DrewJD82
Well-known member
Up until this weekend I had met all my guitar heroes aside from the very first two and the biggest ones- Gilmour and Eric Johnson and all the experiences have been fucking GREAT. I’ve yet to have a single negative experience with any of them; Vai, Petrucci, Satch, Clint from Sevendust, Bill from Mastodon, Devin Townsend, I can go on, the whole “never meet your heroes” has never applied to me and this weekend didn’t change that a single bit.
I became obsessed with EJ when I was 11, my uncle handed me the Total Electric Guitar VHS and said “Learn everything you can” and since I’d been playing for all of 6 months, I didn’t learn a whole lot. But it DID turn me into a hardcore gear nerd right out of the gate when at the end, EJ is playing an outro piece and the camera pans to his pedalboard where he switches to the Dumble then steps on a blue Fuzz Face and my whole world changed because the sound that came out of that guitar was fucking INSANE.
I’ve seen him twice before but never had the chance to meet him until VIP tickets became available for his show in Stuart this past Saturday. A whopping $100, so I said fuck it. I’ve heard how these meet and greets go with many others, but this was not that experience!
There was only 2 other people there and neither of them were gear nerds, I’m not even sure if they were musicians. We watched one soundcheck song and then EJ welcomed us and from the stage said if we had any questions or wanted to know how to play something, it was our time to ask away. When the other two people didn’t have a single question to ask, I didn’t waste time because I had plenty of questions to ask!
EJ is a gear nerd. Even cooler than that, he doesn’t talk to you like you’re a fan, he doesn’t talk to you like he has more experience than you, he talks to you as an equal. He asked my name during my first question and he used my name when talking to me almost every time. When he asks your opinion on something, he digs in because he’s actually curious about what you’re saying. He was so enthusiastic about talking about this stuff, like we started talking about pickup output and he starts saying how he can’t find the happy medium between enough output and too much, but he’s giving me playing examples where he’s picking in a way to highlight what he’s talking about and I’m just tripping out the whole time because it’s all coming through his rig that I’m hearing straight from the speakers, not the PA….and he’s demo’ing this shit for me.
For the next 35-45 minutes I basically had a one on one gear discussion with EJ as he broke down parts of his rig, demo’ing each thing. Like I asked what he’s looking for between the pickups, the Tube Driver and the Marshall for his lead tone, so he went and turned off the Tube Driver and just played through the Marshall so I could understand what the Tube Driver was adding when he turned it back on (basically just sustain, the Marshall is on 10 and is providing all the dirt)
The dude is also a nonstop joker. The soft spoken aspect far overshadows the joker in him.
That was a fucking trip, man. I basically got to sit down with one of my biggest guitar heroes and got a private gear tour while getting his insights on how he makes his sausage.
One thing I noted is that we tend to think guys like this are up to date on all the new gear and what’s out there to make their lives easier, but that’s totally not the case. EJ figured out what gets his job done back in the 80’s and stopped there. I asked him if he’s tried the Germanium Dover Drive and he was floored one even existed, called his tech onto the stage to ask him about it and then grilled me on how it differed from the OG Dover. You’d think Lovepedal would have sent him the first one! I’m guessing the only way he hears about new gear is if someone puts it directly in his hands.
Easily one of the greatest nights of my life!
I became obsessed with EJ when I was 11, my uncle handed me the Total Electric Guitar VHS and said “Learn everything you can” and since I’d been playing for all of 6 months, I didn’t learn a whole lot. But it DID turn me into a hardcore gear nerd right out of the gate when at the end, EJ is playing an outro piece and the camera pans to his pedalboard where he switches to the Dumble then steps on a blue Fuzz Face and my whole world changed because the sound that came out of that guitar was fucking INSANE.
I’ve seen him twice before but never had the chance to meet him until VIP tickets became available for his show in Stuart this past Saturday. A whopping $100, so I said fuck it. I’ve heard how these meet and greets go with many others, but this was not that experience!
There was only 2 other people there and neither of them were gear nerds, I’m not even sure if they were musicians. We watched one soundcheck song and then EJ welcomed us and from the stage said if we had any questions or wanted to know how to play something, it was our time to ask away. When the other two people didn’t have a single question to ask, I didn’t waste time because I had plenty of questions to ask!
EJ is a gear nerd. Even cooler than that, he doesn’t talk to you like you’re a fan, he doesn’t talk to you like he has more experience than you, he talks to you as an equal. He asked my name during my first question and he used my name when talking to me almost every time. When he asks your opinion on something, he digs in because he’s actually curious about what you’re saying. He was so enthusiastic about talking about this stuff, like we started talking about pickup output and he starts saying how he can’t find the happy medium between enough output and too much, but he’s giving me playing examples where he’s picking in a way to highlight what he’s talking about and I’m just tripping out the whole time because it’s all coming through his rig that I’m hearing straight from the speakers, not the PA….and he’s demo’ing this shit for me.
For the next 35-45 minutes I basically had a one on one gear discussion with EJ as he broke down parts of his rig, demo’ing each thing. Like I asked what he’s looking for between the pickups, the Tube Driver and the Marshall for his lead tone, so he went and turned off the Tube Driver and just played through the Marshall so I could understand what the Tube Driver was adding when he turned it back on (basically just sustain, the Marshall is on 10 and is providing all the dirt)
The dude is also a nonstop joker. The soft spoken aspect far overshadows the joker in him.
That was a fucking trip, man. I basically got to sit down with one of my biggest guitar heroes and got a private gear tour while getting his insights on how he makes his sausage.
One thing I noted is that we tend to think guys like this are up to date on all the new gear and what’s out there to make their lives easier, but that’s totally not the case. EJ figured out what gets his job done back in the 80’s and stopped there. I asked him if he’s tried the Germanium Dover Drive and he was floored one even existed, called his tech onto the stage to ask him about it and then grilled me on how it differed from the OG Dover. You’d think Lovepedal would have sent him the first one! I’m guessing the only way he hears about new gear is if someone puts it directly in his hands.
Easily one of the greatest nights of my life!
