Episode 16 : Lebo

Lebo plays an acoustic guitar with a magnetic pickup dropped into it, through an amp, in a rock band. If you know anything about guitar electronics that sentence should bother you a little. It works because the body behind the bridge stays microphonic - the guitar is hearing the whole room and feeding it back through the strings. He can prove it, too: on an ALO cover of "I Shall Be Released" cut with Jack Johnson, there's an ethereal wash under the piano intro that nobody played. His hands weren't even on the instrument. It was the piano, in E against a take in B, activating his strings from across the room.

He met Zach Gill and Steve Adams in seventh grade in Saratoga, California, back when the orchards were still turning into Apple buildings, and the band they started at twelve is still going. Before the touring took over, he apprenticed with a luthier and ran the repair bench at Haight Ashbury Music Center, which is roughly where the tinkering habit got its teeth.

The back half of this one goes somewhere else. Lebo describes a Venn diagram he lives by - discipline on one side, all the prep and the set lists and the hours; surrender on the other, where you walk over the threshold at 7:59:59 and let go. Neither half works alone. The overlap is flow. We got into what Phil told him backstage at Terrapin Crossroads about not putting anything into the music and letting it pull something out of you instead, why Edward Van Halen's beat-up guitar looked better to him than anything clean on the shelf, and the solo on "Plastic Bubble" he begged the band to let him fix.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:44 Welcome, and this week's guest
9:13 What else has been going on
12:55 A special-ed teacher, a radiologist, and loving what you do
14:27 Ethnomusicology, and an older brother with better records
15:14 Saratoga, back when the orchards were becoming Apple buildings
15:54 Meeting Zach Gill and Steve Adams in seventh grade
16:53 The first gig: a talent show that turned out to be a school play
17:54 Cats, Camelot, and where jazz harmony comes from
19:04 UCSB, classical guitar, and the band he was already all in on
20:14 "You've got to follow your heart"
22:40 Learning guitar before the internet
23:39 Torres Guitars, and the kid who hung around the repair shop
25:16 Apprenticing with a luthier, then the bench at Haight Ashbury
26:05 The infinite game, and creativity as a renewable resource
27:54 The hobby: pickups, pedals, and taking things apart
29:36 A knockoff Les Paul and his uncle's 1974 Tele
30:41 Rowdy bars, a Sunrise pickup, and plugging the acoustic in
32:00 The broken string that settled it
33:06 "I Shall Be Released," and a guitar that hears the room
34:54 Imperfection is where the human part lies
36:57 Van Halen was poor, Brian May is a rocket scientist
39:18 The Venn diagram: discipline and surrender
41:06 Flow, and surrendering at 7:59:59
42:30 Terrapin Crossroads, and what Phil said
44:27 Csikszentmihalyi, and the part of the brain that goes quiet
47:11 St. Vincent's favorite solo is "Kid Charlemagne"
51:36 Wes Montgomery, alternate takes, and being human
52:38 The solo on "Plastic Bubble" he wanted to fix
53:43 Outro

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Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matt Hoffman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Producer: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tedd Kanakaris⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Location: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rising Sun Presents

Resources: ⁠⁠Backline