Video
RuinenLust Etude
Conquistador | Spearfish
Luis Villarreal called to inform me his daughters had just been signed to Lava Records and would be recording their — as yet untitled — third studio album: autumn of 2020, in New Jersey, with producer David Bendeth.
“I’ll meet you and prep Dany’s personal Spearfishes for recording.”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you so much, Rick.”
After some thought, I decided to build two additional Spearfish™ guitars for her to use. Moria: a 24-fret ‘fish set up for drop D tuning. And Conquistador, this 22-fret Bare Knuckle pickups-driven light weight axe…which she fell in love with for soloing.
I made four trips to visit the band at their hotel and in the various studios, including one memorable day when Chris Buono joined us. Chris was also kind enough to lend Dany his personal Goshawk™ 6-string.
Ms. Villarreal was now equipped with four of my guitars for recording.
In addition, she used guitars from David Bendeth’s vintage collection. He has decades of experience with his specific instruments, knows their frequency mix slots well, and often pushes artists to use them extensively on albums he produces.
It is not an insignificant victory this album is exclusively a recording of Rick Toone builds plus select classic instruments from the 1950’s and 1960’s. I am deeply grateful to Daniela for insisting on using my guitars (and giving David a glimpse into my world).
A few months after recording I received a phone call from The Warning’s manager, Rudy Joffroy: “Rick, this is a courtesy call to let you know Dany will be pursuing endorsement deals with major guitar companies.”
As a solo builder, one thing I cannot provide artists is tour financing and major media exposure. Dedicating time and instruments I’ve built is…as much as I can gift. Sometimes, more than I can afford to give.
I love music, and I love to help artists develop.
I wish Dany the best of luck on her next steps. A beautiful afternoon she and I had together in her hotel conference room, listening to her playing and singing as I worked on the guitars, is a memory I treasure. Her voice in private, in person, is much more delicate and beautiful than anything I’ve yet heard recorded with the band. I do hope someday her more intimate playing is recorded for posterity. She is a major talent.
I also hope The Warning’s management team and Paul Reed Smith honorably attribute credit where it is due for the sound of the pending new album.
VIDEO: Gabriel Levi explores the newly rebuilt Spearfish™ Conquistador.
DARK | Access
DARK (Roopam Garg) is creating an innovative artist-audience interface model via website, based on the premise of inviting you into his headspace. Highly organized, catalogued and curated realtime insight into his works in progress: music, transcriptions, video, writings, graphics, essays.
The site updates as he generates new ideas.
I’ve never seen anything like it before — the DARK (virtual) experience is possibly analogous to being fly-on-the-wall inside an artist’s mind.
Subscription based. At a moment when touring is not an option, this might be perfect.
Fretless Spearfish
With the multi-scale Element™ aluminum neck I’m playing fretless now in ways I didn’t think I could…ways I didn’t even know were an option. With the multi-scale I am able to play more harmony. I can play fingerings that are simply impossible on parallel frets. (Chris Buono)