James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg | The Acoustic Guitar Podcast

Guitarists Nathan Salsburg and James Elkington discuss collaboration, instrumental composition, unusual guitar fragrances, and their new album, All Gist.

Thank you to Strings By Mail for sponsoring this episode. Explore guitar strings and special offers at stringsbymail.com.

Additional Resources:

• Order All Gist on Bandcamp.
• Visit James Elkington's website.
• Read our 2018 "Guitar Talk" interview with Elkington.
• Watch our 2018 Acoustic Guitar Sessions video with Salsburg.
• Learn to play Nathan Salsburg’s “B.B.” - a melodic instrumental with an unusual origin.

Support the show:

• Listen to Part 2 on Patreon
• Make a donation on PayPal
• Give a rating and review

The Acoustic Guitar Podcast theme music is composed by Adam Perlmutter and performed for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers.

This episode is hosted by Nick Grizzle, produced by Tanya Gonzalez, and directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi.

The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is produced by the team at Acoustic Guitar magazine, including:

• Publisher: Lyzy Lusterman
• Editorial Director: Adam Perlmutter
• Managing Editor: Kevin Owens
• Creative Director: Joey Lusterman
• Digital Content Director: Stephanie Campos Dal Broi
• Digital Content Manager: Nick Grizzle
• Marketing Services Manager: Tanya Gonzalez

Transcript

Nathan Salsburg: 0:00

He'll spark ideas in me. And you know a song. It's not just like there's something that Jim is playing and then he'll bring to me and I write my part and we're done. Ideas are still coming, the song still takes a shape that would not have been foreseen. It's not just like adding a second part.

James Elkington: 0:13

Oh it, just it goes. It ends up being a completely different thing than I'd be able to come up with by myself.

Nick Grizzle: 0:23

Thank you.

Stephanie Campos: 0:54

Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast. I'm Stephanie Campos. Our usual host, nick Grizzle, is out of the office, so I'm filling in to introduce this episode. A few weeks ago, nick sat down with guitarists Nathan Salzberg and James Elkington to discuss collaboration, instrumental composition, unusual guitar fragrances and their new album All Gist. Before we get started, here is a quick word from the sponsor of this episode. Strings by Mail.

Strings by Mail: 1:24

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Stephanie Campos: 1:53

For more information, visit stringsbymailcom. And thank you for listening. To start our conversation, we asked Elkington and Salzberg how they approach composing for the duo.

Nathan Salsburg: 2:04

Well, it's a much different experience for me writing with Jim or for Jim or in opposition to Jim than it is writing myself. In that, largely like when I'm doing a solo composition, the story unfolds as I kind of play my way through it. You know, obviously, whatever that narrative, voice or plot device is, I can't say, it's left to the listener, I guess. But there's never any preconceived like. There's never any, there's never a plan and there's even less of that playing with Jim. Um, in that, largely well, this record was half and half. Butim will come up with a skeleton of a piece and then I'll come in and try to work my way around.

Nathan Salsburg: 2:47

It's funny because I've never thought about those, the songs that we do, having any sort of like necessarily narrative spirit to them, because it's so kind of experiential for us, it's just so really that these records are made because we love playing guitar together and it's less that we have some sort of a like a story we need telling or, um, any kind of like world we want to create beyond just sort of like the joy of playing together but I think we also share a certain sensibility, or we share a sense of uh, rightness, of how things should go, um, and that's like a, it's a shorthand that we so take for granted, that I'd forget about it a lot of the time, but almost anyone that I've played music with for a long time, that's that's usually the thing that keeps me playing with them is that we don't really have to discuss it that much.

James Elkington: 3:41

If we're coming up with a piece of music, there'll be a um, there'll be a flow to it and a shape to it that we can both kind of agree on. We'll know. We'll both know that when changes need to be made and when things aren't working, and when they are working and um, there's no real necessary, necessarily any rhyme or reason to it. It's just something that we both seem to agree on.

Nick Grizzle: 4:04

Is there a lot of improv when you guys get together to record?

James Elkington: 4:07

Our process is mostly to when we get together, one of us will have an idea, either a gem of an idea or like a full song, and then the other person will try and find their place in it.

Nathan Salsburg: 4:24

Not to keep harping on this point, but when we have made records we make them over extremely limited durations of time, like, say, three, four days max.

Nathan Salsburg: 4:33

And this one was even more of a truncated writing and recording experience because since the last record we made well, jim has two kids, I have one kid I traveled from Louisville, kentucky, up to Chicago where he lives, to make it and we're kind of racing against the clock.

Nathan Salsburg: 4:48

So in some cases, takes that we get are well, in a couple of cases were kind of the best that we could do in the time that we allotted ourselves before we really did hit a wall and said it's just not going to get any better from here, though again, luckily, we've reached a point, especially with this record. We're older now we have less to prove and you know, a record that was always sort of an inspiration, always like an initial inspiration for our playing together, was the, you know, perchance and john renburn record which, as we've said several times on tape, it's just not a great sounding record, it's not like very from the hip. Yeah, and you know, if we can, if, if we can, use that as kind of a talisman, you know, as a, as a as a guide. Um, you just get the songs down.

James Elkington: 5:30

Well enough, like you can feel good about them, you know because the writing process happens almost at the same time as the recording. We'll really just carry on playing that song or that idea or that group of ideas and carry on refining them almost right up to the point where it's time to record them, the point at which we both agree that they have seemed to have reached some sort of shape that we both like. Then we'll, with the limited time that we have, we'll pretty much start recording right then.

Nick Grizzle: 6:02

Was there anything specific about this? This the recording session for this album that stuck out for you, um say, as opposed to the the other two that you've done.

Nathan Salsburg: 6:11

I don't remember the last one that we I only have the Vegas memories of the last two.

James Elkington: 6:16

It's been so long it was a while ago. Well, the first one we did we did at a friend's house, a recording engineer friend of ours called, uh, jonathan shanky, who did a. He did a really good job and that was the first time that nathan and I had recorded together and it was good to not have to worry about recording. I think that's part of the reason why we did it with johnny was because I didn't. I I felt like I was kind of up against it just being able to play the guitar parts without having to worry about whether it was recording well or not.

James Elkington: 6:48

Um, and then the second one, I think, was a little more loose and I didn't mind us recording and it seemed like, um, the second one, I think, because that the first one was so fun to make, I think I felt a little bit more confident. I could, I could probably record it and then you know, anything that wasn't recorded, great, we could maybe fix in the mix or something like that. That was the first time where I was like we'll just record and see what happens. And I think we did it with just one microphone on each guitar. Well, maybe we had two microphones on each guitar, but lots of bleed and and that one turned out fine too. So after that I had a fairly casual approach to actually capturing the stuff.

Nathan Salsburg: 7:30

It is a little bit of a I don't mean to overstate this, but it's vaguely psychedelic because it is so. It's such a concentrated experience and there are. The thing is is because the purpose is to get these extremely new songs down. Like extremely, they've just sort of become incarnate. You get them down and then an hour later you're like what, what? Even what did we do before this one? Like what does that song even sound like? Like it's just they're gone until you go back and listen to them and then they start to sort of you, you know, cement themselves in your brain or whatever. But it really is. It's a very intense, I guess, sort of transcendent musical experience I've had in that sense, like just that it's. It's so concentrated it is.

James Elkington: 8:14

It is really intense if you consider, like, the amount of levels of undo that you go through, just writing the piece and then having to try and perform it, um, while it's kind of fresh in your mind, and then hope that you play it. Well, there's a song on there which is a it's like a medley of french folk tunes, breton folk tunes, that, um was, for whatever reason, just very technically difficult for me to play. But then you're put in that position of like, not only do you want to get through it for yourself, you want to get through it for the other person too, because if you can't play it, then they have to keep playing it too, and they, they might be barely hanging on themselves. So I remember that one that was the only one where it seemed like one or both of us were going to throw our guitars out of the window. I actually I'm not crazy about that tune because I can hear the panic in my fingers.

Nick Grizzle: 9:02

Do Do you listen to your own music often?

James Elkington: 9:06

No only to be reminded of how it goes, nathan, nathan and I have got, we have, uh, we're we're planning on playing some shows in June and, because of the process that Nathan was just telling you about, it's sort of I know that we can get back there.

Nathan Salsburg: 9:22

This. This record came together because we were invited by can I use the name of this publication on this podcast, fretboard journal. Can I say that you have to bleep it out. We did a fretboard journal like a workshop at their summit which they did in chicago a couple years ago, and that was and, and they invited us to do it, we're gonna pass. And we were like, oh, we could come up and learn a couple of the older tunes. And maybe we've been saying for years we wanted to make another record. This could be an opportunity. So we tried to. We relearned a couple of songs from the last record we did and then just leaned into coming up with some new stuff.

Nathan Salsburg: 9:53

And for me certainly, like the biggest lesson learned over the intervening years for me was that, like, do not bring things in a bunch of alternate tunings. Don't do it because you have to first, you have to write those tunings down and keep them somewhere where you'll be able to find them later. And also it's such a pain, Obviously, if we ever were to perform these, as of course we all know to have to jump from tuning to tuning to tuning over the course of a set. So for me, with the exception of one alternate tuning. I'm just playing in drop D's on everything, so it's it is going to be easier when it comes time to you know, cram and relearn these for me so that's you said on this album.

Nathan Salsburg: 10:27

Pretty much everything you're doing is drop d drop d is yeah, both these are in d. There's a couple, a couple ones that are in d, a d, e a d for me, um, but yeah, otherwise it's all drop these I've never really gotten into alternative tunings that much.

James Elkington: 10:41

When we started I was pretty much playing in standard or drop D. It seemed also as a sort of a compositional tool. That's kind of where I feel most comfortable is in standard. But this changed in about 2015, 2016. I started playing in DagCad and I made a couple of albums of songs which are pretty much all in Daggad and I feel really comfortable with that as a tuning now. So when we started playing together, I was more in daggad than I was in standard. I think maybe the nana cherry song. I went back to standard or something for that. But, um, yeah, but the majority of so I'll have to be going between standard and dad gad when we actually play live.

Nick Grizzle: 11:26

God help us, I know I want to go back to that rule. Britannia tune what? Uh, where did those songs come from? You said it was a medley. How many tunes are in that one song that you guys put together?

Nathan Salsburg: 11:40

just two, so I don't know if it's is a medley. Doesn't medley have to be three or more?

James Elkington: 11:46

no, well, no, there's.

Nathan Salsburg: 11:47

I think that there might be a third part to it that we wrote that, you and I wrote yeah, yeah yeah, that's right.

Nathan Salsburg: 11:55

I think we sort of wrote some sort of bridge yeah, one came from, oh lord, um, I have all of these lps of like seventies Breton folk revival groups and they all absolutely blend together the titles. I think this is like purple and folk or something it's called, where they had a tune that I sent Jim and I was like I'd love to do this. It's unidentified, it's just called like dance or something, and I sent it to Jim and said I'd love to do this and he was like, oh, you know, pierre Ben, susan, does some, some does a version of this. We managed to, you know, make a synthesis of those. And then there was the another piece that was, unless I'm getting this wrong I can't remember mick hanley and mikhail o'donnell's group and if you know this record, it's the worst band title of all time celtic folk weave from 1974.

Nathan Salsburg: 12:44

It's like the guys from the Bothy Band. So Mick Canley was a solo artist and then Mikaela Donald played in a band called Scarbrae and then the Bothy Band and made those really great records with the fiddler Kevin Burke. But anyway, there's a tune on that record that also Jim knew in some capacity on the Celtic Folk Weave record and we managed to just jam them together and then put a bridge together. Um, we give none of this provenance on the record. It occurs to me.

Nick Grizzle: 13:10

No one gets any credits, no, where are the tunes themselves from, like how old are these tunes?

Nathan Salsburg: 13:17

great question. Um, I have no idea. I know they're both, you know they're both Breton tunes. Um, I work sort of adjacent to I mean, I mean I work in, I work in the folk, in folk music, but I don't play traditional music. So there are people, of course, who can just hear something and be like, oh yeah, that's definitely like late 17th century, you know that's it.

Nick Grizzle: 13:35

Let's go into the other, the other song that you didn't write entirely Buffalo Stance, the Nina Cherry tune. How did that come up?

Nathan Salsburg: 13:43

Well it started. How did that come up? Well, it started. It happened for me because I was playing the original for my toddler and um was just like god. The song was so great, it's so great, and there are all these wonderful little melodic elements. They're so catchy, they're so beautiful. Um, and I just sent it to jim and I was like we should do this and jim said no bad idea, I idea, I think that's a sane response, you know.

James Elkington: 14:09

Yeah, it was also an instance of Nathan saying, hey, let's do this. Why don't you try and come up with something? You know Buffalo stance, you know for acoustic guitar. I was like, eh, there's a. She has another song called, I think, the single that came out after that because she was, I mean, really big in england. You know, I remember seeing her on top of the pops when I was teenager and loved that song and loved that. That whole record is really good.

Nathan Salsburg: 14:36

Um, but she had another song after that called manchild, which is much more song like, and I was like let's do manchild and nathan said, no, we can do, we can do this and so literally, in a matter of I mean, I really I think it was an hour after we discussed, you know, initially had the back and forth about it jim sent a demo of one guitar sort of tackling the you know constituent melodic most of the constituent melodic elements, buffalo stance, I I lost my mind. It was so good, it was like exactly what I so vaguely imagined, um, and I listened to it over and over. I remember where I was when jim's text came in and I was like I ran downstairs and my wife was like, listen to this, let me just listen to it over and over.

James Elkington: 15:19

It was great we actually, we were both in, weren't we both in kentucky? Weren't we both in louisville? I was in Michigan. Oh, you were in Michigan, that's what it was. So I was in Louisville, where Nathan lives, but he wasn't there. But even sometimes when I am in Louisville, my wife's family, her parents, live in Louisville. She's from Louisville, so sometimes when we are down there we'll both be in the same city at the same time but still not get to see each other. So I couldn't really remember where where it was. But yeah, you were in michigan.

James Elkington: 15:48

But the the key to that was, I guess, was just like I would slowed it down with a view to speeding it back up again.

James Elkington: 15:56

But then I it's it sounded better just kind of moved down tempo wise and, um, yeah, we'd had I mean, we'd had, like we'd had some luck before we did a smith's cover on our previous album. That was, I think that was my idea, but it might have been. We're both big smith's fans, so we might have even discussed it. But that that song, it had occurred to me that if you, you, you could perform. If you sort of slowed that down and finger picked it, it actually sounded you, it would sound not unlike a john fahey song or something. You could still play the melody and some of the guitar parts and it would hang together pretty well. So we already had a kind of system from having done that and we just tried to apply it to buffalo stance, although you have to use your imagination a little bit more, I think, when you're listening to it, to be able to hear where the the parallels are but it'd be said too that we're we don't want to sound like john fahey songs.

James Elkington: 16:55

So no, that was another, you know but I hope, like with the no, I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to sell anything to nathan by saying, hey look, I've got this idea. That sounds like john fahey. That would be not.

James Elkington: 17:06

It wouldn't get me anywhere, since, no matter what we do, people are going to say like this sounds like john fahey, that's right but I have to, I have to resort to other things if I want nathan to be on board with something like hey, this bit it sounds kind of like the misfits, and then I'll be like, oh yeah, that's cool.

Nick Grizzle: 17:23

Yeah, let's do that so Misfits cover next record we actually.

James Elkington: 17:29

I mean, we nearly did do a Misfits cover, didn't we? Yeah, halloween.

Nathan Salsburg: 17:33

Halloween because Halloween in 2015, when we did our last tour, we were touring with Steve Gunn familiar with Steve, our player and songwriter, and he was we. We talked about doing the three of us from doing halloween and it just uh, it was last minute. We gotta get together and it was a great regret of mine.

Nick Grizzle: 17:50

I'm a massive misfits fan, always have been and we were playing on halloween in chicago and I was like, ah, I just always felt like a missed opportunity so, uh, when you're arranging tunes I want to get into this a little bit um, you know, we can talk about arranging like other songs, like the Nin Cherry Tune, but also for your own songs, because you mentioned like one of you will come with an idea or a fully you know sketched out song, and then how does the arranging go? How much pre production do you do, like sending files back and forth, or is it just hey, let's get together? You've heard the song, let's see what comes out. In this moment of three days when we're recording together, what is that process like for you for arranging for two guitars, like that?

James Elkington: 18:39

Well, one thing that we realized was that it's really difficult for us to get a full read on what the other person is doing unless we're both in the room together. So there's actually no point in getting too far down the road with an arrangement. Also, nathan and I play solo, so we're used to doing the whole thing, whole thing. And uh, I think in the when we started out doing it because, um, I was, I I started out writing tunes for our first album, like 10 years ago, and initially I think maybe I hadn't done a good job of leaving enough space for nathan to be able to work in.

James Elkington: 19:20

You know, I'd actually like get a song to a point where it was presentable almost as a solo piece, and then it doesn't really leave very, very much space to work in. So we've gotten better at coming up with an idea and only getting so far with it. You know, leaving the door open to anything changing, or there's even some things open to anything changing, or there's even some things. I remember writing some stuff where I'd be playing a melody and there would be like a harmony to it or whatever and, um, just simplifying my guitar part just to the just to single note stuff, so that Nathan has room to move around, and he does that with me too with his ideas. I will occasionally be like uh, can you not play so much there so that I can do this?

Nathan Salsburg: 20:10

or stop playing that low note there, I'm going to play that one you know, which does require a little bit of just rethinking one's approach, because again, we don't get to, I don't get to play with any other. I play with my wife, who's a guitar player, but she's a fairly minimal guitar player and um it is. It's a really fun experience in um, you know, not minimalism but in reducing one's you know, I'm just a footprint reducing one's fingerprint. You might say just playing less because it does sound better. You don't want to hear two guitars like going, you know yeah, that's, that's that's.

James Elkington: 20:45

Another concern is that it's it can. I mean it's, it's already pretty noodley, but the there's the there's the potential for it to become kind of unlistenable. Really, you know, like no fun for anyone and we would. We're trying to write songs really is what we're trying to do. We just and and our we happen to have the same voice, which is acoustic guitar, so, um, trying to make those work together is it's really great actually. I mean, we haven't played that many shows. We only played about a week of shows, and there was a long time ago now but, but, um, it's really fantastic to be playing with someone who can shoulder the burden. You know, I can actually like stop playing if I need to, and and know that Nathan will be able to carry on. That's a huge, because I'm used to playing on my own.

Nick Grizzle: 21:40

He's used to playing on his own too so I mean you, you mentioned at first you would write jim, you would write almost fully formed songs, and he had to dial it back, you know, knowing that both of you have that ability to write a song that is fully formed for one guitar. Um, you know playing devil's advocate a little bit here, why write what may seem like an incomplete song just to record a duo? You know what? What is, what is the fun of that, you know?

James Elkington: 22:15

oh, it, just it goes. It ends up being a completely different thing than I'd be able to come up with by myself. It's like um, the, the process that we have is so fun to to work with and it's, if I could, if I could generate that, if I felt like I could generate that on my own, I I would, but um, but uh, no, this is something that like really, we found that the more space we leave in the ideas, um, and the more the then, the more the other person can get to grips with it and actually the the music is better and it gets done quicker. It's like um, you just have to really like leave that, leave that space. Um, we both still do things on our own and they sound very different.

James Elkington: 23:05

This is we. We have, like a particular. We were surprised actually, we hadn't played together for so long, but when we played together for the um the uh aforementioned uh performance um, we were surprised how quickly we got back into it. We have developed a little bit of language and a way of working for ourselves, and it's a way of working that doesn't. I don't do that with anyone else. I don't have that with anyone else.

Nick Grizzle: 23:34

So, Nathan, for you in the songwriting process, would you say you kind of have a similar thought in that you know it's just the songs end up better, or is there any kind of twist in there that you wanted to add to that?

Nathan Salsburg: 23:47

I will say that when I I've gotten better at this over the years, but I I think that I've been guilty in the past. Guilty, I think. Maybe I've been slightly. I've changed my mind about the best way to be a composer and in years past I've written a lot of pieces that I think just kind of kitchen sink approaches. I just couldn't stop coming up with ideas and so I just felt like, while I'm here, I can add this and I can add this and I can add this, and songs just tended to get. They just got, I don't know about busy, but there will be a lot of parts. I happen to be working on a piece right now. That's like one piece, that's like 28 or I mean it's ridiculous, but it's hopefully. Hopefully it'll work. We'll see.

Nathan Salsburg: 24:27

Um, but when it comes to running with jim, what's what's been, what's really rewarding, is that I don't feel like I need to come up with everything. I can come up with two parts I love playing. Bring them to jim, and not only will he devise some really interesting you know counter voicings or whatever else to flesh out the sort of minimal thing that I brought, but he'll spark ideas in me and you know a song. It's not just like there's something that Jim is playing and then he'll bring to me and I write my part and we're done. Ideas are still coming, the song still takes a shape that would not have been foreseen. It's not just like adding a second part, um and so, and I really like. I really like that because for me it does mean it's kind of. It's just less, less of a burden, it's less of a compositional burden. I don't feel like I have to come. You know, all the ideas don't have to be, doesn't have to be finished before I get there.

Nick Grizzle: 25:13

That's just I want to change gears a little bit and get into gear. What guitars are you guys playing on this record?

James Elkington: 25:20

when we started, I had like a sort of um entry-level martin it had a had a d prefix.

James Elkington: 25:27

Then, oh no, it had a one suffix, that was. It was like a, it was like a triple o, one or an om1 or something like that and um, and that was a nice acoustic guitar for me. At the time I was like I was quite, I was quite pleased with that and it recorded okay. But the first really nice acoustic guitar that I got was the Santa Cruz OM that I have and that's the guitar that is on this record, which I'll come back to. That's why that guitar is mostly on this record.

James Elkington: 25:58

But when I play on my own I have an old J-50 that I really love and the thing that I love about it the most is it doesn't care what I want to do, it just plays the way it plays and it fights back a lot and it's kind of a beast and I just always like how it makes me play. So that's like my more favorite guitar. I also have a Waterloo that I really that I really like. Too much of a mismatch between. Nathan has two nice guitars that sound fairly similar and if I play my J 50 on my waterloo it sounds like I'm playing like a completely different instrument from him in a not great way. Sounds lesser somehow. It's almost like the J 50 like completely needs to be in its own space to work, but when it's, when it's put up against nathan's guitar, it didn't sound that great. So I ended up going back to the om, which is what's on the second record, and um played that pretty much the whole time it's worth saying that the om has a handle.

Nathan Salsburg: 27:13

Sorry, it doesn't make sense. It has a moniker, it has a name. Oh, it does have a name and its name is stinky because it was bought in louisville. Uh, I, a guy, actually jim's mother-in-law went and picked it up and brought it to my house to bring to him, I think was what went, and the guy had this is.

James Elkington: 27:32

this is what happened. I bought it on ebay. It was the most expensive guitar I'd ever bought and I bought it on eBay. I was really, I was really nervous about it. I've been emailing with the guy, but Nathan and the guy was in Louisville and so Nathan lives in Louisville. I called Nathan and said can you go over there and check this guitar out and see if it's good? So he's like fine.

Nathan Salsburg: 27:59

I didn't go over. Remember, didn't't it, didn't it happen that your mom, your, your mother-in-law, brought it to my house to play? Somehow she got involved no, no, no.

James Elkington: 28:07

You went to the house. No, I didn't. You went to the, you did. And then you sat and you called me and you said no, you. You said this is good. And then I hit the buy it button and then you sat there and waited for it to work on it to come up on his phone recollection of this, zero recollection.

James Elkington: 28:24

okay, so that was part one, and then I think you took it home. Acoustic guitar fans love this stuff. They were like tell us more about stinky j Jim, this is gold, this is acoustic guitar gold. You took it home and then my mother in law picked it up from you and a friend of a friend of hers was meeting her daughter in Indianapolis the following day. So she drove to Indianapolis because her daughter was from Chicago and she went to Indianapolis with his guitar and gave it to the daughter. And the daughter drove to my house and handy minuteapolis with this guitar and gave it to the daughter. And the daughter drove to my house and handed me this guitar within 24 hours of me buying it. It was in my hand and it had changed hands four times, but it did not lose any of the fragrance that this man had worn so we need to get into that.

Nick Grizzle: 29:17

where, where did the stinky name come from, right so?

Nathan Salsburg: 29:20

let's go back to that. He was heavily cologned.

Nick Grizzle: 29:24

So are we talking like a Tom Ford or like a Brute for Men? Like what level of cologne?

James Elkington: 29:30

It was kind of Brute-esque, wasn't it? It was Brute-y. Here's what I think happened. You know how we all put on cologne. You know we'd splash it on plays uh, heart gold, and then he's, he's hitting the club anyway. I think that the the process from going like this oh you can't.

Nathan Salsburg: 29:51

No, people don't know what you're doing.

Nick Grizzle: 29:53

It's a podcast so yeah, so you're putting on aftershave, right slapping it on.

James Elkington: 29:57

I'm slapping the aftershave on and then I'm gripping the Santa Cruz manfully and imbuing it with this. I think it must have drunk the wood, must have drunk some of the aftershave or whatever and I would let it gas off for like 10 days at a time and think it was fine, and then I'd put it in the case for like a day and when I'd open the case I'd be back in the club.

Nathan Salsburg: 30:23

It still stinks. I mean it's gotten better, but it does still have a.

James Elkington: 30:25

I don't think I can smell it anymore. Maybe it's just part of me now. Did you smell it?

Nathan Salsburg: 30:30

when you were here? Oh yeah, I smelled it when we were there last time. And how long ago was this? Long enough for me to completely forget going to this guy's house? I have zero recollection of this.

James Elkington: 30:44

probably 12, 12 years ago, 13 years ago probably 12 or 13 years ago, something like that.

Nick Grizzle: 30:48

Oh my gosh it's like when you walk into someone else's house and you can smell their house and they? They don't know because they're in it all the time. Right, that's what the guitar feels like to me.

James Elkington: 30:59

Yes, nathan comes here and he can smell my guitar.

Nathan Salsburg: 31:07

He doesn't like it. Funny actually I'm pivoting to me now I play a Bourgeois J-O-M like their jumbo O-M that Jim and I drove all over Chicagoland like 13 or 14 years ago looking for, not realizing that was. This was a guitar. But it was time for me to upgrade um from like a you know just an entry-level decent, you know 800 or something you know entry-level guild dreadnought. My dad bought me from my yeah, from my um high school graduation and we found this bourgeois.

Nathan Salsburg: 31:39

It was set up for like a like a heavy duty flat picker. Like the action was intense, the belly was kind of gnarly. It's currently just been finished being worked on for like the fourth time in four years. It's not. It's not a super happy guitar, but it is like it's. I love it. It feels so great. I've gotten it where I want it. It sounds fantastic. It it sounds fantastic. It records fantastic. It's really versatile. That guitar I bought a Carrura flight case for some years ago. It's like a Thai company. Some guy I knew was like their American agent gave me a deal and they use, I guess, in Thailand like the most intense hide glue you can imagine and like my, that guitar for 14 years has just stunk like basically a taxidermied animal. I mean, the high glue is so, so intense and it's let up not at all. So we both have our um particularly, you know, noisome instruments.

James Elkington: 32:31

They're marked with theirs I can't smell that, obviously because I'm in a fog of brute the whole time, so I don't I've. I don't know what he's talking about, but I'm sure it's awful.

Nick Grizzle: 32:41

So is that the guitar, the hide, glue, scented treasure? Is that what's on this album? Yeah, no, it's not. Yeah, no, it is.

James Elkington: 32:50

It is. I thought it was in the shop. I thought you played the bourgeois, so Nathan also has a bourgeois, om right?

Nathan Salsburg: 32:58

Wait, maybe you're right. Was it in the shop then? Because it had a really bad. It had a bridge that people kept like not fixing.

James Elkington: 33:05

I mean basically that guitar exploded about five times now, so it seems more likely to me that you brought the backup, which?

Nathan Salsburg: 33:15

also records great, yeah, the OM. I can't even remember. Now, that's really, really it's funny.

Stephanie Campos: 33:20

You mentioned that that's the end of part one. The conversation continues on patreon. Visit patreoncom slash acoustic guitar plus to get access.