- 1 hour ago
Chris Turpin of Mirador (his new band with Jake Kiszka of Greta Van Fleet) and Ida Mae is one of the most talented British guitarists and vocalists working today. Mirador's new self-titled record is one of the most electrifyingly exciting debut albums for years and here Chris talks us through the beautiful vintage electric and acoustic guitars he used to carve out his formidable sound on the record. In conversation with Jamie Dickson of Guitarist he also discusses folk and country blues influences and the unique role characterful old guitars can play in the life of a songwriter and performer. With plenty of demonstrations of the gear to feast your ears on, too, this is a fascinating dive into Chris's sonic world.
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:23wow that's a that's a strap with some guts isn't it reen that's amazing so what is this
00:26yeah this is the the other sort of most important guitar that's that's come to the collection um
00:31that i was very very grateful to be able to trade for and got a huge tip of the hat
00:35to to david and
00:37mike over atb guitars in in in um cheltenham for helping me find this thing so as we were
00:44investigating what tones were going to work the les paul was like well that's a no-brainer you
00:48know we're searching other two guitar bands and i was trying to work out what i'm what i was
00:51comfortable with doing uh i got a telly and i got a strat and the strat was the thing so
00:57this is um
00:59i was looking for player grade strats because i can't afford vintage strats and it's their rock
01:03style money and then it's trying to work out what to do and how to find it uh and they
01:08i said i'm
01:09coming up can you you know anything you've got like pull it out and i'll find a way and trade
01:13up
01:14this guitar they had out the back it wasn't strung up it come from new york um they didn't know
01:21sort
01:21of what the deal was it had the strangest pickups in it um and i tried out the other bits
01:26and pieces
01:27they'd laid on didn't get on with them and this was just the one and it's a what it is
01:32is a 66 strap
01:34it's been refinished by clive brown and this fire mist silver and yeah the pickups i ripped out
01:41and i've got sort of the wonderful house of time pickups and it's a custom wound set
01:45and it's um a hell of a guitar that's been just been played to death you know these old
01:50uh fenders it's almost like driftwood and i wish i knew where this had come from
01:55but it immediately just made an awful lot of sense i am
02:00you know strats are complicated guitars to play you know a lot of people are beginning to say i hear
02:05more people saying it now that they struggle with strats because they hear they're heroes or they hear
02:09what other people do on them and i totally get that it's hard not to do a hendrix thing or
02:14a
02:14rory gallagher thing or whoever it might be but the 66 is an interesting year i think you get the
02:20thicker headstock slightly skinnier neck it is the hendrix year but it just has a sound and
02:26i think this has a swamp ash body i think i'm not sure what color it was to start off
02:32with it could
02:32could be ash from the grain no one can quite tell you know it's one of those things
02:36it's a little over average weight which i think really works for strats i think they have to be
02:41a little heavier for for how i play um and i'm a big richard thompson fan you know british folk
02:48for
02:48some reason takes to the strat you know it's it's that the position four is it you know that's
02:56immediately it's immediately you know british folk so that to me sounds like richard thompson or
03:13something but then you go to the bridge
03:21you get the rory kind of thing and hendrix in the neck
03:35yeah it's it's just an incredible guitar it doesn't it plays differently to other strats that i've
03:40played you know strats have they really seem to vary for me and how you set them up really changes
03:45them but this is yeah became a very special guitar so we use this on most of the record
03:49skyway drifter is a big track which will come out that features this guitar uh and roving blade is
03:56is this guitar and uh you know fortune's fate i cut on the record with this guitar and it just
04:01that
04:01strat thing it's that slightly more scooped mid-range just sits around a gibson beautifully but it can it
04:08can go heavy and you know i'm using a fuzz face and a jtm 45 live so that's hendrix right
04:15go to the
04:15bridge and crank it up and yeah it does the thing uh and i adore it and i feel very
04:20very lucky to to be
04:21a custodian of it for a while and this finish is ridiculous you wouldn't know it was an original you
04:27know well done clive wherever you may be
04:31uh
04:42uh
04:42uh
04:42uh
04:42uh
04:42uh
04:42uh
04:47uh
05:00well that's a that's a a fine sound isn't it i mean uh one of the things i love about
05:05the
05:05miradol record is that the the electric sound absolutely wild and i mean i mean in the best
05:10possible way that you know the playing is amazing but the that these are real untamed electric guitars
05:15on the album this is this is i understand a big part of that saying it is yeah we spent
05:19a long
05:20time trying to work out you know because jake's got such a signature sound and for these miradol
05:23records it was what guitars would sort of dovetail and wrap around that sound and the bridge pickup
05:28of a 61 you know sg les pool it's a barking sharp intense sort of kung kung kung kung kung
05:35so i i yeah
05:36i went on a tone quest for the best part of you know two years you know a year and
05:41a half trying to
05:42find guitars i thought would work you know i've been playing a lot of gretches i love my gretch
05:47guitars i've been you know i love telecasters and i was trying to work out what i could find and
05:53i had some good fortune of you know meeting some good people and having some stuff that i could trade
05:57in to find stuff and and this is one of the one of the guitars that i found that i
06:03thought was
06:03very special i i found it at the the auction house not so far away here in place called caution
06:10i they posted a picture of it it's a guitar auction they posted a picture of this guitar
06:14on on their on their instagram and i saw at the murphy lab and gibson custom shop i commented on
06:20this
06:20post of how cool this guitar was and i said oh shh i'm never gonna get it this what is
06:26that thing
06:26anyway i went in to try it out and i think it comes from came from wales somewhere in wales
06:31i added the bigsby um they had a crapped out transistor amp and a dodgy jack lead at the back
06:38of the warehouse you know in the it weren't quite up and running you know it wasn't a viewing day
06:42i
06:42was going on tour so i couldn't do the viewing day so i said can i sneak in early and
06:46they let me in
06:47kindly and i plugged it in and i just got some sound at the back pickup it had no frets
06:52left it had been
06:53you know ridden hard hung up wet it was a real i think a working guitar and yeah i plugged
06:58in that back
06:59pickup and you know heard this just completely alive guitar
07:14and it was just like i've played les paul's in the past but i was like this sounds like
07:20the classic les paul's that i adore it's i could hear paul crossoff i could hear mick ronson you
07:25know i could hear jeff beck especially playing this guitar with fingers you know
07:40it has that jeff beck kind of oxblood thing as well i'm not sure why and um sonically it fitted
07:46perfectly with we felt with um with jake's sg you know day one of band rehearsals we're doing
07:53feels like gold and just that you know
08:02it's just got this huge thunderous round low end much richer in the mid-range than the sg that's biting
08:09higher up and really fat harmonics you know so i'm rocking this through a jtm 45 and it's just been
08:18yeah earth shatteringly fun and what what year is this do you think well so this guitar came out
08:25the factory black and someone i'm not sure why was either and perhaps a mick ronson fan because that's
08:32classic to strip the top um i've i'd never seen a headstock strip like this i think zapper did it
08:38on a
08:38special but i'd never seen it on a custom i thought that was the coolest thing i'd ever seen
08:42and they even strip you know they strip the back they strip the neck i'm not sure if this
08:46next reshaped i don't think it is this is taken down slightly but it's a 70 so 70s les paul
08:53customs
08:53get a bad rep i i call this guitar the underdog partly for that reason because i feel these guitars
08:59have as much a place in rock and roll histories as the burst maybe more so you could argue
09:05uh so this is a 70 and there are quite a lot of differences as they change across the years
09:10so i'm
09:10led to believe but this still has the the bridge going into the wood the carve i think is slightly
09:16different on the top the neck is wild it's it's kind of like a burst up to about the seventh
09:21fret
09:22has that 59 thing slope shoulders and then it really gets chunky up here it's thick like a
09:2856 or 50 maybe 57 or something like that those pools i've played they get chunky
09:32so it has that thing going on the pickups are a patent applied for and they're very microphonic
09:40as you can hear it just the whole thing is alive um and yeah so a 1970 is what i
09:47believe and um
09:48i added the big speakers i'm a big fan of bigsby's on guitars i mean listen to that you know
09:53it's it's
09:54really changing what the guitar does you know and what i love about this is that you know so many
10:02people you know gatekeepers of uh of what les paul should be would say okay yeah oh this is you
10:08know
10:09this isn't this isn't the absolute vintage spec it sounds incredible it sounds incredible i i don't i
10:13haven't i haven't played another 1970s so i can't compare to i've played other ladies later 70s guitars
10:19with the maple necks very heavy and different beasts and i i'm not sure what it is with this
10:24guitar but again it's the best telecaster you've played you can do you can do all sorts of stuff
10:33this guitar it's really really special and it's the sound of you know i don't know you know finn
10:37lizzie whatever 70s i mean there's so many 70s rock and roll bands because fleetwood mac i'm not sure
10:42what what era that you know white les paul custom was but this is all that was available so this
10:47is what's
10:48cut on a lot of those records you know um and they're all the same they're all different but this
10:53one is very very much alive and it weighs about nine and nine and a bit pounds and i put
10:58the big
10:58speed on which got it to 10 so it's it's carrying some christmas weight but it's not outrageous you
11:03know but i it all makes for the sound you know and this is and and this is all across
11:08the mirador
11:08record only the opening track for example yeah that the only guitars that i used on the mirador
11:13record was this and the strap which we'll talk about and uh and a a gretch dave's gretch duo jet
11:32yeah yeah that's it
11:44yeah through this thing because this is one of the most generous gifts i've ever been given this was a
11:49it's a 1930s i think it's hard to date these very sort of early i think it's an earlier one
11:55l double o
11:56and it was a gift from jake sort of at the beginning beginning of this mirador record and we were
12:01you know talking guitars and sending guitars backwards and forwards and he plays one of these
12:05and he picked it up and he said that yeah he kept playing it think and he just thought it
12:10was
12:10my guitar so he handed it over which is extraordinarily generous
12:15and it's uh probably the best acoustic guitar i own it's an extraordinary extraordinary sounding
12:21thing and anyone that has played these or knows these they're very special instruments it's feather
12:27light it's this body shape can do almost anything it can strum it can finger pick
12:34um and this one had an incredible case of it the original case it's covered in strange stickers
12:40from jamaica and all over the world and he lifted up the lid and it said tips you know inside
12:45the
12:45case so it was someone was been busking with it for i don't even know how long so we've nicknamed
12:51this
12:51guthrie because it's kind of the woody guthrie guitar as well and um it's become quickly one of my
12:55favorite guitars that i use almost every day in the studio tracking different things and
12:59you can't make it sound bad and he's put a 57 in front of this and it's incredible so a
13:05lot of those
13:05early demos that me and jake did you know for mirador him on his l double o it's now we
13:10have
13:10two so we we get to we're writing the next record on on this as well which is pretty cool
13:14but a very
13:15special instrument and again um you know the especially the old um and a good old l double
13:22o will do things that you wouldn't think when you're just glancing at it you know as a relatively
13:28small bodied acoustic absolutely and the balance of a guitar like this when you put a mic in front of
13:33it is kind of incredible all that you know 200 hertz or whatever that you might cut out of a
13:37certain guitar they just kind of sit beautifully and there's a lot of sort of um compression and
13:43pronunciation on each note of the string but it's not sort of overly verbose or shimmery or over the
13:49top it just sits and i think the sound particularly of these guitars just it is the sound of early
13:56sort of recorded american music gibson and martin built that sound and so whether it's
14:03a beautiful sound to begin with or it's so ingrained with us now it just it feels to me
14:07synonymous with all those early records and early songs that i i held so dear i feel like it's a
14:13piece of that lineage and it's it's in it's important you know lucky to have found one that that works
14:18you
14:18know because they're all different you know at this age the life this thing has had across nearly 100
14:23years and it's you know it's beaten to pieces and it crusade it's had all the changes but they just
14:29have
14:29such a sound to them it's um yeah you can cover so much ground it's beautiful and do you go
14:35down
14:36the rabbit hole with um you know string types and things like that you know like one hour and things
14:40like that you know what yeah so i use elixir strings on my strings for touring just incredible for
14:45touring elixir have been great to me i love them um this came with low tension santa cruz strings on
14:52it
14:52when it was handed to me from from jake it had some work done on it and i haven't changed
14:57them that's why
14:58it's just absolutely filthy you can hear every piece of grime and
15:07it's yeah it's ridiculous um i think the low tension is because it's so light this particular
15:12guitar and the top is thin and it's you know there's it's moved but it's not bellying
15:17it's just better play it safe than sound so i haven't messed with this guitar
15:20at all um it's something i really want to get into more in time but at the moment i just
15:26sort of run
15:26elixir's because they're just solid as a rock
15:41you know
15:44so
16:03This video is kind of about the origins of the sounds on the Mirador album. This is a guitar
16:08that's actually made specifically for Mirador, your role within Mirador. So tell me about this.
16:15Yeah, this is relatively maniacal probably, but fantastically fun because we were at the
16:21record on these acoustics, Jake on his other balone and me on this parlor. We were discussing,
16:28there's other guitars we talk about, but we were discussing what we do to take on the road.
16:32And of course, we didn't want to take sort of older guitars on the road. We really wanted to pay
16:36homage to those sort of early American guitar sounds and good sort of the essential guitar
16:44heroes from, you know, early Gene Autry and Woody Guthrie to, you know, Robert Johnson, whatever
16:50it might be and sort of have a piece of that lineage. And Jake at the time, you know, it
16:56was building a relationship with Martin and Utham. And I think it was mentioned in passing
17:01at one of these things that we were considering going to a parlor guitar size, you know, to
17:05take on the road because we'd written essentially on parlor guitars and we wanted something tough
17:10and special and unique that could come out with us. And in building this sort of symbology
17:16and the precious nature of the songs as we felt how they fell out, that should be represented
17:21in the instrument. And this is what we came up with. So we decided on 0028s, matching 0028s.
17:29So a smaller orchestral body, rosewood, which neither of us have really done much of before,
17:37and each decorated and adorned beautifully by the incredible people at Martin and just hats
17:43off to them for being game to do this. And they managed to get it around. These were taken
17:47out on the very first shows we played, the very first show, the very first tour, everything.
17:52I made it on the record as well. You know, we did moments of them with that as well. And
17:57for our
17:58overdubs and they're very special things and each have, you know, they're different sort of styles.
18:05So, I mean, one thing that leaps out, you know, almost literally is the fact that a lot of people
18:12when they look at a parlor size guitar, broadly speaking, will think of probably the not great
18:19examples of parlours that tend to be knocking around, you know, boxy, short, sustain, quite
18:24plunky. This isn't any of those things. It's actually very sweet sounding and it really rings
18:29and shimmers in quite an extraordinary way. I mean, it's 12 frets to the body.
18:33It is, yeah. That was a big decision.
18:36Do you adhere, well, you evidently do adhere to that first sound guitar?
18:40I do. I think it sounds different. They sound tighter. There's a sort of rounder and sort
18:44of more extended low end. It's a very, it's a different sound, I think, having the 12 fret
18:47join and we undenied about it because of course, especially Jake, he likes to spend his time
18:52at the dusty end, you know, up here. So we undenied about whether we do that or whether
18:56Jake should go to a 14 fret and I do a 12 fret, but we decided to go for the
19:0012s because it
19:00just has such a sound and it's such a look, you know, and then you have to play within
19:04the constraints of the instrument, you know, you can't do certain things and it makes you
19:08play a certain way. And again, this early sort of folk traditions of, you know, an early
19:14Americana sort of, you know, country bluegrass songwriting traditions that we've been flirting
19:19around the edge of us and pulling from and a lot of the writing and lyricisms and, and
19:23approach. This is an instrument to do that on, you know.
19:27I mean, the, the, the fret markers themselves are quite interesting.
19:31Yeah, so cool. So we all picked different adornments. So I picked these, which I think
19:36is from the 1800s, very early Martin. I think, I don't know if it was on the gut string,
19:41sort of Martin. And very, very early when we, I went for these. And I also saw this
19:44pictured in a very early, I think it was even a nylon string Martin. And I just thought
19:49it was so beautiful and interesting. And I'm always attracted to slightly more gaudy
19:53sort of the other acoustic, these mad pick guards. So those are the two pieces that I
19:57sort of put together on this to, to separate it. And this beautiful diamond, yeah, diamond
20:03sand hole ring as well. And of course the, the emblazoned Mirador M at the top.
20:10Just, uh, on the, you know, final point on the, uh, um, cosmetics or the aesthetics side
20:17of it. Uh, some, some completely obscure bloke did the aging on it, didn't he?
20:21Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing to say is, yeah. And they're sister pieces of words. So
20:25yeah, both guitars, they're, you know, brother and sister, they're from the same tree cut from
20:29the, the same piece. But so Martin customer shop obviously do extraordinary work. You guys
20:34know, and anyone that's played and even know that they're just above and beyond. Um, but
20:39of course we wanted to beat them up a little bit cause we're used to playing these old
20:41guitars that are trash to pieces, you know, and new instruments can feel a little odd if
20:45you're used to playing older things. So how can we do that? So the custom shop did, they,
20:49they, they, they beat them up and they sort of relicked and cracked and did it, um, sent
20:54them and played them and went, my word, these are astonishing. But you know, Jake, as well
20:59as was kind of insistent, can you push them a little further? Like, what can you do? Uh, I thought
21:05we were sent pictures. That was it. And I believe the custom shop said, well, we don't go through
21:08the finish. We wouldn't, we don't, that's one thing, you know. So the story goes that
21:12I've been told coming down the line. And from what I've read is that, you know, Chris Martin
21:16has, his self came down to the custom shop and was like, well, sorry, if you guys kind
21:20of don't dare and it's, you know, I'll do it. So Jake's especially is a bit more beaten
21:25up, but mine, but all these pig scrapes and these knocks and these dings it's, it's from,
21:29it's from Chris, Chris Martin himself coming down and giving it a go. So it's pretty epic.
21:56So this is a curious beast. What is this exactly? Absolutely no idea. No, I have some idea.
22:03This is another guitar. This is called a Waylay. Waylay? I'm definitely butchering the pronunciation,
22:09but it's a, it's a Hawaiian Island. I found this in Lowestoft in England on eBay for the
22:15priceless sum of like 250 quid or something. And I'm not sure what it is. It's been on tour
22:22with sort of all of Ida Mae and been with me everywhere. And this is what I was writing
22:26on for Mirador with Jake's L00. It was this and his L00. And it's a strange beast. It's
22:35I think early 1900s. It's birch, birch back and sides and it's all burst. Even the neck
22:41is sort of the strange tobacco burst. And it has a plastic mother of toilet seat fingerboard
22:49and no one can really tell me what it is. And I have shown pictures to experts. And if
22:53anyone can tell me, there's a couple of theories. Now, if there's anyone out there that does
22:57know, please let me know. It's been rebuilt. It's been ex-braced. And we think this bridge
23:03isn't original. So there's two theories that it's a regal because of the body size and shape,
23:07but it's got this slight bowl back, which I've not seen on a regal. I'm not sure if that's
23:13a thing. And it has a very wide flat neck, almost like it was a lap steel. That's a prototype
23:21for a round neck. I've also seen that was like the National Conservatory of something, something
23:29or what? Like a strange, I don't know, like teaching school of, was it lap steel music or
23:35Hawaii music or early whatever? I'm not sure, but I've seen other guitars from that period
23:40that look like this, but I have no idea what it is.
23:44And it's got that very sort of percussive attack. It's, um, and, and a kind of voice that we don't,
23:50we don't build into guitars that often anymore, but it is, it's so, um, characterful, isn't it?
23:56It's a really interesting thing. Yeah. I would argue it doesn't sound, you know, great.
24:02It's, um, it's very sort of tangy and open, but I found that, you know, big dreadnoughts,
24:07we all love the sound of plugging them in live can be a struggle and they don't quite,
24:12you know, it's hard to get them to speak in the way they do acoustically. Whereas this,
24:16I was, I was watching footage of Feist and she uses those small mahogany Martins and things,
24:22I think. And, uh, it just has such an incredible sound. So very often when I was touring with this,
24:28I run it through a champ. So silver, silver face fan, a champ, this pickup straight in.
24:35And I think because it's quite a quiet top, it just picks up so much harmonic detail and does
24:40a thing that isn't quite acoustic and isn't quite electric, but I kind of became obsessed with.
24:44So whether or not it sounds good or not acoustically, I've never really recorded with it that much.
24:50I used it on a song called deep river. That was, that's kind of scratchy rhythm thing,
24:53but it's, um, it's a unique instrument and, uh, yeah, this, this would have been on the backseat
24:59with the national, you know, it's funny how guitars, you know, when we think about recorded
25:05music, um, famous records, um, guitars can be very central to a musician's life without them
25:12ever having appeared on a particular famous records. I mean, think of, um, Hendrix's Epiphone
25:17Texan, I think it was, you know, you know, you go up to that Handel Hendrix house that,
25:21you know, the, and the, the curators there will tell you that he played it almost more than
25:25anything else. So it's interesting that there are guitars that occupy niches in our creative life
25:29that don't necessarily actually carry through to being recorded that often, but they're still
25:34tremendously important. Completely. And almost stage guitars, you know, like when I come home,
25:39when I came home from those tours, I wouldn't pick up my national and I wouldn't pick up this,
25:43I'd pick up the Strat or a Telecaster or something, want to do that, but there still becomes such,
25:48yeah, sort of, and it's also, you just trust them in a combat situation like this,
25:51you know, I know I can use this and whatever goes on, I know my way around it. And they,
25:56they kind of take on a spirit of their own and what they do. And also that can be certain
26:00amounts of time, you know, I've, I've been lucky in my career to play and always as an artist and
26:06various artists projects and, and as a songwriter and a singer and a guitar player, but each guitar
26:11isn't appropriate for every project that I do. You know, there's different things that I've done.
26:15And for that early stage of Ida Mae, this guitar and that guitar were kind of essential figures.
26:21Yeah. And I couldn't get rid of them now.
26:53One thing I want to say is that, you know, your new project with Jake, Mirador, you've got an album
26:59coming and with many rock bands, the, the acoustic feels like almost like a, an afterthought or it's
27:07the token slow ballad track is the only place where an acoustic has a home on a lot of rock
27:12records.
27:12And that, that's certainly not the case with Mirador, is it?
27:15No, not at all. You're completely right. No, we wrote the whole record on acoustic guitars.
27:20So Jake was living in this old sort of Victorian house out in East Nashville.
27:24And we'd met cause we'd opened for Greta at the Fox theater in Detroit.
27:29And I was playing this guitar and a Gretsch at the time and these little acoustics,
27:34these blues acoustics, as he calls them, Turpin acoustics.
27:36And that's sort of how we bonded, talking about early blues records and, and discussing guitar
27:42playing and styles and various different ways. There's lots of stories there.
27:47But when we got together, it was sort of a suggestion of Jake was like, well, let's,
27:51let's get together and write something. Let's, let's see what comes of it.
27:54And it turned up with an acoustic guitar and he had an acoustic guitar and we ended up writing,
28:00I think two songs the first day, three songs the next, and all written on acoustic guitars,
28:05which I think it's also relatively unusual for a rock and roll band these days.
28:10And, you know, when you had those first writing sessions, I mean, we'll, we'll come to this
28:13particular guitar in a moment, but what were you actually writing with? Was it just whatever
28:17was lying around or did you have specific instruments?
28:19It was that guitar. Yeah. And Jake's L double O is pretty much what we predominantly wrote
28:25most of the record on, I would say with moments for electrics. I mean, some of the riffs for
28:29Feels Like Gold and Blood and Custard, it had to get electric and just terrify those neighbors.
28:35And get, get those amps cooking. Yeah. And we had two Tweed Champs, so two Tweed Champs
28:40and two acoustics. And that was pretty much the deal.
28:43Right. So it couldn't be more organic and, you know, intimate and natural in that sense,
28:48which is, you know, how so many great records were written. I want to say that I really love
28:56the resonator sounds on the album. So perhaps this is a really great moment to introduce this guitar.
29:01Yeah. This is a really interesting guitar. This is one of my sort of, I guess,
29:06as a very important place and sort of, you know, what I've done and my playing and with
29:10my band, Ida May, we were, I was in a rock and roll band and I was younger and I
29:16wanted
29:16to move away and do something more acoustic and get back to sort of real songs and real
29:20sort of simple guitar playing. And me and my wife's voice, you know, worked so well together
29:26and we began to focus on writing songs more around cowboy chords and, and simple diatonic
29:32stuff, focusing on lyric and melody and narrative and story. Uh, and I'd grown up in Norwich
29:38and, and there was always guys playing at the art center and a lot of them would come
29:41by with resonators and just the most sort of beautiful and exotic, strange, alluring
29:47guitar to me at that age. And I kind of, um, I guess it's through bands. I was listening
29:55to, you know, whatever everyone else is listening to in school, you know, kind of rock and roll
30:01bands and that slowly stumbled back towards bands like, you know, Zeppelin and Peter Green
30:06and early Sabbath. And, and then at the same time, this kind of white stripes thing was
30:11happening and Kings of Leon and BRMC. And anyway, all of these things sort of gently started
30:16to twist back towards the blues, uh, through the prism of, you know, a lot of early folk
30:21music that my family were listening to. Anyway, long story, long sort of garbled story as
30:26to how I ended up with this guitar. But anyway, so I became obsessed with early country blues
30:30and I was really interested in that style of guitar playing. It's the same venue at the
30:34arts center. I've got to see Bert Yanch and people like that play and come through. And
30:38I kind of saw all these players as, as the same. I could see the picking styles and techniques
30:42were all very, very similar, but it was through guys like, uh, Booker White, uh, that I really
30:49became interested in this shape and style of guitar. And I would go and buy all those very
30:54early, uh, DVDs of those German, German TV shows they did in the sixties. Uh, you know,
30:59and you see sun house in that cardigan and he's playing this one of these, you know,
31:05I just kind of became an enamored with the idea of it. And I think, um, I found a really
31:09cheap one that I traded for a fuzz pedal in a guitar shop. And I did a radio interview,
31:14my very first band, and I took this guitar with me and it just turned heads. You know,
31:19it was, it wasn't this guitar. It was a cheap vintage sort of branded equivalent. So I always
31:25said, you know, when the time came that I'd try and find one of these. So we started,
31:29uh, this band item, eh, we got, we got a record deal and it was on a, a new year's
31:34day sale
31:35on Denmark street that this popped up from no Tom, I think it was. And it was far too cheap
31:41as far as I could work out. And obviously it was new year's day. We stayed up late and,
31:47uh, felt like a very good idea to jump in the car and go down to Denmark street and, uh,
31:51check this thing out. Anyway, I checked it out and plugged it in and kind of the shop went
31:55silent and my wife went silent. I thought, well, I think I need to leave with this.
31:58So this is a, it's a replicon. So this isn't an old one. This is a national replicon where
32:04I'm huge fans of the wonderful people at Nashville national. They've been very kind and generous
32:08over the years. But this particular guitar that I picked up before knowing any of them
32:11was very, very special. It's brass with the rolled F holes. So for resonator fans, that's
32:17a big deal. They say these rolled F holes change the tensile strength of the top and brass
32:23over the steel makes all the difference. Uh, I don't know who owned it before me. It
32:27had done a lot of work. It has, you know, Rizzlers in the guitar case and all sorts of things.
32:31But, um, yeah, I'd stuck various pennies on there and things from, from when I was busking
32:37and in my youth. And, uh, it just sort of became the sound of the, uh, sound of Ida May
32:43and was on all those, you know, If You Don't Love Me and all those songs that we had and,
32:47and
32:48toured around all of America with this guitar nonstop. It was on the back seat for every
32:53show that we ever played. You know, I mean, for a lot of people, the, the resonator, especially
32:59sort of, um, you know, metal bodied resonators kind of, they get pigeonholed as a kind of,
33:04um, Delta blues instrument, but actually the way you use resonators, it's, it's right across
33:10a lot of the work you've done. And so what, what can you do with them that most people don't
33:15really clock? Well, yeah, I think that's a cliche. I think, you know, they were invented
33:19invented around sort of Hawaiian music, right? And it was preamplification. So the idea was
33:24the simple technology is of these is gramophone technology. Something vibrates, it hits the
33:30biscuit, it hits an aluminum speaker cone that fires into the body, boom, it comes out
33:35louder. They were just looking for volume, trying to beat the banjo player. That was, I believe
33:40part of the game with these instruments. And I think also, you know, that for me, they
33:45have a unique piece in, in American sort of music culture in that, I don't know how
33:49any of these guitars survived in the humidities and temperatures of America. I mean, so many
33:54great instruments must have been lost and just pulled to pieces by the temperatures and heat,
33:59but this particular guitar, these guitars could survive that, you know. So I think sort of quintessentially
34:06we see that sort of soul gunslinger bluesman holding one of these, but there's so much more
34:11you can do, and it really depends on the resonator. But I found with these in particular, there's
34:17people kind of think they bark, I think, and you hit them hard and they bark and they do one
34:20thing, but it's
34:21absolute nonsense. They have this sort of built-in reverb. Like even now, this guitar is humming
34:26in my lap. I can hear it, you know, like.
34:30So although they're very direct and they're very loud, they just have an awful lot of dynamic. They go from
34:36quiet to loud, louder than sort of a standard flat top, very quickly. So you can be a lot more
34:42nuanced
34:42than you think on them, you know.
34:47These kind of ringing harmonics.
34:55I think...
34:58I think another thing is just the hand rest freaks people out, the mute freaks people out, you know.
35:05Not being able to palm mute like you would in a standard acoustic. Just getting used to that.
35:09But I think you can write, you can do all sorts of these things. You have to just be more
35:13gentle on
35:13the right hand than you would a standard acoustic. But also, you need a good resonator.
35:18That makes all the difference, you know.
35:21So, and how does this particular guitar figure in the work of Mirador?
35:26Well, this guitar hasn't been used much in Mirador. This is much more an Ida May instrument.
35:30But we've got a big resonator moment on the record.
35:33We're in the studio and I use... Jake has an old national that I use, which is a grey one,
35:37a duolian. Completely different instrument to this. It's quiet, it's thunky, it's steel,
35:44but it records very, very... It recorded great. So, over in the US at the moment, I have an old
35:491931
35:50triolian, sort of a la Sister Rosetta Tharpe of Rory Gallagher that I've just strapped to pick up to.
35:55And I've been using that one. I haven't taken this out yet, but I'll be using this for the UK
35:59and
36:00Europe shows, definitely.
36:01So this is very much, you know, the roots of your, you as a musician, this guitar is right in
36:06there.
36:07It's valuable to me, yeah. Because, you know, me and Steph, we were very lucky to go out.
36:11You know, when we first went to America and lived in Nashville, we were getting asked to do these shows,
36:16you know, Greta and Marcus King and ended up with Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss and, you know,
36:20name dropping all these mad situations that sort of me from Norwich, you know, wanting one of these
36:25guitars found ourselves in. But I think this guitar and the other resonators I play at the Mules became
36:32really central figures in us on that stage. They became a third member of the band, you know.
36:38So it was very, very central to that early sort of, I don't know, image and sort of look and
36:44sound
36:44of what we were trying to do.
36:45I don't know.
36:48I don't know.
36:48I don't know.
36:49I don't know.
36:58I don't know.
37:01I don't know.
37:15I don't know.
37:19I don't know.
37:21I don't know.
37:22I don't know.
37:22I don't know.
37:23I don't know.
37:23Here he is.
37:23Here he goes.
37:24You
Comments