“I feel like a Telecaster just makes you play differently – for me, it’s a pretty unforgiving guitar”: Tyler Bryant on the new Tele that rivals his beloved ‘Pinky’ Strats – and how he’s journeying beyond “bone-headed rock ‘n’ roll”

As Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown return with Electrified , we check in with the man whose name is above the door for the story behind the record, and a debrief on how he got those reference-quality electric guitar tones. Turns out, there were a whole bunch of guitar amps onboard, with boutique vintage replicas doing much of the heavy lifting and an untweakable battery-operated pinch-hitter in reserve. There were pedals, too – a dual-channel overdrive pedal , in particular.

What there wasn’t was a plan. But then, when you’re playing with your buddies you don’t need a plan. Was there a particular track that kicked off your latest record, Electrified ? “One of the tunes that kicked it off is a deep cut, which is a song called Movin' .

With this record, I wanted to keep it true to what the band is: a couple of guitars, a bass and drums. “There’s always a temptation in the studio to make things bigger than they are, but with Movin' , it’s just a Telecaster plugged into a Princeton Reverb. I’ve been on a Blackberry Smoke and Black Crowes kick of late, so Movin' was kind of a tip of the hat to that sort of blues and roots rock ’n’ roll.

” You mentioned the Telecaster, which is interesting as most people assume you have a pink Stratocaster in hand 24/7. “I feel like a Telecaster just makes you play a little bit differently – and, for me, it’s a pretty unforgiving guitar. But this Tele is a Custom Shop ’59; it was a gift from my wife [Rebecca Lovell] and,.