Brad Price: News

Many of you may have only seen me play electric guitar, and don't know that I cut my teeth in strictly acoustic music. My new project Kind Favors seeks to remedy that, with an acoustic duo format.

When I first got deeply involved with guitar, my big heroes were all acoustic fingerpickers - players like Leo Kottke, Jorma Kaukonen, Dave Van Ronk and John Fahey. While I branched out in to many new areas, this music has always held a special place in my heart.

Kind Favors brings the circle back around, with a focus on the twisted folk and blues that got me so excited way back when. Dear friend and fabulous bassist Donnie Wright makes it all go go go with slippery underpinnings and the result is nothing less than terrific.

Our first gig is coming up on October 1 at the Mock Crest. Please come down for some familiar faces, great food and drink, and an exciting new spin!

My acoustic rigs have varied once I started playing with the Trail Band in 1995. A few bits of modern technology make those wooden boxes really ring if used properly.

As always, the key to a great guitar is a great setup. And for that there is nobody finer than Dave Zogg at Twelfth Fret guitar here in Portland. My recommendation is unconditional and unsolicited!

Guitars:

Martin HD-28 (1997)

A workhorse of the industry since 1934, the D-28 is the classic big box dreadnaught, with huge bass notes and a crystalline top end. If I had to live with only one guitar, it would be this.

• Refretted twice by Dave Z with tall frets
• Bone nut and saddle
• Currently using a Baggs Element pickup
• Elixir light gauge Nanowebs, Phosphor Bronze

Martin 000-16GT (2003)

Great smaller guitar with mahogany sides and back for that dry, direct sound. Not a fancy guitar at all, but incredibly punchy and fun fun fun to play.

• Refretted by Dave Z
• Bone nut and saddle
• Currently using a Baggs Double Barrel pickup + internal mic system
• Elixir light gauge Nanowebs, Phosphor Bronze

Picks

Most people can never get used to them, but as a teenager I got hooked on metal fingerpicks and always use them with acoustic fingerstyle. I like the lighter Dunlop brass picks, .018 gauge. I use 3 (index, middle, ring) plus a Dunlop plastic thumb pick.

For flat pick work, few people think that those bits of plastic make a difference. How wrong - different materials and types yield crazy different sounds. I only use Wegen handmade picks - sound esoteric enough? They are indestructible and deliver more tone and volume than anything I've ever tried, including real shell material.

Electronics

The Fishman Aura is a remarkable piece of gear - it simulates a microphone using pickup input. I use an Aura to add that sense of "air" that pickups by themselves are always missing.

Since the 000-16GT has a pickup and a mic inside, I use an old Fishman Acoustic Blender preamp to combine the two. This approach is fading away, but it still works really well.

Acoustic amps have driven me nuts - I've had many. But with the introduction of the Fishman SA220 my search may be over - this powerful line array amp is incredibly transparent, feedback resistant and throws sound further than anything I've tried. 

Other than that, I use a volume pedal and occasionally a digital delay for added ambience.

I always get asked, and so I've decide to write it down.

My usual electric rig is remarkably unchanged for years. I can't tell you that it's the best, only that I am very accustomed to it and the whole thing does what I want.

Electric guitars:

Fender Telecaster (1982, a '52 reissue)
Fender Stratocaster (1994, American Standard)

Both guitars have VanZandt pickups, which are nicely done handmade single-coils. They sound like Fenders but with a bit more heft. I use Elixir strings because they don't go dead in 3 or 4 days.

Huge props to Dave Zogg at the Twelfth Fret Guitar Shop in SE Portland. Dave is a dear old friend and the best guitar repair guy on the planet. All of my guitars are refretted and setup by Dave.

I keep thinking that I should also have a Gibson, but somehow never find the right one.

Amps:

Fender Deluxe Reverbs. I love this amp, I've used them for many years. 20 watts of vacuum tube power, God's own reverb, and a 12" speaker. I have 2 of them.

My favorite old one has a now extinct JBL E120 speaker for that big clean California sound.

Effects:

People think that I have a lot of them, but not really. I try to use them sparingly.

The chain goes like this - Guitar -> MXR Dyna Comp compressor -> Boss CS3 compressor -> Boss CE2 Chorus -> Boss OD2 Overdrive -> ProCo RAT Distortion -> Ernie Ball Volume Pedal -> Boss DD-3 Digital Delay (short echo) -> Boss DD-3 Digital Delay (long echo) -> Amp

That's it for the electrics. Now go copy my licks.

Here we are once more - shorter days, cooler nights, a list of things undone and memories made from another summer. Why did it seem so much longer when we were kids? Everything did. Half hour TV shows seemed substantial, and family dinners went on and on. But that was all a card trick played by time, and now we see how it's done, watching our own kids anticipate another school year with excitement and dread in equal measure.

I've been contemplating life a lot lately; where I am, how I got here, where to go. If that sounds like a mid-life crisis, then I suppose it is one. I'm due for that. But I'm not going for a sports car or a girlfriend, I want to begin living like it's all new. Roll away the dew, and clear out the old stories that upon examination are just that - stories, and not any sort of truth. It's time for new possibilities all around, and that includes music of course.

Stay tuned.

For those who might wonder, let's set the record straight: there ain't a lot of money in the local music scene. For most of us it is a major love affair that requires enabling of one sort or another.

Me? I just landed a new job that calls upon my skills and background in both engineering and music; I am now the Senior Technical Solutions Manager for Audinate, an Australian company that is developing protocols and hardware for the transport of multi-channel audio over IP-based Ethernet networks. Got that? It means that with simple, cheap computer networking gear you can connect and use all kinds of professional audio gear and computers, vastly simplifying and expanding what can be done with live and recorded audio.

Neato.

This new endeavor demands a bit of up-front travel - I'll be in Australia for the last 2 weeks of February, back just in time for another jet-lagged hallucination at the Mock Crest on March 6. Be sure to be a witness!

It's only been about 10 years since friends first asked me if I had a website. I told them that when I had something to tell the world, I'd put it up. And here we are.

Music has always been a big part of my life, as anyone who knows me or has seen me play will know. I've done lots of different things, but nothing other than guitar has felt like my core, my identity. It feels like the time to make that statement bigger and broader than ever before.

I've worked in about a bazillion bands, been on loads of other people's recordings, produced other people's albums and even wrote my college thesis about electric guitar. But now it's time to put the focus on the music I do and to let everyone in.

I hope to see new faces at the events I have coming up, and look forward to every bit of it!