CG: I first picked up the harp guitar after hearing
the likes of Michael Hedges, Stephen Bennett, and
Andy McKee and mainly because it looked like a
guitar from another planet that sounded unlike
any instrument I had ever heard! While learning, I
got some really good advice from Stephen Ben-
nett. He explained that where you would play a
bass line on an acoustic guitar on the lower two
strings, the harp guitar allows you to have a lower
octave of bass note with open strings covering
a broader scope of sound and opening up other
possibilities that wouldn’t be available on one
guitar. This was a turning point in my learning
curve and although it took a lot of work to get it
down and to eventually learn to sing on top of it,
learning “Billie Jean” was definitely the best lesson
I’ve ever had in multitasking!
CM: Tabula Rasa features a mix of vocal and
instrumental tunes. When you’re writing
songs or just coming up with new ideas,
how do you figure out whether a given mel-
ody or progression would lend itself best
LONNY
EAGLETON
to an instrumental track or if vocals would
enhance it?
CG: Every song is different. Working out all the
parts to a guitar arrangement – bass, rhythm,
melody – can be very dense on its own, and in
this case, I’m able to “say” everything that needs to
be said without lyrics. On the contrary, when the
musical accompaniment is a little more sparse, it
tends to invite a vocal melody on top of the guitar
part for a more complete sound altogether. Lyrics
tend to be more direct, whereas instrumental
music leaves more room for interpretation.
have toyed around with. How do you trans-
late what you’ve learned on the guitar onto
those different but related instruments?
Lonny Eagleton is a professional session and touring guitarist who can be heard on countless movie
soundracks, TV commercials, studio albums, and singles. He tours regularly with Canadian pop star
Shawn Hook and has also shared the stage with Hailee Steinfeld, Vanessa Hudgens, Jimmy Rankin,
and many others. www.lonnyeagleton.com.
CM: Give us a breakdown of your go-to live
rig these days.
LE: The majority of my touring work lately has
been with Shawn Hook, so my current rig is sort
of tailored to his music; however, what I use lends
itself well to most situations. My main guitar is a
Paul Reed Smith, which I use for the majority of
the show. In addition to that, I also carry a Les Paul
for drop-D tuning as well as a Stratocaster and
Telecaster for different tonal flavours.
Effects wise, I use a pedalboard with nine
boxes: a wah-wah, compressor, tuner, overdrive,
fuzz, solo boost, volume, delay, and reverb. So far,
I’ve been able to get any sound I need out of that
combination, and if I ever need tremolo, I just do it
manually with my volume pedal.
As far as amps go, I use an Orange AD-30
head, plugged into an Orange PPC212 closed back
cabinet. A lot of people tend to associate Orange
with metal tones, but they actually deliver a killer
clean sound that’s great for pop music. For strings,
I use D’Addario NYXL 10-46s on everything.
CM: How did you first break into the session
world? What were some of your first projects
as a “hired gun,” and how have you grown
that reputation since?
LE: I put a band together with a few of my closest
friends [in the seventh grade]. None of us could
really play yet, but we would jam all the time, we
recorded, we sold merch, and we even booked a
few local gigs. After a couple years of
this, I got an offer to play as a sideman
for a local singer/songwriter and
never looked back. That gig opened
me up to the world of session work,
and I absolutely loved it. It allowed my
strengths to shine through in ways
that playing in a band never did and
made me realize the potential for a
career in music as a sideman, which
seemed far more attainable than mak-
ing it big as a “rock star.”
I followed the sideman route hard,
taking every gig I could get, hauling
my heavy rig on public transit, making
sure my living expenses were as low
as possible so that I could put all my
time into music, hoping that one day
I would eventually land a gig with a
major artist and get to play high-profile shows.
I wanted to tour arenas. I wanted to be in music
videos. I wanted to be able to call up my parents
and say, “Hey, I’ll be on TV next week if you want
to tune in.”
One gig led to another, and after several years
of hard work in the Vancouver indie scene, I was
lucky enough to score the job as Shawn Hook’s
new guitarist, which I have kept to this day. We
have been fortunate enough to perform on sev-
eral international TV shows such as Jimmy Kimmel
Live, Today, the MMVAs, twice on The Juno Awards,
several large scale tours, platinum-selling singles…
It’s truly been a dream come true.
CM: How do you make sure you’re staying