Under Influence

In honor of Wilco's new album (Wilco (The Album)) and inspired by Nels Cline I've decided to engage in a bit of musing over the guitarists that have influenced me. Nels has this great list which includes just about everybody to ever pick up the guitar. My list is not as long but it's a bit more involved.

Why might I engage in such an act of seeming vanity? Well, because things don't come from nowhere for starters. "We stand on the shoulders of giants" is one of my favorite quotes of all time (its by Sir Isaac Newton if anyone's asking) and rightly so. I'm also taking a cue from the lists of 15 life-changing albums, specifically Chase's evolving one largely because he includes these interesting discussions about musician growth as well as why the albums themselves are influential. I want to talk about where and why and how what I play comes from and where I want to go or not go again.

I'll start with gear. From as far back as I can remember, I wanted two specific pieces of gear: A black Les Paul Standard guitar and a Marshall Combo amplifier. I've had two Les Paul's now and had and lost a Marshall Combo. Neither of the two were what I originally wanted but one of the things you learn about gear is that they are very particular. The amp sounded great when I got it and I would have had it for a long time had it not gotten stolen. It was a valvestate combo which means that it had a tube preamp but a solid state poweramp. Better than the tiny Peavey I started out with but not as good as what I've played through since. The option for the black Les Paul standard was there but in the end, i ended up going with a Honeyburst Les Paul classic. When all is said and done, guitars come down to feel. The classic felt like my guitar and that feeling has only increased. As I've learned the nuances of the instrument, I've grown to love it for its own voice more and more. There is still no roar quite like digging into a Les Paul.

Gear can have a serious effect on how you play but ultimately, it comes down to how you hold the instrument. Tone is in the fingers as countless guitarists have said and it's true. But knowing what you're working with is important, and it takes time. Some things are immediate, some are surprises, but most take time to learn and appreciate.

So what of the influencers? Chronological, Alphabetical, Depth of Influence-ordered? How about stream-of-consciousness, as in, how they come to mind.

The Edge: Ask anybody who went to GC who knew me and they'd tell you that I like delay...probably too much. As is the case with most christian young men of a certain age, I had my U2 phase. I listened to everything they did and especially the edge. The jangle, the rhythm, the minimalism, and the epicness. The Edge has a sound all his own and like it or not, you know its him when you hear it. I loved the rhythmic part of his playing and the layering of sound. I loved how the guitar didn't just have to strum along but could add a dramatic element through playing less or letting things ring off. I discovered that if you learned about 5 chord shapes and how to match up a certain way of playing those shapes with certain delay times you could basically sound like the Edge (technique-wise). Tone is a whole other matter. I didn't want the thinness of his Strats through AC30's. I wanted "Until the End of the World". The U2 sound was about something epic and huge and heart-on-sleeve which is perfect for a guitarist who cut his teeth playing praise and worship music.

Jim Adkins and Tom Linton (Jimmy Eat World): This was the music that changed my life truly for the first time. It was punkish without being brash. It, like U2, was heart-on-sleeve. It was ballsy and melodic. It was a Les Paul roaring alongside interesting rhythms. Jimmy was my first exposure to Drop-D tuning and to what some have called "emo". (This is not entirely true. I was the owner of The Juliana Theory's first cd way back but I didn't know it was emo and didn't like it because I wanted it to sound more like Audio Adrenaline.) I absorbed their cd "Bleed American" listening to it over and over again, trying to get the thickness that they had in their sound. I still like their sound (mostly Clarity and Futures) but I've moved on. What they gave me was a way of playing rhythmically in a different way. And the power of arpeggios. Playing with a melodic repetitiveness. Its hard to think of them without thinking of the next big influence.

Brian Lee (For All the Drifters, The Rosenfalls): Brian Lee plays how I want to play. At least, when i heard his playing for the first time I knew where I wanted to go guitar-wise. There was the Jimmy influence in his playing to be sure but there was more. It was at times dissonant, and the man knew how to dig into a telecaster and make it scream. I hated his tone at first and then the Drifter EP came out and I was in awe. It was crunchy and precise but branching out in places that I hadn't heard in other emo-influenced music. Brian was able to craft interesting riffs and match them with a theremin solo or a squeal of feedback. I decided to get a Fender DeVille amp because Brian had played one. It was a good choice. I have come to love the sound of my Les Paul through the DeVille, especially dirty. This was how I found the thickness of sound that I had wanted from listening to Jimmy.

Explosions in the Sky: Almost unparalleled influence. EITS was a band that knocked me on my rear from the moment I first heard them. Here was guitar music so pure that no words were needed. It was fenders played through fenders. It was expansive and cinematic. It was moving. And the sound was so unique. I started to pick up licks from them on purpose. I started working on my right-hand speed. I started playing with more reverb. I learned to craft my tone all over again. Rather than learning how to shape my dirty sound and then worry about clean, I did the reverse. Start with a great clean sound and then add the rest. This is the mentality that led me not to buy a strat and a twin reverb but to get a jaguar and an AC15. Clean done well is a rare thing indeed. I guess you could throw Sigur Ros into this influence as well. Jonsi's guitar playing was unlike any I had heard as well. It was long and droney and had a lot of bite to it dynamically if not tonally. The droneyness and the desire to let the notes ring out...to let the instrument breathe (as it were), was the goal here. These post-rock guys taught me to slow down and listen to the spaces between the notes.

Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead): Only the good Lord knows how much I wish I could play like him. Nobody can. But somehow I feel that Matt could do it better than I could. Most people think of Radiohead guitars as just making noise or playing "weird". There is certainly that element to the playing of Johnny and Ed but there is so much more. Paranoid Android changed the way I thought about the guitar as a music maker. But it was not until I started learning stuff off of Hail to the thief that I began to realize what Johnny was doing besides playing aggressively. His playing on "There, There" as well as the spacey stuff he did on OK Computer are what really get to me. The aggressive angular stuff is what I long to play but what I hear in what I try to play is far more arpeggiated and textured than it is jagged.

Dan Hoerner (Sunny Day Real Estate): There's this one Amnesty Letters song where the part that I play was trying to be like Dan's work on "Every Shining Time You Arrive." That and his tone. I'm a tone guy what can I say. But the sound of Sunny Day's later work was really influential on me. It was mostly listening to Dan in the background teaching me how to be a sideman. How to play a simple riff and compliment a song. Sunny Day influenced a bigger influence of mine but Dan's playing remains something I turn to for ideas (aka licks to steal).

Mike Weiss (mewithoutYou): Torches Together hit me like a bullet in the stomach. Tone was there. Creative use of reverb too. And a way in which the guitar could be less thick than in Jimmy or FATD's work but was nonetheless aggressive. Mike and his co-guitarist also used feedback really well. There were times when the rhythm section would drive the song and the guitars would sit back and create atmosphere. I really liked that and decided to try it. There was another Amnesty Letters song where I aped this idea from Mike (Monsters, I think). Also, my first mewithoutYou show was in Reading PA where, after the show, my bandmate Mike and I talked with Mike Weiss for about 45 minutes about gear and style and life I guess. He was all about letting the guitar shape the sound. Listening to the new record, I have to say that I love how Mike has moved more into the background and adds to the songs rather than driving them with riffs. And his tone is even better now.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I have this blues influenced classic rock jumble in my memory that occasionally comes out in what I play but I can't pin down any specifics. And I love the playing of sideman guitarists on over the rhine's "Changes Come Live" disc and "Cold Roses" by Ryan Adams and The Cardinals. But I don't know what else I sound like. Hopefully myself I guess.

where does your playing come from? Come on music nerds, lets discuss.