With their red-hot blend of influences including AC/DC, Rory Gallagher, and Gary Moore, The Zac Schulze Gang are fast becoming one of the UK’s hottest new blues acts.
Their debut album, Straight To It, certainly lives up to its name, with the hunger and urgency of a young band cranking things up and trying to leave their mark on the world.
And though he’s only 26 years old, frontman Zac Schulze is the kind of player who is on a mission to bring vintage sounds kicking and screaming into the modern age.
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Big Guns
As with a lot of younger players, it was Joe Bonamassa who exposed Schulze to the musicians who ruled the world in the ’70s and ’80s.
“I’d been playing for a year when my dad bought me the DVD of Joe playing the Royal Albert Hall in 2009,” says Schulze. “That’s what turned me onto the blues; for people my age it was easy to relate to. That made me want to find out more about who inspired him as a player.
“Gary and Rory were the two I found with so much energy in their playing, as well as feel. With so many people out there doing the Stevie Ray thing, the Gary and Rory style felt a bit more unique.”
In The Flesh
Aside from the vocals, the debut album was recorded live to capture the trio’s natural energy. For Zac and band, it was a case of staying true to themselves and recording something they could actually deliver on stage.
“We wanted to keep it upbeat,” says Schulze. “There might be one or two tracks that are a bit lower in energy, but we did it all live apart from the vocals and wanted to keep that sound. In the past, I’ve gone into the studio and ended up recording 170 parts in one song. But what’s the point in doing that if you can’t pull it off live?”
Straight & Narrow
It was a simple tonal recipe for the recordings: one main guitar and one amp, with just a simple overdrive in front.
“The main guitar was my Strat, which has a 1978 Fender neck with a Japanese Squier Silver Series body,” Schulze says. “I ended up getting the guitar on eBay for £120. Me and my dad went to pick it up from a woman’s house and it turns out it was her ex-husband’s. Somewhere out there is a guy wondering where his Strat went [laughs]!
“Lee from Green Pickups in Manchester then made me some custom pickups. We plugged it into an Orange Rockerverb with an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer for more gain.”
Take Control
With such a simple rig, Schulze uses the controls on the guitar itself to dial in the tones.
“A lot of magic happens through working the volume,” he says. “I use the drive channel but clean it up through my guitar. That’s how Clapton and Page used to do it back in the day. I use a fair amount of gain, so I have to control my signal. John Mayer once said something along the lines of, ‘You end up sounding like yourself when you fail to sound like the people you’re trying to sound like.’ That quote really resonated with me.”
Fire & Water
From the new songs, Betterland is the one that Schulze chooses as his proudest achievement.
“I wanted to base that solo on All Right Now by Free, where it goes from a bass break into something melodic,” he says. “I started with something Clapton-esque in B minor and then went for a major/minor mix, almost like how Chris Buck plays. It’s a solo that builds, it goes somewhere. The same goes for Angeline; those two songs are more pop-rock than blues. Sometimes it’s nice to play over music with more chordal elements to it.”
Zac on the greatest guitar tone ever caught on tape
“I think Bad Penny by Rory Gallagher would have to be up there because it sounds exactly like how it should sound – a battered old Strat going through a Vox AC30. I had the pleasure of playing through that amp before it got auctioned off.
“If you have a great song with a great tune, you’ve basically won. It’s such a powerful tone – kind of woody but also very in your face. Similar things could be said of [Gary Moore’s] Still Got The Blues, it was just perfect. It wouldn’t have sounded the same on a Telecaster through a Twin.”
