Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 122 i Australian Guitar

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS PART TWO OF A VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH LOUIE SHELTON Over the past several decades, you would have heard Louie Shelton’s signature guitar riffs and solos on more hit records than any other session guitarist in history. While there are too many to mention, some of his classics include, Boz Scaggs’ “Low Down”; Lionel Richie’s “Hello”; Neil Diamond’s “Play Me”; The Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”, “ABC” and “I’ll Be There”; and The Monkees’ “Last Train To Clarksville” and “Valleri”. Some of the other artists Shelton recorded with include John Lennon, Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, The Carpenters, Joe Cocker, Kenny Rodgers, The Mamas & The Papas, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald and many others. Not only did Shelton play guitar on Seals And Crofts’ greatest…

This year’s iteration of the Byron Bay Bluesfest offered up a wide range of iconic artists over the Easter long weekend. Some of this year’s big drawcards included Santana, Patti Smith (performing her timeless 1975 debut album, Horses, in full), Jethro Tull, Buddy Guy and The Doobie Brothers, all of whom put on dazzling shows in their own right. With five days of music, food and some of the biggest artists in the world, it’s arguable Bluesfest caters to a wider audience than any other festival in Australia. The festival now attracts over 100,000 people, but spreads them out over the 120-hectare Tea Tree farm with seven stages, over 100 food and market stalls, five licensed venues and undercover food courts. Advertised as a safe, fun and family-friendly event, this…

When raw alt-rockers Bad//Dreems put their debut together in 2015, they were a small band equal parts frustrated and fascinated by a city they couldn’t escape – dear old Adelaide. The album, Dogs At Bay, was born in an air of claustrophobia, as the guys observed social quirks in and around town without any real means of escape. Since then, Dogs At Bay has taken them around the globe, which like most places, turned out to have just as many oddities, issues, and examples of contradictory behaviour as the city that spawned it. Today, they’re still pretty intrigued and irritated, but with the added bonus of having seen parts of the planet they may not have reached without that record. Such is why their follow-up, Gutful, has a much broader…

Picture it: Lismore, 1995. A local band named after the Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School – Dr. Lester Grinspoon, who supported the medicinal use of marijuana – submits the track “Sickfest” to triple j’s national Unearthed competition. They won, and for the next two months, the song was the station’s number one request. Folks couldn’t get enough of Grinspoon, and they were snapped up by Universal Music imprint Grudge. In September 1997, they released their debut studio album, Guide To better Living, which quickly grew to double platinum status on the back of five chart-topping singles: “Pedestrian”, “DC×3”, “Repeat”, “Just Ace” and “Don’t Go Away”. The album spent 36 weeks in the ARIA Top 50. You definitely know somebody who owns it – that is, if…

1 BUDDY HOLLY & NIKI SULLIVAN The Crickets Here’s a fun question to ruin a friendship with: what was the first band to specifically feature both a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist? It’s near impossible to answer because the definitions aren’t completely watertight – do big bands count? Does a rhythm guitarist have to play chords while the lead plays riffs and solos? The Crickets probably weren’t the first band to feature the classic ‘bass, drums, rhythm and lead’ setup (which pretty much became standard), either – and the rhythm-playing Sullivan left the band after barely a year to study – but to the teenagers just starting to discover this newfangled “rock’n’roll” stuff, this was what a band looked like. That was until Holly’s death in 1958, at least.…

I’ll admit to having a little bit of a brain jam over the fact that Fender offers a very traditional, longstanding guitar model called the Mustang, as well as a very modern digital modelling amp of the same name. But the Mustang guitar has its roots in Fender’s early student guitars, and the amp line has a bit of the same ‘make it easy for everyone’ spirit. So, in another way, it totally makes sense. The 40-watt GT 40 is the most student-y of these amps, owing to its tiny size and dual 6.5” speakers. It’s designed to be the perfect tabletop workstation for learning and recording. This series also includes the Mustang GT 100 with a single 12” Celestion speaker, and the Mustang GT 200 with two custom Celestion…

After topping the ranks in our 2016 Bigsound Top Ten (Australian Guitar #118), WAAX have had an enormous first half of 2017. It’s not hard to see why: their second EP, Wild & Weak, is five precise slices of pure sonic euphoria, strewn in dizzy, melodic vocals and numbing lead sections. The quintet are bringing a fresh flavour to a fast-stagnating Australian punk scene, and though their riffs are scorching and their noodling tight, they’re zesting things up by rethinking how guitars make their mark on a song. “Our mantra has always been to make things contemporary and to do something different,” says string-splitter Chris Antolak, “Rather than just follow what everybody else is doing. When we were writing these songs, grungy guitars were a really big thing with bands…

After drawing over 5,500 guitar lovers and enthusiasts to last year’s exhibit, the Melbourne Guitar Show is returning to the Caulfield Racecourse on August 5th and 6th. This year’s lineup boasts not only an incredible haul of local guitarists (Lloyd Spiegel, Nick Charles and Bob Spencer, amongst many more), but also massive international artists – the UK’s legendary Steve Hackett (Genesis), Canada’s renowned Nick Johnston and UK superstar Alex Hutchings. In addition to some killer performances, the Melbourne Guitar Show will also hold a monster exhibition that will feature a gigantic variety of electric and acoustic guitars, effects pedals, amps and more state of the art guitar technology, both homegrown and from around the world. But don’t take it from us – we caught up with big guns of the…

This August and September, Australian audiences will be treated to a veritable Avengers of extreme guitar talent when Paco Peña, the Grigoryan Brothers, Jim Pennell and Phil Manning join forces for the Guitarra tour, tackling the very best flamenco, classical, blues and jazz pieces you’re likely to ever hear. It’s a quartet that boasts serious, serious chops: Paco Peña is one of the most respected guitar virtuosos and a Spanish cultural icon; Slava and Leonard Grigoryan are four-time ARIA nominees for their classic guitar work; Phil Manning is an Australian blues rock icon; and Jim Pennell is renowned as one of the finest jazz and Latin-style players to ever come out of the country. We managed to get the whole team together to discuss what it’s going to take to…

It’s no secret that Collings makes beautiful guitars in both the acoustic and electric spheres. Built in Austin, Texas, Collings instruments are highly prized for their build quality, style, sophistication and tone. you’ll find them in the hands of artists like Lyle Lovett, Emily Strayer, Bill Frisell, Zac Brown, Guthrie Trapp and countless more. The CJ-35 is Collings’ tribute to the pre-war era of American flattop guitar making. During this era, new instruments surfaced which featured bracing, changes to body dimension and new approaches to fret access, which could come to redefine the acoustic guitar from its smaller-bodied parlour era. The CJ-35 has a non-scalloped bracing configuration, featuring three tone bars and a short 24 7/8” scale length. Collings says that this design – which admittedly diverges a little from…

The Line 6 Helix has only been out for a little while, but it’s already revolutionised guitar processing with its player-friendly features on the surface, and incredibly deep signal processing capabilities lurking underneath. Not to mention, it manages some incredibly responsive tones. It’s also a fairly pricey unit: Line 6 has made it extremely roadworthy and they’ve packed a lot of functionality into it, which means it has the price tag to match. In order to make the Helix concept more attainable for more players, they’ve now released the Helix-LT: a streamlined version of the Helix which gives you the same great sound capabilities as the full-sized model, but with a few features stripped back in the name of affordability and ease of use. BABY YOU COULD BE A MODEL…

The Gibson SG has a special place in the hearts of many Aussies, thanks in no short part to its association with AC/DC shredder Angus Young. In many ways, the SG is the ultimate pub rock guitar: it’s lightweight enough that you can swing it around for hours, and it has a bright, punchy tone that cuts through even when you’re wedged into the corner and stuck with a dodgy PA. These same qualities also make the SG great for big-league stages as well, but that’s not all: a lot of us love the SG for how it rips with metal and stoner rock – there’s just something about their voicing that works for those genres. Tony Iommi is famously into 24-fret SGs, and the man invented metal, so there…

Bad Habits is an album so hard, fast and deliciously obnoxious, you can almost feel the tattered leather jacket hug your shoulders tighter with every sharp and distorted wail. The debut full-length from Sydney punk’n’roll unit Bare Bones was a long time coming, brewing slowly in the shadows ever since the August ’14 release of their second EP, Cut Throat Living. “We started writing pretty much as soon as we finished that EP,” says axeman Chris Breedon. “We wrote probably 20 to 25 songs, but the problem is that we’re all perfectionists. We’ll finish a song and we’ll go back and play it, and we’ll be like, ‘Nah, we can do that better.’” Such compulsive ideals are uncommon in punk, but don’t count that as a reason to blow their…

Linkin Park are used to controversy. Some folks lump them in with the ‘90s nu metal scene, but even the title of their debut LP, Hybrid Theory, hinted that they saw themselves as musical melting pot far removed from that genre. They collaborated with Jay-Z on the Collision Course EP in 2004, and have always jumped headfirst into musical experimentation. But nothing could prepare fans for the shock of One More Light. It’s a very different album for Linkin Park, much more influenced by pop, pop-rock and electropop than anything they’ve done before. It’s a risky move that the band knows could alienate fans of their heavier work, but at the same time, it’s a ballsy and confident step that is completely consistent with the band’s long-established penchant for breaking…

Last issue, we looked at Ernie Ball’s new Paradigm acoustic strings, which are break and corrosion resistant and have a replacement guarantee (break them within 90 days and they’ll give you a new set). I don’t know how they’ve managed to make them so strong without changing the tone, but they are catching on with professionals and amateurs alike. As much as I’m a traditionalist about my gear (especially strings), I’ve had the Paradigms on my old D-28 for three months now – they’re still going strong and they still sound great. So it was a no-brainer to try the electric version. IT’S IMPORTANT TO STRETCH For obvious reasons, I figured they should be tested on something with a whammy, so rather than use a traditional Strat, I fitted them…

The Glitterbomb is a collaboration between Australia’s Vance Guitars and Glitoris shred queen Samantha Bennett. Beyond expressing Samantha’s sonic requirements and visual requests, the Glitterbomb was designed with a specific goal in mind: it had to be a lightweight piece designed for female players that wrapped around the body, didn’t dig in and was comfortable and slick to play. SPARKLE SPARKLE The Glitterbomb is made of premium mahogany, 3mm thinner than usual, and with a larger body-relief carve in the back. This gives it a little more of an SG type of balance than, say, a Les Paul. And of course, that means it’s nowhere near as heavy as a Les Paul either. Vance and Samantha, my shoulder thanks you. The neck carve is quite thin and player-friendly, and it’s…