Last month, Billboard.com featured a nice Q&A session with non-stop guitarist Warren Haynes. In the interview, he discusses recording the new Gov’t Mule album and touring with Mule, the Allman Brothers, and the Dead:

We did a few Mule shows prior to the Beacon with the Allman Brothers (in March), and that started out a busy year. We went straight from the Beacon to Dead rehearsals, and then bounced back and forth all year between the three bands. I just feel like the opportunities I have now are amazing. They’re opportunities that I’d never turn down. So if that means I’m busier than I thought I would be, or away from home more than I wish, that’s just part of it. I have the best job in the world, so it would be ridiculous for me to complain about the few negatives that go along with it.

Anthony Stauffer has posted an interesting article about how he has arrived at playing music for a hobby instead of as a career. After trying to become a rock star for over 10 years, he had to be honest with himself:

This simple truth created a situation where I resented having to do the very things that were necessary to put me in a position to do what I though I loved. I thought I wanted to travel the world playing music on stages in front of thousands of people. But I hated packing up all my gear to go play a show for 50 people. And even more, I hated packing up all my stuff at odd hours of the morning, and taking it back home. I simply wanted to get on stage and play, and that’s it.

It’s easy to romanticize what it must be like to be a rock star, but, as Anthony points out, making it as a musician requires much more than playing music.

I’ve been a fan of Tool’s Adam Jones since hearing their album Undertow in 1993. Jones seems to make his Les Paul sound larger than life on all of their recordings. In 2006, Mix magazine interviewed Joe Barresi and Bob Ludwig, who were responsible for recording Tool’s most recent album 10,000 Days. They discuss how they recorded the album. Of particular interest to me was the gear that Jones used in the studio:

The signal chain for tracking guitar was a bit complex. “Adam would play into whatever pedals he needed,” Barresi says. “That signal then went into a Systematic Systems Splitter. Then it would go to between three and five heads. The signal from the heads went to their own individual cabinets. Each cabinet had two or three microphones on it. Then all the microphones came back to the console, and they were blended down as separated for each amp. The Diezel amp went to its own track. The Marshall amp went to its own track. The third track was a blend of the Bogner and the Rivera, or whatever I liked for the song. And that would be one take — three tracks of guitar.”

Also discussed in the interview is how Jones recorded the talkbox solo in the song “Jambi.” In addition to talking about how they recorded the guitar parts, Barresi and Ludwig also discuss how they recorded Danny Carey’s drums, Justin Chancellor’s bass, and Maynard James Kennan’s vocals. Check out the interview here.