [Music] is you got the dominant seven in the base with the five and the three on top. Yeah, but here's where Uncle Larry takes it. [Music] Okay, nice. See? [Music] You, you know what I'm [Music] [Laughter] saying? That kind of thing. It starts, it starts sounding expensive. It's very expensive. Yeah, I like that. I like that sound. I like to sound like you can't afford it. That's adult; that's very adult. That's an adult lick. Yeah. Three, what do you got? You got a fancy lick, man. You know, I should be practicing stuff, but, uh, you know, I'm a big fan of, um, as we talked about earlier, Rick, with my limited knowledge of of what modes actually are or any kind of music, he says he doesn't use modes and then uses modes. Yeah, I know everybody's busted me online about this stuff, and I know, but, uh, if you're playing over just a dominant seven chord, I always like to go, um, if I'm playing over E7, I always like to superimpose the the B minor and then, uh, maybe the, uh, D major 7 sounds over the E7. So that would be like, um, you know, uh, or, uh, or, uh, this one I like a lot. You know? Or D7, D major 7 would be [Music] uh, you know, nice. Nice. I just like that sound. Yeah, uh, [Music] Yeah, but can you play it with good touch? Yeah, play sounds good now.
Guth—oh, man. Well, I've seen you do that a lot where you do that. That's, that's cool. Yeah, I like, I like that. Yeah, yeah. When you were just playing that, there's that little chime sound to it. It's not just what you're playing through your pedals, but it's something about the way that you're picking. Yeah, I actually, I turned the, the delay was a little much, so I turned that off. And so I, I'm my favorite, um, my, uh, favorite effect is Reverb. I, I can't really do anything on the guitar without Reverb. Minimal pedals; both me and Tom both have minimal pedal boards. Do that same, turn the amp off, turn the volume on the guitar down, see if it's coming acoustically through the guitar. Yeah, that same [Music] thing. Yeah, there it is, right there. It's right there. It's in the hands; it's in the hands; it's in the right hand from years of playing. Amazing acoustic. Well, I don't know. I guess, I mean, I don't know. You know the first person and I, and I know you do this too, and you, I think you got me away from the the Fender or DiMarzio, um, Celluloid heavy, right, and got me onto the medium, which for electric, I love the 7 millimeter, but the first person I saw do it when I was a kid was Sam Bush on the mandolin, and he would use a Fender heavy when all these other people, uh, in the bluegrass and acoustic world were using, uh, you know, really thick picks and, uh, and tortoise shell copies and all this stuff, and he used the Fender heavy, and he always used the round shoulder. And so when I started doing that, I realized, man, not only does it sound a lot better to me, uh, it, it's I think it's a more direct contact from the, you know, you're not hear—yeah, you're not—more surface area; you're not hearing, uh, the the click of the pick as much. And also to your point, there's less dipping down into the into the strings, and so you're able to float across right a little faster, I think. You know, totally. I definitely, definitely think you can play faster with the shoulder. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, and I started listening to, you know, all the country guys, of course, then my these fingers started slipping in, you know. Well, you have nails on those fingers when you're fingerpicking. I just use my natural nails, and then, and then once every couple weeks, one will, will catch and rip off, and I just pull it off and let them grow back. But I, I do like a combination of, of it's not, it's not really the sound of the nail; it's more of the flesh and the nail kind of reinforces it and just gives it a little bit of attack at the very end, so it's not like a full-blown nail or anything. That big velvet tone on acoustic on the single notes, man. Same thing, man. I think it's the same thing. And what for that I would use a heavy one, step up from this, so seven to a one millimeter. Fascinating. I can't do that. And then that rounded shoulder just, I mean, man, but that's, I still have to work at that. I mean, uh, I guess we're going to do—Have you ever heard him play? Mine? I have heard him play.
M-up, man. Hey Tom, every time you start a video, you usually start with playing something that you improvise, and is that something you just turned on the camera and—Yeah, you know, it's just, it's all about what mood I'm in. I mean, what mood are you in right now? Like if you're going to play something, what would you play? I'm kind of feeling jovial right now. Okay. Well, what's that sound like? Uh, like I feel like I'm kind of in a good mood right now. Okay, so what would you play if you were starting one of your videos? Uh, I'd be like this, like [Music] [Applause] [Music] Nice. 13 augmented 11. Okay, so, so what is the greatest rock chord of all time? Tom, you played it earlier, and and I said that's the best rock chord of all time. What is, what is it? The only chord that's better than that is the Hard Day's Night chord, but that's multiple things, but you got to have a low D on the bass. You have a low D there. Ready? One, two, one, two, three, four. [Music] Yeah, it's good chord. You have to—I, I don't know the rest of it; it's Beatles, right? I don't know the rest of it, but you know what's great about this right here? Dave, Dave Gilmour, B flat fifths and then a C major. He's implying it's a B flat fifth with a C major on top, so it's you'd call that, uh, like this, like, like C over B flat. What's that mode? It's like B over A. It depends; it depends on how you play it. If you play that, that's B over A because that's the exact voice. I don't think in modes either, cuz you know, neither one of us thinks in modes, but you're in mode guys. If I'm like film scoring or something like that, I think of modes, or if you're playing in jazz, right? If you got an A major seven with a sharp five chord, let's say, let's say D major chord with a B flat in the base, right? So if you play that, okay, so now to improvise over that, that you get, yeah, the scale is B flat, but Lydian with the sharp five. L and augmented. Play that, but, but you could play just a D triad over [Music] that. All right, so you're saying B flat, flat five, yeah, with a sharp five. Oh, yeah, that's the scale. [Music] Yeah, this comes from melodic minor. Wow. Yeah. But if you play just like D, if you play the chord and you play, and you play, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. It's beautiful. Over there, a contender for the greatest chord of all time, in my humble opinion, yeah, is [Music] this, the coolest voicing of an E major 7 of all time? You got root, fifth, and octave down here, right? And then you stack root, fifth, root of an A flat. Yeah, yeah. So it's [Music] like minor 7, major 7. Yeah. Oh, you're hitting the third. Yeah, that's a cool, that's a cool voicing, uh, you know, along lines [Music] of—
I'd like to take a second to talk to you about this channel. Believe it or not, 57% of the people that watch here regularly are not subscribed, so I would encourage you to hit the Subscribe button now. This will help me get even more of my dream guests in the future. Thank you. So how'd you guys get so good? Tom, when you play those super fast, pentatonic licks, what's the key to that? I've talked about this in many of my videos; it's, it's when most people try to play fast, they tense up too much. Mhm. And like in any sports or anything, uh, the looser you are, the better. Like a golf swing; a real golfer looks like a rag doll when they make a perfect swing, you know. Yep. They, if you get too tense when you're, when you're playing, uh, fast, you run out of steam quickly, and you, and you, and you, it, it stops. Most people, rigid wrist action; they, they keep everything super rigid, and they get very tense up here, and it, and it just kills you. Like, yeah, you just run out of energy. But what, what I do is I swing my wrist, rotate it. I've seen, uh, people say that it's Eddie Van Halen had a similar—instead of going up and down, I rotate the wrist, keep it super, super loose, like [Music] um, you do that all day long. Okay. Now when you do it in pentatonics, so I've [Music] seen that kind of thing; it's like, it, I don't know where I developed that technique or who—no one taught me that. I just sort of figured it out by, by playing so much. I mean, I practiced, in—I still do practice incessantly, yeah, and and I always just sort of instinctively knew that if you got to keep it loose to be able to do that. And, um, I do this thing where I practice doubles, like I've talked about this in videos, like I'll take two, two strokes up and down. Yep. And then go to another note. [Music] Old Rush song, you remember that, Vital Signs? Okay, so if you're going to be shifting though, let's say you're playing pentatonics or moving up the [Music] neck, let's see. So Tom, wait, is there any—are you using your thumb though? Is the thumb moving or is the wrist turn—is [Music] it, it's all relaxed; your arms super relaxed. Do it all day long; it never gets tired. I mean, it's actually relaxing to play, like it's actually calming. And it sounds terrible to sit with a guitar on a couch and and you know, do this all day and know the—out of your wife or whatever, but I do recommend that people practice that because it, it, it keeps you—see, I, I like to have horsepower on tap. Like most of the music we play, most of the music I play is very simple, um, organic, sort of, you know, soulful music, but I always wanted to have technique on tap so that if I ever want to do a quick flurry or or explosion of notes that it comes effortlessly. See what happens is like a lot of people, they get so tense when that moment's coming, I'm going to play a fast lick now, and they, they clam it, and they, they tense up, and I wanted to have that fluidity and on tap. And I also am a fan of Steve Morse and all that stuff, and and picking every note, although to that kind of thing, although ironically, Steve would tense—would tense up, and then he got really bad arthritis from it. His right hand was just amazing, unbelievable. He was the first guy I—I know there's others that have done it, but he was the first guy I ever heard play relentless flatpicking, no legato. Yes, and legato is great; I love legato. I mean, there's amazing speed legato players—that Alan Holdsworth, one of my favorites, but I just always wanted to play flatpicking fast notes that are very loud and percussive. I always thought that was more effective. Al Di Meola does that. You know, when I was younger, for starting out, heavy metal kid, I did play that very legato style shredding, and I could do that; I could do all the tapping and stuff, but I got to a certain age and I just wanted to flatpick every note, and that's, that's where I started really developing that.
So Guth, three, speaking of flatpicking, you played a lot of bluegrass, right? That's kind of where you developed your, uh, your right hand. I did, growing up. Yeah. Mhm. How does your right hand—is it similar to Tom's? I think so. I'm definitely, um, of the same school, using the round edge of the pick, medium pick, which has a perfect amount of flexibility, strong enough but still not, you know, these really thick picks where you hear a lot of the click and big noise, um, and then my right hand and arm is really relaxed, and so, you know, just, you know, [Music] Yeah, man, velvet tone, man. I can't not, uh, incorporate some of my fingers in there. Okay, that's—I was going to say, how do you decide when to go to, to, to hybrid picking? Man, that's a tough one. If I'm doing like a three-note chord, like a chordal thing, um, they'll come in there, dyad kind of double stops. [Music] Uh, any kind of double stops or instead of doing this, this, yeah, might come in there, and then any of these rolls [Music] uh, I stole that from Uncle Larry. Can I talk for one second about him, just for one second? Good. I'm gonna leave—I, I, I don't know if you've seen this, but but like he has been playing live with his trio so much, I, I've always said that playing live guitar in a really live context is a muscle, and when, when you do it as much as he does it, it's mindblowing, like how strong that live guitar playing gets. I've been in a couple of his recent gigs where I'm just sitting there going, "Oh my God," like there is no one alive that can pull off some of the, that, that he's doing, and it's like a lot of guys get really good, like, say I'm a studio guy, I don't got—if I did a live gig like that over and over and over, I would build that muscle up, but he is so strong right now, like the, that he's playing on these trio gigs, I just sit there and go, "Wow, man," it's like, and there, there is a muscle there, you know what I mean? That live guitar is a totally different thing than being a studio guy. Yeah, and it's about endurance; it's about strength. Like you probably feel like you can crush rocks with your hand right now, don't you, you playing so much? Well, I don't know. I mean, I, that means a lot that you'd say that, dude, you know, unbelievable. I'm just trying to keep up with our rhythm section, you know. You guys got some cook, but you, you're standing up too, right? Yeah, standing up playing, and when you do sessions, you normally sit down. Absolutely, all that stuff, right? So that's right; there is, is a big change, your arms in a different position. Um, I never thought about that. Yeah, I mean, standing up playing live is, is really a different thing. He's asked me to come out and do a couple gigs with him, and and I'm like, I'm comfortable playing with him in the studio, but I don't want to get my ass kicked. Oh, man, they—he gut me right now; he hurt me. No way, way you would, man. I'm scared of you; I'm scared to death. Get out of here. But it's amazing, just because it's like throwing gasoline on fire when you start seeing him take off; it's like, it's like he starts lifting off the stage, and it's just flurries of outrageous notes; it's just like, "Wow." Amazing, man. So I saw you recently where you're talking about different positions; you went through five different positions where you were doing different bends. M—just kind of country bends 101 out of the, out of the, the, the five shapes. Here's my two cents on the CAGED system: I think it's confusing for people that are just learning because you're talking about letters that in addition to a different key, right? So if you're in E, but you call this the D shape, I think are kind of—if you're learning, you're going, "Why is it a D if we're in E?" So I would just say it's the chord inversions up the neck, which I've based my whole knowledge of the guitar on that because I don't know any music theory, and I don't know all the notes on the fingerboard, and so I've just been able to, uh, rely on my ear, um, and the and the basic fundamentals of hand position on the fingerboard. Yeah, shapes. And so the shapes. So, um, I think the CAGED system is, is just the way the guitar has been tuned since it was first tuned like this; it's not going anywhere; it's not new, right? It's just the bottom line fundamental. So the thing that changed my life on the guitar was learning the shapes up the neck and all the information around those and realizing that only one, one moving, one note in a triad lets you access the four, uh, really important sounds as you're learning major, minor, dominant seven, and major 7 by moving just one note, which I talk about all the time, but the the country bends, if you're, if you're in A, there's your open—here's your G shape, you know that's your first country lick ever; it's right out of your G shape. So you're seeing it right there. And then if I go here, that's your E shape; here's your D shape; if I go here, let's see, uh, that's my, my, uh, C shape [Music] and then you're, you're back up to your A [Music] shape. Not really a good one in your A shape. Oh, here, there's a few things there, but I mean, that's pretty basic. You got this one; there you go. You got this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [Music] Those four. Yeah, yeah. And then I like to bend this—I forgot about this one in your A shape; can bend it, right? You know, those are—but that's, that's like 101, but you can see how those are applicable in every, every shape, you know. So I'm just using that, you know, when people ask me about some of these different ideas, like if I'm playing an A, a, a dominant 7, I'll play ideas out of E minor and G major 7 over that. Now Rick would probably say, "Well, that's mix of Lydian," but what I'm doing is, since I don't know anything about theory really except the—see, Guthrie doesn't know anything about theory except he's naming all these chords and telling you what he's, he's telling you exactly what he's doing. When I'm on an A7 chord, I play G major 7 and I play E minor 7, but I don't know anything about theory, so actually Guthrie does know about theory, but, but not like you do or—I mean, not the complex theory. So that's why I, I superimpose these little, uh, tricks of mine that are kind of like hillbilly jazz, where I'm able to kind of access some of these sounds, uh, like, you know, like I was saying, and it's more of—instead of looking at it like a jazzer that would say, "Well, that's really a 2, 5, 1."
I'm just thinking about the cords. So if you know your hand position and you can find an E minor, you know everywhere. Then when Tom goes to an E minor chord, I'm going to be able to play some notes that fit over that chord. And it's really using your ear. I don't know about the guitar, but my ear has been able to kind of help me navigate through my life to get to where I'm at. I mean, I'm blown away that I'm sitting in the room with Tom and Rick here on this channel. And so, you know, it's another kind of notch in the headboard where I go, "Man, I must be doing something right," or "I didn't piss somebody off to be able to sit here." But it's just—I think really to zoom out and get away from all the really complicated stuff and the rabbit holes of all the guitar knowledge that's out there right now. I think what I'm trying to get people to do is what helped me when I was younger, and that's zoom out, use your ear, really listen to a lot of music, and don't forget why we're all doing this in the first place. It's about music, and it's a language that you're communicating with somebody else. That's it. And so that—I'm just using, and I'm using these really simple things to be able to kind of get outside the pentatonic box a little bit. Um, and they're just knowing those, the framework of these chords, and then superimposing those over some of these other sounds when the opportunity comes. So if I'm playing in an A minor, then I know I can use some of the same framework of these lines out of C major 7 and D7 over a minor. And that's, you know, without getting into—knowing—having to know every single note that's changing. I'm just superimposing these frameworks that I already kind of know, a little bit outlines, to get to those sounds, which I'm just simplifying what somebody like Rick can tell you exactly what that is, you know.
So Tom, when you play—when I see you do your solo things, you do use your thumb a lot.
Yeah, that's like my stock and trade.
That's your thing. Let's talk about that a little bit.
Well, it all started when I was—um, I play a lot of acoustic on sessions, and you know, I'm a big proponent of the cowboy chords. I'm always talking about the power of cowboy chords. You know, I think for the people that don't know what cowboy chords are, you're—you know, you're cowboy shape, right? A minor, E minor, C, D, right? I always say that that—that is the basis of all guitar, even when you're up here, I'm still thinking about those chords.
Yeah, and you do too. That's what—that's basically what the cage system is, right?
Right, right. So, uh, but like I noticed when I was in the studio trying to play acoustic—let's just say you're—you're doing something like—I'm going to turn it down a bit—when you go to play that F, right? The way people traditionally play that F, when you got a microphone dead close to the guitar and a ton of compression that's amplifying every creek, squeak, stomach growl, everything—you got to make sure that this isn't—see, like all these chords, C, G—these are all grabbable without making big adjustments. But when you go to grab that F, there's a huge change there. Yeah, and sometimes it's slow to get to it, it's noisy to get to it. So I remember thinking, "If I just do that," where I just grab that bass note with my thumb, and that—that's where it all started many years ago. And then I started thinking, 'cause I'm a piano player, uh, and I—and I always like way more open voicings on, so I'm always looking for bass notes to extend my chords. Yeah, so—um, like for example, if I was like, you know, let's just—let's pick a weird key, B flat, right? Like I can do like you [Music] know, I want those notes to be bass play [Music]. I used to start doing stuff. I always do a shuffle, you know, like [Music] [Music] [Music]. You know, keep those bass notes going, and I like it for [Music] composition. It's clean, you can get—you can use your hybrid full, and the chords have the same amount of notes. It's like a guy playing along with you.
Yeah.
And a sad man playing along with another sad man.
And Tom, so most people that pick up the guitar start playing a lot of single note lines or licks or whatever I did. And so when you attach a bass note in a chord to the single note lines, then it becomes music. Because if you're playing a bunch of single note lines—not you, but if anybody starts playing a bunch of single note lines—there's a million chords that could go under that. And so the more information you start introducing, right, the more sounds like music. So if you just take—and this I'm stealing your idea here for a minute—but if you just take this I see, right? Okay, that's a C major scale, but if you do this, if you go, you know, [Music] [Applause], yes, you know, then you got—then it sounds like music, and you have music.
Yes.
And I started—you know, Tom's one of the first people other than, you know, Joe Pass or some amazing jazz chord person—I mean, you're one of the few people that I've ever heard apply that approach to—or it's different. You took it into a different area than somebody like Chet, right? Where you're playing alternating bass notes, right? You're approaching the guitar more like a keyboard player, 'cause you're an amazing keyboard player.
Thank you, dude.
Thank you, buddy. I—I've never heard anybody really do it the way that you—
Yeah.
It was always just a matter of like—like wanting to accompany myself, like because I hear all this stuff in my head, so I want to hear it while I'm playing. Yeah, and—and like, uh, it was always just like trying to sound more full. That's really all it is. And I didn't realize at the time that I was—you know, 'cause what—what ends up happening is you—you end up playing with this—this part of your thumb. It's not the—well, I've seen you play where you get your thumb way back, you're playing up—
Yeah, like for sure, all that stuff, you know, like [Music].
Yeah. [Music] Beautiful. Here's a good look, that one you play all the time out of the key, Joe. That one.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Steely Dan. How about this one where you take an E7 chord and you bend that fifth up to a six?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to have some strength in that left hand for that one.
So Tom, you do sessions all the time. Yeah, you play songs with the same chords many times. 1645, always 6415, always 1645. Explain what that means.
Okay, well, every song in every genre now, uses—for the last 25 years—25 years—uses the same three or four chords. Demonstrate. Example: C, C—there's your one chord.
Yep.
Uh, A minor is your six chord.
Six minor.
Yep. F is your four chord. Your five chord. So like the most overused sound in all of pop music is this [Music]. Uh, the—the using the tense—it's on every like—
Yeah. If it was [Music] like—I won't even do tense anymore. It's so cliché. Like certain producers that I work for just won't let me do it anymore. It's so overused. The tense are like five, six minor, four, right?
Yeah. So you—the comp—the compositions are not harmonically rich, so you have to find interesting parts and sounds to make them something. Hopefully there's a good lyric, a good story, or something being told. But like a lot of times my job is just come up with a cool sound.
I'm older than you, but we love bands like Genesis. Okay, now when you listen to a Genesis song, there's so many different chord changes. And why don't people write songs like that anymore?
I don't know what caused the death of chords. I've talked about it a million times. I mean, I've got t-shirts that say, "Remember when songs had chords?" I've been on a crusade to bring chords back to music, but nobody gives a—about chords. Why? I don't know. Rick, you would be a better person to ask than I would.
What happened?
Well, when did they start to disappear? I mean, how long have you been doing sessions for?
I started doing sessions heavy duty in the late 90s.
Okay. So by—by then were we 1, 4, 5, and 6 still pretty much—
See, in the old days, uh, before I got to Nashville, you could do five songs in a—in a three-hour session, because there weren't—they weren't trying to make mini pop productions. They were just country songs. Yeah, so it was—it was totally normal to get five songs on a demo session in—in a three-hour session. But then in the early 2000s, people started trying to make early like—like mini pop records with more advanced production things, and you couldn't get five songs in a session anymore. People would want sequencing, they would want drum machine parts, they would want stuff that, you know, it wasn't just a bunch of dudes playing a 1, 4, 5 in a room anymore. So then it became like you're lucky to get three songs on a demo because it's a little hard to do. And I think chords—maybe when you started, that's when things started amping up a little bit. And then—and then I don't know why every genre started doing the four—like every genre was—does that—it's such a pleasing progression, and it evokes so much emotion in the listener who doesn't know anything about music.
That's the word "cloying" comes to mind. It's—it's—it's fake emotion. It's—it's designed in a laboratory to pull at your heartstrings.
So—so my theory was—always was—that 25 years ago an A&R people began to think that any song that didn't have that chord progression—they didn't know what that chord progression was—that no song was a hit unless it had that chord progression.
Mhm.
Right. I've seen you play—what, "Entangled," maybe? And these songs have amazing chords. You have to figure them out.
You have to figure them out.
See, any music that you can't just chart by ear is what you'd say "detailed," right?
Yeah, like—uh, I'm—I've got like you—like you, I've got a pretty good ear, and—and I could—I can chart any song with a piece of paper without having an instrument in my hand. I just hear the changes, I know what they are. But if you start getting the music where you can't do that, that's more advanced. That's the music I want to hear.
You got exactly—you got to sit at a piano and fish out the chords, you know, unless you're Gordon Mo and you could just hear it immediately. But like—uh, I'm—I'm fascinated with—with that kind of music too, and those are the things that still draw my attention. If I'm driving in the car and I'm—I'm listening to some music and some chord changes go by that I don't know, I get pissed and I go home and learn them.
Why did that go out of fashion?
I think you're right. I think it was when—especially in Nashville—when people started—um, you know, when the executives on Music Row weren't guys like Chet that knew about music, and it was a business, and they—there was so much success on—um—a song with that progression, then they didn't want to change anything. They—if it didn't have that progression, it didn't sound like a hit to them.
Exactly.
And so they just kept perpetuating it over and over and over. But it was in every—it was in every genre. It was not just in country. It was in every pop song, every rock song had it. You've seen the videos where they string together all the songs would have the same melody. It's amazing.
I just don't think those guys are willing to take chances anymore.
You know, what was the last hit song in any genre that actually had some chords?
I did a video on that. There's been no song that changed key that was the number one song since 2009. If you just took a song from the 80s, like "Maniac" by Michael Sembello—
Yeah.
That's a detailed—that was a hit song. Has—song—
Yeah.
—a ton of chords in it.
Yeah. I know the guy that wrote it. He showed—showed me the piano one time. It's amazing progression. Um, but like those were hit songs.
Yeah.
Uh, but that was probably towards the tail end of all that.
Yeah. I did a video, "The most complex pop song of all time," and it was "Never Gonna Give You Up," that came out in 1983, has 22 modulations in it. But people don't realize the intro starts on one key, then the verse comes up—first half of the verse is on one key, then it modulates up a half step, then the bri—the B section, pre-chorus, is in a different key, and then the chorus modulates twice, and there's 22 different key changes in it. Yet it was a hit song.
It sounds amazing.
Sounds amazing. Nobody even notices it. So smoothly done. Sergio Mendes song, songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Okay. But that's 1983. That's—that's 40—41 years ago.
Yeah.
Okay. Here's a question for you. Do you think—you know how people love to follow trends, right? Especially in country music. I mean, if somebody comes out with something radical different, everyone wants to copy it if it was a hit. Do you think if someone came along in this day and age with an amazing song with a ton of really cool chords and it was a massive hit, do you think others would follow suit and start trying to do that too?
No, because I think that—um—I don't think the trends happen anymore because of algorithms, because of how people experience music. Yeah, when I make these videos and I talk about Taylor Swift, for example, there's so many people that I know that have never heard of Taylor Swift. Song—people are so locked in silos because of the algorithms of—of music being suggested to them.
No radio anymore.
So there's no common listening—listening experiences.
No common listening experiences. Right. So it's not MTV—hearing the same songs, and you turn on the radio, you're hearing the same songs, and you go to—you go out to a club, you hear the same songs. You go to the supermarket, you hear the same songs. You go—you know, there—just that just doesn't happen anymore, right? But you know how in country music, like—like for example—uh, I think it was a Miranda Lambert song years ago called "House That Built Me." Yeah, it was an acoustic type thing, right? It was very radical. I don't really remember the song very well, but—but I remember everyone kept referencing that, "I want to do that."
Yeah.
'Cause it was totally different than—I think mainly just acoustic guitar, vocal, is that right?
Yeah.
Mhm. And—uh—uh, so like that became a thing that everybody was chasing for a while. But you don't think that could happen in pop music?
I don't think so.
What—what is the most complex song that you've played on recently? That—is there anything that comes to mind?
Nothing in commercial land. I mean, I've played on all those Morgan Wallen records and stuff, and every one of those songs is—is always just this—the same four chord formula. There might be a two chord—two major or minor.
Okay. So what do people say when it's the same chords over and over? Do they—it's so common, they don't even talk about—do you ever just go home from the session and be like—
But I'm not trying to make it rosier than it really is, but you end up—that's your box that you're in, and it may seem very confining to most musicians, but if you're just in that box all the time, the box becomes normal. So you start looking for things to do inside that box. We all know it's going to be the same four chords. That's not even an issue anymore. So you're just looking for cool stuff to do inside that box, right?
That's it. It's stock. That's why I want to hear you guys rip licks and everything, and—and when you do your—when you play things—yeah, when you guys post on social media and you play what you want to play, it's so great, it's so fun to listen to.
Well, and you know what, the reason why we made this record was because there was no reason to make this record.
Yeah, man.
And we did it for the sheer love of—we did a—a live stream together, of course we've known each other for a long time, we did a live stream together, we thought, "Man, this is really cool. Let's record some more songs." We showed up, we had some ideas, we showed up one day, we didn't have any ideas, we wrote some stuff on the spot, we called our buddies, we made music. Not—I've never made any money on any record I've ever done, uh, and then this one ended up doing good. We didn't put it on any streaming platforms, and I think with the fact that me and him have both been on social media, you know, plowing away at the new world that we live in, that it—it worked in some way. But there was no corporate deadline, there was no pressure. We just got in and—and both had uh, complete and utter total creative freedom, which—do more than four chords.
Yeah.
Yeah.
C, three. Why don't you guys play a song off your record? We'd love to.
Oh, which one you want to do?
What a great idea. How about "The Window"? Let's do it. Let me—let me get my corporate tuning. One, two, three, four. [Music] a [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] a [Music] [Music] you [Music] h [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] Let's go to the end, any—be right. One, one, two, three. [Music] [Music] ah [Music] Yeah. Beautiful. Oh man, beautiful. Ah, thank you. All right, now you guys were playing a—uh—kind of a faster thing a little bit earlier. You want to get into some of that?
Yeah.
All right, friends, here we go. One, two, one, two, three, four. [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Come on, son. Oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] We're down one. [Music] d [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] Woo, jeez Louise. Amazing. Okay, so tell me why you have a physical record, and then—wait, you have it on Bandcamp, but you don't have it on Spotify. Why?
There was a conscious decision. Well, tell me about that.
Only for a short period, we're going to put it on Bandcamp just for a little while, um, and then release it to the major platforms, I guess, to just see if people would buy—actually buy it, you know.
Yeah.
And they did. They did.
Yeah. Tell me about how doing social media has changed your life. I mean, Tom—yeah, you have a whole community that you've built over the last four years or so.
I got two little boys, 11 and eight, and uh, they mean the world to me. It's everything. I think about all day long is them. And I originally started doing a—a handwritten journal to them when they were very little. I started tearing up just thinking about—and I just—to write by hand, you know, just exactly what's going on so they could understand when they get older. But I started doing it through videos, and like—it's all for them. I'm going to start crying. God damn it. But it's all a journal for them so that they can be older and watch it.
That's awesome, man. Tom, you lost your dad when you were a little kid. You are—you crying too? Does that—is that why—is that why—Tom, it must be, man.
I don't know. One of the reasons I started my channel when I was 54 years old is because I was an old dad and my youngest was three at the time, and in case something like that happened, I wanted there to be a record for them to go and watch. They could watch these videos, and that's really the—that's pretty much the main reason I did it too. That's it. And I told my stories, and that's—it's basically just like a journal for me. That's it, man. So I can totally 100% relate to that, Tom. Okay, so I want to ask you a couple things about your pedal boards that you brought today. When you're traveling here, why did you decide to pick these pedals? What pedals do you have in your pedal board?
Yeah, this is small—of all my pedal boards. It's great to just throw it in a suitcase, travel anywhere. Um, super—super small case. It—it fits in—you know, this is just the basic bare minimum of what I can get about with, right? Um, I got—to—
I have an overdrive pedal, and which is the—no, old Nobles, no balls, as I would affectionately call it. And the uh, EQ is great on a live gig for solo boost, so, God knows you're playing solo. And uh, a delay and a Reverb. And what's this delay that you have there, Stroman Brigadier? Which is my favorite pedal delay of all time. Of course, I'd rather be using a tape Echo, but—and the Reverb is uh, uh, what's the EarthQuaker Devices Master Dispatch Master? Which is a great pedal. Yeah, that's about the bare minimum I can get by with. Okay.
And Guthrie, what do you got there? Kind of a similar setup, pretty bare bones. I okay. So your Noble's pedal though, I found out, is uh, is actually just reboxed. There that, that big green pedal. Yeah. So the, the switches go bad on them, and so XTS, our good buddies in Nashville, they uh, they reh—they made it about, about two stories tall. Right? Yeah, all the switch work. Yeah. Is that so it's easy to hit, right? I suppose. Yeah. And then just as B, you know, just a basic tremolo. Y, the Brigadier, and then the Nobles is my favorite. I mean, that's kind of a Nashville staple that he made famous. I—no, you have an original. You know what, you know what they're worth now? How much? Twenty bucks? $1,500? No way. I swear to God, all day long. They used to be $40 brand new. I used to buy them brand new for $40. They're 1,500 now. Some people ask 2,000. Yeah, yeah. I saw one in Japan for 2,000. Am I right? And then I don't, you know, this is pretty, this is pretty much my, my thing. I don't have anything crazy when I play the guitar. I usually always just sounds like the guitar. Nothing, nothing high gain. You have a satellite board, and then I have this little satellite board for when I, when I play with the trio. There's a few intros and a few parts that I use the, you know, uh, the Le—the Stroman legs, which I, it's kind of fun. And then I've been using this for a couple little things that I'll do. [Music] Yeah, kind of a, some sort of, or something. I don't know. Yeah, it's like a string section to me. To me, that's like a big deal. You know, like these little—it is a big deal. I don't use any crazy effects, really, but uh, or know how to. But so that's it. What do you think? I've asked this to a lot of, a lot of great guitar players. What do you think of, all considering all effects, any effect, what do you think is the greatest pedal ever made? Probably the Echoplex. Maybe a million guitar players have asked this question. The number one answer is a Memory Man. Yeah, my Memory Man. I use all the time. Right. That's a damn good pedal. I wish it was a little smaller, or, and also more reliable. Yeah, reliable. My, my Memory Man is, is over there. It's got the cable attached to it, and I've had it for, I don't know how many years. I use amazing pedal.
Tom, what's your uh, what's your take on, you know, I know a lot of our buddies in Nashville kind of have the same approach of uh, getting a nice kind of foundation tone out of their uh, like for me it's a Fender-style Reverb, like we're using here. Yeah, uh, I love to have a little Reverb uh, to soften everything, but you know, it's, it's get a nice clean, warm, fat tone out of your amp, especially live. I play a lot live, a lot. So, and then you're kind of incrementally stair-stepping your pedals in. That's it. And to, to where your pedals aren't—I see a lot of guys that uh, they let their pedal boards do all the work, and their amp is set on like two and a half. It's not really getting anything going. I can never be one of those guys that starts with the high-gain sound, you know, like, like, like a lot of these guys, like guys that you've had on the show, amazing star players, they, they set their amps dirty. M-h, I could never do that. I have to have a super clean starting point, and then use effects from there. Like I always joke around on my channel, if I can't get, if I can't get the green onions tone, like that, that, that clean, really, dony, almost anemic clean sound, and I'm, I'm the wrong place. I build, I build up from there. That's, I got to be able to have that. You know, I could never like get a gainy amp and use that as my rig. If I had to limit you guys to one guitar, that you have. 57 PAF gold top, and I also have a '58 burst. And man, they're both so special, and I'm so lucky to have them both. I'm just, I never thought I would have a burst. I never thought I'd be able to swing it ever. And it's just such a great guitar. He actually talked me into buying it. He, he was over my house, was on loan for a year, and he came over and played it, and he was like, "Dude, why don't you just buy this guitar? It's amazing." And I had to sell everything I own to get it, but I'm glad I did. Okay, if you had to pick between the two, probably the burst. This is a bad, this is a bad boy, though. It's a bad boy. Sounds beautiful. Thank you, buddy. Guth, what is that guitar? This is a Danocaster that I actually got from Tom, because he knew I was in guitar hell a couple years ago. You were in guitar hell? I had a guitar that I played for a long time that, probably looking back on it now, is not a great instrument, but I was, I was, was just used to it, and, and I had it refereed, and it kind of got weird. It got real stiff, and it changed, and I kind of freaked out. And then so Tom goes, "Man, could you play this?" And I went, "Yeah, all day long." And so he got me this one, and I'm, I'm the guy that uh, I, I use one guitar until I absolutely just destroy it, and then years later, and then I have to find—I go in the search of finding something else that I can use. I'm probably—and Tom knows this, of all the people in Nashville, I've got the uh, absolute smallest guitar collection. I, I don't have, I've got nothing. I'm—I guess it's not even a collection then. Yeah, it's not a collection. It's not colle—it doesn't, it doesn't matter when you play like that, you know. I don't have anything. All he needs is one guitar, and there it is. That's—for some reason, I'm, that's it. I'm okay with it now, cuz it's just how it is. So Tom, when you're doing sessions, how do you not make mistakes? I do make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. Yeah, but you rarely make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. Come on, Tom. I do, I do. I don't—how do you stay focused when you're—when—one my sec. I'll give you a little, I'll give you a little secret. Okay. Um, in Nashville, when you do a session, the session leader, as you know, makes a chart, right? And it's a number chart, so you can change any KY you want, and uh, most guys are very closely reading those charts, right? Yeah, but I don't do that. I would rather close my eyes and play along. I'll get a chart and I'll put it there, so people don't think that I'm not looking at it, but I'm not really looking at it. And I would rather just learn the song there. The first two or three run-throughs, I'm going to make tons of mistakes because I don't even know the song. But once I memorize it, I play way better if I'm not looking at the chart. Once I know the tune, I play totally differently than when I'm looking at a chart trying to play. I think a chart has a tendency to force you to play certain things that are just almost automatic, but when you're playing totally from emotion and memory, you play totally differently and more real, I think. So I would rather clam the out of the first couple takes until I learn the tune, and then just sort of have it that way. That's what I do. How often does it happen where the producer says, "Can you try something different?" Oh, all the time. Um, it happens all the time. Every sound you make on a guitar has an emotion attached to it, and I'm, I like to think that I'm pretty good at capturing a target emotion. Like I ask the writer, that's the producer, "What are we going for in the song? What do we want the listener to feel?" Oh, it's like uh, they people are really colorful with their answers. It's like a, it's like a lazy guy on a beach. He's kind of hung over, but he, he's kind of missing his girlfriend, but then he's also kind of hopeful. They paint pictures like that, and like I love that kind of stuff when people talk and colorful adjectives about music. Gives me an idea of what kind of sounds to dial up, and then I, I feel like I'm really good at, at honing in on those emotions. How often does it happen where somebody wants you to play something, something when you know that you've nailed a part? Well, sometimes when I miss the target emotion totally, like I'll be playing something that's, that fits and it's right, but the guy will say, "Man, that's not the guy I want at the party. Try something different." And then you go to a whole different sound. Go, "Yeah, that's the guy that I want at the party." So it's like, it's characters you're playing, you know. I try to become a character for every part, you know, and create, evoke emotion with whatever part that I'm doing. And sometimes you get wrong, sometimes you guess the wrong guy, and uh, I work for a couple producers that are very picky about like what guy comes to the party, and you'll be playing a part and they're like, "That's great, but that's not the guy I want at the party." And then you have to come up with something totally different. You have to attack the new idea with the same ferocity you attacked the original idea. You can't be hurt or take any personal offense to the fact that they didn't like what you're doing. Instinctually, you have to completely ignore the fact that that just happened and reattach a whole new approach without any ego whatsoever. That's the key to being a session man. And if you have any ego at all, you're going to—your feelings are involved—you're not going to do a good job. You have to just act like you're watching yourself play. You're not really playing. You're on the other side of the glass trying to play the, that you hope that guy would see you play. If there's one solo that you had to listen to for the rest of time. Man, there's so many great solos in history of music. Um, I mean, so many come to mind, but you know what solo I really like, and it's your buddy—who is that? I really like the solo that Tim Pierce played on that John Waite song, "Change." That solo always got me, man. And Tim told me how that all happened. You, I'm sure you heard the story—Neil Geraldo plugging him into an amp and telling him what to do, and he went out there and winged that solo. That's a badass solo. Amazing. I love that solo. I think that there's a, there's some moment that on Abbey Road that are pretty amazing, of course, David Gilmour moments that are amazing, but something about that, that sort of unknown John Waite song, that's a badass guitar solo, man. It's really got a lot of tension in it. It's angst. It's very good. I'll tell you one that I can listen to forever, and it's again, it's so hard to narrow that down, but uh, the opening uh, intro, the intro to uh, "The Very Thing That Makes You Rich Makes Me Poor," ra Hooter. Yeah, on that first digital recording he did, that intro is super badass. What about you, man? You got one? Um, the end—the Beatles, George Harrison solo on "Here Comes the Sun" is absolutely perfect. Amazing. The "Abbey Road." Yes, it's amazing. It's, it's just to me, it's like the last thing. The Beatles—don't you think that that record, of all the amazing Beatles records, has the best guitar playing on it? Yeah, the Abbey Road record, it's really got some great guitar playing. I'll tell you another one I love is, and you like, I think you like this record too, uh, is um, Mark Knopfler played some really beautiful stuff on, on, on "Every Street." Oh, dude, yeah. That record, fantastic. Some beautiful stuff. Now, Tom is usually asking me these kind of questions and everything, and I—Tom, you know what's the best this, you're, you know, and it's like—question—I, I change all the time. What's my favorite Joni Mitchell record? Like, who's the most overrated guitar player of all time? Most overrated guitar player, me. Who's the most underrated drummer of all time? You're a drum fan. All you care about is drums. You don't care about guitar. I don't care about guitar. Most underrated drummer, Phil Rudd, man. Yeah, dude. Come on. Yes. That's an excellent choice. Now, who is that? AC/DC. Oh, okay. That's, that's yeah. Well, he tell him about the geodesic dome. Speaking of drums. Middle where you can't hear—no one can hear you, or what? I wish. It's like a big speaker, but uh, my dad built this, the house that I grew up in. It is amazing. My upbringing was very, very different and very incredible, but I wouldn't change it for the world at all. And you know, and so today when we got in the car on the way over here, I said, I said, "Hey, man, I might ask you on the way, if it's okay on the way back home if you can give me a little crash course and some uh, suggested and essential listenings for uh, for rock and roll and, and, and you know, real, you know." H, Tom's studied—an encyclopedia for, for rock and roll, and I'm not, I wasn't raised on rock and roll, and so I'm on the way home, I'm going to get time to hopefully play me some like a crash course. I don't know anything about, about rock and roll. I'm the same, man. I, it's always been clean tone, kind of clean tone. First thing I'm going to play him. [Music] Is that, was a kidding? It's a good start. Oh, man. Well, guys, I, I really appreciate you guys coming down. We've, like I said, we've hung out before many times, but I'm this thankful. Thank you for putting up with us and having us down here. It means a lot. Thank you. Absolutely, man. Thanks. I'm honored to be here. Thank you, with both of you. Appreciate it. And uh, yeah, check out their record. Yeah, man. Right here. Yeah, man. And uh, I'll put a link in the description. Find that for you, you know that. Thank you. Appreciate it, guys. The best. Thank you, man. Thank you, Rick. Thank you, viewers.