Question and Answer

hi pat! once again thanks for the great music!! i saw you back in 1990 at the Berklee Performance Center with gary burton and a student band. that is the first time i ever heard you play with distortion and it really blew me away! my question is: when and why did you decide to use that sound? and had you used it at all before that night for a solo? i think in our modern times, you are one of very few guitarists that doesn't need to use distortion because of the unique voice you have...but having said that, i think your solo on the tune "the half life of absolution", and the work you did with Gary Thomas and the CD with sco that had that distorted sound is just phenominal!! the amazing part is that it still sounds like YOU! how did you get that sound before the VG8?

Merry Christmas Pat!!!

Greg Delcore

thanks for the compliments. sure, i have always messed with distorted sounds, since high school - just like every other guitar player on earth. with "half life" i felt like i found a sonic zone that was new for me and yet different than anyone else's sound. i tried to continue that on "roots" on the most recent group record, another track i am really proud of. there are just some musical questions that a certain tune asks that that kind of sound really provides the best answer for. i avoided it for many years, because i felt like it was being done enough by other people - but there was and is a way of hearing things that i didn't hear anyone else doing quite the way that i would think of doing it - so that's when i started using it on records. the gear itself doesn't really matter - i think it is mostly the conception of the sound that you have, you can get almost any gear to do it.