Wired Strings -The Modern Guitar Life of Dave McCarty

e1s23 Wired Strings -The Modern Guitar Life of Dave McCarty

In this conversation, Dave McCarty shares his journey as a working guitarist, discussing the evolution of his musical influences, preferences, and the impact of COVID on live performances. He reflects on the balance between playing cover songs and original music, the importance of band trust, and the role of technology in modern music collaboration. Dave also delves into his gear preferences, the essence of live performance, and his thoughts on the rise of AI in music.

Keywords: guitarist, music, bar bands, virtual collaboration, influences, tone, live performance, gear, AI in music, band trust

Takeaways:

• Dave McCarty has transitioned from aspiring professional musician to a hobbyist guitarist.
• COVID-19 has significantly altered the landscape for live music, with earlier late-night gigs now shifting to earlier hours.
• Randy Rhodes, Nuno Betancourt, and Steve Vai are key influences on Dave's guitar playing style.
• Finding a balance between playing songs you love and those that the audience enjoys is a constant challenge for musicians.
• Musical tastes can evolve over time, leading to appreciation for artists previously overlooked.
• The essence of a guitarist's sound is often more about feel than technical skill.
• Live performance environments that focus on music appreciation are preferred over socializing venues.
• Modern gear has made performances easier, reducing the need for heavy equipment.
• Band trust is built on preparation and respect for each other's time.
• Virtual collaborations during COVID opened new avenues for musicians to connect and create.

Sound Bites:

"What kind of guitarist are you today?"

"I’d rather people watch us than dance."

"People are there strictly to see music."

Chapters:

• The Life of a Working Guitarist
• Musical Influences and Evolution
• The Balance of Performance and Personal Preference
• The Impact of Technology on Music
• Live Performance Experiences
• Gear and Performance Changes
• The Evolution of Gear and Band Dynamics
• Navigating Virtual Collaboration During COVID
• The Impact of AI on Music and Performance
• The Essence of Live Performance vs. Virtual
• The Sentimental Value of Gear and Personal Stories

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Because I don't know whether you ever heard the old, the old adage that tone is more in your hands than even in your gear. You know, you can go back to Nuno Bancourt. We were talking about Nuno earlier. Nuno, I read an article, he had an opportunity to play through Eddie Van Halen's rig back in the back in the day. And he was so excited because he was going to play through Van Halen's rig. He was going to sound like Eddie. And he started playing and it sounded just like him. You know, there's certain things, you know. Can you play clean? You play through distortion? Do you need, you know, delay? Do you need this or whatever? But ultimately, you know, I played through my friends' rigs, and I still sound like me. And my friends play through my rigs and they sound like them. So I don't know if I would ever miss anything, you know, because that's the old adage. You know, it's it's you sound like you because of you. You know, gear just helps.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So distortion, delay, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Would you miss any of it?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

I played shows where I just plugged into an amp, and I played shows where I've had a full pedal board in front of me. And I've never heard anybody sit there and say that I sounded any different. And I can say the same thing for my friends, you know, around here that have been playing for a while. You know, they uh they always sound like them.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

We're talking about the sound he's chased for decades, the reality of bar bands, and what it means to be a modern guitarist in a world full of modeling amps, home studios, and remote collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Welcome back to the Wide Garage with Pops. In this conversation, we're going to dig into the tone he's built over the years, the bands and nights that shaped him, and how technology has completely changed what it means to be a working position. So, Dave, thanks for hanging out with us in the garage today. So we go back, we just got talking before we try to record. We go back to the 90s, years and years ago, and we really haven't seen each other a lot since then. But I've been watching you on Facebook and seeing you, you know, out on a bar seeing you still playing. So when someone asks what kind of guitar guitarist you are, what would you say today?

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Strictly it's a hobby. You know, it's um soon after we kind of disconnected our relationship, Brian, um, I had my last ditch effort of being a professional musician. Now there's different definitions, obviously a professional musician, but when I really tried to make it my lifestyle, and um we wrote a bunch of songs, recorded in a high-end studio there in the Dayton area, released the CD, had some interests. But when they the the breaking point for me they was they wanted me to quit everything I was doing, job related, which you knew what I was doing at the time, and go on the road for non-guaranteed money. And I realized, you know, I wasn't 18 anymore. You know, I was sitting about 24, 25, and I was just I wasn't willing to take that chance.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

So since that point, I was like, you know what, I need to keep doing it because it's been part of my life for all these years. And it was it's more hobby-based than anything. But it's also still a major commitment. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Where do you feel most at home musically? The live room, home studio, GM sessions. What's your preference?

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Boy, the older I get, the more I just want to stay home in the studio. You know, the older we get, we don't stay up like we used to. You know, I was actually telling somebody tonight, COVID changed a lot in this world, but for a working musician, it changed a whole lot. Prior to COVID, if you were going to be in a bar band, you played, you started at 10 o'clock at night and you played till two in the morning. And once COVID hit, the whole, the whole game changed. Nobody wants to stay out till two in the morning anymore. So now these same bars will have the same bands play from eight to twelve, or sometimes seven to eleven, which, you know, at this point in time suits my lifestyle a heck of a lot more. Back in the day, you played till two in the morning. By the time you tore everything down, loaded your car up, you know, settled everything you needed to. Sometimes you weren't home until four in the morning. Yes. I look back on it, that was just six years ago. I I don't know if I could do that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, I imagine uh then if you were touring on top of that, that's just compounding week over week over week of just not getting sleep or trying to fit it in at odd hours. If you can answer this question, I commend you. I know how tough this is. What are the three guitarists that most shaped your playing, and what did each one leave behind in your sound?

SPEAKER_03 5:03

That's a good question. I started playing in 1983. And when you were a guitar player in 1983, that was the beginning of the hairbands. So you had to be, you know, what they call, for lack of better terms, a shredder at that time. So my first real big influence was Randy Rhodes. And uh back then, it it was it's funny, I talked to all the other guitar players about my same age. Uh, that was the big either Rhodes or Van Halen era. You know, and and there was very few people, I mean, everybody respected both of them, but you kind of followed the path of one or the other. And for some reason, I followed more of the Rhodes thing. Um, you know, before I really knew what he was all about, he was more classically trained, more technical, more by the quote unquote book. You know, where Van Halen was just fly by the seat of your pants and let her rip. You know, he was just he was that guy. When I started getting a little bit older, probably the next one that really influenced me was uh you know, years later was Nuno Betancourt from Extreme.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

That's ironic.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Oh, yeah. Um Nuno was just a almost like a jazz, you know, just a funk player that incorporated all the 80s, you know, tricks and all that other stuff that went into it. Just just phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

He was pretty extreme.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

A little bit, yeah. I actually met him. I was telling telling a kid tonight that I I work with when we were at a dinner. He's a little guy. Um, I you know, when you see him on screen or videos or something like that, he's larger than life, right? He just looks like this big. But he's uh he's a small in stature guy, but but big in playing. I mean, he's just still just an absolute monster, you know. Um and then, you know, after that, probably guys like Steve Vai, you know, and and you know, those are the guys that always thought outside the box, you know, that, you know, because they always say, you know, you gotta follow, you know, musical theory and all this other stuff. Those guys kind of, and all three of them, with the exception of Rhodes, kind of broke the mold of what a rock and roll guitar player really was. And those, those are the kind of guys that always kind of appealed to me. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Great answers and great explanations, too.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Is there a song that you never get tired of playing, or is there and is there one that tests your patience?

SPEAKER_03 7:33

It it's funny because as many I haven't done an original project in quite some time. And the problem with playing cover tunes, especially when you're in a working band that plays a lot, the songs go from something you really like to something that just becomes, you know. My wife and I will be in the car, you know, riding down the road, and I'll hear a song come on the radio and I'll turn it off. So she'll be like, Why'd you turn it off? I said, I'm so sick of that song, I can't see straight. But you know, it it and I mean it's funny, Brian. You asked the ones that kind of try your, you know, whatever. It's it's that's the old argument between local musicians. I mean, do you play stuff that you like or do you play stuff that the crowd likes? The key to me is finding that happy mixture, you know, because you can go out there and play all the dance hits and stuff like that. I've never been a dance type musician. You know, I I always joke around there's there's bands that play in this area that they base their success off that night if there's everybody's up dancing. You know, I'd rather people be sitting in front of us watching us, you know, admiring, you know, what the drummer's doing or what the singer's doing than just up there dancing, not fully paying attention to what we're doing. So I, you know, it and that's the the the thin line. Do you play something that you like or do you play something that they like? I've never fully found that balance. I don't think a lot of musicians really have, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Which artists or songs have surprised you by becoming influences later in life? Is there well let's say after Nuno, after Vi, maybe after that Shredder area, uh, was there anything that started to appeal to you later? Did taste change? Absolutely. I I quit becoming so stuffy.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

I mean, when I was younger, I was so, once again, I was into that Shredder mentality or the or the bands had to play that style of music. What Brian brought up earlier, you know, we did that virtual band thing, and the first thing we did was message in a bottle. You know, I wasn't a big police fan when I was younger, but when I got to be a little bit older, started to appreciate music more well-rounded instead of that little tunnel that I was in all those years, you realize that Andy Summers from the Police was a phenomenal player. But he didn't fall in that shredder mode when I was younger that I felt like I had to listen to because I thought that was the only thing that could influence me. You know, you know, you never think, you know, a guitarist like Prince, you know, was a great player because of his style of music. But when you get a little bit older and open your mind a little bit more, you go, my gosh, that guy was he could rip. He's a monster. Monster music. You know.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

And musician, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah. So if one someone wanted to understand your your tone, I think I hit this a little bit earlier, but you know, what track or solo says it's you? Like, you know, what should they listen to first if they want to know understand you? What is a Dave McCarty guitar solo or tone?

SPEAKER_03 10:31

So going back to that Shredder mentality, it was all about the licks and the tricks and stuff like that. When you get a little bit older, you realize it's not all about technique, it's a lot about feel. And if you really ever talk to a guitar player that's been playing for a while, the ultimate goal is to be able to combine the two, where you could sit there and play those those licks that supposedly wow the people that that watch you, but still play the stuff that the average listener sits there. I mean, you could sit there and hold a note for a couple measures versus screaming through those, those, those measures. You know, it's funny, I got a really good friend of mine that uh that him got him and I have known each other since I was probably 15. And I remember, and he was about, he's about two or three years older than I am. And he would always tell me, you know, you gotta listen more to Neil Sean from Journey. That is the classic example of a guy who can combine the two, you know, that makes musicians and non-musicians kind of feel the guitar solo. Not just the the song itself, but you can come into the solo where you don't, you know, what you play impresses both the musicians and the non-musicians. Or even when you can hum a guitar solo, you know, versus, you know, like you get like like Ingve Malmstein to me was you know just phenomenal. The guy, you know, the guy can play, you know, probably you know, as fast as anybody. But the biggest criticism with him is that they're like, well, he plays with no feel. I kind of disagree a little bit because he he's got of all those neoclassical guitar players, he probably has as much feel and stuff as anybody. But that's you know, still I know Brian told me you play. I mean, it that's the that's the the big argument, right? There you go. But it it's like, okay, do you play with feel? Do you play with with speed and technique? Can you combine the two? And I think the older I get, the more I try to combine the two. And I hope it portrays out, I guess is a good way of putting it.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

So we're gonna switch now to band life and live energy. And I have a question, but then I'm gonna I'm gonna shift off of it for a minute because I'm gonna see this maybe a little bit better at a better question to ask you. Of all the places you played, you don't have to name the place, but what type of place do you prefer? Like I I know you haven't played, you probably haven't played arenas or nothing like that, but of the bars, there's some that are larger and some that are more like three floors and uh like I I go to Nashville a lot for work, so I get to see Broadway and see all the different types of bars and setups and configs and how they they are and acoustical. So, what type of bar gets you going or is it your favorite type of bar to play in?

SPEAKER_03 13:15

So I I've always said I have two bucket list places that I want to play before I quote unquote retire. One of them I played, one of them I have, and that's Bogart's down in Cincinnati. Basically a 2,000 seater. I played there a couple times, fortunately, to a sold-out crowd. There's nothing that's better than that. It's not really a bar. You know, it's more of a venue. Uh people are there strictly to see music. They're not there to socialize with their friends, they're not there just to drink, you know, just do whatever like the normal bar scene is. They're there strictly to see music. So it's very much a concert environment. Right. You know, the problem is I would play one week at Bogarts, then come back and play a 150-seat place in Dayton where it'd be half filled. So you want to talk about an ego check. Right, right. The other place that I said I always want to play before I retired is uh play at the Frays. Um and of course the Rose is another place that's allowing um local bands to play as well. That'd be a good place to play. Absolutely. Um, I got friends that that have played there over the last couple years, got, you know, granted they were all original bands, they got to open up for some pretty decent nationals that came through at the Rose. And the Frays does it all the time. They they had a uh, I think the phrase has a Tuesday night where it's $5 to get in, and sometimes it's just local bands that come in. Yeah, like little festivals and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Um unfortunately, I've never had the opportunity to do it. Like I said, that's the that's the I guess the holy trinity, you know, between places. I've already I've done one out of three. Well, I think it's my wife.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I gotta keep playing until I do those other two places, right? Exactly. You know, back when you started and back in my heyday as far as my age and stuff, the places to play back then would have been Hare Arena and McGuffey's.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Yep. Well, I played McGuffey's. It was I played McGuffey's more times than I care to care to admit.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I think like Autograph got booed off stage when they opened up at Van Halen with Van Halen at Hera, and then they went to McGuffey's and they were like the best things to slice bread. It's just you can't open up for some bands.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

You know, there was you know, McGuffey's, you know, there was a famous story about um Guns N' Roses when they were playing either the Nutter or it had to be the Nutter because they I don't think they ever played uh played Hera. They were notorious for going on stage late. And what they did is on the way to the arena, they swung by McGuffey's, went up, you know, got up on played on the band that was playing that night, played on their gear, played three or four songs, got back in their probably limo, and went off and played played the Nutter Center. So McGuffey's had a lot of decent acts that came through that place. Yeah, I met Kid Rock one night at McGuffy's. Did you? Yeah, that was uh he would he signed a band, I think the name their name was Paradigm at the time, and I was playing in an original band that we were supposed to open up for him at McGuffe's. And he was playing Hera that night. So we played our set, and his band never showed up. So we ended up playing the whole night. I mean, there was a line down the sidewalk at McGuffey's. It was just crazy that night. So as I was loading out that night, a limo pulls up behind McGuffey's and Kid Rock gets out of the limo. And he sits there, looks at me and goes, So how was tonight? I go, it was sold out. He goes, Yeah, me too. A few more people at Hair Arena than there was at uh was at McGuffeys, I can promise you that.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

What's changed most for you during your live performances since you started? I I imagine it's got to be gear, maybe more than logistics. But how would you say what you do now has changed when performing?

SPEAKER_03 16:57

If you mention gear, I used to, when I was younger, I used to run around with four, four, twelve cabinets. And if anybody's there, sir, you did not run anywhere with those. You walked with that. Oh, yeah. I mean, those things are, you know, the ones I have are about 110 pounds a piece. And, you know, playing McGuffeys, I'd have four of them on one side of the stage. And at one point in time I had dummy cabinets. Because it's all about perception, right? The more cabinets you have, the cooler you look. At least I thought. So I always get back to the Bogarts thing. I always sat there and said, if I ever play Bogarts, I'm gonna borrow every cabinet from everybody I know, and I'm gonna load the whole back of them, and I'm gonna have this big presentation. What I've switched to over the years is I have two floor monitors that I played through, and I play through a modeler. So, which is no presentation whatsoever. Matter of fact, your gear's pretty much hidden. It doesn't look like you're playing through anything. And that's what I played, played through at Bogart's, you know, even though all those years I said I was gonna have this big wall of sound behind me. A lot of it is I just don't like hauling around heavy stuff anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I mean, the tone that you can get out of an Axifax or uh I I think the helix and stuff, uh, and then there's one that lets you just copy your amp tone. It's crazy. It's just nuts. What do you think is the most important? So you're you're in a band, forming a band, you've been in a band a long time. What's the most important thing for band trust?

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Guys that show up prepared. Uh if I, you know, like I said, this is a hobby for me now. So to me, if you show up at a rehearsal and you're not prepared, you are basically saying you don't respect the time of the other people in the group. Um one of my favorite sayings is I'm not ever going to say I'm busier than you, but I also know you're not busier than I am. So if I could spend the time to learn the song before you go into a rehearsal, it's almost well, it is expected that everybody should have that same respect for everybody else as part of the group. Rehearsals are for putting the song together, not learning the song. The group I'm playing with right now, full-time, they're all about that. They they understand, you know, it's respect to everybody else in the room to show up prepared. It's easy to put something together if everybody's prepared. So we're we're coming into rehearsals, learning sometimes five, six songs of rehearsal and playing them out the next week. And that's a true testament to everybody knowing their parts and learning their parts. There's nothing worse than just one guy in the band not knowing their part and somebody else having to show them their part. It's just it's frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

So I'm gonna switch over to virtual bands here. Talking about your virtual project during COVID, I think what happened, a message in a bite in a bottle. How did that process work? How'd you get involved in that?

SPEAKER_03 19:44

That was that was amazing. We were talking about sweetwater earlier. I had a buddy of mine who was a rep for sweetwater. He was a head rush and cord rep. When COVID hit, obviously nobody was playing in bars, the bands weren't touring anymore, nobody was doing anything, but there was still a niche to play and to put something together. So, a really good friend of mine, a guy named Jeff Gastineau, him and I were doing a uh a side project in the Springfield area at the time. Because of him being a rep for Korg and Headrush and him working at Sweetwater, he knew people all over the country. So he reached out to me and said, Hey, what would you think about doing a virtual project? We did Message in the Bottle was the first one, but there's about five or six other ones out there that I did with him. And what it was was he would find click tracks of, we'll use message in the bottle as an example. He would have like a scratch track of that with a click track, and he would send it to each individual musician. The click track kept everybody on time. So I would, I would maybe have a like a drum track on mine, maybe a bass track or something, and then the vocals. So I have a home studio, so I would lay my track down. Then he would send a track off to the drummer, and might just have the click track and maybe some scratch tracks in there too. They would record their part, singer, everybody else that was involved in the project. You finish everything off, you take the stem through the recording process, and we just send it off to Jeff. So then Jeff put all that stuff together, lined everything up with the click track, mixed everything down, and then everybody sent off their video piece of it. The misconception is everybody's playing live in those videos, but it's not. We're basically playing back to the track. But he pieced all the video, all the audio together, and boy, that that just came together really nice. Really nice.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

So when you record that part alone, you have the click track, you record it. What was your expectation on that final product? And it came out exactly how you wanted it to. Like is that an experience that you're used to, essentially?

SPEAKER_03 21:48

That was the first time I did any kind of virtual stuff with, especially people that weren't even in the same city with you. I had no idea how it was gonna come out. It was just like I knew I was, you know, I played through an idea. Effects. So yeah, you mentioned that earlier. So I went in and dialed my tone as quick, you know, closely as I could to Andy Summers. Um and just cut it and sent it off to Jeff going, man, we'll see. It was boy, he had that thing turned around in maybe a couple weeks, and he sent me a copy of it. You said everybody I was involved in a copy of it before he released it. And um, I couldn't believe how good it turned out. But after we did the first one, I expected the same thing out of all the rest stuff because I knew what he could do, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I mean, knowing that going through that experience, going through COVID, no longer being able to play places, and then you have that experience, is that something that you would be up for again? Is that changed the way that you've looked at collaboration and making music?

SPEAKER_03 22:48

I I do it in a heartbeat. The guys that, you know, the people that I know in the Dayton area that saw me do that, they're like, hey, can you get him to do another one so I can be a part of it? I mean, it was just fun. I mean, it's a it's a different experience. You know, when you play live, you got the reaction, but then you have the the together product, you know, when you do something virtual like that. I've done other things where, you know, like we we played live and people have uh I played in an Iron Maiden tribute band. I don't know whether you guys knew that too. Um that that's a lot of fun, and it's it's big production, it's big everything. We every time we play, we we do some kind of recording on it. So we got all these different cameras around the stage and the audio is all mixed out of the board. We got professional uh ABI guys out of Cincinnati that work with us there. And that's another thing. It's a little different from the virtual thing because you're playing live, but still when you see the finished product, it's just like that your live collaboration versus your virtual. The virtual is very controlled. Live is like you never know what's gonna happen, and you'll get surprises out of video, audio, some of the audio stuff you can go back and fix. You know, because you know if you're playing live, right? I mean, nobody's playing perfect. And if you're actually trying to do a show, too, you know. Titanics podcast.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah. Titanics podcast. Even though we don't do it live, we have editing, we still don't look at perfection.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Right, right, right. Sometimes off the cups, there's nothing wrong with that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

So uh I'm going off the script here again because I've something came to mind. Back in older days, there was like an argument about rights like online music versus, you know, like you used to buy albums, buy CDs, things like that. Then you had Napster and in all these things. You got the arguments about Apple music and rights and Metallica, I think got mixed up in a lot of that, right? Um, Taylor Swift with her owning her rights of her own songs and all those kind of things. And now what you're running into now are AI bands. Bands that are just not even real. What are your feelings on that? Now that you work your ass off, you know, your fingers to the bone, literally, you know, and now you got these AI bands that are getting these this traction.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Well, I I could take it to another level. I mean, people that use samples. I just, once again, you know, bruises and bumps, you know, it is that's part of the beauty to me of music. You know, I got um, and there's nothing wrong with this. It's just not something that I I like, but I got local band buddies of mine in the you know in the Dayton area that use samples, you know, and not just, you know, there there's some bands out there that use, they don't have a keyboard player, so they use keyboard samples. That's one thing. But when you start sampling in vocals and you start sampling in guitar parts, when you have a guitar player just to make yourself sound more like a jukebox than actually a live band, it's it's not for me. You know, it doesn't mean it's not right. It's just me being, I've been accused of being a perfectionist, you know, when it when it comes to music. And I just, like with the invention of AI, when that when that first came out, the other guitar player that's in I'm in a band with right now, just basically he did something with AI and it wrote a song for him in like 30 seconds. And he said it to me, he goes, What do you think? And I go, it sounds pretty good. He goes, Well, it's not real. I go, then why are you sending it to me? Because you know, I like that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

But you know, some SF like AI, but to get an idea started to flow, but to actually perform to me, you need it needs to be you, right? It's like us. We we do a lot of research on AI. We do a lot of research with AI for work, even, but the performance itself, for the lot of the fact, even AI automation we do, it's work. And I don't know. I'm just I'm just this AI crap, the characters and and all that kind of stuff. I guess I'm just too old for it, you know.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

But it's the old guy get off my lawn type mentality, right? It is.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

If you go to a show or a concert, I mean, I don't want to just listen to a speaker or watch a video when I see a live human performing and doing those things. I guess that brings up the question of well, what if they create it all with AI and then they just cover or perform that thing.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

So KISS retires a couple years ago, and they're coming out with avatars and AI, and that's gonna be the new version of KISS. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm just trying to know if I could follow that.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

That's Gene just trying to make more money.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Well, that's what he does, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Yeah, he does. It's all about the characters of dolls and everything that's out there. It's all about the marketing.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

It'll be uh KISS microtransactions. Have the band play songs for you in your game or something.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

So if I were to buy in if I blindfolded you and handed you your main rig, what would be a piece of gear that you would miss? You would be able to tell your tone is different. Like, I know you're playing with the axe effects, but let's pretend it was a stompbox pedal board instead. What what's the thing you need to have in your pedal board or your your tone or your chain?

SPEAKER_03 28:16

It's funny because I do have the axe effects, but I still have an analog Mesa Boogie rig. And I was a big boogie guy for for years. It's let me kind of rewind a little bit because it goes in, because I just had this conversation a couple weeks ago. I have a good friend of mine, he's actually the drummer in um the the Iron Baden band, the project I'm in. And he they discovered he had a brain tumor. So he had to go in, did a 16-hour surgery, and he we did a fundraiser for him a couple weeks ago at a club called the Hidden Gym in the Dayton area. Um so there was all these great guitar players, great musicians, and I brought my rig out, and my buddy uh brought his rig out. Very similar rig. As a matter of fact, I buy all my stuff from him. Because he's the guy who um I wouldn't say I'm a gearhead, but if somebody could show me how to use something instead of me figuring it out, I'm that guy.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

So that's my friend who does that. So he's the one who originally bought the Axe Effects. If you've ever messed with an Axe Effects, it's not the easiest piece of gear to get to sound good. But once you get it sounding good, it's just they don't make a modeler better than that. So we had all these different players, including like my local mentors, you know, we're playing, playing that show. And they were playing through my rig. And the thing is, it's like, is that gonna sound like my rig or is it gonna sound like him? Because I don't know whether you ever heard the old, the old adage that tone is more in your hands than even in your gear. You know, you can go back to Nuno Bancourt. We were talking about Nuno earlier. Nuno, I read an article, he had an opportunity to play through Eddie Van Halen's rig back in the back in the day. And he was so excited because he was gonna play through Van Halen's rig, he's gonna sound like Eddie. And he started playing and it sounded just like him. You know, there's certain things, you know. Can you play clean? You play through distortion, do you need, you know, delay, do you need this or whatever? But ultimately, you know, I played through my friends' rigs, and I still sound like me. And my friends play through my rigs and they sound like them. So I don't know if I would ever miss anything, you know, because that's the old adage. You know, it's it's you sound like you because of you. You know, gear just helps.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

So distortion, delay, that kind of thing. Yeah. Would you miss any of it?

SPEAKER_03 30:35

I played shows where I just plugged into an amp, and I played shows where I've had a full pedal board in front of me. And I've never heard anybody sit there and say that I sounded any different. And and I could say the same thing for my friends, you know, around here that have been playing for a while. You know, they uh they always sound like them. I mean, granted, you need certain effects or certain tones, you know, using distortion or you know, overdrive or whatever, to be able to do certain things. You know, but of course you know what you're missing right off the bat, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:08

If you're playing by yourself just for fun, are you are you generally leaning towards distortion or not?

SPEAKER_03 31:16

Yeah, when when I'm at home, I'll have use uh in my studio, I use a lot of universal audio stuff. So it's all simulated through my what they call a DAW, you know, basically a recording apparatus. And it has, you know, an Ibanez tube string screamer hooked in through a Friedman model amp. You know, you got a chorus pedal in there, you'll have a delay pedal, you know, and I and when I go in, those are my default settings. And when I'm just kind of messing around at home, yeah. That's pretty much just the three things I have in place.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

So is there any piece of gear there that's too beat up to sell but too precious for you to replace?

SPEAKER_03 31:54

I have a uh 94 Les Paul. Um it's a 57 reissue. And um I bought the thing in December of '94. Um I don't play it as much as I used to because it's pretty dang heavy. And the older I get, the more I don't like going back to the heavy stuff. But I'll never sell it. Never get rid of it. I've broken the headstock on it twice, ripped the pickups out of it a few times. But I always joke if my kids don't want it, it's going to the box with me. I just don't want to sell it. I'll I'll never sell it.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

I mean, the the tone that comes out of those without heavy they are.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Phenomenal sound of guitars. But so heavy.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Back to passive, you know, and I mean it's it's uh it's a it's a boat anchor. I mean it it's heavy. It's all mahogany, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I I remember the first time I broke the headstock on it. I I actually had a tear in my eye. I didn't know at that time you could repair the head stocks on those les walls.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, that the angle that those joints are cut and susceptible to that. There's a real good video. It's not a Gibson, but it's a Dean, and it's the lead guitarist from Trivium. He's singing, performing on stage, headstock falls over, and he has a meltdown and throws the guitar and good stuff. Good stuff. Dave, thank you so much. This has been a blast. We've gone from sweaty bar stages to home studios, hauling two amps, the size of elephants, into clubs to trading files over the internet. What I love about the story here is that you have decades of real-world experience, band experience. And then I think this is also unique. You've not been stuck in your ways, you've grown with modern approaches, the Axifax, for example. If this was the 90s and there was the argument of solid state versus two bamp, two BAMP would win every time, but the technology has come so far now. And I think that's awesome that you're making use of it. And you're back, thanks you as well, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah, Dave, thanks again for taking us inside your world as a modern guitarist. And for those listening, stick with the wide garage feed. In our next conversation, we're going to get more personal to Dave and talk about how he keeps music alive while struggling work, family, and real life. Until then, I'm Pops, and this is the Wide Garage, where we talk about tech tools and the humans behind them. Thank you.