THE MOON TOWER
After first seeing him supporting Zakk Wylde in May 2016, we've managed to catch Jared live a number of times. During his recent trip to the UK for a short run of dates supporting UFO, along with a couple of festival appearances, we caught up with him backstage at Birmingham Town Hall (see our review here).
You grew up in Wisconsin, how did you get into music?
Well to be honest, the whole reason I got into music was because I was so bored. I grew up surrounded by corn fields in the Midwest. When you live there you either fish, or hunt, you play sports, there isn’t really a ton going on. We didn’t even have neighbours, no kids to play with. So I did the sports thing, I was really into cars for a while, but then when I was 14 or 15 I started listening to classic rock. I wanted to play the drums originally, and be a drummer. I even got to the point where I got a drum kit from a friend. My parents came home and I was crashing on it, they were like “Uh-uh, no way”. So my dad goes “Why don’t you try guitar?” I was like “Everybody plays guitar, screw guitar”, but then I picked one up, started learning a few riffs. Then I got into high school and all my friends were playing. I got the bug with them, and right away I was obsessed with it. I just remember coming back from school in the beginning, before anyone else was home, grabbing the guitar right away and starting practising. Then all of a sudden I was practising up until dinner, then after dinner. Then it got to the point where I’d wake up earlier in the morning to play more. I was bit by the bug hard, I just loved it. Then I realised when I got on stage, when I was like 15, I loved that feeling. Playing in front of people is such a rush, and I just haven’t stopped.
What sort of stuff were you playing in early bands?
Black Sabbath. That was the first riff I ever learned – Electric Funeral. That was a big one as I was really into the riffy stuff. Stuff everyone loves in the beginning – The Who, Pink Floyd – all British bands though…. Zeppelin. It’s funny, a lot of people don’t really think about that, but all those great, great, classic rock bands, they were all British. It’s pretty wild. Free, Bad Company, I was turned onto all that stuff. They were playing that on classic rock radio, and where I grew up was like 20 years behind everywhere else. But then again, I was also really into the grunge stuff, like Alice In Chains. Just because that’s awesome.
Was there anyone particular in your family who got you into music and playing an instrument?
No one played music. My dad showed me some stuff – Bob Dylan, Mountain, but my mom was really the catalyst. She would take me places and let me play. She would go and get a drink at the bar and be like “My son plays guitar, what if I bring him over?” because they had open jams and stuff, and she was the one that bought the guitars in the beginning. They were super supportive parents, which made the whole difference. Instead of me having to try and hide it, they were accepting of it. I don’t think they realise, even now, they’re like “Where are you?” and I’m going to England, I’m going here, going there. I don’t know if it’s really dawned on them… they’re like “Woah, the kid does really like it”.
You eventually moved from the Midwest out to LA….
Actually, before then I moved to Boston to go to music school there, at Berklee. I got a scholarship to go there, but went there and I just didn’t really like it. It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to play rock and blues. I just remember going there and they were like “Yeah…. we don’t really teach that here. You learn classical, jazz….” And I was like “What the hell?” Eventually I left there, and then I went to LA. I was 21 when I moved to LA. I moved there and I tell you, it was crazy moving from where I grew up to Hollywood. I’ve been there now for almost seven years. Never a dull moment.
So you got out to LA, that’s where you met Erik (Sandin - bass) and Dennis (Holm - drums)?
Funnily enough Erik was one of the first guys I met. He was playing bass, I remember we were at Guitar Center. I walked in, it was my second or third day there, I saw this long haired dude playing bass and I was thinking “What’s up with this guy?”, checking him out. He starts playing and I could tell he knew what he was up to. He was pretty good, so I just went and introduced myself. He’d just moved here too, and we clicked right away. It was funny you know, he was from Sweden, I was from America, it was his first time there. So I was like, “If I get a gig, do you want to jam or something?” And he was like “Sure, I guess”. So I got his number, called him two weeks later when I’d got a gig way out in the desert at this festival, but we needed a drummer and Erik suggested we try Dennis. I remember we were in a room together the next day playing together. Then for the next two and a half years I’d say we just jammed. We played small gigs here and there, trying to figure it out. Then in about 2013 or 2014, we started to get serious. It took a while, but LA to be honest, just to figure it out, the Rubik’s cube of what LA is, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, it takes a long time. It chips away at your soul, man. There’s so much happening in such a small area it’s almost like your head is spinning when you first get there, but it’s the best decision I ever made. When I first moved there I entered a guitar contest. It was probably after three weeks there. All the judges were from magazines – Guitar Player, Guitar World - the guitarist from Supertramp, and this guy who owned a studio. He was like “Come to my studio and jam. Do you have any songs?” No. “Do you sing?” No. I was thinking, I just moved here, I don’t have anything going on, and he goes “Get some guys, come to my studio”. He offered me a tour of his studio, and when I went there my jaw dropped. He was like “Marilyn Manson is in this room, this guy in this room”, and I was like "Woah...." I’ve never been to a real studio, that doesn’t really exist where I’m from. Flash forward to now, he’s my manager and we’re trying to conquer the world together. It’s funny how only in LA opportunities like that would pop up. You never know what’s going to happen.
Did you always want the band to be a power trio with you singing?
Yeah, that was the dream. But it’s funny, when you think about it, I was like: "I want to front a power trio, I want to be a guitar hero, I want people to play my guitar". It’s all good when you talk about it, but putting it in motion is a whole other thing. Instead of thinking about it, how do you actually do it? There’s so much that goes into it. First off, I didn’t really sing. So I gotta figure out how to sing, I gotta write some songs, but then after that you wonder, how do I find my own sound? When I was growing up, of course I wanted to sound like SRV, Jimi Hendrix, but that only goes on for so long until that dream fades away, then you wonder, what am I going to bring to the table? It’s been a long journey trying to figure that out, I’m just glad I stuck with it as now things are growing it feels like the persistence is paying off. I’m glad I went the route I did, even though it was hard as hell. When I was 18 or 19 I just thought I had to get good at guitar, then the rest will work itself out.
That’s the easy part, right?
Exactly, the playing part is the enjoyable easy part. It’s everything else, but it’s going good so far.
As far as influences go, you mentioned a lot of 70s classic rock. Who are your all time favourites?
What’s funny is that people look at me like “Dude, did you just come out of a time warp?” Long hair and all that. It’s just the best music I’ve ever heard, the late 60s, 70s stuff. It’s so organic. Obviously the power trio stuff like Cream, Hendrix, SRV, Mountain, a lot of that stuff. Early on, I didn’t even want to play rock, I wanted to play more blues stuff. Growing up, I listened to a lot of the old school 50s guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, the super old school guys, and learned from that. But to be honest, I’m influenced by so much stuff, especially when we go on tour with bands. I was on tour with Zakk Wylde for six months, hanging with him every day and watching him play, all of a sudden it’s like “I wanna be like that!” then I go on tour with UFO and Saxon and all of a sudden I’m a little heavier. Influences are weird because they come off in certain ways and all of a sudden you’re like, “This is different”. You notice different things. It’s in the back of your head, and it starts coming out. But yeah, at the core of it, 70s, late 60s, English rock is such a big part of it. A lot of guys now don’t even talk about that stuff anymore, it’s so ingrained in us and we know it so well. When you listen to Zeppelin or any of these bands, we’ve heard the songs so many times, you forget that that’s a song, a great riff. That’s still super inspiring.
Is there anything recent, say from the last five years or so you’ve heard and liked?
Um…. One Direction? No, there’s a lot of stuff that comes out now I like. I hung out with Blackberry Smoke in Hollywood the other night, love them, I love Rival Sons, Gary Clark. It’s funny, as I wouldn’t call a lot of these people my peers, but I like a lot of that stuff. We toured with Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown, they’re great friends. I’m trying to think of anything mainstream, but that’s a tough one. I listen to a lot of old school country too, and there’s some good new stuff like that coming out. In the UK there’s some good bands coming here and playing more of that stuff. But not much to be honest, I’m living under a rock, dude!
You have a new album coming out. The first single from that, Last Chance, is a bit more rockin’, very in your face. You had some songs on the first album along those lines like Playin’ For Keeps and Blackfoot, they were pretty raw, but Last Chance is short, to the point….
I love playing blues, I love playing rock, but a lot of people when they heard that were like "This is heavy!” But the whole record is to the point. The first record, Old Glory and the Wild Revival, was the first time I’d really stepped into a studio, so that came out super bluesy. This one, we put out Last Chance
as it’s a heavy hitter, but the whole record from the tunes, to the riffs, to the solos is very in your face. They’re songs, really constructed. We sent it to the label a few days ago, and they were like “What the fuck?” It’s still very bluesy, but the record sounds like it could’ve come out in 1976. So it’s definitely got some throwback stuff, but it’s cool. I did a lot of the record at Johnny Depp’s house, another perk of living in LA, he has a home studio. Then a lot of it was done at Aerosmith’s studio in Boston, The Boneyard. My friend who produced it, Tony Perry, he’s Joe Perry’s son, so that opened up a plethora of cool gear, cool stuff. I’m excited. It’s like all the influences I’ve picked up over the last few years on the road coming together and punching you in the face.
Do you have a release date for it?
I don’t know the exact date yet, but it’s going to be end of September. We’re going to wrap it up, then do a big tour, really do it right. I will say firmly, I don’t think anything else coming out is going to sound like this – so straight up, bare bones. I’m excited.
The first album (2015’s Old Glory and the Wild Revival) struck me as quite bare bones as well – guitar, bass, drums, minimal overdubs. No quadruple tracking guitars or anything.
Exactly. This new record, I’m trying to think... one song on the record, probably the bluesiest number, we had a guitar that was Joe Perry’s that he’d actually put a bass string on the bottom of. So I played bass with my thumb and slide guitar on the top, and we just recorded the vocals and guitar in one take. I swear it was the first take. We sat on it for a while and then three weeks later we listened back and Joe heard it, all these different guys heard it, and were like “You should just put that out”. So we are literally going to put the first take demo version of that tune out. On the album as a whole, there’s maybe two guitars per track, sometimes three. A lot of the time bands will try to do so much shit, at the end of the day it just comes out and you can’t follow it. I love the sound of just one guitar, drums, bass, just super-simple and direct. The drums we tracked super-random: one mic overhead, one mic in the room, some stuff just sounds like…. if it’s 1975 that sounds about right. It’s fun to do stuff like that. We took a lot of risks.
Are you going to be throwing in any new ones into tonight’s set?
Yeah we will. We’ll do Last Chance, and one other one called Don’t Be Scared. It’s cool…
So guitar talk….
Uh-oh. Now it gets nerdy!
You must’ve been asked this a million times, but you don’t use a pick. That’s pretty unique in the rock genre. I was trying to think of other players who don’t use one – Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler - neither really in the same genre...
Yeah…. I think I’m one of the only guys who’s trying to kill himself on stage! Yeah, no pick. That was born out of that whole philosophy of “What am I gonna do? What can I bring to the table?” For ever I was trying to sound like everyone else, it just came about because I wanted to try something different, I wanted to sound different, play different. When I was playing with a pick a lot of the times I’d sneak it under my fingers, then a lot of times I’d just put it on the amp, but then there came a day when I was sat on my amp playing with just fingers and the writing was on the wall. I was kind of scared to take the leap, but when I did, so many people were against it, saying “Dude, you can’t do that, it’s not gonna sound right. You won’t be able to play rhythm right using your thumb”, all this stuff. It was just another thing, I took a chance, took a bit of a risk trying something and it really worked out. It took me a long time to develop though. I was like a madman about it. I’d honestly say it only started to truly come together about a year and a half ago, like it was truly developed. A lot of times there was still a lot of muscle over brain, I’d just play, but now it’s to the point where I’ve got the motor skills and it’s pretty deadly.
Have you switched string gauges since moving to fingers full time?
To be honest, the string gauge doesn’t really matter with the picking hand, but with the fretting hand I’ve backed off a bit. I’ve been using 10-52s, as they have a bit of beef on the bottom end still, but I’m doing all these crazy bends nowadays. If I sat down with a guitar right now with 11s, I’d totally be able to do it, but when I tour and play all the time, it’s just a bit easier on the hands bending with 10s. The fretting hand, every time I bend up, I put everything into it. It gets a little sore. But with the light top, heavy bottom, it’s all good.
Guitar-wise, are you still using Old Glory (Jared’s Gibson Les Paul Custom with a single P90 pickup)?
I use Old Glory all the time, yeah, the whole new record was recorded with Old Glory. I haven’t been bringing it over here too much. I’ve beaten the hell out of that guitar and it needs a lot of work done to it.
When we last saw you at the end of 2016, you were using a Wylde Audio guitar….
Ah yeah, that was cool, as Zakk’s my buddy and those guitars are awesome…. they’re so Zakk though. I use those guitars all the time at home, but in January I met with the people at Gibson and we started talking about possibly doing a guitar and working together, doing some promotion, and I thought that was a really cool route to go, so they’ve sent me some guitars I’m trying out. Right now, we’re talking about doing some sort of Epiphone model with my spec, so they gave me a guitar to try out and it’s pretty awesome.
I’ve noticed you using that a lot on Instagram videos…
Yeah! Exactly, and to be honest, I swear on my life it’s a really good guitar. They ain’t paying me! It is a good guitar, and once you get connected to it, start learning how it plays, you can take it for all it’s worth. But I’m not sure if Old Glory will be coming across the pond any more, we’ll see. I was just in the Custom Shop seeing about getting a few Old Glory babies made.
Are you using the same Seymour Duncan P90 you use in Old Glory in the Epiphone?
Yeah, I got a deal with Duncan, that was awesome. The P90 is like the pickup you can’t really screw up, it’s such a simple old design and Duncan does it great. It’s an honour to work with them. They’re great pickups. The one I’ve been using lately is actually a stack, so it’s got another coil so it doesn’t buzz. I do that for the sake of playing live, as sometimes when you’re playing a P90 and it’s so loud, the buzz is out of control. When you’re at a festival and the buzz is as loud as your guitar, it’s like “Oh my god, kill me”. Then it doesn’t matter what you play!
You’re still using Blackstar amps?
Yeah. They've got a new Series One 100 watt half stack I’m using. I used it in the States on our last tour with UFO and Saxon and that thing is awesome. When we come over here to the backline company we rent from, John Henry’s in London, I always pick out a new amp to try. I love Blackstars as they always sound really good for me, for my tone, and they’re really easy to use. The one I’m using tonight, I just unboxed it, set it to what I thought would be pretty good, and it crushes. You always know when you start playing and the sound guy just puts his thumb up like “That’s good”, alright, cool! But the Blackstar stuff is great, it’s always there and never breaks down for me. That’s the biggest thing, especially when you’re touring. It’s cool to have old gear, but at the end of the day you just need really dependable stuff that sounds good, gets the job done, and if it sounds great, that’s even better.
Are you using any pedals?
Nothing at the moment, no. I have some old pedals that are really cool. I have a ‘68 Fuzz Face I’ve been using, but the only problem with that is it’s so noisy. It’s such a noisy pedal. I’m at the point now where what I do and the style I play, I don’t use much anyways, but I have an old fuzz and a Seymour Duncan boost if I need it. But with this Blackstar head, there’s so much power there…. I don’t use any delay or anything crazy, I just go up there and slam it out.
You were using the Blackstar Artist 30 for a while, which isn’t very gainy…
That’s right. If I play something like that, I definitely throw a pedal in front of it. I have a boost called a Killing Floor that Seymour Duncan makes, and that’ll kick it over the edge. The fuzz sounds amazing at low volumes, but I plugged it in today and it was just like “Eeeeeeeeeee” and I’m like “Yeah, I’m not doing that, not going down that road!” I think guitars sound best when you just have a great amp and a great guitar, just turn it up a little bit to get the tubes working. That’s all you need. Especially for blues rock, when you start adding too much on top, it takes away from what it actually is. It’s supposed to be raw and unpolished. That works for me.
So to wrap up, we’ve all thought about this growing up as musicians – who would be in your all time fantasy band?
Oh man, fantasy band…. that’s a crazy question. I’d go with what everyone wants – Jimi Hendrix on guitar, and Leslie West on guitar too, both of them together. The drummer could be Ian Paice…. or maybe John Bonham. Then we’d have… man, it’d be so weird, I don’t even know if the band would be good! Then we’d have Freddie Mercury on vocals, with Gregg Allman on organ…. Bass player, Jack Bruce. Or maybe the drummer could be Buddy Miles…. That’d be a crazy band! Can you imagine the egos in the room? But if I could go back and just see a band, I’d want to see Cream, Mountain and Hendrix, just at the Fillmore. I’d love to be there, to see what it really sounded like. I have a dream all the time actually, that I’m at the Fillmore in New York and I’m about to see Cream and I’m like “Holy fuck, it’s gonna happen!” I have a friend, he’s an older guy who used to play in Aerosmith, Rick Dufay, he was a kid and grew up at the Fillmore. He tells me “Best place on earth, I still remember what it smelled like”. Very cool.
And finally, Taco Bell or Del Taco?
Honestly dude, Taco Bell. Del Taco, they have like a 39 cent taco. It’s supposed to have ground beef in it…. There’s no way.
Jared James Nichols’ new single Last Chance
is out now on all good download and streaming services. He is touring the US throughout September and October 2017 with Saxon and UFO, and is hopefully returning to our shores for a full UK tour at the end of October. For details on upcoming dates, keep an eye on Jared's Facebook
and Instagram
pages.
Photos from Stone Free Festival June 2016 and Mama Roux's November 2016 (non professional)