23 years after Donna and Vikki set off from Albany to play music across Australia to any willing listeners, teaming up with Josh en route, The Waifs are one of Australia’s best-loved indie bands and they’re taking time to reflect on the places they left behind.
The roots of their new album, Beautiful You, began when Vikki Thorn, her sister Donna Simpson, and Josh Cunningham got together in a Western Australia studio. They hadn’t seen much of each other since touring on the back of their last album, 2011’s Temptation.
The album involved eschewing their traditional writing habits, which normally saw them penning songs separately, and embracing total collaboration. We recently caught up with guitarist Josh to find out how the new process worked for the band and to ask about the guitar gear he can’t live without.
Back To Basics
If I could only bring a few pieces of equipment on a tour, it would be my homemade “Joshua” J45, a flat pick, and a capo. If all else fails, that’s all I need.
Evolution
My rig used to essentially be those three things. I’d leave home on tour with a guitar case and a piece of carry-on luggage for months on end traveling all over the world.
Now I have two acoustics, two electrics, a banjo, a ukulele, a pedalboard with all the DIs and gadgets for them all, and a guitar amp! Oh, for the good old days! Although I can still fit all that on one airport luggage trolley.
Hitting The Studio
I usually go for the nicest acoustic sound off a microphone but then also have a line running through an electric amp as well. You can get some interesting “meatiness” with that blend.
With the electric I am usually sitting in the control room with the engineer playing through an amp out in the studio. On our current record, our producer, Nick Didia had some really nice amps and pedals.
I know the amp was a 65. As far as the pedals, I have no idea what he had. He’d just set up the sound and say “play”.
Back In The Day
My first guitar and amp was a Session Stratocaster copy and a Gorilla practice amp. Came as a package with a guitar cable thrown in. I bought it from Doug at Harbour Music in Crows Nest, Sydney.
All I needed to understand about that rig was that when I plugged in and cranked up, it was the most powerful adrenalin rush that I had ever known. I was unleashed!
Gear Vs Song
The gear I use absolutely influences the song that comes out. Having a certain guitar with its unique voice does take you to new creative places. I guess a certain amp sound or guitar tone/effect does a similar thing. Gear definitely influences the song.
Sound & Music
Who am I to say whether there’s an overemphasis on gear? I lean towards pure acoustic tone and it works for me, but some people are so into the gear and the technical stuff that their music doesn’t exist without it.
A lot of folk over the years have done some pretty inventive stuff and broken new ground with gadgets and gizmos and new ways of tweaking them.
It’s all sound and music and if you can make it on a couple of sticks or with your hands clapping, then why not a bunch of electronic gizmos too? They are really just musical instruments too.
Getting Weird
Recently, a guy in California was going to come to our gig and give us a guitar he made out of an oil can but we got the message too late and he never showed.
I’m not that interesting with this kind of stuff. I mainly just have a bunch of guitars, so there’s nothing too obscure about that. I even stopped buying guitars because I took up making them.
Okay, how about this: a bandsaw? Some years ago, instead of buying an expensive old Gibson guitar, I decided to buy a bunch of tools and build one instead. Now I only play my own guitars. Does a bandsaw or a drill press qualify for obscure?
As for the oldest piece of gear in my rig, that would be my banjo. It’s a Slingerland tenor from the 1920s.
Stomp
It’s mainly DIs for all my acoustic instruments. I go through a line selector, so I have one cable that plugs into every instrument. It then routes to its own DI via the line selector.
I can also have everything running through my electric rig as well, which is just a Boss Tremolo pedal, an EP booster, and a Sex Drive. I control all that by a volume pedal. I can have anything from my homemade Telecaster copy to my banjo or uke running through that setup and coming out my amp.
Solving Problems
The EP booster is not so much a problem solver but I always have it on. Everything just sounds better when that thing is on. Apparently it’s the front end of an echoplex, so no wonder it sounds so great. I guess in the sense that if it wasn’t on, things don’t sound as good, it’s solving a problem of sorts.
The Waifs’ new album, ‘Beautiful You’, is available now on iTunes via Jarrah Records / MGM Distribution. Catch them on tour throughout October and November – visit their website for more info.
