Shine a Light
ANDY TIMMONS FINDS OUT MORE ABOUT ANDY ALEDORT’S NEW DOUBLE ALBUM, LIGHT OF LOVE, FEATURING DOUBLE TROUBLE, STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN’S LEGENDARY RHYTHM SECTION
LONGTIME GUITAR WORLD associate editor Andy Aledort is widely known for his song transcriptions, instructional columns and DVDs — and he’s also toured throughout the last two decades with Dickey Betts and the Jimi Hendrix Tribute. His brand-new release, Light of Love, features 17 originals plus a cover of Muddy Waters’ “You Shook Me.” The songs are drawn from different sessions, including a 2004 session in Austin with Double Trouble. Final recording and mixing was done in the fall of 2021 with engineer Bob Stander at Parcheesi Recording in Huntington, New York.
When instrumental master Andy Timmons (who also happens to be a current GW columnist) heard Light of Love, he was so intrigued that he volunteered to interview Aledort for this issue of
GW. “Andy has his own distinct musical personality,” Timmons says. “That’s what jumps out at me when I listen to this record.”
ANDY TIMMONS: On Light of Love, you’re covering blues, rock and pop, but it’s coming out in a distinctly personal way. You have your own “voice” — not just vocally, but on the instrument. Of course, I’m expecting a “guitar record” from you, but there are a lot of vocal tunes mixed with the instrumentals.
ANDY ALEDORT: I had so many songs I planned to include, so I knew from the start this was going to be a double record with acoustic-driven tracks and more aggressive electric guitar songs. For each, the goal was to have “hooks,” either in the guitar licks or the vocal melodies or both, coming from a “pop” sensibility of trying to draw in the listener.
When I first played the record, I found myself listening to both discs all the way through, which is a lot of music — 18 songs and 100 minutes. It’s a nice journey from start to finish. I can’t think of many records I’ve listened to in the last 20 years that have given me that feeling.
Thank you, that’s great to hear. With so much music, sequencing was essential. Since the music stretched over two discs, I looked at each as a record unto itself and tried to make each disc flow as naturally as possible. I used the Beatles’ White Album as my template for how to carry a listener through two discs of different types of songs.
On the title track, I hear a pretty clear influence of David Lindley and Jackson Browne.
David Lindley’s slide playing on those early Jackson Browne records had a major influence on me. He got a huge sound, and it’s a great thing to aspire to as a slide player. The “Jackson” influence in the songwriting dawned on me later. It always goes back to the Beatles, because they wrote just about every type of song there is; there are country elements in “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and so many of their songs. I’ve always been a fan of country music, especially Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and George Jones. It’s so powerful, just like the best blues music. When country cross-pollinated into rock with the Byrds and Bob Dylan and later Jackson Browne, Neil Young and Little Feat, those artists influenced me too.
“Save Something for Me” might be my favorite track. There’s a hypnotic vibe to the groove. You take your time and let the song roll out naturally; there’s no sense of “rushing” to get from one section to the next. It feels like a live performance in front of an appreciative audience. It’s built from a simple riff but it’s very powerful.
“Light of Love” and “Save Something for Me” came out of some tough emotional times, and not unlike my favorite country music, they pull on the heartstrings. Even the title — “Save Something for Me” — I don’t know exactly what it means, and I didn’t think about it when I wrote it. Later, I thought, “What is that phrase expressing?” and I think it means, “Don’t forget about me.” It’s a very simple request, one just about everyone can relate to.
“Can It Be” has a slamming funk-type groove. And your Strat tone on ”Lost and Lonely” is fantastic — so clean and still so fat sounding, with an undeniable Albert King influence.
“Lost and Lonely” is one of the older tunes, cut with my 1961 Strat straight into a 1978 100-watt Marshall Super Lead. But I cut the song in the wee hours of the night, when everyone was upstairs sleeping! The amp was really low, on 2 or 3, so the tone is super clean. That’s what kept the song in contention: the tone is so good. It’s a live take all the way through. I also play the bass on “Lost and Lonely,” along with “Spacedog” and seven other tracks.
“Spacedog” has one of the fattest riffs I’ve ever heard. Are you using an Octavia for the octave-fuzz effect?
Hard as it may be to believe, it was recorded with a Line 6 POD with a RonSound Stone Machine, which is based on a late-Sixties Foxx Tone Machine.
That crushing tone on “It Don’t Bother Me.” That’s not the Line 6, is it?
Yes it is! While recording, I often let the tune ramble wherever it may go, thinking I’ll edit it later, but sometimes you get attached to all the crazy stuff in there. “Snow Bird” was 15 minutes long, so I cut out six minutes to reel it in to only 9 1/2 minutes.
We have to talk about “Have Mercy On Me,” the track you cut with Double Trouble’s Tommy Shannon on bass and Chris Layton on drums. You’re playing your ass off; I hear your love of Hendrix, but you don’t imitate him. I think he’d love what you do because it’s real and raw. How’d that track come together?
I was in Austin in 2004 recording with them, and we got to the end of the session and had a half hour left. I said, “Can we record one of my songs?” and they said, “Sure, show it to us.” I showed them the form in about one minute and we cut it once and walked into the control room to listen. Tommy said, “There are a couple spots I’d like to fix,” so we punched those in.
I carried the session with me for 17 years, and a few months ago I added “live” lead guitar and vocal on top of the track, singing and playing simultaneously with the amp super loud, bleeding into the vocal mic like crazy. And that’s what you hear: a “live” lead guitar/vocal track on top of a “live” one-take backing track. I was aiming for a Johnny Winter/Jimi Hendrix live-inthe-studio vibe.
“Buried Summerville” points to the Beatles influence and is a very catchy and interesting tune. The tone on the solo is fantastic.
“Buried Summerville” came out of a dream in which Paul McCartney was playing piano and singing exactly what you hear on the intro. I woke up laughing because it was so bizarre. I went downstairs and then spent three days writing the rest of the tune. For the solo, I’m using a Hughes & Kettner Tube Rotosphere, and it’s double-tracked. The bridge was intentionally written in the style of Squeeze, and the post-bridge solo is triple-tracked with a “pinch harmonic” overdub, because I was aiming for a Queen/ Brian May “regal” type of sound. And the outro solo is a total “Clapton/first solo album/Strat position #2” sound.
The new albums by both Andys — Aledort’s Light of Love and Timmons’ Electric Truth — are available now.
“I was in Austin in 2004 recording with Double Trouble… I said, ‘Can we record one of my songs?’ They said, ‘Sure, show it to us!’” — ANDY ALEDORT