I was first introduced to Metallica by some friends in 1998, attending eighth grade at Ministik school. I was hanging with my buddy Reese one afternoon and he was showing me some of their music. “Listen to this,” as he turns up his stereo to showcase the intro to Metallica’s The Unforgiven. A horn is sounding and crescendos, you think you’re about to be kicked in the chest from some heavy-metal distortion, but instead, greeted by a mysterious nylon-string guitar, followed by a sharp sounding Stratocaster line.

It was reminiscent of an old Spaghetti-Western film. You’d think Clint Eastwood was about to kick the door down, shoot your can of Coco-Cola, say something cool, and then leave. I never knew a heavy metal band could mix those mean riffs with pretty-ass lines. The big sound of mean, hooky-riffs tagged with a banging rhythm section and singer, James Hetfield’s barking tone. It was everything you needed in a metal band. I was hooked.

My friends and I began playing guitar in the Fall of 1999 and we all wanted to play Metallica songs. Every time someone in our little group got a new Metallica CD or live-concert VHS, I always tried to listen/watch it right away. I thought James Hetfield was the man, with his iconic white ESP Explorer-esque guitar. I think a lot of us wanted to be like him. Or maybe it was just me.

We had a little band going and eventually played a few community events here and there. Our first time playing was at the Parish Hall. We covered three Metallica songs. Our drummers’ kit didn’t have proper support to stand up, so we used to lean it on the bass amp. Halfway through the first song, during the bridge section of Enter Sandman, the drum kit fell over. Everyone in the audience was laughing, as we stopped and wondered what the hell to do. That felt like the longest ten-seconds of my life. Yet, our drummer, Stirling, managed to get his kit back up and we agreed to keep playing and finish our mini-set. I suppose if that’s the most embarrassed I’ve been on stage, I’m lucky so far.

Fast-forward to spring 2003. My cousin called and said Metallica was playing in Toronto that summer and asked if I wanted to go. I jumped at the chance! Me and a few other friends got tickets to their July 5th show in Toronto at SKYDOME Stadium. The show was called SUMMER SANITARIUM 2003 and featured Mudvayne, Deftones, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and Metallica as the main-headliner.

This was during a time when nu-metal was at its peak – a style of music known for it’s post-grunge and alternative influence, usually with bad-vocals and shitty guitar. Not my favourite era of music. Mudvayne was my favourite of the openers. I actually managed to make it pretty close to front-stage, but needed to take a break after 15 minutes of being up there. Body to body with tons of sweaty people. I had to buy a new shirt and change, because my original shirt was soaking in sweat from other people. Bought a water and a sub sandwich to help me get through until the main event.

At 9pm the house lights go down. The crowd erupts in excitement. This is something I’ve been wanting to witness for a long time – Metallica live! The Ennio Morricone composition Ecstasy of Gold plays over the PA, as the graveyard scene from film The Good, The Bad & The Ugly is shown on stage screens. It’s a strange feeling. I feel as though I’m the character in the film, searching for something big nearby. The song ends and the acoustic intro to Battery starts. I know some people like searching set-lists before they go to a show, but to me, that just spoils the show. It’s like reading a leaked-movie script before watching the movie. It ruins any surprise and therefore, takes away from that ecstatic electricity.

The power-chord comes to its big cadence, when the main-riff is performed. And then there he his, 50 feet in front of me, James Hatfield running through the riff with a Les Paul! Every one of the 40,000 people exploded with joy, it was almost deafening. Then comes the full band. A mosh-pit starts up right behind me. I was never one for mosh-pits, but whatever. It was loud! I could feel every kick-drum from the speakers bump my chest. Every-low bass note rumbled my guts. I was on cloud nine the whole time. They played all of their classic tunes, and showcased a couple of their latest album. The interaction with the crowd was fun. I lost my voice for the next day because I sang along to every single line to 16 songs for two hours in total.

Fast forward to spring 2017. Me and the lady purchased tickets to see Metallica in Toronto on July 16th, in the same venue as last time. I was excited enough to text my bandmates in the Shine about it…

ME: I’m going to see Metallica on July 16th!

CAPTAIN STAN: Uhh…….don’t we have a show that day?

ME: What?! NO!!!!! 

Yup. As it turns out, we were scheduled to play Ottawa Bluesfest that very same day. I was pissed-off at first, but then came to realize the Ottawa show was a true opportunity for me and the band. I sold the Metallica tickets. 

Soon after, I learned we were one of the openers for Peter Wolf, and the late great Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. I would have been a fool to pass this up! All of my life I wanted to be that guy playing music on the big stage. Maybe someday, I can be that guy who gets someone else to pick-up the guitar.  Not because they want to emulate, but because they just enjoy the music.

And if missing out on watching one big stage means playing on another big stage… how naive can I be?

The post From Watching The Big Stage To Playing On It appeared first on Midnight Shine.

“A Gibson Les Paul”, he answered.

At that moment, I knew I wanted that guitar.

I would always snoop through my older brother Robert’s CD’s and tapes in attempt to discover cool music. When I was 11 or 12 years old, watching his Guns N’ Roses Live at Tokyo concert on VHS and quickly became a fan of their music.The thing that stuck out to me was the guy with the big curly hair, rocking a Pepe Le Pew t-shirt and several Les Paul guitars throughout the show. There was something very mysterious and sexy about the shape of that guitar. To me, it was like seeing a beautiful woman. I asked my parents for that model guitar for Christmas, to which I was told, “That’s $2000! Sorry.” I don’t blame them. I didn’t even know how to play guitar at the time.

Fast forward a few years. Me and my buddy Reese are high-school freshmen (minor-niners) and big-time into Metallica. James Hetfield was and still is the man to me. We ended up taking weekly guitar lessons from my older cousin, Nelson. I always thought Nelson was the coolest because he had a Gold-top Les Paul himself. I was in awe whenever I saw the guitar. He taught us the basics and we flew from there.

As I discovered other bands, I found that many other players were into Gibson Les Paul’s as well. Guys like Zakk Wylde, Gary Moore, Jimmy Page, Al Di Meola, Randy Rhoads, the guys from Thin Lizzy, they all slung the Les Paul. Every time I would hear these guys play, it fed my desire to obtain my personal holy grail.

Fast forward a few more years. It is now 2005 and I am working at the Wawatay Radio station as a technical trainee in Moose Factory. It was there I met and worked with George Witham. All of us younger guys had referred to him as “that kick-ass drummer.” He taught me many things in the technical field and being a musician himself, offered a lot of advice and insight on music. It was a fun job and I even got to be the disc-jockey on Friday afternoons.

It was also this job that I was able to save up money for THE guitar. I was always browsing the Gibson website and drooling over the guitars, and knew I wanted to get the Standard model.

After sleeping on it, I decided to go with the Desert Burst finish. I almost chose the Iced Tea finish. Those flamed maple tops always took me in a trance, like staring at the sand in shallow water.

I called up Steve’s Music – Toronto, and inquired about their Les Pauls. They told me they didn’t have any standards with the Desert Burst in stock, but they would be receiving a shipment within a week and they would call me back. So I waited… and waited… and waited…

BAM! They call me back a week later. The longest week of my life. I finalized the order and was told I should be getting the guitar in a few business days.

Now, it’s kind of an unwritten rule with guitarists to NOT pay for a guitar without trying it out first, but I was 850 kms from Toronto so I couldn’t exactly just walk down the street and try it out. Not that I gave a shit at the time. The clerk said thank you and told me the “guitar is beautiful.” For $2,500, I sure hope it was. A little more waiting. The suspense was killing me. “I hope it will last.”I called the train station freight department in Moosonee a week later and was told they had a box that said GIBSON on it with my name. HOLY SHIT!  I ran straight to the docks and hopped on a boat taxi to take me across to Moosonee so I could pick it up.

From the moment I got the box, I was smiling ear to ear for the rest of the day, maybe even the rest of the month. I returned home and opened it up as my mother and younger siblings had gathered to witness the unveiling. It was like being a kid at Christmas. It was here. The guitar and instrument I had idolized everyday for several years had finally arrived. I played with it for the rest of the day, even polishing it twice before going to sleep, eager to pick it up again in the morning.

I’ve had the guitar for 12 years now. And although I have other guitars to play/practice with, “Dez” (Desert Burst) is still my favourite. It’s probably been through a billion notes by now. It has been recorded on both Shine albums and played at dozens of shows.

New goals and challenges arise as time goes on. The guitar not only sounds and feels like home, but it also serves as a reminder of the fire that I had in my belly as a young, worry-free teenager, and to never stop chasing and working toward my goals.

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Boss TU3 Tuner – A guitar tuner. Simple. Are these things banned up north or something?! Stay in tune kids. We tune to A440. I prefer A442 as I think it adds more liveliness. I plug my guitar straight into this, which leads to…Boss CS3 Compressor – I use this for when the song calls for a “clean sparkly” tone. e.g. Mooshoom. When active, I think of it as a glass of sparkling water.
Wampler Pinnacle Deluxe Distortion – The workhorse of the board. It was developed to emulate that early Van Halen tone. Think of a muscle car with its pedal to the metal.

Hauling an amplifier is a pain, so I’ll usually request backline for the shows. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a nice Marshall or Fender to play through. But, that isn’t always the case, so I figured I better get a good dirt box that’ll make almost any amp decent sounding. It’s on throughout the whole show and I’ll only kick the boost on whenever I’m playing abig, fat, voluptuous lead or want for some feedback, Hendrix style.MXR EVH Phase 90 – I keep this set around 11 o’ clock and usually kick it on for the occasional lead. Sometimes the mellow tunes call for some nice swishy dirt, a la David Gilmour. If you set it slow, it almost has this rotating speaker type of effect. Dreamy.MXR EVH Flanger – This is usually only used for the verse sections on In the Midst. I remember recording my guitar part in the studio. I don’t know what type of processing, voodoo, sorcery, etc., they did to the original take, but having all of these boxes helps replicating it. It has this nice “ear to an incinerator, hairy waves” sort of sound, similar to Dimebag Darrell’s sound on Hellbound. I’ll sometimes kick it on for the chorus of Here I Am.Wampler Latitude Tremolo – This big box provides the “stuttering” effect utilized in a few songs/riffs, e.g. The verses in What Do We Do With You, Since You Been Gone and In The Midst. Trying to replicate the sounds on the album can be a challenge, but that’s also part of the fun. +1 for tap tempo switches.Effects Loop – An effects loop is a series of audio effects units, connected between two points of a signal path (the route that a signal would travel from the input to the output); usually between the pre-amp and power amp stages of an amplifier circuit, although occasionally between two pre-amp stages. Everybody got that?!

Ernie Ball Volume Pedal – This pretty much works as a volume knob for your feet. The reason I have it in the effects loops is because the front signal keeps saturated this way. This makes for very smooth and also animated volume swells, especially paired with delay and reverb.Boss Giga Delay DD-20 – This twin pedal has a smorgasbord of different delay/echo sounds. My favourite part of it is that I can have 4 presets saved. Meaning, I can easily switch to a stored sound for specific songs. Short delay, long delay, modulation delay, etc. I actually have a short modulation preset that I use for Hopeless Romantic live, emulating a Leslie speaker. I also use a looping feature when starting up James Bay with this extended Pink Floyd and Rush style intro. I think of running through the trees and being lost/found on the land.

Electro-Harmonix Nano Reverb – Used for creating a canyon amount of decay. I mostly use this at home when I’m messing around with long chords or soaring ambient lines. Not necessary if you’re performing in an arena of sheet metal.

I enjoy sound manipulation both in terms of playing technique AND warping it electronically. Of course, you don’t need all of these pedals, but I enjoy the options. I enjoy the players who can make the guitar sound pretty AND stink. After all, I feel that music should be a liberating expression with no rules and having all of these stomp-boxes makes me feel like a kid in an ear-candy store. Sweet.

The post The Live Show Pedalboard appeared first on Midnight Shine.

Writing this post makes me realize how excited I am to be playing live with the band again. The four of us live in different towns in Northern Ontario, so it’s difficult to get together and rehearse. We each have our own lives to live, with bills to pay, jobs to do, books to study, etc. But, whenever we do get together it feels like a breath of fresh air, one that differs from the 9-5 routine.

We’ve been trading song ideas and demos for some time. It helps keep us up-to-date with each other musically. This past summer, we debuted two new songs at The Big River show in Moose Factory. The songs were met by the crowd with great response and has only inspired us to keep moving forward. It felt good to play live and loud again. I live in an apartment building, so I never get to turn up the amp past 10 (insert Spinal Tap reference) without annoying my neighbours. Playing on stage and finding that sweet spot is a savoury time.

When writing new songs, I try to keep a live-performance mindset — will this riff get heads bobbing? Will people sing along to this melody? Will this beat have feet tapping? I believe that aside from the technical side of playing an instrument, you also have to practice writing songs as well. With Stan, Adrian and George by my side, I know that we will only get better. Here is to more songs and more stages.

The post Itching To Play Live… appeared first on Midnight Shine.