funky, and “Whole Tone Blues”
was going to be a shuffle.
I wrote the title track over
one of my favorite tunes of all
time—“Twisted Blues” by Wes
Montgomery. I’ve wanted to
write something over that form
for a long time. I changed some
of the chords and the melody,
but the form is similar. I also
did that on my other records.
On Fuzzy, there is a song called
“EpistroFunk” that’s based on
Monk’s “Epistrophy.” There are
a lot of tunes where I take the
form of another song and write
something over it.
When you record live with a
rhythm section, do you record
the solos live, too?
Everything is live—like the
classic jazz records. We go in
and try to play together as well
as we play in clubs. Before we
record, we play the music live
for at least a year.
You’ve been playing a Les Paul
a little these days, too, right?
I didn’t use it on the record, but
yeah, I just wanted to have a
Les Paul. I hadn’t played humbuckers in years. For a while,
it was difficult to play, because
it reacts so differently and is so
loud. It took a while to get used
to it, but now I am digging it.
Noy having a blast in the studio with a pedalboard that barely has enough spare room to route patch cables
between stompboxes.
You usually record as a trio.
What made you decide to add
organ to this record?
It felt to me like it needed a
little more harmony. Plus, organ
is very bluesy [laughs].
How do you compose
your tunes?
I come up with a riff or a
concept that starts from a drum
groove. I might take a two-
chord vamp or a line and record
it with a very basic groove and
bass line at my apartment in
Pro Tools. If that works, then
I write over it. For example, I
wanted to write a rhumba, and
that became “Oh Really?” I
wanted “Twisted Blues” to be
What’s on your pedalboard
these days?
On the right side we have an
old Vox wah-wah going into a
Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Octavia.
Then I have the Xotic AC
Booster—I left it on for a lot
of the record. The Ibanez Tube
Screamer is for the twangier
stuff, like “Whole Tone Blues”
or “Trinkle Tinkle”—the real
Texas-flavored stuff. Then I
have an E. W.S. Fuzzy Drive,
which is great. It’s a mix
between a fuzz and an overdrive. I used it for slide parts
and on “Two Centers.” You can
get a lot of sounds by adjusting
your guitar volume—it cleans
up nicely. Then I have a DLS
RotoSIM, an old MXR Phase
90, a Monster Effects Swamp-Thang tremolo, then a Fulltone
Mini DejáVibe. On my second
pedalboard, I always have a slap
delay going on one of my three
Boss DD-7s, a reverse delay
on another, and a longer delay
with a single repeat on the
