🦶what's on my pedalboard?
[plus: Jack Straw]
RIFFS & RECS:
Let’s start with the easy one.
Here’s my entire acoustic guitar pedalboard:
I used to have a pretty involved setup, but these days it’s delightfully simple:
Mogami/Neutrik cable →
EV Everse 8 as a monitor →
(I’m getting my compression & reverb from the EV)
QSC K12.2 as my main
For some of these smaller, quieter private parties I’ve been playing, the Everse 8 is plenty for both monitor and main. That makes for a one-trip load in even without a cart.
Electric setup is also lightweight:
EV Everse 8
(or direct to FOH, monitoring via Sensaphonics 2MAX)
(as an expression pedal)
an Anker power bank → MyVolts adapter → tuner
if the HX Stomp power supply breaks or goes missing, I can run USB-C to the Mission Engineering 529M as a backup
(and long-term I’ll upgrade the power bank and run the whole board off battery power)
all of this is mounted on a Pedaltrain Nano
3M Dual Lock holds pedals & doodads in place
3m zip-tie mounts hold the cables in place
(I really should replace these with smaller 3/4” black ones)
HX Stomp patches
I usually make a new patch for each gig, so I won’t go too deep here.
Prince Of Tone boost (“Heir Apparent”) →
Nobels ODR-1 overdrive (“Prize Drive”) →
Volume Pedal (“Gain Block”) →
Fender Deluxe Reverb amp (“US Deluxe Nrm”) →
Boss DM-2 delay (“Bucket Brigade”) →
Fender tremolo (“Optical Trem”) →
12” tweed cabinet (“1x12 Fullerton”) →
plate reverb (“Dynamic Plate”)
A couple of elaborations:
The Prince Of Tone is an always-on boost—it really makes the amp come alive
This “volume pedal” is really a boost that’s controlled by the expression pedal. It goes from 0db to 3.5db. That way I can play lead with a clean tone (or drop my dirty tone back in the mix a little).
Choosing separate amp & cab blocks gives some nice options:
the delay & trem sit between the amp & cab (like they’d be in the FX loop of real amp)
also gives us way more options for mic (& mic placement on the cab)
I was never a delay guy until I watched this deep dive on the Strymon Brig
The path splits before the reverb. Half goes direct to the output, half runs through the verb before it gets to the output. Theoretically, I should get the same result by turning down the mix on the reverb. But practically, it sounds/feels way different to me. 🤷♂️
CHARTS:
I don’t love every era of The Grateful Dead.
But their Europe ‘72 album is great:
only one drummer
not much jamming
tempos haven’t gotten super sleepy yet
and most of the best songs are in rotation by this point
The client for Saturday’s private event is a Deadhead, so—in addition to Ripple, Friend Of The Devil, and Casey Jones, I dusted off Jack Straw.
Here’s my chart:
Dropbox folder with Ableton, Sibelius, PDF, & musicXML files.
SMARTS:
1/ quick hits & quirky bits
TEMPO:
~70 BPM
it’s roughly 65 BPM in the VERSES
it speeds up in the INTERLUDES
reaching ~72 in the CHORUSES
and slows back down to the VERSE tempo at the triplet/decrescendo in measure 42
FEEL:
one might argue that this is actually twice that tempo…
…but with a half-time drum feel.
For the most part it’s a semantic difference…
…but double tempo/half-time feel would take up twice as many measures (and pages)/
KEY:
I wrote it in E major (4♯s)
but the “5 minor” chord (Bm)
and that D chord
means it’s kind of A major, only centered around E
(“E mixolydian” if you are modally inclined)
FORM:
VERSE 1 + 3 are the same, and
VERSE 2 + 4 are the same.
But really these labels are for convenience—it’s a bit of a stretch to call these sections “verse,” “chorus,” etc.
mind those 2/4 bars!
2/ the lyrics
I’m a sucker for a story song, and this one goes deep.
The song has two characters—Jack Straw (sung by Weir) and Shannon (sung by Jerry Garcia)—and a narrator (sung by Garcia, Weir, and Phil Lesh).
(source)
Shannon kills a guard, breaks out of prison, and reunites with his partner in crime, Jack Straw. They head to Tulsa to “settle one old score,” and end up on the run.
Writers Bob Weir and Robert Hunter took inspiration from the book and 1939 movie versions of Of Mice and Men.
Like George & Lenny in Of Mice and Men, Jack kills his friend Shannon:
Jack Straw from Wichita
Cut his buddy down
Dug for him a shallow grave
And laid his body down
There’s a ton of inside info in this lyric breakdown on Genius.
3/ the vocals were overdubbed later
It’s a live performance, but…
From its inception until the performance on 5/10/72, all of the verses in “Jack Straw” were sung by Bob Weir.
On that date and forevermore after that, Weir and Garcia traded verses in call-and-response fashion.
But this version from 5/3/72 has the two singers trading off, so they were obviously overdubbed.
Listen very carefully, and I think you will hear the “ghost” (reflections and bleed) of Weir’s voice during Garcia’s verses.
(source)
That’s all I got this week.
See you next Wednesday,
Josh
Have you tried the Henrikson amps?