My trusty red ESP vintage plus from 96 was the weapon of choice and as I have always told players, the tone is in the guitarists hands. Jeremy set up a cool sound from my Marshall head (which I love the most), and with nothing but a distortion pedal he brought along from Steve Vai, that he occasionally stepped on, it was straight ahead guitar into amp. If I play the set up it sounds like ME. If he plays the same gear, it sounds like Lukather. So lesson to all of you.
We worked on where he should play in this song... as there were spots in the verses and some empty solo sections for him to fill. He played great of course, and again I was blown away looking at fingers fly. He can capture a Jeff Beck tone easily which is quite a treat for me to hear. He has worked with Beck before and knows him VERY well. It shows. Once we said our goodbyes to him, Jeremy went ahead on picking the parts we could use and fit it into the sections, to give me room to answer him and play with him in harmony. The chorus sections of this instrumental were done weeks ago on my old Les Paul so that was done. By the end of the day we knew we had something very special.
Any fan of mine, or Luke (his nickname in the biz) would agree that this track not only rocks, it moves you without anyone singing. Having that strong rhythm section of Kenny Aronoff and Jimmy Haslip on drums and bass, didn't hurt of course. The next day I did some edit ideas for the song, and we cleaned up the tracks and finalized the edits and guitar parts. Ready to be mixed! So I want to thank Luke for playing as he knows best, amazingly, and Jeremy for working hard on the parts to make it NOT seem like just a "guitar players look at me, look at me" song, but a musical statement from both of us. Can't wait for you all to hear this one and the others.
Some of the songs are already mixed although it is still hard to state positively when I can package and release my CD. But I am very proud and want the music to be the best it can be. More updates on other work coming.
Kulick.net/blog, January 14th 2009
