- 4 hours ago
Guitar World's Paul Riario sits down with Cardinal Black guitarist Chris Buck (and his Yamaha Revstar) to talk favorite pedals, finding the guitars that speak to him and the baggage that comes with, um, some of them.
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00:00There's so much baggage that comes with the Strat, arguably more so than any other guitar,
00:04because it's such a distinctive sounding guitar.
00:07And the moment you're kind of maybe on the neck pickup with an amp that's kind of pumping
00:12and you're kind of playing quite aggressively, well, it's Stevie Ray.
00:15If you're kind of on the bridge pickup and you've got a load of gain on you,
00:19run into a Marshall, then you're Ritchie Blackmore.
00:21If you're in the in-between positions and you're on the edge of your breakup, you're John Mayer.
00:24If you start using the tremolo bar, you'll have the kind of older generation coming out going,
00:28Hank Marvin. So there's so much baggage with the Strat that I felt increasingly like
00:34I was trying to find my voice and find my identity as a musician.
00:37Hey, what's up? It's Paul from Guitar World and I am here with the esteemed major guitar player,
00:42Chris Buck. I'm so excited to have him. He's here in the state touring with his band Cardinal Black
00:47and I'm going to ask him a bunch of questions, but thank you for coming.
00:50Thank you for having me, man. I was just saying off camera, it's surreal meeting you.
00:53I've been watching you on YouTube now, but longer than probably either of us care to admit.
00:57So, yeah, no, thank you for having me.
00:59As I told you, I'm flattered and humbled by that and like all my babies have grown up to be
01:03amazing guitar players that I get to interview now.
01:06I mean, for nothing else, you've cost me a lot of money over the years with various
01:09products I've been taken in by with your incredible players. So thank you, man.
01:13And for that, I apologize.
01:15Before I get into it, because I'm going to mostly try to talk a little bit of gear with you,
01:18but before I get into it, the funny thing, I want to give you a little background.
01:22The first time I'd ever heard you was I was scrolling through YouTube and I saw that Paul
01:30Davids had a bunch of these guitar players, really well-known guitar players come play
01:35on this solo on one of these tracks. And that was my first introduction to you.
01:39Oh, cool.
01:40And of course, it was your solo that was by far the standout, the most compelling to
01:46me. I was struck by it. And the thing that really caught me was the fact that it was like,
01:51at times, you have that phrasing that almost sounds like Derek Trucks without a slide.
01:57Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:58You know, it's the way the way you approach with your fingers and the way you slide across
02:02the fingerboard. It's almost as if your approach to guitar is almost like trying to be a vocalist.
02:09Yeah.
02:09And it's impressive.
02:10Oh, thank you.
02:10Can you tell me, is that something that you consciously wanted to get there or do?
02:15Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you're not alone in a lot of people having discovered
02:19me through that Paul Davids video. That was, you know, kind of a fairly pivotal moment in
02:24my life, you know, just in terms of the amount of eyes that were suddenly on me as a
02:27consequence of Paul's channel. So I'm forever indebted to him for that. But yeah, for whatever
02:31reason, that solo seemed to resonate with people and seemed to kind of, you know, it
02:35just happened at a fairly opportune moment as well. For me, it was October of 2020. And
02:40I vividly remember that because the video went live the week after my son was born.
02:44Wow.
02:44And it was in COVID. So obviously all of my typical avenues of earning money as a musician
02:49had evaporated all, albeit overnight. And that video just kind of took off, you know,
02:54kind of went sort of fairly stratospheric within the guitar community and suddenly put a lot
02:57of eyes on me. So yeah, that was cool. That was a big moment.
03:00And it's well deserved because you were playing, your playing was unlike any other guitar player
03:05I'd seen up at that point. I mean, like I said, there was, to me, the comparisons of Derek
03:09Trucks was very close. But at the same time, you were doing it in such a soulful and slinky
03:14way.
03:14Oh, thank you.
03:15And also just pocket was just the way you play is just, it really caught me.
03:20I mean, my slide playing is a disgrace to the human race. So I stay well clear of a slide
03:25as much as I can. But yeah, that idea of trying to emulate or capture some degree of like vocal
03:32fluidity that you have as a slide player, like Derek Trucks is a great example. You know,
03:36Sonny Landreth, Joey Landreth, whoever, all of the Landreths apparently.
03:39Sonny Landreth, right.
03:40But that, you know, kind of effortless vocal phrasing that you have, if you're not necessarily
03:45restricted by frets in the way that normal guitar players are, trying to capture that
03:49in some way, shape, or form.
03:49And you always had been playing like that. That's the irony, of course. It's just that
03:52that's all up in your style.
03:53You know, kind of, I guess it's actually, I've never been the most diligent of people
03:58when it comes to practicing guitar. Guitar, for me, at least, when I discovered it was,
04:02that was what was so fun about it was it was the kind of, it was the juxtaposition. It was
04:05like the antithesis of anything academic I was doing, where you have to put all this effort
04:09into it because you're told that you have to practice. Guitar, I discovered and just
04:13fell head over heels in love with. And at no point have I ever considered myself to actually
04:18having practiced guitar because I just play it all the time because I love it and I want
04:21to get better at it and enjoy it and explore it. But that said, one of the few things I've
04:25ever put any kind of degree of effort into on the guitar was listening to my favorite vocalists,
04:30whether it's Sam Cooke, whether it's Otis Redding, Ruth Franklin, whoever, and trying
04:35to kind of emulate or capture their idiosyncrasies in their voice and their unique way of approaching
04:43melody or harmony or whatever, and trying to play like that on a guitar, varying degrees
04:49of success, of course. But if you can at least have that in the back of your mind as to kind
04:53of your approach as to soloing or just guitar playing in general, I think it does give it
04:57a slightly more vocal, melodic feel. So I'm glad that seems to come across. That's cool.
05:02No, you really have proven how the guitar can be such an expressive instrument, you know,
05:07and the guitar style shows that.
05:09The guitar is just awesome and it is such an expressive instrument, arguably a lot more
05:14so than most other instruments, because you have all of these kind of little things that
05:18you have access to, whether it's vibrato, like you can't vibrato a note on a piano, for
05:22example. And then vibrato is so distinctive and so unique to guitar players, whether it's
05:27B.B. King or whether it's a faster vibrato like Slash, whoever, you know, whether it's a big,
05:31wide kind of more typically kind of of that genre, Steve Vai vibrato. It's so unique and
05:36so distinctive that you have all of these expressive tools on your fingertips. So, yeah,
05:41I'm just continually in love with a guitar, you know, I kind of just fall more in love
05:45with it every day.
05:46What is the first, like, thing or aspect that you look for, say, in a guitar? Like,
05:51what is the thing that, like, speaks to you?
05:53It's a slightly controversial one, because there'll be those that swear blind that it
05:56makes zero difference. How loud it is acoustically. Any guitar that I've ever tried or been interested
06:03in or subsequently bought, you can guarantee I wouldn't have gone that far if I hadn't
06:07sat down and just gone, and it's been like, oh cool, it feels like it's resonating, it feels
06:11like it's vibrating against my body. Which again, I'm not going to get in the scientifics or the
06:16suit of scientifics of that, because I don't understand it. But, you know.
06:19For me, that's always been the sign of a good guitar, it's how loudly it resonates on fun.
06:23Absolutely. My most recent guitar purchase is a 62335, which I'm still convinced that they
06:30kind of, they played me like a fiddle here, this guitar auctioneer in the UK called Gardner
06:34Holgate, who, their usual guy for demos, wasn't available. And I happened to be in between
06:39tours, we'd been touring with Miles Kennedy around Europe, and we'd finished one leg, we had
06:44a couple of days off before going back out, and they rang me saying, oh, so-and-so isn't
06:48available. Are you available? Do you want to come in and play some cool guitars? And
06:51they get some incredible instruments in. There was a 63 Strat that I played that day that
06:56looked like it had come out of the factory yesterday, it was terrifying, it was so pristine.
07:00But one of the guitars that I had to play that day was the 62335, and I picked it up and straight
07:05away it caught my eye just by how unusual it was. A fair amount of experience with vintage
07:09guitars, but it didn't look like any vintage 335 that I've ever played. The binding on the
07:13the bass side was bright white. I was like, well, that's unusual, with really strange
07:18little dots. Headstock looked unusual, there was a lot about it, I was like, this just looks
07:22really strange. Didn't really give it much more thought. If there's any Gibson like that
07:26that I don't immediately recognise, a bit of a blind spot in my knowledge, it's like 80s
07:30to 90s. So I'm like, it's probably just an anomaly from that era. Didn't really think
07:34much of it. Sat down, played an E chord, and it all but leapt off my lap. I'm like, oh, cool, this is interesting.
07:40The only thing I can compare it to, having played a few 335s now, and a few like Holy Grail
07:46335s belonging to various people, they never sound like I imagine they're going to sound.
07:51They always sound a bit like a banjo. They're kind of like, very nasally, and can be quite
07:55quiet for the size of the guitar. The only guitar I've ever played where you think, oh, that
07:59kind of feels, or that sounds how I would imagine it to sound, is a casino, which of course
08:03is like Fully Hollow, and he's loud and boomy. This 335 sounded like a casino. So I was
08:09like straight away intrigued. Plugged it in, just amazing, beautiful sounding guitar. And
08:14it was interesting. Having played so many guitars that day, it kind of became a bit like a factory
08:19line. You kind of like guitar in, guitar out, guitar in, guitar out, like play 30 plus guitars. And
08:24you know, if you're filming, you're on camera, just get the job done. The 335, suddenly you
08:29had kind of all of the guys working in the offices around the thing sticking their heads out.
08:33I was going, what is that? That sounds awesome. And one of them made the point and said, oh,
08:36you can tell you like that. Your playing sounds better. It sounds inspired. You sound like
08:40you're enjoying yourself. And I was like, I absolutely am. So I subsequently bought it,
08:45but it was a total dog's dinner. It had essentially, I don't know whether Pete Townsend had been the
08:49previous owner of this guitar. It would be one of the only possible ways of explaining what
08:53had happened to it. It's 90% glue at this point, to be honest, about 10% wood. But it's a
08:59non-original headstock, which is the first I've ever come across that. Someone clearly
09:04had broken the neck and it made more sense to replace the headstock. It's 62, so short
09:09magnet PAFs, spectacularly, are still in there. With the original electronics, it's had a
09:14Bigsby at some point, it's been taken off. There's glue holding various bits of it together,
09:18but it's just an amazing guitar. So I had to have it. But I wouldn't have got that far if I
09:24hadn't just strummed the chord and it, as I said, all that left off my lap. So that's undoubtedly the
09:28first thing is how resonant or how lively it is acoustically, before you even plug it in.
09:33That's amazing. I always find that's very true. Sometimes when you pick up a guitar and you
09:37feel how resonant it actually makes you want to play even better.
09:41Yeah, totally. It just throws you out there.
09:43I guess that's the root of that then, is does it make you want to play it? Is it an
09:48inspiring guitar to play? And does it draw something out of your playing that maybe other
09:52guitars don't? The main other 335 that I have is an Orville by Gibson, a 90s Japanese import,
09:59which is a great guitar, in fairness. Take this 62 out of the equation for a second, which
10:06again, just to kind of leap in and say that I'm not in love with this guitar because I've
10:10fallen in love with the romantic idea that it's a vintage guitar. It genuinely could have
10:14been a 1993 335 and if it had sounded like that, I would have had to have had it. But
10:21the Orville by Gibson, like I said, it's a great guitar, but just pales in comparison,
10:24you know, relative to the 62. So it's just, I don't know whether, you know, it's whatever,
10:29it's wooden magnets and string in them and wire.
10:31It's sort of how it's kind of slapped together. It's like you have, like for me, I have a
10:35bunch of really nice tellies, for example, and the one that gets recognition or the most
10:40like talked about is parts telecast. Right, okay, yeah. And it sounds fantastic. It sounds
10:44better than some of the standard ones that I have. But I know you also have a parts
10:47Jazzmaster as well. Yeah, I do, yeah. And that's sort of your main guitar.
10:51Well, yeah, that and the kind of the Rev Star have been the ones that I've kind of
10:55really been sort of switching between recently. The Jazzmaster, much to my eternal
11:00shame, took me way too long to kind of actually find. I don't know whether it was
11:04because of the name put me off. Yeah. Or just, I think more than likely it was the
11:09the players that I tend to associate with Jazzmasters, just being of a
11:13genre of music that's never particularly been my thing. Sure.
11:16You know, incredible players, but you know, just not within the kind of
11:19blues rock realm, I guess, or idiom. But I can't remember why I came to one.
11:23I didn't know why it was. Actually, I did a video for ATB, a guitar shop,
11:27a vintage guitar shop in the UK, and they had a couple of cool Jazzmasters
11:30in this. I thought, well, let's bite the bullets. Even if the alt-rock world
11:34leaps down my throat and wants to kill me, let's get it out of the way, let's
11:38play blues on one. And I just fell in love with it. And you know, kind of
11:41for all of the idiosyncrasies or kind of the things about Jazzmasters
11:45which people aren't necessarily so much in love with, you know, lack of sustain,
11:49all this kind of stuff, just loved it and kind of thought, well, you know,
11:52as long as I've got a hole in my ass, I can't afford a real original 62.
11:55Let's try and get as close as I can with a parts caster. And for whatever
11:59reason, those bits of wood bolted together sound awesome.
12:02There's certain magic when they get together. Do you ever find with the Jazzmaster,
12:05I don't know, my experience with the Jazzmaster, I always found that I didn't
12:08have the sort of same, I guess, I don't want to say tension, but like I felt like
12:13I had to overbend.
12:14Oh, massively.
12:15Compared to a strap.
12:16Yeah, absolutely.
12:17Am I right?
12:18Totally. That's good. That's not me going mad then, in that case.
12:20Yeah.
12:21Because I have, I play ten and a half gauge strings on everything.
12:24They kind of feel like a good middle ground between, you can use them at home
12:27and not rip your fingers to shreds, although the callus just falling off my finger would
12:30attest to otherwise. But they kind of work on their own as well.
12:33As soon as I get on stage in front of people, my right hand turns into Thor's hammer.
12:37And it's just unnecessarily aggressive.
12:40Ten and a half feels like a good kind of compromise for all of my guitars.
12:45The Jazzmaster, which has a seven and a quarter inch radius fingerboard,
12:48this is 12 for reference.
12:50I feel like in order to hit a bend, if you need to bend up a whole tone,
12:54just bend as far as you can.
12:56Until you hear the note.
12:57Yeah, until you hear the note.
12:58But it definitely takes a lot more of a concerted effort with the Jazzmaster
13:01and it does with other guitars.
13:03So, yeah, that's cool.
13:04I'm glad we have this confirmation.
13:05Absolutely.
13:06Jazzmaster players.
13:07Absolutely.
13:08It's not me, it's the guitarist.
13:10So now tell me about your relationship with Yamaha and Revstar.
13:14How did you end up with a Revstar?
13:17They paid me a lot of money.
13:19No, it was genuinely, I think, as soon as you become associated with a guitar brand
13:25that isn't Gibson or Fender or any kind of like huge legacy brands.
13:29People can be a little bit sort of suspicious of that to some degree.
13:32But honestly, I walked into a guitar shop that's just got bang, sadly.
13:37PMT in the UK, which has gone recently in Cardiff.
13:40And the Revstars had just been released.
13:42This would have been like late 2015, maybe.
13:44Yeah, around that time, sure.
13:45And saw a selection of them on the wall and was immediately intrigued.
13:50Not just for the fact that it's Yamaha.
13:52I've got an old SG.
13:53Well, my dad had an old SG-1000, which is the heaviest object known to man.
13:58But it's a great guitar that I used to play when I was a kid.
14:01So kind of, and there was always Yamaha acoustics around the house as well.
14:04So Yamaha was always a brand that I was kind of cool with.
14:07And I just loved the idea of the Revstar being, A, a new guitar that wasn't obviously,
14:13at least in shape, derived from, it wasn't an S-type.
14:16It wasn't a T-type.
14:17It wasn't a Les Paul.
14:18You know, it was kind of, it was his own thing.
14:20Mm-hmm.
14:21And just like such a, like a simple, ergonomically kind of attractive guitar.
14:25You know, kind of like three-way switch.
14:27Yeah.
14:28Master volume, master tone, two pickups, wrap over tailpiece.
14:30Boom.
14:31You're away.
14:32Like my dream guitar is a 54 or 55 Goldtop.
14:35Which, when you see this, kind of makes sense then.
14:38It's kind of the spec that I went for when they asked me,
14:40what do you want to do with a custom shop?
14:42But as much as it was a kind of practicality that made me fall in love with the Revstar,
14:46some subconscious level or some kind of slightly more conniving part of me was getting a little
14:51bit miffed or kind of just annoyed with the idea that playing a Strat as I had done for,
14:57you know, a very long time until that point.
15:00There's so much baggage that comes with a Strat.
15:03Arguably more so than any other guitar because it's such a distinctive sounding guitar.
15:07And the moment you're kind of maybe on the neck pickup with a kind of an amp that's kind of pumping
15:13and you're kind of playing quite aggressively, well, it's Stevie Ray.
15:16If you're, you know, kind of on the bridge pickup and you got a load of gain on you running into a Marshall,
15:20then you're Richie Blackmore.
15:21If you're in the in-between positions and you're on the edge of your breakup, you're John Mayer.
15:25If you start using the tremolo bar, you know, you'll have the kind of older generation coming out going,
15:28Hank Marvin.
15:29So there's so much baggage with the Strat that I felt increasingly like I was trying to find my voice
15:35and find my identity as a musician.
15:37And at every turn I was being thwarted by how distinctive a Strat was sounding.
15:42Like, take that, what you make of that.
15:44The takeaway from that is probably be a better guitar player.
15:48But that's a fair assessment.
15:49The artists that precede you, you know, like if you have to work twice as hard to kind of make your mark.
15:54Absolutely.
15:55A Strat, right?
15:56That's absolutely how I felt.
15:57Whereas the Revstar immediately was like, well, it's a new guitar.
16:00There's no baggage attached with that.
16:02I can kind of feel like I'm stepping out of their shadows just by virtue of picking up a different guitar.
16:06Plus, the one thing that struck me about the Revstar when they introduced me is like,
16:10it is really a marriage of many guitars, yet it still looks classic.
16:15Yeah.
16:16You know?
16:17It's hard to...
16:18Off as a tangent, a bugbear of mine is headstock shapes.
16:22Headstock shape is such a hard thing to get right.
16:24Sure.
16:25There's so many great looking guitars out there, which are like, amazing, amazing, amazing.
16:28Oh, what happened there?
16:30And it's such a like, oh, well, that's the kind of, that's the mood.
16:33So true.
16:34So true.
16:35Whereas just, I love the headstock.
16:36I love the three-a-side thing.
16:37Um, so yeah, there was, it was just such a lot about the Revstar that I fell in love with.
16:40And then of course the, this came later then, the custom shop one.
16:43Did you do all that yourself?
16:45Well, kind of.
16:46I think a lot of people are probably wondering like, is that, is that you or is that like a little bit, some half and half?
16:51A little bit.
16:52So I got this in 2020, as I said, kind of right at the start of COVID, you know?
16:56So all of the initial kind of period of wear on this guitar was, was under, under lockdown, quite literally.
17:02Obviously seen a lot of road use since then, at which point all of the wear became expedited.
17:07Yeah.
17:08What Yamaha did with this, apart from spraying it in nitrocellulose, which obviously, you know, for those not familiar with nitrocellulose,
17:14it's an older style of, of paint basically.
17:16Yeah.
17:17And you get this, whereas you wouldn't get it with polyurethane.
17:19Um, they very, very, very subtly, uh, checked it.
17:24So these, these lines, or some of these lines at very least, were there when I got the guitar, but all be, albeit like imperceptibly so.
17:31They were super subtle kind of cracks in the paint.
17:33It became a little more exaggerated.
17:34Yeah.
17:35And just over time, they've kind of greened, whatever you would call that, oxidized.
17:39I don't know what the science, clearly I'm not a scientist.
17:42Yeah.
17:43Especially gold tops, they green out.
17:45Yeah, absolutely.
17:46And obviously all that paint was worn off where I kind of, you know, use the volume knob a lot.
17:49It's all around there.
17:50That was the one thing that struck me about this guitar I loved.
17:52Growing up in the seventies, I was a huge Aerosmith fan.
17:55Yeah, yeah.
17:56And Joe Perry's Les Paul has the same thing.
17:59I'm like, he's done that to the, to his guitar there.
18:01It's so cool.
18:02If nothing else, it tells you I should get more use out of the tone control.
18:05Right.
18:06Definitely not got the same amount of wear there.
18:07But it's just, it's a cool guitar.
18:09And, you know, Yamaha was kind enough to make me the custom shop one, which in the moment is great.
18:14In the back of my mind, it was always a case of like, well, I fall in love with the production models.
18:19Of which, you know, kind of made in Indonesia and a couple of hundred dollars.
18:22It's going to have to be some guitar to kind of prize that out of my hand because I fall in love with that.
18:26And it's not always a guarantee that a guitar made lovingly by one person is going to turn out as good as the one that's just, you know, happened to come off a factory line.
18:34But from the moment I picked it up and played it for the first time, just kind of connected with it.
18:39For me, I always tell a lot of guitar players, it's one thing to see, you know, you look at a guitar and it looks attractive to you.
18:43But it's really, you've got to go to the shop.
18:45Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, play it.
18:46And that's the crying shame, not to get off on a tangent.
18:49That's the crying shame of guitar, you know, stores closing down, left, right and center.
18:53You don't have that.
18:54Well, Amazon's great, but you can't play the bloody thing before you get it.
18:56You know, you don't know whether you're going to connect with it.
18:58So it's, yeah, it's a shame.
19:00So can you talk about, are you possibly in the works of a signature guitar with Yamaha?
19:05I couldn't possibly say. It's probably the question I get asked.
19:09I'm sure you get asked that a lot.
19:10Yeah.
19:11But you can tell me.
19:12Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:13I'm not going to tell anyone.
19:14Exactly, yeah.
19:15Yeah, that and what time do you finish playing and the two questions I get asked most, I think.
19:18I mean, you know, kind of hypothetically speaking, I've been very lucky to enjoy the relationship that I have with Yamaha.
19:25And so many people have inquired about this guitar.
19:27Relative to the other RevStars, it's a kind of a bit of an amalgamation of features.
19:32So it's cool that it's become associated with me.
19:35And if that culminates in anything, great.
19:37You know, we'll see.
19:39You've done a very good job.
19:41Diplomatically avoided there.
19:42Very good job right there.
19:43I feel like I'm just talking to a politician.
19:45Exactly, yeah.
19:46So let's talk about the pedal board.
19:58Yeah.
19:59Has it changed since, I mean, since I last, I think I last saw it two weeks ago when you posted about it.
20:05It's about a fortnightly basis that it changes radically, so there's a fair chance.
20:08Yeah.
20:09No, actually, bizarrely, it's pretty set in stone at this point.
20:12So prior to this, it was a much bigger iteration of this.
20:16For reference, this is the Schmidt Array SA450 is the board, the actual physical board that this is built on.
20:22Prior to that, I was using the Schmidt Array SA550, which denotes its width.
20:27It denotes its width.
20:28XDM, which is the extra deep man, so basically kind of more depth and more width.
20:34It was nice to have the flexibility of fitting a couple more pedals on there.
20:37I mean, for context, live, I'm using a Boss RE202 Space Echo as well, which goes off the board.
20:43That would be on the board in a perfect world, but it's just not physically the space.
20:46Right, right.
20:47So there are a couple of kind of compromises in that respect, but the old board was just horrendously big to try and tour with
20:53and was constantly on the threshold of being too heavy to fly with.
20:5832 kilograms is your weight limit when it comes to carrying pedal boards on flight.
21:03And this, depending on which airport I was at and how they calibrated their scales that morning,
21:07was either 31 and a half or was 32 and a half.
21:10Right, right.
21:11So there was a rogue kilogram knocking around in there somewhere that I was yet to find.
21:15So I thought, well, rather than just, you know, kind of go into every bloody airport in the world with a sense of trepidation of fear,
21:21let's make sure it's well under 32, downsize, and it sounds better than the old board.
21:27I think the simplification of it, less pedals in the chain, it's kind of been to its, yeah.
21:33Part of me wants to, when I see something like this for the style of guitar that you play,
21:37I'm like, I wonder, do you need such a wide palette of textures and colors?
21:43I think the crucial thing here is obviously this is used and this is built with the context of playing in a band in mind.
21:49Like, especially in these scenarios where you come in and just kind of like, it's demonstrating licks and chord progressions,
21:54or whatever, it's all fairly straight ahead, kind of, you know, maybe one or two overdrive tops.
21:58Within the context of Cardinal Black, like, for example, one of my most used pedals is the Catlin bread echo rack,
22:04which is an amazing sounding pedal, if you kick that on for a second and play that in isolation.
22:13It doesn't get much use like that. Where the Catlin bread comes into its own is, you know, this kind of thing.
22:18It'll be like...
22:34All that kind of something more ambient kind of stuff, which is...
22:37It goes unnoticed, I would imagine, by the vast majority of people in the crowd, but it's, you know,
22:42at least not consciously, it's just their backing vocal, you know, kind of isolated vocal parts or whatever.
22:47And, you know, that is where this comes into its own.
22:50And so, just to, I guess, to quickly run through some of the things that I've got going on here.
22:55Sure.
22:56The HX Stomp is covering a lot of ground.
22:59Are you using it for the modulations and delays and reverbs as well?
23:03Yeah, primarily. So, Harmonic Trem being one of them.
23:06Funny story, Harmonic Tremel, I'm a huge Harmonic Tremel fan.
23:09Sure.
23:10Probably my most...
23:11I've used one myself. It's great.
23:12Oh, awesome. What one do you use?
23:13I use the Flint.
23:14Oh, nice. The Flint sounds great.
23:15Yeah.
23:16Do you know what? I've never had a Strymon pedal.
23:17And that's for no other reason other than just not probably being able to afford them at various points.
23:21But I tried the Flint for the first time the other day with the Deco and was blown away by them both.
23:26So they might have to reconfigure things and get one in there.
23:28But the funny story with the Harmonic Tremel was...
23:32I kind of fell in love with Harmonic Trem pretty much because of the HX Stomp.
23:36Right.
23:37That was the first experience I had with it.
23:38And it sent me a total rabbit hole then of like, well, let's get an amp with Harmonic Trem in it.
23:43Yeah.
23:44So I started doing a bit of digging into kind of which amps came with Harmonic Trem.
23:47Obviously, it was like typically it was a kind of brown face thing.
23:49Yeah.
23:50From that very specific kind of...
23:51Chris Stapleton one.
23:52Yeah.
23:53You should have had one as well.
23:54Yeah.
23:55What's that?
23:56Princeton in there, I think.
23:57Maybe a pro.
23:58Oh, possibly.
23:59Yeah.
24:00Cool amp either way.
24:01Yeah.
24:02Sent me on this rabbit hole of trying to find a cool founder amp with Harmonic Tremel.
24:04And I ended up buying a 1961 concert.
24:07Big 4x10 kind of like the precursor of the Super Reverb I guess in a lot of ways.
24:11And that had Harmonic Tremel, which sounds awesome.
24:14I'm running that live, at least back home when I've got my own rig with me, with my Super Reverb.
24:19Right.
24:20Which is a weird bastardized version of a Super Reverb.
24:22It's a brown face that someone has converted to like slightly mythical specs.
24:26Because obviously that Super Reverb didn't cross over into that era.
24:29So it's a non-existent amp in a lot of ways.
24:31Bit of a unicorn.
24:33But obviously the Super Reverb not having Harmonic Tremel.
24:36I was running those two amps side by side, kind of like a dual mono setup.
24:39Yeah.
24:40Whenever I wanted Harmonic Tremel, I found a way of triggering the Harmonic Tremel in the concert using the G3.
24:46So it was that switch there.
24:48It was switch 11 turned on the Harmonic Tremel with a weird cable out in a custom order.
24:53And then obviously the Super Reverb is not Harmonic Tremel.
24:57For want of a better phrase.
24:58Rigged that up.
24:59Sounded absolutely majestic.
25:01It was huge.
25:02Because obviously you've got two big amps alongside each other.
25:04One Trem.
25:05One really kind of drastically tremming.
25:08For want of a better word again.
25:09I've had a word again.
25:10And one not.
25:11Sounded great on stage.
25:12Our front house guy there that comes everywhere with us.
25:15Had a word to me.
25:16He was like, pretty much since I started working with you guys, just for a bit of width out front,
25:20I've been panning your amps.
25:22Kind of like, not necessarily hard, but like, you know, kind of fairly drastically.
25:26He's like, I can't do that.
25:28If you've got one amp.
25:29Yeah.
25:30Pulsating.
25:31And the other, like, you know, like dubstep.
25:33And then the other not doing anything.
25:34He was like, the one half of the audience feels seasick.
25:36And the other, I'm got a clue what's going on.
25:38She was like, can you go back to using the HX Stomp, please?
25:40I'm like, okay.
25:41So, after all of that, probably a rabbit hole to find a harmonic trem amp.
25:46Back using the HX Stomp, which in fairness sounds awesome.
25:49So it's just, you know, that kind of...
25:51Yeah.
25:52That's what I always loved about...
25:54What struck me always about the harmonic trem, it's a natural univibe.
25:58Yeah, absolutely.
25:59Yeah, totally.
26:00In a very strange way.
26:01There is a lot of univibe about harmonic trem, isn't there?
26:03It's hard...
26:04When anyone asks about the harmonic trem sound, it's hard to describe because it's pretty distinct.
26:07Yeah.
26:08It just has a very different pulse than the normal trem, but it's just gorgeous.
26:11It's kind of hypnotic.
26:12Yeah, totally.
26:13But then, yeah, I've got a couple of delays, like slapback, bit of a longer delay.
26:18Got a big old plate reverb for one of the tracks in the set.
26:22Huh.
26:23A chorus, again, very specific moment in the set.
26:38We've got a polysustain, which gets a bit of use.
26:40That's their kind of electroharmonic frees kind of thing.
26:53That with the Catlin bread, for example.
26:56Wow.
26:57Yeah.
26:58That sounds...
26:59You've got some cool stuff going on with that.
27:00Oh, that's fantastic.
27:01It was funny because I was just going to ask you...
27:02One of my questions was, how do you use so many reverbs and delays effectively?
27:14And you just proved it right there.
27:16Haha.
27:17So that's great.
27:18We've got the Electric Lightning, my signature pedal with Thorpey FX.
27:21You also have a UA pedal underneath as well.
27:23Yes, the UA.
27:24If we flick that up, the double-decker pedal.
27:26Before you get into that, you have a little bit of...
27:29It sounds like a little bit of drive on your tone.
27:32What are you using right now at the moment?
27:34So these are literally the only pedals on at the moment when everything on the G3 is off.
27:39We have the Golden Reverberator from UA Audio doing the Spring Reverb.
27:43I see.
27:44It seems somewhat sacrilegious using the Deluxe Reverb and using digital reverb emulation of that.
27:48But it's nice to have a consistency.
27:50Sure, sure.
27:51Especially on a tour like this where you're using a higher back line.
27:53If you know exactly what your reverb is going to sound like every night.
27:56The only pedal which is doing any kind of drive, at least consciously, is the EP Booster.
28:01Which is last in the chain.
28:03Super subtle, but it probably would take a relatively low headroom amp like the Deluxe Reverb into a slight bit of...
28:08Yeah.
28:15Just a little edge.
28:16Yeah, a little edge to it.
28:17It's such a great sounding pedal.
28:18But yeah, so there's a lot going on there for...
28:21You know, like I said, it's just so much of the set in a Carna Black gig is, you know, kind of like more ambient sounds and a couple of interesting kind of little textures and stuff like that, you know.
28:32It was funny because before we were discussing too, we were talking about the King of Tone and praising it.
28:38Yeah.
28:39And it was just funny when you were saying here, you're trying to get it to sound good at low volumes.
28:44It's one of those pedals that comes to life.
28:46Challenging.
28:47But you said that's the pedal you have on the whole time on your set.
28:51Yeah, absolutely.
28:52Like I bought the King of Tone when it was about a year waiting list, I guess.
28:56Yeah.
28:57Quite a while back now.
28:58That's about 45 years now, I do believe.
29:00But yeah, it's one of those pedals that...
29:03I mean, let's kick it on for a second.
29:04Sure.
29:05In this context at relatively low volume.
29:07Yep.
29:08It sounds great, but it can sound a little bit congested.
29:11Yeah.
29:14Very compressed.
29:15Yeah.
29:16And very kind of mid-range guidance.
29:18Yep.
29:19As soon as you kind of have the amps at a gig volume.
29:22Sure.
29:23It feels great under the finger.
29:24Sounds amazing.
29:25So that's kind of still consistently a pedal I gravitate towards.
29:28Do you have both on or one channel at a time?
29:30Yes.
29:31It's the standard version.
29:32It's not high gain version or anything like that.
29:33Yeah.
29:34And both channels are on all the time.
29:36Other drive pedals then, we've got the beautifully named Blues Crab by Mua,
29:40which is only there because the Snouse Black Box, which I was using,
29:45obviously a recreation of the Marshall Blues Breaker, the original Marshall Blues Breaker.
29:48Yeah.
29:49It's just too big.
29:50Yeah.
29:51To fit in here.
29:52Even though it's not a big pedal by any stretch, but it just will physically fit.
29:55The Mythos Molnir, which was on the board previously, which is like Mythos approximation
30:00of a Klon, that's been replaced by the Golden Horse Decibelix, again because of its size
30:05or lack thereof.
30:07You know, kind of sounds like a Klon.
30:09That sounds great.
30:17Slightly kind of honky, kind of nasally mid-range that you get with a Klon.
30:22The Blues Crab is not doing a great deal.
30:35It's so slight, but you hear it.
30:37And I think it's a feel thing too.
30:39Yeah, and what that gives you is, if you set your pedals pretty subtly like that,
30:43you can stack them together.
30:44So, for example, the Blues Crab and the Golden Horse Decibelix together,
30:47you could happily play rhythm guitar on that all night.
30:50Oh, that sounds great.
30:57It's a pretty solid rhythm sound.
30:59We've got Steve Luke with the Echo Sax by Gurus, which is probably the main delay,
31:03at least for like solos.
31:14Incidentally, I'm just using his settings as well, because who am I to argue with Luke?
31:19We've got the Small Speaker Overdrive by Great Eastern FX from the UK,
31:22which excels at making every amp sound like a little 5-watt champ or something like that.
31:27Pretty squishy, pretty aggressive.
31:29Here's beautifully with the Golden Horse.
31:42If you want to fatten out the mid-range of that.
31:44Yeah, it brings out the note, just widens it.
31:56Wow.
31:57That's a cool combination.
31:58That gets a lot of use, those two pedals.
31:59And what about your collab pedal, the Lightning?
32:02Yeah, the Lightning was an idea that Adrian Thorpe had, the Thorpe FX.
32:07I think he'd long wanted to do a valve or tube pedal, and I was the guinea pig.
32:13Very gladly so.
32:14Love Adrian to bits.
32:16I've been using Thorpe pedals consistently for a very long time,
32:20so it made sense in that respect.
32:22Principally on this run actually, I love the boost side of it,
32:25which ironically is not actually utilizing the valve in there, or the tube,
32:29but it's principally a solo boost at the moment.
32:34If you kind of crank that, it's got what's called the lows control,
32:37which basically fattens out your low end, so you get this kind of...
32:47That's one of those pedals that you turn on and then you don't want to turn off
32:49because it just makes everything sound a little bit more.
32:52But then the gain side of that, the overdrive side,
32:55like I said, all of my settings are all over the place at the moment.
32:58It's very JTM, marshally, kind of aggressive.
33:07Quite aggressive, it doesn't really leave anywhere to hide, you know,
33:35so it's a bit of a revealing pedal.
33:37So if you're not having a great night, maybe kind of stay away from that one.
33:40But yeah, particularly proud of that.
33:42And then the Golden Fleece, which is the Mythos Fuzz,
33:45that lives in the loop of the 29 pedals UNA.
33:48So you basically kick that on by turning the UNA off, if that makes sense.
33:52Again, fuzz in isolation can be a bit much sometimes.
33:55Sure.
33:56Stack that with something like the Decibel X.
34:18Something like that.
34:19Do you think you can get away with doing your stuff with, say, a modeler?
34:23Have you thought about that?
34:24Yeah.
34:25Getting away with something and enjoying it are two very different things.
34:28Wow.
34:29Right, right.
34:30Good point.
34:31That said, I do a lot of, like, kind of clinic stuff using the Helix for its practicality.
34:36Sure.
34:37And it's just, you know, I mean, taking this board on tour was a no-brainer for this tour, for example.
34:41And using amps and all that kind of stuff.
34:43That said, this HS stomp is a huge part of the rig.
34:46So I'm really not averse to digital stuff, you know.
34:48It's a kind of core part of the setup.
34:50Very cool.
34:51The bit that I struggle with, bluntly, with modulars, is it's not the amp emulations.
34:57It's the cab emulations.
34:59It's the IRs or the whatever.
35:01Like, if I use a Helix, I invariably use it with a Line 6 power cab with the built-in speaker emulations into the cabinet.
35:08They sound better than me.
35:09Whatever technology that is utilizing sounds better to me than the IRs, you know, which feel a bit flat or a bit two-dimensional comparatively.
35:16Sure.
35:17So, yeah, I can, and I've done, you know, Cardinal Black shows using Helix in the past, but it always feels like it's just kind of slightly away from home, I guess, you know.
35:27So speaking of, you said your amps, I know you left some of the amps back at home.
35:31What are you using on this tour right now?
35:33On this tour, using a Victory MK Clean 2x10 combo that they're very kindly loaning me.
35:39That arrived at the Gramercy yesterday, so see if that's in one piece.
35:42That came from California somewhere.
35:44And I went and bought an amp yesterday, bought a Deluxe Reverb from Brothers Guitars in, like, kind of upper east side, is it maybe?
35:51I've been trawling through New York guitar shops online for the past couple of weeks trying to figure out what's where.
35:56And there was an awesome lucky 1969 Twin Reverb, which had been kind of like blackface spec'd or kind of changed for sale.
36:05But I was read the Riot Act by our singer and tour manager, who doubles up as both, that we haven't got that much space in the van.
36:12So if I buy that, we'd probably sacrifice how much underwear we could take.
36:16So yeah, Deluxe Reverb and an MK Clean for this run.
36:20So hopefully they play nicely together.
36:22Yeah, especially with 10s, it's going to kind of alter your sound a bit, right?
36:25Yeah, and I love the Super Reverb. Super Reverb's my favourite amp all the time, so I'm a big fan of 10-ish speakers.
36:30Pairing 10s with 12s is always, I've always had, you know, kind of a degree of success with that.
36:36So I thought it'd be nice to try and replicate that.
36:38But also the MK Clean, I'm expecting, if it's anything like the MK Clean that I have back home, to be super high headroom.
36:44Yeah.
36:45And kind of like, you know, crystalline kind of, you know.
36:48That'll carry the weight of your tongue.
36:49Yeah, exactly.
36:50That kind of bit more kind of typically dumbbell, steel-string singer-esque kind of thing.
36:54It's nice to have in conjunction with that, then, a bit of an amp that's a bit squishy comparatively,
36:58and a bit more kind of compression.
37:00It means that if you're having a bad night, you know, not everyone and their mother has to know,
37:04because you can at least hide behind a little bit of natural compression from the amp, so.
37:08Fantastic.
37:09Any tour horror stories or gear mishaps that have you, so far?
37:12Where to start?
37:13Ah.
37:14I mean, you know, guitars generally.
37:17Amsterdam Schiphol seems to be the collector of all lost guitars, irrespective of wherever you're going in the world,
37:23something will end up in Amsterdam.
37:26So that's always fun.
37:28My guitar stayed behind in Heathrow recently while I went to Italy.
37:32I was saying earlier on a different video that we shot, you know, it's kind of, I've had this guitar for a good number of years now,
37:37but I've always been quite pragmatic with instruments in the sense of like, they're tools, they're tools of my trade, they're part of my job.
37:44Don't get too sentimentally attached or romantically engaged with the bloody guitar.
37:48You know, it's never going to serve you well.
37:50We say that, but we don't mean it.
37:51Exactly.
37:52And it was only when this guitar stayed in Heathrow that it was the first time that this guitar has been lost for any kind of prolonged period of time.
37:57And I knew where it was because it had an air tag in it.
37:59I was following it around, still knowing where it is and not having it in your hands are two very different things.
38:04And it was about four days, I guess, where it was a bit kind of, what's going to happen?
38:08The airline weren't particularly helpful, so you're kind of in limbo really just thinking, is this going to arrive?
38:14Is it going to be lost in the bowels of Heathrow for the rest of the time?
38:17Yeah.
38:18And that was the first time it really dawned on me that, okay, maybe there's a bit more than this guitar than I give it credit for.
38:22Yeah.
38:23But yeah, generally, we've been pretty lucky, you know, kind of stuff blowing up on stage happens.
38:28It's part, you know, it's part of the course, it's kind of, that's the way I'm looking for, kind of, you know, just, it's the nature of the beast when you're using old gear sometimes.
38:37And my Super Reverb is 65, or at least started life is 65, the concert is 61, 62.
38:43You know, some of my guitars are old, you know, it happens.
38:46But it's kind of, as long as you're aware that that might happen, it's not the end of the world, you know, so.
38:50Fantastic, fantastic.
38:51So are any songs in your set, like cover songs, where you get to stretch a bit, musically?
38:56Yeah, this, I mean, the second record that we just made is undoubtedly more, like, song focused, I guess, than the first record,
39:03and less instrumentally indulgent, shall we say, in certain moments, which makes crafting a set list interesting then,
39:10because you're trying to find a balance between, well, you know there's going to be a lot of guitar heads in the crowd.
39:13Yeah.
39:14You want to appease those guys and give them something to kind of, you know, get their teeth into.
39:18But also Cardinal Black's appeal, I think, thus far seems to have been, you know, more kind of, just a bit more general than just guitar bands.
39:26You guys write great songs, I mean, that's a really big thing, you know, it's actually memorable.
39:30But, yeah, so there's a couple of moments in the set, there's a track on the new album called Your Spark Blows Me To Pieces,
39:36which has got a fairly lengthy guitar solo. It was funny, when I was writing that, you kind of know with certain songs that,
39:42well, this is never in danger of being a single on the record, let's check a big old guitar solo in.
39:47So it's guitar for the sake of guitar at the end of that, it's a bit gratuitous, but it's good fun and, you know, kind of the guitar heads and the crowd seem to kind of pinpoint that moment in the set.
39:57So, yeah, this, you know, it's one of the reasons live show is such a different beast to an album.
40:03You know, an album is a very different methodology, it's a very different point to making a record than crafting a live set.
40:09And live sets give you those moments to stretch your legs, you know?
40:12Yeah, that's the great part. Especially on this tour, you've got to really lay it down for the American audiences.
40:17Yeah, yeah. I love playing in the U.S., you know, I mean, I feel bad, technically it's a North American tour,
40:23because we're dipping our toe into Canada, albeit, too briefly, we'll come back to Canada properly at some point.
40:28But every experience I've had of playing in the U.S. so far has been amazing.
40:32The crowds, relative to the U.K. and parts of Europe, I guess, by extension, are so enthusiastic, it's awesome.
40:39It's kind of, you feel so wanted and so loved, you know, which is stroking my ego, no doubt.
40:44So, it makes me sound a little bit kind of arrogant, but yeah, it's just lovely.
40:48It's well deserved, right? You made it this far, so it's good to get out there.
40:52You have to pinch yourself, you know, this is like the first time I've ever been to New York City, you know, never mind playing.
40:57So, aside from doing all the kind of touristy stuff for the past couple of days, it's just wild that we can show up in a city that we've never been to.
41:04A sellout venue like the Gramsci Theatre is just like, oh, cool, you know, people want to see us, that's awesome.
41:09So, I'll, yeah, be trying not to kind of take that for granted.
41:13My last question to you is any words of encouragement and how to make a mark as a player in this very noisy and crowded musical environment and landscape that we have?
41:25Yeah, I mean, get a proper job, probably.
41:28No, it's, funnily enough, we did an in-store at Rough Trade at the Rockefeller Center yesterday and a young guy came up to us after the show and said,
41:37any advice, you know, kind of like, I'm just, you know, starting out now and kind of feeling a little bit disillusioned with the necessity of social media.
41:44Like, any advice?
41:46You know, it's kind of, I think we, as Cardinal Black, we work on the ethos of as much as can be physically done in-house, we do everything.
41:55You know, kind of, this record that we've just released is the first time that we've partnered with a label.
41:59This North American tour is the first time that we've partnered with a booking agency over here.
42:03Like, we came over last summer and did The Basement East in Nashville and The Troubadour in LA.
42:07Totally off our own back, you know, aside from, we played a festival in Omaha, which was the kind of conduit to actually physically getting us over here.
42:14But then the other shows that we did were just entirely, okay, let's book a show, let's see what happens, you know, see if we can sell out these places.
42:20And we were lucky enough to do that and that spawned the label, which spawned the booking agency.
42:24It's a kind of domino effect, but you can do so much just by, you know, kind of a bit of kind of just willpower and determination and guts, you know, just to kind of really take the bull by the horns and actually kind of do this stuff yourself.
42:38You know, it's, I mean, Joe Bonamassa is a continuous, exemplary kind of inspiration in that respect, you know, kind of how he's got as far as he has.
42:46Just by going, well, okay, well, if that person doesn't want to work with me, I'm going to do it myself, you know, and we kind of, we have that ethos within the band, you know.
42:53It's just, you know, learn as much about this industry as you can because you're less likely to be screwed over if you at least understand most of its moving parts.
43:04Sure.
43:05But then on a musical level, trying to kind of make your mark, I kind of, I don't know, I was very bored and very business, so that comes very secondary in my mind to the, you know, don't be screwed over.
43:15Well, you're doing this now as opposed to what you laid the foundation for.
43:19But, I mean, you know, developing your voice as a musician, you know, it's flattering to think that I might have done that on any degree or any level, but it, for the most part, my experience of that was that it just happens by osmosis over time.
43:31It's certainly your culmination of your influences, your, this amalgam of all of the people that you've aspired to try and sound like over the years, and ultimately failed to sound like.
43:41Because, unfortunately, I'm not Slash. As much as I tried to be for a very long time, I'm also not Hendrix, you know.
43:47But all of these influences creep into your playing, and out of that comes this stew which sounds a bit like you, you know.
43:54So it just, it happens, there are ways you can expedite that, but, you know, for the most part, it's just a gradual progression, you know.
44:01Fantastic.
44:02Well, inspiring words, Chris, and inspiring playing.
44:06Check out Chris Buck, his band Cardinal Black, they're on tour right now, you gotta see them, you won't be disappointed.
44:13And thank you, Chris, again, for just being here and spending some time, it's been a pleasure.
44:17Absolute pleasure, thank you very much for having me, this is awesome. Thank you.
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