Last Dinosaurs only recently got back on home turf after playing two massive headline shows in Asia (their sixth tour of the region in four years), but they’re not wasting any time in getting back to work.
They recently announced that they will be hitting the road once again this May for a headline tour of Australia, they’ve dubbed the Miracle Methods Tour, which will see them stopping all over the country.
Despite the band’s schedule, we somehow managed to steal some time from lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Sean Caskey, who talked about the importance of brushing your teeth and the guitar gear he couldn’t live without.
Back To Basics
If I had to whittle my rig down to the basics, it would be a toothbrush, my Fender Jaguar, and my pedal board. Toothbrush so I could clean my tooth, Jaguar because it’s my favourite and most recordable guitar, then pedal board because I’m nothing without it. Like Mark Skaife without a Commodore, or Shane Warne without Tinder.
Evolution
I don’t go to the gym so my guns are still the same size as they were in grade 6. But my pedal board has changed every year or so, it’s kinda difficult changing though because you get so comfortable doing the same pedal stomping dance on stage.
These days I have this stupidly large Line 6 multi effects unit to give me the synth sounds for ‘Wellness’ and ‘Rock With You’ (MJ cover). The most important thing about my rig though is my Ivory pedal.
I designed it purely for my set up and it is my life support system. It gives me the bite and the colour I desperately need before going in to a Fender Hotrod Deluxe amp.
Hitting The Studio
In the studio I was using my brothers amp which is a beautiful hand-wired, boutique, class A, vintage style, dual channel Marshall 18 watt / Vox 15 watt, single output transformer amp head. Sorry, had to do it.
It sounded great in the studio, and we were using a nice range of microphones in different positions which Scott Horscroft (producer) balanced as a way of naturally EQ’ing.
One extremely important lesson I learnt though was that my ‘Wellness buffer’ proved to be absolutely vital when it came to maintaining tone.
The amp is usually in another room far away from the control room for sound isolation, so your guitar’s signal often diminishes over long cable distances. The buffer was able to keep the tone healthy.
We figured it out when I forgot to put it in the chain and we were wondering why all of a sudden my guitar sounded super shithouse. The engineer was so amazed that I ended up gifting him my buffer.
Back In The Day
My first guitar was a Squier Stratocaster, olympic white I think (just like Albert Hammond Jr.’s). I can’t remember the amp but it was some crappy transistor amp. I learnt how to play guitar by learning all of The Strokes songs so it was totally appropriate that I had that guitar.
This was when they had only released Is This It and Room On Fire. My understanding of gear was super minimal, one of my friends had a Boss ME-50 which was a multi effects unit and it just blew my mind. Couldn’t handle it.
Gear Vs Song
Gear definitely influences my songwriting. When I buy a new guitar I will often punch out a couple of new songs, I guess because you end up playing the guitar so much you stumble across an idea.
Guitar pedals are also huge, for me the sounds they can make sometimes trigger feelings or a particular idea of something. Like for ‘Andy’ I happened to hit the right pedals on my brother’s pedal board to make it sound like a steel drum.
So I wanted to make a tropical sounding lead line with it. I’m a music > lyrics guy, music is all I care about, then once the song is done I stop and realise I need to write the lyrics.
Step On It
My pedal board is obscure in the way I have tightly packed it and routed it, but also because I have modded my Strymon Timeline. It looks like I have some random Boss pedals below it with guitar leads plugging in to where the switches were on the timeline.
That’s my switching system now so I can stomp on it. But it looks kinda Mad Max-esque. Other than that it’s relatively simple, one overdrive (which is always on) with the only switch being for extra boost.
Last Dinosaurs National Tour Dates
FRI 20 MAY – Fat Controller – Adelaide, SA
Tickets $24.95+ bf
FRI 27 MAY – The Foundry – Brisbane, QLD
Tickets $29.95+ bf
FRI 3 JUN – Northcote Social Club – Melbourne, VIC
Tickets $29.95+ bf
SAT 4 JUN – Northcote Social Club – Melbourne, VIC
Tickets $29.95+ bf
FRI 10 JUN – Newtown Social Club – Sydney, NSW
Tickets $29.95+ bf from:
SAT 11 JUN – Newtown Social Club – Sydney, NSW
Tickets $29.95+ bf
