Feature Articles in Premier Guitar Mag

The January issue of Premier Guitar has a couple of really good articles concerning guitars. One is a great interview with Lincoln Brewster the other is about todays churches embracing guitars and rock style bands in worship service. It's great to see the church and guitarists/musicians of faith getting positive publicity in a main steam type venue.

http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Jan/Joyful_Noise_or_how_the_church_learned_to_stop_wor rying_and_love_Rock_n_Roll.aspx

http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Jan/Soul_Man.aspx

Those were great articles. I'm surprised no-one else responded to them?

P.S. Except what Lincoln Brewster had to say about U2. I've heard enough of them in Church to last a lifetime.:roll:

Lincoln Brewster has some amazing Gear he uses. (You should see his list). I'll have to go listen to him again because everything I've heard him do sounded like a mediocre amp model. I know he loves his line6 stuff...He says he gets a good Marshall & Vox tone out of his modelling gear. "Sorry, but I just don't hear it". Once a POD, always a POD.
But I'll go listen again incase I missed something. :cool:

Just found the article link from the Line 6 website.
Good takes and perspectives about worship.
One comment was interesting: LB observes praise bands moving from U2 style of musical arrangements to more of Coldplay.
True?

Lincoln Brewster has some amazing Gear he uses. (You should see his list). I'll have to go listen to him again because everything I've heard him do sounded like a mediocre amp model. I know he loves his line6 stuff...He says he gets a good Marshall & Vox tone out of his modelling gear. "Sorry, but I just don't hear it". Once a POD, always a POD.
But I'll go listen again incase I missed something. :cool:

I absolutely love some of Lincoln's tones and phrasing. But the sound that stands out the most to me is on his song "Broken". On his website, he says that song was recorded with the Music Man through his '63 Blonde Bassman. I noticed since then that the tones I like of his all sound the same, apparently I'm a sucker for a '63 Blonde Bassman. (with a little delay).

I was also a little shocked at his statement on U2. They're a long way from what they started out as.

I love Lincoln Brewster. He's got mad chops, is a gear head, AND he also has a really good heart. A part of his story that the article didn't mention was that his church originally offered him a position as a soundman. Then the Lord told him to give up songwriting and just focus on running sound. Later on, the Lord released him to write songs again and lead worship and stuff. There's another bio on him that goes into more detail on that stuff here (http://lyrics.crossmap.com/artist/brewster-lincoln.htm).

Even though I've not been too impressed with my experiences with PODs, he somehow manages to make 'em sound good. Listening to his live album, I honestly have nothing bad to say about the tone from his POD - it actually sounds quite good.

Thanks for the links to the articles - they were a good read. I had to laugh when the "outdated soundboard" shown in the Episcopal Church is the same one we're using in ours with no plans to upgrade. That rag loves to push folks to buy new gear.:mrgreen:

It was interesting to process all the various views from the different churches on how to present the music, whether or not to pay folks - all the stuff we've wrangled through here. Just goes to show you that there's really no right or wrong way, you just have to figure out what works best for you.

As for Lincoln, he's a bad moffo. Great guitarist, great human being. I'm with him 100% regarding a well tuned POD Xt. It doesn't always "feel" the same when you're playing, but it can sound as good or better than the tube amp you're used to playing through, and looking at the stack of them in my room I should know. There's something to be said about volume control in an environment like a church that was designed for piano, organ and choir. We've got 2 guitars, a bass and pedal steel all running through Line 6 stuff along with electric drums and keys and it's eliminated what was formerly 5 years of volume whoas. Seriously, our platform is so acoustically resonant that we need to be real careful with monitor volumes or the bounce can overrun the mains in the first 5 rows.

Lincoln performed at our church a few months ago. I was part of the crew to help setup. Lincoln and his band were a blast. It was just three piece but they sounded huge. Lincoln and the bass player both went direct but used amps for feel. They aimed the amps across the stage (at each other) more to feel than monitor. Linclon just turned off the treble and dimmed the bass. He used a POD XTL with a Blues Driver and a another Boss OD I don't recall the model. His electric for the vening was an EJ strat.

We have a new RCL system in a 750 seat room. I wish I could have downloaded his POD to mine.

One comment was interesting: LB observes praise bands moving from U2 style of musical arrangements to more of Coldplay.

uh...that's not exactly a great leap forward issit? =jason

uh...that's not exactly a great leap forward issit? =jason

That one had me scratching my head too. I think I'd rather go back to the hymnals if that's where we're headed.:wink:

That one had me scratching my head too. I think I'd rather go back to the hymnals if that's where we're headed.:wink:

I don't get to visit a lot of other churches for worship, but when I do there's invariably an electric player back there with the delay going and Edge lines popping out willy-nilly all over the place. If you listen to the late-90's early-00 Passion cds along with Delirious and the other early worship giants it's as if you needed to have an Edge-clone in the band, and I think Lincoln is pointing out that the genre has finally managed to move away from that. Not that it hasn't managed to try and mire itself into another stylistic quagmire or two. :roll: That's one of the reasons we never try and copy original recordings. As Lincoln mentioned in his interview we just strip the arrangement down to bare bones and run it through rehearsal a few times to see where our musicians decide to take it. Sometimes we'll keep particular thematic passages in there, and other times we just turn it on its head so it becomes ours instead of us trying to do them.