Touché Amoré’s Nick Steinhardt & Clayton Stevens Talk Guitars, Tone, Recording

Hey everybody, it's Jordan from The Music Zoo. Today I have the pleasure of talking to Clayton Stevens and Nick Steinhardt of one of my favorite bands ever, Touché Amoré. Guys, thank you for taking the time to talk to me. Happy to be here. Good to be here. All right. I'm sorry that this was a rescheduled webcam episode, but now I get to ask you how that show in Brazil was that you guys just did for the stage 4 tour.

You want to take that, Nick? Yeah. It was very cool. We got to play in what seemed like kind of the historic venue. Little bit of a step up from the last one in terms of size. It was gorgeous. The even like the background felt like the tiles of the artwork and just like the way the architecture was and yeah, the fans down there super amazing, super passionate.

She did really well. Yeah, love to get back whenever we can. Was it just a one-off? It was. That's wild. That's such a long trip for one show. Yeah. We stopped off in notably on the way Florida and played [laughter] and so it made it a little more of a slightly reasonable trip. But the Yeah. The flight home. Yeah. It was funny to go 4 hours of you know time zone but like a 13 hour flight.

Yeah. To play a hourong show. You have vocals play. Yeah. There were some locals that played and then also the band Celeste from Lyon, France. Really good metal band also played. So that was a treat. Nice. So yeah, I guess today I mean I've seen you guys over the years so many times. I think my first Touché show was I looked it up before on Google, the 285 Kent show in like 2013.

Yeah. And I remember that was my first time seeing you guys and I was just blown away by the power and like there was no time in between songs you guys did. It was like a 24 song set list according to set list FM. Sounds about right. It sounds about right. I mean back then those songs are also like a minute 20 2 minutes max. But I've been a fan ever since.

So recently I've seen you guys on the stage 4 tour and your tones were incredible. And so I said I have to I said to Clayton online I have to talk to you guys about guitars. Amazing.

So let's get into it. I want to ask you guys first off, whoever wants to take it first, what your individual influences as guitar players are and then maybe how it contributed to your roles within the band. Yeah. I started playing guitar at a fairly young age. Probably like nine or 10, something like that. Just picked it up because of like Green Day and Blink182 and sort of the pop punk of the time.

And took a couple lessons and didn't really stick until I was showed a power cord and then I started doing bands right away. So yeah, the Ramones, who you're wearing the shirt of and we talked about offline a little bit, was a huge influence on me guitar-wise. And then Sonic Youth kind of took my brain to another place in terms of what guitar could do. And those are kind of my primary influences on guitar from when I was in high school, let's say.

And starting to make music and do all of that stuff. And so, you know, I've always been interested in powerful guitar and interesting guitar and that kind of takes different forms. You know, like I said, something in between Sonic Youth and the Ramones, either the simplest or the most complicated, noisy, crazy [ __ ] so that was kind of my introduction to guitar I would say. How do you think that I guess we'll finish off that question.

How do you think that shapes what you what your guitar parts in Touché are? Are you more of like the Do you guys consider yourself like rhythm and lead or you trade off? I would say I play more of the rhythm in the band, but we do kind of trade off and also sort of approach the guitar from more of like a sonic youth or television to guitar sort of attack.

At least it's been that way for the last 13 years or so, something like that. The earlier stuff was more I was playing lead guitar in the very early stuff. Then once Nick moved from bass over to guitar, it became more of a two guitar thing. And then over the years, he's kind of taken more of the lead role, I would say. But, you know, but yeah, Sonic Youth plays a huge role for me and television.

Both those bands in terms of the guitars playing off each other and yeah you know the way that they you know separate sounds and you know one does something low, one does something high. Maybe they harmonize and all that stuff and letting the other members of the band take you know the parts that hold it down like the drums and the bass and the vocals. Totally. Nick, how about you?

Also started playing guitar really early, like age five, I think. And my musical journey, it's funny like kind of racking your brain to think of like what things from then you have taken through to now. I mean, stuff that caught my eye when I or my year when I was really young was just kind of whatever was on K-Rock. Whatever was like loud and exciting. You know, I loved Offspring.

I loved Rage Against the Machine. When I got more into punk music, it was like AFI was huge. And for me, yeah, Jade's guitar playing is like unmatched in that sphere because, you know, the music's hyper melodic and he's the single guitar player. So, he's playing these like fully voiced chords across all six strings. And that really formed a lot of like the melodicism of how I play.

But then being in a band like Touché where we have two guitars, it's like that's like almost too much sonic information and density to come across well I think in a recording between Clayton and I. And so touche, you know, I wouldn't use the word restraint much in our music, but like in terms of physically even like how many strings I'm playing or how many, you know, the rhythm that I'm strumming is like sometimes there's like an element of like reducing it to get the effect I want to have to pull back.

And I think that's come with like some more maturity of like studying other like great, you know, even older bands like you like Pompetti or Eagles or something. You're like sort of realizing how light their touch might be or how they might only be playing just the top two strings and letting the bass kind of ride on the low stuff. Yeah, kind of all over the place, but yeah, I guess in short, it's like it started a bit more maximal and like learning it all and then learning what to pull back to get the same effect, right?

Yeah. It's like as you guys progress like you still pull in like the D beats and the really fast drums but the guitars let everything kind of like guide the way and fills in like the space in between which was always really cool. Yeah. So I guess given that Yeah. No, I was going to say I think you know kind of to what Nick's saying is that both of us definitely you know started on you know extreme music, punk music, things that caught our ear, but we're both and actually everyone in the band really are big classic rock fans.

So everything from, you know, the Beatles to Kiss to the Birds to anything in that is a huge influence on the band. And what we listen to and the types of chords and guitar stuff that we tend to gravitate towards is more in the classic rock sort of realm. And I think that's where we take a lot of inspiration from when we're trying to fuse our love of, you know, punk, screo, extreme metal, all of that stuff.

With some of that classic rock stuff that we love. Yeah. It's funny. Some of it is like, is this a song? Is this songwriting influence or is this guitar playing influence? And that line is so fine sometimes. Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess all that kind of leads to led into my next question, which was you guys identify as a it's a single coil

Band. And Clayton, that makes sense that you love the Ramones and Sonic Youth so much because I feel like you were you guys were one of the first bands I saw early on that was it that was playing quote unquote hardcore but without less Pauls and SGs and ESPs and it led to such a different sound. And so I guess is that those early influences made you want to play Jazzmasters and Fender guitars I guess for lack of a better word?

Yeah, I've been a Fender guy like I'd say like almost day one. Like my first guitar was a Strat. That's not uncommon. But yeah, I had a brief feray with Les Paul's but in this band it just never felt right for some reason. It never sounded right. And I when I started playing guitar in this band, I bought a Jaguar just because I thought it was cool.

And the offset really wiry jangly thing kind of became a bit of a defining sound, at least for like, you know, my section of the band. Previous to me, yeah, I guess there was it was mostly like Telecasters, right? Telecaster Strat. U, but yeah, it was very single coil and jangly from the get-go. A lot of open strings and I don't know just the way that they would all like open strings within chords like letting certain notes resonate and that just sounded really good on Fenders.

Yeah. I think when the band started, I was just really in a mindset of you know, I was really into what was going on with like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mono, you know, just more experimental post rock type stuff was sort of where my head was at. And also kind of black metal and just you know, stuff that wasn't exactly made for a 5150. And you know a less Paul and so I guess that's kind of what gravitated towards our other guitarist early on he actually had an SG that he had bought cuz he just thought it looked cool and I kind of convinced him to get a Telecaster and go down that way and sort of pulled the band towards like let's do this and it was something my I was already doing in previous bands was using single coils and pedals.

You were using your dad's Mustang early years. Yeah. Yeah. My dad had a 60s Mustang that I was using and just like a Boss, you know, yellow overdrive OS2. And that was sort of the sound and it was just established early. And then once Nick started playing guitar fairly early on after that, he and I just went head first into that and it became an obsession. And like you said, now we can't we kind of can't play [laughter] humbucker guitars in the band.

We try it and we try it on record and you know maybe once in a blue moon something with a humbucker could sneak in somewhere but not really 99. Not even a P90. You're like get that. Not really. Yeah. Just Yeah. Something about the Telecaster, the Strat, and the Jazzmaster, and of course, the Jaguar. All of them have that percussive element, and I think that also plays a big role.

Yeah. It just wouldn't be the same bands, I don't think, sonically, with the Humbucker, which is really cool. Feel like a lot of bands can just like go back and forth, but for you guys, it's so set in stone. Yeah. Yeah. And even like aesthetically, like I was thinking of guys like was it Ryan from like Poison the Well who played a telly but had like a little JB in the bridge.

Like you were you visually are playing a Fender but the motor of it is a humbucker and it's which is good for Poison. Poison the Well is also a band that like kind of had a weird twangy sound kind of midcareer that kept developing and developing. I mean, the Telecaster was the sound of You Come Before You, which is kind of that turning point, and it wasn't Ryan playing it, but yeah, it's a really They're like one of the only other bands that I can think of that like has kind of that sonic identity built around the guitar style way.

Am I going Is there a music video for like a song off versions if you guys remember where one of them is playing like a Gibson like jazz guitar like a 175? Interesting. I saw that back in the day and I like it blew my mind. I was like, who is playing this? Yeah. Yeah. That I don't remember in particular, but Ryan and I funnily enough like a few weeks ago had an exchange.

I had seen them I want to say circa 2006 to 8 somewhere and he was playing a Les Paul Artisan which like a late '7s model with these like crazy banjo floral inlays and I had bought it because I saw him playing that guitar and loved it. I've tried it in Touché. It's never sounded right, but I'm filling in on guitar for another artist coming up and I'm actually using it cuz it's like I never get a chance to even play it.

And he and I had this funny exchange where I was like it was you that was playing this in like 2007, right? And he was like, "Yep." And like sent me a picture. That's awesome. And like an oddly expensive guitar to take out on stage for hardcore shows, I think. Right. Back then. Maybe a little bit. They were a lot cheaper then. They were a lot cheaper back then.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. We talked about I mean I remember like you know when versions when that was happening and Nick and I thought it was really cool the way that they had you know the JMPs and sort of the older kind of classic rock sound that they had brought into that stuff and that their choices of gear it made their sound change more authentic and interesting and was definitely in a way I would say not exactly what I was taking from or anything, but I definitely some inspiration in terms of vintage aesthetic and all of that stuff.

Totally. Yeah, for sure. I p I did one of these interviews with Brad Clifford, the guitar tech, last week. Do you guys know him? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't real I didn't realize he played on the Tropic Rot, and that's my favorite Poison record, and I absolutely punished him about it. He's like, "Yeah, we made that record. It was fun." And I was like, "No, that's the best." Great tones.

Great tones. Oh, so good. All the like and you guys are no strangers to like lap steals and stuff like that. All the stuff they were doing was so cool. I wanted to ask you

Guys about the multiple songs of yours that I think are I consider like iconic like melodic intros songs like flowers and you was it flowers the first song on stage four and tilda off pardon the sea like where does all that stuff come from? Is it some of the classic rock coming to head? Who wrote which part or is it kind of a group effort? I think both of those were me, but the Flowers intro like the till day intro that was it was like there are these chords we can play and then we made a punk song out of it.

So in that one the intro came first. Flowers I think we just like we needed something to start the song with and it was like we could just play cuz like I mean it's is it the chorus? It's like a simplification of another part of the song basically that we like added later from my memory. Yeah, the chorus was something I had brought as like a slow kind of almost like slow core type of thing and then we immediately kind of played it fast and that immediately became the song and then yeah that intro I think it came pretty quick.

I can't remember exactly but once we figured out what I had brought in as a slow thing into a fast thing that song came together very easily. That's cool. That's such a fun part of like the songwriting process to me is like you're stuck on a part and you like take a microscope to another part and play it faster or backwards or extract something from it for another part and then it's like a puzzle.

The whole thing is unlocked. Yeah. No, we do that all the time. And the process of writing for us can consist of a lot of that. Just trying stuff different ways, seeing what works, what doesn't, and then just kind of going on feeling of Yeah, that felt right, you know? Yeah. The till day intro especially, I think the first time I heard that I was like I think this I was like this is a shift in what bands are going to try to do like combining this like melodic sparse airy intro into Yeah.

It's funny like musically if you're talking about that intro specifically like I honestly couldn't say where that would have even come from. It's like you know we weren't super into like Modern Life as War at the time but like that doesn't really sound like that either. So I'm sort of like racking my brain like where was that? Probably low you know just like the jangly rung out chords.

Like I definitely was listening to a lot of that band Great Destroyer and drums and guns and they had a side project. I can't remember if it was simultaneously called the Retribution Gospel Choir. But I think that's where a lot of that kind of melodicism and like open jangling like droning notes came from.

Makes sense. Is it are all the records E flat? Right. E flat or E flat and then dropped. And then there's one tuning that we've used on I guess four songs now that's E flat with the G dropped another half step. And it's like a drone note sort of situation. Yeah. I like hacked it to try and not have to return to like an F position and bar a bunch of chords because again even that fretting doesn't sound like our band.

It's like you need to have like three open strings going at all times somewhere. And that tuning was developed for a song called Anyone Anything. And every record I try and write a new song in that tuning that doesn't sound like any of the others. It's like a little personal challenge. So, like the song Reminders is in that tuning. Okay. And then what's the one on Spiral, Clayton?

This routine. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. How does songwriting usually work for you guys? Is it do you guys have a space that you keep all your stuff in and make a habit for writing or does one of you bring an entire song? What's the usual workflow? That kind of depends. Number one most important though definitely is everyone in the room together feeling it. Making sure that everybody has a feel and say in the part and feel like they've taken control of their part and what they want to play and that they feel, you know, good and authentic to them.

But I would say it me Tyler and Nick all come in with ideas. Some of them are flushed out. Some of them are complete song essentially and then some of them are here's some chords and here's my idea of what could be something and then we all kind of work from there. It comes in various stages but it all needs to be worked out in the room together is kind of the final part of it.

Nice. I guess that goes into my next part of this where I wanted to talk a bit about stage 4. I'm hope you guys aren't sick of talking about it after touring about on it for a year for 10 years of it. No. No. But that record a lot of people will agree is a masterpiece. And I've always wondered what the songwriting order for that record was because to me the way the music feels is so entwined with Jeremy's lyrics that like the music is almost like narrating and matching the emotions of the vocals.

Like they're just so perfectly entwined. So, do you remember like the order of what which songs are written? I do and I don't because I have this meticulous I have this meticulously cataloged because we basically demoed the first half of the record at one point and then the second half of the record really shortly before we actually recorded it. The ones that I think were in the second batch were Palm Dreams, Displacement, Skyscraper, I'm sure.

No, I think Skyscraper was in the original batch, weirdly. Okay. I could look this up and clarify, but yeah, it was definitely like in two chunks. Like, it wasn't like we stopped writing for a while, but it was like there was a point where Jeremy wanted to have he'll generally want to have like a documentation of the songs that he can then write to. And doing that in a couple of chunks is useful for him for sure.

Yeah, comes last on that stuff. And so, you know, we kind of finish a song 95% of the way there and then he writes to it and sometimes it'll be like, oh, I kind of want to cut one thing here or add an extra line here. We kind of work around that to make the vocals work. And that's sort of the last part of that. That makes sense.

Yeah, Clayton, you're right. Skyscraper was second batch. The first batch was Benediction, New Halloween, Flowers, and you and Water Damage. Yeah, Benediction I think might have been even the first one. That was the first that was some that was something I brought that I was like really excited about just the initial kind of verse riff. I just I was really excited about that and I think it set up a good melodic.

It's really open and there's not a ton going on in the verses. Like it's just strumming really open. And I think that was a good sort of starting point of like this is going to be our sort of north star is like remaining simple and open and trying to let stuff breathe in a way. We had all felt on the previous album Survive by that all of us had kind of individually overplayed and overthought our parts a bit.

And so I think without even speaking about it, we had all kind of naturally come to the same conclusion of like I just want this to sound more not simple but feel more open and feel like that there's space for the songs to breathe. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. To me that was like instead of there being 10 parts the song could be four parts that are like really highly considered.

Yeah. And another thing is you know we had written probably Benediction and a couple of songs. So it was already sort of going one way musically and then Jeremy had sort of come to us and say you know well I've been dreading this but you know it's going to be all about my mom blah. We were all kind of like, well, we already figured that, you know, I mean, what else is there to write about in this moment?

And so, but it did kind of, at least for me personally, make me think, okay, I do want to write stuff in a more major triumphant sort of way. Because I felt like that would be a good canvas for what he was trying to get out and whatever that might be. And that was just like an instinct that I had kind of going into the album. And I do think that came across in that way.

And it was a good match for was going on there. But a lot of that was subconscious, you know, just kind of speaking honestly about what we were doing and being, you know, I think putting our egos aside for playing wise of like, well, what's going to suit the band the best and sound the best live and all of that. Mhm. Yeah, that'll make sense. Like especially after coming off the last record which is definitely more [ __ ] and everyone's all on 10 for most of it sort of respond with let's make a more not artistic statement but like I don't know what the word is.

Yeah. More subtle more subtlety for sure. And yeah, you know, Nick and I have come to this thing since then of like, you know, it's like if it doesn't feel right when you're playing it, like it feels difficult and weird, like it's probably not right. It should feel fun to play somehow. That seems to go in line with each other. You know, it feels good and somehow it also sounds good.

That Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think the song that made me wonder about the songwriting process or like the order for that song was Water Damage, which is my favorite on that cuz I was just like the bridge of it reaches such a crescendo and it's interesting to hear that was in the first batch of songs written, but then I guess the only Yeah. What was that? So also the only one with a blast beat so you can hear like kind of maybe where it would have come from. Oh, true. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. What was the what were the guitars and amps you were using on that record? I did I just use my Lone Star with Brad? Yeah. And I used that one. Yeah. The main Yeah. Mainly our live amps at the time which was Yeah. Lone Star and a twin. And then Yeah. Brad has a few like it's like a train wreck like a little train wreck amp that he has little boutique wooden amp.

And We may have used, he has a couple odds and ends, amplifiers and weird things we may have used for small things, but the bulk of it was essentially what we were using on the road at the time. That makes sense. Yeah. A lot of pedals. A lot of pedals, I bet. Do you guys shoot out a lot of drive pedals and stuff like that? Because I don't think the Limelight wasn't out yet by then, was it?

No. No. No. That's a record. But with Yeah. With Brad, we with Brad, I feel like we generally started it didn't it wasn't one of us or the other. It was like whoever started the song, we'd get a sound we really liked and then the next person that went, we would dial the tone in to complement what had already been laid down. I don't remember doing a ton of drive shootouts on my end.

It was mostly that like JHS double barrel that I was using at the time. I think like that's generally speaking where I started. Yeah. And like maybe those Mesa pedals I was using from still from a survive by like the tone burst and the grid slammer. I think that's all I would have had at the time. Yeah, you're right. In terms of drive pedals, actually it wasn't it probably wasn't that much.

I think my main one was just a full drive and what's that thing? It's a Catalinbread kind of marshally sort of box. Oh. A dirty little secret. Dirty little secret. So one of those I think I was still also and I think you probably were too, Nick, using the LPB boost at the time for some stuff. Just that I think wasn't always on for me. Yeah, same.

So that always played a role as well. And then but I remember doing some fairly complicated like I remember when you were doing Rapture I think it was you did like one of those you had one of those JHS Cubs and you would put something in the effects loop of it so that it was the Alpine. The Alpine, right? It was like the reverb trails I think had like a DC2 dimension C chorus on it or something.

Yeah. So yeah, that was the pedal they made loop in it, right? Exactly. Yeah, it was like a TRS cable where you could make your own little loop. So I think I did that for Rapture. The guitar lead specifically was just this super dense like wet ethereal thing, but wanted like the main melody to come through. So I think we were only affecting the trails of the reverb or the delay. Cool.

I guess going from that record touring it, the next record is with Ross Robinson, right? How were I mean I've heard a million stories about recording vocals and I've listened to a lot of podcasts with Jeremy talking about recording vocals with Ross Robinson, but what is it like to record guitars with Ross Robinson? I would say almost the opposite experience of most drummers and vocalists. He's an absolute pleasure to do guitar tracking with because well, as long as you have patience, I would say the he's a very detail oriented person and when he hears something in his head, he will chase it until he finds it.

It's just you got to be open-minded going into it. Yeah. And so, but it's so much fun. Yeah. And he shares a love of that classic rock that we do and classic rock guitar sounds. And so he keeps it really simple in terms of what he really likes to use like a rat, a very old rat, a very old TS 808, and a very old memory man.

And those three things are on every guitar track probably for both of us on both records that we did with Ross Robinson. There's a lot of stuff outside of that stuff, but that is that's the core. That's the core of it is those very simple old the oldest, you know, electric guitar tools that we've had essentially since the 70s. The most classic things. It's just whatever the first one was.

It's like it's never the second one. It's always whatever the first one was. Yes, he has, you know, it's funny. He's a gear nerd because he loves all the 70s and 60s gear, whether it comes to guitar or outboard gear, any of that stuff. But the details of the gear and all that stuff, he's really not that picky about it. He just has expensive taste, unfortunately, [laughter] for him.

So even when we did the last record with him, he didn't have when we did Lament, he had a cool '9s full tone deja vu vibe that was cool and we used it a couple times, I think. Nothing crazy. But he remembered how much he loved the original Univibe and then after that record went and got a very first year Univibe in the box with the manual and everything like literally like the twist high was still around the K.

Wow, that's awesome. From like, you know, 67 or whatever year it was from. So it's a dream come true, I think, for Nick and I too to do, you know, guitars to tape on really great old classic gear. My main amp for the last record was his 68 Plexi and then Tyler's Trainer YBA3 custom special. And then on Lament, I actually just used primarily just a standard deluxe reverb.

I think just out of the box 68 re reissue one. A great amp as well. But and then Nick, they used a Vox on both. Yeah, it was his like 60s AC30. Just ripping hot. Yeah. When you crank a When you crank an AC30, they get crazy. Yeah. His is on another level. It's like you're like I pray this thing makes it through the end of the recording session.

Yeah. Every day he would always turn it on and be like please turn on. [laughter] cuz he likes to run the amps pretty hot and pretty or you know not hot in terms of gain but hot in terms of like it's alive it's up. It's turned up real loud. But the master volume is up or something pretty cranked on, you know, the Marshalls or Vox or whatever.

And feel kind of becomes your tool there playing lighter or softer and then layering and effects. And you know, he loves to go to the details of that. And so, you know, we kind of do our basic guitar tracking, which I think is a lot of, like we were saying, just that rat, TS9, memory, man, and then we go back and it just becomes like pedal mania and just figuring out, yeah, rat's nest of insanity and plugging stuff in.

And he has an old bass six that we use a lot as well for layering for guitar stuff, leads, bass stuff. I mean, all kinds of things and being open-minded to he loves like flangy sounds and very interesting chorus sounds and you know some pretty out there stuff for what we would normally do but kind of made me fall in love with all that stuff now I'm a huge flanger guy because of Ross really that makes sense I mean all those like core and record it's like everything on relationship of command had chorus and crazy electroarmonics flangers on it and all that stuff.

So that makes sense. That's cool that it like imparts onto your band now that you can take that into what you're doing. The cure. It is funny that like the like genre wise we, you know, don't hold a lot to, you know, some of the rest of Ross' catalog, but it comes from a very specific sonic point of view of like ' 60s7s like rock radio and the gear and the sounds that they were using.

And that like when I started, you know, when we started working with Ross, I was like, "Oh, like that is the sound of early new metal is it's like aggressive music, but it's like played through this lens of like pretty weird gear and sonic choices for that type of music. And then when we get in, it doesn't make us sound like new metal, but it does give a pretty unique perspective for hardcore, too." Absolutely.

Yeah. Cure is Ross' favorite band ever, and so that plays a huge role. Yeah. The cure and so flanger and chorus and all that stuff and sort of those lowfi high up bass stuff like that like the basic stuff is perfect for that. Absolutely. A different register than I think a lot of bands that play the type of music we do just you don't hear that sort of register a lot and it makes it really impactful then when you go the bass maybe goes you know up here playing a bunch of interesting stuff and goes back down for the chorus and yeah those are those tricks of like Nick saying like old sort of yeah like the radio of the 70s songs that are just like infectious there's a Man, that's really cool. How is he as far as

Like performance goes? Like is he a perfectionist as far as like you flubbed a note there? Like will he let a flub note go, but like the performance itself was great, or is he just like, "Nope, you didn't hit it. Go back." He'll let a flub note go, he'll let out of tune go. He'll let like the noisiest signal chain go. Somehow the final result just sounds amazing.

But no, he's all about like the soul of the performance. Yeah. Yeah, it's I'd say it's rare that we would do more than two or three guitar takes and it's like generally speaking like full song at a time. He wants you to perform it. Yeah. Wow. You're Are you pedal switching while you're like playing or is it just like some combination of he me Clayton and him?

Like we're all kind of in it together as part of the performance. It's really cool. It's really [ __ ] fun. Yeah. Everything from like, you know, okay, to get a not noisy enough signal, you got to turn this way and you hold this because it grounds it and you press the pedal at this [laughter] time. Like and I've got the screwdriver like tilted onto the power supply, you know, like what whatever it takes to get a sound that definitely he, you know, we follow when we're in the studio with Ross, we definitely follow his lead a bit and go down the rabbit hole with him and then ultimately we make the decision about, you know, kind of going with the sound.

But he's very, I would say, firm on what goes in is what's going to come out. And, you know, when the mixes are printed, there's not a lot of room for the mixer to do a lot with the guitars because it's printed as is. There's no DI track. There's nothing to reamp. Like, the sounds are going to be committed sounds to tape. Does he only work to tape or you guys record it to tape?

Tape and then tape into ProTools so that he can edit it. Yeah. Right. It's all but he's like dumping it kind of simultaneously, right? I don't know how this stuff works, but I don't know how that works yet, but that's he dumps he'll dump, you know, like let's say Nick does three full takes of a song, he'll dump that whole file and then Okay. And then he can make edits within there.

So I kind none of us really know exactly like, oh, was that one full take or is that the chorus of this one and this one? But at the same time, you know, nothing's to a click. Nothing is, like I said, done where you could fix it later. You kind of have to just live with what it is in the end as long as you feel like you got what you needed to get out of it.

And yeah, that it's going to be pretty that file is not very movable. That's all I would say. Like when it comes like those effects are on there's nothing you can do about it once you get it. That's really cool. That's I think that's my favorite part of that's my favorite part of like recording weird guitar music is like I just did a record with John Markson who does like drug church and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. And he's all about like someone's on the floor turning the rate of the chorus as you're playing and we're muting open strings or closed strings, whatever. It's like three people are playing the guitar at once. That's the most fun part of recording for sure. That's fun that you guys got to do it for us. And now going into live recording, I mean, not live recording, live playing. How do you guys aim to

Translate the stuff you've put on records live? It sounds like you kind of just use your Fender amps, but now you have Hiwatt, right? I do. Yeah. Yeah, I play Hiwatt. Yeah. I mean, starting from the beginning of the band, basically, I've been playing twin reverbs and so Fender has always been a big part of the sound and getting the sound from the floor as we've been kind of discussing with pedals and stuff.

So, always that's been a thing. But I've always been a little bit in the middle in terms of, you know, if I could only have one basic amp, it's always going to be a Fender because I feel like I can get what I need out of it. But I've always liked Marshalls. I've always liked Voxes, you know, like I have a love for all that British stuff.

And when I've gotten to play, you know, the really old Marshalls, like Ross' Plexi, it's a completely different thing than playing at JCM800 or anything like that. So, I've kind of fallen in love with I call it the British amps that are trying to be American amps. And so Hiwatt is kind of once I was able to get introduced to the people at H Hiwatt and try one out, I was just completely blown away at it's pretty much exactly that.

It's, you know, it's like it has a little bit of Marshall flavor in the mid-range, but without all the fizziness. And it loves pedals. And that's always been my problem with Marshalls is the pedals and the way that they react with pedals is just not what I go for. Especially in terms of spaciousness and stuff. It just I actually recently had to play a show on an 800 which sounded great for all the rock stuff.

When I would get to like the delays like they're so rigid like the repeats would be so rigid and things like that. So I've always had trouble playing Marshalls live especially. But yeah, highwatt now is kind of this perfect medium for me that it's super clean. Probably even more clean than the twin honestly. Like it's just it feels like they're terrifyingly clean. I think I remember we had like a vintage like DR what is the DR the whatever they're like I play the DR504 that's the 50 we had like a vintage one like the David Gilmore amp in the old shop and it was just like terrifying to play through because you can't hide behind anything.

It just you hear whatever you're putting in is what you're getting out. Yeah. Very high very hi-fi kind of you know kind of piano like I would say in a way and the bass response and the high but I still love my Fenders and when I can't get a high watt I always still opt for a twin reverb and that's sort of you know my basis of amp stuff and then whatever pedals get me there now the limelight which I use with a helix essentially right now I'm using the Helix Stadium and with that I was actually able to clone the Limelight and so that's in it's actually inside of my Helix now.

So I use that for and just for effects. I don't use any amp sims or cab sims or anything like that. It's just a canvas for me to build on top of and it's been nice and utilitarian for me because I'd had to play 800 and I was able to change around a couple pedals, do different things to kind of make it work for the set. So that's kind of

Where I've landed live is it's a utilitarian what can kind of get me there sort of approach as opposed to trying to like perfectly recapture what we did on the album. I think just having a really good clean bass sound and enough pedals to make it work. That's kind of the key to making it work live. Yeah, totally. Nick, for years you were using the Mesa Lone Star, right?

Yeah, I've been using that almost exclusively since 2010. It's still in your setup. Mhm. Okay. And yeah, I do record with it. The last two records obviously I did with that 60s Vox. But yeah, I don't think there's a huge point of something being lost in translation live. Like it's it does sound pretty true to the records, I think. And yeah, limelight pedal. I have an Empress.

I'm trying to remember what it's called. It's like a boost with a like a three decel. It's got a three decel boost that's switchable and then you can kind of buffer. Is that the buffer pedal? Buffer. Buffer plus. Yeah. My whole signal is running through that. Nice. And it has been for a while and it's like it's kind of the guitar is kind of hot to the touch and it gives you so much room to play with the dynamic of your right hand and other boosts there.

But, yeah, my you know, I've switched in and out a couple of delay pedals over the years. More so due to either like reliability or oh, this one's got presets, but my stuff stayed like pretty similar over the years. Yeah. You're rocking a lot of Boss these days. Yeah, some somewhat because it's easy to replace and it never goes bad anyways. Yeah. I always go back to like I think I found myself with a bunch of boss pedals again after years of like fun crazy boutique stuff.

Yeah. It's just it just works. Yeah. Just really does the thing. I like that Buzz Osborne quote from Melvin. He was like, "If I'm in like Jakarta, I can go get like a new DS1 and it'll work." It probably works out pretty using a Fender Twin, which is like one of the most readily available amps in the world, right? Yeah. No, I mean, that's a huge part of it.

It's sort of to that utilitarian aspect. It's just like I know it's going to be loud and clean and that'll get the job done for me and they're truly everywhere. So, I'm very thankful for all the Fender combo amps out there in the world, that have gotten us through many gigs in many places. You know whether it's a Devil Deluxe Twin like it's just amazing that those amps can be so affordable, so available everywhere and have worked well for so long for so many genres.

Like it's Yeah, it's truly an amazing feat what Fender has pulled off since, you know, what I guess the 90s or since that stuff's been available worldwide. Yeah, totally. Do you guys ever feel like your contemporaries or whoever has like a proverbial gun to your head to like get into the quad cortexes and the full modeling systems for all the traveling? Are you guys staunchly always amps?

Yeah. I just think every time I've tried a whole new rig or a whole new system, it's sounded good up until the moment I get on a stage and then I'm sort of like bewildered. And at this point, I don't want to have that happen. And I don't really know how to get the training wheels on to where I don't have like a detrimental first week of performing, you know, with some whole new system, you know, like we don't run in ears.

We don't have a monitor tech. I was just going to ask that. Yeah, we have front of house like most of the time, but yeah, we're not like that. I don't want to say we're not that pro, but like I think if we had a little bit more infrastructure around us, something like that could be a little bit more seamless. Mhm. And yeah, I'm all about ease of travel, but it's tough.

Yeah, I think there's also like unquestionably something to energy emitting from the stage and all of that stuff. So, a silent stage is straight up like out of the question. You know, if we were to do something like that, it would have to be something where there were cabinets and life on stage and all of that. So, you know, that would be the closest I would say we would ever get to that kind of thing.

But like feeling the energy on stage and like feeding off of that and feeling amps and air move and all of that stuff plays like I, you know, we literally dance to the music, you know, I think that is just such a key [snorts] huge role in what we do. You know, and I think for bands where you're playing bigger places and you need a more consistent thing, it might make sense.

And I really not am opposed to any of that stuff. I don't have some kind of like, you know, like, oh, modeling's all whack, whatever. I've used it on recordings now. I helped produce a friend's record a few months ago and we did basically all modeling guitar and absolutely loved it for making records and just being creative and being able to create sounds super fast. Like I just absolutely love it.

But there's just never going to be anything like feeling an amp in the room and the feeling of the air pushing against you and all of that stuff. Like it just can't be replaced. So, for this band, I can't imagine a situation where the stage isn't bumping. Yeah, I get that, too. And it's, for me, like it's always like I still lug around like an 800. It's like, just visually, like I want to see a rock band on stage with like cabinets and speakers, and it just like at the bare minimum, it looks cooler.

[laughter] Oh my god. I might dis I might disagree on that front, but I think it's like more of like an artist. I don't think one looks cooler than the other. It's like more like the intention around it. Like if you had some really elevated production and having a bunch of like dis with you some crazy LED shows and lights and some spectacular stage setup. Absolutely. Yeah.

But at like but generally speaking for a band like ours like the air needs to be moving. Like I'm playing guitar for another artist on a tour coming up this next month and we're on In ears and it's in with a Keer amp modeler and tracks and the whole thing and it doesn't feel foreign to me even though I've never done it but I think it's because of the style of music.

If it was our music I'd be like why the [ __ ] is this only in my ears? [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I think it comes down to the player too. Like I ran into a friend yesterday who told me about seeing Bad Religion at a fest or something and Brian Baker was using a keer and he was like where's your JMPs and your stacks but it didn't matter because it still sounded like Brian Baker which is cool and that's good at the end of the day.

Yeah. I mean I don't think you can change who you are as a guitarist. That's for sure. You could buy all the gear in the world, all the guitars, everything. Like you're going to sound like yourself 99% of the time. And you know, you take someone like Kurt Ballou and hand him a crate combo amp and a, you know, whatever guitar, a jazz guitar like you're saying, and it's going to somehow sound like Kurt Ballou.

Like there's just something to his hands and the way that his brain thinks and all of that stuff that's more important than all that other stuff. However, to me, somebody like him embracing this stuff is makes it inarguable. Oh, absolutely. Like, this is a person that's built his career partially on taste, tone, gear, and being a really inventive player and engineer. And so, to me, when somebody like that starts embracing technology in a way that like I wouldn't know and speaks highly of it's like, okay, like that's inarguable.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw Converge on these last couple. Have you guys seen Converge recently when he switched to the Helix? It sounds incredible. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You can't you like I've seen him on a million different rigs over the years. You just can't argue with it. Yeah, that is in his Yeah, he came to the zoo a couple years ago. He picked up a guitar, but he plugged in one of his brutalist pedals into a I don't know, like an orange amp and it just with from like one note I'm like that's it sounds like Kurt.

It's crazy. I like fell the floor. [laughter] Exactly. And he does exactly what I'm saying. You know, he they he's embracing it, but at the same time, he's got two cabinets behind him in stereo, at least using a power amp of some kind to get that feel to play, to feel inspired to play. But what's coming out of the speakers, I mean, it's absolutely fascinating what the way that he's had it all kind of done out and he's doing stereo panning and using the room and doing all kinds of stuff that, you know, was sort of strictly for sound people and now he's controlling that from behind the guitar and sending what he wants.

So, just a complete genius who's Yeah. I mean, yeah, like Nick is saying, if he's embracing stuff like that, then it's game over.

Absolutely. Yeah. Let's end out with you guys are ending out the stage 4 tour in a couple months in Japan, right? In Asia. Yeah. Asia and one in Melbourne, Australia will be the last show. Nice. What do you guys foresee after that? Taking a quick rest from rest for rest is for the week. We will [laughter] no. I mean, we got we're starting to plan next year and we already have some plans in the works and we definitely want to work on new music and time is going by faster than ever.

For sure. The older we get, the faster it goes. But yeah, I new music, more tours, more of the same. I think we're in a really good place as people in a band together and having a lot of fun playing right now. So, I don't see anything really changing anytime soon. Right on. Trying to think of any last questions. I had one before and then we've talked about you guys using the same gear for years, but if you had to put together a desert island rig of fantasy years of telly's and amps, whatever.

Could you put together a guitar, two or three pedals, and an amp? Is that a bad exercise? No. No, it's a great exercise. It definitely would be a high watt custom 50. I'll take any cabinet with that. I don't I mean I really like the high watt stuff, but yeah, give me that head and a matching cabinet and then give me a limelight pedal and a carbon copy and a holy grail and I could do anything.

I feel like with that's and a tuner. I'll take one away for a tuner if I have to take one away. That's vital. Give me the boss wa craft tuner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Limelight, carbon copy, and a holy grail. That's I mean that's the basis of our band, I think, in many ways. Light drive, carbon copy, and holy grail. Absolutely. It's just been flavors of that forever, you know.

Yeah. [laughter] Nick, if you have to build a fantasy rig, what do you got? Yeah, it's honestly it's not far from what I've cultivated over the years. It's a Jazzm Lone Star. If I'm just going to get a little bit more nuance, there's no budget. You could go vintage. You can get a vintage rat from Ross or something. I don't know. Well, you Well, you know, it's funny.

It's like those are so like isolated experiences to, you know, recording. It's like I'm not used to like playing and writing music through that. It's more like, oh, that sounds really good coming out of the monitors through the tape, you know? It's absolutely the limelight. It's like we spent so much time making that perfect for us and it's really proven diverse even apart. It's a great pedal.

My friend has one. I've played it before. It's great. Yeah. But Yeah. Some Yeah. What delay would I choose? Maybe memory man. Things my 70s Memory Man. Yeah. Thing's amazing. I was a hater for so long and then Ross made me a complete convert. [laughter] Yeah. The little bit of I don't know. I guess you would call it gain. The modulation, the marble. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so the way that there Yeah.

It kind of pushes is very unique. Yeah. My desert island rig would definitely be all stuff you have to plug into the wall with a threeprong or two-prong cable. No wall warts. Yeah. [laughter] The island has clean electricity. It's all good. Last question. You guys are coming up on almost is it hit 20 years as a band? Not yet. 2028. It'll be 20 years. Wow. Coming up on that anniversary soon, do you have any advice for younger bands who were going to sit in a van with each other for months on end?

You got anything? I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. It's like you just got to be kind to each other and, you know when to goof off and when to leave each other alone and just be good people at the end of the day. Yeah, I think that's really good advice. I would also say, you know, follow your instincts and don't worry about what other people are doing.

I've just seen too much like doing this for, you know, 20 plus years playing music like this. Like, I've seen every approach work. I've seen every approach not work. I've seen every style come and go. It doesn't matter. You can't, no one can predict what's going to hit or not hit or resonate with people or not resonate with people. And so I think following your instincts and staying true to who you are is the most important thing possible.

And my other advice is don't break up. Why break up? No need to. Keep going. Take a break. Keep it going. It's great advice, guys. Thank you so much for your time. This is awesome. I'm gonna quit recording right now.