Brandon on being inspired by his dream guitar for his new EP Blush
For the last two years, Brandon has been using his all-time dream guitar: a Gibson Les Paul Special Double Cut in TV yellow. His Creative Director, Caroline Ridings, calls it “Banana,” and when Brandon and I are chatting over Zoom to discuss his new EP, Blush, Banana is in arm’s reach. He is rather thrilled to show it to me:
“This is my baby. I love this guitar dearly,” Brandon says. “When I was 16-17 this was my dream guitar. This is still my dream guitar. The tone of it is so pretty. I think this is the best guitar ever made up to this point outside of having something that’s custom-built for myself. This is the cream of the crop. I can do a lot with it, too. I can make it sound super big and heavy. I can make it sound really light and thin. How I want it.”
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The new EP, which consists of four songs and is Brandon’s debut on Secretly Canadian, sees him flex the full capabilities of his dream guitar. It sounds super big and heavy (even while using little to no distortion) on Falling when he fattens up the tone to support the choral quality of his layered, harmonious vocals. And then he plays it light and thin with adept picking under nimble Latin percussion during Without You.
Beyond the guitar’s sonic quality, Brandon’s rhythms on the instrument are fluid and reactive throughout Blush. Rather than writing riffs that he repeats along verses and choruses, the EP has a more orchestral feel. Certain sounds respond to other sounds rather than being conjoined.
Guitar and voice are the primary focal points on Blush, with the chords, effects, and lyrics playing off each other. Other instruments like drums and keys enter the soundscape in specific moments to support a cinematic swell or create a framework around the melodies as they dissipate into ambiance towards the end of a song.
“Feeling and motion. It’s taking you somewhere. This is the most experimental I’ve gone,” Brandon says of Blush.
A key aspect of that experimentation is that Brandon played every instrument on the EP (except for the saxophone). Drums, bass, and keys were all him, and their formless nature is the result of building them around the feeling and motion of the guitar.
“My drummer in my band, he’s told me I play drums like a guitar player,” Brandon says. “Because guitar is my first instrument, and most of the time it’s the first thing I put down, I’m thinking how everything else is going to work in terms of the guitar that I played.”
The guitar he played on previous releases like his 2020 EP Coming Clean, is far more within the bounds of traditional singer/songwriter music. He mostly used his acoustic, a Gibson CL-20 Plus from 1997 (which he also loves), and a Squier Jazz Bass.
But since then he’s greatly expanded his arsenal to include a Hofner Jazz Bass, a fretless bass, a Fender 72 Twin Reverb, various pedals such as Hologram Electronics’ Chroma and Microcosm, and, of course, his dream guitar.
“I have all the things I need to make my favourite music so let’s give it a try. Let’s see how many chances I can take. Let’s see if I like them, and then also let’s see if people like it,” Brandon says.
In truth, Brandon has been taking chances since he started playing guitar because he’s a lefty. At first, finding a guitar built for left-handed players was difficult, so he played a right-handed guitar upside down. Then he got the right-handed guitar restrung to be configured for lefties.
“I feel like just being left-handed in general is a disadvantage in life, but I love it,” Brandon says with a chuckle. “I think it affects the way that I think about playing. Once I had it strung the right way everything psychologically changed. I felt so much more comfortable. I felt like I was able to learn my way. I felt more confident. I felt normal – Like I was a part of something. Being left-handed you feel left out. Especially when it comes to guitars. It’s hard to come by something that’s made for you. Even though it was a right-handed guitar that was strung left-handed it felt like it was mine now.”
For almost a year, Brandon kept his right-handed guitar strung left-handed, but eventually, he knew it was time to find something built for a lefty. He went to eBay and found a left-handed Epiphone Les Paul Special II in tobacco sunburst. The previous owner had made different modifications to it as well like changing the pickup covers and adding Telecaster knobs. When Brandon met him to buy it the guy was really sketchy, but he finally had an instrument that was made for someone like himself:
“That was like heaven. I think that was one of the happiest days of my life up to that point,” Brandon says. After playing his first left-handed guitar for a bit he opened the body and discovered the previous owner had made modifications under the surface as well. “He wired it like a ‘60s Gibson so it sounds like a ‘60s Gibson. I was not complaining. It’s this super-beautiful-sounding guitar. It’s just different having something like that. After all these years, I have my own guitar now.”
Brandon actually still has that first guitar, and he used it throughout the new EP, but it doesn’t compare to how he feels about Banana:
“I’m for sure more confident now that I have this thing. It’s just so fun to play. It feels great. The neck is perfect. I really don’t know how to talk about it. It’s just special. I’m just smiling, looking at this damn guitar,” Brandon says of the Les Paul Special.
Brandon is carrying that confidence with him as he writes his debut album, which is coming soon after Blush. When I ask him about the album, he simply says: “People can expect me at my best.”
Blush is out now via Secretly Canadian
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