ERIC GALES
One of the finest players of his generation, Eric Gales has survived addiction and jail time to return playing better than we’ve ever seen him. We catch up with the guitarist to talk about the redemptive power of the blues and learn why he may be picking up an archtop soon…
We were in the audience of one of Eric Gales’ stunning live shows recently, when someone in the crowd shouted out, “Play Machine Gun!”. But Eric simply shook his head and said, “I ain’t trying to be the next Jimi Hendrix. I’m just trying to be the first Eric Gales.” The riposte earned him an ovation and serves as a mission statement for the career-peak form he’s currently on. You get the sense that Gales is a guitarist whose defining moment has come: a time when he is wholly and unapologetically himself.
“I’m really, really proud of this,” Gales says of his latest album, The Bookends, from which much of his live show is drawn. “My goal was to let the listener hear a glimpse into things that inspire me. I mean, I can do a 1/4/5 record, a slow blues shuffle, and eventually I am going to do an old-school roots blues record – because it’s where I come from. But I just have an influx of so many different styles, that I like everything. So that’s basically what The Bookends is. I wanted to show the world, open my brain up and give them a little sample of that.”
Everything from blisteringly dextrous picking to elegant chordwork that wouldn’t sound out of place on a 50s Blue Note album can be found in Gales’ current work. But it’s all still underpinned by the blues. When we ask who are his main touchstones, in terms of blues guitar, the reply is pure Gales: sassy, savvy and funny as hell.
“Man, I’d have to say Albert King, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters. But there are actually four kings. Now this is a very pivotal question that I’m about answer for you,” Eric says, stroking his chin and assuming a very grave expression. “There are four kings: Albert King, BB King, Freddy King and… Burger King.” Gales explodes with mirth. “That’s a power-punch right there! All of them influenced the hell out of me.”
But though these words were made in jest, they kick off a wide-ranging discussion of what Gales thinks matters in blues playing, so we draw up a chair to pick his brains… When you play, how do you stay in touch with what makes blues powerful, while avoiding falling into clichés or getting stale? “Do you know, I think that I have been benefitted – and I don’t take this for granted – but I have been benefitted with a way to relay what my feelings are sounding like through playing. I’m almost 45 years old, so I think it’s safe to say pretty much anything that a person in my audience has been through, I possibly have been through it, too. So being able to play that and the emotion that comes behind it has been a gift bestowed upon me that I’m very grateful for. And I play from that area because I’ve been there. And from time to time I still go there, you know what I mean?
“I’m playing from a severe point of pain; it’s a lot of pain and things that I have caused on my own, to myself. So that in itself is a very intense area to play from. As we know, blues is predominantly attached to suffering of some sort. A lot of things that people had to go through and they were playing about it, that was their outlet, you know, because after they played, they found some relief from playing about it. So I think that the things that I have been through are very recognisable to a listener that – even if they have no knowledge of what a guitar is or the specs or details of strings or a guitar pick, a whammy bar, pickup or a chord – what they hear, they relate to. So that means a lot to me.” You mentioned earlier that you might do a very traditional, rootsy blues album next. Would you go as far as picking up a big archtop, T-Bone Walker-style? “Absolutely, yes sir. That could very well be my next aim. You know, it’s a toss-up between that or one more electric record and then that. I even thought about half and half, you know what I mean? But I feel a full-on raw, authentic Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker blues album, you know, because I have yet to do that specific type of album in its full detail. That could be my next thing, and Joe [Bonamassa] could be the very ideal person to help bring that out.
“I’m playing from a severe point of pain… that I have caused on my own, to myself. Blues is predominantly attached to suffering of some sort”
“I am predominantly feeling a bone-, butt-naked Leadbelly, back porch, raw, backyard sort of blues album might be next. Yes. Yes”
“I mean, who knows? I mean, like I’m kind of speaking beforehand because I’m kind of spontaneous with whatever that is popping to me, that’s the area that I’ll go in. I rarely think beforehand about, ‘Okay, this is the area.’ It’s kind of like how I’m feeling at the time and that’s where we’ll go. But at this moment, I am predominantly feeling a bone-, butt-naked Leadbelly, back porch, raw, backyard sort of blues album might be next. Yes. Yes.” Your chordwork throughout your set was beautiful – it was basically jazz improvisation. Do you get inspired by jazz players? “Absolutely. I’m very influenced and inspired by Wes Montgomery and Herb Ellis and Kenny Burrell, you know, Grant Green, George Benson, all those cats, Jonathan Butler. All those cats are amazing because the jazz guys and the chords that they play intrigued me so as a kid, because it equated to me. Like, I grew up in the church and listened to a lot of organ players, so passing chords on the way to another chord is like typical organ, piano work. So I just acquired that influence and incorporated it into the guitar. That’s where my influx of chords into a riff, into a chord, followed up from – because of all of these really dope organists that I heard growing up, and I liked it. I infused it with what I do.
“Eric Johnson is one, too, and in fact he might be the most influential person ever to me in life. But, see, I could say that but in the same breath, I have to say Stevie Ray, too, as well. I’d have to say Frank Marino and I’d have to say Robin Trower, all in one, you know? If I had to sum it all up, it would be Stevie Ray, Eric Johnson, Frank Marino, Robin Trower. And, you know, just to give it all the way, Albert King, the top situations of… I mean, but that’s definitely not excluding everybody else; I take from everybody else, too, but the ones that really moved me growing up were those five.” Tell us about your guitar… “It’s the Magneto Sonnet. It is actually the Eric Gales signature model that Magneto make for me, they’re out of France, and I have a rosewood-neck one and I have a maple-neck one. I left the rosewood one at home. I came equipped with two maple-neck guitars, so the Strat that I was playing is the Eric Johnson model and that’s the only guitar that I’ve spent my own money on and bought because I’m such a huge fan and I want it. So the radius of the neck is flat, it’s different from a Strat, so I have really grown accustomed to how those guitars feel.
“And the amps are my own models, the DV Mark model that’s out now that is doing really well. It’s a tube preamp solid-state power amp, so it’s a perfect hybrid. Going through two 2x12s, it’s 250 watts and it’s all clean, so when I even use other backline gear, the first question I ask is, ‘I need an amp that gets loud but clean.’ And then I have pedals to make up for everything else, but if it gets loud and clean, I can figure out the rest from there.” A lot of really great players seem to gravitate towards amps that have a lot of backbone, a lot of clarity… “For me, it has to [have that backbone]… you know, a lot of things that I play, it has to be able to allow me to – no matter the dynamic of what I’m doing – I need it to respond to it in a clean way, because there are a lot of things that I do that I thrive on the cleanness of it. If I’m trying to do a pentatonic of this and this and that, I want it to be as clean as possible.” What overdrives do you like to use? “I use my own, it’s made by Xotic; it’s called the [EWS] Eric Gales Brute Drive. They make them up on order now. And I have a fuzz that I use, made by Mojo Hand pedals, it’s called the Colossus Fuzz. I love it. And I’ve got a Tube Screamer.” Do you stack them or go in and out individually? “The Tube Screamer I use for just regular rhythm and I hit the Brute Drive to bump it up for solos. If I use the fuzz, it’s just the fuzz, because it’s got ample headroom and ample fuzz tone in it.” The way that you learned guitar is quite unusual, as is the way that you play it, left-handed but with the guitar flipped upside down as well. How has that shaped your playing? “I honestly don’t know, because I’ve never played the other way to compare it to. So, for me, everything that I learned came in the fashion of just figuring it out. I can say that, predominantly, everyone that I learned from were right-handed players, and so if they were doing something that was completely difficult as a left-handed upside-down player, it never crossed my mind. My drive for wanting to learn it was far over succeeding the fact of the possibility that I couldn’t do it. So I sat and worked with it until I figured it out.” It’s amazing the power of passion for learning guitar… “Dude, that right there – if it could be bottled and sold… inspiration makes practising not feel like homework.” But you can’t just switch it on, it comes from inside… “It’s got to come, yes. When it comes, it comes very powerfully. Like, it’s two or three days that pass by, I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to use the phone, I’m not leaving. I barely go use the bathroom. It’s that kind of inspiration – it’s pretty intense.”
“When inspiration comes, it comes very powerfully. Two or three days pass by, I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to use the phone, I’m not leaving… It’s pretty intense”