Andy Timmons – My Magic Bullet

From playing classical to jazz, to helping design his own pedal, to elevating pedals off the floor, Andy Timmons has some great stories. When I asked Andy about his “magic bullet” or a “light bulb moment” that had influenced his playing, I mentioned that I had recently done an interview with Steve Morse on the same topic. Andy lit up.

A Light Bulb Moment

Fuston: Do you remember a “light bulb moment” when something enlightening happened and changed everything for you?

Timmons: Yeah, I remember being in front of Steve Morse. Well, being around him is always a light bulb moment because he’s so bright he makes your light bulb shine. But it’s true. One time when I saw him, I was pretty close up, and I recognized that it was a dry/wet signal. He had a volume pedal for his echo, and I don’t run my rig that way, but I have this Halo echo pedal, and echo has been probably the most important part of whatever my sound is. It’s always on.

A friend once said to me, “Echo’s not an effect for you. That’s just part of your sound.” And that goes back to one of my earliest musical memories — the guitar solo on the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There.” I was born in 1963, and my brother was 12 years older. So, he was buying Beatles records as they were released. My earliest memories are all ’60s British Invasion, all the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Kinks, Animals, you name it.

That was my foundation in the house. And then my brothers got into everything Jeff Beck did from the Yardbirds forward. For me, it was always about the guitar sound. I didn’t know it at first, I just knew the guitar part was my favorite part of the song. I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t know what a guitar was. But I loved that sound [on “I Saw Her Standing There”]. It was very echoey.

Oh, okay. You mean like a reverb tank in an amp? Was that what you were hearing?

No, no, no. This was an actual room sound where they would take the signal and feed it through the board into Studio Two at Abbey Road. It was like a reverberant stone room with different sound dividers and a speaker at one end with a microphone at the other end. It’s literally like creating that reverberant sound of being in a bathroom. They had three of these echo chambers.

I was always attracted to that very reverberant sound and hearing different permutations. I even remember hearing a guitar from outside a club before I was old enough to get in, but that was probably an Echoplex, and it was truly transcendent! Think about Hank Marvin’s sound on “Apache” by the Shadows.

There were tape echoes back in the late ’50s, early ’60s. Hank’s thing was the Italian Meazzi and the Binson Echorec that a lot of the English guitar players had. Later on, I got an Ibanez AD202. So, I always was using that echo sound, and that’s what led to what the Halo is now. That’s how I got to work with Robert Keeley.

The Keeley Halo

I had a Maestro Echoplex EP-3, but it was too volatile to use live. Then I got ahold of the old Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, and I would string two of those together for the dotted eighth/quarter thing that I learned about from Simon Phillips, who I worked with quite a bit, who had worked with David Gilmour. And that was kind of his parameter. I remember thinking, “Oh, I’ll take that.”

But then it was about the modulation on the repeats, and if you had an old tape echo, if it wasn’t properly tuned, the sound was just a bit out of tune. And there’s beauty in the inconsistency. The Memory Man has modulation available on the repeats. It doesn’t give you that Andy Summers, Police sound; it’s only on the effect. And you can dial it just right. It just gets slightly out of tune with each repeat.

The visual analogy is it sounds like a drop of water in a lake with the rings emanating out. The tone remains pure, but everything else circles around it, so I started calling it the “halo.” I thought, “Man, I wish I could find somebody I could sit down with and communicate all these things I love about all these different echo devices and come up with the ultimate dual echo pedal.” This was at NAMM 2019, I think, and I was chatting with Daniel Steinhardt from GigRig, one of the tone aficionados out there that really knows his stuff. I asked him, “Who should I talk to about creating this echo?” He answered, “Robert Keeley,” without missing a beat.

Daniel walked me over and introduced me. Then Robert and I got to work on it. It took about a year and a half of not settling, and he and his crew, Aaron Pierce and Aaron Tackett, the whole team was all about the joy of getting something great and not compromising. So there’s a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in that Halo pedal. How’s that for a convoluted way of getting back to your question about light bulb moments?

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On How He Got Started

When did you start playing guitar? What was your early inspiration?

It was the TV show Hee Haw, no joke. We got into Hee Haw just because it was such a hoot. It was just so silly and so funny.

There were certainly a few guitar players on Hee Haw.

Like Roy Clark. I saw Roy Clark, and I guess I hadn’t been exposed to that kind of virtuosity. I’d heard stuff on records, but seeing it, watching him play, I remember thinking, “I bet he can play anything that he imagines.” I was already playing and learning pentatonics and whatnot. But I remember thinking that, and it was really inspiring to me. “Man, what if you could get to the point where you could imagine something, and it just comes out?” Well, I’ve been playing for 55 years, and I’m starting to catch on. (Laughs)

Did Roy Clark inspire you to pick up the guitar?

No, no, no. I had three older brothers, so I had a plastic toy guitar when I was four or five, and I was already playing melodies on one string, which is still a big thing for me. And everybody had those Silvertone acoustics in the ’60s. There was one in every household.

Yep. Mine was a purple sunburst. With the action about this high! (Holds fingers 1/4-inch apart)

That was a thing. It was impossible to play, wasn’t in tune — ever. So, I got into this thing where I was teaching myself. Of course, I’d watch my brothers, and I’d sneak into their rooms when they weren’t around, and I would just try to remember what they did. When I was maybe 10 or 11, I had another light bulb moment. I was in my bedroom, and I played a D chord, and I had borrowed my brother’s Every Picture Tells a Story record by Rod Stewart, still one of my all-time favorite records. The title track was on. I played that D chord, and I was like “That’s the same chord!” It hadn’t even dawned on me that I could learn and maybe play what was on records. I mean, maybe just growing up in Indiana, I was just so secluded, but there was a light that came on, and I was like, I can do this.

I remember one time I heard John Lennon playing this wonderful voicing of a D chord. And I was like, “Well, hey, there’s another one I can use.” Wow. Those are formative things. And encouraging.

By the time I was 16, that’s when I knew this was it for me. I’d read all the guitar player magazines. I remember Tommy Tedesco had a monthly column called Studio Log. Then I became aware of Larry Carlton and then later Steve Lukather, and I realized these guys made their living in the studios. I started thinking maybe I could make a living somehow playing guitar. I really set my sights on that, trying to learn how to read music.

On Finding His Tone

You’re known for your amazing tone. Can you tell me about how you developed that?

Eric Johnson was always kind of a benchmark. People used to maybe make fun, but he was the one that took the time, and the results were there. I mean, yeah, the battery matters. It’s an obvious thing. Cable direction, every little thing...

I’ve learned everything matters.

So, here’s my fondest discovery on Eric’s journey. Eric sets a benchmark for tone. I don’t want to sound like him, but sonically, he’s an inspiration, and musically, too. He did a record [with] Alien Love Child. It was a great side project he did with Bill Maddox on drums and a great bass player, Chris Maresh, and it was something different than his usual thing, more bluesy, Cream-ish kind of stuff. We showed up and were looking at his setup. Jeff Van Zandt, his guitar tech, was there, and Eric’s four-knob [Chandler] tube driver was up on this platform, a little wooden platform. It was on its own little stage, and we were kind of chuckling and wondering, “Oh man, what’s Eric up to now?” We asked Jeff, and he told us, “Yeah, he was playing one day, and I went to straighten a cable. And I lifted the tube driver off the floor. All of a sudden, Eric stops and says, ‘What did you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I...’ ‘Just don’t move.’ That’s exactly how it happened. So, we built a riser to keep it that high.”

We shook our heads and were like, “Well, okay.” Fast-forward, and I’m working on my album Resolution, and I’ve got the three-knob [Tube Works] tube driver, and that’s got a lot more gain, but it’s sitting on the floor, and my Marshall’s over here (Gestures to the side). I didn’t have a guitar plugged into it. I was plugged through something else at the time.

Well, the common thing about those two pedals is they both have 12AX7 tubes. We started noticing that we were hearing things through the other amp, but it wasn’t my guitar playing because my guitar wasn’t plugged into it. Turns out the tubes were microphonic. We picked it up and put some two-by-fours under it — it was not just a little different. It was incredible, the difference. Totally cleaned up the low end.

Wow.

Yeah, so all this low end was collecting on the stage where Eric was, and the pedal was picking that up from there. So, the riser was sort of like using an Auralex GRAMMA to lift up your amp. So, again, here we go. I would say to Eric occasionally, “Man, you just need to write a book.” Then I realized, no, these are things you’ve got to find out for yourself.

So, that whole tone thing, from pedal risers to batteries, is an extreme rabbit hole because, at a certain point, you kind of have to make music and not obsess. And that’s a note to all of us. We love the forums, but at some point, your tone is going to come from more time spent on your guitar than anything else.

Andy Timmons onstage with Andy Wood and Steve Morse at Woodshed Guitar Experience 2024

On Teaching

I only got back into teaching in the later part of my career. I never felt like I was that good at it, but that was insecurity. I didn’t think I had that much to offer. But anyway, after many years and somebody asked me to teach, I realized I actually kind of enjoy this. I heard myself communicating the ideas — okay, maybe I’m all right the more I did it.

I hardly do any private lessons. I’ll do the masterclasses, and I have a subscription lesson site, guitarxperience.net. I teach lessons about things I know guitarists will use the rest of their lives — things we all need to work on.

On Evolution

When I go back to play my own stuff, even if I composed it, I’ll have to go back and relearn. And there are times when I’m not sure or can’t quite figure it out. Because as you play, you’re not repeating exact things, and back then I wasn’t composing in that way and was improvising much more. There are things that can happen that you haven’t done before. You’re relying on a certain amount of vocabulary. But once you have the ear that can be guided by the moment, that’s when interesting, new things can happen. You may never get back to it, especially the more time goes by.

And at this age, I’m 61 now, I could have practiced something all day yesterday. The next day, I’m like, “Man, how’d that go?” But anyway, that’s the ongoing thing. But I love that evolution. I like that I don’t play exactly like I did 30, 40 years ago. I can revisit it, and I can do it.

I think it is natural that your taste and your soul are going to change along the way. And everybody’s going to have their own preferences. I’m sure Eddie Van Halen always heard people say, “Man, that first record.” He probably thought, “I did some other stuff, too.” Sure, everybody’s got their favorite early records. Somebody said to me recently, “I really liked your early stuff,” and they meant it so innocently and sincerely, and I was thinking, “But what about my new stuff? I’ve come a long way since then.”

On Being Remembered

Yeah. Well, here’s the best version of that. I was in Miami from ’83 to ’85, and I met Steve Bailey and Ray Brinker, and they recruited me to move to Texas. They were in the jazz world. Steve was with Dizzy Gillespie, and Ray was with Maynard Ferguson. They wanted to be rockers and could rock. I was the rock guy in Miami, so they recruited me.

We moved to Denton where they’d gone to North Texas State [University], another great jazz school. I met this girl who was an artist, and we immediately became tight. There was this cool street fair called the Fry Street Fair.

My girlfriend was going to have a face-painting booth, and she said, “You should do something.” I thought, “What am I going to do?” And I remembered Johnny Carson and his Stump the Band skit. So, I made a booth and called it Stump the Guitar Player. I had a little battery-powered amp and a microphone, and I had a bucket out for tips. I was like, “Name a tune. If I can play it, you give me a dollar. If I can’t play it, pick another tune.” That worked out well for me. If it was a pop tune from the ’60s or ’70s, and I’d heard it enough, I could probably play it. I’ve got a fairly good musical memory. I made like a hundred bucks that day.

To this day, I have people see me somewhere, and they come up and say, “Stump the Guitar Player!” And I’m like, “I’ve done some other stuff.” Nope, you’re Stump, the guitar player. I don’t mind it. I’m always like, I can’t believe people remember that. That’s funny.

Was it just one time? Clearly you made quite an impression.

Well, I think maybe I might’ve done it a couple years in a row, and it would’ve been over a few days. It was a good schtick. It’s just kind of funny that people remember me for that. (Laughs)

Let Sweetwater Help You Find Your Magic Bullet

Every musician, singer, producer, or DJ is looking for their own unique sound. Sweetwater has thousands of instruments, pedals, and tools that can help you realize your voice. If you’re looking for your own magic bullet, call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700 and let them help you find the gear that will fulfill your dreams.

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