The year was 2015. Show host Blake Wyland intended to start a podcast where he took a deep dive with his guests from the guitar world to explain their rigs. What happened was that, but also a whole lot more. The show quickly evolved into discussions about people's lives. Guitars, pedals, amps, etc. are the central hub of the show, but it really is more about the PEOPLE behind all of it. Both the musicians who use the gear, and the folks that create these magical tools of expression. You can…
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It has been way too long since Dylan McKerchie of Dylan Talks Tone has been on the show, and quite a bit has changed since our last conversation. Dylan has a home base, his daughter is working full time winding pickups with him, the business is cranking, and somehow he is producing an absolutely unreasonable amount of guitar content every week. We get into what happens when the thing you love also…
This week I’m hanging out with Randy King of King Electric Guitars, and what starts as a conversation about old cars takes approximately four minutes to wander off the road and into something much bigger. Randy has been obsessed with making things for most of his life. He bought his first car at ten years old, spent his youth tearing into old hot rods, served in the Air Force, played music, and…
Scott Mellinger of Zao returns to The Tone Mob for a long-overdue hang, and apparently age comes for us all in different ways. Some people take up golf. Zao seems to be getting slower, heavier, and sludgier. Scott digs into Pillars, Zao’s new collection paying tribute to the overlooked bands from their local scene that helped create the blueprint for what they eventually became. That leads into…
This week on The Tone Mob, Blake sits down with Frank Gross, founder of Thunder Road Guitars Seattle, for a conversation about music, retail, risk, reinvention, and the strange magic of simply refusing to disappear. Frank tells the story of leaving the band life behind, moving back to Seattle, and slowly turning Craigslist flips, pawn shop finds, and a tiny workspace into one of the most respected…
Trevor Boone basically grew up inside a guitar shop. His dad started Emerald City Guitars in Seattle back in the mid-90s with a shoestring business plan, a small loan, and a whole lot of secondhand guitar-store dream dust. Trevor was the kid at the counter, surrounded by musicians, weird old guitars, shop talk, and the kind of musical obsession that tends to permanently rewire a person. In this…
Yvette Young is back on the podcast, which means we are legally required to talk about beautiful guitar parts, creative chaos, and the strange little circus act of trying to be a functioning artist in the modern world. This time around, Yvette digs into her work on the new Superman soundtrack, including what it was like getting mysterious NDA phone calls, turning around guitar cues on tight…
Buddy Blues joins The Tone Mob for a long-overdue conversation about guitar, YouTube, blues, pedals, and the strange little internet ecosystem where all of those things collide. Buddy shares his story, from growing up in Beirut playing classical piano, discovering electric guitar through blues and Pink Floyd, moving to Florida as a teenager, gigging heavily, touring with John Mayall, and…
Jesse Honig of 29 Pedals finally joins The Tone Mob, and we are digging all the way into the beautifully nerdy machinery of his story. Before launching 29 Pedals, Jesse spent years inside studios, tape machines, consoles, repair benches, and the general glowing underworld of professional audio. He worked as a roadie as a teenager, became a studio assistant in Philadelphia, built a life as a…
Ron Jackson has one of those jobs that sounds suspiciously like something a music nerd invented while staring at the ceiling. As the host and producer of Musora’s Covers On The Spot, Ron brings bands into the studio, hands them an iconic song from somewhere outside their natural habitat, and gives them only a few hours to rebuild it in their own image. The results have included Emily Wolfe…
Sal Mignano has never been particularly interested in making the bass behave itself. As a founding member of The Sleeping and one-third of the thunderous new project Held, Sal writes riffs from the bottom up, stacks distortion pedals into increasingly hostile little ecosystems, and believes the bass should do considerably more than quietly hold everyone’s coat. Sal joins Blake to tell the…
Barton McGuire doesn’t believe a guitar pedal should politely prevent you from making a bad sound. Where’s the adventure in that? In this episode, Blake sits down with the founder of Cosmodio Instruments to talk about accidental self-oscillation, homemade noise contraptions, imposter syndrome, and the long road from stuffing circuits into RadioShack boxes to running a growing pedal company. Barton…