The Union (Luke Morley & Peter Shoulder) Interview

The Union is an acclaimed new band formed by Luke Morley and Peter Shoulder

Luke was lead guitarist, chief songwriter and producer for Thunder from the band’s inception in 1989 until their split in 2009. Pete was the vocalist, songwriter and musical rudder of Winterville. He is one of only three British artists (the other two being Eric Clapton and Peter Green) to win a W.C. Handy Blues Foundation award, presented in Memphis in 2006 for co-writing the American Blues Song of the Year.

I caught up with the pair after their storming show at Islington’s garage last month. They provided some fantastic insights into improving as a guitarist, playing at your best, being creative, setting goals and dealing with criticism.

The Rock Star Method: What made you learn guitar?

Luke Morley: There was always music playing in the house when I was a kid. Beatles, Dylan. The Stones etc. so I guess that has something to do with it but the thing that really made me want a guitar was seeing Hendrix on TV setting fire to his Strat and smashing it into pieces. As an eleven year old boy I thought ‘that looks cool’.

Pete Shoulder: Hearing the Nevermind album by Nirvana when I was eleven years old. I can remember the music really excited me and I was feeling things that I’d never felt before. I wanted to be able to male those kinds of noises myself.

RSM: What’s the best thing about being a musician?

LM: Being paid to do what you love is a rare privilege and I do!

PS: Doing what I love to do as a job. Being allowed to be creative everyday.

RSM: Do you have a vision of what you still want to achieve in music?

LM: Nothing specific really. I just want to keep making good albums and putting on good live shows. It’s a matter of always challenging yourself if you want to keep improving and there’s no reason why you can’t keep getting better.

PS: There are so many goals that I want to achieve. Particularly with my writing and singing. I would like to leave behind a huge body of work that touches on a lot of different genres of music.

RSM: Before gigs do you visualise or imagine them going well?

LM: Fortunately I don’t suffer from nerves or stage fright so I guess I always think they’re going to go well.

PS: You always hope that a gig is going to go well, but you really never can tell. You can go onstage in the foulest of moods, tired etc and go on and do the best gig of your life. It’s a strange old thing.

RSM: Do you have any specific goals?

LM: I’ve played in just about every major venue in London apart from the Albert Hall so doing a show there would be good.

PS: At the minute, selling out theatres in the UK would be great.

RSM: “You Know My Name” is a powerful combination of dramatic lyrics and a huge riff and sound. What inspired the song?

LM: The Stones’ ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ made me think about what it would be like if God wrote a song about himself and YKMN is an attempt at exactly that.

RSM: What is the best state of mind to be in to write a song?

LM: Any. As a writer you need to be able to motivate yourself and sometimes it means pretending you feel a certain way even if you don’t.

PS: A fearless state of mind. I think writers block is nothing but fear of writing a bad song.

RSM: What is the best state of mind to be in to play at your best?

LM: Relaxed but not too relaxed. Never drunk or under the influence….

PS: You need to be relaxed , which is sometimes quite hard. But when I’m relaxed I sing and play much better.

RSM: How do you deal with negative criticism?

LM: I ignore it as its usually motivated by forces or prejudices I can’t control.

PS: You’ve got to remember that there are people out there that really love what you do, not everybody is going to like you. It comes with the territory.

RSM: Do you hold any beliefs that help you to be successful?

LM: Only that a beer should be cold and a woman should be warm!

PS: We are very true to ourselves. We only make the kind of music that we want to make. If the two if us get excited by a song we’ve written, it’s job done.

RSM: How did you know that your creative partnership was going to work?

LM: We had ten years practice working together before we started The Union so I guess it wasn’t much of a leap putting a band together.

PS: We’ve been friends and worked together off and on for nearly ten years. So it felt very natural to start a new project together. That’s probably why it works so well.

RSM: Do you have any advice for people learning, or wanting to improve on, the guitar?

LM: Watch people you like or would like to emulate and practice, practice, practice. Eventually you will develop your own style naturally.

PS: Learn your favourite songs from tablature. Also jamming along to backing tracks really improves your lead playing. Try and get out and play gigs as soon as you can. You improve so much quicker when you’re out there doing it. 

Interview with Proud Mary lead guitarist Bingo Richey

I caught up with Bingo at the launch party for Proud Mary's great new album, Ocean Park. Bingo and I discuss the best states of mind for playing guitar, dealing with criticism and how to improve faster.

Existential Questions!

We all have songs that mean a lot to us because they came out - or we were first introduced to them - during a memorable time in our lives, like maybe on a trip overseas or when we met someone special.

The general consensus is that the song is special to you now because it reminds you of that time. Could it be possible, however, that the song was so good and affected you in such a way that the events in your life at that time also became special?

Did the song complement the experience, or did the experience complement the song?! 

"New York, New York" by Ryan Adams - a song that was the soundtrack to 2 amazing months in California for me. But how much of a bearing did the song have on my experience in the sunshine state?

Sweet Emotion

Carlos Santana giving it some,  live on stage.

“Just as Jesus created wine from water, 
we humans are capable of transmuting 
emotion into music." 
- Carlos Santana.

Scientists and philosophers have long sought to explain how music impacts us at an emotional level. It is known that playing music alters how our brain and body functions, and therapists have long advocated playing an instrument to reduce anxiety and stress, as well as to relieve pain.

Music has also been recommended as an aid for positive change in mood and emotional states.

Renowned surgeon Michael DeBakey explains: "creating and performing music promotes self-expression and provides self-gratification while giving pleasure to others. In medicine, increasing published reports demonstrate that music has a healing effect on patients."

Nothing expresses an emotion like playing the right song, whether it’s to celebrate a positive feeling or to help manage a difficult one.

A youthful Janis Joplin in the 1960's.

“It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned how to make feeling work for me. I'm full of emotion and I want a release, and if you're on stage and if it's really working and you've got the audience with you, it's a oneness you feel. I'm into me, plus they're into me, and everything comes together.” – Janis Joplin

On the journey of learning and mastering the guitar everyone experiences difficult emotions through criticism, frustration at not progressing fast enough, stage fright, making a mistake, or just from having a bad day.

During these times our better judgement can get clouded, making it difficult to deliver the best performance we can, progress fast and be inspired.

If emotions ever get in the way of your guitar development, try the following technique:

First, get clear on what’s causing the situation, e.g. “I’m nervous about playing live”, “I can’t play barre chords yet”, or “my last live show didn’t go as well as I’d hoped”.

Then arrange it into a statement in the form: even though (insert situation), I deeply and completely accept myself as a musician. i.e. “even though my last show didn’t go well as well as I’d hoped, I deeply and completely accept myself as a musician”, or “even though I’m not yet as technically proficient as Steve Vai, I deeply and completely accept myself as a musician”.

The next stage of the process involves tapping points on the body, derived from acupuncture, which can release the energy blockages that cause negative emotions. There are 10 points in all, 9 of which are illustrated on the diagram below. 

You can tap on the points on either side of the body, using whichever fingers are comfortable. Tap just enough so you can feel it - don't hurt yourself!

First, tap the “karate chop point”. As you tap say your statement out loud. Next move on to the eyebrow point. Tap and repeat your statement.

Now move on to the “side of the eye” point. Then under the eye, under the nose, on the chin, on the collar bone, under the arm and finish on the crown.

Pause for a moment and take a couple of deep breaths.

The final stage of the process uses a combination of tapping, eye movement and humming to integrate the left and right hand sides of the brain.

The last tapping point, known as the “gamut point” (so called because it is connected to a wide range of emotions), is located on the back of your hand, around 1cm below the point between the knuckles of your 3^rd and 4^th fingers (see diagram below).

While continuously tapping, follow the 10-step procedure below:

While continuously tapping this point, follow the 10-step procedure below:

1.  Say your statement.

2.  Close your eyes for a second or two.

3.  Open your eyes.

4.  Look down hard right, but hold your head steady.

5.  Look down hard left, keeping your head steady.

6.  Roll your eyes in a clockwise circle.

7.  Roll your eyes in an anti-clockwise circle.

8.  Hum 5 seconds of your current favourite song.

9.  Count from one to five.

10.  Hum another 5 seconds of your chosen song.

Beady Eye

Liam Gallagher has finally named his new band - and Beady Eye bear a striking resemblance to his old one. The quartet are essentially Oasis with one key component missing - Liam's brother Noel.

The final Oasis line-up featured Liam on vocals, Chris Sharrock on drums, Andy Bell on bass and Gem Archer on guitar, and those same stalwarts make up Beady Eye.

Other than Noel’s absence, another significant difference is the new band's choice of producer - U2 mastermind Steve Lillywhite, who was responsible for establishing the Irish rockers' trademark full and ambient guitar sound, and he has gone on to be one of the best-regarded producers in modern rock.

In April Liam said he was planning on releasing the band's first single in October, and play live shows around its release. In typically understated fashion, he also added that he was “feeling a million per cent confident that they (Beady Eye) could be better than Oasis."

Noel walked out on Oasis last summer before a gig in Paris after being worn down by his difficult relationship with Liam. Gallagher Snr., it’s now over to you.

Beliefs

Research into the psychology of performance has pointed to a direct link between the mind and the body. Put simply, what you think and believe will affect the way you play guitar, the speed at which you improve, and how well you perform live.

Beliefs are a set of generalisations we make about life, music and ourselves. They are not facts, though we act as if they were.

If you believe that playing barre chords is not easy, then it makes playing them very difficult. You may believe that writing a hit song is unlikely to happen, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because once we have formed a belief, we live our lives by the rule of that belief. We look for ‘evidence’ to support it.

Why and how does this happen? It’s because of what biological psychology has called the Reticular Activating System, or RAS.

The RAS is a cluster of brain cells that act like a radar system activated by our beliefs or goals. The RAS filters in information that is consistent with what we believe, and filters out anything that does not support our thoughts.

This is why its crucial to make sure you have a set of beliefs that are “working for you”, and helping you to achieve all your goals on the guitar.

The first step to doing that is by identifying what beliefs you hold right now. Try writing down any internal dialogue that runs through your head when you’re playing, or thinking about playing the guitar. It could be anything, from thoughts such as “I only play well when I’m drunk” or “the songs I write sound amazing”, to “I need to practise more” or “I’m too old / young to play the kind of music I love”.

Listen carefully and your beliefs will be revealed. They tell you what you can and can’t do, and dictate the limit of what you can achieve on the guitar.

Another way of identifying your beliefs is to use a technique known as “free association”. Take the following 5 key areas of guitar development: open chords, scales, barre chords, song-writing and playing live - or use whatever’s important to you right now. Without too much deliberation, write down a sentence or two about your feelings on each area.

Becoming aware of your beliefs is the first and most critical step to making sure that you have a set of beliefs supporting your development as a guitarist. Simply by identifying a negative, “limiting belief” they are often dissolved, as you consciously realise that it is false or ridiculous, while your positive beliefs are reinforced, firing up your creative and technical potential to become the musician you want to be.

The Black Crowes

Is this the end of the road for The Black Crowes? The band have put down dates for their 20th anniversary “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys” tour, but comments made since seem to indicate a curtain-closing finality to the proceedings.

The band’s most recent studio offering, 2009’s “Before the Frost...Until the Freeze” was recorded before a live audience at a rural NY studio, and seemed to create fresh momentum for the band, with Uncut Magazine calling the album "an inspired move" and The Record Review commenting that the record "feels right, as if it’s exactly the record that they needed to make at this point, both to separate from their musical past as well as to open up the future."

On the experience of recording in the backwoods of New York, lead singer Chris Robinson said, “My days of making a lot of music in cities are over. There is something about a pastoral place - not having your senses wrapped up in everyone else’s schedules and vibes; I was completely focused on the task at hand.”

After touring to support the album in 2009, The Crowes spent time at the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles, recording over 20 songs from their 20-year history, arranging acoustic versions of their favourite tracks. The resultant double album, “Croweology”, is scheduled for release in August.

However, after the forthcoming tour, the band plans to go away for an “indefinite hiatus”. Says founder member Rich Robinson: “After this tour we are going to take some much needed time to spend with our families. But for now, we are very much looking forward to a great year of touring.”

And guitarist Steve Gorman concurred: “After this tour, we’ll be taking a nice, long, much needed break. We are all in agreement that this is the right time to spend time with our families, friends, outside musical and non-musical projects and of course, our personal lives.”

Given the often-tempestuous relationship between the Robinson brothers, and indeed the other band-mates over the years, it’s safe to assume that anything could change between now and the end of the year when the tour concludes.

But if you’re a fan and can get stateside for one of the shows then this might well be your last chance to enjoy their blues-infused rock n’ roll for a long time. For those that don’t know what they’re missing, an evening with The Black Crowes is good for the soul.