let's go ZOHRAN!!!
+ we're talking pedal boards with our new series "what that board do"
new york forever baby.
we are so thrilled to congratulate Zohran Mamdani on his historic win in the NYC primary mayoral election!!!! together, the people will never be defeated <3 yesterday we showed the country (and the world) that republican billionaires dont have more power than new yorkers wanting to make our city more affordable, more equitable, more just. that ICE has no place in our city. pretty fucking cool. thank you for getting out to vote,, and remember to get out there in November to see this movement through and get Eric Adams permanently out.
we also want to congratulate and thank our friends at
who have been working night and day for months to get the word out about this election and making politics and rank choice voting accessible! we are so grateful to have been able to partner with them in publishing their interviews and platforms and are excited for what the future holds. be sure to go back and read their interview series that we’ve hosted over the past few months if you haven’t already…
What That Board Do
A conversation between Matthew Weddig and Cassette Spence
Cassette Spence and I were on a setlist together last summer and gabbed during setup about the gear we had in common. She proceeded to use it completely differently, creating a sort of one-woman Portishead through an array of pedals – some delegated to the floor, another built into a suitcase that housed a Yamaha Reface CP keyboard with the speakers hacked off to fit.
When I asked to interview her later about her pedalboard, it was fully disassembled. Spence claims this isn’t part of her process – “it’s just my messiness” – but it’s decidedly part of a quest, especially now that her pedalboard doesn’t need to cover all possible situations. Spence played bass and sang in Vassals – “a loud trio” – for 10 years and played guitar “playing the standard sounds” for other bands. She started doing solo shows in 2017 with just an acoustic guitar, soon adding things to sound more interesting – delay or a “cheesy” Casio keyboard with drum and auto bass – yet in control.
“It was a slow dive into adding a full rhythm accompaniment to my live set. I couldn’t let [the Casio] do its thing and play guitar. The laptop and MIDI controller is cool when other people do it, but I’ve never trusted my computer enough to bring it on stage.”
It’s still a process, which with any luck disqualifies it from being a mess. “I’d like to have a cool slapback and a delay I could more or less tempo-sync in one box. That’s the quest right now.”
Death by Audio Reverberation Machine
CS: In college, I saw a picture of Wilco where they had this very dirty, very used delay pedal, and that was the first time I saw time, delay, and feedback parameters as expression. [An expression pedal plugged into another compatible pedal can allow a guitarist to control the parameters with their feet while their hands are too busy playing guitar to turn the knobs.] I thought, “I wanna be able to fuck with delay with my feet,” and it kicked off a 20-year search for the ideal delay pedal.
My friend Michael Cory (The Wicked Farleys) showed me this one. It’s colorful, not like your Swiss Army Knife reverb at all. So I’ll find a mild reverb on the backline amp and actively play with this pedal. It’s an always-on pedal for me, with the wet/dry mix varying.
The reverb dial goes up to 125%, I think feeding back into itself. And I can use it as an extra gain stage; there’s this kind of mysterious knob labeled with a triangle – the manual calls it “altitude” [the manufacturer website describes it as “similar” to gain]. Then I can use the tone controls on the guitar, and this pedal is usually pretty pleasant to play against. It’s such a murky, cloudy thing.
JHS Colour Box
CS: I like having some tonal control over my voice. This pedal has multiple lines out, so I can give the house one line and we’ll call that the “dry” vocal, but I can also send my voice through an amp and do whatever I want with it. I like to have a little overdrive, a little color, on my vocal mic, and that’s hard to ask for at a venue. The Colour Box is kind of an extreme tool for that.
EHX Memory Boy
CS: I saw Spoon and Deerhunter in the early 2010s, and they both did crazy vocal delay stuff that I wanted to do too. My little bass pedalboard for Vassals had a tuner, a fuzz, and then a Memory Boy I’d use specifically for vocals. I brought it back for my solo shows after I started to miss playing with a vocal delay.
Saturnworks Switchable Latching TRS Expression Pedal
CS: It’s essentially an expression pedal, but it has two settings and a momentary switch. Usually I’ll use it to control the feedback amount – messing with delay time gets really messy – and let it hang on a lo-fi loop that degrades really quickly.
My pedalboard real estate space was too limited for a full expression pedal, and when I was messing with a friend’s I would want it to come back to a specific spot. Before I learned about this, I made my own, painted it to match the Memory Boy. Then I later found out somebody was already making them. But better. I’m kind of a lousy solderer. Didn’t stop me from trying.
Thanks for coming to our Rippers show this past weekend. It was a hot hot day and the vibes were immaculate. If you missed us this time around, we will be back on 8/9 partnered with Shea Stadium for another stacked lineup of Moon Sand Land, Rat Palace, Pop Music Fever Dream, Strawberry Runners, and Gobbin Jr. Don’t miss it. Also, for those of you asking for our GUNK DJ playlist……
Thank you all for reading and for voting and for getting to the gigs and getting out to VOTE in this hot hot hot heat wave. We feel so lucky to be New Yorkers everyday but especially today <3
also! remember our birthday is coming up in august… and we are looking for sponsors for our birthday parties (yes, plural). hit our line @ thegunkyard@gmail.com if you wanna be a part of that! homemade raffle items and big donations welcomed alike :)
xoxoxox
Hannah and Ceci
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