AJ Yorio, The Heavy Hours
“We assumed we would just be four friends making music in a basement forever. One day we get a phone call from a booking agent in Nashville. A week later he says, ‘Hey, Dan Auerbach wants to get lunch,’” says Heavy Hours guitarist AJ Yorio, explaining how they came to co-write with the Black Keys frontman. “The way we’re used to writing songs, the music takes about a month and then the lyrics take another month. Dan was like, ‘Alright, let’s try and write a song before lunch,’ so that was wild.”
The Black Keys connection began a whirlwind that has seen the band collaborate with Simon Felice (The Lumineers, Bat For Lashes) and David Rhodes (Peter Gabriel). Their third single, Desperate Days has been released to streaming ahead of a forthcoming album. The singles have a plaintive, acoustic feel, so AJ has to use his electric guitars creatively, layering parts and adding tasteful slide. “I love my volume pedal. I’ve been concocting a recipe there because I love having those swells, acting as a synthesizer almost. It’s this misty vibe that sort of floats throughout the song.”
At the same time, AJ isn’t afraid to pile up the guitars. “For these singles, I recorded probably nine guitars on every song because I love the sound of four different acoustics and three different electrics. I got into this habit of in laying down a lead part, going back for a solo and then adding some of swells and feedback. The producer said, ‘It’d be really cool if you could play every part on this album with one guitar,’ so that challenged me to compose and arrange the parts that way.”
AJ’S main weapon for this purpose is a Telecaster Deluxe, retrofitted with Seymour Duncan Phat Cat P90 pickups, through a silverface Fender Vibro Champ for small gigs or a 1969 Super Reverb when serious volume is required. His pedalboard takes from out-of-control to tasteful: “I’m always trying to figure out how to harness the Big Muff’s power and weirdness. But when Mike is singing, I don’t want to overpower it, so I try with the combination of the guitar and the volume pedal to make it sound like a pedal steel, just have some bends running into each other, never letting the audience hear the pick strike the string.”