"Josh in LA and his equipment"

Pci: Do you also do your own music right now?

Josh: I wish but I just haven't had the time. The past year I've been home at the most a week and a half and that's just not enough time to do anything. I really would like to get into the studio scene little bit too. I think I have unique sound, I'm more of a heart felt guy. I hope to get into some sessions here.

Pci: I'd like to talk about your equipment. Which is your main guitar at this moment?

Josh: The main guitar is the Strat I have had for 15 years. It's just my workhorse. I've had many guitars in the past but this is the one that I play every night no matter what.

Pci: Which year is that one?

Josh: It's 1989 and I just bonded with it. You know, when you find that guitar and I'll get another guitar for a while and think, "This is great!" But then after a while I'm just like, "Well, it's not as comfortable as this one." So it's just the one, you know. But I just got a 335 from Gibson, which I really like. I've always wanted a 335 all my life and they let me go through and pick some out and I found the one I really liked so I'm enjoying that but I'm mostly a Strat guy.

Pci: How about amp?

Josh: Well, I've been using Fuchs a lot lately and I've used Rivera for a long time, for about 10 years and I still use those. That the amp I own here at home. But with the gig with Ricky, flying everywhere and so I can't take my amps, so I just had rentals. It's always a Fender Twin or something like that, which is fine especially with the AC Booster, it doesn't matter what I have.

Pci: I realized that you use a very heavy gage of string. Could you repeat your gage?

Josh: I use " .013, .017, .026 (plain steel), .036, .044, .056 (round wound)." I've been using strings that thick for about 10 years. Just got comfortable with it. My thing is that when I'm playing live, it's my job too even though it's fun and all that but I like the fact that I'm working hard and sweating and I have to dig in to play. It makes me concentrate and give my all, all the time and I just kind of like that feeling. Plus the tone, there is a big difference between the 9s and 13s. A huge difference!

Pci: My Xotic guitar builder was so surprised. He was like, "What?" He had never put anything so heavy.

Josh: Well, most people they pick-up my guitar and they don't know, they are like, "Wow! What's wrong with this? I can't bend anything!"

Pci: So you have tried AC booster, RC booster and Robotalk?

Josh: Yeah, I've been using them all especially AC booster because I have been flying everywhere and on the flight about 6 month ago my pedal board was destroyed so I haven't even been taking my pedal board and I have been just taking couple of loose pedals and the AC booster has been literally the perfect pedal for everything. It doesn't matter, I'll get there with a guitar and any clean amp and AC booster can give me every overdrive tone that I want out of it. I can get a heavier tone, which I don't really need for Ricky but it is so versatile with single coils and Humbucker and it's so transparent. It's just really doing all overdrive pedals. It's so easy to use and it cleans up well when I turn down the volume knob so I can use it all the time in any situations so that's pretty much it. I've been bringing that, my guitar and a wah pedal and that's all I've been using for the past 5 months. I use RC booster when I'm at home but I haven't been bringing it because I haven't been bring the pedal board but I ordered Bob Bradshaw already and it'll be in there. I'd like to use it alone so I almost leave it on all of the time but I really like it in the middle blues tones, that just the edge of break up because I set my amp pretty clean. So I kind of used it in the middle between my lead sound and clean sound just for that little blues and it's perfect for more traditional just breaking up blues sound. Albert King, B.B. King sound. It's the best booster I've used. It goes for both of them. The best thing about them is that they don't ever sound like an effect to me. You turn them on and you kind of forget that they are on. Most pedals, they are called effects because you notice, it's an effect but they don't sound like that. They kind of amp-like and disappear and blend in and you don't ever feel like you are playing through an effect, they are so natural sounding.

Pci: How's Robotalk?

Josh: Robotalk is really cool especially the envelop filter. I've had a few envelope filters in my lifetime and they are always cool for one song but you never end up using them. They are just too wacky or too this or that but the Robotalk I found more uses for. First off the plain auto wah envelope type filter sound is better than anybody I've ever used because it tracks so much better and the nuance is so much better with the tone control. A lot of them end up being too bright but with this one you can really retain your low-end and still get all your wah function but you can get really bright too and get that classic prince auto wah sound but it just sounds so fluid. I found myself using it for rhythm things and it's really cool and then the random arpeggiator. That's a tough one to play. It's not like you can just turn it on in the middle of the set and it works. You gotta kind of know what you are doing with it and Iﾕve been practicing and messing with it, trying to find usable thing. It's cool. I kind of like, besides the normal way I've heard people use it setting it at a medium to slow tempo and just kind of hitting a chord and letting it do its thing and setting up patterns. I've also been using it at a very quick tempo where I'm playing a quick pattern over it but where I'm kind of counting the beat in half time over it against the way the Robotalk is going. I can hear it as like a rhythm part that I would use in tracking a background part for cool ambience noises and stuff. I've never had a pedal like it. It's pretty unique, you know? It's definitely more of a studio tool or you have to write something around it but it's cool.

Pci: You said you ordered some rack for Bob Bradshaw; can you give me the specs of the equipment?

Josh: Well, since pedal board was destroyed, I had to come up with what way do I want to do this again because I can't just not have a pedal board. So I kind of noticed that everyone in LA goes with him, you know, they use his stuff. I've never even owned a rack of anything and I don't even use any rack effects so I went and researched it and I was just blown away by the how heavy duty it's made. It's so wired perfectly and so made heavy duty and road worthy that I was just blown away.

Pci: You have to travel so that's very important to you.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. So I've got this unbelievable cases from Chris Craft Cases which are really heavy duty and it's just going to be by his standards which are pretty simple rig pedals. It's just a six base rack and he made one space with loops in and out. It'll control all of my pedals.

Pci: Which pedals did you put on it?

Josh: AC and RC Boosters and Robotalk and also this other pedal, experience pedal which is a prescription electronic and it's like a fuzz, octave, Hendrix type of pedal. This Arion stereo chorus, which is for Leslie. I use Leslie and it's build into it. It'll control my Leslie but I use that when I don't have my Leslie for Leslie type sounds. I stole that idea from Michael Landau, he uses that pedal and so does Scott Henderson. I never even thought of using those pedals until I moved out here and everyone had this cheap $15 Arion pedal on their board and it's not that good of a chorus but when you crank it up it's a good fake Leslie sound so thatﾕs in there. Univibe type of pedal and it's called Mojovibe. A guy from Florida makes it thatﾕs actually a friend of mine. I think that's it for now. Only other thing I want is a Delay. I don't have a Delay in my system right now because I get tired pretty much every delay pedal and I recently tried the Fulltone tape delay, which is great but it's super expensive and a hassle.

Pci: Going back to your guitar playing style, do you have any particular guitarist or musician you were greatly influenced from?

Josh: Yeah. Growing up, it was mostly the older guys like Albert King, Freddy King, B.B. King, I was really into the Allman Brothers, Duane Allman and Dicky Betts, Clapton, you know, stuff like that. I think I was like twelve when I first heard Stevie Ray. That was a huge wakening for me right there. Somebody gave me a video of him. Besides how great he was, I have never seen somebody gives as much in a performance. He was like 100% in all the no matter what and that was a most impressive thing I have seen. That kind of sent me on another place. I focused even more into this and I got more into jazz and fusion and I started listening to Scott Henderson and Michael Landau and people like that. And then I really got into Danny Gatton. He is probably like my most favorite player now. I just dove into him and he is by far the most amazing thing I have ever heard. He just plays any style and it always sounds like him and he has this sense of humor that it always shows through in whatever he plays, even if he was playing a straight ahead jazz song, he didnﾕt care. He would always throw in a blue grass or banjo lick. He would always go completely nuts, you know? Just played whatever at anytime. He also changed the way I approached, I started working banjo type of roles and finger picking things that kind of incorporated back into my more blues base style and it kind of rolls into a big ball of Robben Ford meets Scott Henderson meets Stevie Ray with all finger picked. Those are like my favorite stuff..

Pci: What do you listen to these days?

Josh: Well, besides all the guitar player guys, I mostly listen to blues stuff. Not just guitar guys, piano you know. I like Room Full of Blues a lot. They are like a swinging blues band. Stuff like that. I mostly listen to old school stuff, you know? But I also listen to a lot jazz, Coltrane and Miles Davis. My favorite musician in general, a living musician that is, that I go see all the time is Kenny Garrett. He is an alto saxophonist and he is the best musician. He blows me away every time I see him and I listen to him all of the time. Robben Ford was never one of my biggest guys growing up but I lately I have been listening to him a lot for some reason.

Pci: He is also popular in Japan. I think he went to Tokyo couple of months ago as Jing Chi, and Michael Landau played with him as guest.

Josh: Yeah. I'd like to find a tape for that. I hope they recorded that because I've never heard them play together and they are so different. They both still have the blues base sounds but they are so different. Landau is so much more Hendrix side and Robben Ford doesnﾕt have any, and I would like to hear how they sound together.

Pci: I met you at the Larry Carlton show at Catalina. Do you also listen to him?

Josh: I've always listen to him through the Last Night and Valley Arts stuff but I really liked his last album because it's straight blues, Sapphire Blues record. It's great. Big band and he's really tasty, lots of B.B. King sounding playing on there and he has great tone too. Of course Dumble tone.

Pci: You like Dumble tone?

Josh: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I love it. I've played few lately and one. I still can't shake it. One was the best I've ever played and it sent me on the crazy wild amplifier chase, you know?

Pci: Somebody told us that using AC Booster is similar to the Dumble tone. Is that true?

Josh: Yeah, especially with my 335. The way I run it with my 335, I can get the Larry Carlton sound. I run the gain way down, and the volume way up. It's still over driven enough with the Humbuckers that it's sweet and singing. That's how I can get that kind of sound with AC Booster.

Pci: You had mentioned that you sang with your blues band and you wrote the songs.

Josh: Oh yeah. I wrote all the songs and we put out four records.

Pci: Are all of those things still available?

Josh: Yeah, just through me through my website.

Pci: Any new up and coming young musician you are interested in?

Josh: I don't know much younger guys but I know a new guy. Johnny Hilland. I didn't know him until recently. He is a lot more like Danny Gatton, a little bluesier than him but very good. There are few new guys. Sad but there's not much in the rock scene with good playing. Hate to be a snob but if they are not playing at least decent, I'm not into them. You know what I mean? There's something to be said and I love simple punk old school. But now everyone sounds the same. All of these bands sound exactly same.

Pci: I heard the business of the recording studio is very difficult in Los Angeles because many people started using Protool and stuff like that. What do you think about these digitalizing recording as a musician?

Josh: Well, when I was doing my records few years ago I did analog. You know, straight to tape, all the best I can do. But living here and tons of my friends have Protools in their house and there is a lot of benefit in having that. I wish I had Protools right now. It's good for a creative outlet. Always being able to get your sound down on tape and just get your ideas out. But it's causing a lack of talent in the main stream to happen. Everything gets fixed in the mix and everything gets fixed in Protool. It's really causing a problem in live performance because they sign the artists and give them a year to make their record and spend all this money and it doesn't even matter how good they sing. They take 100 takes and slice it up into one take and pitch correct and make everything perfect. When they get out there and play live, and I know because I've seen big people. We see them play live and they either sing with a tape which is horrible because they are not even singing, or they just cannot sing and pitch live. They just give a bad live performance because they have no experience doing it. It's a difference thing from the way I grew up, playing and going to bars and just learning how to play every cover song you could and paying your dues. You become more abroad and well-rounded musician, able to deal with any circumstances and really become good at your craft. Really, the most important thing is how you play live, you know? It's sad that a lot of kids don't learned that until you are pushed out there after their record sounds perfect and they sound nothing like their record when you hear then play live. They can't hit their notes and stuff.

Pci: I think that's why many people are not going live any more because it's not fun to go live.

Josh: Yeah. A lot of people, like Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears, readily admit that they don't even sing. They don't even care because they dance too much. They feel like their audience doesn't care and they are coming more for the spectacle than to hear her sing, which I guess is true but it's sad, you know?

Pci: I agree with you. Thank you very much!

Josh Smith Video Clips are here!
Josh Smith pictures at Cafe Boogaloo live are here!