Did you guys consciously try to develop I mean because you really developed styles like the first time? Did you ever think like I got to come up with something new for this record because no one’s done this before? You know, when I think back, you know, I I would imagine that like West Montgomery felt the same pressure because there was so many amazing guitar players before him. And so Hendrickx must have felt the same way when he heard West Montgomery around. He was a contemporary. Oh yeah. You know, so Jeff Beck obviously did because he just kept going forward and just changing direction. Didn’t listen to anybody and just kept breaking barriers and building new bridges. So I think it’s for me anyway, it’s better just not to even engage in that and just to continually just be expressive about how how you feel about life and what’s happening. And uh you know the world does not owe me a career. So I don’t get upset when I you you know when it dips uh but I celebrate when it doesn’t. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think uh inevitably uh whenever a person is decides to play an instrument and they start getting deep into it, their unique sensibilities just have to flow in somehow unless they really fight it. And some people do and it’s basically out of fear of not being able to fit in because what they’re doing just might seem too obtuse to them or something and the and the rest of the world. Uh, and then there’s people that love playing and they don’t really want to have their own voice. They just want to play. When I reflect on me and how my kind of voice developed, it was very um innocent, you know. I didn’t feel like, okay, now you remember you’re going to be a big rockar guitar player one day, so you have to be different. No, it was just the fun of discovering something that was not what I was hearing usually because I I would listen to the blues, love great blues, great rock, great jazz, classical, and I would tinker about with all that stuff, but I never felt uh good enough to be authentic at any of those things. I mean, if you hear me play the blues, you know, it’s and I tried. And every time I would do something that sounded uh conventional and even the really good stuff, it just it didn’t feel right. Never sounded as good as the guys that did it great. And it just felt weird to me. So I would I found myself just looking for, you know, obtuse things, you know, and once I’d find them, I would just exaggerate them, you know, just, okay, what is that? And how can I, you know, make it bigger? And this never ends. This is a fantastic. It’s one of the highlights of playing an instrument like a guitar that is so malleable and and changes with every touch, every angle of the pick and every amp and every everything. Uh you know there’s so much it’s an there’s infinite options. So I also feel that uh uh there will be and there is young people coming along that are doing that same thing. I mean, you have them all. I mean, you’ve Matteo, you know, you you see the like the Tims, Tim Henson’s and Scotty Lees. There is a very healthy evolution going on. And I think they’re doing the same kind of thing. They’re looking for what feels natural to them and then exaggerating it. I’d like to take a second to talk to you about this channel. This is actually Rick Bott 2. I’ve had it since the beginning of my main channel and many of you are not subscribed. As a matter of fact, 87% of the people that watch this channel regularly are not subscribed. So, I encourage you to hit the subscribe button on this channel and on my main channel. This will help me get even more of my dream guests and help continue to grow both channels. Thank you. But I do love when uh I come across something that I feel is relatively unique, like, "Oh, you never played that before and I haven’t really heard that before." You know, let’s let’s let’s unpack it. You know, that’s fun. It’s just fun. You know that. Oh, yeah. That’s one of the great joys of playing is the discovery of things within yourself you didn’t know were there. So, if I said to you, what is a perfect guitar solo from one of your guitar heroes? Just just anybody that you grew up listening to that you think, "Oh, this is a perfect guitar solo. God, so many." Yeah, there’s so many. Oh, Hendrick’s uh Machine Gun. Yeah, that’s exactly in my mind, right? That’s the greatest performance ever on an electric guitar. That’s hands down. It’s a voice of God. Um I’d have to mention a favorite of mine is Alan Holsworth, Red Alert from Yeah. Believe it. To me that’s you could, you know, write a thesis on that. Just how he starts, where he goes with it, how bizarre it gets, and then how he ends it. I mean, how he finishes it is so elegant. It’s so beautiful. Yeah. And you can’t hear the pick. I can’t hear the I remember watching him like this close and I I see that he’s picking but why can’t I hear you guys both knew Allan, right? Yeah. And I released his records. Yes, you did. That’s right. So I I’ve saw Allen play many times but and up close, but I could never tell what he was doing ever. I could never see where his fingers were and I could never hear his pick. Yeah. Even if you heard Allan play, if you were next to him, is it the same thing that Oh, yeah. Yeah, I used to go to his apartment all the time and he’d be playing and this same thing. I had this really great gig uh when I first moved out to California and I was working for Frank transcribing. I was transcribing some other things and I got a call from Allen and I was just this, you know, and he has this very unique way or he had this unique way of uh writing down his music. Totally different, right? And he wanted to do a chord book. Yeah. But he didn’t he needed a translator. So, I was actually hired to go and hang with him and and get a great explanation of how he figured his how he navigated the neck and the pictures that he saw. Okay. And how to translate that into conventional notation so other people can, you know, do it do what they will with it. It was it was really a great experience. I’ve seen some of his chord charts the in the way that he explained them and they’re just very so fascinating. Yeah. very abstract, but he he knew he knew what he w how to uh kind of capture that stuff in his mind and see it on the guitar and he improv everything was all improvising that’s freakazoid stuff. So, what do you guys when you are are out touring like this, do you do you tend to practice or do you work anything out before like uh you during the tour when you’re actually out traveling and do stuff? Do you is do you only pick up the guitar at soundcheck or when you when you come on the gig when you’re touring? Uh well, this tour is kind of unique because of what Steve and I have coming after where it’s right. So, we’re woodshedding for an upcoming tour. That’s kind of weird for us. Yeah. But in general, uh if I have a day off, I won’t play. Okay. And most of the time, we we play six nights a week. So, it’s it’s a nice rest. I like playing an hour to 45 minutes beforehand. On this tour, I get I start warming up around Little Pretty. And so, I start with my whole tone scale. Uh and um it’s a good scale to play over. It is. It’s just it’s a good one to warm up with. And uh so that’s that’s my routine. And I basically just go over all the stupid things I did the night before and go, why did you do that? And then try to figure out an easier way to finger something. And a lot of it has to do with the entertainment part of it where you realize you need to run over there and do something, but you also have to play this part. Our instrumental gigs are rather unique. So we we can’t just hit a note and jump around and you know we’re never backing up somebody, you know what I mean? We’re always at the forefront. So there’s a lot of stuff to go over at the end of a gig. You go, "This was good. This was good. Screwed that up. I should work on that one. Maybe try a different pickup. Don’t step on the pedal for this." And you know, so I go through all
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