Picture the scene. You are playing a sold-out show at Seattle’s legendary Paramount Theatre, playing in Jason Isbell’s backing band, the 400 Unit, and to close out the set Isbell has an idea. Why not invite Mike McCready onstage to jam on a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing?
Sadler Vaden has been there, four years ago now, but the 400 Unit guitarist can still picture it in his mind’s eye – it’s an experience he is not likely to forget any time soon. For a start, covering Little Wing is no gimme. You’ve got to do the song justice. But then you’ve got the guitarist from Pearl Jam up there with his Fender Stratocaster, too.
“It’s like the question of, it’s not my decision, but do you even do something like this!? It’s Jimi Hendrix, right?” laughs Vaden, joining MusicRadar over Zoom. “I think it was Jason’s idea. But we were in Seattle, it’s Mike McCready, why not? You know what I mean! And I think that we have license to do that because we’re careful with it.
Article continues below“I remember just being really excited, thinking like, ‘We’re doing Little Wing’ with Mike McCready in Seattle, it’s sold out. I just felt like I’m where I’m supposed to be. I never thought I would be here but clearly I’m where I’m supposed to be!’”
Vaden and Isbell had already played a cover earlier in the set, performing R.E.M.’s mid ‘80s classic Driver 8, which had just been recorded and released on Isbell’s 2021 studio album, Georgia blue. But this is a Hendrix in Hendrix's hometown Seattle, playing a track with so much history. Stevie Ray Vaughan's version is also a lodestar for generations of blues guitar players. No pressure. “Yeah, absolutely, and that’s untouchable,” says Vaden. “Everything he did!”
Both Isbell and McCready were on Strats. Vaden, who is here to ostensibly talk about his new signature Gibson SG Standard, was playing a Les Paul. Vaden says he only met McCready earlier in the day.
“I was a kid [when they broke through] but Pearl Jam is of those bands that they’ve sort of transcended all eras, and, I mean, they’re Pearl Jam!” he says. “But that was my first time meeting McCready that night. [He’s] just the nicest guy, musician, just wanted to know about your gear and all that kind of stuff, and those are the things I remember.”
The list of classic electric guitar classics that have been informally banned in guitar stores worldwide probably began with Stairway To Heaven but has most definitely expanded over the years to include Enter Sandman, Wonderwall, Seven Nation Army and you could probably through John Mayer’s Slow Dancing In A Burning Room in there too. Little Wing is surely in there, too. Everyone plays it.
So how did Vaden and Isbell approach it as not to receive a blanket ban from the Guitar Center network across the continental US? Sadler admits that covering the standards is not easy. There is an art to it.
“Yeah, for me, any time I’ve ever done something like that, it’s hard,” he says. “I’m not Jimi Hendrix, but I also want to honour it a little bit, so I try to find that happy medium of just expressing myself, and putting my own soul into it, but also having little – I call them checkpoints. Any time I do a solo, there’s a lot of improvisation, but I have little checkpoints that I like to hit.”
There don’t need to be that many checkpoints. The key was trusting the audience to fill in the blanks, and throwing in some note-for-note Hendrix licks when the time was right. So long as Vader remembers where they go, he’s all right.
“After I make that checkpoint, I can take some off-roads, I can go off the GPS or take some different routes,” he explains. “But then find my way back! With something like Little Wing, for me it was important to express myself, to put myself into it, but then hit a melody line or something, just to bring people into it, and have their ear grab a hold of it.”
McCready was no slouch either. He’s been around the block. He knows just what to do.
“Oh, he was great,” says Vaden. “Yeah, he’s amazing! Right when he started soloing, he went back and turned every knob up on the amp that he was playing through, just all the way up. [Laughs] It was great.”
In a three-guitar jam, the most important thing to do is to listen to what everyone else is doing. And to be ready.
“When we got onstage and started going, it’s kind of like I’m thinking, ‘I don’t have the ball. Mike McCready has the ball.’ So I’m gonna find my way in wherever I can get in,” says Vaden. “If and when someone looks over and says, ‘Go!’ I’ll be ready. And also hearing, ‘Who’s gonna do the rotary tone?’ Kind of waiting [to hear] who’s gonna do certain licks. I don’t want to step on those when they come around.’”
Vaden is lucky enough to have a few of these all-star jams under his belt. The McCready jam has to be up there with the best but is it the best jam he’s had with someone who is in the pantheon, someone who is—
“—A rock star!?”
Vaden’s not sure. A few special nights are coming back to him here.
We did In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed by the Allman Brothers, and Jerry Douglas got up, he brought his Dobro, and that was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever been a part of
“Umm, let me think. We did play with Chuck Leavell in Memphis,” he says. “We did In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed – we’ve had Warren Haynes play In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed with us as well, so having Chuck Leavell up there was amazing, and Warren too.
“One of the best best jams I’ve had was I was doing my own thing on a music cruise, and Jason got up and, once again, we did In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed by the Allman Brothers, and Jerry Douglas got up, he brought his Dobro, and that was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever been a part of! Me and Jason just stopped soloing when Jerry Douglas was here. But we’ve had a lot of great moments like that.”
Vaden laughs. This is to hard to call. But then one performance in 2018 with David Crosby springs to mind, playing the song Neil Young wrote about the Kent State Shootings in 1970.
“David Crosby! Probably playing with David Crosby, doing Ohio with David Crosby, multiple times,” he says “But at Newport Folk Fest one year, I would say that probably is the high. That probably was the best.”
The Sadler Vaden SG Standard is available now, priced $1,999. See Gibson for more details.
