PHOTO : MICHAEL CRUSTY
JAYE R . SCHWARZER OF CANCER BATS
On his 2004 Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom guitar
Like a lot of musicians , I probably own too much gear and each piece has a special feel or sound that helps shape the ideas I ’ m writing or recording . Every piece of gear means something special to me , yet at the end of the day , my most cherished instrument has to be my 2004 Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom Guitar . These were only made from 2004-2006 and were manufactured exclusively in Japan . It has two spaces for single-coil pickups and I ’ ve swapped out the bridge pickup for a JB Humbucker , which was built into a single-coil form while leaving the seldom-used neck pickup stock . This helped to make the tone I get a little bit crispier !
It has a tobacco burst body with a thick , baseball bat-style , long-scale neck that feels perfect every time I grab it . I can tune this guitar super low or even pretty high without having to mess with the intonation hardly at all . My Jag is the only guitar I ’ ve ever bought brand new at a shop with my own money . I was playing in a band in the early 2000s and we wanted to tune everything down to Drop C , but my other guitars weren ’ t keeping the intonation very well . I read up on Baritone guitars and saw that Fender made a Jaguar version which , lucky for me , is one of my favourite guitar shapes .
Nearly every song or riff I ’ ve written in nearly the last 20 years has been funneled through this guitar at one point or another . Cancer Bats songs like “ True Zero ,” “ Breathe Armageddon ,” “ Winterpeg ,” and “ We Run Free ” were born from this guitar ! You can hear my Jag all over the new Cancer Bats album , Psychic Jailbreak . I used it as the main rhythm guitar on every single song to really set the right tone and foundation .
MICAH BARNES
On his baby grand piano
My most cherished musical instrument is my baby grand piano . It used to live in my brother ’ s music studio in Liberty Village in Toronto before that area got a makeover as a condo development ... Daniel and I had many happy hours collaborating on songwriting and arranging in that funky , dusty , “ unfussy ” space that he shared with many other creatives in the building . ( It seems a long time ago when artists could afford studio space in downtown Toronto , now that I think of it .)
Key to this story is that our father ( classical composer Milton Barnes ) never had a real piano to work on at home and I always wanted to rewrite that legacy . So , when I heard that the piano might be for sale , I saved up my duckets , negotiated a payment plan , and paid the movers $ 200 cash to transport this beast over to my Queen Street apartment . It ’ s an old Victorian on the second story above a store , so you can imagine the stairs are narrow and treacherous . Luckily , the piano legs unattached and with the body of the piano strapped to a dolly , the small army of skinny movers used leverage and ingenuity to get her up to her new home .
So many of Canada ’ s finest jazz artists have rehearsed with me on this piano ( Jackie Richardson and Alex Pangman , to name only a couple ). Of course , I coached many a young artist on it as well , including Juno-winners JP Saxe and Sally Shaar from Monowhales . Most important to me , she is my composing companion . The entire New York Stories and Vegas Breeze albums were first sketched out on her . So , no matter that she doesn ’ t hold her tune any more , she will always be my friend , my collaborator , and the place to put that picture of my dad .
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 53