Personal hero of mine, Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What Is The What and How We Are Hungry, screenwriter of Where The Wild Things Are, and gifted artist Dave Eggers did our album art with drawings and slogans. You can read and hear about all of these amazing events at our brand new site: thecarousels.com. In this new enchanted webland, you can HEAR THE NEW ALBUM IN FULL, see where we’ll be traveling on tour, and you can READ THE FULL DAVE EGGERS ALBUM ART STORY. I promise you want to read that one. It’s pretty captivating. You can even watch a video about the educational non-profit work he’s doing and see how we want to use our new album to support it. Yes, all of those magical items can be found at our new web site.

The blog has been switched over there now, too. Join us.

-Paul

News about more collaborations and Paul Banks and the Carousels’ new album soon. Hear a sample here.

[MP3] The Noise Revival Orchestra & Paul Banks – BMBT

teams up with

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Here’s the other two SXSW events we’ll be playing, chronologically, for your convenience. Again, you can click the posters for info and RSVP:

Drawing for free Okkervil River tickets for everyone who RSVPs for this one:

We join a line-up of the best of Brooklyn:

Here’s a shot of giddy and uncool fan-boy Paul Banks at BookPeople in Austin:

-Paul

HI, I’M HUNTER, electric guitar for Paul Banks & the Carousels. Paul asked me to write a little about some of the guitarists who had the most profound impact on my playing. So here it is, an incomplete abridged collection of things I learned from these heroes of mine, and some examples of where their influence shows up on our upcoming new album:

Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) – About 4 months after I began playing guitar (almost exactly 10 years ago), I became obsessed with learning “Over the Hills and Far Away”. I labored over this song every day, working on the opening hammer-ons and pull-offs until I finally got the whole thing down, minus the solo, somewhere around day 35. It’s the greatest feeling, to nail down something that once felt unattainable and know that you are tangibly better than a month ago. This inspired a year of efforts to learn every Zeppelin song.

Page is so eclectic. Exploring his catalog teaches you something for every genre. I discovered many chords, licks, and tunings for the first time in Zeppelin songs. His riff composing is off the charts. He probably created more great hard rock hooks than all his peers combined. He wasn’t limited to that, though. He always dabbled in pretty acoustic guitar pieces, and as the band matured he began blending styles like funk, country, candy-store pop, and jazz into the Led Zep sound. Amidst (and sometimes within) the array of blues rockers and folk ballads, he tends to sneak in these great progressions and unusual chordal harmonies. Some of his best work: “Good Times Bad Times” and “The Ocean” (classic riffs), “The Rain Song” (beautifully confluent acoustic and electric parts), “The Wanton Song” (hard rock riff and jazz chords somehow fit together naturally).

There’s a hammer/pull-off riff in the outro of “Stick With What You Know” that’s directly descendant of my former obsession with “Over the Hills and Far Away”. All the electric guitar on “Floats on Satellites” can be attributed to Page as well, since most of my interest in country-style lead playing stems from folksy Zeppelin songs that made an obnoxious little 17-year old realize country guitar can actually be pretty cool.

Peter Buck (REM) – I probably align myself most closely with his guitar philosophy. His approach is all about hiding counter-melodic lead lines inside his rhythm parts. He usually does it by playing around with ringing open strings. REM notoriously stacks up divergent background vocals with alternate lyrics and melodies instead of conventional harmonizing. Buck doesn’t do BGVs, but his rhythm guitar is always singing something. He never does guitar solos, and kind of loathes them in general, I think. But he’s very adept at adding cool leads and fills on top of the rhythm, provided they are tastefully fitting and serve to enhance the rest of the song. A great guitar role model because he supplants his ego for the sake of the band. Some of the best examples of his style: “Harborcoat” (weaving counter-melody through his chords), “I Believe” (fusing rhythm and lead together), “Losing My Religion” (tasteful lead hooks, on mandolin though).

I’m pretty much mimicking his approach all the time, though I’m okay with doing a solo every once in a while when it makes sense. He isn’t the original anti-lead player, there are other guitarists who have prescribed to his line of thought – Johnny Marr of The Smiths and Edge of U2 to name a few – but Buck had the most impact on me in this regard. On the record: most plagiaristically in one of the verse leads of “I Don’t Cry”, in which I did a little bluesy counter-melody thing on the B-string while leaving the top string open. Paul even commented that it sounded exactly like REM right after I recorded it.

Kim Kramer and Bob Bailey – These guys were church leaders in my high school youth group. They headed the music team for years, and wrote at least three albums worth of original songs that we sang regularly. Before my senior year of high school, Kim (who was the high school pastor) invited me into the band, and taught me all their songs. Bob got married and stepped down from leading music at about the same time, but he left me all his parts and compositions to feed off.

Both of them were and are accomplished players. Bob has amazing technical proficiency (“chops”) and something I think any serious player should strive for: a sound that is uniquely his. Let me hear a clip of Bob playing anything on guitar, and I can tell you it’s him within 10 seconds. For lead, he fires off bursts of blazing fast licks, and always puts pauses between his phrases, as if to let you keep up with where he’s going. For rhythm, he likes distinct chord voicings, deliberately precise picking patterns, and a trademark palm-muted strumming rhythm with triplet teases: BAH-da—BAH-da—BAH (simplified). It should be called the “Bob Bailey”, like Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley”. Kim is more of a by-ear player. He creates parts that are undeniably catchy and hummable. Like Bob, he loves rich chord voicings, but while Bob forms them scientifically, Kim forms them instinctively. Among the many valuable tips I got from him, he planted the idea in me that you can create chords in your head and then go find them on the guitar. About six years later I finally figured out how to do it. Stylistically, Bob and Kim are completely different but quite complementary, because they are rooted in the same natural intuition.

Most importantly, they are both good friends of mine. It’s one thing to be able to hear someone’s music and learn from it, but far more to know them personally; to sit down and talk life or music with them on a regular basis, to know what they’re really about. As well as being my best all-around mentor in the formative high school/early college years, Kim was either partly or fully responsible for introducing me to and educating me on a number of bands who’ve been instrumental to my development, including: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Steely Dan, Rush, The Police, Tom Petty, U2, REM, King’s X, Weezer, and Foo Fighters. Bob and I have gotten to know each other better since I graduated college. We regularly work together in church band, and I play with his original group, The Reality Brokers, which is a mind-bending musical challenge. It’s a cool privilege to play along side one of your biggest guitar heroes. Lately, he’s impressed upon me the active pursuit of removing my musical comfort zones and working on my weak spots, but all without taking ourselves too seriously.

The solo of “My Friends Give Up” is me trying my best to emulate Kim’s catchy lead theory, playing a part that can be hummed along with. There are no examples of me trying to play lead like Bob, because I’m not physically capable of it. But the whole record is an attempt to create my own trademark sounds, the way that he does.

Monte Montgomery – I saw him live for the first time in June 2001 at Antone’s (thank you, David Perkins and John Kolvoord). From summer 2001 to winter 2003, I pretty much made it my life’s pursuit to figure out what the hell this guy was doing at all times on the fretboard. He is by far the most gifted player I’ve ever seen, for his combination of one-in-a-billion finger dexterity and an immaculate ear, which can seemingly summon any note, lick, chord, or harmony and instantly relay it to his hands. If he has heard a song before, he can play it on cue.

I attended over 30 of his shows in two years, and was about five times as devoted to studying him as any of my college courses. Literally, I learned every bit of every song that I was capable of playing. Perhaps the most important gift he gave me was the ear training. Monte is pretty obscure, well-regarded in guitar geek circles but largely unknown to the general public. There isn’t exactly a plethora of resources for learning his stuff on the internet, as there is with Townshend or Gilmour or Page. So the only way I could learn was to sit in front of my speakers, listen, play along, and try to figure it out. Then I’d go to another of his shows, stand right up front, and pay extra-close attention to those songs I’d been working at. Then it was back to my room trying to emulate what I saw. Lather, rinse, repeat. Over and over for two years. Initially, trying to figure out his complicated techniques by ear was tedious and frustrating. But by the end of that run, I was pretty dang good at it. I’m pretty limited in what I can physically do with a guitar, so nothing is more vital to my playing that my ear. Monte forced me to hone it. I’m convinced it was the most crucial period in my musical development. In order to find my own voice, I first had to figure out how to steal his.

“Dale’s Girl” from the upcoming album has a guitar part in the second verse that I did with false harmonic tapping. An unapologetic ripoff of one of Monte’s trademark tricks. It’s my favorite guitar part I’ve ever recorded.

Honorable Mentions:

Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies) – He’s a good and tasteful player, but didn’t do anything new or unique on the guitar. However, when I started playing, BNL was my favorite band, and I learned the basics from Robertson’s guitar parts. The standard chords and suspensions, conventional strum patterns, picking, etc. All the obvious stuff I picked up from Robertson.

Andy Summers (The Police) – Another great example of the Peter Buck melodic, no-solo approach. But while Buck is hyperactive, Summers is minimalist. In a three-piece band, he sometimes chose to fill the sound out with understated three-note riffs (verse of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”) or even noteless strumming while muting all the strings (chorus of “King of Pain”). His legendary part on “Every Breath You Take” is probably one of the five best guitar tracks ever laid down. It’s the best example of his knack for deceptively difficult riffs that sound so simple. He forgoes the self-showcasing lead licks to focus on sculpting a memorable, easily-grasped sound. The lesson is the same as Buck, but the execution is totally opposite. Where Buck is a modest yet tirelessly busy guitarist, Summers is virtuoso yet relaxed and sparse.

Mike McCready (Pearl Jam) – Early on in my development, I tried to learn McCready’s solos on the first two Pearl Jam records. Songs like “Even Flow” and “Alive”. Of course, they were and are way too fast and difficult for me to replicate. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though. Being limited with how far I could go as a lead player allowed me to discover the ingenuity of what guys like Buck and Summers and Edge were doing. I’m glad that I don’t have guitar shredding skills, or else I might have gotten stuck on Steve Vai and Yngwei Malmstein for the last ten years. Yuck.

Rivers Cuomo (Weezer)

Pete Townshend (The Who)

Brian May (Queen)

Walter Becker, Skunk Baxter, Denny Dias, Larry Carlton, Elliott Randall, and others (the Steely Dan dream team)

-Hunter