46 G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M /F E b R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 the volume knob, but tone knob swells have
more balls and you hear the whole swell. The beginning isn’t cut off and wimpy sounding.
Dickey Betts plays a series of wonderfully operatic volume swells at the beginning of
“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” You hear every nuance. That’s amazing, but if you’re rocking out, the tone knob is better because
it’s like, Whaaaam! You hear it from the get go. First it’s bass-y and louder than hell, and then it gets trebly and louder than hell.
There’s a bit of a trick to it because the tone knob is harder to reach—at least it is on my Tele. You have to roll your hand. When you run out of little finger start using the top of your ring finger, and then use your
middle finger to finish it off.
What it’s like playing with norah Jones in the little Willies?
You can’t get too comfortable because she’s fearless about changing the feel and key signature of a song on the spur of the moment. Norah really likes the key of Bb, which I’ve learned to love because it’s underrated as an open-string key. You’ve got the open-G string itself, plus you can get a classic twang riff going by alternat-ing between the open-A stralternat-ing and bend-ing behind the nut to raise its pitch to the tonic. The same move works on the E string because you’re bending from the b5 to the 5. And on the D string that same bend is the 3 to the 4. You can do all of those easily on any guitar.
How did you develop your bluesy rendi-tion of Ray Charles’ “Here i am” with Jones?
First, she encouraged me to make it sound more “Jim.” I completely changed it on the spot at rehearsal. That’s how I arrived at the stark, menacing vibe. In the studio, she nailed her vocal on the first take. We could have approached the guitar solo in heavy blues fashion à la Frank Zappa and Don
“Sugarcane” Harris on “Directly From My Heart to You,” but I like how the solo com-plements her vocal in a more subtle way. It’s a bit Hendrix-y, too—something like “Belly Button Window.”
Did you cut it live?
The live take was a bit like Kenny Burrell on “Midnight Blue,” but I wanted something more feminine sounding, so I overdubbed a new solo.
How did you capture the tones on Dream Dictionary?
I mostly used a ’70-ish silverface Fender Princeton Reverb with a Celestion G10 Vin-tage speaker. We miked the front, the back, and the room during tracking. Then I did what I always do and re-amped it—meaning we sent the signal back out into another amp.
In this case it was an old tweed Fender Twin that Andy Tomassi bought from Buddy Guy.
We placed front and room mics, and added plate reverb and compression. The final mix was mostly the Princeton with the Twin fill-ing out the bottom end. It was a nice yin to the Princeton’s yang.
You’re famous for coaxing a huge, pris-tine sound out of just a Tele and a sole vin-tage princeton. When you buy one, how do you make that old thing sing?
Features
Jim Campilongo
48 G U I TA R P L AY E R . C O M /F E b R U A R Y 2 0 1 4
guitarplayer.com/february2014
> Watch Campilongo make sweet Fender-on-Fender love playing a Tele through a Vintage Reissue ’65 Princeton Reverb.
M O R E O n L I n E
I spray money out of a fire hose onto it!
I replace the speaker, pots, caps, and power tubes, which I have biased to run really hot.
It all adds up to sounding louder onstage and quieter in the studio. Most vintage amps you find are completely wrecked. You have to spend an extra $300 in replacement parts to get one up to speed. I’m like a professional
racecar driver when it comes to gear. “Hmm, if we take the bumper off, maybe I can shave a second off my time!”
What are your thoughts on the Fender Vintage Reissue ’65 princeton Reverb?
Fender did a nice job with the reissue, and I use it on tour. When I show up to a gig overseas to find a reissue Princeton in the
backline, I fall to my knees and cry because I’m so grateful. Actually, Fender just released a ’68 reissue loaded with a Celestion speaker that I can’t wait to try.
What guitars did you use to record Dream Dictionary, and how did the tracks go down?
I used my Martin 00-15 on the acous-tic guitar duet with Steven Cardenas, “One Mean Eye.” I was trying to write a tune in the style of Érik Satie. And I was actually just auditioning the studio when I cut “Sup-pose” on Andy’s great big Gibson acoustic.
The workhorse was my ’59 Telecaster.
We cut most everything live to analog tape as a trio. Other than on “Pie Party,” most of the solos were cut with the band, and then I added some rhythm overdubs. I overdubbed a rhythm track and the descending parts at the end of “The Past Is Looking Brighter and Brighter” through a Leslie speaker cabinet.
On “Nang Nang,” I overdubbed a weird ska rhythm with my orange signature Telecaster, and the engineer conjured up the trippy, effected sound.
a student gave you the ’59 Tele in exchange for some lessons many years back. Do you have any thoughts on guitar instruction in the digital age?
In-person students nowadays want to record everything on their smartphones, which is both good and bad. If trying to frame video of my hands on the fretboard during a demonstration distracts the stu-dent, it’s difficult to achieve the intangible parallel of a successful personal connection, so I don’t allow video recording. I do, how-ever, encourage audio recording because it gives the student a document of the lesson to go home and study.
And it’s just so cool how easy it is to teach globally these days. I offer lessons on my website, and it’s pretty mindblowing that guitarists all over world can download a lesson, hear my voice, follow my finger-ings, and, hopefully, laugh at my jokes. g