FEATURE > BRIAN SETZER
I wrote seven songs with lyrics, then I started fooling around
with the Bill Monroe song “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” just running through the melody and chords on the guitar. At that point,
I decided to backtrack and make this an instrumental record,
since that’s something I hadn’t done before. As for the writing and
arranging, basically I just wrote out the melodies and chords in
lead-sheet form. For the chords, I fooled around on the guitar and
came up with a lot of substitutions—whatever sounded right to
my ear. For instance, in “Earl’s Breakdown,” where I broke out my
Scruggs banjo, one of the original progressions is something basic
like G–C–G–Em–E7, but I play G–Gmaj7–G7–Gm6—crazy jazz
stuff that happened to work really well. My bassist, Johnny “Spazz”
Hatton, and drummer, Noah Levy, were part of the writing process, too, since they came up with their own parts based on my
skeletal notation.
What about the recording process?
When I finished writing the album, I wanted to go into the studio
and get everything down on tape as quickly as possible because I
was so excited about it—just like any other album I’ve recorded. I
like to keep things simple: Pull out the best old microphones, put
up the Neumanns, put up the Sennheisers, bring in my old gear,
and just play and start making a record. Most of the new record
was recorded live—just a few guys in a room—and for the selections without drums, like “Far Noir East,” we used a click track to
keep things rhythmically tight.
Brian Setzer’s
Gearbox
Guitars
1959 Gretsch 6120 with TV Jones Classic
pickups, assorted Gretsch 6120-based signature
models with TV Jones-designed pickups, 1963
D’Angelico Excel, 1930s Stromberg archtop
Effects
Early-1960s Fender Reverb unit, vintage Roland
Space Echo units
Amps
Various 1963 Fender Bassman combos
—some modified with heavy-duty wiring
and 30-watt Celestion speakers,
1961 Fender Twin-Amp
Miscellaneous
D’Addario EXL110 strings (electric),
D’Addario EJ17 strings (acoustic),
medium D’Addario or Fender picks
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