The question often arises about what I use for electric guitar gear while leading worship. The reality is, I find it too daunting to be an arduous pedal-stomper when I am leading, even as I carry the full brunt of electric duties in most situations. If a gig should call for me to simply play guitar and do backup vocals, and not lead worship, I am more free to tip-toe through tones and take chances with my playing. For me, leading worship takes the main focus away from pedal pushing and more toward the spiritual direction of the service. When I lead worship, however, I do like to have a light-weight, simple pedal board with all the basic tone options at my feet.

I really love a tremolo because it sounds great with both distortion and clean tones. The purple pedal in the photo is the Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo, and it is true bypass. Best of all, I bought it for under $40! It sounds great, regardless of the price. The Cochrane Timmy is such a warm overdrive and it cleans up well when I roll back the volume on my guitar. The Memory Man with Hazarai is an easy-to-use digital delay. It has a bit of reverb in one of it’s settings that helps create the atmospheric tones I strive for sometimes. The wireless system at far right on the board is a Line6 XDS Plus. Line6 has upgraded their wireless line with newer models, but I still love the tone and the price–plus it has great long-distance range for big stages. This is obviously a no-fuss combination of pedals. They are all sitting atop of a Pedaltrain Mini pedal board frame and are powered by a Visual Sound- 1 Spot power supply (wires and plugs are all George L). My studio board, and another live board I have, is much more extensive. Again, when I am free to stomp, I like more stuff!

The amps I use at church are hand made by my buddy, Kevin, at Shaw Audio (I have a Shaw Full Tilt 18 in my studio). This particular head in the photo is a Shaw Tone Rod 40. This particular head in the photo is a Shaw Tone Rod 40. The head is riding atop what I call “The Coffin,” which tremendously helps cut down the stage volume. It houses the Blackheart cab shown in the next photo. Kevin replaced the stock speaker in the Blackheart with a WGS Reaper 30. Kevin and I experimented with closed-back and open-back options for the speaker cabinet. The Shaw sounded tons fuller with an open back, even as the cab is mic’d within the closed domain of the “Coffin.”

The Shaw head is not only for my use, but also for the other guitar players when it’s their turn to play electric. We have another Shaw in the other sanctuary utilizing a Blackheart cab, re-loaded with a WGS Reaper 30. We run a Radial SGI™ Studio Guitar Interface system, via a mic cable, from the guitar riser onstage to the backstage coffin, 100′ away.

I guess there are some who feel that more pedals are better. As a player in a multi-venue church, I hate lugging around a big pedal board from one sanctuary to the next. I am also on a quest to find the cheapest, great sounding pedals available. After having owned a ridiculous number of expensive pedals, I like to search and recommend affordable stuff to the younger guitar players. I must say that there’s some great sounding stuff out there that won’t break the bank.

Write me with pictures of your “worship gear.” I’d love to post them at some point.

jamie@jamieharvill.com

Blessings on your tonal pursuits!

I saw this headline from People Magazine a few days ago: “Billy Ray Cyrus says he could have been a better dad.” Duh! Couldn’t we all have been better parents?

My kids, Josh and Betsy, are learning the lessons of marriage–the same ones we all do when we choose to tie the knot. As I look back, I pray that they weren’t massively maimed by my ineptitude. After all, I was learning about life as my kids were growing up. When Brenda and I made the decision to build a career in music, there were so many things we couldn’t do financially at the time, like owning our own home, buying things on a whim and taking “real” vacations. What I’m saying is, we were poor. For many years we lived in less-than-stellar rental housing, hoping that our one-and-only high-mileage car wouldn’t give up the ghost too soon. I know my frustration with the lack of money was palpable. Some days we had more money buried in the sofa than was in the bank. Brenda even saved soap slivers in case we ran out and didn’t have the cash to by a new bar. We was poor, I’m tellin’ ya! Eventually, things greatly improved as my songs were recorded and the royalties made up for the lean times.

I ran into a lady around my age at church a few weeks ago. She was heading down to the nursery to pick up one of her grand children. As she was extolling the greatness of being a grandparent, I asked her what she liked best about her new role as a grandma. She said it was wonderful having money this time around. She told our story when she explained that as her kids were small, she was so caught up in making ends meet that many precious moments were lost to daily survival. Nowadays she can take the grand kids for the afternoon, buy them clothes and toys, and then hand them back to mom to suffer the brunt of bath time and supper. AMEN!

I believe the environment we build in our homes for our kids growing up will either create problems for them in the future or will be a solid foundation that will serve them well now and for generations to come. Even as we marry, have kids, and try to figure out how to make a living, we must be aware that our children turn into us when they grow up. They make decisions (or not) based on the experiences they had in the home. If we do everything for them, and clean up after their mistakes, they will never acquire the living skills to survive in a hostile world. Thank God for His grace! Without two sets of wonderful parents teaching Brenda and I the ropes of life, along with their solid marriages, we might have inflicted more injury to our kids and each other as a young family.

I appreciate Billy Ray Cyrus’ honesty. At least he is attempting to keep his family together. I am seeing in my newlywed children that, as Proverbs 22:6 states, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” I’m banking on that!

For several years I have searched bookstores, magazine racks, the internet, TV, music reviews, album liner notes, and have listened for word-of-mouth on any information I could find on producing music. Of course my initial interest in making music involved the singer of the songs that I heard as a kid on the radio. As early as age ten, I quickly learned to see patterns with my favorite artists; there was always a common denominator between many of them. First, the names of certain musicians continually surfaced on the recordings, and I noticed that several of the same recording studios were being used. Then, I began to see certain songwriters surface who penned songs for my favorite performers. It dawned on me, sometime during my high school days, that there were particular persons at the helm of these great records, bringing consistent success to the artists I followed. These persons, I soon learned, were called producers.

Successful producers have a hand in overseeing each piece in the music production process. The producers’ resultant product is many times as “signature” as the artist’s voice, playing style or song. What would the Beatles be without George Martin; the Sixties’ “Wall of Sound” without Phil Spector; Michael Jackson without Quincy Jones, or Jimi Hendix without Eddie Kramer? And where would the careers of many of the iconic Nashville singers from the golden era of country music be without Owen Bradley? Who would dare overlook the musicians who helped craft the sounds like the Funk Brothers of Motown, the Wrecking Crew of Los Angeles, Booker T & the MG’s of Stax Records in Memphis, and the the “A-Team” of session players who helped define the “Nashville Sound?”

The process of producing involves varying degrees of knowing music, how recording equipment works and how to craft songs. Producers are also responsible for hiring certain musicians, singers and engineers that are brought into specifically chosen studios. It’s also common that some producers aren’t musicians at all! The best of them usually are, though, and are involved in every aspect of the process. Many play intermediary between the artist and the record company. Sometimes they even arrange and chart the songs for the session–even engineer and mix. There is a bit of psychology involved in recording as they are to bring out the best performances in the players and singers. I have never heard of a sinner shamed into heaven, and neither have I heard of a singer or musician shamed into a good performance. It takes a delicate balance of all of these skills to be a successful producer.

I have read several books on producing music that I highly recommend (some of these are memoirs, but contain wonderful golden nuggets of insight into their craft). These include: Q: Quincy Jones On Producing, co-written with Bill Gibson; Hit Man by David Foster; Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music by Phil Ramone; Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards by Al Kooper; Behind the Glass-Top Producers Tell How They Craft the Hits, Volumes 1 & 2 by Howard Massey; Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey; the hilarious, spicy and irreverent look at the making of a rock recording called, The Daily Adventures of Mixerman by (the name was changed to protect the innocent…) Mixerman; How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A.: 50 Years of Music Row by Michael Kosser, just to name a few.

I ran into a PBS special the other night featuring producer David Foster. This was a second helping of the “Hit Man” and his friends, the first installment airing a few years ago. There on the Vegas stage were performers who weren’t shy about giving Foster credit for the huge part he played in the making of their recording careers. There behind him in the band were some of the legendary musicians with whom he crafted many hits: J. R. Robinson on the drums, Nathan East on bass, and Dean Parks on guitar.

Producers these days are forced to do almost every aspect of the recording process themselves, many times spending hours alone in front of a computer screen–long after the singers and musicians have gone–editing, comping, tuning, cleaning tracks and getting everything just like it needs to be. The economy has forced many of the big studios to close, and the home-based studio makes better financial sense to all involved. Even as the world of music has changed, and the economics have forced the industry to reinvent itself, the producer still plays a very important roll in the making of the music that is the soundtrack to our lives.

After writing about my experiences on the road, and putting Wes Turner’s thoughts about some of his experiences on this blog a few weeks ago, I was delighted to receive this short memoirs of the road from Road Dog, Keith Wilson. Keith traveled with a group out of Pensacola, FL which performed 350 shows a year. This group, like Truth, spent it’s time in churches. These words, again, reflect so many my experiences.

Our group did the vast majority of our concerts at churches, and we stayed in people’s homes 95% of the time. We came to refer to those as either a “Mansion Experience” or a “Missionary Experience.” That should be self-explanatory, but I’ll give a couple of quick examples:

Staying in the home that was clearly used in the filming of Gone With the Wind: Mansion Experience

Staying in a home where, before going to bed, we were given a Chamber Pot: Missionary Experience

The Road for me meant getting up at 5:00 am in order to get back to the bus, with our sack lunch in hand (provided by our host). I didn’t know until we got on The Road that the only sandwiches anyone ever made were ham with mayonnaise or pimiento cheese!

The Road meant meeting with the senior pastor or music minister prior to a concert, and talking with my Assistant Road Director about using the “Skateboard Entrance” that night, and how we might handle the dove release in that auditorium. Now, we didn’t do any of those things, but it helped break the monotony to joke with the ministers that way. It’s amazing how few of those ministers had a sense of humor.

The Road meant “Band Up/Vocals Down” or “Band Up/Vocals Up”, depending on how the church’s stage was built.

The Road meant a label on an empty channel on the sound board that read “DRUMS”. Anytime anyone from the church complained about the drums being too loud–just pull that fader down and everyone was happy!

The Road meant repairing mic cables on the back pew of the church while trying–sometimes unsuccessfully–not to let the soldering iron slip and burn through a pew cushion. It meant a lot of very small churches–and the same for the Love Offering. It meant great devotion times with your road-mates, and some very moving concerts where the presence of the Holy Spirit was clearly felt. It meant fantastic memories and making lifelong friends. The Road also meant having to choose between buying the new Toto cassette or new guitar strings—or have dinner that day.

But perhaps most of all, The Road meant my life would never be the same again. (I still get nostalgic whenever I smell diesel fumes!) And I will always be grateful for every moment I spent on The Road.

In our microwave world, we all tend to be in a hurry. This involves the church, too. When I was a kid, before we became Christians, my folks, probably through guilt, packed us kids in the station wagon and headed a few miles away to the Garden Grove Community Church.

Robert Schuller constructed the unconventional church building on 10 acres of land, completing it in 1961. Not only did the church have traditional sanctuary seating, there was also a large window that opened up to the parking area so Dr. Schuller could preach to both the folks in the pews and those in the drive-in. Several speaker boxes were installed in the parking area so families like as ours could drive up, listen to the sermon and leave without ever getting out of the car. As the sanctuary window dramatically opened with the start of each service (photo above), Schuller would raise his robed arms into the air and greet everyone, including us lazy folks listening from the drive-in. Ushers were positioned in the parking area to keep an eye on us and to gather the offering–kind of like car hops with suits and no skates!

Even though drive-ins have fallen out of fashion, we professional religious types still try to make the pathway to church as easy and convenient as possible. In my house of worship, we have a second sanctuary (or venue) providing a full band and a video feed of the sermon. It has tables and a casual environment that supports drinking coffee during the service (scandalous still to many today!). We even have an indoor garage where baby strollers are stored during the service, a fully stocked bookstore, and a friendly bevy of greeters and ushers to lead you where you need to go.

We must do all we can, in and outside of the church, to reach the lost. Schuller had remarkable, innovative vision with the design of the original Garden Grove Community Church back in the 60s. In today’s world, we must continue to be creative but also design a pathway where people make can move into the nucleus of the church body through small groups and opportunities to serve. Otherwise, church activity will be reduced to the drive-in concept of “get God and go!”

Photos: (top left) view of the GGCC Drive-In;
(lower right) view of the sactuary and the big winow opened to the Drive-In