Greg Howe, the American guitarist born in Easton, Pennsylvania, knows his way around a neck. One of the original uber-shredders along with Tony MacAlpine, Paul Gilbert, Marty Friedman, and that band of stringfellows, he has continued making instrumental records all these many years gone. His most addition is a blend of rock and funk, jazz and Latin, on a CD called Sound Proof. On it, he eschews the traditional route of playing with a host of superstars like Billy Sheehan and Dennis Chambers in lieu of working with a real band. A real band in terms of a group of musicians who will appear on subsequent records and go on the road with him.
Here, he talks about the new record and how he made it. Listen as he tells you the who, what when, where, and
Howe of guitar music.
You were one of the players who was around back in the day. Shrapnel Records was around and you were one of the key musicians. How has the world for guitar instrumentalists changed?
Yeah, well the business has obviously changed drastically. Physical distribution is sort of quickly becoming a thing of the past. People are making their music available in digital form and people are sort of requesting their music in digital form so on that level of course it’s changed. I think that also the internet sort of helped even the playing field a little bit in that the record companies don’t have anywhere near the kind of control that they used to have. They don’t have the ability to manipulate as much as they used to, not that all record companies did that. But they were certainly in the position to do so if they wanted to and in many cases they did. So that’s becoming different. There are a lot of artists today, especially guys who have already established their name, who are just bypassing the record labels now; deciding to just go straight to the internet and not deal with the record label because on many levels they don’t need to.
I think still the important thing about a record label is that they’re usually plugged into the in-house PR. A record label is really a financial backer with connections to the industry. So if you have those connections already and it’s no longer necessary to have the backing, which is quickly becoming that way, then you really can bypass the record labels. The thing that happens with artists is that they probably don’t sell as many records but the percentage they get from each record is so much bigger they end up making a lot more.
What about from a creative standpoint? Are you now going heads up for an audience that can now go out there and listen to ten thousand guitar players who all have MySpace pages?
If anything it’s helped me. It hasn’t really impacted me in that way. I was one of the fortunate ones when I got in at a time when there was only sort of a handful of guys that were in the super shred thing, or post Yngwie shred era. And with the help of Fender at the time who was taking out full-page ads with me for a couple of years, I really established a big fan base and I still have a lot of it. The great thing I discovered over the years and the thing I wanted more than anything ever since I was a young kid wasn’t so much really to be the greatest guitar player in the world but it was to have that quality that all my favorite guitar players had which is that they can play three or four notes and you just know that it’s them. So, what I like is that I feel like I’ve established that and people tell me that all the time and I can recognize it myself.
To me that’s really what the heart and soul of being an artist is about. To me it’s not so much getting on MySpace and seeing who’s great but the whole concept of being an artist is just like being an actor. Christopher Walken is one of my favorite actors; it’s not that he’s the greatest but you can’t get that anywhere else. And that’s the same thing with Van Halen; that’s the same thing with Stevie Ray Vaughan; that’s the same thing with B.B. King; that’s the same thing with Larry Carlton; that’s the same thing with anybody who is in the industry that is recognizable. It really has very little to do with their talent. Obviously they’re talented, but when you get to a certain point, it’s not about that; it’s just about being able to create something that is unique and being able to present yourself in a way where somebody else can’t go get that across the street. And so I really don’t think that the Internet is hurting people, especially people like me who already sort of have a base there 'cause a lot of my fans are those guys. It’s really interesting because a lot of them can really play and sometimes I’ll get a student that shows up or a guy that sends me a demo and he’s technically amazing but he can recognize even within himself that there are these other deeper characteristics in his playing that he hasn’t tapped into. This is what a lot of the newer generation of players are inquiring about- what are these deeper concepts? How can I move somebody with my music 'cause I can already impress people with my technique but now I want to be able to affect people.
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| "A record label is really a financial backer with connections to the industry." |
I guess the one thing that leaves me a little cold about some of these contemporary players is that the technique is well developed; fast and clean, very complex stuff yet I’m not sure who that player really is. Back in the day I could tell it was you or Yngwie or Tony MacAlpine or Steve Lynch, but now I hear these guys and I say, “Who are you?”
That’s exactly right, “Who are you?” Because I’ve seen guys who can play all these different styles and they’re great if it came down to if I was a music product company and I need someone to demo my stuff. There’s tons of guys I can think of that would be ideal. I’m really not that guy and I’ve never really aspired to be that guy. I always wanted to present a voice and be something hopefully that will go down in history as being the sound of Greg Howe. That’s really what I think any artist that’s really at the heart of it is trying to be. They’re not shooting to be the greatest because it’s not a sporting event. We’re not keeping stats like a basketball game were you can literally measure how good someone is. We’re talking about art, the manipulation of notes, an abstract way of conveying information to people. There are people who are beginners that need to develop the fundamentals but at a certain point talking about who’s better, it’s like saying a piece of art work is better than another piece: it has nothing to do with that. It just has to do with preference and what moves you and what affects you.
The whole heart and soul of my website is going to be to get into that territory and explain. Because I feel like the guitar community, in particular, has always attached to that sportsman/adolescent kind of the fastest draw guy type mentality and I don’t know why that doesn’t exist with other instruments but when it comes to guitar it’s so competitive in a juvenile manner. And so I’m really hoping I can contribute somehow to breaking some of that down and just getting people back thinking what music is all about.
Is there a process for you whereby you prepare yourself for beginning a new album?
Well, every album is different. And in the past when I was in that whole, “I do have something to prove, I do want to play the most over the top thing;” I do want to make sure the licks are things you never heard before on some level. Back then I would prepare by playing a lot, but now I really don’t really think that way when it comes to an album. I think I’m just thinking about the whole presentation. I really don’t prepare by doing finger exercises. What I will do is listen to a lot of different material and usually what I listen to has virtually nothing to do with instrumental guitar music at all. It’ll be anything from Stevie Wonder to Pantera and everything in between. During the process of just absorbing as much stuff as possible, then inspiration seems to start to formulate in my brain. And they don’t necessarily have any kind of direction or genre, so that’s what I do.
And on this last album, in particular, since I really didn’t have any time to prepare, I told the record label to just book studio time in San Francisco and that I would come there and somehow I would have to have material. I was supposed to deliver this record about two years ago and then too many things came up. Luckily he (record label exec) was patient with me, the record label. Next thing I knew, October was right in front of me and I sort of sat down and whatever came out came out. I didn’t try to force it or anything and there was certain ideas that I had that had been lingering around for a while. The last song on the album (title track) is a song I actually wrote about seven years ago. But almost everything else on the album was very new and very spontaneous and the Latin tune which is called, “Reunion” just kind of fell out of the sky and landed there. It was just one of those song that I really didn’t have to write and it sort of appeared in front of me. I heard the notes; I heard the chord change; I heard the melody line. It happens sometimes. That was a big part of what went on with this album, but there was some writing that went on in the studio. We only had four days to track the basic stuff. The drummer would be playing at three in the morning; I would be at the hotel writing something. It was kind of crazy.
The last song on the record is “Sound Proof” the title track on the record. That is strange that the main track on the record would have been lying around for so many years.
Yeah, I wrote that song right around the time I was writing for the Extraction CD; it was one of the songs I was considering putting on Extraction, but I didn’t. There’s always easily a couple of left over songs, so I figured this time since we’re in a crunch and I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, I might as well pull that one out and put it on.
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| "Almost everything on the album was very new and very spontaneous." |
Greg, could we talk about that? The track has those kind of clean rhythms and then it has that “Greg Howe” lead tone you’ve created. How does a track like that happen?
In terms of the actual recording process, we rehearse and then we go into the studio. Obviously when you listen to the CD, you heard that there are different guitar parts that I couldn’t be playing at the same time. So when we’re rehearsing, I’m usually picking the one and playing the one that I feel would be the most necessary if you would say, be playing live on stage. Because I was playing with the band and because I was dialed in and because it felt great, sometimes that part which isn’t necessarily intended to be the (main) guitar that will stay, but sometimes if it feels great, I’ll just keep it. But sometimes after the drums are tracked and after the basic tracks are there, I’ll go back and just redo my guitars. A lot of what I’m doing in the studio initially is reference guitars stuff for the bass player and the drummer.
Are you a proponent of lots of guitars, little guitars swimming in and out, different textures and things? Do you like that building process?
The process is always different. A certain song might lean towards that, what you’re talking about: adding textures, adding things and getting into that territory. And sometimes that’s what the song is; sometimes I just want something that’s totally raw, like, no rhythm guitar no nothing. Strat you know, amp, bass player, drummer, trio stripped down. Sometimes I want a big productions thing kinda like a Sting album. It all depends on the song for me. That’s why the creative process is really the heart and soul of what I get into. Guitar playing to me is just something I happen to do; it’s the instrument I play the most so I’m probably the best at that. But it’s not where I identify myself first; being just a creative artist is where I first think about myself and then the guitar probably comes after that.
Certainly the first song on the record, “Emergency Exit” is a pretty full-blown guitar excursion. It’s the longest song on the record and even has breakdowns for drums, bass, and keyboards.
I don’t think the length is something I thought about, but I think there is a certain alarming smack you in the face sort of wake up vibe to that song. I really wanted it to be overly intense. I wanted it to jolt you into place as opposed to some records will start you with a kind of nice easy song, guide you in comfortably. I wanted it to be kind of abrupt and obnoxious and also I felt it would be a good opportunity since it’s a brand new band with relatively unknown guys to get a chance to solo each and kind of say, “Hello” to everybody.
We could have gone the route of high profile guys and try to get a Stu Hamm or Victor Wooten and sometimes for the sake of record sales sometimes that’s helpful. But at this point in my career, I’m fortunate enough to have these distributors and these overseas license things not require me to have another high profile name. So, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get a brand new band and these guys are all pretty young and have that energy and they really want to get out and play. The other great thing about it for me is that they are available because with the problem with doing an album like Extraction is that they become novelty records. They’re fun to listen to but it never really exisst because getting those three guys together is almost impossible. So this will be a great opportunity for me to say, “Here’s the band that’s on the record and when we come into town or your country, you’re going to get the same guys playing the same stuff.” I think there’s value to that.
Do you like the idea of a band that remains constant from record to record? Theoretically would you use this band on the next record?
Yeah, absolutely, I like the idea of that. I think there are certain things that start to connect after a while. There’s certain subconscious connection things that happen and chemistry starts to build and I think that’s really important. I’m not saying it’s necessary but I do think there’s value in being able to look over at the bass player and you know him so well that just by looking at him a certain way he kinda knows what you’re gonna do and he goes with you on that. Spontaneous things can happen on stage that can make more sense.
When you were auditioning players, did you give any thought to the image or look of the band? Did you want a band with both black and white players in it?
I would never consider that criteria. I held an audition in L.A. and we had a few great drummers that showed up but Gianluca (Palmieri) just fit. He was dead on accurate; he sounded great but also he understood. I think he just vibed with me because he has listened to a lot of my music; he knew a lot about me. And Jon Reshard, the bass player, I’ve known him for about five or six years. We worked on projects together; I knew he was gonna play bass on it. Yeah, I geuss it kinda fell together that way. There was absolutely no thought that went into that altogether.
You covered Stevie’s tune, “Tell Me Something Good.” How did that come about?
I’ve remade Stevie tunes; that’s kinda become almost a theme for me. He’s one of my favorite artists; he’s probably my favorite artist, period. We were in the studio for four days tracking all this stuff. Like I said, a lot of this stuff was written right before I went up to San Francisco. Some of it was written while we were in the studio. Thoughout the course of the whole project, the keyboard player kept playing the opening riff to that tune and I didn’t really think much of it other than that’s kinda cool to hear 'cause I haven’t heard that song in a long time. When it came down to it, we really didn’t have the 60 minutes that we wanted or whatever. And someone suggested we remake that song and at first I thought how would we remake that as an instrumental? But then as I thought about it some more, this can be a really cool expressive kind of opportunity for me. Plus it sticks with the theme. I wasn’t even thinking it was a Stevie Wonder song 'cause I always remember it as being a Rufus song.
It was even better that way because I’ve remade the song, “I Wish,” by Stevie Wonder and on my Tilt album I’d had done the song, “Contusion,” off of Songs in the Key of Life, and something tells me along the way I did another one; I don’t remember if I did or not. In the privacy of my own world. I’ve remade tons of Stevie Wonder songs.
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| "The whole concept of being an artist is just like being an actor." |
Have you ever meet Stevie or had the chance to talk to him?
No, I haven’t; I would love too.
And what about the guitars you played?
I used a series of different guitars on the album. I have some Strats; I think most of the single coil stuff that you hear is from this beautiful blue ESP guitar called a Snapper. It’s kind of like a Strat-looking type of thing but it’s an amazing sounding guitar especially for using it for a Straty-type of thing. I had been with them for years; I’m not with them anymore. They make some beautiful guitars and I still get along with those guys; everything is totally cool. That was the main guitar I used on that although I think I broke out an old HM on a couple of tracks but I don’t remember which guitars I used per song.
I have a custom ESP, sort of a Horizon style guitar with a Floyd Rose, twenty-four frets, maple neck kind of thing. If you see videos on YouTube, usually you’ll see me with that. It’s kinda a see-throughblue guitar, custom. I use that a lot of the times.
The amplifer that I used this time was a Cornford MK 50 and I didn’t use any stomp boxes or any kind of pedals in front of it. It was the first amp ever that I recorded with that I was able to just go right into the front end of the amp and have it be pretty cool.
So that’s something new for you?
Yeah, generally I don’t leave home without some kind of Tube Screamer or Analog Man this or Maximum pedal that or something that I can put in front of (the signal). I do what a lot of other guys do which is get the crunch channel on an amp and then you roll back the gain and then you replace that gain with the gain of some cool stomp box pedal. But I didn’t do that with this amp because you really don’t need to and actually this is the first amp that seems to sound better without doing that.
What were some of the effects that you did use?
Yeah,I got some octave pedals, cheap, you know, Boss pedals. There’s this weird phaser that I have that’s got all these different settings on it and at the beginning of “Reunion” you can hear it. It’s got this one setting where if you hit the note, it kind of oscillates between these different octaves and that was kind of fun to use. There’s nothing crazy going on there. It’s usually wah pedal with an octave pedal or, in that case, it was that weird phaser. But nothing crazy, no strange rack of stuff; pretty striped down set-up.
You have always been a player of the Strat kind of guitar opposed to Les Pauls. The whammy bar has always been a part of your thing?
Yeah, it’s just I think initially came from the Van Halen school and that’s just what I have always grown accustomed to. It’s generally a guitar like that, it’s a little more versatile, you can get a little more variations of tones out of it. Then, you’ve got the whammy bar and you can do additional things like that. It just tends to be generally a little brighter. I’m not playing a lot of heavy rhythms most of the time. I think if I was I would certainly bust out my Les Paul more often; I do play it occasionally. But, yeah, I’ve always leaned towards Strat-style body shapes.
And then there’s acoustic on a couple tracks, “Morning View” and “Sunset In El Paso.” What are you using there, Greg?
On the “Morning View” guitar solo, I used a Parkwood hybrid guitar which is really cool and is very fast; it feels like an electric guitar kind of. On “Sunset In El Paso,” I also used a Parkwood acoustic guitar.
When you’re picking up an acoustic, does it require something different then if you were picking up an electric? Is it a harder instrument to play? You mentioned that it’s really fast but typically can you play on acoustic what you can play on electric?
In most instances but itdepends on a lot of things. On “Sunset In El Paso,” I got acoustic guitar strings, the action is not that low and I really wanted to get the full acoustic feel. And in that case I do have to play considerably different sometimes. There are certain things that I’m just not going to be able to do. Sometimes the approach is different and depending on what I’m playing, yes you’re right, sometimes it’s almost like you’re playing a different instrument.
I notice that you have “Connoisseur Parts One and Two” here, kindly jabs at the world of guitars and effects and everything we’ve just been talking about. Do these tracks suggest that you’re kind of world weary of the subject as well?
I think to a degree, I’m poking fun at you know all of us, myself included because we all get into talking shop sometimes. It’s fun and it’s fun to talk shop and to find out what the latest tubes are that are cool and it’s great. In that quest, I’m sure it’ll always keep going on for me; I’m always going to be searching for better tone as most guitar players are. But yeah, sometimes it’s humorous. I’ve been around these boutique dealerships recently and I see a lot of these guys who will come in and spend so much time posting messages on these forums about tone and then they come into the shop and talk about tone and you’re kind of like, “Can this guy actually even play? I’ve never heard him play the guitar?” Which is kind of funny.
What are the plans now?
Well I want to develop the website which should be up shortly. We’re still creating content for that and I feel really great about this site so that’s a big part of what my plans are. But we are also setting up a tour for the later part of October/November in Europe right now so we’re booking dates as we speak. And I tend to tour the States next year; I really intend to do that.
I just got additional material for a new album which I don’t know exactly when we are going to record but I have a feeling it will probably be next year. Pretty much my plans are to get out and tour, finish up on this website and then start on writing some new material.
Interview by Steven Rosen
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