TrueFire Live: Andy Timmons

so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] hello everyone and welcome to this live broadcast here from true fire studios you are watching and listening to andy timmons who we've had the pleasure of working with over the last couple of days on his fourth project here we'll tell you all about it in a minute um for those of you that for whatever reason don't know much about andy i can tell you this guy he's got a pedigree a mile long top session player guitarist for danger danger they opened for kiss and alice cooper all over the world sold a million records two number one vids on mtv uh however andy has seven or eight releases we'll find out in a minute uh the andy timmons band his his records are amazing i don't know if you've heard that beatles record i'm gonna ask him about that a little bit but that's a must-have for anybody's library he's also a musical director for olivia newton john and taurus all over the world with them um the thing about andy is uh any top 10 guitarist lists from any magazine anybody's list he'll be on that list but you ask any top guitarist who their favorite guitarist on he'll be in the top three of all of their lists so enough of me talking let's say hey to andy timmons [Music] i didn't hear a word you said i hope it was really nice things i was too busy noodling my apologies it's all good man um we sort of deliberately chose to open you should we open with a track you know oh yeah but we chose to open and you'll understand in a while we're going for a real dynamic effect here um welcome back thanks brad always great to be here love working with you guys here at true fire you and tommy and ali it's great it's been way too long we've got to really um tell everyone what you've done here over the past couple of days so there's a news a new series well new to me uh called in the jam and it's a brilliant uh you know teaching utensils and really practicing uh tool wherein i created ten uh different backing tracks and the idea is that i uh it's just bass and drums so i uh on camera we'll play down a rhythm guitar pass and then on top of that i'll play a lead guitar pass so it's all these tracks are about four minutes long so it's a good amount of time to jam and each of them usually have nice uh you know different feels tempos and there's basically like you're in a live jam so there's going to be um levels of dynamic we're going to go through different uh you know soft sections loud sections and so then i um on top of recording those two rhythm and lead tracks i then i then go back and do a commentary on each track so you really get you know a play-by-play for me um describing what i'm thinking what i'm feeling and all the different approaches that i'm using my concepts about comping or soloing uh as regards to you know key centers and scales or note choices and such so it's a pretty cool throwaway and then there's the platform in this in this uh series where you can eliminate any track or mute any track that you want so if you if you want to play drums you can meet the drum track there's this click track you can have you can play drums to it but you can meet the mute the bass you can mute my guitar parts both rhythm or lead or separately why would they want to do that well because you want to you want to shut me up so you can play that's the cool thing the the lead track that i play on that track i actually leave space so it's kind of like we're jamming but you can also just take out my lead track completely and then you you've got the the the backing track to play and you can reference what i've done if you want to learn little elements um it'll all be there in in tab and notation and such and then you there's me describing it so it's kind of an ultimate little tool to get some ideas but also have the the fun flat the fun fun platform hard to say fun platform to play you know so you can go and have your own have your own dialogue you know so to speak shall we without further ado let let's roll a track sure show them a little bit about you pick any track and okay why don't you set up uh the the rhythm part sure take us through come on okay so yeah this uh tommy let's try track two i believe that's the tune that's kind of based on the uh oh no it's track six my apologies it's based on the donnie hathaway groove of uh a tunia in the early 70s called in the ghetto so it's kind of got a nice early 70s funk soul kind of groove to it and it's just too too coarse throughout the whole thing we're just going b minor to uh to to e7 now granted okay i'm going to jam through it but you'll have the you'll have the opportunity to not only hear me play this you know when you get the series but then you can have turn on the commentary track and i'll kind of explain you know what i'm doing along with but for now i'm just going to play along with it and set up a groove but keeping in mind that there's going to be a soloist on top of this i don't want to get all busy and show off how many chord voicings i know this is all about what how can i fit into this rhythm track to support what's happening and that in this case is to support another soloist be it uh you know bass keyboards uh guitar or it could be it could be a singer on top of it so i'm i'm very much rhythm section role at this point so let's uh let's roll from the top tommy let's see what we got [Music] so [Music] so you get the idea now i'll go through each of these tracks i go down and they're about four minutes long and i'll go down and uh and kind of as you can see i'm kind of building with the band the bass and drums start off broken down with the percussion i'm keeping it simple i was actually just doubling the the bass the bass riff and then as it got on i'd you know maybe build the intensity along with the rhythm section and so that's all there then to set up uh playing a lead track down and so now i can play on top of that and uh just see what happens and again this is this is a pretty simple one because it's just it's really one key it's just staying b minor to e flat i mean b minor to e7 uh so it's all kind of uh e dorian and so i suppose now it would be just try it that'd be good when would now be a good time brad we'll play something on top of that timeiness everything exactly [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hmm [Music] so as you can see you know we put some peaks and valleys in there to have some dynamics because if you're jamming for four minutes you don't want it to be all in your face the whole time right trying to make it the most uh musical experience as possible yeah and it's very hard for us to i guess simulate in this live broadcast what the kind of what what the in the jam software does but the coolest part about it as andy said is you know if you want you can mute andy's rhythm part and play rhythm guitar under andy solos um or take out the bass and play bass or play drums or if you're a horn player jump in the jam yeah it's a very very cool thing you can go on true fire and check out there i think i'm pretty sure there's a a free sample you can download the software and you get a feeling for what this is all about but that's what i did um we have had a blast as has everyone here at true fire folks have found a lot of nonsensical reasons to come into the studio and have a look at what andy was doing um and wait till you see uh the pedal board which we'll talk about so hold your gear questions towards the end we will run it down yeah um tommy can you do a quick shot of the pedal board andy's running stereo mesa boogies um tell them about the tube um oh okay well it's it's uh when we got here the the the mesa's the the lone stars come with 606's which is the way you know they're kind of voiced and that which is a very you know classic american sound but they're also uh they have switchable bias and you can actually equip them with el34s for a bit more of a british kind of thing and that's the that's how i prefer it because it to me it tightens up the low end a little bit so we got here we tracked we tracked the rhythm stuff with the 606s and we when we scored some el 34s they got in just in time for the solo work so that's what my main my main lobster has the el-34s in it now and that's how i stock them um uh with my amps at home these are amps we've just borrowed from the local uh back uh back line company so thanks to those folks i don't have their name handy i wish i could give them a shout out but they're in tampa and uh and speaking of tampa i'll be at uh replay music replay tomorrow uh tomorrow is tomorrow about two yeah i think five yeah if you're uh so if you're local if you're local come on down um or anywhere anywhere in florida you can check it out which is killer uh really interesting unusual beautiful quality people uh guitar store in tampa that a lot of our artists love to go and hang out and do a clinic there you go um so before we move on um we've got some folks chiming in oh yeah remember i told you i'd love to you know see who's chimed in tuned in to us from all over the world in time zones so say hello to your fans from norway phoenix london fort pierce florida come on down to replay yeah uh peru liverpool the netherlands france atlanta pismo pismo beach california poland nashville ireland germany pennsylvania mexico city scotland san francisco toronto hungary spain montana ukraine valencia dang faroe islands buenos aires sweden paris france brazil japan and italy it's four am in japan by the way oh kinichiwa thank you so much for tuning in oh that's incredible yeah you've you know that's the the beauty of the internet ever the world is at your doorstep it is thank you everybody for tuning in and for uh for your interest in what we're doing music and guitar it's like a brotherhood a sisterhood it's just a wonderful thing absolutely okay um folks are going to be asking some questions for sure one of the first questions was do you remember what you were playing at the beginning what was the tune you were playing solo guitar well there's two there was it was kind of a juxtaposed piece there's it's a it's a piece from the resolution record it's called the prayer and the answer but this time i played the answer first and played the prayer at the end of it only because i wasn't sure how long i was supposed to play before before we started so i was a little i was a little off guard but that's okay but that that's uh it's a nice little chord melody piece from that yeah it was beautiful man um let's not waste time let's show them another track okay sure call it another one sure sure there's uh there's a nice up-tempo one uh tommy i think is track two and this essentially is a jam that's it's kind of e minor 9 to a7 that repeats but then it goes down to c major 7 to b7 and i look i love jams like this because it's all kind of related to e minor but it's several different flavors of a v minor whereas if you got that e minor to a seven you know you're kind of dorian that's c sharp being the the the note that defines that particular sounding mode but then as soon as i drop a c major seven and c sharp's not going to be the right note so now you're kind of e minor with a with that that flat six so you got to think about that then it goes to a b dominant [Music] right so that gives you places to go melodically where you can if you're outlining the third of that b7 chord and i always love that the flat nine of that um the b7 so instead of just being some long jam and e which i get very bored i run out of ideas very quickly i like creating jams that i have somewhere i'll have somewhere to go melodically that has some emotional content but as we do we're going to first play down our rhythm guitar part right and this is the the intent for me always is to you know find what's right for the for the musical situation it's not about showing off all the different voicings we might know but what's going to set up for the soloist later better so you'll see that we'll start off fairly uh fairly simply almost almost thinking of yourself as a um as a piano player where you know i i've got a good amount of echo on my tone and that g that gives me the chance to hold the chord [Music] i can have more sustain without having to be rhythmically active but i can i can really service the uh the track you know harmonically i can lay that that foundation so let's uh we won't do the whole four-minute track but i'll play a good amount of it just so you can kind of get an idea of how these tracks are set up okay all right tommy let's try it [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so just uh yeah given i was probably actually a little too busy and we're starting to get in the way a little bit but uh trying to leave as much space and without actually hearing the other solos sometimes it's kind of hard to second guess but that's what we were able to do we were kind of able to create some of these foundations and uh platforms for everybody to kind of get there yeah i wanted to um just for a second revisit you know your thought about you know not being over complicated not playing too much and what's interesting for us and i think interesting for all of the students is keeping in mind that when you were laying down your own tracks sometimes you felt you were a little too busy and you would do it again you know yeah yeah so to see you know you hear all the time musicians you know the dream for them is to have this great rhythm section behind them that's just drums and bass but if you have a key or a guitarist there so you were designing yeah i mean these great music you should give the drummer and i know they're not your regulars these are friends of mine some great session players from back in dallas sean mccurley is on drums and braylon lacy on base um so i've worked with sean many times over the years he he was a member of my blues band the pawn kings back in the deep elm days and braylon's a great i've known about him forever but we've just never played together he works with uh kirk whalum and uh and uh erica badu you're both from dallas so great great great players so this is the first time we've all played together so i just thought it would be the right rhythm section because they're both inspiring players to jam with yeah so that's why being in the gym okay i want my some of my favorite jammers they came out great you know and of course andy timmons on rhythm guitar he's not a bad for them on a on a good day but that but that's the thing brad you're right is we're trying to create something that the people that don't have the opportunity to go out and and play and jam on stage will be musicians which is always obviously the ultimate situation this is providing them the feeling of that you know right giving them that you know it's really the difference between getting asked to stay for another couple of tunes on stage and saying hey thanks very much next you know and that's one of the most important things i illuminate throughout is that um you know you've got to really be listening to what's around you you know we if we if all we're doing is practicing in our office or in our bedroom or whatever that's great but what music really is about what live music is really about is everybody responding to each other not just focused on their little world you know when i'm playing these rhythm tracks i'm very much paying attention to what the bass and drums are doing and trying to fit in to what that groove is but then also you know i have to imagine the soloist not having the benefit of playing live with that person being myself or the all the students that are going to be uh playing along but anticipating what would they want to hear what don't they want to hear you know your your your instincts and my instincts as as a player is if nothing else is happening well crap i'm kind of sounding like the feature i might want to fill up more space and i catch myself courting melodically which is you know it's it's a pianistic way of playing the changes you don't want to do too much of it because again you're wanting to support what's happening on top without being intrusive and and getting in the way of what they may be doing right so that's that's well excellent that's the tricky part really an excellent point thank you you touched on it briefly um every one of these there are 10 tracks yeah and every one of them you do a commentary you run through the entire track right and you're giving us a perspective of what you're hearing and how you're reacting absolutely to what the other you know musicians are doing yeah which is you know i can't think of a better way to kind of teach the art of what do you call that communication it's communication it's dialogue it's interaction it's just very very much like you were saying earlier it's very much a it's it's conversational in in the best circumstance it can be uh some of the best examples that you can witness of me and the situation is is uh of course little wing is an overplayed standard but you can there's footage of me playing lil wing with either eric gales or monty montgomery watch those videos because they're all over youtube but you these are guys i can go play with and we're really listening to each other so we're kind of you hear us kind of even if we're solving at the same time it's working because we're we're completing each other's sentences or harmonizing and so it's that kind of instinct that i've been able to develop over just years of being on stage but you're not always on stage with those kind of players you know and so you tend to gravitate to towards the ones that hopefully that will be listening you know absolutely and you know we were talking earlier how about about how you know i would say probably 80 percent of the true fire community yeah you know we have day gigs we do other things we don't get to go out and play live and um you know we're playing in a vacuum in front of our screens very very often so sure uh and that but that's that's also great not everybody that may not be their end goal but this will very much give them that feeling you know that's why i think this is such a great a great idea and it's a great a great series because you're really going to get the experience of the band i've put together i can back you up you can listen to me you can play instead of me right it's pretty cool it gets you close to the real thing you know that's what i'm shooting for so um you've got a great drummer a great bass player on this track you know okay rhythm guitar you know honestly got a little busy but actually what you can do with that always what can you do right so we've got you wanna maybe now we you see me switching guitars to that the guitar i played the rhythm with that's my new uh it's called the atz 100 it's a new ibanez guitar i just just released and i love that kind of single coily sound on that guitar but i'm going to play this guitar for the solo you just do it like that um we'll run down uh the guitar some more detail at the end fair enough let's see if i can get this guy on here and we'll i think we're going to extend uh the broadcast by i don't know an hour just to get through the pedalboard come on i get more heck from my pedals than anything from tsa you know it's pure envy oh you know that but that's really what we want you to leave behind yeah with all the dials yeah yeah well uh let's let's give a go at this uh track to tommy what do you think play a little bit see what happens [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right beautiful man so um are you ready to do some q a let's do that absolutely um but i have to is that legal in florida it is legal okay enough to read you this comment so uh jorge says beautiful love andy's phrasing and d-w-t-n-g-r-n-d says yo he's so fire i'm having an existential crisis [Laughter] i hope you know i agree with that i'm sitting here two feet away i'm having the same existential experience man um okay questions yes yes um okay uh it's funny i have never been able to find an answer on the internet who makes your straps oh wow that's a good question you know i think i've lost my favorite one but i don't even know who makes these but there's a company in chicago called soldier s-o-u-l okay d-i-e-r and uh so it my favorite one was from them but i have i've misplaced it but they're all you kind of have it here or i have no it's not here it's being lost in the world somewhere you can have great straps it could be in a hotel room in beaumont i don't know but um but they all i tend to gravitate towards the the 60s psychedelic yeah they're all kind of hendrixy in some way and uh but yeah i wish i had a better answer for that and some are diaderio which is a stream company i work this is kind of an i don't know what this is it's cool sorry that's why you can't find information on the internet because i don't even know andreas from london asks share your thoughts on moving from the drive channel on your amp to using the overdrive pedal into the clean chair that's a great question because there was there was a period of time a long period of time when i first started using the lone stars that i was i was using the lead channel on the lone star with a tube screamer in front of it it's a great lead sound and i've been kind of going back to it but there was a point uh very decidedly gosh it's been i don't know five years ago or so we had an issue with an amp that i had it was a loan ramp and i was in swindon not too far from london with andreas is and um so i couldn't use my effects loop i think it was just that the effects loop tube was was malfunctioning so i had to run everything to the front of the amp which means that you can't use distortion on the the amp distortion because the echo will be distorted because that's the that's the uh obviously the purpose of the effects loop so i had this uh jhs pedal called angry charlie that brian meter my good friend from the guitar sanctuary had turned me on to um i said i think you might like this pedal so it was on the board i was using it occasionally but so i had to run everything into the clean channel so i was using that as my full lead tone gain into my echo units into the front and i just it was one of those things where i had a great gig my friend daniel steinhardt from uh who makes this switching system the gig rig he and dave gregory from xtc happened to be in attendance and uh they were just they were raving about my tone and my and i knew that i thought my plane was a bit more articulate i thought i had a little bit more control that way so i just kind of went down this path and that led to me going to introduce myself to josh scott at jhs and i said yeah i i understand you've been using our pedal we've been selling a lot more of them lately i was like well that's awesome if you anything you want to change maybe we could do a version of the pedal that became my at pedal so we changed a few things about it and uh i've been using it ever since and that's my full-on lead tone that's what you're hearing today but that's a great question and but i go back and forth and i still love the lead sound of the lone star so i'm kind of starting to utilize that more so i you know i'm just i'm a gain freak and that's why the pedal board's so large there's so many types of gains that are in my types of sounds are in my head i want to be able to get all of them mm-hmm i'm selfish i want all of them here why not uh and so these are the things that i'm using to search and try to get to that place sometimes it causes more trouble than good but sometimes when it all lines up right it's like oh i've got i've got the palette i need to express as freely as i want to that's really the goal right electric expression we're trying to electric we're trying to get to that point where we're really expressing not just you know speaking words at the right time at the in the right space meaning musically so that's that's that's my goal and that's why there's tone questing that's why there's all these pedals it's what we're all doing we're trying to get that level to where we can really get out what's inside of us that's the beauty of music and speaking of electric expression you know gratuitous kind of plug for your first course here yeah which was unbelievable unbelievable really really well received so well thank you um and uh melodic muse was the one you did just previously which i think uh provided a lot of insight into you know how you're thinking and crafting creatively i thought i thought yeah that was a difficult one to tackle how do you teach melody but that's why i kind of came up with the concept well you can intellectually study melody you could figure out why does that note make me feel a certain way so that's the intellectual part but i came up with the phrase the orelect which is another type of uh function i think that is a collection of musical ideas that you've taken in over the years that that also in very much inform how you think melodically i'm always playing phrases that are just from the library of things i've heard before or maybe that are inspired by something that moved me a certain way so there's that intellect in the art i speak quite a bit about that and i lead the lead the the players through a lot of different ways of kind of finding finally i thought it was i mean you know a very very accessible way of explaining yeah you know how that happens um and then you did the blues thing you know so uh there's already a unbelievable library of stuff here that you really really should check out and you know please do if you haven't already um any one of those courses uh will serve you well are you guys the rest of your life you've kind of ignited the uh the teacher in me you know i i started giving lessons occasionally at my in my friend's guitar shop like i mentioned the guitar sanctuary back in in mckinney my best friend george fuller that's his place and he had a friend that you know what was asking me for a lesson and i hadn't really taught much over the years because i just really i wasn't confident with it i didn't feel like i was very good at it but that at that point you know i gathered quite a bit more experience and i found that i kind of enjoyed it it was right about that time that you know i started doing a couple of those and through jeff mcelan you know our mutual friend he's kept he kept suggesting you know he really should talk to my friends and i was like yeah i'm a commitment foe right i don't know he says yeah but robin ford and larry carlton well okay maybe okay if those guys if those guys are cozy then then i know i know i'd be in great company and it's been been great and this will led me to my own website now too in addition to true far i've got guitar experience.net where people can go i love that i'm a uh annual subscriber myself um yeah i still owe you for my money for that no you owe me nothing maybe a sushi dinner when i come out now yeah come on down to today's good coffee you're a coffee freak too i love i love a good car um guitar experience you can get to it you go to andy timmon's site and there's there's a link to it there but right you take um songs you've recorded in the past you perform them on video yeah um break it down and you know extensively extensively is an understatement they're tabbed out i mean it's a wealth of just a wealth of knowledge it's fun for me because there's some of these things and the same with what i what i do in the true fire courses there's so much of the stuff that's really been just instinctual and developed over just repetition and years of doing it but it's also a lot it's very gratifying for me to have to kind of break down the techniques and the compositional and the melodic elements and figure out ways of explaining okay even though this may have just been something i just did or developed subconsciously well okay that really does come from somewhere and it helps me you know define what i've done in the past and how i can how i can learn from it too because i'm still learning a lot from this well and what's awesome you know the work we do together here at true fire you know focuses a lot on kind of the craft you know um and what you're doing in your head and approaches uh technique when you break down your songs you're taking a finished piece of work right and really analyzing it so yeah you could go there and learn the song note for note you can pick up some licks but what i like about you know what i've seen so far is kind of getting inside your head very much so yeah you know to understand why you painted with the colors you painted exactly i don't know that's me no it is no it's fun and i because i've always enjoyed i love those behind the music you know videos where they're going through the faders on the track and really revealing you know what's made this thing that you that you really love so okay let's let's talk about let's just get get behind the curtain a little bit yeah so that's guitar experience yeah right oh yeah and uh sign up join me as an annual subscriber you're very good i'll take at least a year to get through one of his solos okay if i can see if i can do it anybody can do it yeah yeah certainly you can do it okay more questions yeah oh i like this as a father and a husband how do you strike a work home life balance especially when you're on the road well that's just it um i really ever said especially since my son alex was born he's 15 now um you know i very much pick and choose the work that i do and you know because the family is most important but yeah but also you know my life has been geared towards my pursuit of of guitar and music so it is a balancing act but uh thankfully you know married 23 years now and i'm a happy healthy son at home but it's it's it's very much me picking and choosing i've had i have to thin things out you know sometimes which i've done over time i've had to turn down some pretty significant offers if i was gonna be oh you're gonna be gone you know six seven months out of the year so i'm not gonna do that right i had plenty of friends i was somewhat fortunate that my son was born when i was 40. so a little late in life for to have a son but at the same time i'd had lived enough of the of the the traveling you missed me just tonight but i'd also seen a lot of my peers who had had kids when they were younger and missed the entire childhood right you know just because by virtue of always being on the road so you know i was sensitive my folks divorced when i was young so i was sensitive to not having a dad around i guess and i didn't want to be be that for my son though i have to be gone sometimes and it wasn't easy especially early on i got to leave my baby but that's a great question but it is very much something that i take uh very seriously and like i say so far so good it's like with any relationship with any family it's it's always it's always work it's always what can we do to make this the best situation well you know um hats off to you because it's a very deliberate um and a very deliberate balancing act yeah you know you made it work for yourself thank you um you got a you know a very prideful thing going on there so i appreciate that very much um they're both watching from the gym hello are they really monica and alex all right um let's do another track if you can okay um i think let's just try track three and uh this one's this one's based on uh a ballad of mine called cry for you which yes track five so that's um certainly one of my more popular tunes and i still love playing this so much it's in d minor which of course the saddest of all keys the song was written actually many many many years ago when i first joined danger danger i moved away from texas to go to hackensack new jersey where i was living with the singer ted i lived in hack instead did you i was right across from the essex diner on summit you're kidding me right there so there i was with my four track and i was missing my girlfriend who was not my current wife but just an old girlfriend that so you know it was written for her and it's like okay the song has lasted a lot longer than the girlfriend did but uh but i still love playing it every night and so let's do a little bit of the rhythm track first just again give a flavor for you know how we're doing some of these things um yeah let's just do that [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you get the idea right we're we're starting off you know dynamically and kind of building up and i'm increasing the intensity as the drummer gets a little more into it and so how will you approach the solo for this i'm pretty much with that in mind you know we're going to start dynamically this one doesn't really have any breakdowns as i recall so it's four minutes of full-on d minor yeah but it's again it this has always been for whatever reason it's a beautiful key and chord progression for for expression so we can uh try a bit of that on the solo let's try it hit it tommy [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hey [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can see why we were just sitting like in the control room just amazed dazed and amazed man okay let me let me say that you know you can see well sometimes i'm playing and my eyes are closed and sometimes that can get you in trouble uh but the thing about it and in in in the in the through the series of the course it's like it's okay to make a mistake we have to get past this this fear there's such a fear of making a mistake especially in i'm live on the internet right now right and so i'm a little uber aware so i might i might play something that oh man i wish i wish i hadn't played it like that i wish i didn't get the note i was looking for we got to get past that because it just it doesn't matter anymore you know everything you do is on youtube or right it's out there and i'd much rather live my life in a way to where we're still going for stuff we're still it's okay to you know you might misspeak in a conversation you shouldn't be worried about that or else you're going to have a speech impediment the rest of your life right where that you might just be so much in your head about being fearful so the thing about a jam was it's not supposed to be perfect that we're here to have a dialogue into and to hopefully say some things we've never said before we don't want to repeat the same conversation we had last week right it might be the same words but let's say them in a different way that further illuminate how we're feeling in the moment that's i think the ultimate you know thing with music that we can get to is to have that that level of expression so this is all an excuse for me to cover up the fact that i made a mistake but but it's it's very sincere we'd be hard-pressed to find where are the mistakes but that's such a good point and that's um you know jamming yeah you're gonna make some mistakes right absolutely but that that's the sign that you're letting go a bit and you're you know you're you're going for stuff and there's there's there's some things throughout the course where i'll hear something you know i'll hear myself repeating things i've played before but also here's some things i have i've never thought of that particular thing so i'm i'm so happy to be open to not just regurgitating the same phrases but i which is which can be a very valid form of you know musical expression but you want the new stuff too and you got to be open to that but you're going to make mistakes so take the good with the bad cool but i'd rather i'd rather be living like that it's very honest there you go man are you ready for some more questions oh absolutely yeah okay first shout out more fans chiming in from seattle mumbai montreal serbia guatemala indonesia dominican republic belgium new mexico panama oklahoma illinois venice and finland i mean isn't that crazy this is for a little kid from indiana that never i know playing guitar in his bedroom that never thought he'd leave evansville indiana crazy right it's insane and i i just want everybody that's watching to know how how thankful i am to that you know i'm at this point in my life and and anybody cares about what i'm doing it's you know because i've always just been i've always just been a fan i'm i'm as you guys are tuning in i tuned in when robin ford was here you know i have i have my heroes i have uh you know all the people that i look up to still it's through the fact that there's people that are looking in my direction that way in any way i'm very honored by that and i'm i never take it for granted so thank you guys and you you don't that's sincere i mean i will tell you that whether we're you know having coffee together or dinner this is one humble cat you know it just kind of blows it's just honest just honest you know but not that's why we love you man as much as we do love back at you uh iran and bangladesh just chimed in okay um okay questions um all-time favorite movie wow that's tough i mean it's hard it's the things that flood to my mind are it's a wonderful life just because it's such a beautiful sentiment yeah um but who doesn't love spinal tap and and i gotta say mighty wind is up there which is like the the folk version of uh of spinal taps yeah i guess i really don't have one i'm a nut i'm like a a fool for christmas story during the holidays just because it is what it is you know who doesn't love that movie but you know it's funny but i'm not a huge movie guy i just there's some people that like just seem to know everything about every movie right i quickly uh you know have to say oh i never saw x whatever it is but that's a great question but gave us a couple titles here yeah um of are there other non-guitar player soloists that you like to follow or study or emulate a huge i'm a huge fan of both oscar peterson and bill evans oh oscar peterson oscar just the opportunity both of them yeah oscar the epitome of what swing what my idea of swing should feel like there's a record that he did with ray brown and herbalis in 1955 called uh live at the strat stratford shakespearean festival it's a live trio record and nothing i've ever heard swings that hard now bill evans is another story where he can swing you know so great but it's his touch he gets more emotion out of the piano than i've ever ever heard there's a beautiful version of uh my foolish heart that he he would perform and it was early 60s i think just i i heard it on the local gas station in in texas a few a few years ago i pulled over which is like it wrecked me this was so deep and so beautiful i love cannonball adderley on the on the saxophone of course to learn how to also swing in a dynamic fashion charlie parker is unbeatable the way the dynamics within his lines the peaks and the valleys of of how he would articulate really i listened a lot to him in my early college years and he really was a huge influence you went to a university of miami i think yeah my first two years ago i was who else was who's that i'm sorry well who um who else came out of that universe a lot of players there's a lot of great players i just i just introduced you to teddy cumple he was my roommate he's out with joe jackson right now but timmy mitchell and brian monroney and teddy castellucci and mike abbott uh come to mind joel kipnis there was a it was just you know as great as the faculty and curriculum was it was the other players you know and so you know not everybody and i you know i paid student loans back for years and years not everybody can afford to go to that kind of college but any situation you can be into where you're around mutually passionate driven people you know going for the same thing you're going for it's it's so great it's such an inspiring thing i mean it can be daunting too because i'm around those players that i mentioned you know i could have easily just packed up and went home and got these guys are way way better than me though but we all had our you know i came into that school as a i was really the established rock guy i was i was learning jazz and i'd studied classical mm-hmm and uh so i really had that as my strength but all these other guys were there's a fusion guy bebop guy this one guy could read anything you put in front of him you know so we all had things to offer each other and it was that luckily it was it was a very non-competitive group of people to where we really just enjoyed hanging out together so i look back very the two years that i was in miami was 83 to 85 and i look back very fondly that you know i can see that that was two of the biggest years of my musical growth because i was also gigging six nights a week i'd get all this inspiration and be transcribing all these great jazz solos getting theory then applying it all to madonna tunes it you know for six sets a night down at the that down at raffles you know whatever we were playing so it was it was the ultimate immersion basically you know so and it's all um we're kind of woven into your orlick right absolutely and that's exactly right your original music yeah it all feeds together there was a point not long after i'd kind of really been immersed in that that scene and i was playing rock but somebody pointed out to me you know everything you play kind of swings a little bit okay but that's nothing wrong with that nothing at all i mean listen ringo starr the way he plays drums there's a lot of swinging what he does but he didn't really listen to swing but he listened to ray charles and those drummers had a bit of that vibe you know so you really are you know uh a product of all these things that you've taken in that that connect with you emotionally that's and that is the oral act that's that part that you're not maybe always conspicuously or conscious of aware of but it's no it's it's in there it makes who you are and melodic muse the the course you did which you know we it really blew us away when you laid out that curriculum and presented it because um you showed us how to tap that orlick you know because it's there but you don't really realize that it's as important or as creative a tool that was a killer curriculum well thank you thank you um okay what musicians are you listening to at this moment wow okay though okay you know i do and here's what i use bill lenero makes these really wonderful little they're almost like start off as a bread tie but you know what i when i was doing the play-throughs earlier i took the straps off so i had to discombobulate it yeah but thank you tommy um going back to that what was the question again we were just talking about how quick who are you listening to oh okay you know this this is every day is different now i've been really heavily into barney kessel again because my first guitar player could first guitar teacher a guy named ron pritchett in evansville indiana when i was 16. taught me he was teaching me even though i was i was already playing three years professionally i was a good rock player by then but you know i wanted to learn how to read music so it was lesson one of the oahu's you know notes on the treble strings but he knew that i could play everybody so then he would start turning me on to he'd write out changes to jazz standards and barney kessel was his guy he could play just like this so barney kessel is a a very uh very much a fond uh influence of mine really kind of he took the torch from charlie christian and took it to the next level you know so he's kind of like the glue between charlie and wes you know um and i just love he's a very blues-based player so it really connects with me but also wes west montgomery is hard to beat i'm always a matheny fan but then you know but the next day i'm listening to kiss right like i'm like you know i get back into my 70s you know headspace and all i just i just get out the name drop point but i just ran into getty lee in toronto with and dave grohl like three days ago like these are some of my my heroes in the rock and roll because i the first song i ever played with the band was bastille day you know back in whenever it was 1976. so all the 70s rock still is a fun thing for me to go back to so i'm always kind of bouncing around that's awesome you know there's a lot of new players coming out too i'm influenced by all the i love all eric gales uh junior is a is a favorite of mine and you got you got josh smith and you got so many great you know modern blues players just just sound amazing there's so much happening there is a lot happening so there's hope man you know and and again no matter what level you get to you realize you're a beginner you know because you can instantly be humbled by standing next to tommy emanuel one day or or eric johnson the next or whoever and just go man this is possible yeah which was one of the questions which is are you still learning was that are you still learning and developing oh my gosh yeah i think more more consistently now than well of course it's hard it's hard to top your the youthful the youthful mind and you know in the college days but i think i'm uh i'm more aware of of honoring the gift whatever gift i have you know finally getting to a place where [Music] you know that's it's really one i it's what i want to honor the most and so the first thing i do every day is play at least an hour you know i love playing just play some jazz standards with my ireal book app um and when it comes to transcribing i it was always kind of daunting to me because i really didn't physically like to write things out it doesn't have to be that it doesn't have to be if it's homework to you you know anytime things are or feel like a hassle or a chore there's bet there might be a different thing that might resonate with you and for me it's just learning just one lick learn the one lick or something that really kind of uh you can isolate and get the kind of get the the little little treat you know what i mean um but if you do if you make that an exercise and try to do that every day that can really be a great thing but you want to document now you might just want to make a an isolated recording of it or video yourself after you learn it because if you're like me a few days can go by and if you don't consistently apply it it'll be gone you know i'm saying it gets into that little cache file and you're in your brain it could be deleted right um so it's handy to make a little folder of these ideas as you go and make it a point to try to it's like learning any any language you want to be able to apply it with the jam tracks or whatever you want to be able to kind of try to see if you can you know assimilate it into your vocabulary good point but even just but even just the exercise of doing it whether it becomes part of your vocabulary or not the exercise of physically and trying to dig it out by ear you know i'm sure you can find a transcription or a video showing it right i participate in that kind of content as well but the more that you get it through your ears first and there's plenty of you know options on uh on software even youtube you can slow stuff down i hope you know that right there's a setting yeah in the in the tool thing on youtube where you can slow it down by a quarter or half or so slow the video down but try to get it with your ears not your eyes because that develops the orlect otherwise you're just visually learning something and it's not the ears so it's a very different way of incorporating a good point i mean especially today uh you know when anyone who's over 40 okay we didn't have oh right guitar pro and tab and you had to yeah slow the vinyl down with your thumb and whacked out pitch and yeah but you know today there are so many tools and it's so easy to pick up and get that tool and you're you're saying do it with your ears to internalize it it's it's it's a balance it's about yeah i mean i again i love watching and if i have trouble with a whatever it is i i no problem getting help but that is the way we learned back then we didn't we had rarely had anything even on television i'd watch hee haw just to see roy clark play guitar yeah you know but yeah i had we had we had a record player a needle in our ear and our guitar and i'd realized years later that was that was the best thing it could have been because i had to earn it you know i had to really really get in there and and dig for it so let's um oh one just one really quick yeah uh john boyd says just saw the video of steve by handing his guitar off to you yeah how did that feel okay well see i've known steve said i first met him in 1988 back in his david lee roth days so but then in 1990 early the early 90s i became an ibanez and dorsey so then we began you know i would i would see him at ibanez events or be on stage with him sometimes like the ax attack was a big nam show concert 1993. that alex goldnick and reb beach and sean lane and satriani and uh vi so we were you know i would and then g3 started happening and so he would invite me to come play which was you know an amazing honor because obviously steve and joe and of course eric johnson and all the guys they've had on the tours they're all you know big heroes of mine but they started inviting me which is obviously a great honor but this was a particular show in dallas a couple years ago where i think it was the 25th anniversary of passionate warfare it was a big production and he he invited me to the choice of man i can't invite you to play there's a lot going on but yeah please come you know and i'll see you after the show yeah so my wife my wife monica and my best friend sylvia also goes to the show with me so it's myself my my two girls and we're watching the show it's getting close to the end of the show during the show i should point out that he had some video things worked out where at one point joe satriani appears on the big screen he goes hey steve they had this whole thing worked out right so they jammed together right like that's so cool then then john petrucci shows up up there it's like oh wow there's there's john's like i'm like crap i want to play right i'm literally having that thought you know but oh well you know another time right but so then it's the last song sylvia and monica go tidy up but they're going to the restroom because we're going to say hi to steve after it's the last song but here comes steve with a wireless and thomas is behind him you know it's just tech and he's wandering out in the crowd he has no idea where i'm sitting he knows i'm there but but somebody was videoing this luckily so you see him come down the aisle and he sees me and you see the look of happiness and joy on his face without a thought his first instinct is to hand me his but how cool is that yeah that in that moment he's so selfish i'll be here man you know and uh so i he hands me his guitar and he's like trying to hand me his pick i said i've already got one in my hand because i mean every guitar player you always have a pick right so he hands me his guitar i whittle around for a minute and i'm like just facing him he goes turn around and i turn around everybody's on their chairs with their with their phones filming it was it was a crazy moment well meantime sylvia and moniker are like coming out the rest of going what is going on down there you know they'd gone here hold my water i'll be right back they come back they said you had one job you know what happened we go away what happens right there you go so but it again it's it's it's amazing that somebody uh caught that that initial thing it's it's what an honor but steve steve has been a very uh a very good friend a very very big supporter because i ended up on his his favorite nations label i was one of his first assignees when he started that label in the early 2000s so that that's been a great friendship and he's been an excellent mentor he's very very wise and uh fun and creative guy he is wise in many ways kind of a godfather no he is uh no he is very giving in that way absolutely okay so let's see we're not running over too late but how about we do one more track yeah solo over it sure and then we'll do the gear rundown let's do that but skip the rhythm part okay so we can get to the gear okay uh i'll see what track are we gonna do what do we have up tommy we have one and we have nine one and nine yeah this uh wow it's hard to jump into well let's do a bit of nine just because it's high energy cool you wanna do that yeah i don't see that let me tune this one's like kind of supposed to sound like buddy miles and billy cox with hendricks you know she's got kind of riff rock [Music] um [Music] oh [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] that's great shout out to ace really so uh that's uh andy timmons in the gym lots more of that 10 tracks really i love the selection and variety of feels and tempos they're all very jammable and um if you just want to sit back and watch more of this you can do that but if you want to jump in the jam with andy yeah you've got the tool to do come on in uh shall we show off some gear absolutely where do you want to start guitars um i'm playing my old faithful right now this is the um it's 25 years old now this is the original prototype for what became the at-100 my signature guitar with ibanez like i mentioned earlier i've been working with ivannes since the early 90s and so it's been a really long really excellent relationship and i also have a new i think i played this on a couple things earlier this is the new ver the new version of of the old at100 it's called the atz100 which most notably has the the roasted maple neck and uh a different bridge pickup now i've got a single coil single coil voice cruiser so even more vintage in in sound and of course you've got a bit of a matte finish which looks really nice so really really really happy with that guitar that's been you know because i have old fender strat and telly stuff that i'll use in the studio i've been taking this and that's getting more play than the old the vintage guys it's just more relevant both are available right yeah this is just just coming into the stores at the end of this month so it's just it's been in development for quite a while but it's just being released but this one's been out now well they've been remaking it now for over maybe seven eight years now so we're both both available yeah and street price oh gosh uh i think it's 27.99 but i'm sure that you get it much much cheaper yeah and we were we were talking before the broadcast um these are you haven't modified you're they are exactly it's in the that's that's the design and place and when we first released the original at100 you know all along they said well we can make it this way or we can save money and cut corners and and i can i as a business person i understood it but at the same time as a you know i'm i was approaching it much more as just an artist and a fan right because you know you grew up like well i want that exact guitar my favorite players playing with a lot of times it wasn't necessarily what you saw in the ads that's right right how many times did we see that so i was very sensitive to that so i really i i stood my ground up like this has to be exactly the guitar that i'm playing so yeah and even changes that i've made over time those changes are applied to the signature nice because i originally had different tuners on the guitars now they're using the same tuners that i changed to um but yeah it's been it's been that way for all these guitars and it'll be the same now with the with the atz-100 it'll be the one that i'm playing and they're you know really affordable vr absolutely it's it's you know absolutely so i'm very very very proud of that long uh relationship and again proud to have a guitar that's that they they can go get and know that it's exactly what i'm playing beautiful yeah and let's go to the amps now you always play the mesa we talked about the macy's i've been using the mesa lone star since about 2005. so it's been a long time staple of mine and i've just never been so happy you know live and in the studio um it's it's it's it's my job on the live stage in the studio to come in with my sound the engineer shouldn't it's not their job to make me sound good though you know years before that i i didn't think about it as much i was more concerned about the playing you know i was certainly i wanted a good sound but i was just thinking about more about the playing but over time you know i got more into really being aware as much as i could sonically and the way that it's all evolved just using the clean front end of that i love this clean channel of the lone star and just running all the all the uh all the effects in front of it except for the time-based effects and by that i mean the uh the uh the the echoes and stuff that's gonna go in the effects loop so and there's obviously lots of different types of things i've got to go in front of it i'm not sure if tommy's got a photo of it i believe tommy's going to show us can he show us that i think we're on a delay here i can see coming see a little bit of a modern okay but so it's it's it's basically the whole the whole system is controlled by the uh by the the the gig rig the g2 um so my guitar is fed into that and then it's connected to all the different pedals and i have a variety of presets where i can essentially turn on or off any of the pedals it also has midi you can do lots of different things with it which i'm basically just only using it to switch my pedals on and off right and so the main components of that first i'm running into a a c-a-e and that feeds the front of the g2 this little mini pedal you see this little dunlop it's an expression pedal that controls it can control any parameter of the timeline but i'm choosing just to control the uh they point to it with your foot so we know exactly there is okay that's a good idea here is the uh little min it looks like a mini wawa pedal but it's a volume pedal and expression problem i've got that to control the echoes on the timeline right and then you've got this awesome sonic research tuner arguably your most important pedal because tuning is very important and then we've got the g2 here that's the bank of presets i have that controls all the different gain essentially gain structures um the clean channel of the amp sounds like this hold on but you almost never hear me just into the clean channel if it's a clean sound i'll generally have that's my carl martin uh dual compressor that's it's hitting the front front of the amp pretty pretty significantly [Music] now to that i might add there's this rc boost pedal which is a great exotic pedal i've been using exotic pedals for a long time in fact i have a signature bb pedal it's not on my board right now but it's another pedal that i use quite a bit i've got that thinned out quite a bit i'm going to put the base back up [Music] and then i can switch on the old that's an old ts808 it's an original tube screamer and that sounds one of the classics one of the most identifiable types of gain then we can switch to my ghs at pedal which is basically my full-on lead tone so here's the of course i'm usually i'm usually running it into the lone stars but i can i can take that pedal in front of any amp and i'm going to get very close to my sound so that's that's a handy thing to have now i've got another one of the jhs at pedals on here and i've got that when i want to run a fuzz pedal there's a there's a jhs muffle edifies i've been using that kind of replicates some of the early big muff pedals and if to use a to use a fuzz it's kind of tough to go [Music] it needs to go into a pretty cranked amp so what i've got the jhs set up for the at is a little less gain but [Music] then you get this real creamy kind of fuzz sound now that you've got a good kind of amped up sound to get into [Music] in this pretty flower petal that's a retro vibe by the jam company from uh company out of greece [Music] i'm always changing chorus pedals but this one's been sounding pretty nice it's a noi neighbor [Music] got a really nice try chorus the octavia sound is this green uh pedal from brazil from the g i company really great friends of mine which i hit i have a button that says octave and i change it that's what i get when i have things mislabeled oh it's over here [Music] it's that real ratty uh upper octave kind of uh octavius and the hendrix [Music] and uh quirkily this i never have it usually on my pedalboard but i decided i want something for like a george benson tone on that first that first track i played on so i've got this is my practice unit it's an old tone works by korg from the 90s or whenever that i used to practice with but it gets a really nice kind of direct you know jazzy sound [Music] so i can live my bebop fantasy there sure but those are the main things that i'm using today um so is this a typical board you'd bring out on the road with you absolutely yeah this is this is my main my main touring board but again some elements swap out but that's the beauty of it we're always you know that if we just get that one different pedal then you know then i'll play great you know if if only right but uh but it help i mean again it's it's these are all tools and just trying to have have something a sound at my disposal that i might want to go to yeah you know yeah what's interesting to me is you know they all sound like you well we can't get away from that we are going to sound yeah but do you know what i mean nothing is overly dramatic in one direction or another right you have a very tuned ear to exactly what you're what you know your elect thing yeah yeah that's this exactly that is part of that library of you know the benchmark of tones of our heroes you know but because we can't sound like them we may try and be frustrated that we don't it's those limitations that make us sound like us you know i might be in my mind i might be falling short of what i'm really wanting to hear but in that is where i that's where you know my sound is not to say that i'm not ever happy with the way i sound because some some days sometimes i do and i think okay well that really sounds good but there's a lot of times where you don't feel that that's part of the process i don't know that there's any any great artists or even or any human that are really just like oh i'm i'm perfectly satisfied that was awesome you know i have nowhere to grow you know that wouldn't be any fun yeah you know so again it can be frustrating but when we get those little those little nuggets of of encouragement of like wow that sounded pretty good you know that that's what drives us and keeps us going right well if you want encouragement come go later and watch your chat here you've got uh hundreds of fans really i'm appreciating um your music um your teaching the time that you spent with us today which i really appreciate happy to do so again i'm happy i'm so honored to have a platform to to share whatever is my experience is you know and and because i i i realized at this point that there's some value to that if it helps other people get to the place where they're really enjoying uh music then that's a a wonderful thing to be able to pass on so good thanks for providing that is very much appreciated man so how about you pick a track play us out um yeah say goodbye and thank you to all your fans out there and we certainly appreciate you tuning in absolutely let's just go with track one time it'll be a nice mellow way to send everybody out something cool but thank you brad thanks true fire thank you thanks for tuning in [Music] do do [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] me hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right

Channel: TrueFire

Views: 102,349

Keywords: TrueFire (Award Winner), Guitar (Musical Instrument), Guitar Lessons, ellis paul

Id: QkQrdYXs5PY

Length: 91min 55sec (5515 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2019