Telecaster Love

Last weekend I recorded all the guitar tracks for Lies & Speculation. It was my favourite part of the recording so far, but that’s not surprising. Aside from the fact that I’ve been a guitarist for over 2 decades now, 9 of the 10 songs were written on the guitar. For me, because of my familiarity with the songs and the instrument, recording the guitar was easy and fun.
The acoustic guitar parts were all done with my Takamine. It has a great full, somber sound. Even though I have 7 or 8 electric guitars, I only used two: My 1974 Fender Telecaster Custom, and my 1991 Fender Telecaster Standard.

I’ve had a love affair with Telecasters since first hearing the Rolling Stones. Keith Richards’ primary sound relies mainly on the Tele. Because of that, once it looked like I was going to keep up my music lessons, my parents bought me one for Christmas (1991).

Other than the obvious importance of the Tele’s SONIC QUALITIES, I love the way they look. Especially as they age. The maple neck on Fender guitars age really nicely. I love that as you play them, the finish wears off and the wood starts to erode. It looks really cool, shapes how you play the instrument, and gives each guitar unique qualities – almost a personality.

On Saturday morning, preparing for the 2-day endurance run (10 songs, averaging 3-8 guitar tracks per song), I changed the strings on both guitars. I had to stop and admire the ’91 Tele’s neck – it’s starting to erode:




My ’74 has a lot of head start. Not only is it 17 years older, but has spent most of it’s life in a working, touring band.




Hopefully the ’91 Tele will catch up. I really do love these guitars – after stringing each one I played it for a half hour or so, reveling in the feel and sound.

Remembrance Day

This morning I woke up with Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in my head. Not much of it, just the first line: "Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun..."
I've been a Floyd fan for around 25 years, but today for the first time it made me think of my grandfather.

My family is British, and when World War 2 broke out everyone joined up. Everyone. My grandfather was 16 or 17, and went to enlist on Day 1. He wasn't old enough to know to lie, so when asked his age he told the truth. The enlistment officer flatly told him that he wasn't old enough to join the army. He would have to leave, walk around the block, and come back when he was 18. So what did he do? He left the office, walked around the block, and came back saying "I'm 18 sir."
He fought in North Africa and Italy. He was captured at Anzio and saw some horriffic things happen. Stories that I recently heard from my parents that are worse than you see in films.

When the war ended, he went home. He polished his medals and put them in the back of a drawer.
36 years later, he was dying of prostate cancer. He pulled his medals out of the drawer for the first time, shined them, mailed them to Canada and died. I was very close to my grandad, and it meant a lot that he wanted me to have those icons. I received them after hearing of his death, which was quite hard.

These medals sat for for another 30 years in a box hidden away in the various bedrooms I've had since then. For Christmas, my wife had them set into a shadow box along with my only photo of him. This display is mounted on the wall just as you enter my apartment. It serves as a memorial to my grandfather, and also as a reminder to live my life with the honour he did, to make his memory proud.

Thank you grandad, I miss you.

Lie, to me

I’ve started recording the bed tracks that will become 'Lies & Speculation'. As happens so often, songs are still pretty dynamic and morphing in unexpected ways.

On Saturday afternoon I was in the studio, laying down the bed tracks for Love Isn’t Enough (LIE). When I demo’d the original, I had a crappy MIDI track playing what was meant to be a violin accenting in the background. The melody was good, but I couldn’t get the violin to sound like anything other than a cheap 80s synthesizer.
So I tried my usual fallbacks: I tried it on a piano. That didn’t work. I tried it on a guitar. That didn’t work either, but wasn’t as bad as the piano. So I kept banging away at the guitar.
On a whim, I picked up the slide and plucked a completely different melody. IT SOUNDED AWESOME!!!! In about 3.5 minutes, I had worked out a beeeauuutiful slide line to flush out the chorus. I wouldn’t need the crappy MIDI violin anymore. A couple of knob-twists, a couple of button-pushes, and I had a new track set up to record the line.
In one take, I got exactly what I wanted. My eyes were watering with excitement as I put the guitar down and set up the PC to playback what I had just recorded.
With almost post-coital bliss I relaxed, a huge smile on my face. Suddenly something moved. The glass slide slowly rolled off the desk, shattering on the hardwood floor!
There would be no Take 2 today. Thankfully Take 1 got the point across. It would retain the magic that appeared, so that once I buy a replacement I can do a proper job of it.

Of course, the new guitar line necessitated changing the drums. And then the bass. And then the background vocals. Kinda like when my wife buys new nailpolish and suddenly realizes that the whole outfit should be replaced.*


It was a really exciting day. I had just hit a new level with this album. LIE would turn out to be the star I first envisioned when I wrote it 2 years ago, and it will pull Lies & Speculation up with it.


* she doesn’t really do that.
* but if you buy more of my albums, we might be able to buy her more clothes