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Night Demon bassist/vocalist Jarvis Leatherby discusses the band’s upcoming limited release 10th anniversary Curse of the Damned box set.
The post Q&A: Jarvis Leatherby on Night Demon’s Curse of the Damned box set appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Fancy filigree distinguishes a reader’s ideal manifestation of straight-ahead Telecaster essence.Reader: Charlie KramerHometown: Arlington, VirginiaGuitar: CAM Custom Guitars T-StyleI’ve wanted a great Telecaster forever. I bought my first one back in the 1990s and I’ve owned five or six T-styles since, including Fenders, Squiers, G&Ls, and various knockoffs. None of them had everything I was looking for: twang with body, great playability, big frets, and a just-beefy-enough neck—something that could switch between rock and country like a boss. I’m picky; I’ve played guitar since the ’70s—gigging and recording actively—and, in that time, owned a couple dozen guitars from off-the-rack instruments to vintage Fenders and Gibsons, pawnshop weirdos, and some custom made ones, too. But if a guitar doesn’t speak to me, it gathers dust and then goes on Reverb.
A while back, my friend Chris Moreau at CAM Custom Guitars was cooking up something special. Chris made a couple guitars for Tracii Guns of L.A. Guns, so he knows his stuff. He also made a superb Flying V-style that my wife gave me as a Father’s Day gift a few years back.
Chris put together this T-style with an alder body, a roasted maple neck with Jescar stainless-steel frets sourced from Havok Guitars, Fender Pure Vintage ’64 Telecaster pickups, and an engraved Wanby bridge and control plate. Then, Greg Wells at DoubleU Design Studio in Falls Church, VA, burned an amazing paisley design into the top with a Glowforge laser engraver.“When plugged into a cranked amp, it could move from Waylon Jennings to Jimmy Page by just adjusting the volume and tone knobs.”I watched with envy when Chris listed it for sale, and I had to play it before he sold it! But as soon as I had it in my hands, I had to have it. It rang like a piano, and when plugged into a cranked amp, it could move from Waylon Jennings to Jimmy Page by just adjusting the volume and tone knobs. The big stainless frets made bends smooth and easy. I wrote him a check and got out of there with my new prize.Since then, it’s been one of my main gigging and recording guitars. I used it on a demo for my band Mother of States and played it onstage with the Vaping Nuns (a band I play in with Chris and Greg). When I’m taking a break from work or want to run scales, it’s my go-to instrument—always just a few feet from my desk. Finally, I have the T-style of my dreams!

Buddy Guy’s high-energy, crowd-strolling performances set the bar for every electric blues and blues rock guitarist who came after him. And that includes Jimi Hendrix. Buddy changed the game and left an indelible mark on the sound of electric guitar playing. He’s still out there, delivering incendiary performances to stages all over. On this episode, we’re talking about one of the last blues guitar showmen, whose polka dot signature Strat caught both of our eyes. Where’s the best place to start? And where did Buddy get all that energy?Thanks to our Sponsor, Xvive!LEARN MORE! https://xvive.com/

Swedish duo Frusen Sorg rip through eight minutes of blackened crust punk on their new EP.
The post Full EP Stream: Frusen Sorg – “Jag Springer Med Avbrutna Ben” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Bad Cat Amplifiers has introduced the Mod Shop Black Cat 30 Head and Combo—the debut models from its new Mod Shop series and one of the final amplifier projects touched by Mark Sampson.Before his passing, Sampson—co-founder of the boutique amp movement and one of the most respected circuit designers in the industry—collaborated with Bad Cat on a number of designs. Among them was a fresh take on the award-winning Black Cat. The result is a limited amplifier that blends Bad Cat’s signature character with a bigger, bolder voice, infused with Sampson’s distinct approach to tone shaping.Key Features:30 watts of EL84 Power – Four EL84s provide signature Class A chime, natural compression, and harmonic richness.All-new tone stack – Revoiced by Sampson for enhanced openness and dimension.Two independent channels – A rich, dynamic clean channel and a punchy, articulate overdrive.Studio-quality reverb and analog bias-modulated tremolo – Lush, vintage-inspired depth and movement.Built for real-world use – Buffered effects loop, multiple speaker outputs, and a direct line out for cab sims or IRs.Handcrafted in Costa Mesa, California, the Mod Shop Black Cat 30 is built with premium components, custom hand-wound transformers, and a level of detail worthy of the Mod Shop name.Combo Specs:Custom UK-made 12” Celestion Bad Cat speakerDimensions: 23.75”W x 10.375”D x 19”HWeight: 48 lbs.Head Specs:Dimensions: 20.75”W x 10.375”D x 10”HWeight: 31 lbs.Both versions include a two-button footswitch (Channel Select and Tremolo) and come with a 3-year limited warranty.The Mod Shop Black Cat 30 Head and Combo are available now and carry street prices of $2299 and $2499 respectively. To learn more or place an order, visit www.badcatamps.com

BOSS announces the RT-2 Rotary Ensemble, the latest member of the company’s famous compact pedal lineup. Rotary speaker cabinets are a vital part of the classic combo organ voice, and guitarists and other musicians have also used them to infuse iconic tracks with their distinctive depth and rich modulation. Powered by the latest BOSS advancements, the RT-2 distills this expressive spatial effect into a pedalboard-friendly footprint with three sound modes, deep tonal shaping, multiple audio output configurations, and advanced real-time sound control. The most revered rotary speaker designs feature a spinning high-frequency horn (treble rotor) and a woofer that feeds into a rotating drum (bass rotor). Changing rotor speeds between fast and slow creates a steady stream of tonal shifts that players have long used for interesting sonic movement. The RT-2 authentically replicates these complex audio behaviors, coupled with two-way speed control, a Rise/Fall Time switch for adjusting the transition time between speeds, and a colorful indicator that shows the current rotation of the virtual rotors.The versatile RT-2 has a three-position Mode switch for selecting a classic rotary speaker sound or two modern variations developed with custom BOSS tuning. There’s also a Drive knob to add pleasing distortion inspired by the tube amplification circuits in vintage rotary speaker cabinets. Via a rear-panel switch, this dual-function control can be assigned to adjust the volume balance between the treble and bass rotors for different tonal characteristics.Real-time speed control is essential to the rotary experience, and the RT-2 includes many options to achieve it. The pedal switch offers four operation types with clever ways to bypass the effect and change speeds while performing. Connecting external footswitches provides independent speed control and access to a “brake” setting that stops the virtual rotors at their current positions for unique tones. Alternately, an expression pedal unlocks continuous control of level, drive, balance, and speed, complete with assignable settings for each parameter.To learn more about the RT-2 Rotary Ensemble, visit https://www.boss.info.Availability & PricingThe BOSS RT-2 Rotary Ensemble will be available in July 2025, for $239.99.

“To standby or not to standby, that is the question”Are you using your standby switch correctly? Are you sure? It might be a little different than you think.You have your on/off switch and, well, that makes sense. But standby? Okay, well, what is the flip side? In a tube guitar amplifier, it is “play.” Isn’t the flip side of “off” also play? Why are there two switches that do basically the same thing? Vacuum tube amps are a very old electronic technology, and there is a specific function for each of the two switches. The on/off switch controls power to the entire amplifier by switching the line voltage on or off to the power transformer. The power transformer is the distribution hub for the energy inside the amp. If your amp doesn’t have a standby switch, then once you switch it on, all the energy is on inside the amp all at once. This isn’t a good thing for vacuum tubes. They need to warm up before they can function, which is why you get no sound from a tube amp when you first turn it on. Tubes only need about 45–60 seconds to warm up to function, but they do sound different and “better” once they get up to operating temperature. This can take five to 10 minutes, and once you actually start playing the amp and they get cooking, even more time to get that tone!So the standby switch has a few functions. At cold start up, it allows the tubes time to warm up before applying the high voltage to them to operate the amp. While the amp is at operating temperature, if you are taking a break, it allows the amp to also take a break while maintaining operating temperature. And at the end of the session, it allows you to discharge the energy inside the amp. Here are the times you’ll use that switch:Cold startWith the standby on, turn the power switch on. Allow the amp to warm up for a minute, then flip the standby to “play” position. There is no issue with waiting more than a minute, but shorter is bad. There is this thing called cathode stripping that happens when you apply voltage to a tube before it is fully warmed up.In between sets or just taking a break.You probably know how hot your amp gets when you’re jamming away. This is okay; tubes run on high temperatures, but all the other parts inside, not so much. So, give the amp a break. When you’re taking a break, switch to standby position. This keeps the tube warm but allows the entire amp to cool down. This also takes the high voltage off the circuit, so the parts’ life clock is put on hold, too. If you’re going for a long break, an hour or more, you can do a full shutdown and start from the cold-start procedure. Otherwise, you’re just wasting energy heating the tubes and the heaters do have a life span.Shut down.So far, it’s likely everything seems obvious. But here’s where people can get it wrong: It’s the end of the night, and you’re drained and done. Well, your amp wants to be too! Shutdown is a slightly different procedure than taking a break and allows the amp to drain all its stored voltages. After that last note, flip that on/off switch onto the off position. You can audibly hear the energy drain out of the amp as the last of the high voltage is dissipated by the tubes trying to operate, because the standby switch is still in the play position. The off position shuts down the heaters inside the tubes and the high voltage, so the last of the energy stored by the caps can drain out while the tubes are still hot. When you hear the last of that sound dissipate, the voltage inside is drained, and you can put the standby switch onto standby. Now, the amp is ready for the cold start up procedure.What about amps that don’t have standby switches? They don’t need it. The Princeton Reverb, for example, doesn’t have a standby switch, but it does have a 5AR4 rectifier tube. The 5AR4/GZ34 tube has a controlled warm up. While the tube is cold, it will not pass high voltage for a set amount of time, about 45 seconds. This controlled warm up allows all the tubes in the amp to get warm before the high voltage comes on. So, it does the waiting to go from standby to play for you. You don’t have the take a break option anymore, so it is best to shut it down when taking long breaks. It automatically does the cold turn on and aforementioned shut down procedure. But if your amp has a standby switch, use it!

You wouldn’t expect Dann Huff, one of the most renowned studio guitarists, to feel nervous sharing his debut solo LP with a friend. But when that friend happens to be Toto’s Steve Lukather, a permanent fixture on the Mount Rushmore of L.A. session players, it’s easy to understand the butterflies.“He said, ‘I want to hear your record,’” recalls Huff, 64, with a laugh, detailing the creation of the colorful and lovingly arranged When Words Aren’t Enough. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll send it to you.’ Then as soon as I pressed send, I went into this almost-fetal position mentally. I thought, ‘I just sent it to one of the people I value so highly in my life.’ But it was great, the fact that I felt the fear.”That story crystalizes the skills that propelled Huff to this moment: the confidence and curiosity it took to press that button, but also the humility it took to still feel those healthy nerves. After all, you have to be great—but also a flexible team player—to rack up the credits this guy has. And he’s had a career like few others in the business, both in the styles he’s explored and the roles he’s served: Huff rose up the ranks of the fertile ’80s session scene, where he recorded with everyone from Michael Jackson to Kenny Rogers, has played in both a contemporary Christian rock band (White Heart) and an AOR outfit (Giant), journeyed back to his hometown of Nashville and immersed himself in the pop-country world (Shania Twain, Faith Hill), ventured into marquee-level production work (most famously on Taylor Swift’s 2012 blockbuster, Red), and now—finally—released a fascinating album of his own. Dann Huff’s GearGuitarsJames Tyler Dann Huff Classic1964 Fender Stratocaster1959 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster ReissueGibson Les PaulYamaha Classical Guitar (gut string)Amps & CabinetsREVV Dynamis D40 (40-Watt Tube Amp Head)Matchless ampsLittle Walter 2×12 Open Back CabinetEffectsBoss OS-2 Mr. Black SuperMoon JAM Pedals Wahcko “As soon as I pressed send, I went into this almost-fetal position mentally. I thought, ‘I just sent it to one of the people I value so highly in my life.’ But it was great, the fact that I felt the fear.”When Words Aren’t Enough nods to so much of that range, moving from simmering dixie funk to cinematic orchestral rock to atmospheric and artful Americana. It sounds like the work of an artist stretching every single muscle yet never straining in the flex—a series of clean and jerks that sound awfully clean. But you can’t talk about this ambitious endeavor without exploring its true roots. “This project for me is basically a love letter to my emerging years, which is the late ’70s,” Huff says. “It’s everything that I built upon, everything that I love in guitar playing.”The groundwork was laid when Huff was a kid. When he was around 10, his parents moved from the Chicago area to Nashville—with three sons and a whopping $800 to their name—as Dann’s dad, Ronn, pursued a career in orchestration. (“Man, he had some big cojones to do that!” Dann says, accurately.) The elder Huff’s career took off, and he found work with the Nashville Symphony, as well as occasionally in recording studios with rhythm sections. The latter intrigued his son, whose interest in the guitar started to grow around age 12. Dann had felt a sense of culture shock in Tennessee, but music became his guiding light. The more he glimpsed of his father’s work life, the clearer his path became. “My dad had a friend who was a session guitar player in Nashville named John Darnell, and he asked if [John] would come over and spend maybe 30 minutes to an hour with his 13-year-old son,” he recalls. “He came over one night, and I’ll never forget it. He taught me some scales and a couple chords. He kind of lit the fuse, and that was it.”As an aspiring guitarist, the young Huff had the perfect entry point. His dad would offer to let him sit in the back of the room at the studio, where he’d meet “the cream of the crop” session players in Nashville—guitarists like Reggie Young, Pete Wade, and Dale Sellers. “To me, those were the rock stars,” he says. “You could go into a dark-lit studio, hear music for the first time, and make something new. I just thought that was the coolest thing. Why? I have no idea. There was no illusion that I wanted to go and be a rock star. Not even in the slightest, when I was a kid.”“This project is a love letter to my emerging years, which is the late ’70s. It’s everything that I built upon, everything that I love in guitar playing.”As a high-schooler in the mid ’70s, after years of practicing his chops in the basement, that dream started to become real. He played on friends’ demos at the local Belmont University, and he soaked in torrents of incredible instrumental music of that era: Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, and Al Di Meola’s Elegant Gypsy, as well as Steely Dan’s Aja. “The list could go on, but it was so diverse,” he says. “I was inundated with all these different kinds of music, all the Motown stuff. Everything interested me. And all of the sudden I started seeing these West Coast session players.” After playing on an album by singer-songwriter Greg Guidry, he was directly connected to some of those musicians, including former Toto bassist David Hungate. He was eventually hired for an L.A. session with soul legend Lou Rawls, kicking off a period of frequent commuting.“At the time, Steve Lukather had all but vacated his chokehold—he was simply just the very best—because he was becoming a rock star,” Huff says. “I started booking myself on sessions. Back in the early ’80s, they still used contractors for a lot of the pop sessions. I said, ‘Just book me like I live out here.’” He would go out for stretches at a time, making a name for himself in L.A., but realized that this process wasn’t sustainable: “I didn’t realize I could charge for my hotels, my rental cars,” he says. “I did my own cartage. If I booked a session, my expenses would usually surmount that by 100 percent. But I was smart enough to realize I was investing in something, and it became apparent over the course of a year that I couldn’t keep hopping on planes, playing on big records in L.A., and coming back to play on demos in Nashville.” Around age 21, he and his new wife hopped on a plane and headed west, starting the next chapter of his life. The ’80s flew by in a stream of sessions: Michael Jackson’s Bad, Barbra Streisand’s Emotion, Chaka Khan’s I Feel for You, Bob Seger’s Like a Rock, Whitney Houston’s self-titled, Madonna’s True Blue—every situation was different, and the ever-curious Huff learned something from almost all of them. “It was one of those perfect storms,” he says of this prolific time. But after the unexpected success of Giant, his melodic rock band featuring his brother David on drums, following the release of their 1989 debut, Last of the Runaways, he decided to move his talents back to Nashville. “I felt I didn’t need to do my studio career anymore,” he recalls. “[My wife] and I had just had our first kid, a daughter, and we felt, ‘As long as I’m gonna be doing this rock thing,’ which I’d never dreamt of doing, ‘we might as well do it from the comfort of where the rest of our families are,’ so we moved back to Nashville and I left my studio career. We cut a second Giant record, and by that point, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were out, so say no more.” Rather than move back to Los Angeles, he quickly found a niche in the Nashville scene, particularly within the world of country-pop/rock, playing on a series of enormous records—including a pair of multi-platinum monsters by Shania Twain, 1995’s The Woman in Me and 1997’s Come on Over, both produced by the singer’s revered then-husband, Robert “Mutt” Lange. “I don’t have any illusions of what I can do on the guitar, so I have to dig deep into what I actually have roots in.”Huff was once again ingrained in the session world—just a very different one—but Lange noticed his potential in another field. “I didn’t get into producing records because I wanted to,” Huff admits. “I was lured into it, or encouraged into it, mainly by Mutt Lange. He sensed that the way I played studio guitar, I knew that it wasn’t about me. It’s about building something.” And that sense of songcraft, of having an eagle eye for arrangement and talent, served him well when he made that jump, working with artists like Swift, Rascal Flatts, and even Megadeth. It also wound up informing his first solo LP, When Words Aren’t Enough, which came about after some friendly prodding from fellow Nashville musicians Tom Bukovac and Mike Reid.“Both challenged and embarrassed me: ‘Why don’t you play guitar anymore?’ ‘I play guitar on the records.’ ‘No, why don’t you play guitar?’” he says. “I didn’t have a good answer after saying no for dozens of years. I decided I would give it a rip. I wasn’t in tip-top form of guitar playing at this time, so it was humbling, but it felt right.” He gradually started putting together some demos, drawing on the pivotal period of teenage inspiration that first drew him to this wild life. “Runaway Gypsy” laces jazz-funk riffs with grooving Latin percussion and grand string parts—a cinematic stew that reflects the influence of Al Di Meola. The title of “Southern Synchronicity” is an overt nod to Police guitarist Andy Summers, but the song is way wilder than you’d expect, with shifting time signatures, funky drumming, and the fiery fiddle of Stuart Duncan. Meanwhile, the greasy “Colorado Creepin’” is a tightly coiled, wah-heavy highlight. (“You can probably hear a lot of my love of Jeff Beck,” notes Huff.) Every track—featuring the core of Huff, bassist Mark Hill, and drummer Jerry Roe—is virtuosic but tasteful, placing every show-stopping solo within the context of a hooky melody and satisfying musical arc. Often utilizing large chunks of his demos, they knocked out the bulk of basic recording in a couple days—and that no-nonsense approach fits for a guy who spent decades as a quick-on-his-feet hired gun. The process made Huff “fall in love again” with his Stratocaster, which he hadn’t played for years, but the recording was intentionally bare-bones. “It wasn’t about amplifiers or all the equipment,” he says. “I used very little equipment on the record. When you’re trying to say something, just say it how you’re gonna say it.“The gift of being older and not being, shall we say, in my ‘prime form’—my chops aren’t as fluid as they were when I was playing 10 hours a day—is that I had to define what I was interested in before I did this,” he says. “And what I’ve always been drawn to in music—and I saw a connection here—is composition. When the shape, the form, the melody, the dynamics, are correct, that allows you to improvise over it in a way that isn’t gratuitous or about you trying to prove yourself. I don’t have any illusions of what I can do on the guitar, so I have to dig deep into what I actually have roots in.” He also wound up enormously proud of the record—but that’s not to say he didn’t feel anxious about it, illustrated by his exchange with the great Lukather.“I went through a period after I finished this thing where I was absolutely terrified,” he admits. “I guess anybody would. It’s hard to hear yourself from another perspective. I can listen to other guitar players or musicians, and I just want to hear who they are. I’m critical, but with my music, it’s like, I know where the warts are, and I hear the limitations. It’s hard to hear it for what it is, but I thought, ‘If I don’t let go of this thing and stop trying to impress myself or everybody else, I’m never gonna do this.’ So I said, ‘Fuck it. I’m gonna put it out.’ So I let go, and that was the best decision I could have made.” YouTube ItIn this two-and-a-half-hour video courtesy of Vertex Effects, Dann Huff does a deep dive on his most recognizable guitar parts over the decades.

You wouldn’t expect Dann Huff, one of the most renowned studio guitarists, to feel nervous sharing his debut solo LP with a friend. But when that friend happens to be Toto’s Steve Lukather, a permanent fixture on the Mount Rushmore of L.A. session players, it’s easy to understand the butterflies.“He said, ‘I want to hear your record,’” recalls Huff, 64, with a laugh, detailing the creation of the colorful and lovingly arranged When Words Aren’t Enough. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll send it to you.’ Then as soon as I pressed send, I went into this almost-fetal position mentally. I thought, ‘I just sent it to one of the people I value so highly in my life.’ But it was great, the fact that I felt the fear.”That story crystalizes the skills that propelled Huff to this moment: the confidence and curiosity it took to press that button, but also the humility it took to still feel those healthy nerves. After all, you have to be great—but also a flexible team player—to rack up the credits this guy has. And he’s had a career like few others in the business, both in the styles he’s explored and the roles he’s served: Huff rose up the ranks of the fertile ’80s session scene, where he recorded with everyone from Michael Jackson to Kenny Rogers, has played in both a contemporary Christian rock band (White Heart) and an AOR outfit (Giant), journeyed back to his hometown of Nashville and immersed himself in the pop-country world (Shania Twain, Faith Hill), ventured into marquee-level production work (most famously on Taylor Swift’s 2012 blockbuster, Red), and now—finally—released a fascinating album of his own. Dann Huff’s GearGuitarsJames Tyler Dann Huff Classic1964 Fender Stratocaster1959 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster ReissueGibson Les PaulYamaha Classical Guitar (gut string)Amps & CabinetsREVV Dynamis D40 (40-Watt Tube Amp Head)Matchless ampsLittle Walter 2×12 Open Back CabinetEffectsBoss OS-2 Mr. Black SuperMoon JAM Pedals Wahcko “As soon as I pressed send, I went into this almost-fetal position mentally. I thought, ‘I just sent it to one of the people I value so highly in my life.’ But it was great, the fact that I felt the fear.”When Words Aren’t Enough nods to so much of that range, moving from simmering dixie funk to cinematic orchestral rock to atmospheric and artful Americana. It sounds like the work of an artist stretching every single muscle yet never straining in the flex—a series of clean and jerks that sound awfully clean. But you can’t talk about this ambitious endeavor without exploring its true roots. “This project for me is basically a love letter to my emerging years, which is the late ’70s,” Huff says. “It’s everything that I built upon, everything that I love in guitar playing.”The groundwork was laid when Huff was a kid. When he was around 10, his parents moved from the Chicago area to Nashville—with three sons and a whopping $800 to their name—as Dann’s dad, Ronn, pursued a career in orchestration. (“Man, he had some big cojones to do that!” Dann says, accurately.) The elder Huff’s career took off, and he found work with the Nashville Symphony, as well as occasionally in recording studios with rhythm sections. The latter intrigued his son, whose interest in the guitar started to grow around age 12. Dann had felt a sense of culture shock in Tennessee, but music became his guiding light. The more he glimpsed of his father’s work life, the clearer his path became. “My dad had a friend who was a session guitar player in Nashville named John Darnell, and he asked if [John] would come over and spend maybe 30 minutes to an hour with his 13-year-old son,” he recalls. “He came over one night, and I’ll never forget it. He taught me some scales and a couple chords. He kind of lit the fuse, and that was it.”As an aspiring guitarist, the young Huff had the perfect entry point. His dad would offer to let him sit in the back of the room at the studio, where he’d meet “the cream of the crop” session players in Nashville—guitarists like Reggie Young, Pete Wade, and Dale Sellers. “To me, those were the rock stars,” he says. “You could go into a dark-lit studio, hear music for the first time, and make something new. I just thought that was the coolest thing. Why? I have no idea. There was no illusion that I wanted to go and be a rock star. Not even in the slightest, when I was a kid.”“This project is a love letter to my emerging years, which is the late ’70s. It’s everything that I built upon, everything that I love in guitar playing.”As a high-schooler in the mid ’70s, after years of practicing his chops in the basement, that dream started to become real. He played on friends’ demos at the local Belmont University, and he soaked in torrents of incredible instrumental music of that era: Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, and Al Di Meola’s Elegant Gypsy, as well as Steely Dan’s Aja. “The list could go on, but it was so diverse,” he says. “I was inundated with all these different kinds of music, all the Motown stuff. Everything interested me. And all of the sudden I started seeing these West Coast session players.” After playing on an album by singer-songwriter Greg Guidry, he was directly connected to some of those musicians, including former Toto bassist David Hungate. He was eventually hired for an L.A. session with soul legend Lou Rawls, kicking off a period of frequent commuting.“At the time, Steve Lukather had all but vacated his chokehold—he was simply just the very best—because he was becoming a rock star,” Huff says. “I started booking myself on sessions. Back in the early ’80s, they still used contractors for a lot of the pop sessions. I said, ‘Just book me like I live out here.’” He would go out for stretches at a time, making a name for himself in L.A., but realized that this process wasn’t sustainable: “I didn’t realize I could charge for my hotels, my rental cars,” he says. “I did my own cartage. If I booked a session, my expenses would usually surmount that by 100 percent. But I was smart enough to realize I was investing in something, and it became apparent over the course of a year that I couldn’t keep hopping on planes, playing on big records in L.A., and coming back to play on demos in Nashville.” Around age 21, he and his new wife hopped on a plane and headed west, starting the next chapter of his life. The ’80s flew by in a stream of sessions: Michael Jackson’s Bad, Barbra Streisand’s Emotion, Chaka Khan’s I Feel for You, Bob Seger’s Like a Rock, Whitney Houston’s self-titled, Madonna’s True Blue—every situation was different, and the ever-curious Huff learned something from almost all of them. “It was one of those perfect storms,” he says of this prolific time. But after the unexpected success of Giant, his melodic rock band featuring his brother David on drums, following the release of their 1989 debut, Last of the Runaways, he decided to move his talents back to Nashville. “I felt I didn’t need to do my studio career anymore,” he recalls. “[My wife] and I had just had our first kid, a daughter, and we felt, ‘As long as I’m gonna be doing this rock thing,’ which I’d never dreamt of doing, ‘we might as well do it from the comfort of where the rest of our families are,’ so we moved back to Nashville and I left my studio career. We cut a second Giant record, and by that point, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were out, so say no more.” Rather than move back to Los Angeles, he quickly found a niche in the Nashville scene, particularly within the world of country-pop/rock, playing on a series of enormous records—including a pair of multi-platinum monsters by Shania Twain, 1995’s The Woman in Me and 1997’s Come on Over, both produced by the singer’s revered then-husband, Robert “Mutt” Lange. “I don’t have any illusions of what I can do on the guitar, so I have to dig deep into what I actually have roots in.”Huff was once again ingrained in the session world—just a very different one—but Lange noticed his potential in another field. “I didn’t get into producing records because I wanted to,” Huff admits. “I was lured into it, or encouraged into it, mainly by Mutt Lange. He sensed that the way I played studio guitar, I knew that it wasn’t about me. It’s about building something.” And that sense of songcraft, of having an eagle eye for arrangement and talent, served him well when he made that jump, working with artists like Swift, Rascal Flatts, and even Megadeth. It also wound up informing his first solo LP, When Words Aren’t Enough, which came about after some friendly prodding from fellow Nashville musicians Tom Bukovac and Mike Reid.“Both challenged and embarrassed me: ‘Why don’t you play guitar anymore?’ ‘I play guitar on the records.’ ‘No, why don’t you play guitar?’” he says. “I didn’t have a good answer after saying no for dozens of years. I decided I would give it a rip. I wasn’t in tip-top form of guitar playing at this time, so it was humbling, but it felt right.” He gradually started putting together some demos, drawing on the pivotal period of teenage inspiration that first drew him to this wild life. “Runaway Gypsy” laces jazz-funk riffs with grooving Latin percussion and grand string parts—a cinematic stew that reflects the influence of Al Di Meola. The title of “Southern Synchronicity” is an overt nod to Police guitarist Andy Summers, but the song is way wilder than you’d expect, with shifting time signatures, funky drumming, and the fiery fiddle of Stuart Duncan. Meanwhile, the greasy “Colorado Creepin’” is a tightly coiled, wah-heavy highlight. (“You can probably hear a lot of my love of Jeff Beck,” notes Huff.) Every track—featuring the core of Huff, bassist Mark Hill, and drummer Jerry Roe—is virtuosic but tasteful, placing every show-stopping solo within the context of a hooky melody and satisfying musical arc. Often utilizing large chunks of his demos, they knocked out the bulk of basic recording in a couple days—and that no-nonsense approach fits for a guy who spent decades as a quick-on-his-feet hired gun. The process made Huff “fall in love again” with his Stratocaster, which he hadn’t played for years, but the recording was intentionally bare-bones. “It wasn’t about amplifiers or all the equipment,” he says. “I used very little equipment on the record. When you’re trying to say something, just say it how you’re gonna say it.“The gift of being older and not being, shall we say, in my ‘prime form’—my chops aren’t as fluid as they were when I was playing 10 hours a day—is that I had to define what I was interested in before I did this,” he says. “And what I’ve always been drawn to in music—and I saw a connection here—is composition. When the shape, the form, the melody, the dynamics, are correct, that allows you to improvise over it in a way that isn’t gratuitous or about you trying to prove yourself. I don’t have any illusions of what I can do on the guitar, so I have to dig deep into what I actually have roots in.” He also wound up enormously proud of the record—but that’s not to say he didn’t feel anxious about it, illustrated by his exchange with the great Lukather.“I went through a period after I finished this thing where I was absolutely terrified,” he admits. “I guess anybody would. It’s hard to hear yourself from another perspective. I can listen to other guitar players or musicians, and I just want to hear who they are. I’m critical, but with my music, it’s like, I know where the warts are, and I hear the limitations. It’s hard to hear it for what it is, but I thought, ‘If I don’t let go of this thing and stop trying to impress myself or everybody else, I’m never gonna do this.’ So I said, ‘Fuck it. I’m gonna put it out.’ So I let go, and that was the best decision I could have made.” YouTube ItIn this two-and-a-half-hour video courtesy of Vertex Effects, Dann Huff does a deep dive on his most recognizable guitar parts over the decades.