Rise to Power with New Czars’ Greg Hampton
Producer/guitarist churns out heavy rock in new band debut
Greg Hampton rolls with a pretty diverse crowd… whether it is as a producer of projects by hard rock royalty like Lita Ford or Alice Cooper or as an artist bringing the funk with pal, bass ace Bootsy Collins. When it came to his own band, The New Czars, Hampton rolled up his sleeves and created one of the best modern hard rock albums we’ve heard in a long time. WTDP? had a chance to catch up with Hampton – a fellow Texas native – to talk about the new project, the newly-released album, Doomsday Revolution, and his mountain of sweet gear!
WTDP?: Tell me a little bit of how The New Czars came to be. Doesn’t it get traced back to last Alice Cooper album?
Greg: Not really. When I was doing that, I was finishing the Science Faction record with Boosty (Collins). I started writing the Alice record before Science Faction was even finished really, but I started writing a bunch of stuff that really didn’t seem to work musically because it was a little too eclectic. I don’t know… it’s just sorta how it went down. (Bassist) Paul Ill and I had been friends. We worked together originally… it was 2002 I think, or 2001 maybe… when we first met. It was through Reeves Gabrels mainly. Then I met (drummer) Chilly (Moreno) through some other mutual friends – Roy Z, who produces a lot of Halford and Bruce Dickinson. He played on the Dickinson Tyranny of Souls record too.
WTDP?: Diving into Doomsday Revolution, talk to us about the tune Time Stops. On the surface it seems like a straight forward mid-tempo rocker, but a deeper listen reveals a lot going on in that one from the plucky sitar line to the backward guitar ambience.
Greg: I started it off with just the main chorus riff… the power chord thing basically… and then I started writing the verses on piano, is sorta how that came about. And then as far as the electric sitar, I think I doubled it with the electric sitar and my guitar synthesizer with a sitar program. Then as far as the reverse stuff… I do a lot of weird reverse stuff with pedals. So you know… what can I tell you?
WTDP?: Another song that sticks was a bit of a surprise… because it’s the ballad – Only Dreaming. What can you tell us about that one?
Greg: I’m glad you liked that. Billy Bob Thornton actually kind of encouraged me to finish that. I had that idea knocking around for about five years… that basic vocal hook. I’ve had that title in my book for probably five or six years. In January 2009 I started working on a batch of songs. I was still in the middle of recording the Lita Ford record, but at that point I started working on some ideas and I had played a bunch of them for Billy Bob Thornton. He would would tell me he really liked that song and he kept saying that’s a ‘really good one.’ He kept saying that to me and I was like ‘Oh cool, you know?’ When we started this record I brought it out and I kept messing with it and then I finally got an idea on how to maybe twist the vocal arrangement a little different. It seemed to make more sense and then it just sorta grew legs and ran down the road I guess. Billy made suggestions for that and the song Why Do You Have 2 Lie also.
WTDP?: A nice surprise was the instrumental tracks. Most bands don’t go into the projects with the idea to do a single instrumental, let alone three. Were they written as instrumentals or where either of them slated for vocals that didn’t materialize?
Greg: I cut 10! They were definitely instrumentals. I never had any ideas of anything particularly as far as them being vocal songs. No.
WTDP?: What will happen with those extra songs?
Greg: Some will make their way to film submission stuff. Some of them will be on the bonus digital bundles. There’s two of the instrumentals that will be on the digital bundles. There’s a reggae version of Keep On Goin’ for the European bundle. There may be some additional bonus tracks. I’ve been on the phone with labels about the European and Japanese versions. So at least we have enough to cover so they all have a certain batch of songs. At least they feel like it’s something that’s there own.
WTDP?: How did the band approach writing for the record? Did the band jam out ideas or did you have completed songs for the others to learn?
Greg: Most of the stuff I would write all the basic riffs and I would start those out like that. Certain things I had Adrian Belew contribute to were things he and I would interact with when I flew to Memphis and worked there. Other things we would work out when I would get with the band. We would have them contribute their parts or like Paul would contribute some writing on a couple songs. He came up with the bridge with me in Time Stops when we were recording that on the floor. I had some bridge elements, but it didn’t flow really right and then Paul had some ideas. We were referencing some old Crazy Horse things. A lot of those ideas I had been working on and I would catalogue them and put them aside because certain things I have worked on in the past… they don’t work. Certain bands that I produce or write for or bands that I write with or artists that I write with… it just doesn’t work.
WTDP?: How did Adrian Belew get involved in the project?
Greg: I just approached him. I had always loved his work. I called him and we decided he would work on it. He liked the ideas when I sent five, six, seven of the ideas. He liked where it was going and so he decided he’d get involved. We did a bunch of work there and then I brought the tracks back here and continued to work on things and that was about it.
WTDP?: Let’s talk about gear. Now from the ‘Making Of’ videos we’ve seen on MySpace… you’re not messing around when it comes to pedals. Can you give us a run down of what’s on there?
Greg: It’s all run by a GCX switcher. There’s two racks that have a Scrambler clone made by Creepy Fingers, a Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe, Wasabi backwards delay, a PH-1 phase shifter, a Seymour Duncan Shape Shifter, Mooger Fooger Murf, Line 6 DL-4 delay, Foxx Tone Machine fuzz machine and a micro synthesizer. Then the two pedal boards have a Super Shifter, Deluxe Memory Man – the older model, XP200 modulator pedal which was made by Digitech at one point, the Boss Slicer. There are two pedals made by a place out of New York, a boutique company called Death By Audio – the Robot and also the Interstellar Overdrive deluxe. A Discombobulator, which is an envelope filter from a company out of Sweden called Emma. My friend Warren Haynes has one of those too. The XP300 Space Station… those are amazing. My wahs are all mods made by the guy at Creepy Fingers, Brad Davis. The one that I like the most is the one that is sort of modded like an old Color Sound T-Rex one because it’s got more mids and low end stuff and it doesn’t lose… You know a lot of times it gets a little top-endy and there’s definitely some really great tones in that thing. I switch around a lot. I have three or four different pedal boards. I have another pedal board that has the Line 6 M13 and then it’s got a Chopper pedal with the tremolo in it. I have stuff modded too with weird foot switches. The Memory Man Hazarai thing I had foot switch put on it so I can use it for loop-on-loop sound looping. It was extended from there because I can’t really play guitar and hold down the tap record button with my finger at the same time. Nels Cline had inspired me maybe three months ago we had done some work together on the Tommy Bolin project that I’m doing. I broke out my old 16 second delay and put a foot switch on that and I can switch between those two things. I had the old Boomerang as well to do different looping and some weird sound-on-sound stuff that you can get three or four things going at once. It’s pretty nutty.
WTDP?: What about your guitars?
Greg: I have a purple sparkle SG, ’77 Dean Explorer, couple of Fernandes Ravelles. They have guitar synthesizer pickups built into them. So you have a 13-pin line out and then a regular line out as well so you can just record regular. I have a lot of Strats that I’ve had custom made by a cat called Eric Chaz. He does all my work. I have sustainers in probabiy ten of my guitars.
WTDP?: Which do you consider your #1 right now?
Greg: The Fernandes Ravelles I use a whole lot. That black one I used a whole lot. I have a Strat, a black sparkle Strat that was sorta built from parts and it’s got a humbucker in the bridge and a sustainer in it. I’ve used that thing a lot too.
WTDP?: How about amps? What is your amp of choice?
Greg: There’s a JCM 2000 I use a lot. I have an old Peavey 5150 that was one of the first hundred or two hundred built. I had the tubes changed in it. I’ve got these newer Russian tubes that were really, really bright. Line 6 gave me one of these Spider 100 watt heads… It’s a Bogner combo thing. That thing is amazing. Also I use a lot of small amps, like little Vox cabinets and little bitty things. Like the one speaker configuration things. A lot of those great records from back in the day, a lot of those great Allman Brothers records and a lot of Jeff Beck’s records, a lot of that stuff when you are making records, the best sounding stuff is in small amps. I’ve got little small Voxs, little small Hi-Watt amps, little small combo things. The biggest guitar sounds that I got on this record were probably out of a little Vox amp with an eight inch speaker. I record a clean direct signal into the computer at the same time I record. I’ll have two mics, like a ribbon and a SM-57, on the one little cabinet. Then I’ll overdub like if I want to use a 4×12 cabinet or something and mix them in or whatever. It just depends. If I’m recording rhythm tracks generally I don’t use as many of the effect things, but there’s no real rules.
WTDP?: If money was no object, what piece of gear would you jump at the chance to have?
Greg: Nothing I can think of. I pretty much have everything I want. I’m very fortunate. I wouldn’t mind having a couple $30,000 Fairchild compressors. Other than that, I really can’t think of anything.
WTDP?: If we found your iPod on a park bench and thumbed through it, what would we see that might surprise us?
Greg: Miles Davis… Bitches Brew, David Bowie… 70′s stuff like Low… Porcupine Tree, Gov’t Mule. It always changes. I love Omar’s work from Mars Volta. I really like his solo stuff and I don’t speak Spanish very well, but some of the stuff that’s sung in Spanish I really like. Quite a bit of Hendrix in there, some Jeff Beck, some of Nel’s solo stuff. There are probably three or four records in there like Draw Breath, Destroy All Nels Cline… Some old Steely Dan stuff on there. Soundgarden… probably a lot of Sly Stone, The Beatles, Tool, Tom Waits.
WTDP?: What happens now? Do the New Czars hit the road?
Greg: We’ve definitely have been talking about that. We’re just trying to see who the most appropriate person to go out with is. I’m in the middle of co-producing this Tommy Bolin tribute record right now with Warren Haynes and Fabrizio Grossi. We’ve got a lot of heavy cats that we are still going to be recording. We’re trying to delegate logistics and scheduling between the rest of us. Paul Ill is involved in a lot of major records over at Linda Perry’s. He works on a lot of different types of music as well. It is something that we want do and we will do. We’ve already been learning the songs. That’s been a real chore because there is so much going on. The other thing we’re trying to figure is who we’re going to have as the fourth member playing my alternate guitar parts.
la
la
