ment of a guitarist who truly made
it with his signature Framus Storm-
bender guitar. Then, at The 2019
NAMM Show, he unleashed a sec-
ond signature model and, in true
Devin Townsend style, he did the
thing you wouldn’t expect a so-
called metal player to do: he made
it an acoustic. He also kept it in the
Canadian family – the Empath sig-
nature model is by Prestige Guitars,
which, like Townsend himself, hails
from Vancouver.
“We spent about a year in devel-
opment, trying to figure out what
would be best-suited to my needs
and they came up with something
I think is really fantastic,” he says.
“Aesthetically, I wanted something
a little different. I wanted that kind
of dreadnought body style because
of Gordon Lightfoot, basically. Then
as they made the first one, I started
realizing I do a lot of stuff higher on
the neck and a cutaway became
important. It became a situation of
how do you mix that 1970s folk vibe
I was raised in but bring that into the
future?”
It’s a bit strange to hear a sup-
posed metal god talking so ad-
miringly of ‘70s folk and Gordon
Lightfoot, but Townsend is used to
shattering expectations. Take his
appearances in recent years at sev-
eral heavy metal festivals where,
instead of getting his full band to-
gether, he just showed up with an
acoustic guitar. When it comes to
his longevity, that unpredictability
has been a feature, not a bug.
“I think it’s been a huge benefit
to my career. I’ve got almost 30
records that I’ve done but none of
them have been super successful.
None of them have been so suc-
cessful that there’s been a prece-
dent set I need to follow,” he says.
“If I had gotten really successful
playing the heavy stuff I had done,
I’d be tied to that for the rest of my
life. If I had gotten success with a
pop single, of which I’ve done a ton,
I’d be tied to that too. Everything I do, whether it’s brutal metal or new-
age acoustic flute music has sold
about the same, so it doesn’t really
matter what I do.”
With so many stages to his ca-
reer, you’d think it would be virtually
impossible to combine them into
a cohesive set. On his most recent
tour, Townsend’s setlists included
songs from all his myriad projects,
bringing the entirety of his cata-
logue to audiences for the first time.
Switching genres from project to
project would be a challenge for most
guitarists, but Townsend was pulling
it off from song to song. But at this
point, that’s just second nature.
“I’ve always been very confused
as to why it’s difficult for people to
shift gears. The equivalent for me is
eating one thing all day, every day. I
view the stylistic changes for me to
be very much in line with that. I just
don’t want to eat the same thing all
the time. I find it very easy to switch
between them because one is in re-
action to the other.”
Let’s not B.S. here. July Talk is not
a guitar band, or at least not in the
conventional sense. The tension
isn’t between vocals and riffs, a la
Led Zep or Metallica; rather, it’s all
about the vocal interplay between
the gruff, growly Peter Dreimanis
and the high and sweet Leah Fay.
Guitar, like all the other instruments, is a supporting part: if July Talk
were Michael Bay’s not-as-terrible-
as-you’d-think The Island, guitar
would be Steve Buscemi providing
grounded character actor work be-
hind Ewan McGregor and Scarlett
Johansson.
Guitarist Ian Docherty prefers a
far less ridiculous analogy; he says
Getting Weird with
IAN DOCHERTY
July Talk
Go-To Live Rig:
•@ Yamaha SG1820 Guitar
•@ Yamaha SA2200 Guitar
•@ Cindy Guitars Gargoyle Guitar
•@ Electroluxe Telecaster Guitar
•@ Friedman Amplification Dirty
Shirley Mini Amp
•@ Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Amp
•@ KO Amps Plexi Amp (x2)
•@ Fulltone OCD
•@ Empress Effects Compressor
•@ Neunaber Audio Slate
•@ Eventide H9
•@ Strymon Timeline
•@ smallsound/bigsound buzz
•@ Boss Volume Pedal
•@ Boss ES8 Pedal Switcher
•@ TC Electronic PolyTune
•@ RJM Y-Not A/B/Y Switch
•@ Strymon Zuma Power Supply
•@ MIDI Thru Box
•@ Radial Engineering SB6 (x2)
@
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 51