Bartees Strange
It’s hard to place your finger on what exactly makes American singer-songwriter Bartees Strange one of the more wildly eclectic guitar stars of the modern age. Perhaps it comes down to how he’s able to seamlessly shift his jangly overdriven tones through jazz, hip-hop and filmscore ideas, while also exploring more atmospheric approaches to the six-string, surprising the listener at every turn. As it turns out, a lot of that musical open-mindedness is something he absorbed from Omar Rodríguez-lópez – the mastermind behind the fretwork in At The Drive-in and The Mars Volta...
“He’s probably my biggest influence,” Bartees explains. “I love every project he’s part of and would say he’s one of the all-time greats. His music just hit me at the right time in my life when I was looking for guitar heroes.”
On Bartees’ debut album Live Forever, released last year, he combined this eclecticism with an autobiographical approach to songwriting. “I think the songs work well because they’re real and it’s my voice and stories that tie it together,” he says. “These are all little snippets from my life, plus I think most people actually like all sorts of music. Why not make a record that sort of accepts and accommodates that?”
He also chose to use vintage gear for guitar tones that matched the honesty and sincerity of his music. The main sounds came from guitars made during the mid-60s fed through amps from the early 70s...
“I used an early 70s Blackface-converted Vibrolux and an early 70s Vibro Champ,” he continues. “Most of the overdriven tones were actually from just pushing the amps. It was that old Led Zeppelin trick, getting big sounds through smaller gear and big drums with fewer mics. For the guitars, it was a mid-60s Epiphone Casino and a friend’s late 60s Fender Jaguar that sounded so good, I ended up buying a ’64 myself. It’s the tone you hear on Boomer and the heavier parts of Stone Meadows.”
Interestingly, all effects were added in during the recording process, rather than later in the mixing stage. For Bartees, it was a way of adding to the directness and urgency at the heart of his music – moving fast instead of wasting precious time pondering too long on any given riff or part...
“It’s something I do that not everyone does – I like to commit the effects and all my ‘wild stuff’ when I’m tracking,” he adds. “Nearly all of my tones were printed as you hear them, very little was done after with plug-ins. I think that speaks a lot about how I create. I prefer to make decisions and just get rocking with it.”