From songwriter to indie band: the switch from acoustic to electric?

HAVING played the acoustic guitar for years -decades even -maybe it really is time to fully embrace the electric guitar. To get that sound you always wanted. The heroic northern melancholia band sound you always held in your head.

I mean yes, it’s easy to write songs on an acoustic, if you write songs. Stick it next to your bed wake up with a hangover a love story gone wrong and you’re off! Bedsits, rented rooms, low waged accommodation for live in workers, teenaged bedrooms, traditionally they should have an acoustic in the corner – even if you can barely pluck an old out-of-tune string.

So I’m not saying abandon the love of your life, the song writing machine in the corner which woke with your hangover blues, and let you talk in a way that conversation never could. It’s just that we can grow and change as the years go by – like an old fashioned marriage in the days when there were old fashioned marriages. We can adapt.

Personally I want my music to reflect my environment, reflect my loves and desires, my geography, my accent, our accent which means avoiding folk-Americana-country blues. I feel more at home with Cobain grunge, New York attitude and Liverpool- Manchester melancholia than twee English village romps round the maypole or middle America country goodness.

Maybe it’s a class thing. Maybe it’s a city-suburb thing. I’m not willing to fit myself into a marketable product for the consumer of twee – it’s not me.

I bought a Gretsch Electromatic   from a shop on the Blackpool Road in Preston, Lancashire, a few years back but never quite got the hang of it using it in live gigs. It never quite gelled with my bass player, drummer and second singer. I never felt like I had the right amp and the right sound and I never believed that I knew how. I felt, as I do, I wasn’t good enough.

Plus I already knew what I was doing with my Tacoma acoustic (bought from a shop in Penrith called Mad Monk’s after a long noodling decision-making process sat on a bench in the middle of the shop – as you do). Teaching the guitar day in, day out since 2008, has enabled me to work on fingerstyle, strum patterns, lead licks and constantly write songs in a manner in which a “proper” job would never allow.

Playing the electric with a band on stage and arranging a full band sound, however,   is another skill altogether. To exist in the 21st century comfortably and rolling in some kind of capacity as a moderately successful chugging along band, which doesn’t stoop to covers or plagiarist copycat generic mediocrity, you need it all.

Here’s a warning though – I bought the Gretsch after researching online, happy to discover a random top jazz guitarist, on YouTube,  expressing the opinion that my lower budget Grestch (under £1,000) was a good substitute for the real thing if you were stuck. Being a northern man in the region of austerity bites – that sounded good to me.

I bought it and quickly realised that it wasn’t set right. Apparently factory production guitars just bang off the line and can turn up slightly off kilter until you pay someone else to fix them. Why would anyone know this until they’d been sold a bum set guitar?

(I’m ignoring the weird idea that a crap product sold to you is your fault for not knowing better – a kind of don’t question the free market neo religious approach I refuse to recognise as rational. Once sold – no one cares – is more like the truth.)

So it quickly went out of tune including on a live EP performance at Blackburn College studios (very high quality for those snobbish about the word “Blackburn” which has hosted the likes of Biffy Clyro, Edwyn Collins and Mark Radciffe Radio 1 sessions). It kind of made us sound shitebag plus my scatty arrangements with a top double bass player and drummer, which never quite satisfied my desire for a good quality sound.

It was years later when I discovered a guy fixing guitars out of a bedroom in a house off the motorway on the east Lancashire back route to Manchester. Another low budget hero – he made the guitar sound sweet and perfect for me for a mere £40 with all the decency of a non-corporate human being taking pride like a craftsman (truly recommend – insert name)

Now years later – it’s the summer – I have the time and the inspiration and now – here we go – I want it. The joy. A joy which can’t be achieved without good friends as good musicians. The joy of a full band electrified sound.

What’s made the difference now?

If you want truly fine northern melancholic joy, for those of us initiated in the notion of a Velvet Underground meets the Smiths meets the Verve a a tradtion. For those of who understand the sweetness of the blues echoing out of Manchester and Liverpool as our soul capitals.

For those of us who know what it’s like to be buried under the weight of a grey-white sky and a rambling bus journey through a the neglected regions with their neglected infrastructure and their neglected humanity.

I thoroughly recommend Bill Ryder-Jones, former Coral guitarist, just flip yourself onto Spotify and check out “Two To Birkenhead” and the album “West Kirkby Primary School” and then read up on who he is on Spotify for an “alternative folk rock” experience.

There’s a sound out there that says to me – I love this – let’s do our “alternative folk rock” songs too – my band – while we’re still alive.

Seeing Bill and his band of merry musicians playing in the woodland area of Latitude Festival 2016 made it for me. Made me love music and see it’s worth – on the Sunrise Stage having been sunburnt, drunk and sober and drunk again, feeling tored and emotional – having already been blown away by Bears Den and Emma Pollock.

Having crawled about after all those years of late gigs, excess and disappointment mixed withthe ongoing poverty of forever living n one room – to feel joy.

I have the electric now I need to get the sound – mission possible – so begins the summer search for a baby amp to hang a microphone over and dig out the two pedals I never got the hang of – a delay and crunch – wish me luck.

I hope this was helpful for anyone with their own ideas of how to sound good ona low budget with a big heart – I know you’re out there and I’m with you.

FOOTNOTE:

I keep hesitating over the purchase of a decent 15 watt Vox valve amp – which cuts through the whole band sound – £300 is a lot if you’ve no income over a summer when all your students go on holiday.

So I took up the heavy 100 watt Marshall I’d already been given as a generous hand me down from a professional bored with his toy-hobby. It’s a pain to drag around with the PA and the rest of it.

I’m persevering.