Rory G

First release:
LEVEL 1 = PEACE OF MIND by American Zen.

Formed:
American Zen originates from San Diego, California.

Instruments Played:
Electric Lead Guitar, Electric Slide Guitar (bottleneck style with an Ernie Ball Pinky Finger Metal Slide), Tenor Ukulele, Analog 2-Voice Synthesizer

Styles and Similarities:
We had just moved to L.A. We were starving in Venice. That was great! laughs Rory. "I was jamming with anyone. I played with this Paul Attanasoff from this really famous blues band. Oh yeah! Paul Butterfield."

"This guitar player was working with Coyote when I was in San Diego," explains Rory. "He was an awesome blues player. I asked him to show me how to bend strings like he did. He tried to show me, but somehow we weren't getting anywhere. So he says to me, 'go get a B.B. King record. Let him teach you.'"

"I got the album, Live at Cook County Jail, by B.B. King. I'm not saying I sound like B.B. King, but he did teach me how to bend notes better."

Rory's main guitar for this album was a 1984 Tobacco Sunburst Fender Stratocaster. "This bass builder in Hollywood was working on Tom's Rickenbacker. He had boxes of knobs and controls. I stumbled on this one control that does something really creepy with my guitar's tone sound. When you turn it all the way up it gives a kind of bass boost that makes my guitar really fat and smooth and distorted like Jimi Hendrix. Then when you back it off it starts to sound like an alien space ship taking off," smiles our Alien enthusiast.

"I use this guitar tone control to thin out my bass pickup on my strat and also to thicken my treble pickup. It's cool what you can do with just one little knob. I'm not ready to move up to programmable special effects yet."
 

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