S6: E4: Ned Evett - The Multidimensional World of a Guitarist

Speaker 1: 0:45

My guest today is a guitar prodigy and has toured the world playing with and has supported such acts as Johnny Lang, eric Johnson and George Thurowgood hey, everyone, it's Randy Halsey with Backstage Pass Radio, and today I am excited to have an artist back on the show who was originally with me when I did an interview with my pal, zach Perry, and I believe that was back in October of 2021. So, you guys, hang tight and we'll catch up with my buddy and the king of the fretless guitar, ned Ebbett, when we return.

Speaker 2: 1:20

This is Backstage Pass Radio, the podcast that's designed for the music junkie with a thirst for musical knowledge. Hi, this is Adam Gordon, and I want to thank you all for joining us today. Make sure you like, subscribe and turn alerts on for this and all upcoming podcasts. And now here's your host of Backstage Pass Radio, randy Halsey.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Ned. What's up, brother? How are you, man? It's good to see you again. Yeah, you too, man. Yeah, I think it's hard to believe that, as I was kind of writing my outline out for your interview, I'm like, wow, it's been two years already since we were down in Galveston doing the interview with Zach Perry, and it seems like it was like six or seven months ago. It's crazy, time flies when you're having fun, I guess. Right, yes, it does. That's funny. Yeah, wow, I guess since that interview back in 2021, you moved from Galveston out to the West Coast correct.

Speaker 3: 2:29

That is correct From the left coast to the to the West Coast. Yeah, what was the move all about?

Speaker 1: 2:35

for you.

Speaker 3: 2:37

Oh, let's see. And early last year in January I did the Joe Satriani's G4 guitar camp experience as an instructor. It was the first time they had had a fretless guitar instructor on hand and I brought myself and my strange fretless guitars along and set them up and people got a chance to come in and actually play one for the first time, because you can't just walk into the guitar center and pull it off the rack.

Speaker 1: 3:04

They're no such thing. There's no such thing as one in Guitar Center really Is there. Is it? They probably? Yeah, I've never seen one.

Speaker 3: 3:12

So that was really fun. I there was Joe Satriani, steve Morse, steve Lukather, neely Brosh, just so many John five, just a ton of Corey Wong. It's a super long list of guitar greats at a great time. That was an early January and I had sort of been planning to move to LA. After that was over, and after I did it in February, I sort of came back, got my stuff and I moved here to LA. I really miss Galveston. I love the Houston area and especially Galveston Island, so I do miss everything about that environment. Sure, it was a very critical couple of years for me playing there, playing with Zach doing my own thing, playing at the Charkeys Club with their open mic jam. Right as the pandemic was getting over, everybody got back to work and so that created a lot of momentum for me. Then I did the G four thing and then just kept writing that momentum and I've been here since. You know, like February, march, yeah, what?

Speaker 1: 4:22

What was the tie for you to Galveston? You're not a native Texan, so how did you wind up in Galveston?

Speaker 3: 4:30

I was curious about that Well actually, my family immigrated there in 1870. Okay, side out family. So do you have some family history? Okay, I have. Let's see, I was there. I played at the old quarter. In 2012 was the first time I actually went there as a, you know, forming musician, and I met Rex Bell at that time and who still owned it. So then, later, as the story goes, I moved to Houston for a girl who was getting her PhD at the University of Houston. We moved there and then we wound up living in Galveston during the pandemic because she didn't have to be up in Houston. So we did that together and I just immediately fell in love with the island.

Speaker 1: 5:15

And so, yeah, that's interesting that you say that, ned, because you're not the first artist that I've had on this show that has had a lot of influence on the art of having a woman draw them to a certain place on the map. This is a very common story that I hear on this show, as you could probably well attest to. So yeah, it's not the first time I've heard such a thing. But you know that's what we do as boys we follow the little girls around. So there's no harm, no foul on that, I don't suppose. Well, it was interesting because I didn't ever know really what your tie was or how you found your way to Galveston. I remember when I set up the interview with Zach, he said I've got a buddy of mine bringing me down to, you know, to Denny's place, to where we did the interview. His name is Ned and I. It's like that's interesting. I've never heard Zach speak of Ned, you know, and I hadn't heard your name up until that time. But it was a really nice surprise to have you accompany Zach in that interview. It was a really well responded to, interview and listen to a lot of times and it was my first exposure to ever such an instrument like you're holding in your hands. But and we'll talk more about that guitar shortly.

Speaker 1: 6:37

But the fretless guitar is a. You know, I've been playing the guitar for 37 years and I've never put my hands on a fretless guitar. It's a very interesting instrument and I really, when I looked at it for the first time I think the one that you had, the fretboard was glass possibly and I didn't even understand how it all worked. But if you'll take just a second with the listeners, since I've kind of gone, maybe gone off on a little bit of a tangent about the fretless guitar level, set with the listeners kind of at the just, let's keep it at the 50,000 foot level for right now. What is the fretless guitar? What are we talking about, ned?

Speaker 3: 7:14

for the non guitarist out there, For the non guitar player or non guitarist, fretless guitar is it's closer to maybe a cello or a violin, and then it doesn't have the metal ridges across the fingerboard that you set your fingers on and sets the pitch. Fretless guitar like, again, like a cello or violin, you can slide your finger up and down and you can sort of get between the notes. Okay, it has a vocal quality that's similar to a voice. Violin yeah, okay, yeah. So that's kind of the broad strokes of it. Okay, from the fine points it sounds a lot like a slide guitar, okay. So when you hear it, you go, oh, it kind of sounds like a pedal steel or a slide. It has that type of a sound to it as well.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Built into it. Sure, for those that don't know about the pedal steel, what Ned is referring to on his guitar is a lot more mobile than the pedal steel, isn't it, ned? That's funny there's no mobility to the pedal steel, but what an awesome sounding instrument. It is Well going back real quick. Where in California are you these days? Are you Northern California, southern California? Where are you living?

Speaker 3: 8:30

I am in San Pedro, which is in the Los Angeles area. It's right next to Long Beach and it's the closest thing I could find to Galveston in this area. Okay, it's a port town. Okay, you know it's right by the ocean. It doesn't have a, the beach is rocky. It's not as nice as Galveston's beach, but I love the people here. It's very working class and it's got a great pace. There's a guitar shop right down the street. For me Got it like similar to Falconetti's place in Galveston. Sure, it just has a lot of the things I like about life. Man, I just like that small town feel inside of a big city that you get with Galveston in Houston and you get it here South.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Wormat. Well, I think it's a prerequisite when a guitarist moves anywhere, there has to be a boutique guitar shop in the area. Does they're not in it? They're done, okay, all right. Well, I wanted to take a walk back with you for just a minute. You know, we talked about San Pedro, we talked about Galveston, we talked about some places you were originally. If my memory serves me correctly, I think we talked about Nashville back in 2021. Is my old memory still serving me correctly? Here Are my pretty on point.

Speaker 3: 9:51

You're on point, man. I was born in Nashville and moved back. After going to high school out west in Boise, idaho, I moved back and did a record with Adrian Ballew called Treehouse. It was an all-frazzed guitar record and that was in 2011 and I fell in love with Nashville and stayed there for a bit. So I have a lot of Nashville in my experience, in my life and stuff.

Speaker 1: 10:22

Well, it seems like, as a musician, it's interesting to hear you leaving Nashville, because I think more people are moving to Nashville these days than they are moving away from Nashville. And I think the Nashvilleians will tell you that because I have a lot of them on my show and they're like, oh my gosh, the infrastructure doesn't support all of these people moving here. It's crazy out there these days.

Speaker 3: 10:48

Yeah, nashville's got that old. It has that hub and spoke road system from the 19th century. So it's not it's just not built for the level of growth and development that it's gotten. Of course it's just like you know, when the billionaires push out the millionaires, you lose that local flavor of guns. That isn't necessarily why I left Nashville, because there's still lots of great parts about that community, that musical community. But yeah, it's grown so much since I was a kid I mean it was like a little town comparatively.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Well, you know, I think it's the new. I mean, it seems to be the new. I don't know if you concur or not, but it seems to be like the new LA or the Sunset Strip and even the music scene back in New York, out in Long Island, back in the in the 80s. You know, all the rockers were out there and now it's like a lot of the rockers are in Nashville. You know, you got Kip Winger out there, you got, you got a lot of these guys that have migrated out there and it seems to be the hotbed. Now Not so much. Maybe it's still like that in LA, I'm sure it is. But you know, I think back in the 80s, when the whole Sunset Strip thing was, you know, that's all you heard about. I don't it's not like that anymore, but it seems like people are gravitating to Nashville for sure.

Speaker 3: 12:09

Yeah, you're 100% correct, and one of the reasons that Nashville radio sounds so much like 80s rock is a lot of those guys producers, musicians, writers even have moved to Nashville and they all kind of brought that more stadium oriented guitar sound to country radio. You'll rarely, I mean and even now that's been superseded by hip hop and rap influence getting into that sounds. It's always, it's always been a growing, you know animal there. Yes, so it's, it's, but there's no sale like Texas. There's no sales tax. There's a lot of cool things about Tennessee. Tennessee is beautiful, you know.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Weather wise, I prefer hurricanes to tornadoes, you know, you know they're coming right Exactly A plenty of time to get out, Exactly.

Speaker 3: 13:52

Exactly, I had a hurricane go right over my, so I had a tornado go right over my house in Nashville and that. That creeped me out pretty good.

Speaker 1: 13:58

So Well, I saw one some years back. It's the first time I've ever seen a real tornado and it was probably about, you know, a quarter of a mile from my house, and I don't even know how to classify maybe what. You know what? What are they f-rated or something like that. I can't remember, but. But I couldn't tell you what f-rating it was.

Speaker 1: 14:24

But it wasn't one of these little things like you might see, where you see this swirl coming off the ground and it disappears in like two seconds. It was shaped up in the sky. You could see this and it was for somebody that had never seen such a thing. You don't know how to react to it. We don't have shelters here for tornadoes, right? I mean, it's like you know, run for your life is pretty much what it is. So it was kind of a well, I'm not going to say kind of. It was an uneasy feeling to see that and not know A which way to go and and B where to go. Like, we're like inside. We're not trained like that in Texas for tornadoes, right, I'll tell you what, man, even if you are trained, there's no good.

Speaker 3: 15:07

There's no good decisions when you're on the rolls. Wow, it's like unless you have a bunker right built to a standard. It's a yeah, the in Nashville. It's. East Nashville is kind of the corridor where they always seem to come into town Interesting. So East Nashville has been hit over and over and over again by by tornadoes whenever they they roll through town. So East Nashville is, from a musical standpoint, just my opinion, east Nashville is the place to be in Nashville for music. Okay.

Speaker 1: 15:40

And like we talked about, I mean at least with the hurricane, you have like a five-day warning. Hey, it's, it's a thousand miles in the Gulf and it's tracking right towards us. You can do what you want to do, but we're telling you, on the 21st of this month it's going to slam the the Gulf Coast and you want to be a hero and stick around. Feel free to do that, or you can get your ass out and you know, yeah, save a little bit of a headache. But anyway, I wanted to go back again. Like what was the musical setting in the evet household when you were growing up as a kid? Did you come from musical parents? Did you have siblings that were musical? Talk to the listeners a little bit about you as a young kid growing up and kind of what, and instilled music in you and what the family was like with music.

Speaker 3: 16:35

Well, randy, I just lost both my mom and my dad this year at the same, you know, within like seven months of each other. And this is a really personal topic for me. My parents were both musicians. My mom was an opera singer, she was a soprano, my father was, you know, also, he was an English professor by trade, but he also loved music and had a decent bass baritone as well in the church choir. So I grew up with them in the church choir nothing but freaking nonstop classical music playing in the house on the record player they would crank Mahler to ear, splitting volumes. It's like that was my first rock and roll, was like Beethoven and Mahler, like just all right. And so I grew up in that environment. They were very supportive of my playing guitar. They course got me guitar lessons on classical guitar when I was 15 and sort of insisted that I get a foundation of some kind that that's to this day I draw upon that foundation from that.

Speaker 3: 17:43

So I grew up in. You know, I was born in Nashville but I grew up in Boise, idaho, where there wasn't a whole lot to do other than just play a guitar, one of those type things, right. So I went to work playing in the clubs there when I was 17, playing five, six nights a week, you know. So that's what it was like for me. You know. Mtv, you know, hitting this, hit the scene, and just so inspiring to see people actually play a guitar and wanting to, wanting to, you know, follow that path. So, yeah, man, it's like a second. I'm super lucky and I'm still doing the thing that I set out to do at 14 or 15 years old. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Well, and I didn't mean to touch on a source subject, I'm sorry to hear, sorry to hear of the loss of mom and dad. I had no idea, but, you know, it's always nice to understand musical people like you and what the upbringing was, because I think that that is. You know, music was a big thing and in our house my mom was, you know, was a pianist, and I think that helps us get our feet under us, you know, and that's where the love of the music comes from, initially, versus that of the parents never turning up the Beethoven or the Statler brothers or whatever the case may be, back in the day, right? So thank God for good musical parents, right.

Speaker 3: 19:10

And I'm actually really happy that you asked, and being able to talk about my folks legacy is amazing for me. Yeah, this last since they moved on. So don't feel bad. You know it's funny because there's like two models. There's like your parents don't want you to play guitar Absolutely you play, and then that drives you, of course, or they're super supportive.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Yes.

Speaker 3: 19:32

And then you get. I guess it kind of works in either in either, in either way yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Well, and yeah, and opening up that conversation about the folks to it's, I think there's healing and, you know, talk therapy, right, I think it's good to talk about those things. I think so many people suppress emotions and loss and we all do it in different ways, but I think it for me it helps to to voice it and just let it out. You know my wife Terry, we've always talked about this. I'm the outwardly emotional guy in the family and she's the inwardly emotional, like if she's upset you, you may never know it, whereas if I am, you certainly will know it. So I I'm more of the talker and the opener up.

Speaker 1: 20:21

But I've had a lot of people on my show, ned, that you know. We talked very openly about mental health issues and things like that, right, you know there's so many artists that myself included who have have fought with anxiety and depression over the years, right, so it's good to talk to people that you know can, can relate and understand where you're coming from and I, and I think there's that's therapeutic in a way. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 20:46

Oh, I was. I feel that exact same way. Yeah, Musician, you were artists, so we're driven. Something's in there. Of course it drives us to both, you know, be processed, to stuff. Yeah, you write a song. You get all that emotion in this little time capsule. Yes, it allows you to put it out into the world in a more positive way. Of course you can release it. Yes, that's one of the things I love playing with Zach. Just, zach songs were just a great diary of his life. And you know, I just met him randomly in Galveston and started playing with him and it was just it's really cool to jump on board with somebody that's, you know, that's that has written some songs and has a history in song that you can kind of check out, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:31

He's a very prolific writer and I've always said that you're either a lyricist or you're a lyrical airhead. I don't think there's some something in between, right and Zach. Zach is a writer for sure, and I think he'd tell you there's a lot of things I don't do very damn good, but writing songs is one of the things that that he can do very, very well, and I love to hear his stories, you know.

Speaker 3: 21:58

He's a great guitar player too, zach. Like his electric playing is dope, yeah, like greedy. And she can jam, and it's like you wouldn't know it sometimes when he's just playing the acoustic guitar, except for a couple of songs when it really digs in, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:16

Well, I'm sure he'll love to hear that, especially coming from a player like yourself. You talked a little bit about starting some guitar lessons when you were 15, but I think it was the, the uke, that you started out on, was it not? Was it the ukulele?

Speaker 3: 22:32

Yeah, man, I had, like my mom had a ukulele when she was a kid and I inherited it when I was 11. And she taught me all these like standards that my grandfather had taught to her on the guitar, like five foot, two eyes of blue, just that strummy. And then I would like pick out rock guitar solos on it, like killer, queen by queen. Oh yeah, I was just obsessed with it. And then, man, when the hormones kicked in, like around 14, I was like I need an electric guitar now, and so that was kind of yeah, but ukulele was huge.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Were you you spoke a queen? Were you a big Brian May fan or not so much? Or Box the box.

Speaker 3: 23:22

Yeah, okay, so one of his 10 AC 30s chained together with his tone, that's treble booster thing it's like. And he like Billy Gibbons. He plays with a coin, he plays with a sixpence. You know, billy plays with the peso oh really, I didn't know that. And they both play with light strings. Both of them are like I think Billy plays with AIDS and Brian plays with, I think, with AIDS as well, or just they play. They had their touches. It sounds so colossally huge but it's really not a. It isn't like they're digging in.

Speaker 1: 23:54

It's not a heavy thing. Yeah, wow.

Speaker 3: 23:56

But it sounds so heavy. It sounds. See, I was a huge Brian May fan, Still amped and staked Wow, and he plays.

Speaker 1: 24:03

You've got a couple of songs to Does he really had no idea Interesting. It was somewhere around the mid 80s that you became inspired by a fretless player and you you spoke of Adrian earlier share with the listeners who he is and what band he was with. For those that don't know him.

Speaker 3: 24:26

Adrian Blue is a guitar legend. He initially started off playing with Frank Zappa, then he played with David Bowie, the Talking Heads and and the 80s lineup of King Crimson with Robert Frit, tony Levin and Bill Brouffer, and they did three classic King Crimson records. And then he was in a band called the Bears, and his solo career has just been incredibly rich and diverse. I saw him play fretless guitar on an MTV concert when I was like 16. And he brought it out for one song. And then he, it was a, it was a Fender. I think it's a Fender Mustang. This is tiny little fretless guitar. He played it on one song and then he put it away and I was like, oh no, no, bring the fretless guitar back. And so that gave me the idea to make my own fretless guitar and try to develop more of a like a style around the entire guitar, not just one song, yeah, but um, so I did that.

Speaker 3: 25:23

So I was on tour in Italy in 2010,. Opening for Joe Satriani and Adrian Ballu was on the bill in Milan, and so I got to meet him and he walks up to me and says, hey, I played fretless guitar too. He said that to me. I'm like what? Wow, I had no idea he'd even never heard of me. So that turned. From that situation I wound up going to Nashville and he produced my tree house record for me and I got to meet him, get to know him and he's it's one of my good friends and still going strong, just still. He plays with talking heads a review with Jerry Harrison, okay and he also does a Bowie tribute thing and his own stuff. So he's, he's never been better.

Speaker 1: 26:11

I think he was attached somehow, as a maybe a session guy or something, to nine inch nails as well. I think he might have had a some history with with them. But you know, I think when you play with people like Zappa and the talking heads, I mean you've probably played with thousands of others that are never even mentioned, you know. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 26:30

He got a platinum record for playing on that nine inch nails oh really, okay Spiral and in his studio cutting my guitar parts. I would look up. On one side was the nine inch nails platinum record and on the other side was his platinum records that he got from playing on Paul Simon's Graceland Wow, what a historical album.

Speaker 1: 26:51

that is too Right.

Speaker 3: 26:53

He told me when he cut the Graceland record, paul Simon had not laid his vocals down yet. So Adrian's in the studio going hey Paul, where am I supposed to play? I don't know where the vocal is, I don't want to step on your vocal. So Paul Simon comes into the studio and it goes and, as the track is rolling, just sings the lyrics standing right next to Adrian. That's how cool is that and that's how they. That's how they.

Speaker 1: 27:19

He provided you know the basic, yeah, but what a cool story. What is cool story behind the record? Well, I think Adrian. But he, he must. He was prolific too. He must have had 20 plus solo records out or something. He had a ton of stuff out, right.

Speaker 3: 27:35

He still writes records, his own music, puts it out. He's a phenomenal drummer. He's from Cincinnati originally. He just has that sort of Cincinnati vibe on the drums and yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:45

He's a vocalist too, is he not? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 27:48

absolutely. Yeah, he's a, but also yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Well, I think, like so many musicians, yeah, I'll pull a skeleton out of the closet on you. He's dropped out of college to pursue music and I think that that's not such an uncommon thing for musicians. They get in school and they say, eh, you know, maybe not, maybe not. School is for me right. Was university just not your bag, or had you already been in just engulfed with music by that time where you're not going to focus on reading a US history book or whatever? Right? Talk to the listeners a little bit about kind of what got you to college and why you diverted real quick.

Speaker 3: 28:33

Yeah, that's a great question, you know, because both my whole family are educators and teachers. So I would never denigrate, you know, teaching per se but as a path, especially with rock and roll, I had already played for three years aggressively when I started college. I wasn't a beginner and I remember my overall feeling was I wanted to tour and play on the road, I wanted to get out of my hometown Gotcha and I was going to a local college. So it didn't give me that sense of I was going me out and starting my life and seeing a better part of the bigger part of the world. It didn't have that for me.

Speaker 3: 29:11

So I had an offer to join a touring band, like a circuit band, and I took it in a heartbeat Okay and I bounced. But you know it's like pick a program like Berkeley or you know North Texas State, it's just like. You know there's a lot of phenomenal resources there for a particular type of path Okay, and it's a great fit for some people. So you know it just kind of depends on that crucial part. That crucial age from 18 to 20, you know, really determines a lot of your path as a musician, you know, I agree.

Speaker 1: 29:49

So did you discover that the road was for you? Was it all you expected it to be, or was it kind of a lackluster or anti-climatic or whatever? Whatever term you use for it? Right, talk to the listeners a little bit about the road and, if it's all it's cracked up to be, that's a very personal question.

Speaker 3: 30:10

There's some people that can't stand the road. They miss their cat, they miss their house, they just it's never really. It doesn't really do that for them, but for me it was always like escape and adventure. I've always loved it. If I sit around too much, I'm well, I'm not. What am I doing? Why am I? Why are they out on the road right now?

Speaker 3: 30:30

So you know I've toured in 30 countries. It's been the way that I've interacted with the world for so long. Makes sense. You know I'm going to Japan in three weeks for a two week tour there. So that's my first time to Japan. It's not my first time to Asia, but super excited about that. I always try to tell people, if you're a musician and you really you want to do something, that you're going to have to try it out. Because, of course, especially younger musicians and it's worth saying to younger musicians you know, take it all with a grain of salt, don't take the free cheese, don't take the free drinks and the free drugs, because the only free cheese is in the trap and that will eventually, you know, that'll eventually bite you in the butt.

Speaker 1: 31:13

That's a great PSA there, for the young listeners out there for sure, brought to you by Ned Evans. Yeah, that's great, that's great advice, you know.

Speaker 3: 31:22

Really at the roots. That's kind of a tough enough to crack, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:27

You've kind of been standing there with an amazing looking guitar and I think if anybody was to see this, we'll definitely have to post some pictures when we drop this episode of the guitar and whatnot, and I think there's a. There is a video out on YouTube where you unbox this thing, and I watched that yesterday, so I'll make sure to drop some links to that too. But and we'll talk more about that specific guitar but do you build guitars as well, or do people build guitars for you to play? Talk to the listeners a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: 32:06

Yeah, it's funny, when I started off playing Fratless Guitar, you could not get one anywhere, anywhere. You had to make it yourself, and that's what I did. In 2000, I launched a website called FratlessGuitarcom and I ran it for about 10 years. I built guitars for John Frashante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, martin Gore from Depeche Mode and just a number of just you know jazz guitar players, experimental players, and I had a lot of fun with it and it was actually fairly, fairly profitable and pretty fun. I am not a guitar shop guy, I'm a live musician, and I finally was found myself in a position of having to choose am I an artist or am I a guitar guy? And you know, it was never big enough to really want to just give up playing live music. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3: 32:59

And I'm not really that's not really my thing. Like I respect people who build guitars you know so much. But so, as of right now, I have I'm working with Ivan as guitars and also Morningstar guitar that makes this guitar yeah, and I have people customize and build guitars. You know for me that work for my style.

Speaker 1: 33:20

So well, let's talk about Morningstar. So you know again for the listeners that they can't see you right now. You've been holding this glass beauty in your hands and I don't want to steal your thunder, but when I say glass beauty, the whole, the whole dang thing is glass. Literally talk to listeners in their minds. I paint this picture for them in the minds. I have what you're holding in your hand right now.

Speaker 3: 33:45

Well, what I'm holding is a 25 pound electric guitar that is made of sections of glass. It was built by Alex Morningstar of Morningstar Guitars and, as he tells the story, he saw me playing my glass fingerboard guitar on the internet at some point and thought that was a good idea. But he wanted to go further and make an entire guitar out of glass. So when he built this guitar for me there was it was kind of one of those cool deals where, you know, you know, part of his initial inspiration was seeing me play the fretless glass fingerboard. So it's like most people that are into guitar, whatever the guitar is made of really influences how it sounds.

Speaker 3: 34:34

So in my case, this guitar is made of glass. So it has this brilliant, precise, clear sound. It's just everything that you would think out of a solid glass guitar. It's also supremely heavy. So I mentioned, you know, I have a strap by a company called cable free guitars, called the gravity, zero gravity straps. That really helps distribute the weight and I couldn't play it with like a normal strap. But I'm super excited. I'm taking it to Japan, you know, getting a February going to play it over there. It's just a party, it just. It has a beautiful sound. It looks brilliant. We live in a visual age with Instagram, and I've been filming some promotional videos with it, which look really incredible. The guitar looks incredible. So yeah, what's going on?

Speaker 1: 35:23

What is the weight difference for the listeners that don't know much about technical wise, about the guitar, or have never even picked up a guitar in their life? What's the weight difference in a glass body guitar like you're holding the Morningstar, and that of a you know of, I don't know, a fender strat, just any electric solid body guitar, right?

Speaker 3: 35:47

Yeah, strats are actually pretty light Strats, probably between eight to 10 pounds A less, paul, they can, they can be there. They're probably the heaviest electric you know. That's like can be 14, 15 pounds and that's heavy, right, that's heavy, that's heavy as hell Exactly.

Speaker 3: 36:04

You know from being, you know from from your own gigs how heavy that is. So this guitar is a full 20, 25 pounds, so it's 10 pounds heavier, wow. And yeah, I have another guitar. I have a resonator guitar that's 18 pounds, so it's. I thought it was heavy, it's an acoustic meta.

Speaker 1: 36:25

You literally have to wake up in the mornings and strap this thing around your neck and just walk around with it all day, right, Ned, just to get prepared, get your muscles in shape for the show. To carry the thing around for an hour and a half, right? How did you know that? Literally, I was just, it was. It was an educated guess. That was all just an educated guess.

Speaker 3: 36:46

Well, you're correct. I have a. I worked with a company called mono. They make cases and then they make a custom case for it. And for this, this Japanese tour, I've been training. I actually put the 25 pound guitar and also my Ivan has no guitar, and so combined that's like a 40 pound pack and I will. I just hike up and down the hills here in San Pedro, you know, for, like you know, a half hour every day, getting everything in shape. I love, I love training for tour. Wow, it's just the most, just the most fun. Next to the tour itself. It's like you want to be hitting the road in top tip, top shape. Yeah right on.

Speaker 1: 37:23

Yeah Well, I read Steven Tyler's memoir and I believe it. If I remember correctly it was called do the noises in my head bother you? And he talks about specifically. You know, when Aerosmith was off the road he had a place up in Lake Sonopee, new Hampshire, and and I think it was like this three mile little road that went around the property where he lived up there and a beautiful part of the country and and he would go running on that road every day, three miles, and that's how we prepared. You know the getting the lungs, you know filling up and doing all the things that lungs do for vocalist, and that's you know he prepared, just like you said he prepared for the road. You know you got to be tip top shape for for world tours like that. It's all part of the gig, so to speak.

Speaker 3: 38:15

Actually, if you're a drummer or a singer, because you know there's just that aerobic element to it, I guess you could say you know that'll steal playing relatively easier from a you know, conventionally guitar playing. But yeah, yeah, it's good to. It's good to be, I think, in general, just with what, even if it's your local band having a show which is good to prepare.

Speaker 1: 38:37

Of course. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. And I have a whole new respect for drummers because I expanded my studio here in the house and you can't see it in the video but it goes kind of far back that way. But I've got an electronic drum kit from a, from a friend of mine who plays in a several bands around town but they had a big 80s new wave band and he played the electric drums and that and I he was getting rid of him. I said, yeah, I want, I've always wanted to set a drums in the studio and that takes up the least amount of space.

Speaker 1: 39:09

Maybe I can start to pick some things up on that and then maybe graduate to an acoustic kit at some point in time. But you know, I'll cue up a song back in black AC DC and drum along with it and my tongue's hanging out by the end of the song. I'm not kidding. Like it take. I have a whole new respect for these guys that sit there and play three set or you know how you get it right. I mean, it is a workout. That's why they're all probably have all girlish figures and everything, because that's what they do night in and night out.

Speaker 3: 39:44

Yeah, that's funny that's one thing I love about playing music in Texas how the humidity is so high you just sweat. So you sweat out like 10 pounds every night Exactly.

Speaker 1: 39:53

Well, how much difference is there? But really, between that, the Morningstar and another guitar? You talked a little bit about tone. Every guitar sounds different. Is there a huge difference in the glass bodied and just a solid wood bodied electric guitar?

Speaker 3: 40:11

Yes, there is. That being said, it's the player that is the one that brings the crucial element, which is the human being that brings the music to it. It's just a piece of it's just a, it's just an object until that occurs. And but you know, we all get inspired by different sounds, and inspiration really is the key to me. Like you know, like I have a guitar that has a glass fingerboard but it has a brass slide, and those two things together just have a vibe, and the glass guitar, the Morningstar, just has a vibe, which is like it's a sound, and if you sit there and you analyze it to death, have fun with that because it's going to kill your inspiration, and then you'll just evolve into one of these guitar trolls online that sits around and lives to make fun of anything that's that's different than their experience, that their narrow focus of experience and I never wanted to be in a band to each for that. I wanted to be to make music that was inspiring and to me, and to, hopefully, people listening listening to, hopefully, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:24

Would you say there's one? It might be like choosing a favorite kid over the other kid, but do you prefer? Is there a preference in glass bodied versus solid wood bodied guitars at this point, since you've since you've played, since you've played the all glass guitar now.

Speaker 3: 41:43

Yeah, that's a great question. I prefer glass fingerboards, so I do prefer that why is that?

Speaker 1: 41:49

Why is that?

Speaker 3: 41:51

One of the biggest reasons is because the glass, it has a very clear treble, which is great. But one of the things about electric guitar is round wound strings, that is, your low strings, have you know? They have ridges in them and it will chew through an ebony finger board, which is the hardest you know, one of the hardest woods you can make a finger board out of, and it's really expensive to have to replace your finger board or have it reclaimed after the strings dig into it. So one of the cool things about glass is it's impervious to nickel plated steel. It does not wear out. It does not, it does not wear out. So that's, that's number one and number one. Number two, which is I don't know if I should rank them, but it's got a great look, got a great sound. Impervious, other than if it breaks, of course, but don't drop it right.

Speaker 1: 42:45

Don't throw it don't throw it up in the air and try to catch it, like a lot of these guys do, right.

Speaker 3: 42:50

Yeah, it's funny. Don't do the, don't do the thing where you spin around. Yeah, of course, but you know it's. It is, long as you treat the glass with this, the same level of care that you would like vintage guitar or something, it'll be fine. I fly with them all the time. You know I have a custom case, but you know, other than the airlines losing them from time to time, it's. I've had great luck as an international musician.

Speaker 1: 43:18

So well, you can't have everything right, you can Something. Something has to go wrong. That's Murphy's Law. Well, you talked a little bit about kind of. I guess before we hit the record button you were showing me the guitar and I think on a fretted guitar we would probably call them capos, but you referred to this piece as a slide on that Morningstar there. Can you talk a little bit about the slide?

Speaker 3: 43:49

Yeah, fras, guitar is really cool. That's kind of like playing slide guitar with your fingers. But I was doing a tour with Leon Russell on his last North American tour. It turned out to be his last tour and I was playing opening for him and I came up with a concept of a slide, of a what I call a clamp slide. It's a, it's a slide that attaches to my neck of my fretless guitar and it's under tension, so it slides up and down and so you could bring it up to the fifth fret, for example, and then you could just leave it there and it doubles as a capo and a slide. Okay, so you can do all these crazy things with it that only really work on fretless guitar. It doesn't work on fret the guitar. Sorry, it's sad to say, but I've been doing that since.

Speaker 3: 44:40

Again, this tour with Leon was 2017, slightly before I'd played with fretless capos before, but the clamp slide kind of developed organically over a couple of years, and now I'm working with Jim Dunlop and I use their parts to build them and I I have a. This one has a Billy Gibbons Sangria model, which is just a beautiful red slide, and, yeah, when I met Zach Perry, I had that going on. You know, zach is a singer songwriter, so he'll capo, he'll do songs and be flat, he'll do songs and kind of crazy keys. So the nice thing about the capo slide is you can get into, you can match whatever key the singer songwriter is playing in, just like that. All you have to do is move the capo slide to the same key that they're doing. So it's great for that.

Speaker 1: 45:31

Yeah, I really enjoyed the one show that I saw you guys play together. It was at the little coffee place there after we did that interview and it was a treat to get to hear you play with Zach and the different sounds that that and the different tones that that guitar had. It was a really nice compliment to what Zach was doing, for sure. But on these guitars, when the fretless guitar specifically, are you open tuning these, or they open G, open D, or they standard tune guitars? Talk to the listeners and mainly the guitar players out there how such a guitar like the Morningstar would even be tuned to play.

Speaker 3: 46:12

Well, for years I played in standard tuning on fretless guitar you know the tuning that everybody plays with, and I wrote a lot of songs that in E, A or G, just songs that are pretty close to the, where the chords are close to the open strings. I did that for years and then when I moved to Nashville to make Treehouse with Adrian, I wound up having to tour that record without a band for various reasons and so the record was done, which was a band record. Then I had to go out on the road and support it and I just was really frustrated with the limits on a on a conventionally tuned fret of guitar oh, fretless guitar at that point. So I switched over to the Robert Johnson tuning, which is an open E chord Okay, and I had read about and I was just so enthralled with it and it took me a couple of years but I learned to solo like play guitar solos in that tuning and that was that was kind of the difference maker, Because you know, I'm a guitar player, people want to see you shred, they want to see you do your thing, and took me a couple of years really of to just transfer over my sort of standard soloing techniques over to the open tuning, and now I don't play in standard tuning at all, I just I do nothing but the that open E tuning.

Speaker 3: 47:37

I have some guitars that are tuned down to open D and open C because of the. Some of the songs that I've written do better with those tunings, but it's all the same tuning. It's all very standardized.

Speaker 1: 47:50

So if you're on the road, do you? I'm assuming you carry multiple guitars that are tuned differently for for onstage songs, correct?

Speaker 3: 48:00

Well, I can do one of my gigs with one guitar tuned in open E. Okay, I can do that, I can. I prefer to have at least two guitars because I like to have an acoustic fretless guitar as well. So I can do that. And if I'm you know, if I'm if it's a full tour, I usually bring four to five guitars, and but it's mostly for the character of the guitar as opposed to like tunings, yeah. So I wanted my style with this new tune to be very consistent. So it's all open E and, depending on where you put the clamp slide that's, you can use that as your home base. So if you want to play in the key of A, you just move it to the where the fifth fret would be, and then you can all your chords sort of transfer over into that position. So it's very standardized. It's a very Nashville way of thinking. It's a, you know, one, four, five type of Roman numeral system. National system.

Speaker 1: 48:55

Talk a bit about playing in. Hopefully I get my terminology correct Playing behind the slide or behind the nut on a guitar?

Speaker 3: 49:11

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you know that's a sunny land with a lot of that. It's basically, if you have a slide, you you also have access to the strings that are behind the slide and you could manipulate them in different ways. You can like play harmonics behind it Again, I don't know if this is going to feel male to hear this, but but you can also do behind the nut bending, which is, you know technique that Jimmy Page did, clarence White, jerry Donahue with the Helicasters, where you you put your hand behind the nut. So here we are with my Ivan as an old guitar, which is a fabulous thing for doing the behind the nut bends, which is kind of the sound of it is familiar to people that are familiar with the Parsons B Bender yeah, this model, but I can bend the E, the B, the G and the D, so you're really kind of getting into that pedal steel zone where you can cover a lot of things.

Speaker 1: 50:10

You can do slide Like uh, like it's one thing to learn to play a guitar normally right how does one even know about learning to do some of the things that you were doing there? I mean, is this just years and years of sitting around learning this thing, ned?

Speaker 3: 50:31

You know what I would say? Um, in my case, the, the, I've been able to, uh, push the fretless guitar forward because I'm a live player and and I'm a recording musician. So I'm always looking for new, new. I'm playing with different people, I'm playing with a mom constantly writing new songs, and that really helps. It's like being able to, you know, being able to take that chance of messing up on stage, live, in front of people's, really where it's at. You know, a lot of people are very orthodox, they don't want to make a mistake, they don't really take a whole lot of risks, but take a lot of risks, uh, in the studio and live too, and but as long as your goal is to make great sounding music, that mitigates some of that risk in a sense, and it and it winds up working out pretty good. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 51:28

Well, I think you would appreciate this. I had an artist on my show I guess it was last month. Now, uh, a guy by the name of Ron Thall goes by the name of I know I mean Bumblefoot, right, and you know we're talking about fretless guitar and whatnot and a phenomenal player in his own right years with guns and roses and Asia, and think he's doing Uh, there's a new group that he just spun up, um, for I think they're called for whom God's destroy or something, but a phenomenal player. And when I was talking to him on the show, you know, I don't I don't know if you're familiar with his thimble or not that he has in the body of that guitar, but uh, I thought that that was really interesting to see how he's integrated the thimble, where he could just like pop his little finger in there and pull that thimble up and then get a whole different sound and technique out of the guitar. You guys, you guys are pretty amazing with this, this whole innovation of things. It's just really cool.

Speaker 3: 52:36

I he's. He's a good friend. He and I did a European tour together in like 2001 in France when nobody, you know, it was really early days for the frets guitar thing. So, uh, he has always been my favorite rock and roll frets guitar player. Like it could just do it to just uh, and he can do anything. He's just phenomenal and he's a great person too. He was initially signed to Mike Varney's shrapnel.

Speaker 1: 53:05

Yeah, shrapnel Yep.

Speaker 3: 53:07

And uh, made it through that. You know that thing. And uh, yep, he's, he's a good cat.

Speaker 1: 53:13

I agree with you there, ned. I've I've had a lot of spectacular people on the show and you know, when you get, when you get to that level of musicianship and playing with some world renowned artists that that he's played with over the years, right you? I think a lot of people might wonder I'm guessing they do, maybe they do, maybe they don't, maybe I'm full of myself to a certain degree, but you know they have to think they wonder what's it like to talk to these guys. And I have to say that he was probably one of just the most down to earth nicest guys ever and we talked about so much on a Monday. We kept going and going and going and we're having such a blast. He's like can we do this again tomorrow? And he actually called me back the next day and we taught for another hour and that's why I did a part one and part two with him.

Speaker 1: 54:07

But just an amazing guy was generous with his time, much like you are, and so I concur with you there on him just being an all round, not only a great guitarist but just a nice guy in general. And you usually, you know, if you're that great of a guitarist, sometimes you don't get the other part that goes along with it. They're usually not as nice or not as free with their time, but, super guy, both of you guys are so kudos for that.

Speaker 3: 54:33

Well, that's interesting. That's that kind of thing that the don't meet your heroes, that type of, of course, that old slogan and I've been super lucky, the heroes of mine that I've met have been just fantastic people. That's like not only would you they have careers that you would just kill for, but they have, you know, great family lives and they're just good people. It's like I've been really fortunate. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 55:00

You know, I had no idea. It's such a small world to. I had no idea. By throwing his name out there because we've been on the topic of fretless guitars for a while that you guys have, I'm sure that you know. You knew who he was and I had no idea you were friends with him and whatnot. So I have great taste. That's all I got to say. I've got great taste in the people that I bring on my show. What can I say? Right?

Speaker 3: 55:25

Ron and I were on a record called fretless guitar masters which was put out in 2000. It was the first fretless guitar compilation record. It's still out there online somewhere, I think Wow, okay, yeah, so you know I've been out for a long time Very interesting.

Speaker 1: 55:41

Well, I wanted to talk a shift gear, maybe just a little bit, and talk a little bit about the music. You make itself right and I know that you've played in a multitude of bands over the years. You spent some time in Northern and Southern California, I think that was some what. Somewhere around the mid 90s you were on the Warner Brothers label, correct? Were you on Warner Brothers for a little bit? Does that sound familiar or am I?

Speaker 3: 56:10

Um, let me see my in the 90s I was. I played with a band called built to spill. That was on Warner Brothers. Okay, I've never. I was never signed to Warner. Okay, I had a demo deal with Capitol Records in around that time, trying to kind of break into the grunge thing. I was in a band called Deluxe 71 that was based here in LA and Marvin Netsioni was producer. Marvin used to play the, he was the bass player in the Loan Justice and he produced some Counting Crow stuff around that same time. So, yeah, so you know, like I've been chasing the chasing the dream for a long time, yeah, Well, I think you have what.

Speaker 1: 56:49

Uh, is it six or six or more solo efforts out? Does that, does that number, is that pretty close to what you have? Am I off of 12?

Speaker 3: 57:01

I have 12. I was well, as a matter of fact, I was. I was coming back from a road trip yesterday and I I don't ordinarily do this, but I turned on Spotify and I asked it to play me, okay, and I sat there and I listened to these 20 years worth of solo records for four or five hours and, of course, you know you're always you're waiting for the track to come up that makes you cringe, you go.

Speaker 3: 57:24

Oh, my God, I wish I wouldn't have done that, but I have to admit it was. It was pretty satisfying hearing it all come back and after a certain point you forget about it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:35

Well, it's like a walk down memory lane, right? Oh, totally so. And here's why I ask and that's what I love about these interviews, because it sets me right and not everything you read and study and listen to on the internet is the gospel, and that my question to you is living proof of that. But I wanted to ask you because you mentioned listening to hours and hours of stuff from yourself on Spotify Are there multiple Ned Evitt pages on Spotify or is there only one? And here's the reason I ask I had Scott Billman on my show not too long ago and I had my numbers wrong, because on the Scott Billman page there was only X amount of music, but I didn't know he was under another name, scott Little Billman, which there was a whole bunch of other stuff out there that I didn't know about. So I didn't know. I looked on Spotify for you and I counted on Spotify, specifically six. So that's where I got my number from. So I didn't. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 58:43

That's interesting. It's possible For me there's Stinking at the Underground. Generation Exodus. An introduction to Frelsk Guitar. Hand of Kindness, circus Licker, I Still Middle of the Middle, freed for you, free House Glass Guitar and All American Radio. So that's 11. And then the built to spill record I'm on is number 12. So, which is called Boise Cover Band. So that's my discography. Spotify is weird, though sometimes it does seem to kind of carve things up. It's like it wants you to listen to either the top tracks or sure Sometimes you're never quite sure how it's serving it up to you. But those are the. Those are the records that I have on on Spotify at the moment.

Speaker 1: 59:30

Okay, I'm going to go back and go back and look again, because I was listening to some of the stuff from your catalog which I loved, and it's good to know that there's much more out there that maybe I didn't either I overlooked or I wasn't looking in the right place. But it's not unheard of to have bands on my show and I've asked them about specific records that I grew up on and they said, yeah, it's not on Spotify because they're in litigation over the whole thing, right? So they take it down, and then you're. So if you don't know the band you know, then you would never know that they had three records out there that aren't even on Spotify because of litigation. So there's a lot of reasons why guys like me would not know the whole, the whole catalog. So thank you for setting me straight on that, but it sounds like you've you've done a lot of work there. You've been busy over the years, for sure, and what would you say? Your writing style is, as it relates to your solo music.

Speaker 3: 1:00:34

I'm definitely a songwriter when it comes to, when it comes to I'm a singer, songwriter that plays electric guitar, so kind of very much in that Mark Knopfler sort of mindset where you have both things. You have you have a signature electric guitar style and you have songwriting which supports it. So you know, I think you know Mark Jimi Hendrix, all those guys were just were sort of like the heroes to me because they were doing both. They weren't just the guitar player which forces, you know. So I would say my definitely I'm in that sort of songwriter recamp and in some ways that's been limiting because when you're a songwriter you typically only play the guitar, the song needs. I think. I know, I know for a fact that there's people out there that would prefer it if I just played straight. You know more guitar solos and played more guitar, guitar, guitar maybe didn't even sing, but as an artist I just I like to communicate. You know playing songs, of course, of course.

Speaker 1: 1:01:39

Well, you spoke about it a little bit earlier. It was touched briefly upon. But over the years you've toured and traveled the world playing music. Talk us through a little bit of the some of the worldly journeys. You know I think you did multiple tours with Satriani and probably many artists for that. But talk us through a little bit of the, the worldly tours of Ned Avid.

Speaker 3: 1:02:04

I'm really, really lucky because I play a strange guitar so I'm a good fit as an opening act for you know, that sort of legendary guitar circuit. So I've toured Eric Johnson, george Thurgood and, and Joe Satriani was just was just enormously supportive and helpful to me because if I had a new record and he didn't have anybody opening up on a European leg or a US leg, he would. He would let me open a few shows and that kind of evolved into me doing complete tours with him where I was doing the entire tour as the opening act. And once you work at that level then you'd always want to get back to that level. You always, you're always.

Speaker 3: 1:02:47

You know you're playing the clubs, you're playing smaller performing venues, but it's always just fun to be out. You know opening for people that are have a bigger audience and you know I'm a niche artist, I play a weird guitar that's even weird to guitar players. So it's been, it's been very interesting popping up between, like small clubs and then you're opening for Kansas or Leon Russell and then you get 20 minutes to a half hour to do your thing and you literally have 10 seconds to establish who you are and what you're doing on stage or crowds will just turn. They'll turn their backs on you, throw things at you, but they'll ignore you. So so anyway, it's been bringing it all back around. Man, it's just like the more stuff you can do in front of crowds in terms of actual paying audiences, it's always better. It's always better for your music, because you have to rise to the occasion. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:03:48

Well, it's probably a little bit of an odd question and I hope it doesn't come across that way, but from an adoption level you know you're right. You hit the nail right on the head. I'm in sales for a living. You got like five seconds to make an impression. Either they're going to like you and talk to you or they're going to tell you to go kick rocks. Right. But as an opening artist, have you? Have you felt like the majority of the time you're, the audience accepts you as the niche player that you are, or are there some where it's there a little a tough crowd, so to speak?

Speaker 3: 1:04:26

I've always been able to establish the whole thing Okay quick. Yeah, I think part of that is just I. You know I don't radiate fear. I have this funny thing at Brandy like when I get in a pressure situation this is a family trait my my adrenaline level drops Okay.

Speaker 1: 1:04:46

Grace under pressure is what they call it right.

Speaker 3: 1:04:49

Yeah, but it's weird. It's just kind of like okay, like I literally get more relaxed and more calm if there's 4000 people screaming for the headliner to come out. Okay, fair enough, and it chills me out. So, if you're not radiating fear, yeah, and you, the people interpret that as confidence, and then if you're confident and then you play and then you just get into your thing. That's pretty much all they're looking for. Of course, you know that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 1:05:14

Not totally.

Speaker 3: 1:05:15

I think crowds are more forgiving in this era. I know back in the day you know people would boo, slide in the family stone off the stage. Or you know, yeah, yeah, that ever happened, yeah, no.

Speaker 1: 1:05:26

I agree.

Speaker 3: 1:05:28

But I think, I think crowds are more partisan back in the day. I think in this era, people, they want to be entertained and yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:05:39

So how does that go off? You know like if you're out on tour opening for Satch right and you go out as the opening act, it's literally you and the guitar. Are you performing like vocally? Are you, are you only playing the guitar? Is it kind of like an atomic, a manual type of show where there's no vocals? Talk to the listeners a little bit about if they were to see an net of it as an opening act. What would the expectation be that they would see in that show?

Speaker 3: 1:06:13

I play with at least a trio these days. But that's more conventional people, you know. They go, they see a trio and they're immediately comfortable with that. If you come out with just you and the guitar, there's initial. There are those sort of like, okay, what is this? And then they see the glass fingerboard. So they know there's something going on. When I toured with Joe back in the early 2000s for the first time in England, my first show with him, he and I are standing at the side of the stage and there's 4000 Joe Satriani fans going Joe, joe, joe, joe, joe, joe. And he just kind of looks up at me and he's just like you ready to go on? I'm like, yeah, sure, yes, whatever. And just that's just my nature is just more sort of like, yeah, I'm ready.

Speaker 1: 1:06:58

Well, you've perfected your art over the years and there's nothing to be scared or bashful about, right? And you exude that confidence when you go out on stage.

Speaker 3: 1:07:07

That is part of it, Mike. I mean, the one thing about taking risks is that each one of those risks that you take walks on stage with you and you cannot unlearn that. You know, I do have friends who are singers who are terrified every time they go on stage and somehow that's part of their gift is they're able to take that terror and then they turn it into this performance. Of course I really. That's amazing, I mean. I'm glad I'm not that way, just having to be that freaked out every time you go on stage. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:07:38

Well, risk are not a bad thing if they're calculated right. I think that that's that's the key word there. You know you're probably a renegade if you're just. Everything is a risk. If it's methodical and it's calculated, then that can be a great thing. Well, totally shifting off of music for just a second, it was interesting to find out about the sculpting thing that you have either done in the past or are still currently doing. Would you want to talk about that at all?

Speaker 3: 1:08:08

Yeah, like a lot of musicians, you know you, you have a second, you know, sort of passion. Mine is sculpting and painting. I do those two things and I also do animation, so that's kind of a combination of the of sound and and art. So, yeah, it's like particularly like I remember being on tour going what am I supposed to do with all these hours on the on the bus, or you know? And I got into doing sculpting and just, you know, like, and not like full on sculpting, like with the chunks of clay or marble or something, but just like little portable chunks of sculpey and stuff. And OK, I got so good at it that I started to sell it.

Speaker 3: 1:08:50

And now I'm represented by a gallery in Galveston called G Lee Gallery. They, they have my artwork there for sale. I sell a few things every month. And yeah, there's a lot of celebrity painters out there, you know, in satchels as paints, and Ron Wood from the Rolling Stones. It's just like in some ways it's all part of the same mode of expression of the source trying to get stuff out, trying to get it down.

Speaker 1: 1:09:13

That's interesting that you have that. Well, you threw out a couple of names there that paint, and I've been trying to get John Mellencamp on my show for a while and he's a huge painter. Now, right, that's what he. I think he probably avoids people asking him for interviews because they think they only want to talk about you know, hurt, so good, and Jack and Diane right. But you know, the other part of that too is truly an interest in just art in general, and with you it's sculpting, with him it's painting. So that's interesting that you have that other outlet. How long have you been doing the sculpting pieces? That's been going on for a while.

Speaker 3: 1:09:50

Yeah, since I started touring in the 90s I used to make extra money making like extra, like making sculptures, and I would fire them up in the oven at the band house and then I would sell them at the merge table. So that's how I kind of got into it, doing it like that. I've been doing it since since the mid 90s, since I toured with Yellowwood Junction, which is a band I've got a reunion show with up in San Francisco this month and which was with Tim Westergaard who founded Pandora.

Speaker 3: 1:10:21

Keyboard player and he is funny because he was learning while I was learning to sculpt, he was learning to to code.

Speaker 1: 1:10:29

Okay, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:10:31

The laptop right next to me. But anyway it just. You just meet all these people that have you know.

Speaker 1: 1:10:38

you learn from people, of course, what percentage of your time, though, is, or of your creative time is, spent sculpting, like if you had, you know, on a scale of 100 percent. You know how much of it is guitar playing and developing that craft and fine tuning that craft versus that of sculpting. Is it pretty small and sculpting?

Speaker 3: 1:11:01

I'm actually I produce a lot of. I produce records for people, so I've been doing a lot of that. Okay, good, and I'll, yeah, yeah, and that I'm producing a band called Solon Cowboy here in Los Angeles. That is phenomenal. So I've been doing that and I. What I typically do when I need a break from audio is I'll pick up the sculpting stuff or my drawing materials just to kind of get a little break from listening to tracks over and over again and what you need to do. So, yeah, it all works very seamlessly. Here in my studio I've got an art setup and a audio setup and a video setup. So, very cool, I do those three things kind of in a circle. Yeah, and you know it's cool because you don't wind up getting burned out on any one thing Absolutely. And if you need to, really, if you need to really prepare and buckle down and knuckle down for something, you know, you can do that too.

Speaker 1: 1:11:51

100 percent, 100 percent. Well, it's my understanding too that there's another side, a little side thing you have going on there in the comic book world. Right, talk to the listeners about Crystal Planet.

Speaker 3: 1:12:03

Yeah, crystal Planet is a comic book that Joe Satryan and I created, and for a few years now we've been trying to get it turned into an animated series and we've got it to the point of being a graphic novel series. That's done by Incendium and heavy metal publishing, and so typically in animation you go that route you develop somewhat of a fan base for the comics and then you turn it into an animated show from there. So that's kind of where we're at, yeah. So science fiction yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:12:39

So when you I'm not I've never been a big comic book guy, right but like when you talk about you and Joe putting this together, like what, what is your role in the comic book? What's net of its role in the comic book specifically?

Speaker 3: 1:12:53

Yeah, the I am. Let's see how to put it. I'm above the line. It means created by or, you know, written by. And then I created the story with Joe. Okay, it's a big story, it's a big, sprawling sci-fi epic with great characters and lots of lots of action. So we created that and then we licensed that to get comic book company to make a version of it. And my role is I'm a storyteller, whether it's in songwriting or in animation or screenwriting. So, very cool, that's my role. I had not come up with the ideas. And then you hire. Then you hire awesome people to like, do the artwork and do all that stuff. Joe and I contribute audio. I do voice acting for the for the animation side, and Joe, of course, does the music. And Joe's a great story guy, great head for story as well. Even though he's known as a guitar legend, he's also a. He's really good with plot and character development and everything else that goes with it.

Speaker 1: 1:13:56

So I had no idea, and it's that's why I love the show, because you learn something new every day, and every day you talk to people. It's amazing how creative they are. And I mean, I knew you were creative on the guitar, but I had to assume that that carries over into other things too, right, and I think a lot of times people are only really really good and creative. And one, I guess, genre, so to speak right, for lack of a better term. But you have dabbled in a little bit of the, I guess, various different arts and that's really cool that you you can apply that to many different things.

Speaker 3: 1:14:34

Well, thanks, randy, they interrelate, they kind of. There's a crossover between, you know, science fiction and rock music. That goes back a long ways, you know. So you're kind of like tattling a lot of ways with art, you're tapping into the subconscious of everybody at the same time. And, yeah, goes back to Jimi Hendrix. And, you know, is the earth in space? Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:15:01

Well, from a music perspective, what is new from you that is maybe recent, either recently released or maybe even new material that may be coming out soon? Is there anything that we, the listeners, can look forward to in the months or near future?

Speaker 3: 1:15:22

I've been working on a new solo record and good as be releasing a lead off single from that this month. It's called Trinity footprints, and a video for that as well, and the video shows my new all glass guitar and all of its visual glory, standing out in the desert playing the song, and I'm really excited about the song and really excited about the video and and the record that will eventually make its way to all the streaming platforms, hopefully this summer, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:15:53

Wow, well, what perfect timing. This was right, almost spot on there. So all the streaming platforms is where the listeners will will be able to find the music for download and consumption right.

Speaker 3: 1:16:08

Correct Spotify, Apple music, Amazon music and camp as well. And yeah, it's going to be fun.

Speaker 1: 1:16:16

Are you constantly writing as a singer songwriter? Are you constantly writing or do you take time away from that? Do you get burned out on it? Talk to us a little bit about the process of songwriting for you.

Speaker 3: 1:16:31

I'm constantly writing and it does seem to come in piles. When I did the G four experience last January, when I got back from that, I wrote a 25 year album 35, 30 songs, all with fretless guitar risks, because it was all. It was a very guitar intensive event. So I wound up doing a lot of coming up with a lot of riffs and then I turned those riffs into songs. That's the way that I usually work. So there are times when you know you get to kind of burned out on anything, but my eye always try to not reach the point of burning out. Yeah, stop just a little bit before you go too far. Yes, you know you leave something in the ground. You know. You know don't don't harvest everything all at once.

Speaker 1: 1:17:16

But do you write around a riff or do you write from a lyrical perspective and then put music to it later? What kind of writer are you in that sense? Both Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:17:27

Initially, when I in my younger days, I was more dependent upon coming up with a good riff and then coming up with some lyrics that would fit it. But again, my father was an English professor, so I grew up with Shakespeare and irregular rhymes. Yeah, and I also grew up with hip hop and rap, where not everything has to rhyme necessarily, it's just about the intent. And so I never, never. I can write from either. Stand by right, I'm on piano quite a bit and I can write with a drum beat. I can write with guitar, I can write with the ukulele, I can write with other people. Most importantly, I love collaborating on songwriting with people and just like being part of the jam.

Speaker 1: 1:18:06

Yeah, you should come up with a rap record. I think that would fit you well in that you know like you ever thought about doing a rap. A rap record that would be interesting there. That would get you out of your comfort zone a little bit, I think. Yeah, I don't know where you much apply a fretless guitar into the rap rock scene there, but I guess it could happen. Right, it could be a new thing. Could be a new thing.

Speaker 3: 1:18:31

I recorded with hip hop artists before. It's like a lot of times I'll do I'll cover, like the synth line, more like a doctor gray type. Yeah, I'll do the top line, okay, yeah. So actually I have this sort of strange history with hip hop. It's a you know that we could talk about it another time, sure, but I'm going to leave the wrapping up to. I'll leave that to Eminem, right.

Speaker 1: 1:18:55

To the people that actually do it. Well right, Talk to the listeners about upcoming shows or tours that might be coming up.

Speaker 3: 1:19:03

Well, if you're in Japan in the first two weeks in February, I'm going to be playing in Tokyo in an Osaka and I have a tour in the works for this year with my band. And that's not how many days released yet, but I'll make those available on the site as soon as those are ready and I am excited to bring this new glass guitar out to the world and in all of us 25 pound glory.

Speaker 1: 1:19:34

So yeah, right on. Well, will you be back in Texas anytime soon? I know that in a couple of text messages I know you've mentioned that you had missed Texas. Is there a reason to be back here anytime soon?

Speaker 3: 1:19:47

I just played there in early in early September. It was great. I played two nights at Sharkies and I would like to come back and do a full scale Texas tour. Just hit all the big markets. So yeah, in terms of Texas, I'm going to wait until I can come back and hit everywhere.

Speaker 1: 1:20:04

So very good. And where can the listeners find you on social media?

Speaker 3: 1:20:10

Oh yeah, you definitely check me out on Instagram and Facebook and I'm easy to find. Just type in netEvitt or glass guitar and I usually come up.

Speaker 1: 1:20:20

So okay, and I think the domain name there too is netEvittcom for the listeners that want to go out and check out some videos. There's stuff on YouTube, of course, but netEvittcom is where the domain is parked there. Well, net listen man it's. I've kept you a long time. I appreciate you being generous with your time. It's been super awesome catching up with you and learning more about your world and and your all of your special talents that I had no idea the last time I talked to you, so this has been a treat for me, man.

Speaker 3: 1:20:55

Randy, thanks for having me on the show. Your show is great, just giving a platform to people that are out there being creative. I know you're a musician yourself and you're also doing that, so thank you for your time and hope to see you again in Texas this year.

Speaker 1: 1:21:09

Yeah, for sure We'll get together for a coffee or something or a water or beer or whatever it is, but good catching up with you. I wish you the best of luck and continue success in the near future and you guys make sure to head over to netEvittcom and check out all things netEvitt there and on Instagram and all of the other social media platforms that Ned is on. I ask the listeners to like, share and subscribe to the podcast on Facebook at backstage pass radio podcast on Instagram at backstage pass radio and on the website at backstagepassradiocom. You guys take care of yourselves and each other and we'll see you right back here on the next episode of backstage pass radio.

Speaker 2: 1:21:55

Thanks so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of backstage pass radio. Make sure to follow Randy on Facebook and Instagram at Randy Halsey Music and on Twitter at our Halsey Music. Also make sure to like, subscribe and turn on alerts for upcoming podcasts. If you enjoyed the podcast, make sure to share the link with a friend and tell them backstage pass radio is the best show on the web for everything music. We'll see you next time right here on backstage pass radio.