Premier Guitar September 2016 | Page 74

Can you point out specific songs where you were thinking about Drake when you wrote them? From an early song like [the Black Crowes’] “Thorn in My Pride” to stuff from Flux, I feel that you can really hear a Nick Drake influence in the way that the rhythms roll and, even more so, in the timbre of the ringing open strings. Robinson wields one of his Teye guitars onstage with Bad Company earlier this year. “I always thought Paul Rodgers would be fun to work with,” he says. “Obviously that wasn’t something I could even think about doing when I was in the Black Crowes.” RICK ROBINSON’S GEAR GUITARS • Echopark Ghetto Bird with Arcane P-90 pickups • 1963 Gibson ES-335 • 1969 Gibson Les Paul goldtop • Fender Custom Shop Telecaster • Martin 0000-21 acoustic • Zemaitis George Harrison models (two) • 2010 Gretsch Black Falcon • Teye La Mora • Teye El Dorado AMPS • 1955 tweed Fender Vibrolux • 1971 Marshall JMP with Matchless 4x12 • 1989 Marshall Silver Jubilee with Matchless 4x12 • Rich Robinson signature model Reason • Vox AC30 Hand-Wired Being a big gearhead, what did you play on the album? I actually kept things pretty minimal. I got a new Echopark with P-90s, and I used my goldtop and my 335 like I always do. Those are my main guitars. For amps, I had some Vox AC30s, my signature model 50-watt Reason amp, and an amazing ’50s tweed Vibrolux. I also used a 1971 Marshall 50-watt JMP that sounds great, as well as a Silver Jubilee that I’ve used forever. Then I have these Fulltone Tube Tape Echoes that I use three-at-a-time. As for acoustics, I’ve got a quad 0 [Martin 0000-21] that was built to George Gruhn’s specs and a couple of Zemaitis George Harrison signature models made when Tony Zemaitis passed away and the company moved to Japan. They farmed out their acoustics to Lowden, who are based in Ireland and make incredible guitars. STRINGS & PICKS “Music That Will Lift Me” has some particularly great acoustic and electric guitar textures. How did you record them? A lot of the time we used a pair of Gefells on the acoustics, and on the electrics we used a mixture of Shure ribbon mics with a range of placement. We miked some up close and others far away, to really get a depth of different sounds. I’m really happy with the way all of the guitars sound on the album—very natural and organic. • Assorted D’Addario electric and acoustic sets (.010–.052) • Dunlop Tortex .73 mm Overall, what were you going for when you made the album? EFFECTS • Fulltone Tube Tape Echo (three) • Way Huge Red Llama • Way Huge Swollen Pickle • custom Red Rooster Booster • Fender Vintage Reissue ’63 Reverb tank 72 PREMIER GUITAR SEPTEMBER 2016 I’ve done every album I’ve made for the last 25 or so years in a slightly different way. On my last record, The Ceaseless Sight, I wrote a few songs and song fragments, and I wanted to use the studio to finish them. I liked the way it turned out, so for this record I said I’m not going to finish anything—even more so than the previous record. For Flux I decided to channel all the inspiration and energy you can get going on in the studio. I like to use the studio as a source of inspiration. When you go into a high-end place like [Woodstock, New York’s] Applehead, with a certain past, you really have a finite amount of time available, and so there’s an urgency to make decisions on the fly and to finalize everything as efficiently as possible. I really work well with that kind of pressure. I love the fact that Flux is a very eclectic record. It draws from all of my different influences and it’s kind of like a journey, which is what a good record should be. It was interesting to see where the music took me in the studio and where the album takes you when you listen to it from start to finish. You mentioned pressure—how long did you have to make the album? We only had two weeks to record, and we basically tracked one song per day. Sometimes I came into the studio with skeletal melodies, and some of the songs were more fleshed out, but, again, I opted to do most of the composing and arranging in the studio, to see what it would elicit from the music. What are some examples of the skeletal ideas you fleshed out in the studio? “Ides of Nowhere” and “Sleepwalker” were songs that evolved from these little ideas. They really came to life when the band and I were in the studio. They weren’t anything like originally planned, and it was really exciting to experience that transformation with the band. With “For to Give,” I went into the studio with just the verse and the Photo by Ken Settle How has Nick Drake influenced you? I don’t really use Nick’s tunings, but he’s a profound influence nonetheless. He really sent me down that road of exploring alternate tunings on my own, and it’s something I’ve been doing for years. premierguitar.com