Chats With Guitar Cats Podcast #30 BRETT GARSED | JOHN FARNHAM BAND

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hello my friends are welcome to another chit chats with get cats and I didn't keep track of what number were up to but it's about a number thirty or something and it's getting easier I'm not getting freaked out with the whole live to air thing which is great because if you've watched any of these you may have seen that I was pretty bad at this to start off with and ooh what was that I just hit the wrong button but that's okay that's okay we hit the right button and get me back that's because the Internet is in front of me and I don't want that on sea life to where that's what happens I'm not freaked out turn the internet off on your MacBook but as usual no bad days got my coffee and ding dong who's at my door none other than mr. Bret Carr said hey Bret how you doing very good that's good mate thanks for coming along oh I've traveled so far from the the comfort of your is this your your man cave where you are now yeah yeah it's the we built this house about eight years ago and I took over the two-car garage that normally comes with it so now it's a it's a my excuse for a studio nice one nice one well this is actually my land room that you can see here oh wow yeah yeah that good little lounge chair there and I don't actually own a TV I've got my big iMac that I watch Netflix and YouTube and like kind of thing on it's just the way it is these days I like to work work from home so love it Bret I'm gonna ask you what I ask everybody to start off and that is what began the love affair with the guitar for you how did that all start I'll try and angle my camera there's a red guitar of that there I don't know if anyone can see there yep that guitar was owned by my older brother John and he was 10 years older than me we lost him to cancer in about 2009 unfortunately well mm and no 2002 am I saying yeah 2002 and yeah John had that guitar under the bed it's an old maiden guitar it's like a Max Max one or something like that by matings yeah and misquoted good player but I he had to give it up and focus on running the farm after my father passed away from cancer so and so the guitar just sat idle under the bed and I'd get it out and look at it and there was a guitar cable in the case and I remember I'd asked him about it and I say what's up with this and he said it's an electric guitar I thought brilliant so I went looking for a power point to plug it into and that didn't work and thank God try plugging it into the headphone jack on the stereo because it fit but that didn't work and yeah but I'd still I'd still get it out and I'd muck about with it and and my brother-in-law Greg would actually play it sometime so it was always in tune so at least there was that and and my brother's chord book was in there which just had chord diagrams and I think it was Greg that showed me how to read those and he said yeah look here's the strings there's the low high if there's an X above it don't play that string if there's an O you play it open and if there's a number on the string that's where you put your finger on the fret you know and I thought well seems pretty straightforward so and I did so I remember discovering that if you held your finger on the high string and hit it and moved your finger up the notes went up and then they went back down again which was in a revelation and and then I there was a song by status quo called pictures of matchstick man I don't know if anyone remembers that because it's long before they became the sort of the band we knew them to be was when they're a bit psychedelic back in the 60s and my brother had that single and I remember listening to a gun had a guitar intro was just pretty much played on the high E string and I thought honestly how hard could it be you know and I just kept poking around until I found the right note and then I just sat there and worked it out and that was the first thing I ever want transcribed I suppose you'd say and so I suppose it's sort of showed me that I had a good ear like I had a good ear and a good understanding for how music sort of functioned I even made up a little song just using the open strings which had a 4-bar structure and and had it had it had harmony to it like it was certainly wasn't he work of genius but it just showed that there was an attitude there that that I connected with and and with the instrument and so I ended up taking some lessons off a guy here in the very town I'm living in Castlemaine named Jeff Lyons and Jeff was a local legend for good reason he was the only guy in town that could or that anyone even knew of the could play I'm going home by ten years after oh yeah yeah Jeff was quite the gun and he taught taught me sort of the first song he taught me with seasons of change changes by black feather I think seasons have changed I think that's the song just sort of the intro and then some chords and then a boogie woogie bass line and a couple of other things and and and then I sort of gave it up for a while lost interest in it and then my cousin Andrew came up to visit one day and we were poking around in the bedroom he looked under the bed and found the guitar you've got a guitar you know and I said oh no I not only have I got a guitar I can play it mate so I got it out and played my four lessons for him and luckily for me he was just fooling the inspiration and said that's it we're forming a band so well cool so well yeah he was the guy Andrew was the guy that got the whole ball rolling and what what age was that that you started playing that you put together you little band that 12 that 12 yeah Andrew was Andrew was older there was Andrew my other cousin Neil and our friend Ken cannon Andrew the eldest are about 17 I think Neil was about 15 and I was probably about 13 when we did our first gig right here in Castlemaine at the railway hotel cool cool hysterically funny times Yeah right do you remember what what song has you played at your first gig massive amounts of deep purple Led Zeppelin Jimi Hendrix we just we just learned what we had which is what we like we had no idea that no one else was listening to this at all like we we had Physical Graffiti you know the first like ii Zeppelin album with whole little love on it and we had made in Japan and I had my brother had the Isle of Wight album with Hendrix and and yeah we just learn whatever all the Creedence Clearwater stuff we should get our hands on like anything that we us or our family members were listening to I was really lucky my brother was just such a fan of guitar oriented music so he had Santana Pink Floyd Zeppelin purple you name it you know he had it and so that's what we played and it was especially years in a couple of years when disco really hit it was just it was just we suffered you know no one no one liked us at all like would play oh look I wanted to hear the Bee Gees you know shooting against the Bee Gees I love the Bee Gees but we just couldn't play it you know because we didn't have a keyboard player and and yeah I remember we used to playing this in this pub at a town called Daylesford just up the road and and it was just the same old story usually playing to almost empty rooms everyone hated us and we'd suffer through it and and these four or five guys came in one night and we knew they weren't locals because we'd never seen him before and they sat down on the table here we go and we're playing a pie really obscure stuff we played the instrumental Jimi Hendrix closed Woodstock which I'm really full yeah this beautiful ballad week because we played Purple Haze and that was the version we did and we played that instrumental because we just loved it and I learned it it was as best I could and it was the closest thing we had to a ballot and and I remember we started point we played all the Ritchie Blackmore's rainbow stuff because I just love Blackmore was the reason I even wanted to play it really and so we played all the rainbow stuff we could we could learn and and these four guys are sitting there at this table and they just it's just oh look at us like oh my god don't you everything we play they were roaring though the greatest crowd we ever played for they come up to us afterwards and say we've never heard anyone play this music before we've never seen anyone like this music before other than us yeah it was it was a treat and do you remember what type of gear you were using men we yeah yeah yeah well uh the first that red guitar Andrew ended up buying the red guitar cuz I wanted to tail the whammy bar on it cuz Richie had a whammy bar you got to go to go the strap we couldn't afford strat so I bought a a guitar called a sockeye or sak a I remember talking to Brett Kingman and Brett had one as well and they were just back in the days when those great Japanese instruments that were not good you know yeah yeah I remember I bought it and I brought it home it did have a whammy bar the kind of Bolton on door which eventually I just broke off but I remember at the 14th fret it didn't make any sound at all all the strings just Fred it out buzz yeah and I thought all guitars were probably like that you probably just avoid that general area so you know we'll just won't go into that and I didn't realize later on you could actually fix that good but yes I mean I think I got a strap copy of some kind and pleaded with my mother eventually to - will you buy me a strap I think I was about I think I was about 13 or 14 at this time and I was I was addicted to the guitar I'd never nothing had ever really captured me like this like the guitar and music it's just all I ever thought about and the poor thing she relented no I'll go grab that hang on okay let's have a look around his room while he's doing that what can you say here we go live brilliant in it yeah yeah I always end up grabbing a guitar chariot son somehow myself but yeah she bought me this so oh look at that yeah look at that yeah it was in pretty good Nick when I got it that I'll soon fix that yeah yeah so what use that well it's almost nothing on it is a ridge other than the body and I think the volume and tone knobs but it's think it's like a early like a mid seventies type thing or 74 75 okay right and I since put a different neck this is actually a I got this neck when I was in the States and I think it's I think was actually made by John Sir to be honest oh nice one yeah I think it was I could be wrong but I think it was when he was still working at fender and he was doing some blank necks and I got one for my Stratton one for the tele and just a big slab of maple but yeah but I'm paid about six hundred and fifty bucks for that was and you know we figured that out and it's it's probably like buying a custom shop strat you know so with a massive investment for her she was a widower on a widow on a farm you know and with a 16 year old eldest son running the joint me who wants a strap and I remember this little chubby kid it'd go waddling into the pubs here in town and people would just lose their minds I think it was one of two Fender strats in Castlemaine and I made Glen quill who was another instrumental figure in my life Quilly had the other one and I know he still got it - is it being showroom condition I'm sure yeah yeah yeah clearly always looked after easkey I'd personally love to find myself at a 73 strat because that's the year I was born I don't think they're particularly known for being that good around that time but just just for the yeah it was a yeah mine's a it's a CBS one you know I had the three bolt neck and the big headstock which suited me fine because it looked like the it looked like the one Richie was playing on the machine head in a sleeve the Sunburst strap with the maple neck yeah and you know but I remember yeah I had a jade Clubman amplifier okay 80 80 watts and Roy bought all his stuff because he was the only guy that had a job and and before that I had a 5 watt coronet amplifier and it's fantastic to think back about how Acme all the gear was back then because now the stuff that you can actually begin with his really good gear and it's cheap to know it's you know you can you can buy a beginner guitar that you could can continue to use for an entire career and and the same with a nap you know and it won't break the bank at all like a the family could set up their kids with great gear that'll they could make some really good music on but back then you were either playing something good or you're playing something absolute rubbish and and I'd the beautiful guitar but still had this this amp and I think their Australian amp J yeah yeah yeah yeah and it was bring it like it had a distortion knob on it and which you could switch on you know and we shall be switched his hot immediately and turned it flat out and it had about as much gain and so I don't know you know like a distortion pedal with about 10 seconds left in the battery you know like it was it was so lame but but you know I just learned to learn to play on that and that eventually can the drummer had friend who was giving away all his gear and he gave him an old wire fuzz pedal which is still at the back there oh nice and doesn't work anymore I've I've had people look at it but they said who knows what any of this stuff is we wouldn't know how would you know what the circuits are yeah yep so yeah the first the first time I plugged that fuzzy and that was life-changing because then I had sustained so it's nice yeah that was that was a big big game-changer okay so you said you played to the four guys in the pub in Castlemaine was that through the the Jade amplifier or did you have something bigger by then now that was the joy yeah it was many years later I got I got a Marshall and well that was when I started working I left school at about 14 15 and got a plumbing apprenticeship okay it's just what people did around here we just all us young guys went and got apprenticeships we all became mechanic citizen Turner's you know whatever I actually wanted to be a welder I wanted to be a boiler maker but but because I really liked welding but that division of the big factory that I was going to go and do that in shutdown so then the plumbing apprenticeship I got was in the same Factory I drove past that whenever I go to Melbourne oh nice nice yes like I love driving past it they're not going into it yeah thinking what could have been hi if I didn't go down this way yet hey you don't want to get a gold watch from that place no not at all so you mentioned Blackmore as a bit of an influence and I gotta say a lot of the bands that you've run rattled off then my friends who have older brothers into all that Led Zep the the deep purple and everything yeah I'm gonna be the first with me I don't know too much in the way of the Blackmore and stuff but do you think that was a very big influence on you two trying to get the whole speedily well Richie was everything you know he was he was it wasn't even like an influence it was like a religion you know I was I remember it very vividly I couldn't have been any more than about 11 and we were having a just a bit of a family get-together at the farm and all the brother-in-law's and everything sisters were all there and and my brother other brother-in-law Rob had put on an album and I just looked at my brother John and I said what what's this and he said this is deep purple he said they're the loudest band in the world and the the album was in rock so the song that came on was speed King and I mean it's just nothing but it's the closest thing you'll find to just progressive rock yeah it's just pirate the Qatar pyrotechnics 101 I mean I just went I went ah you know as the minute he said they were the loudest band in the world I thought yeah they sound like it yeah and I thought this is brilliant and then of course once he that's when I thought this is what electric guitars sound like I just expected to plug that Mayton in and have that come out of it because it was just built into it I didn't realize I could do it yeah that was the first album I once I had saved up enough money and that was the first album I ever bought and and just everything I heard from Richie from that point on just astonished me like I just thought I've never heard anyone get noises like this out of a guitar and when I just to listen to other guitar players and right so this guy just stands alone and he really does like I mean I mean the more you go back and listen to what blackboard was doing back then he is he is the bridging gap between the really primitive 70s guitar players and that leap into the late 70s with your Van Halen's and people like him and Brian May and Jeff Beck yep they were this technical bridge of of just that led us to the to the the innovation of technique and now when you see it where it's gone now with like a three government and Andre Neary and people like that like they're just doing things I often my standard quotas I feel like I'm watching the matrix like it's so I feel like it's CGI they're so damn incredible I just think that can't be possible Hannah yeah but they're doing it you know and yeah it's this black most part of that you know like you listen to the you listen to the highway star solo and that picking section in the middle is just you know that's thick that created Yngwie and paul gilbert and all those guys whether they know it or not i'm not sure i paul was it i knowing that was a black north man but not all was but there's a precision there that just was it had not been saying it's funny you should you should say that because a common thing i ask people they usually say to me that they started off playing folk music and strumming and then i often say what what bridged the gap what got you from playing strumming the chords for the Bob Dylan songs to the sound that you are now and that there always seems to be something you said ritchie blackmore two standout moments for me the second one that happened was my friend played me eruption for Van Halen what the hell was that but the first one was and this is ver in 86 and I was 12 year old kid who was playing the shadows and all the the surf guitar kind of tunes because you could at 12 but a standout moment you need it is it is and I'm so thankful that I got a grounding in that yeah because the touch and the feel which is everything I've got a good grounding that I know guys who lap straight into trying to learn randy rhoads etc and they don't have that they can't play one note and just make it sing and and with a clean tone as well exactly no distortion like it's it's really you know I got to meet Hank Marvin actually like many years ago I was sorry to do write years ago we were touring with John and Olivia newton-john and playing in Perth and Hank turned up Stuart Fraser and I got to go and get a photo with him and have a chat to him what of what an awesome guy like just the most beautiful person he's on my radar he's kind of one of those guys that's like okay keep yeah yeah and I've been aware that he was has lived in Perth for quite a while now yeah so I might try and get him I'm not sure how if he's a private person or not but I was saying about the van Halen moment but what happened before that was watching the TV and John Farnham was doing huge sellout tours around Australia you were a member of the band at the time and on came this solo to let me out and it's funny you had the big camera hanging off your guitar and everything of that get so yeah there was that guitar yeah and I saw this and just went what was that I had no idea that was even possible it was it was life-changing for me and I actually just tried to load it into my software and folks I just got a new laptop and I'm running a little off today I'm gonna try and play that clip Brett I don't think you're going to be able to see this so bear with me for the minute and a half as this plays but I'm gonna try and play that right now let's see if it works [Music] gosh no avocados [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh my god I saw that as a 12 year old and as I said mind blown Brett you couldn't see that then but I'm sure you're well familiar with it be honest Rick it was the gap the Garfield t-shirt you didn't even notice it I did we've just had a comment from Drew Berry's over in the states it said Guthrie who and my friend link has just said Eddie Van Halen eat your heart out so seriously man I saw that Angeline what was that like you were legato playing all those harmonic things you were doing well that was all just trying to just trying to follow Eddie's lead I mean I'd I think that's what that's what I got from Eddie was like you've got a you've got a you've got a gotta be yourself I suppose you know and and even though look I was still blatantly copying any I was trying to mutate anything I could to at least go somewhere you know to do something a little different rather than just do the the finger tapping thing straight out of Eddie's playbook you know and and then of course through Eddie I heard heard about Allan Holdsworth and when I heard Alan I realized yeah you got it you've got to be yourself you got to just find your thing and I mean look not everyone can find their own thing like Alan I mean it was singular like that that's that's above anything I ever tried to emulate or steal from Alan technically or anything like that the thing that just struck me the most was I've never heard anyone like this guy and throughout the rest of his career I never ever did I mean Alan just kept evolving on his own and it had nothing to do with anything that was happening around him yet there's this incredible Dave Chappelle quote I think it's Dave Chappelle and it was genius is when I hope I can remember genius is when everything before you was obsolete and everything after you bares your mark well and yeah it's an amazing quote it's something like that he was referring to Richard Pryor I think so he was obviously referring to another comedian but but Alan sort of hits me that way where well do you think Alan is the guy that stopped daddy in his tracks Yeah right and and Shawn Lane like I remember having a massive Alan rave was Shawn Lane when I was living in the States and yeah it was great Shawn was the first guy I ever met that loved Alan's playing as much as I did and we just had this like I was awestruck enough to just meet Shawn that we had this fantastic just Alan session you know and Sean said he yeah he he just heard of I think he just read in the paper this band called UK was playing in Christine in the park in Memphis so he went down to check him out and there's Alan standing there doing his thing and Shawn just said he said that just stopped me right in the middle of what I was doing and I went there you know you know so when you figure like with Alan you were they did either hit you like that or it didn't so you're all those little tricks and everything I mean they're just dumb tricks but how old were you how old were you when in that 22 I think 23 okay and how old were you when he first started playing with John Oh 21 the first the first gig I did with John woman I first met John was the summer of 85 so it was before whispering Jack okay he was still in Little River Band at the time and he decided to just do a short pub to her just to you know keep his chops up and have some fun yep and so he put together a band that was a great band it was David Hirschfeld I was on keys samtcy was also playing guitar Nicky Nichols was on BVS Bruno de stanislovas playing bass and Derek pallucci was playing drums and I remember it was funny too cuz I was so I was so happy Sam was there because I was petrified like I've never played and I went straight from our local pub ban to John you know wow what I can't be the only guitar player I don't even know how to play a funk rhythm you know and luckily Sam was there and I thought I thank God you know we've got a propagator PI up in the band and I was so ashamed because I just I was so in order ability because especially when I found out he was just as good a keyboard player as he was guitar player he was such a beautiful slide player and all the rest of it no I desperately wanted to set it get him aside and ask him questions but I was too shy yeah - yeah terribly shy and intimidated by the whole thing it was a miracle I had the courage to do it but so was there an audition process to get the gig with Farnham yeah there was actually because what happened was it's a bit of it I've got a sort of wine back a bit I was always reading Guitar Player magazine I love that magazine it was sort of back when that really was the magazine it wasn't Guitar World and guitar for the practicing whatever and all the rest of it so that was it and Mike Varney started doing the spotlight column and I was really enjoying reading that you know where he'd take three unknowns and they'd send in you know hundreds of people had sanding cassettes and things and he'd choose three and shove him in the book and give him a bit of a bit of a boost and I was enjoying reading that column and I thought I've never seen an Australian in here so I thought well what have I got to lose so I got my girlfriend take a photo of a house with that guitar and he put me in the book like I think I'm pretty sure on the first Aussie whoever getting that foot I really coulis the spot pretty sure I'm the first Australian in the spotlight column because I read them all yep and I'd never seen one in there until I was in it so I could be wrong but I don't think I am but so yeah me but I thought oh great now I've got a ratio you know it's like the only real sort of outside opinion of my ability such as they were at the time and I thought well what I can do is photocopy this and write letters and do a little demo tape and send that around a few people and see if anyone's interested in hiring me as a guitar player look my bail was set so low I thought if I could get in a cupboard band in Melbourne and just work as a guitar player I'd be happy you know that's it make make make a enough to live on playing the guitar done and I sent out about but at least a dozen handwritten letters and copied the cassettes and nearly all of them came back because I think most of the men that I've go on a record company so I got the this magazine called Sonics and I do like yeah they do a yearbook and they just put in trade addresses management booking agencies record companies so I just went through the whole thing and luckily one of the addresses was for the Wheatley organization and I thought fair enough you get a cassette and I got this beautiful letter I'll never forget I've still got the letter you know still EF it just dear Brett I just got your tape please call me Glenn Wheatley and I thought this is a good one I got yes the Rena that's short saying don't call me or do call min so I rang up Glenn and he said you know I want to put a band together for John so he can go out and do some gigs which would be interested I said no let me just check my schedule you know and so they organized for me to go to John's house down in where he was living down in Melbourne somewhere Camberwell or something and I just went out and knocked on the door and John answered it I couldn't believe it you know went in and Ross Fraser was there and and they still like John's wife Jill still gives me grief about to this day I I had this cassette player that I would use as a practice amp you could just plug your guitar into it and press record and it would come out with speaker nice I had this Dodd preamp but I was running through the Marshall at the time and was only because I was too lazy to bring the Marshall back from our rehearsal space mm-hmm and so I turned up with this cassette player in the dog trainer know she's still Jill still says yeah but they were working on a demo for let me out at the time and they said this song's got a bit of a solo break-in you want to take a shot at it and I said sure so I I did two takes and I got really lucky and didn't fluff anything and they really liked it now here's the thing I remember it was in a really strange key not the key that we did a on the album and it put the solo in a weird key like it was in flats and done and but I was just mainly a near wing it by ear guy anyway so it didn't matter but they are Ross said what would you play in the verses I said all I don't know there's no vocal and John said I'll Chuck a vocal on for you so he just grabbed a fifty eight and stood there in his lounge room and so here's the thing that song is in the main part of the song was the lyrics in it is in F sharp on the album I remember distinctly the demo was in a so it's an upper minor third yeah and he stood there in his lounge room he's hitting like high G's like 15th fret high E string on a guitar geez no warm-up no nothing just grabbed a mic and I'm just sitting there watching and listening to this because see here's the thing like alone I don't know how long before this I've got to try and track the date down me and my petrol head mates here from coastal Maine drove all the way to bath us to go to the bath house 1009 to the race you could go to this concert they had there because I just build an amphitheater and the first gig was lrb cool and so we thought right you know and I was already a fan of John's like I loved I loved the net album and I loved the uncovered record and I thought and I'd love to know if this guy can hit this stuff live you know because he's a hell of a singer and so we go to this gig and that's when I just I stood there watching them and I realized that he is actually holding back in the studio I thought because he obliterated what he did on the album's live ID I was such a fan of heavy rock and metal on all this stuff and I was always disappointed when I'd hear live recording so I go to gigs and the singers always duck melodies and you know I get with the crowd cuz I ran out of breath and I thought this guy's like a superhero I've never seen anything or heard anything like this and then he did it for me not that long afterwards I'm in his house and he did it for me in his land room so Wow yeah it was just it was unbelievable yes yeah and i35 I've use later I'm still just standing there going can't believe what I'm hearing yeah yeah nothing so you did believe for a while and you went to the states and you played with Nelson right yeah yep did you know in the back of your mind that you'd always come back someday you know it's I've talked about this in other interviews and it's it's hard to talk about because well it's hard to sort of balance it because if I take the life I had there and the people I've met and that are in my life now and always will be that are in America then I wouldn't trade any of it but if I think about some of the experiences I had there and hindsight being 20/20 I look at it and go what was I thinking and then I look at why why would I leave Jon's been why would I not stay with John and just continue working with the good guy I believe to be the greatest singer that's ever lived I mean you're not wrong no you're not right now I don't I don't have an answer for you I don't even really know the one thing about it is that having done it removed all questions if I maybe if I hadn't done it I'd be sitting here going what if I had done it well now I know I did it and it I know what it's like to go to America live as an American and tour America and I suppose I got to do it at the last dying gasp of what was the 80's music scene there which was a unique moment and and then I got to experience the changing of the guard from one style of rock into the next one and then I kept living those lived there for 13 years I mean then I got to watch Rock not be the thing anymore and haven't moved into rap and hip-hop know now and be in so this it was a unique experience to be there and live there and I I remember Vernetta Fields was in John's band and I remember having a conversation with her because other people were in my ear and I was listening to it so naive oh I was just happy to be playing music I couldn't care less about money or anything like that I didn't make any difference to me I thought at least I'm not plumbing yeah yeah I don't care if they pay me ten bucks a week I'm happy you know ya know and people are always like we need more money we should be getting more money and I thought okay that's what professional musicians say we should get more money I was so naive I didn't know Jeff so I was sitting next to Burnett her on a plane line a Vanetta we should be getting more money and she just went excuse me dude was like we should be getting more money and he said you gotta pay some dues before you get some more money honey and then she started and like I love an editor this day I'm so honored to call her a friend you know and she proceeded to tell me a few stories about when she was in the Ike and Tina Turner Band and a few a few stories that that pretty much just left me with my mouth hanging open in shock yeah and that are even more poignant in this moment now than they even were back then for me but so maybe that's what I had to do to I paid some I pay some dues over there I gotta tell you oh yeah yeah so we're sorry to cut you off there when you were saying about the audition with with Farnham well getting together in him hitting those notes and all and room and everything you knew he was a mind-blowing singer did you think that he would become such a commercial success as he did because a lot of my viewers are international I gotta say I won't get in the figures but I have a very low viewing audience in Australia when I mentioned John Farnham a lot of them aren't aware of him and I encourage you guys to go out and watch him on YouTube whatever he really is one of the best singers in the world life did you think that it would take off to be such a commercial success because he was everywhere late eighties early nineties well I thought he I thought it should because I just I didn't look at things based on trends or fashion I just looked at what was in front of me and went that's incredible that deserves to be heard that should be huge I remember the very first rehearsal we have with that that initial band at pub band and I was driving a Mazda 6 to see expect men and John turned up to the same rehearsal in his master 6 to 6 which was older than mine and more beat up Wow and I'm just going what's happening here you know and I remember I later on I was telling people I was going to do an album with him because this was in 86 and they were already working on whispering Jack and I said yeah I'm doing an album with John Farnham it's gonna be great and a lot of people I spoke to they said well yeah well that guy one of the greatest singers and if anyone ever deserved it it's him but it's over he's passed you know it's gone yep and and I never really listened to any of that but but no one believed it no one believed it in fact I would go as far as to say I bet a lot of people would have thought well yeah I'm trying to look at this young act over here and then of course the minute the whole thing exploded oh there was there were guitar players calling the gigs saying yeah I'm coming down to audition for the guitar players spot really I'm oh yeah yeah the guy's ringing up saying well I'm the best guitarist in Australia these were well known names if I drop the names you'd know who they are well then they wanted to work with John Farnham get in though because Oh somebody's hot okay yeah now I want to work with him and you know much to John's credit like I mean it was an enormous leap of faith to put that much faith in me because I was so young and raw did you know he's done nothing but I've never done anything but believe in me and I just can't thank him enough for that you know he's just always been that guy that just said be yourself do you think you know so one thing about Farnham is there's the John Farnham band and at his film clips always feature the band he's a solo artist he could just hey it's all about me but that's one thing he's always had his band in there he's always featured them so it sounds like he he's got to look after you guys and go hey that's John yeah that's the doc you know that's the that's why you know what people are like especially Australians sometimes they're just knockers you know they just like to they like to just sort of give people a bit of stick just because and that they never know these people you know they're famous bad guy you know like I'm and the amount of just stuff you gotta tolerate and why have you ever met the man you know if you ever met him he's like one of the most humble decent people you'd ever meet down to earth he could be the most arrogant tosser based on just the magnitude of his success and he's nothing nothing like that you know and it's yeah it's an endless source of frustration to me that people read him that way and it's not like not like that at all you know John's just an incredibly humble person with just a phenomenal talent I mean I met I don't know even even when we did that big fiery gig earlier in the year and everyone's raving about Adam Lambert you know and I'm like Adam Lambert is a fantastic singer and you know maybe I shouldn't actually just bring up Adams name because he is a fantastic central of Angeles but I think it's just the fact that I've had the benefit of standing next to John for the better part of 35 years and hearing him consistently bang out those notes we don't drop keys if he doesn't feel like he wants to sing a song anymore he can't give it the aunt that he needs to give it in the middle of a one and a half two hour show and it's gone do you know you don't drop the key yep and so yeah you pretty much get the same show out of that guy you got back in 1986 you know yeah that's amazing yeah absolutely it's two-second it's time to turn the heater on yeah but you go for it and when he comes back I'm gonna ask Brett about his time in LA when he did split for a little while he's back now sorry you're right mate you're right I was just saying I'm gonna ask you about when you did depart the camp for a little while and you went over it was you went to LA didn't you yeah yeah yeah had you already lined up the gig with Nelson or did you go over there and sort of think okay I'm here who wants me no no it was lined up um wonderful fella named Jeff shoe Kraft was managing co-managing Nelson at the time and Jeff worked with John in Little River Band Management okay and that's how he knew me and the connection there and and at the time John wasn't really doing a lot he was going to take a bit of a hiatus and and I think what sort of you know I'd broken up a girlfriend so I was been sort of miserable and and I was living in Melbourne trying to sort of get some other work happening in the interim and it's just you just can't just jump into a scene and expect people to want to hire you you know and so I sort of struggling a bit and then this offer came up to come to the states and I think I was at the stage where I just didn't really care too much about myself so I thought okay why not you know Jeff said yeah come on over see what you think and so I just went over there and and and he gave me a sort of put me you know put me in a room at the Oakwood apartments anyone knows the Oakwood apartments in in North Hollywood there then then you know what I'm talking about and and he just gave me a cassette player and so it is the demos they'll be over later the tsavo to pick you up you know and and i sat there listening to the demos and went man these are hits this is a right these are great songs and they really are I mean I love those songs and still do and Mattin gonna gonna came over and that was just great guys you know really just all down-to-earth guys and we got together in the afternoon I met Bobby Rupp the drummer Bobby's you know one of my dearest oldest friends to this day I started just spoke to yesterday nice nice I met Palmer kovitch incredible keyboard player sort of almost the MD for the band and yeah it was we just got on like a house on fire it was really good fun and and it wasn't at all like a like a really serious audition or anything that it ended up just bobbing in Matt and gunner and I just went into West I asked Julio's and jammed for a few weeks and played the songs and got to know each other and and we just hit it off nice then I went I went back later that year to do the album and which was it's just such a fascinating education in how the industry work there the American industry and how different it is to what I'd known here in Australia because this is before before MTV was a thing here you know I think MTV in Australia was like two hours on a Saturday night whereas in America it was the 24/7 TV channel yeah and the interesting thing is I remember in 89 when I was going back over there and I remember I'd watch a lot of MTV during the day because I didn't have a lot to do at the time and there was a show called yo MTV raps and it was it was a half hour show and that was how much time they devoted to rap and hip-hop and they replay it so it was the same half hour in the morning in the afternoon and I'd watch it and I'd really enjoyed it and thought man never seen anything like this before this is interesting it's fascinating to think that now it's almost like yeah let's have a show called yo MTV rocks and I think I put a bit of rock music on in between all the rap and hip-hop which dominates the scene now you know it's incredible to see that changing of the gaurd the evolution of music and I was living there when it all happened very strange MTV doesn't play music anymore yeah really yeah yeah which is ironic so when you were over there we're doing a bit of teaching at GI T stuff like that be doing master classes yeah well that was another yeah that even happened I'm pretty sure it happened through TJ Hal Murray like I got to know TJ when we were doing the the Nelson record and he heard so much playing on there and he really liked it he was working at charity studios we were recording it and he just liked my playing and introduced himself and and once I jam with him I was just like mask guys unbelievable you know and we became really good friends and and TJ was teaching up at JIT and I think he put in a good word to me the key Swire who was then the head of the guitar department and he's just a brilliant guy a lovely player and great bloke and he got me up there to do a seminar and the kids really dug it and it was it was pretty tough because I mean when he introduced me Nelson was just like kind of a laughingstock really I mean I mean it was real shame because the image of the whole thing really undermined what I thought was some just some great melodic rock music yeah good pop and but Matt and Gunnar were caught up in this whole this whole like the LA rock scene you know the glam rock sort of thing and here's the interesting thing and I had this they had this A&R guy John Kalodner if you don't know who John Kalodner is look him up he's a piece of work and if you look up the video for Aerosmith dude looks like a lady and there is okay yeah and he's name was on every record from back then he's a real character yeah and he was actually a pretty cool guy and had it really nasally voice you know used to come into the studio and I'd be I'd be in the middle of doing guitars you know so I'm sitting there and Mactan of the producers there and Dave phone of the engineers there and here's Culloden Reed always come in with this incredibly beautiful girl hanging off his arm and it's sit down and just hold court and listen and so we'd sit down and listen and and then they'd finish playing the track and he'd say buy here one market a solo I'll stop this record and I'm sort of shrinking in my chair but his vision for the band was to be the Eagles of the 90s as he put it which is interesting because to me that sort of says that he had his finger on the pulse that country rock modern country was going to be a thing and he saw it probably five six years before it really happened and yeah I really believe if Matt and Gunnar had taken the band down that path then they would have been at the forefront of a new scene rather than at the end of an old scene but how could you possibly know I mean you know as I've said hindsight's 2020 and at the time you know they wanted to be white snake and winger and rat and all the rest of it so which everybody did everyone was trying to be that absolutely and they were trying to follow that path but yeah colada was on the money he and the sad thing is that if you actually look at the cover of the album Matt and Gunn are just dressed in jeans and acoustic guitars it looks like a country rock record deer right and and the lineage of their father Rick Nelson like he was credited with starting the California sound all that sort of things so it all ties in but yeah unfortunately we went out in the trash with a lot of other bands from that hair metal era and it as I said I just felt like it undermined what was a really good pop record yep you know I was actually named after their father is that right I was I was well and I actually met Matthew and Nelson at NAMM not the last year but the year before and I got to tell them that it's a shame I never met their dad because I only ever knew Rick Nelson as the singer and whereas everybody knew him from the the Nelsons which was the TV show and and in America I mean you know there that's an institution over there that's shown I yeah I feel like it would have appreciated that no I think it's great someone just knows me as the musician and not the actors Yeah right yep so I asked you about the teaching and one great thing now about trying to learn guitar is the fact that YouTube there is videos everywhere so you had the video out of your teaching and one thing I got out of watching that on YouTube because I didn't have it back in the day was that your for note per string approach whereas a lot of guys arranged their fast runs into three note per strings well that's all from Alan that's all from Alan holes yeah absolutely yeah I read about that with in an Alan holdsworth interview I would never have the brains to come up with out on my own I mean that was that was Alan's genius and of course he had the hands to do it to the big stretch I've got tiny hands and crap stretch I mean really I yeah I absolutely have no facility to play those massive chords and so in a way I it's sort of I feel better about explaining that to people because it's not it's it's not from a genetic gift it's if I can do it anyone can do it because I'm more disadvantaged than most I would feel but yeah that was Alan's idea to arrange strings for note for notes on scales for notes on a string to because it broke up patterns and got you away from that sort of stuff yeah when I first started to do it I started to come up with a system for it a pattern system and that's when I realized well I'm defeating the purpose because I that's how I got better at using chromatics as well because I kept hitting so many wrong notes I had to keep correcting myself okay no because you're new yes generally a half step away from what you want yeah and and I thought well the value here is the movement it gives you movement around the fretboard and it's all it also makes you learn the fretboard because you you haven't got your Old Faithful positions to go back to you know and but it took a long time you know it but I realized early on it was something worth persevering with yeah yep I did try and incorporate some of that in tomorrow playing after seeing your video on that and I couldn't get my fingers to do the stretch and I actually have quite large hands but just wouldn't wouldn't gel with me I went for many years not really using my pinky I was one of these guys played with the thumb over the top and dachi yeah so when I try and approach more of a four note per string I'm doing it as like a three note and then sliding it up one yeah whatever works yeah yeah but there's no there's no rule that says you got to use four fingers I mean heck Greg has got some of the biggest hands I've ever seen and yet Greg does mainly these three fingers and uses his right hand to get those kind of runs yep and red beach would do it too you don't tip the wild thing is TJ who mainly keeps his left hand in a closed sort of grip here and does a lot of wide interval stuff with his right hand because he plays the two hands on the neck and yet I've seen TJ's it just casually like this with the guitar and he can play a tritone across the entire neck first position well that's the three a three fret stretch it's ridiculous he's got some he's got massive hands and the biggest stretch and we were talking about I said dude I would give anything for your left hand and he said I don't even use it you know he said I mainly keeps his left hand quite close yeah commuting I think you know so he doesn't use the hair tie thing yeah sure sure now it's funny how we we all approach this thing yeah there's no rule I mean yeah whatever gets whatever you whatever you imagine yourself doing by any means necessary go for it yeah so I was gonna ask you about your approach to the fret board because I'm the first to admit that I want my little box pentatonic shape oh we're in a minor I'm gonna play at the fifth fret I were in D minor we're gonna go up to the tenth fret etc and it wasn't until the whole YouTube thing became very popular that I started seeing I was playing it in a queen tribute band and I'd take extended solos and I'd add sort of improvise a bit and as soon as I got out of my comfort zone I started seeing videos on myself and oh man I'm lost I'm hitting a lot of wrong notes so I thought it's never too late let's learn to navigate the whole fretboard and I'd start asking people what's your approach and it really struck me that everybody's completely different some some learn but everything up on one string others are using the Caged system others are three note per string do you have an approach that well in excellence i I hear music in intervals that's how I approach music is is if someone shows me a scale I don't take any notice of how they play it all I want to know is what are the sequence of intervals you know whole step whole step half step whole step whole step you know what is it what what's the what's the formula for the scale and that way you could learn it on one string it doesn't really make any difference you know and then the challenge of our instrument is is developing that relationship across strings and I remember I'll just grab this guitar remember I taught a beginner at MI and maybe I'm not back far enough I don't know and it was a lady and she played a bit of piano and she said what's a half step on a guitar and I said well it's that and she said ah okay so it's like a piano just to the next key and I said yeah the trouble is it's also that yeah and and you know she was astonished she said how can a half-step go from being this little movement to this and I said yeah welcome to the guitar and I mean you add in open strings and the possibilities just go out the window so so one if you embrace that you can use it but it is it's it's a lot to learn you know it's a lot of stuff to get over but but but at the same time like I said you don't you don't have to go that path you can just whatever the system is that you get that helps you express what you're feeling then that's all that matters you know it doesn't matter just because one person does thing one something one way doesn't mean you're doing the wrong thing there is no right or wrong the minute you get past that whole concept right there the whole world opens up to you you can just get on the with the business of enjoying it you know yeah but the minute you start trying to sell your system as being better than someone else's ah you've got it you shut that door now you can't have it both ways you can't have it where we can do whatever we want it's beyond judgment just enjoy yourself - yeah we can do whatever we want but my systems are better than yours then you know you know yeah and then if you open yourself up to that then you've blown it because yeah you'll get judged by everybody else and they will have a valid reason for shooting you down so yeah I like the other approach where just just Chuck all the rules out enjoy yourself and see what happens at the other end - yep so your approach to chromaticism as something that I took on board from from seeing your videos on YouTube there and not really something that I've ever experimented with and as soon as I did people started saying to me I have you been listen to some jazz or something made if you picked up some jazz licks it's like no I'm just learning to use the notes just on the other side of the correct notes and sliding in and rolling around yeah just passing tones I mean and that's that's that was how my primitive had heard jazz I didn't you know I didn't I didn't know any other scales all I knew was just some basic modes and I didn't even know what they were called I didn't need to know they were mode so I just like I said to me I was trying to play a lot I loved Larry Carlton Larry was one of my biggest turning points as a guitar player and I remember trying to play along with one of Larry's tunes and quickly sort of found out okay it's in E and I thought well see I heard music is happy and sad I made you to me was happy G minor was sad and then mixolydian as I later found out I determined was to be as happy a Dorian the santana mode was to be as sad just not quite as sad as sad a holy yep and mixolydian wasn't quite as blatantly sunshiny happy as major you know it's just a little bit on the little bit wobbly you know I'm a big fan of Lydian personally but it's very hard like very hard to play Lydian and not sound like you trying to sound like Stevie right yeah well David Gilmour for that matter yeah was Lydia Ning belong before Steve I did absolutely yes Steve loves Lee and he really he leans on that a lot you know and does it beautifully so yeah that's what I mean you've got and you've got to find your own way to express yourself other than other than I'd say if yeah if you find yourself going oh I can't play Lydian unless I if I play Liddy and I sound like Steve Vai then I would I would say find a rhythm or a groove that is so far from anything Steve I would play okay and and choose a sound that is unlike anything Steve I would play yep and do not do any song song this is what I always does and yeah don't get me wrong I love it but don't do that yeah yep I think Wayne Krantz said it where he just I forget who Wayne said he was a huge fan of like you said you just have to walk away from it if you're ever going to find yourself you've got to walk away from it in a way that was I had to do that with Allen because I was well the one thing lucky were about with Allan Holdsworth is that he's such a genius way beyond anything my lizard brain could ever come close to getting to that there's no hope of me ever copying him because I don't know what he's doing I've never will never know it sure and all I had to do was really embrace all the sounds and the influences I had before I heard Allen which was blues rock which was the 70s you know just before before I heard Larry Carlton and Allen I really I would have been happy being Mick Ralphs from Bad Company you know or Brian Brian Robertson from Thin Lizzy and then I would have been that's the sound I was really going for and then Larry got me started and then Allen just finished it off and Eddie Van Halen you know and so I mean I all I had to do was really embrace that sound again and then and that slide playing of course just that's that's just another universe then I can I could just stop playing all the Diddley wiggly stuff and just play slide for the rest of my life and I'd had him I think I'm gonna come back to the slide because that's a whole different topic with you but a bathroom break building building this life you know what you know what I'm going to start doing that I actually rang a couple of friends after my last one and said these generally go for two hours I think at the one hour mark I should get people to come and do a little live performance here and use those if you'd like to go take one please buy we'll try yeah I'm gonna read some comments and things so it's not just me folks it does happen now I'm gonna bring up and I'll bring this up again when Brett comes back but he mentioned Larry Carlton and something for me that I learnt was using motifs and I got that from a Larry Carlton video on true fire calm paid for teaching site and what he meant by motifs was listening around to the band someone will play it cool to lick they might go but there but them you get caught gonna take that but I'm a bit dumb but don't put them but there but too little there but don't know bear but them and making melodies not just going wiggly diddly for no reason the first time I ever tried that I was playing with my friend Mikey who have played in bands with 30 years with he's come up to me I've gone to use that concept and straightaway he's just excuse the French but just looked to me and just got a me what was that just like no Larry Canton taught me something there motifs and it's a very big thing so I'm gonna ask Brett what other things he got from Larry Kelton but I'm also gonna pick his brains about his slide playing because he is a different player when he puts that slide on and he can go from that beautiful legato stuff to just the most beautiful melodies most of the stuff went on Farnum is him playing with a slide and the melodies that he comes out with is absolutely beautiful and we still got people in the chat room if so make yourself known and there's a few comments there that I will read out to Brett I can hear that he's coming back ah yeah mate I just went on a bit of a rant then you mentioned Larry Carlton yeah and on the true fire site a couple of years ago I paid for four year subscription on that and I was just saying to folks that he had a thing called blues motifs and he explained his use of motifs of you stuck for ideas listen to the guys in the band someone will play a little doodle of do you go thank you I'll take that dude didn't do diddily diddily didn't it and how that really opened up a melodic sensor in my playing what is that something that you would use and have you picked up anything else from Larry Carlton that you'd like to share with people Larry so here's the thing I'm Guitar Player magazine once again the first issue I ever got had Jose Feliciano on the cover and which was kind of cool because I actually was a jose feliciano fan my brother had his live album yeah and so that that got heavy rotation along with everything else and but the other the other cool thing in that issue was the guy Barry cut Murray's maybe he played lead guitar for the Atlanta rhythm section great guitar player beautiful player yeah he was a real hot picker too like a great sound like and then the second issue I got had Larry Carlton on the color and and I remember talking to my brother-in-law Wayne why Wayne Mackay is my brother-in-law he's a fantastic drummer and Wayne's influence on me is profound like his album record collection is something I would just pour through and you wouldn't believe some of the gems I found in there and of course he was a he was a massive Crusaders fan he said Larry cut yeah it's Steely Dan Crusaders got you know come on get into him and so it just happened to be in the record store a local record store and here is the very first Larry Carlton album the one with room 335 on it and his that's the album he was talking about and I think he just released strikes twice when he did this interview so I found that one later but yeah this this album I brought it home and put it on and the thing that hit me about Larry was here's a guy with obvious jazz heavy jazz harmonic sense but with a rock tone yeah and the ability to use a rock and blues sound and feel but with just notes I'd never heard coming out not like that not the way he did it and and his phrasing completely captured this is before I'd heard Allen and Scott Henderson and all these other people that would come along later on but I remember TJ and I were hanging out one day this is like 92 when we're working on our first album together and we he said you know I've never heard me were told Larry must have come up again you know he's not never heard any Larry Carlton I said I gotta go we gotta go Tower Records and get a Getti album you know so he walked up to Tower Records on Sunset and bought that album brought it home and put as soon as the you know as soon as the solo came on he just looked at me and man ah he just realized I got your number pal all your stuff comes from and yeah it was it was pretty self-evident that my phrasing was all nicked from Larry just yeah everything from yep so really what I like I said I didn't have the brains to to go through Larry's harmony you have to understand like after those four lessons I took from Jeff here in town I was self-taught that was it I it was putting the needle back and forth on all my lp's and ruining them yeah and I did I studied classical guitar with a great player named Dom Charlton when I was seventeen I did that for about a year and Dom was great he was a younger guy who loved Eric Clapton and and but he was he was great he got me into classical guitar and taught me how to read music and I suck at it now but I got pretty good back then cool and I even managed to figure out a few john williams the guitar player not the composer dipped a few john williams pieces by a year which is I still can't believe I did it Wow yeah I learned Givat entirely by ear took all day and yeah it was hard that sucked at playing it but I did figure it out but but yeah I couldn't analyze harmony because I didn't know what harmony was unfortunately classical guitar doesn't teach you about harmony you're playing some of the best you'll ever hear but you don't know what it is you don't learn chord voicings you don't learn the scales that go with those chords I tried to find a jazz teacher but there was none around I'd I looked and there were no other players in town that could help me because we're all flying blind we didn't know what we were doing and so I it wasn't until I went to the states and met TJ that we were jamming and he said he said you really liked playing in mixolydian a lot and I said I do and he said you don't know what that is and I said and I had no idea and he and he played me to scale and I mean I the Larry Carlton scale was the one where I was trying to figure out how to play on Larry's song yep and I went well it sounds happy so I played a major scale I mean oh no no that okay so don't hit a dich rpr he didn't Dean at all so without realizing and I learned how to target an interval and play modally so so that's how I thought I thought play all the things you would play an E major but play the flat seven okay and that's how my head works when I play music you know yep I don't play like if I play a I don't play modes where I play a major scale and another key to match chord I play I play from the root of the chord and that's the sequence of intervals that sit in that chord so you know if I play the altered scale I don't play melodic minor a half-step up I play half step whole step half step whole step whole whole yeah yeah so on the other approach whereas I'm thinking all that that we're playing in B but there's an A and an E chord in there so really it's an E I'm gonna solo like I'm an e but the root note that we're playing around is B yeah yeah they're all valid as long as you can stay in touch with melody then then it's all good you know but it's just how my brain works I can't help it I keep getting drawn back to the tonic and then I've got to start from there and yeah unfortunately I can't it's kind of one of these and I'm no good at it so yeah and the frost does frustrate me I wish I could do the other way but but yeah Larry was Larry was the guy that really hit me with phrasing and also with the way he just we weave the line wove a line through changes you know like it was I thought god I'd love to be able to do that yeah well it's funny because I mentioned to your good friends with Louis Shelton and he was around one time we were working on a little video thing for him and we Larry Larry spoke volumes about Louis yeah big big good friends and we watched a little video on Larry and he was talking about his approach and how to me it was very mathematical and I remember turning to Louie and go in his is this how you approach things and he just looked at me said ah no totally not he's sort of using his ear and yeah he said no I mean that's too much thinking for me but yeah I wanted to bring up the slide playing for you because as much as we saw in that little clip that I played earlier your chromatic your legato your all that type of playing is just amazing with finer most of those iconic solos were with slide guitar and it seems like almost when you're given I can only use the word restriction there's probably not a restriction but it's just another medium to play with of having a slide on your finger and the melodies you come out with those solos are just beautiful man just how did you get into the whole slide playing was that something that came naturally oh no no and it's locked I don't explode playing comes naturally for anybody I sound like a big cat I say I remember reading a Duane Allman interview and he said that when he first started doing it he said the rest of the band would look at each other and go oh no he's gonna do it again I thought I said well there it is you know if the best in the world one of the best that's ever lived went through that we all go through it so yeah I remember watching countdown back in the day I couldn't have been any more than about 14 I think and Little River Band had just released a song called every day of my life and Rick famosa was playing this beautiful slide I think Rick was a big loud George fan from Little Feat and love Rick famosos playing always tried to figure out what his what his kind of background was I've never met him and I've done a lot of work with Gramm Goble and Grimes said yeah Rick was a whale George fans so I thought I sort of helps me understand how he's where he works how his brain works but then you know Rick's also an amazing Orchestrator so there's an amazing mind laying his hands on that guitar so but I just loved it and I thought oh this is brilliant I got to get me one of those so I went to the local music shop and bought a chrome one and came home and it looked so easy and it was so bad it was just awful and I remember I just sort of went oh I see end of that threw it away you know and much later I was talking to that guy I mentioned before Glen quill Quilly and Willy was is about 10 years older than me and he introduced Smita some of the greatest stuff like Willy introduced me to the Bluesbreakers album and and Allman Brothers and you know so many great things came from talking to Quilly and he said well he said of course you sound like crap he said you could tie it you guys got a tune your guitar to a chord and because I was playing the strap at the whammy bar I had to buy a cheap Les Paul copy and I tuned it to open I think it was open a but no I tuned it to open e that's right open e and and that was much better and then of course I saw this live clip of Joe Walsh this is before I even bought the guitar I saw this live clip of Joe Walsh doin Rocky Mountain Way where he took the regular guitar off and put the slide guitar on and that's when I noticed Joe Joe wore it on his second finger the finger okay and and I just thought okay well I guess that's the finger you wear it on cuz I think Rick was wearing it on his third finger but that's why it ended up on this finger and so I was playing in open e and I really loved that that relationship between the second string and the third string where you have the it's a major third fifth interval you know which is because the the G strings are half-step up kind of thing and eventually I developed enough control muting wise where I could keep the thing quiet and have it just do what I wanted it to do and went back to standard tuning but I really missed that third interval and because I had it on the middle finger I just thought I wonder if it of work so I just angled it like that and I could get the interval again so I went oh happy days so you know if I went so so yeah that's sort of that's sort of the the beginning of the whole slide guitar thing but that I just look at it was just a series of events where I just happened to catch Rory Gallagher on the Old Grey Whistle test one night on the ABC and that was life-changing you know just to see Rory like that it was one of the greatest performances I've ever seen and and I was lucky I was lucky enough to grab a cassette because I could record the ABC through my FM radio in my under my cassette deck and managed to get a large bulk of the show and yeah I just lived and breathed that for decades I mean I just love Rory I just did a on my youtube channel I just did a version of walk on hot coals as a sort of a tribute to Rory sir yeah so you said this one and angling it somewhat to get different oh yeah yeah it's still something I got to work on you know it's like it's a bit it's still a bit touch-and-go you know it's not an exact science but looks like playing to me is like singing like if you don't do it your pitch goes you know like I just the better I the more I more slide I play the better my pitch gets so that's why you hear the great slide players and you know there's never even a question you Sonny Landreth or Derek Trucks or or David Lindley or anyone you know you name what and there's never even an issue there's that it's just it's just beautiful and perfect you know and with me it's like it's a bit dodgy you know so well you said with Derek Trucks that's one slide player that I got man you sound like a a woman singing yeah yeah beautiful thing to hear him play you know I jam with Derek when he was 15 really yeah TJ and I had a band a fusion band back in 95 for 95 I think and we were trying to get a spot at the NAMM show where we could play with our band and we were endorsing Hughes & Kettner at the time and we asked them if they had anything going on and they said well we don't but they said washburn have got a big show and they said we do know they must have known people there and they said with they need a band to back this young guy named Derek Trucks would you guys do it and we said yeah we'd love to you know and they said yeah you could play a couple of your tunes and then Derek could get up and play with you and and we I knew straight away I thought Derek Trucks I said I wonder if he's in relation to butch trucks from the Allman Brothers cuz it's an unusual name and and I found out that that was his uncle butch was his uncle and oh wee TJ and I met Derek in the afternoon with his father and he was only 15 and and his dad was just great Derek was very quiet he just sort of pretty much said hello and that was it you know and his dad was a great guy we're having a big chat so yeah Derek's he's off into Miles Davis and Jon Kyl trying all sorts of stuff it's incredible and I was like wow this is incredible and so we you know we played a couple of our tunes at the Washburn show and then Derek caught up with us and we just played a blues we didn't know what else to do and I don't think Derek cared so we just played a blues and I just remember looking at him going man he's a great slide player he'll be he'll be great you know but back then he was very much in the Duane Allman mould of just that's what he sounded like he sounded like a young Duane you know and then 10 years later I was 2004 I was at in America doing some stuff again and I went into MI to do some just some guest teaching you know a bit of open counselling and I noticed on the wall there was a sign saying tonight the derek trucks band and I went oh well you know this would be great here the young fella again see what he's been doing you know so I go down there and I remember sitting there and just going this is what it must have been like to walk into a club and hear Jimi Hendrix for the first time it was just it was religious it was biblical it was unbelievable I thought it was and it wasn't even like I mean if Derrick had had just stood there and played it would have been like that but then to hear him with that band and the way they just breathed with each other it was it was otherworldly so yeah forever seemed ever since then I've been just a yeah just a Derek Trucks disciple right before we started I told you that I'm having issues with my interface that decides to go up and down without me touching anything you did see me change the battery in my camera just before but folks thank you for letting me know that my mic drop does that any better and a slight delay before you can actually let me know but I'm Sam fine it sounds fun to you yep yeah but this is the last time I'm going straight down to the shop and getting a new interface there's nothing in the stores at the moment because of the current situation which has been very frustrating that's why I can't get a battery adapter for my camera but until anybody lets me know any differently or hope I'm not distorting now because that would really piss me off but just you talking about Derek being so good at a young age it's like Joe Bonamassa like I knew of him when he was 14 years old a lot of people if you've got it you know it at that young age now it's this - what he can be told okay that'd be right okay how does that link oh I'm just going to go back a bit but Bob are really annoying really annoying hopefully that's okay keep letting me know guys as I'm talking because it's been a bane of my existence lately as a little interface here so yeah just say something like Joe Bonamassa absolutely kicking ass at a young age did when you were young and you were saying about you know learning all the deep purple stuff do you think you would if you listened back now you pick that it's you that's it's the the same style maybe just well I was dreadful at a young age I mean yeah and there's a reason for that it's it's just the lack of information you know I remember picking up Juke Magazine I don't know if you remember that that were to trade papers around when I was young Juke and RAM and they were they were the just your standard Australian rock trade papers and I told you what was going on out there in the world and I picked up a copy of Juke magazine and I was 14 and they were talking about the band feather which had a very young Stewart Fraser and a 16 16 years old and there's a pitch swanee John Swan was a singer I think Stewart's brother Warwick played drums I think yeah and I remember they I eventually caught them on countdown doing a song called girl trouble and I was just going oh my god if this what if this is what your average 16 year old sounds like I'm dead in the water you know Stuart had this excitement to his notes that I just couldn't figure out I was like why don't why don't my notes sound like that what is he doing I couldn't see so then I'm watching countdown once again now we're doing something like ac/dc came on they were doing something like high voltage I think and it's right at the very end of the song and it was probably a mime I don't even know but it was right at the very end of the song Angus is hamming it up and he hits this low note on the like a G on the low E string and shoves the guitar right in the camera and I could see his left hand wobbling the string like that yep and I mean you've got a wobble the string mate you've got a wobble the string that's vibrato I didn't never know what vibrato was no one told me no one taught me about ferrata they weren't included in the four lessons I had you know I was wondering why when I just hit a note or even bent up to it it didn't sound exciting that's what Stewart was doing he was he had vibrato yep good vibrato and I went and that was life-changing I mean this is this just shows that the universe we're living in now with everything at our fingertips on YouTube I mean you can learn what would have taken me five years to learn someone can learn in literally five minutes on YouTube vibrato was a mystery I remember the day I held a note and then bent the lower note up a whole-step in you - unison with it you heard the two of them together and went oh my god that's how you do that you know the ability to bend a string and into a pull-off like Brian May was doing a lot of it it took me months to figure it out and then another six months to perfect it it you know these are just dumb things that you'll learn and like I never got those lessons like when Jeff was teaching me those first guitar lessons he was just showing me how to navigate a fretboard like how to actually hold a pick and play a guitar like we never got any further than that but now it's all on YouTube you want to learn how to do some of the most complex in the world there is close-up footage and tab and notation absolutely either by the artists themselves or by someone who knows what they're doing I mean you want to know what those allan holdsworth chords are with the harmonizer settings I can find a clip that'll show me how to do it you know it's like it's a different this is why we've got such great young players because they carve decades off the learning process whereas back then for us it was like needle lp ruining scratching unplayable dead and then our it's just a shot that there's going to be some sort of music on one of those two channels I can get here in the bush you know and I might get it and it was usually countdown I thought I might get to see something early the first time van Halen we're on countdown doing you really got me I'm sitting there like this waiting for every horrible New Wave rotten disco soul and then all of a sudden out of nowhere this guy's standing there playing this Explorer and I'm going what's this and then by the time it gets to the soul and I've caught this glimpse of something something happened you know but involved this and then it was gone and I went they repeat this show next Saturday so I had to wait till next Saturday and I'm sitting there with my cassette player and I recorded it couldn't even know what the band was called I didn't even catch their name and so I've recorded it and I've looked at it and then I've gone into town and bought the album brought it home and now I've got eruption to listen to and I've just had to sit there and go how would he do it how would you do that it had something to do with this hand and I'd nodded it out you know whereas yeah it's like the the age we live in now you want to learn anything just go look it up I think the problem with it being so accessible now though is that back then when we were trying to work stuff out ourselves we weren't getting it exactly the way they're doing it we're coming up with your own things whereas now everyone's like oh no no he uses his finger in the anchors this or whatever well but what's you so and you and you has got to be contained within two bars it can't be like oh I've got this you know I've got this technique where I play with my nose you know like I'm on my elbow or it's not about that because that'll that get you through one thing you know it's got to be in that in the touch in the way you touch the instrument and the way you choose the sound that expresses you like like I'm so lucky that people have told me they can hear me within ten notes five notes and that's so hard to come up with that identifiable things it's everything else doesn't matter it doesn't matter how many chops you've got you it doesn't matter how fast you can play in the grand scheme of things without that you just you know you just you just a you're a walking gimmick you know and I'm sorry that is the hard truth of it and the sad thing is I believe it's in everybody I've sat in a room and mi with ten guys in a room all jamming and I've said to him I remember saying to them all one day at the end of our little session I said you know I could pick every single one of you guys in a blindfold test just based on your vibrato just based on how you play into a note now yep those new answers are in all of us do you know that you don't have to play the exotic scales or anything you've got it just let it happen well you said it before with with Angus young man he's got that it's like he's nervous yes so quick but one oh you know it's him you know it's Angus my first guitar heroes Hank Marvin was the first thing that I started learning to play but then Mark Knopfler the whole brothers-in-arms ero Israel at the time when I saw you on TV with doing the whispering Jack concerts well I mean I got it Sultan's a swing I got it then me please one note and I just could that's Mark Knopfler man I interviewed Rick Brewster the other day and I kid you not about an hour later I went as a JB hi-fi I walked in and there was a solo playing on the stereo and I didn't know the song and I went there copy Rick Brewster that sense it's just like Rick Brewster and the vocals came in stocke Neeson went and it happened to be a best-of well I made my my cousin's band well back in the back last year when they used to be gigs you know they just claimed one of the local pubs and they're really good heavy rock band and they play a lot of a angels tunes and sometimes I'll fill in for it and yeah one of my greatest pleasures is whenever they play an Angels tune they get to play one of Rick's solos because they're like they're just majestic compositions all and all them are all in themselves absolutely just so beautifully written yep did you know but you just do the song a disservice they're not polite you know I be I consider it sacrilege to improvise something why would you you know so yeah I did say that's a Rick that there's no way that I could play no secrets for instance and not play that solo by applying something and not playing George Harrison so exactly exactly yeah yep and he was saying that that comes from singing singing yeah what he wanted to hear and running with that rather than trying to show off chops which yeah there are guys who can connect the dots you can have beautiful the right choral tones and everything and I don't mind it when there's a bit of liquid in between or you know the string lines in the 70s on TV shows was it classic for it where you had to get certain think that's Grubbs name by Barry White yes look at my look I love chops obviously you know yeah one of the biggest abuses of them in the past anyway and much to my detriment detriment because once you establish establish yourself as a shredder there's no going back no amount of me posting clips of slide playing is ever going to undermine the fact that people think I'm just a shredder and there's nothing I can do about that and but and I love technique but it's just that the technique has to be connected by identity you know envy is not in a great guitar player because of his chops because his personality is in there Steve bye it's his personality is in that technique you know what I mean it's like it's like it can't just be a succession of notes beautifully played with precision which is what shred is you know that's what it is but it's when you combine that with an incredible personality paul gilbert you know he's gotten so good as he's got Noda like in his younger days yeah was also a three note per string but he where he's taking it now and kind of walking away from that a bit but they a lot of slide playing a lot of slide just really nice bluesy kinds of things but then knowing that he's got that to fall back on to that and any jaw and anytime he does rip your head off I mean I don't mean to sort of say it in any way though the chops are bad that's ridiculous you know the more technique he got the better man I love watching these guys play and have but they've also got personalities I'm saying you better and that's just as simple as sitting back and letting it come out you know like you got it in you just let it happen Phil buckle was the guy when people used to come up to me in the pubs when we were just in our pub and they'd walk up to me because no one had ever heard the people I was listening to not even no one even heard Eddie Van Halen back then this is before jump and before beat it you know and they definitely never heard of Allan Holdsworth and so they were walking up to me and they'd ever seen anyone do this and they'd never heard anyone play the legato stuff like what I was trying to copy from Allan no you're gross guitar players I've ever seen I've never seen anybody do that and I'd say well I copied these two guys eddie van halen and allan holdsworth you ever heard of them like oh no no I said well here I'll write their names down so I grabbed a coaster and I dried it on the give it to him they sort of you know look at me and wander off and and I remember I was down at sound works in Ringwood near Melbourne Paul gale was fixing my gear and while I was while he was fixing it sometimes I'd wander down the street - helmets music which was just down the store down the street with a store down the street and I'd go in there and just play guitars and muck about and I remember I went down this back room they had with a sand house sign up no stairway to heaven no smoke on the water and I was like bloody hell Oh tough room you know so I plugged into this amp and got a guitar and had it really low you could barely hear the guitar above someone talking and I'm just standing there noodling about as I do and this head comes around the corner and unbeknownst to me it was Phil buck or Wow and I'd been in the store like a week earlier same deal army I wasn't playing and Phil was demonstrating a guitar to somebody and he was doing the the harmonics technique that I Tommy Emmanuelle's famous Lenny Breau you know that sort of style of thing and I remember just going who's this guy you know I didn't even know who he was and this guy's head comes around the corner and I went oh my god am i playing - Adam I playing too loud and he said no no you're fine he said what are you doing and I said and I said what do you mean he said play and I did my stick you know he said wow that's really interesting you know and and I said oh I copy these two guys I started doing the spiel I was looking for a beer coaster to write their names I know and Phil said I know who those two guys are he said what are you you're doing something else you got something else going on here and that was the first time anyone had ever said that to me what Phil it was the first time I never met a guitar player I didn't have still didn't even know the magnitude of the guitar player I just met him Phil Michael yeah genius absolutely but he he was the first was first time anyone had said I know who Eddie Van Halen and Allan Holdsworth I know they're playing you've got something else and I walked out of there like going I've got something else no there's something of me in there that stuff that I used to listen to when I try to copy Eddie and I try to copy Alan and I this other thing would come out and I just sit there and go I'm useless I can't do this I'm getting it wrong it's like well actually you're getting it right you know you you're being yourself you you know the fact that you can't copy them as a blessing don't try to copy absolutely be influenced by them get it wrong and keep the wrong and make it you know and that's what that's what we should do totally now you mentioned Phil buckle and when you did have a bit of a hiatus from the John Farnham ban you were you were replaced with two guys being Phil buckle and Jack Jones also known as yeah when Thomas now yeah those guys when they were playing your solos I I don't recall them ever trying to do it with the slide they would sort of just play on our field does place lie I know jack well I know jack is Irwin now but I knew him is Jack back they'd in fact I introduced Jack to John I met Jack I was before he'd met John yep Mike and it was just you know I remember we hung out for a while and I just remember sitting there going I should quit playing guitar right now and manage this guy because you know just I thought well you know sign him up someone it happened anyway but yeah I know I know ill and doesn't play slide he probably can I'm sure he can let's face it if it's got strings on and Erland can kill it but but but it's just probably not his thing you know it doesn't have a connection to it I just play slide in such a weird way like I just that's me isn't it you know like everything's just not quite there is it like I mean people would look at me they'd look at the hybrid picking thing and go ah so you can play all that country and western stuff you know it's like no can't no Danny Gatton can't do any of that you know Scotty Scotty Anderson that can't do any of that I just do my thing you know so it's like the slide playing they'd be like ah so you could you know I could give you a dobro and you could play like some some Delta blues and no can't do any of that and he brought any you know Robert Johnson no no no that Duane Allman not useless yep yep just doing my thing are you any good at playing solo pieces I know if I someone gives me a guitar it says play me something I'm like perhaps you wanna give me some music to play over because I don't know many no I grew up I grew up in a band grew up in a band that's how I how to play was with a guitar bass drums singer I people give me a guitar to this day and say entertain us and I'm going on there what do you want to he'll play some scales for you if you like it no I'm not a solo performer and it's looking if I you know I could sit and play a couple of acoustic things just not very well but I don't want to be I have no desire to be that guy you know I don't want to be I like being in bands and the thing is the bigger the band the better if it's if it's if they someone puts me in a band and says your job is to set up the back here and play a little rhythm bits all night I'm like love it I'm there you know it's not like let me down the front you guys I've got to show everybody how amazing I am you know it's like I hate being down the front I'm not that guy I like being in the middle of something big I would have been a really good second violinist ill son sure sure any love being out of a big picture it's funny you should say that because I had the weirdest day the other day where I mentioned I went into JB hi-fi and they're playing the angels and all that day it seemed everybody that I had been interviewing over the last few weeks a couple of months their music was just following me everywhere and I went to a friend's place I just got my new laptop and just like oh you've got yours I got my own we can hang out and keep working on stuff and she had Foxtel going one of the music channels and two strong hearts came on and there's you or a filmed on the Gold Coast's which is where I'm from and at the fourth the Miami I said boo yeah which is now gone that's been knocked down gone that was an that was been there since I was a little kid I always remember it being there but there's now a residential high Royce there which is called funnily enough Miami ice kept the name yeah but what got me was in that you were standing behind the drummer Angus you weren't down the front go hey I'm yeah brick I said yeah check me out down the front note it's like you were saying you well everyone else is sort of not vying for the camera but you were almost showing away from it quite content to hang behind Angus I know look I will do it if it's required because a lot of times it is required it's like you know you've got it you've got to go down the front and do this and and then I've done my own gigs where I you know it's been me fronting the show sort of thing you know I may say that and look it's fun and everything I'll do it my way I'm just bit goofy and and how you're going you know but but yeah I I have no desire to do it if I can do it and and it's effective then that's fine and I'm happy to do it and I will enjoy it but it's not a driving ambition like okay it's not like I have to be I have to get all the solos and I have to do this all right I actually did a tool with Paul Stanley many years ago back in 2008 yeah well Paul bercovich the keyboard player from the Nelson ban a bit of a long story but hey we've got time yep it's you know Paul was on this show called rock star remember INXS did a show where they were looking for a lead singer and though they had this incredible house band with my friend Raphael more air Morel was playing guitar I met roughly old when I was at Mi and Paul was the MD at a house band and they were just ballistically good and they did a second one with Gilby Clarke and Jason Newsted and someone else I can't remember and and Oh Tommy Lee that's right how could I forget and Paul Stanley was watching this show and he said I didn't care about who they were looking for I just wanted the house band you know he grabbed the band and used him to record an album and they had a fantastic rhythm guitar player whose name I can't remember and I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember his name because he was a gun player and an incredible singer and he couldn't do it this Australian leg of the tour because he had to do something else and Paul asked me if I'd do it and I was Paul Stanley I gotta say is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet he's just beautiful guys right real and lovely guy yeah just a just an absolute legend just wonderful fella and prior to this when I was learning the material I was in England doing some guitar clinics and I did one in i1 where I met up with Paul Cornford and James cullin father and son of Cornford amps you know and we went into London that night and I said is there any chance I knew they knew Guthrie of course because Guthrie was using the cord for namsan I said can we hook up with Guthrie and they said yeah he's in town so it was great I got to meet Guthrum nice and I was brilliant we went out and had a curry and got hammered it was just fantastic and and I remember Guthrie said so what are you doing you know and what's going on I said I'm gonna do a tool with Paul Stanley of KISS I said yeah I'm playing rhythm guitar and Guthrie said you're playing rhythm guitar did someone miss a meeting just a gem and I'd said none are Rafael Maria's playing lead guitar it's in good hands trust me I was I was so happy to just stand there and play power chords all night oh it's so much fun loved it I couldn't I said this is my new career I could do this all night you know and Rafael just killed it just went out the front and laid waste of the joint and I just really enjoyed that like just being in a band fulfilling a role and enjoying being there I mean you know it's not about the solo it's just for me it's even though I'm known for just being the solo guy you know I love working with other guitar players and I got to I was so lucky I got to work with Stuart Fraser for 25 years you know and it was like a master class in how to be a musician you know yeah she was a very big influence on me when I first started working out songs by ear those noise works solos were easy that was the kind of thing I could work out like who didn't have all the the fast moving but I could go I could see those little shape cities - man Darren and he could do it he just he just didn't when he did it was like a shock really and oh yeah yes Stuart was there was sides to his playing that a lot of well you know he's one of the greatest acoustic players I've ever seen he was very capable of doing all the bun chick stuff Chet Atkins Tommy Emmanuel yep I mean he would hear some Doyle dykes tune in some strange alternate tuning and within an hour he'd figured it out and he could play it was just one of the most naturally amazing musicians I've ever been in a room with Wow Wow cool I'm unbelievable yeah like I was a huge noise works fan long before I met him yep and yeah I just felt so incredibly blessed that I've got to become such good friends with him damp c-word mate it's exact yeah too much of it and actually pretty close to home at the moment as well but I'll move on from that you mentioned your hybrid picking and I saw that on the video the thought of you be playing with it with a pick but then when you're going to skip strings your finger will just pop out and grab that well it's how I sweet pick yeah the turning point was well Phil once again you know I was gonna say Phil I saw him built he'll worked at sound works for a while when I used to go there and get my gear fix and sound works had a sort of a retail section for a while in the late 80s and so I walked in there one day with my gear to get repaired and Phil had a video on and was Vinnie Moore and he was doing his first instructional thing and he did this this thing and I went oh my god what was that and Phil said that's called a sweep arpeggio I said I've never seen anything like that before that is unbelievable and Phil said well maybe you should take this home and listen and leave a look at it and he gave me Frank and Bailey's first instructional video yep so I went home and just watch that and when my god well that's yeah let's face it Frankle Frankle just you know wipe the smile off your face in nothing flat I was just I was just gobsmacked at what I was seeing and hearing and then much to my shock I real cuz I've never seen anyone arrange notes the way Frank did across strings I all my thinking was kind of this way like along the fretboard because I didn't have any ultimate pickin facility and still don't really on track but so I just had to mainly if I was going to do Anna Peggy oh I'd skip strings you know you get the intervals that way and I'd never seen anyone arranged the notes like Frank did because unlike the metal guys Frank was doing very small sweeps but between two three four strings which I thought it's much harder to do than just rake across all six you know and he was also using scale lines like I mean using that technique to play scales it was amazing amazing and it was then anything like it then I realized that I had a certain amount of facility within the fingers the pick and the other three fingers where I could incorporate the concept I never took any of Frank's ideas thank God because it's so identifiable you know once you go down that road you just become a poor imitation of the master sure Franklin but luckily I could really get a lot of Frank's concepts will come up with my own ideas and these just stuff just started pouring out of me which was really good timing because I didn't want to keep doing any more tapping because I just felt line ever really came up with much original anyway and I just met TJ and I thought I'm gonna stand him with one finger poking around like well I'm standing next to this guy and and then it was lucky because after about a few months of working on that particular angle I did an album I was in the States by now and I did an album called satirical fun where I got to play with Frank and Shawn Lane I had another yeah so I got to meet I got to meet Frank I was at the studio this beautiful studio out in Costa Mesa I think was called he was called fast forward I think it's where Allan Holdsworth recorded a bit of the metal fatigue album okay and used a beautiful 50 watt marshall there that was their in-house amp oh I'd love to have that amp now I tell you it was a good one the chairs I was finishing up Frank was coming in and I got to have a chat to him was first time I'd ever met him and we're still great friends to this day he's just a legend no God well I gotta say my approach to modes came from being a fourteen year old kid in 88 and seeing him doing your Ibanez clinic dance yeah his approach to it where he played something he played the chords same three chords just in different sequence and landing on a different one and saying what key is this and people would go I that's in G well that's in D that's an A and he said ah but there are the same chords and then so yeah that's more the way I think about things but he said after he'd done some playing any questions and everybody went anyway any questions not to do with the way I'm picking cuz I'll come back to everywhere yeah okay so you all want to say that it was the first time I'd ever seen anybody sweet pick and it was mind blowing man there was totally mind blowing I actually actually only recently message Frank with this story and that's when I used to used to travel a fair bit with Bobby Rock from the Nelson band and we do drum clinic tools with with their friend Kyle Carter on bass and and we were way over on the east coast of the States and we'd finished doing a gig and these I was having a chat with these guys and they said you know wasn't that long ago we came to this very club and was to see the Chick Corea electric band no was to see yeah that's right it was to see the electric fan they were the headline they said the opening act was Allan Holdsworth when we've stood there and watched Allen and his trio and we both looked at each other and went well I feel sorry for whoever the guitar player is it's gonna have to follow this and Frank walked out and just laid waste to the joint and I thought to myself only Frank could follow Allen like only Frank because number one the musical knowledge done the technical prowess done but the originality of concept like like you just can't deny that Frank has just got one of the most original approaches that you could possibly come up with nobody sounds like that absolutely and nobody plays like that no wonder Allen loved him so much because it's just you know it's just the same thing I bet Allen would have thought God look at that I never would have thought about like I mean something completely original and yeah that's the that's that's yeah yeah Frank are just out of nowhere he had a camera just you know yep Hank said he had that he had that choice of either leave to go to a uni in some sort of Conservatorium in Sydney or I could go to GI T and he chose GI T and the rest is history as they say nice nice I actually did send it a message to him through his website asking if you'd like to come on I haven't heard back yet be nice so far yeah that'd be great I'm just going to quote about teacher yeah absolutely I'm just asking folks that are still listening is if the audio still okay as I said I have had some issues with my interface going from loud to quiet etc along the way I'm gonna keep talking in the meantime but I wanted to ask you Bret when I spoke to Thomas McLaughlin a couple nights ago he had he walked away for 20 years from the guitar by the time he got to about 14 or something he he got caught in that whole rabbit hole of production and samplers and wanting to make drum and bass music and all this kind of stuff which I went down that road as well in the mid 90s but he said he didn't play for 20 20 years it's only a couple years ago that he got back into it but being mentored by Steve Vai he said that Steve would have six months away from the instrument himself and and come back to it and yeah I might have to have a couple of weeks of woodshedding did to get the chops back have you ever had any time away from the instrument to be honest no but on but I'm at the same time no I've never had a I've never not played for six months okay nothing nothing like that yeah I mean I've never not played for a week but at the same time I'm not a religious two hours four hours a day guy like right now I'm not practicing a lot you know but I when I picked the guitar up now it's I'm very very specific on on what I'm thinking about and why I'm even grabbing the thing you know I'm it's that end of all thing like a lot of times when I pick it up I try to challenge myself to especially with chords to hear chord movement like start on one note and then build a chord from that note and then from the next note build another chord from that note so small triads sort of things like that this sounds a lot more technical that it is believe me I'm I'm no Ted green but I mean I'm trying too far from it I'm afraid but I'm trying to come up with an approach that I relate to personally I've always had a hell of a time with cords that's one of those things I wanted to really get into with Stuart Fraser because Stuart beautiful cord play like an just had facility with it he would play chords a certain way and go what wouldn't I think of that you know and he just had a way of knowing the guitar in a way that I didn't I wanted to really work on that but unfortunately he got sick and we never had the chance to get into it and and I thought well maybe I should I'm gonna try and take my approach to single line playing and trying to approach chords that way and and so it's not like I'm studying it every day or for a long period of time but it's like when I do pick the guitar up even if it's for a limit limited amount of time it's it's on something that's very important that I get closer to you know that's why I think yeah just standing here and if I practice a lot I get technique everybody does that's what technique is technique is time it's woodshed time it's ours yeah it's running it's endurance is running you know and I can always relate a stir you know be there Jim guy years ago and I still exercise but I used to be pretty hardcore into it back in the powerlifting days and I was gonna ask you about that actually well I mean I was just I've never played any sports and that was the sport I got into it my friends we got into powerlifting yep it was fun but hurt but it was fun but but you can relate it back to physical exercise like it's time spent effort expended rewards earned that's what chops are you just shove yourself in a room and you play and you will get better technically yeah but unless you're really side by side working on something conceptual they don't grow you'll you'll get better at playing the same thing over and over again but in the end I just end up all dressed up with nowhere to go if you know what I mean you know it's like it's just and like I said that I see young as players young enough to be my grandchildren that are technically so far beyond what I'd ever be I think there's got to be something else for me you know can I do something else like the slide playing just to me is where I feel like I've got the most originality this Rory Gallagher thing I just did it's quite funny you know it's like I was I was working on a bit of thumping stuff because I've never played some pick guitar before and I was fascinated with how the blues players do that whole something and I was listening to this song walk on hot coals that we used to play in our pub and Rory's song and and I thought man you could actually you could do that like that like a sort of a Robert Johnson e-type thing so I set up a mic and I just did a version of it where I sang in sang the song and played the tune like that style and luckily I did it to a click track and then later on I played bass and some drums and and I had to put a solo to it and I remember I had a crack at oh just a regular solo no way well that's rubbish right there for a start you know that's just completely inappropriate then I thought maybe I can copy Rory and do like a Rory inspired solo and that was lame beyond oh right yeah it just wasn't working I was thinking I can't play a solo in this song you know and I remember standing there gone this solo needs a harmonica solo cuz Rory was a gun harmonica was he really ah gotcha one of the best in the world I mean he's good sax player to genius and one of the greatest singers ever you know like no one acknowledges how beautiful that man's voice was yeah and and I went Rory would just do a kill a harp solo I don't I'll play the harp solo on the guitar so I play the guitar Monica solo so so yeah it's a I loved how all it took was that mental shift to go what's the direction what are we doing here you know you could do any number of things that would have been fine but that was that was the shift and I channeled my friend Steve Williams from the Farnum ban and what would Steve play you know and just try to choose harmonica based intervals the way harp players think and the same and and I was just really happy with how it turned out you know it it's a big part of of that there's the thing it's not about I have got I've got technique I can play therefore I shall play yeah yeah John you gonna play where are you gonna frame it you know I miss Abby used to talk about that like the composer has to frame things you know we use a conceptual frame to put around something he says so an artist puts a frame around the thing the painting otherwise it's what is that on the wall yes and composer has to put a frame around their composition otherwise it's just noise yeah and yeah I had to put a frame around this thing and go well it's a solo but what's it gonna be how does it work in this song I was really happy when I did it because I thought God that's that's the big part of it right there it's not even the fact that I was happy that I was able to play something it's a fact that I even came up with an idea so yeah the fact I even the fact that I could just hear that it should have been a harmonica solo and if it wasn't kovaydin we're all locked down I could have just rang up Steve and said you want to come up for a day and play up solo for me can I come to you soon speaking of heart plays harmonica plays Stevie Wonder man I could be walking through a shopping mall here harmonica solo on something and I'll just go I don't know this song but I know that Stevie Wonder playing the heart the heart because he chromatic heart predict the button on the side Steve Steve Williams we're in a hotel room one night and he said check this out and he played Stevie Wonder's instrumental harmonica version of Alfie I said oh no no no you know that song and Stevie he does this sort of tonguing thing where he gets staccato notes like she did a few of those in this in this solo and the Rory thing and oh my god there's Stevie's harp thing yeah and Steve said check this out you know he said listen to this you said this whole websites devoted to how the hell he does this no he said now you're waiting for the kicker and I said what's the kicker and he said he was 15 when he did it well he's like 15 or 16 I think you know yep and you know I think he was about about that age or not much older when he wrote my yuria more like I mean Jesus you know like better you know that there's there's your humility right there I mean absolutely what do you what do you say to that you know I mean you think back to all these classic compositions by by these people from way back when they were kids totally my voice is getting Scratchy I need a glass of water yeah bad your funeral grab one that's that's fine by me because we are God we haven't even touched on gear yet I was gonna get to that but before I moved on to gear I wanted to ask you about now everyone wears in-ear monitors and the like now but back in those days in the 70s 80s nobody really thought about it but hearing protection and a lot of the greats now a boned deaf yeah did you wear earplugs protection do you have issues with tinnitus now no look I'm pretty lucky I mean it is there if it's a quiet night especially here in the country where we have no real traffic noise at night you know if I lay there and I focus on it I can find it but it's got to be that it's not like it's not anything that's damaging or a problem and and I guess I'm kind of lucky I'm one of the few guitar players in the world that people ask to turn up right I've never I've never been a horrendously loud player and it's bits that need to fit in to the sound of the band like I don't want to be the loudest guy on stage I want to be in I want to be in it you know look if you listen to my albums they're sort of wall of sound --is-- like this that there are sort of collage of sounds and I love that like I love that I don't know say all kestrel that's that's you know caching that's right and checks my body can't cash you know that but I love that concept of like a whole lot of sounds blending in together you know and and so yeah I've never been a really loud player but I've been in some pretty loud environments and so if I'm going to play with my friends at the local pub the earplugs are going in I'm telling that I ain't going deaf for that yeah and there's been a couple of occasions where I've walked away and gone man that hurt that just hurt yeah when I was doing the Nelson gig they had massive side fills and I was staged well I was on facing the crowd my right ear was right next to that right side filling we get if they were mic spikes happening this guy got it first this one yet cell phones always on this year so I think Jennifer batten I got to meet Jennifer many years ago and she said from touring with Jeff Beck the left ear got it my said so you know depending on where we stand next to each other we're either perfectly hearing all the death yeah yeah so I did have a chat with Jennifer a couple weeks ago folks if you're stumbling on this and you're thinking what's where is these interviews I've got a whole playlist of these on my channel chit chats with KitKat's so please like subscribe all that kind of thing I hate asking for that but you don't ya gotta do it so Jennifer we had a great conversation about her hearing and she said just that yeah the wall of Marshalls with Michael Jackson as well and that when she got her hearing tested it was just this steep fall off at a really low tune about 2k Wow yeah so that is big issue I've had ringing in my ears since I was a teenager because start playing quite young in the bands and everything but that whole been not too loud on stage it really depends on who you're playing with the gear that you're using how directional your boxes are I've always liked to play in stereo not because of I need you know have two boxes I'm loud it's no so I don't have to be as loud I can angle them a bit and I got more spray exactly yeah but I do realize there's a you might be aware of a show called absolutely the 80s that gets around Australia which is all the guys from the 80s it's run by Scott Caan from kids in the kitchen but you've got Oh Brian Mannix all those guys so I'm the Queensland guitar player for that and depending on who's singing at the time I'm drastically different on stage in terms of volume Scott generally starts it off and he likes it down low just sitting in the mix then you'll get Brian Mac's uncanny x-men walk out and the first thing he does is just look at you guys there it is yep and then it's got to come back here and then Sean Kelly's pretty easy whatever's going he's just a very cruzi mellow guy but then downright I just can't get enough from boom kashyapa he's just like yeah and he'll stand right next to my rig and just like more MORE and I'm like yeah dude that's I'm past six and on a tube amp on this on my Freedman it's not getting louder it's just getting more compressed so it really depends on who you're playing with huh yeah yeah a lot of John Stephens loves it loud yeah Jimmy Barnes louder the better you know it's like well John's John farnum's been using in is exclusively now for since about 96 really so it's really irrelevant to John you know we we don't use in ears on the the singers are all on your knees but on the the live gigs we've been doing a lot of red hot summers and day on the green stuff so a lot of times we rock up to these shows and we haven't even seen the stage until we walk on there's no not even a line check right and we talked about this quite a few years ago and just said it's safer if we just use wedges just regular monitors because there'll be too many people yelling at poor old Adam our sound guy when we walk up there it's usually set and forget once Adams got it dialed in it stays the same and and and it's it's loud but it's a good loud you know it's not my ears aren't ringing by the end of the gig I just feel fulfilled yeah right so Bret as I said we haven't really talked about gear has there been any mainstays for you that you've used throughout the career or has it been a constant evolution well it's yeah it's been an evolution the after I had that horrible Jade amp that I talked about and I finally started to work I got I got a got a Marshall 1970 super lead hundred water and I got it from a shop in Frankston and then I was lucky enough to get the matching slant cab for it and I remember the first time I got it I realized straightaway all this is gonna be way too loud you know to use and now I read about guitar player I read read about this thing called the Altair power attenuator and this came out way before power suits before Tom Schatz did that whole thing yep no I ordered it from the states and it turned up and it was everything I dreamed of it was perfect it was just the attenuator you put in between the speaker in the head and at that stage I was using the first channel of the Marshall channel one which was sort of normally the bright channel but just sounded great with the strat you know and then of course like an idiot I was using a cheap guitar cable as a speaker cable and blew the ampere so melted the transformer completely so I got that fixed and then the first channel sounded like crap and the second channel sounded good so I started using that then I got a Dodd preamp was one of the ones didn't have the not even a switch just a knob so it was just like a clean boost and it just hit the front of the amp really hard and gave you that extra overdrive and these things sell for like 500 bucks us on reverb now so they're quite the collector's item yep and and it was just it's it was I still listen to old cassettes and if you can get past the horrible playing the curse at the guitar sound is to die for it's just the most beautiful focused that's your sound that's your get that's your blues rock metal it'll do all that you know but it's not metal in the sense that it's fuzzy and high nd it's just sweet it's a best guitar sound I've ever had and like an idiot I sold that amp and it went round and round and round in circles for a while I sold it after I went to America and needed money I just figured out an old amp who cares you know and luckily it ended up in the hands of a fantastic guitar player producer in Melbourne named Dave Carr and dave was kind enough to leave it at a studio a few years back so I could play through it again and he's changed a lot so it's more his aunt now than it ever was mine he's owned it for longer than I ever did and I did ask Dave I said would you sell it back to me Dave and he said are y'all sell at the pay for my own funeral and I thought I'll take that as a no thank is though yeah I was really glad it ended up in the hands of someone talented talented enough to get the joy out and who also recognizes the value they don't ever sell it against so then I sort of am popped for a long time and in America use a lot of hughes & kettner preamps which were good gear but and then I was struggling with this new hughes & kettner triac try amp combo huh I just could not pull a ton out of it and it was a tjz apartment I said to him this is am i nuts or I just can't get a sound out of this thing he said there's only one way to find out if it's any good or not and he said that's compare it to something else you so let's go down the road to making music they've got a Bodnar's down there I said what's a Bogner you said you'll find out and he said we went down there and just dragging the amp down there and we plugged into a Bogner ecstasy into one of their matching 412 cabs and I went my god I've been under a rock for this long yeah I didn't even know that amps like this existed the clean channel on your Sam was unbelievable and of course the blue channel on overdrive was like I'm in heaven you know so bought a Bogner now I'll give you a voice a break there because there is a comment relating to that that I've just read ok if you wanna have a sip of water from flash Grover it says hey y'all I tried Brett's bog de 100 B when it arrived in Oz killer amp yeah yeah beautiful lamps I'd love to get another one but the bank account can't support it I'm afraid I had to sell that amp we needed a septic tank so I'm afraid the amp had to go so no you know when you build a house everything everything must go so someone's got a beautiful bog and that they got at a bargain price and if you're out there watching this I hate you and I'm coming for you ok you know you got a kill a deal on that thing and I'll you know if you're suffering due to this lockdown let me know I'll buy it back from you man - never saw that thing that well you know like they're always making them that's why I looked at it like now you can always buy another amp you know I mean there's Friedman's sirs there's boggling James this that and the other and you know they're out there and look I'm lucky enough to be bestowed with all the beautiful axe-fx gear so that's my mainstay now that's so that's what you using no sex effects well I mean as far as the farm stuff goes I've been using an axe eight for for about the past three years you're right and spent many many hours dialing that thing in basing it on real amps and getting good sounds and I figured well you know you're either going up there with that or you go up there with your pedal board and rented backline yeah so the one thing about we get to use the same monitors and they're good like like those wedges we play through about 10,000 bucks each apparently so yeah they make sure that they've got good wedges for those gigs owner what they are but they're bloody good so I've got the two stereo monitors in front of me and I get a little my stereo sound through that and the band and then we've got two usually two backline backup amps which we also run the axe eight into as well so I've got it behind me so it's like it's I'm I'm Wallace I'm Pete Townsend up there it's not a bother anybody you know you step two feet that way no one is it and it's just ridiculously loud and good and heavenly and I get all the feedback and everything in na just loving it right right right sorry that the thing is with the x8 is it is it never changes so whatever it goes to front of house grant Walsh gets the same thing every time there's no mic placement there's no wind there's no rented backline amps that blow up half way through the gig I don't spend the first three songs my back to the crowd going like this you know it's like I just get up there and I just do it you know it's pretty much the same every night so yeah it's it just makes sense it's funny there's a been a bit of a shift in technology as I mentioned to you I've known Dave Leslie for a very long time and I was using a Kemper when I was touring doing the the Queen tribute you think and I'm ever mentioning that to him and he said I've had a you know play run in the shop it's not the same but then he had a bad experience doing it a multi play a night where he had a backline and amp that just let him down and as you know when when your sounds not on you you're playing it's just not on he just said he just hung his head just go when you sound completely check say yeah so he said he saw everyone else was using the axe FX and and jumped on and got himself one and I've checked out his rig now with the ax 8 etc and it's funny talking to Steve Stevens recently as I said when I do these chats like I get talking to people for half an hour beforehand and and Steve had just started using the boss tube amp expander using speaker I us instead of making up and just went whoa never making up again yeah sound guy came running down to the front of the steps was that's the one yeah yeah yeah it's an amazing piece of kit yeah and there's a few things out there like that have you heard of the blue guitar amp one as a Thomas blood yeah Thomas's lovely mate he's a lovely Thomas when he was when he was working for Hughes & Kettner I can used to work for them yes probably Thomas was probably one of the guys that implemented the red box technology that was sure well we use ahead of the curve with that you know I love you the speaker see minute and everything so yeah Thomas is he's a gem absolutely that's what Jennifer battens using now is the the amp one and yeah yeah I did have a chance to play it when I went to a youtuber event last year in in Germany and that's where I first met Thomas and had a play with that unit and that's really got my ears pricked my ears up and in terms of what I want to use there's so many options out there now like you know all the boss gear is great campus great fractals fantastic you know line six is doing it yep soon as the blue guitar just the other night Friday nights James Ryan does a great fun live stream on YouTube and Facebook and he was using the synergy gear yep and that's that's based on when I was I was doing a lot of work for CMI here in Melbourne yep when I was endorsing ESP and all its stuff and they were trying to get the Randall modular system going yep and I think that's a follow-on from that technology and that came from Bruce ignite who I think loose ignite who's that happy I have to check my diary if he's not on tomorrow it's a day after I've got Bruce come there you go yeah dr. Bruce event I'm sure Bruce is involved in the synergies he is cuz he owns a licence on that gear yeah and then James Jones was pulling some fantastic sounds out of that you know so I mean you know there's just there's no end to what you can do now like and I totally get it I if you if you're in love with your old favourite amber and it's the greatest thing you've ever got I I get it I wish I had an amp that I could get married to but I can't take it anywhere you know not even with fun and we can't travel with gear anymore if you can't fit it in a small road case or in your suitcase you ain't bringing it isn't that crazy but it's become because you know the days of touring acts back in the right up until only recent times people used to do load the truck and go from town to town to do all these shows but now it's flying from city to city sometimes if we do a run of red hot summer gigs so they will have a truck and we can bring whatever we want but at the same time I don't have an amp I don't have anything that I've that I'm looking at going that's my dream man if I had that Bogner ecstasy and the matching cab then you know that'd be my heir absolutely but and I'll be using that every night but but you know at the end of the day it's like books what kind of market a pudding on it have they put it in the right position is you know ah there's so many factors if you go if you go di the consistency outweighs the rigmarole you know what I mean it's like the screw around the convert and the ax8 has been so bulletproof that thing has never let me down you know like I just plug into that sucker and yeah years like you know I just have been jostled around and you know crap tipped on it and all the rest of it it's just yet sorry I'm just plugging him a phony right computer so I wouldn't saw southern suns recently who did a reunion run of shows yeah we did some of those gigs and I I used to go see them back in the day of huge fan of Jack Jones Owen Thomas who I'm trying to lock in some dates with to come on and have a chitchat with me on this show and I used to marvel at the huge racks full of gear that they had back in the 90s when I'd see them and now they're altering with a excites as well and I heard Reggie actually talking to somebody in the after the show bit of a meet-and-greet and just saying wow we can just recreate all those sounds with this little box now it's a real I hate the word game-changer but it has been hasn't it well the thing is - especially urlan like you know you could give him a gorilla amp an ER and a guitar adder it came up and he'd be able to pull an amazing sound out of it you know so yeah he's always been able to he was way ahead of that curve with the mic land our thing as well like Earl was always dialed into what the LA guys were doing like as far as what they were using and like he was that he was the guy that had an Ag native before I ever knew what that was and and the Soldano before I knew what that was and yeah and you know he's just always had great sounds and at the end of the day it really is the nut holding the whip I mean if you're ready to invest the time and and dig around this technology until you get what you want out of it you will get anything you want out of it when I was doing the demos for my first album for Big Sky I had a boss rack Mountain unit called a VF one and I bought it just because I used it for delay and reverb and you could footswitch the delay on and off and that's why I bought it was a half-space racking unit and when I started doing the demos for that album I realized that it had distortions in there and also had a speaker simulator and it had one speaker simulator that's what you got yeah and I dialed up all the guitar sounds and I would put the demos up on I forget it was like mp3.com I think it was a sight like that back then this is like this is like God late 90s I think early 2000s or something I forget way back when and just to see what people thought of the damn and people were emailing me saying what amp you using yeah Bogner Soldano like I said no it's a $300 rec space rack unit yeah and there you go you know it's like you can just take anything if you just sit with it long enough and you adapt your touch to it yeah yeah well anything out of it so because it isn't it's in the fingers and that's one thing that antibiotic you know you know like a the greatest skier in the world it's not a great news Oh Mike you know and the crappiest gear in the world doesn't stop someone from being a great music absolutely basic stuff that'll Stuart Fraser was like that you could give Stuart one remember those smokey amp sort of our building cigarette packets I'll just grab I'll just grab one so people know what you're talking about okay I got everything you might I have everything there it is I've actually put a little clip on the back so I could hang it off a my pantry something but so people know what you talk about and I have to hide my eyes or else it'll focus on my eyes but I think people could see that that's actually a cigarette packet yeah yes Stuart knew that guy that was building them he met him in America and became friends with him and he gave him one and yeah you know like Stuart was the guy that would plug into an amp and it could have the raddest weirdest sound in the world and he would just adapt to it and he would find something to play that made that sound work like he would embrace the sound and use it yeah whereas I just go no no like that it's not another Bogner you know I'm yeah yeah and whereas he wouldn't fight it he just go I'll roll with it TJ would do it too TJ would just look look for the weirdest sound you could find and and pull something magic out of it something hilarious or brilliant you know I like it yeah we would just roll with it so Brett what's what's your number one guitar at the moment the this the the red strat that's what I'm playing back to that night yeah I mean oh you know that they change I mean I was using the blue ESP which is hanging up on the wall there for a long time and that's that's a beautiful instrument but when when Stewart couldn't play with us anymore in John's band he had to focus on his treatment and everything I was still using the blue ESP which has the humbuckers and I just thought you know cuz Stewart often plays Nags guitars and he would play a single coil and I really missed that sound and I thought you know what the strats really are the Swiss Army knife aren't they you know and I thought I'm going to go back to playing a strat so I was actually playing an ESP strat one of the vintage series ones that really nice and really a nice guitar and I kept looking at I was going to try and buy a sir strat I really wanted to get one of Scott Henderson strats because like I yeah Scott's one of my heroes and not to try and emulate him but I just know I've become good friends with Scott and I know how particular is about gear and I think of it he's going to put his name on this guitar it's got to be great otherwise he just wouldn't even let it leave the shops and I thought well that's a that's a shoo-in that's a guaranteed great strat style guitar yeah and then I kept looking at this red guitar hanging on the wall and my mother had passed away and I thought she left me a little bit of cash and I thought I want to use that cash to get this thing back into playing condition because it had a weird fisherman bridge on it with a DI split and everything and and I didn't particularly like the pickups and and it still had the original no it had this neck on it yeah and so I got a really nice some Callahan bridge yep Callahan bridges are really nice they're real vintage spec and yep and I just completely by accident welcome by fluke the Virgil Arlo pickup company sent me some pickups for the humbuckers and I just went man these are incredible and then I asked him if they'd be kind enough to send me some single coils and I just went well that's it you know these are the greatest bloody single coils I've ever heard and then I asked Scott about the buzz factor because he's got the Sur system where it's got the dummy pickup yep and it's before John developed his own system he was using a system by a company called Ilic out of California so I contacted them and got one of his systems which sits in the back plate trem plate and that sucks out most of the buzz so I've got my beautiful Virgil Arlo pickups the the illage system kills the buzz the Callahan bridge and it is one of the most stable strats I've ever played in my life it's almost like my mom just looked down at me and said here have a good strap you know nice one mate nice air so it's funny as you bring up the Ilic I've I I put together I'm just gonna switch to the shot of me is that the right camera is that one there yes it is it's still the right one I know I'm gonna I'm gonna do another quick everybody just gonna explain some of the stuff that you talk about so what Brett was talking about there I've got several strats that one there is something like pieced together from parts I'm going to go grab it I had the eulogy system put in that but the person I got to wire it all for me didn't do such a good job so I ripped it out and it's all sitting over there Callahan bridge that Brett was talking about is in that one there and he is absolutely right that's one of the best vintage bridges that you could possibly get in and the clincher for me on that is there's no movement when I put the tremolo arm in it I hate it if the trim arm has any slack whatsoever but Callaham have got that completely nailed and I actually have my very first guitar sitting back there as well which is just down to the original body and neck of pulled everything off that guitar it was a cheap onyx copy that I got when I was 12 years old and I'm gonna restore that and I'm got a bit of hardware lying around but if anybody has any suggestions of what I should use to bridge pickups etc I am going to do that one backup I should go grab some guitars to show you guys what I'm talking about I'll just lose the headphones for a second this is the one that I put together out of parts and had the original Ilic system in and that was actually a big it was built into the the back plate on that but as I said it wasn't wired so well so I pulled it out and it's sitting over just behind the camera actually in my little box of parts and the Callaham one Callaham bridge would be in my main workhorse strat which is this guy right there you go I got cables and things on the way here and again I have to hide my eyes for the camera to actually focus on this but that has a look at take anything yet Callahan bridge in there with Kinmen pickups a beautiful big nine oh so that's the sound of a p90 which I'd never tried until recently and I'm a fan let me tell you wow that's great yeah the Kimmons a good bridges aren't they other that the Callahan's yeah yeah so what I was saying there Bret while you're away was what sold me on that was it was a vintage style bridge that the arm didn't have any movement like I use an arm much like Brian May would in that one finger is always on it and let me just so we can see the two of us so I'm doing subtle things and if there's any movement in the arm at all before it actually moves the bridge I'm lost yeah what is this and they've got it sussed in the way I was I was quite shocked when I talked to Scott about it because it's got Henderson because um he's so particular about everything and Scott's on the bar all the time now you know he's got he's doing some amazing things with the whammy bar and he didn't care he said I don't care about the movement you know I still worry about it and I thought wow that's that's fascinating because I was you know I was trying the old plumber's tape around the thread and that's fine and everything but you got to do it every time you wind the thing in and then I just heard about the the Callahan bridge and how they sleeve it but then they they also do everything else and talked about you know you got a you got to get rid of the sort of some sort of metal plating they do on the block the string block and all that sort of stuff and they do all that no they they just have the raw metal and everything so so yeah I'm surprised he wasn't hip to that but but he didn't care you know yeah yeah I just realized that as I went to grab some guitars everybody would have seen that I'm wearing my pyjama pants right now as you should be I'm wearing my track edex yeah actually after we got the Skype connection and everything sorted that the Sun went a little bit I thought normally I just wear a black t-shirt every time so it's rare that I've actually got something on just so nobody picks on me for what I'm wearing or just keep it uniform and I forgot to take this off but I thought I only get cold I'm put much my pyjama pants on and my woolly socks so with us the Sun the Sun moves this way so it's gonna be blasting in through these windows in a while and it's gonna be like a sauna in these okay well the the actual hue of your camera has changed somewhat it was like a wish and now you've got the the more of a warmer tone happening there yeah does anybody have any questions for Brett because Brett remember we said about the time flies we have been talking now for two oh yeah two and a half hours yeah yeah I'm good to go for three if you are but I'm just thinking if anybody has any questions just a drive in man will be will be touring with John Mayne Stewart let us within two meters of each other and we just start talking about pickups and you'd be like god it's always where me bars and pickups with you bastards isn't it it's bad for me because I didn't play a hell of hell of a lot of guitar for a long time in was running to the production thing from the mid 90s right up until maybe five years ago and so when I get talking with people it can either be guitars guitars guitars or Pro Tools Pro Tools preamps blah blah blah yeah it's it's a healthy subject it is actually I did a live stream a week or two ago friend of mine is works for avid the Pro Tools people and he used to be my assistant and years ago when I was doing albums around town for people and he's the top guy in Australia for for avid and I said to amazed you should come on I'm trying to keep this a mixture of known players manufacturers and then people that we can learn things from because I want people to if you want people to watch you got to give them a reason to give up their time yeah and I said so we made you know come on he says oh yeah but what the hell we going to talk about yeah I said so we mate you've been threatening to give me a lesson Pro Tools power lesson for a while and all the stuff that I've missed since jumping in at 4.3 and I didn't pick up all these new things let's do it live so we did and that was that was great but then I clued him on sooo just talking about the gibberish talk there was a segment on Dave Letterman years ago that I saw where the two guys came out and basically just read a flier of the latest version of ProTools and it to me it was perfect sense hey now available 24 bit 96k the normal stuff right thought it was the most hilarious thing they'd ever heard like look it up on YouTube you'll find it and yeah so when guys get together and start talking gear yeah absolutely I totally get that yeah yeah it's pretty funny some some people are so technically savvy and they get into the minutiae of the specs yep and then the and then some of us sort of shoot up the middle and then there's others who just like I don't want to know about that I just want to plug into it and I love that too like I love the old-school guys that that where they just had people around and the sorta laid out like oh there's this beautiful documentary about Tom Dowd the engineer the producer engineer and Eric Clapton's talking about him I think he did Glalie you know that did the Derek and the Dominos album I mean amongst a million other things you know Coltrane Miles Davis and Aretha Franklin the guy's just the legends one of the most beautiful documentaries and there it Clapton's sittin there saying he said I didn't really felt like I didn't feel I need to talk to him because he one of those behind-the-scenes guys you know one of the white coat guys yeah he says it wasn't until I got to know him that I realized he was a musician who also knew how to run all this stuff and make you sound good and and also had good ideas about your song and yeah it was interesting like that that's why a lot of the guitar players know that you watch the edge on that it might get loud movie and he probably doesn't have a clue how to set up his rig no no I think it's like Starship Enterprise you know yeah but that but he knows how to play it doesn't he wouldn't know the ins and outs of the thing literally you know but then you see an interview with dela Shu his Tech and he completely knows it inside out it's his job than that yeah maybe just least merci Scott Henderson knows every cable in his rig because he sold of it you know he knows everything about all the tech technical aspects of what he's using and I really I really love that like I got to go to for me terrible name dropping I know but I've just been so lucky to get to to get to become friends with one of the biggest influences I've ever had and and who was still just kicking ass out there like Scott's just one of those guitar players and musicians that's just getting better and better you know I don't know if anyone's heard his latest album people mover it's just it's unbelievable you know it's like that guy man he's just you know there's this fascination with sort of fusion now it used to be neoclassical shred guitar and sort of stuff and there every young hotshots of fusion play you know Scott's the guy he's the reason okay he doesn't get the credit for that but he is the guy who was triggered this whole movement I guarantee it you know sure sure is that he is that bridge between well he's the bridge between ritchie blackmore and jazz you know like I remember hearing him I thought he was a jazz guitarist that brought distortion pedals and became a fusion catalysis yeah and then I heard him talking about Ritchie Blackmore and he's open counselling one day and I said well you're a Blackmore fan he said well yeah that's how I started out I was Ritchie Blackmore Albert King you know it's like Ernie said I'm a blues rock guitarists that learn jazz cool but oh my god I dodge asleep so good at playing jazz in fusion I thought he was from that world and then he found rock nice yeah the trip now when you say say you know new fusion players do you know Australian guitar playing plenty have you heard him oh yeah ever plenty right yeah yeah well plenty is even a different animal again you know like the way he bridges like like modern production with like an by that I just mean modern rock production with with melodic rock you know I just really love the way his songs sort of have that they bridge that that gap of modern ambient music with with metal you know and it sounds natural it's really organic it doesn't sound forced to me like I've heard other people try and copy him now you know because that's what people do the minute they hear something they go okay so now I'll do that looks like to think think for yourself you know come on totally turn but no I just they'd all I know how to do is copy I'm afraid to do that you don't want to do that because you might end up on a gig with plenty and you'll suck because he's the real thing and you're not you know it's yeah and the chair plenty stuff really just sounds fresh to my ears and it's obvious that come it came from here you know what I mean yes oh absolutely but see there's another guitar player a love called Michael Brooke I don't have any one's ever heard of him joke right and turned me on to him and he did an album a long time ago called cobalt blue and I went looking for that album on Joe's recommendation and couldn't find it so I found this live album he'd done called live at the aquarium and now Michaels he's a trip he he invented what they caught what is what he called the infinite guitar system and it's like the Saints tiny effort can and is sustained type system or the sustainiac which which is like an ebow in a pig I've got one back there well had one yeah and Michael invented and it was a separate system and that's what the edge used to do with or without you on the Joshua Tree that sort of stuff and because Michael did a few albums with Daniel Anwar and Brian Eno and that's Michael's sort of known for doing ambient music but he's done a lot of beautiful film score stuff his music was featured in heat and movie and into the wild a lot a lot of really good stuff and this this large thing it's him at the London Aquarium which is now a gig apparently and and it's him sort of playing two loops that he's set up so it's years ahead of its time in that regard how he swells them in and out I don't know but he's doing it all live and I remember it was one of those albums where I bought it I was listening to it first time I thought yeah it's kind of cool second time is kind of cool third fourth guy it's kind of cool and by the fifth time I just went oh my god he's a genius this is genius you know like I just and so that's I hear that and then I hear plenty and I think well is it there's another connector there you know it's like it's like Michael's music with in plenty is like that with some Metallica chucked in there or Pantera you know like or something is modern metal you know what I mean so so yeah I love the way music sort of morphs into itself and absolute hybrid other elements and nobody seems like when you like the beauty of a band as opposed to being a solo artists is when you get all different influences come in together and you've got your guys from all different walks of life musically speaking that just create whole new paths and like you say yeah you're not trying to sound like somebody else it just comes out that way yeah if it's a true band where there's no no one sort of dominating the vision and its input from everybody it something amazing can happen you know like a look at the police I mean you know the police even though it's their sting songs I mean I mean for the most part I know Stewart and Andy did contribute but the songs we were songs we walk away were written by Steve yeah but it's the alchemy of those three guys you know they they those songs would always be brilliant the medic because sting said you know he said Roxanne was originally like a bossa nova or something and and it sounds beautiful like that yeah but nothing sounds like the police but the police because of Andy and Stewart and sting you know it's it's those three guys that make that band you know the police were instrumental for me to make me stop thinking that music had to be number one heavy and it had to have a roaring guitar solo like it could just be a great song you know that that was the police I went okay now I just listen to music I don't how many preconceived notions or prejudices about what it is so it was it made me just admit that I just loved pop music and music in general and it didn't have to be macho posturing and all this sort of crap you know yep so Bret you touched on something before you when you mentioned the power lifting and I know back in the earlier days of Farnham John would we call you Rambo and you did look like Rambo from the movie back then so was that the way train was a power lifting are we getting it's a body building back then House Powell this isn't a lifting no one would ever want to see me running around in my undies I'll tell you that that's but the Rambo thing is very funny because when I was first touring with John I just used to wear a tank top David Hirschfeld was fouled it was fantastic he used to come up to me and say I call you the man of many tank tops and he was a great guy and and so I just bought a tank top and it had mango written on it was the mango brand I think you know must have been a brand back then in the 80s and we were backstage at this gig after the show and I'm just standing there and Steve Houston was there from lob and he said what's that say on your tank top Rambo and John went ah that's it you're Rambo from now on oh that's it you're done and and it just became a nickname it's sort of funny because people often they talk about that era and they say God you a huge back fan and I'm like I've always been a little guy I'm very small like I mean I'm only five foot nine in a strong breeze yeah and yeah I'm not tall and I I think it's the deception of how you look from the stage and I'm your lights and I suppose I was bigger back then because of you know I was younger and I was working out a lot that but no we started off just doing basic body building movements look god applied any sports and and I was fascinated by the fact that you had control over how you physically looked I I thought you would just see the Bourne fit and muscular or you were a fat guy and I've always kind of struggled with my weight because I love food I'm a foodie and and I thought wow this is interesting you can actually control the way you look became fascinated by that and so Italy it started off as doing bodybuilding movements and then we eventually me and my friends eventually migrated to a gym in Bendigo which is about 45 minutes from here and it was run by a guy named Lori Butler and it was Lori was one of the greatest power lifters in the world and and that was when we just got into that actual sport of powerlifting this tremendous farm we just all did it together and was a hang and yeah and yeah it was it's great fun I'm still really interested in and I just just last night I was watching some international powerlifting stuff yeah just fascinating to me yeah strong people can get some credible it's funny I'm the opposite so I'm 63 so I'm always been tall and lanky rhymes I've spent a lot of my adult life being in the gym because I don't want to be skinny the opposite thing right yeah but I have had issues with tendinitis in recent years and I think it's because of overplaying and then also the gym thinks so during the whole lockdown thing and the gyms closed I completely stopped and I'm back to being little stick man Rick again but I just started up yesterday was my second day back in and let me tell you after that first day no wait pretty much just doing it you know bench pressing with five kilos aside just getting the movement down to make sure you know build again from a tendon level I'm not going to feel this man let me tell ya soreness is incredible it's my life I like it well you know it makes you feel alive and yes your body I look it's like anything you got a reproach with caution and you don't want to overdo any one thing you know anything can be over trained like like I about two years ago well it's two years since but for about two years I really got into the skipping-rope I can I just loved it and it was brilliant keeping the weight off like it was I've never been fitter yeah and it got to the stage where I could I could skip for like 40 minutes straight well that's a coach doing I was doing it every day and yeah from phenomenal for building just good endurance and I loved it I thought god I finally found an aerobic activity I really enjoy because I hate running I hate it the same I love swimming but who's got a lap pool you know and especially a heated one and but then I started to get problems in my forearms took about two years to show up but it did show up and the skipping-rope had to go you know just I just had to stop and so yeah any you can't overdo a good thing you know you got to just be careful and with weight training and you know the like if I do deadlifts and stuff like that or chin up so I always use wrist straps so I take the stress off my hands yeah so I don't have good grip strength but who cares I'm not complaining chin ups actually that that really mess with my forearm so I worked out that was the thing yeah you got to use restrains you got to do guitar player like you don't get the forearm development and you don't get the strength but but you know that that's that's alright and look as you get older like I'm 57 now so I mean my training now is based around a based based around just very very careful self-preservation you know like I don't my ego is out of the equation there's no there's no numbers to brag about not that there ever were but there certainly aren't now it's just about I'm glad I can get out there and just move and do something and I heard a fantastic quote and this applies to anything this is one of the greatest quotes did come from some fitness thing on a youtube site and I can't remember who it was but it was most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade and I thought man that is a fantastic quote if you chip away at something then within 10 years you can transform yourself at almost any age you know yeah but if you say I'm gonna get this down in a year some things just take longer than a year we as musicians know that yeah like if you say I'm gonna learn to open that pick like guthrie govan and I'm gonna do it in a year it's like yeah well good luck with that yeah yeah I think Guthrie spoon doing it a lot longer than that you know it's like you know or as an example you know of anything and I'm sure Guthrie be the first guy to say Mike you know just take your time there's you know there's 30 percent just chip away and I'm like but yeah it's a great that's great quote to remember so cool so if I chip away at it well there was a really good good question when I I said before us does anybody have any questions before we round things up because sometimes it takes a while to get through there the first response to that was awesome chat no questions required cheers from deja voodoo which I thought I everyone's been a bit quiet but maybe we're onto her see ya but my friend link who goes by the name big fella link I said I'm six-three he's 65 right yeah he says okay here's a question for both of you playing a strat you can only choose one selector switch setting which is it so which position for you if you can only use one on a strap that's how I didn't it it's hard I know what it wouldn't be for me anyway why I think I'd probably have to go with it'll be either the back of the middle probably the back I'd say the back I've got I've got mine rewired so that I've got a tone control on the back pick up so so I can you know I can get at least a little bit of tonal variation and I'm not limited to just the squawky brightness of it so I probably I'd go the black more route and need to be front or back he just takes the middle line out she says I don't like that you don't like the middle pickup - yep so spinning everybody said too much gray area there say flack or white that's me you know I very rarely used the middle very rarely use the middle so for me and it's a tough one isn't it I'm going to throw some spanner in the works here if I could have one position and this isn't standard I have a neck on switch almost forget my iMac I'll just go back this way it's all backwards so you think so I could find the back in the next yeah so I could be on the bridge pickup and then kick in my Hagar I originally had this wired so there was a blend knob like account and a blend knob which would blame the front and back together but I just never found a use for it to be honest today the rhythm sound that I've been chasing for years and it wasn't until I got a Telecaster and and use that middle position that I went yeah that's what I've been searching for so if I could have one Kelly's are incredible beasts you know like cuz I got an ESP telly which is still here it's still hanging on the wall there I've changed the colour and the neck and it's got all those sir necks on it but I played that for years I did my whole Big Sky album with it and played live with it for a long time with 11 252 s on it so it was it it was a tough beast to manage yeah I'm back the team I'm back to tame 252 now I just I think if I if I was touring a lot and playing a lot I'd get match fin enough to put the allowance back on okay but you know there are things you can do with lighter strings that you just can't do with the heavy ones it's just they just that's just how it is you know I tried out I trow dates for the first time recently because my hands were playing up yeah and it was amazing I didn't have any of that loss in tone that everyone told me would be there when I played my big open chords I had just had to be a little bit more careful of how I hit it yeah but it took away any fights and anything I could think I could play and you know I'm well TJ went to Allan Holdsworth house with Scott Henderson many years ago in fact the very first verse very first song TJ and I recorded big lead guitars we tracked using the prototype box that Alan built for a thing called the harness which was a box like a load box you put in between a marshal on the speaker cabinet so that's it that's what he brought back from Alan's place but when he got out there Alan you know just chatting to him about their stuff and he realized Alan was using 8 to 36 on his guitars very very light streams and TJ tried him out for a while over these tapping and he pulled massive sounds out of it and the conclusion we came to was the light of the strings and the light of the attack the bigger the sound yep whereas the bigger the string the heavier the heavier the attack the bigger the sound Stuart Fraser could play 12 to 58 in standard tuning and play him like I was playing a set of tens and they were they're amazing like he was just he got it he got the idea from marcasite from diesel marquees this massive strings and I think Danny Spencer's uses 12s like a lot of guys I know big strings you know and man props you know I'd be in hospital if I tried to play that stuff absolutely I just can't do it and but yeah it's it's an interesting journey the string gauge thing you know but you've got it just what are you trying to do how are you trying to do it and what are you capable of doing without hurting yourself like I remember a young guy came to me an MI and and he'd gone from playing nines to 3rd teens overnight because he watched the Stevie Ray Vaughan video and he ended up a month later he had his arm in a sling so I mean you know the Stevie Ray Vaughan effects there was a video by Rick Piero recently if people don't know him he's great youtuber very very good content from Rick yeah it's great and he was saying that he was talking to de Friedman about a certain tone that he wasn't able to get in drop tuning or something and Dave said to him using the wrong gauge string you need the light strings for that he's surely not and tried it and they had some tone comparisons of it all and get the lighter strings sounded better so I said I went down to the eights I think I'm gonna step back up to about a nine for now and just see how that goes without now that I don't have any issues could be the way to go pics I did tribal dip I did try a 9.5 for a little while and that was still a little bit too much just with some of the RSI that I had in here but I'm good now so can destroy mines again yeah yeah it's very personal it's a very personal thing what do you I often looked at the country pliers how beautiful their left hand movement was it was so delicate you know like a really they all seemed to have it like it's just beautiful then like they don't strangle the strings or anything like that they're very very deliberate and I thought they're probably using light strings because the bends you know they want to do all those yeah you know I I Steve trovato who was the country teacher at Mi for a long time he was doing a play along book with a CD and I was sitting at home one day in LA and TJ ran me up cuz TJ was engineering it for him and he said what are you doing I said nothing he said can you come down to the studio and play some slides stephenie's a slide solo so I came down to Cherokee studios and Steve said I want to have a slide solo on this CD so if you wouldn't mind doing it that'd be great and I said yeah I'd love to so I did my stick you know he said that was great thanks very much and I said so what's this all about you said I'm doing a whole country play-along book I've got Jerry Donahue from the helicopters and Albert Lee coming in tomorrow and I said I will be coming in tomorrow just quietly you know so I came back the next day and I got to sit right next to Jerry Donahue and and Albert Lee and watch them solo right there yeah and Jerry Donahue not to be confused with Jerry Douglas the dobro plays yep Jerry Donahue of some of the bending stuff that guy could do was just ridiculous you know just I mean three strings going in different directions all at the same time and yeah he was using very light string and I'm convinced that's it they use the light strings because of those possibilities the way they can bend different intervals the way they'll react differently you know a set of nine the rates will react very differently if you've been to at the same time as opposed to you know 12s or even tens it's got to be a reason and out Lee let me just say like I mean he did three takes of a solo that was at least two minutes long rapid tempo and every three to every one of those takes was perfect I just went how you're gonna choose which one you're going to use you should have just had him doing one he'll never pick them Wow most lovely guy in the world it's just like sitting there going could someone put some money in the meter for me like a lady said he's English she said I expect them to become in going wow yeah y'all doin you know so you said about sitting in the room with them do you know the guitar player Tom Quayle oh absolutely I don't know him personally but I do know of a so when I was in Germany last year I had some studio time at the event and it was Dave Friedman suggested to me he said hey let's have a guitar battle between semi bola and it song quail and I sat there with with Tom as he's playing and he plays in a different funny tuning did you know that he wants all fourths right and he's sitting beside me I'm talking to him he's warming up and to hear the sound of his fingers slapping the stainless steel frets just yeah he's got a left-hander he said the legit legit a'mma see of his left-handers was amazing hmm I have a video on my youtube channel of him letting me play his guitar and him giving me a bit of a lesson on on the the tuning he uses and yeah you can hear it I hold the camera up and you see to his right hand then you see his left hand it's just the sound coming out of it well I mean yeah I've seen clips of Tom picking and he's obviously an incredible picker but I think he could just play all left hand and you never need you know yeah it's it's pretty a pretty remarkable I have one last subject I want to touch on before we eat that three hour mark but jeez I told you it goes yeah tone wood when it comes to guitars do you believe that the wood the guitars made out of affects the tone or do you think a pickup is pick up it picks up string vibration no it's got it it's got to matter but that that information comes from people more informed than me and once again holdsworth this was back in the 80s I was reading an interview and this is when everyone's going the heavier the better they're building guitars out of brass it's getting to the point of ridiculous heavy heavy heavy that's where the sustain is heavy you know and Allen's like no no you're wrong not light of the body light bodies ash older he said I even tried a guitar made out of balsa wood but that was to life that was ridiculous right and now that the other thing Alan said they said why don't you use a Floyd Rose because you use the whammy bar a lot and he said because the strings don't travel through the block he said the block is where the resonance comes from that way it resonates through the body yeah that guy man he was just so switched on the things no one was talking about this back yeah no one was talking about like guitar wood now and just straight out of the blue no no it's got to be life you know the first guy to put a humbucker in a strat before Eddie Van Halen I'm sure Eddie had the same idea but Alan did it you know he's so disappointed when he said he had this strap that he built must have been one of the guitars he was using with UK or someone he said I sold it to a guy and he just went and put the single coils back in the wood he said he just totally missed the potential of that guitar and and yeah what a what a genius you know but yeah Alan was the guy saying that so now I like I said I I always defer to people that are much more knowledgeable than me I've never had the luxury of trying different woods you know I just I've got a guitar aren't I lucky you know whatever it's made out of I just hey thankfully it's here you know yeah but I'm not that guy that will spend my fortune on amps and mics and strings and things I can't afford to experiment I'm not just not that rich it's funny I had somebody approached me a couple years ago who had developed a brass block for the floyd rose and wanted me to do a comparison and said mate you come here and you pull the bloody guitar apart and put it all in you know to the a be by all means I don't know about that and we did and we recorded direct into the computer just to get you know check out all the waveforms and discern yeah and there was no difference in sustain between a standard and the brass but there was a big difference in tone just eating out on the block of woes yes so today that a bee was like hang on that's not what we were expecting but oh it just had that top-end zing was gone it was a lot warmer well I never underestimate what people are capable of hearing that I'm not and I also and also just where their research is and where you may not understand it when I first heard about Eric Johnson talking about the old is it carbon batteries versus alkaline so they liked that he was coming when he talked about that I thought oh come on what are you going on about but then later on good a mate of mine named John Ziegler explained battery sagged to me he said no you don't understand he said those old batteries he said the carbon batteries he said they put out more power but as they fade they will change the sound of your pedal that's called battery sag then I remembered reading a Duane Allman interview where he said he had this first pedal he used with the Allman Brothers and he had to put a battery in it and leave it plugged in for a certain amount of time and then it was he knew he'd get the whole gig out of it but it was after the battery had drained for a certain amount of time it had the right sound well it's changed the sound of the pedal whereas someone told me that juror cells and alkaline batteries put out less voltage but more consistently for a longer period of time so oh well there you go I didn't you know obviously I was ill informed I'd I made an assumption and I didn't have all the information to to base that assumption on so yeah I'm always ready to listen to someone plead their case like I walked through the halls of MI one day and I heard Scots playing and I knew it straight I went that sound the the one and only Scott Henderson yep and here's Scott in one of the larger rooms with his bunch of disciples around him no I'm me being one of them yep and he's got his entire rig set up and I went in and said what's going on and he said I'm a being guitar cables and I went what he said yeah I've got a Belden cable and a something else cable and he was switching between the two and I swear for a split second I a difference and then I lost it yeah but he could hear it you really got our locus on things like that I I know I compared converters for recording about ten years ago I had yeah just a cheap m-audio interface and I had an Apogee and i sat there a being listen to music and it was a good ten minutes cuz you focusing on different things am i hearing any difference in low-end the crack in the mid-range brubber blah and after ten minutes I went the decay of the cymbals yeah and hear that if that took me ten minutes of critical listening to pick that is it really worth worrying about well you know it's just you can't but you can't and I look at look at the way Jacob Kolya hears music you know I don't know yeah you know that young guy that's just just look him up I will and look Rippey Otto's son freaky-deaky perfect pitch yet Wow yeah Dylan I think he's not yeah that's right that is just you know what a trip I mean the way he would hear I would just he record that the way he would hear it no yeah or anyone with a perception like that connected to the musical knowledge to understand it and the possibilities they would hear and and you know you just I just have to always say on the jury's out because just because I can't hear it doesn't mean it's not there you know what I mean it's like love the heel I'd love to hear like my dogs one day just to see what's really happening out there that I don't know can you mind open yeah yeah Bret I think we should wrap things up it might like you said earlier you could talk for hours about this kind of stuff so I'd love to have you back on sometime if you offer it oh absolutely yeah yeah okay I got your email there might in your phone number so I'll keep in touch but it's been a pleasure talking to you yeah yeah it's not that scary once you get past the whole life thing it did freak me out for maybe the first 25 episodes and then I had a moment as I said where you're all wrong now recommend this is great I mean I you know I could imagine count other players that would love to have a chat so well I'll try and I'll try and stand in your way I'll have a chat to you after we end this broadcast and and see if you can recommend anybody for me but oops yeah folks thank you so much for tuning in all that time thank you to breakfast for taking the time out and please remember like subscribe all that kind of stuff I don't have that many subscribers considering the content that I'm putting out right now and today you get I'm actually going to go now they've got my new laptop there's a music store Gold Coast music on the Gold Coast here have said mate unit come in and demo any of this stuff so I'm gonna see if they've got all the Fender Strat standard strats that are out now I'm going to do a bit of a comparison between all those I think that'll be make for some good content but please like subscribe share all that kind of thing help get the word out because I've had some great guests I got some more coming up just this week alone we've got Bruce egg nadir I've got my friend Vladimir from cat pic studios who's just a smaller youtuber like me to talk about being a smaller youtuber and then I have Doug Rappaport Brett have you heard Doug Rappaport yeah Doug plays with Edgar wind and Ken winter that's right man yeah yeah great player yeah yeah so yeah I was I was very stoked that he said he'd take the time I've got Thomas in the works I've got whoa I'm gonna get Jack the bear the mastering guy because he is not only great with the mastering mastering music but mastering life he's a great motivational speaker man I got quite a few people lined up so please folks like subscribe share all that kind of stuff Brett thank you again mate I'm gonna hit the button right now thank you thanks folks see ya you

Channel: Rick Hollis

Views: 116,407

Keywords: livestream, podcast, guitar, amp, fender, marshall, gibson, friedman, smallbox, interview, demo, review, youtuber, John farnham, nelson, virgil donati, TJ Helmerich, ESP guitars

Id: UkoH7JgigTI

Length: 189min 25sec (11365 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020