Myles Kennedy has made no secret over the years that the late Jeff Buckley is one of his biggest musical heroes.

Speaking to MusicRadar in January, the Alter Bridge frontman placed Buckley, alongside Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Stevie Wonder and Ella Fitzgerald on the pantheon of his biggest influences.

“The vocalists I looked to would have been Stevie Wonder, that was probably the very first one, and then Jeff Buckley was a massive influence,” he said, emphasis on massive interviewee’s own. “Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, together in the ‘90s, were big influences on me. And as the years have gone on – this is going to sound kind of interesting – I love female singers, and there’s just something about Ella Fitzgerald, and I could listen to her forever.”

So in 2019, when Kennedy got the opportunity to perform a cover of Buckley’s Hallelujah, when Alter Bridge played L’Olympia in Paris, using Buckley’s modded 1983 Fender Telecaster, it was officially a big deal. It was the first time the Tele had been played in public since Buckley’s death in 1997. Matt Lucas, of legendary Parisian vintage gear emporium, Matt’s Guitar Store, lent Kennedy it for the occasion.

And in a recent interview with Guitarist, Kennedy admits that it the prospect brought him out in a cold sweat. Sometimes a guitar has too much cultural and cosmic weight to pick up. This he needed to talk himself into.

“Playing Jeff’s guitar was amazing, though I truly didn’t feel worthy of it,” says Kennedy. “I was a little uncomfortable, to be honest. I gradually convinced myself that it was okay. It’s just a guitar that’s part of this incredible history. All I had to do was not taint that history.”

And there is a lot of history. Buckley’s version of Hallelujah was in many/most critics’ opinion the definitive take on Leonard Cohen’s original. “Grace is an album that gave me the same feeling as hearing Eruption,” says Kennedy.

Kennedy’s performance was captured on video for posterity. You can check it out on YouTube [below] and judge for yourself whether he did it justice (1.8mn views, 40k-plus likes, circa 300 dislikes delivered a consensus of sorts that he most definitely did).

As for that tone you’re hearing in the video, Kennedy explains to Guitarist that, like, say, Kirk Hammett’s Greeny Les Paul, there’s something “technically wrong” with the wiring and that gives it the secret sauce.

“It’s just an early-to-mid ’80s Tele, but there’s something weird about how the pickup was wired,” he says. “Apparently, there’s something technically wrong with it, at least from what Matt Lucas explained to me. That’s what gives it that beautiful shimmery sound. It’s all down to this imperfection, which makes it even cooler. When you plug it in, you think, ‘Oh yeah, there’s that sound!’”

The listing on Matt’s Guitar Shop offers some insights as to what made Buckley’s Tele exceptional. After all, a 1983 Telecaster doesn’t necessarily excite a collector in the same way as a Nocaster or ’51 Blackguard would. But this was a little unusual in that it had been modded with a Seymour Duncan Hot Lead Stack, a noiseless pickup based around an Alnico V bar magnet that has a warmer character than your typical Tele bridge pickup. It has a bit more output, too.

The original pickguard had been switched out for a mirrored ‘guard (like Chrissie Hynde's Telecaster, and this had an unusual top-loading six-saddle bridge, which as Matt’s Guitar Store notes, “usually adds some snappiness” to the tone. So, then, a one-off Tele. Perhaps with this being the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster, and Fender having already launched a number of limited run Teles to mark the occasion, maybe we might see an official replica. Who can say?

What we can say is that Buckley changed Kennedy’s life. Speaking to MusicRadar in September 2019, just a couple of months before he performed Hallelujah in Paris, Kennedy explained how Buckley opened him up to a new way of singing.

““Jeff was such an important musical figure in my evolution, especially in the early to mid-90s,” said Kennedy. ““Jeff was such an important musical figure in my evolution, especially in the early to mid ‘90s. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what was happening in Seattle. I’m from the Pacific Northwest and am very proud of all those bands and how much they affected music. But at that stage in my development, I was really trying to figure out how to integrate blues and RnB into what I was doing, to help inspire my own sound… I was just looking for guide posts.

“When Jeff Buckley came out, there was such a level of musicianship and emotive quality to his voice that really appealed to me. He had this angelic sound which I hadn’t heard many male singers utilise. He used a lot of falsetto and soft-spoken ideas, almost more of a feminine side, which I thought was really interesting.”

But Buckley had power, too, and that did not go unnoticed. That sense of dynamic range is something that you can hear in Kennedy’s vocals, too.

“He had this power in his upper register,” added Kennedy. “It was ferocious when he went into those almost Robert Plant-style wails, then he would bring it down into something very soft that would draw you in. It was his sense of dynamics and that overall control over his voice that really appealed to me. Grace is a truly brilliant album… I think we were robbed of a great talent there.”

Alter Bridge’s self-titled album is out now via Napalm Records.

• “Being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true”: Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti on recording at the studio that Eddie Van Halen built
• Burned out recording vocals? Myles Kennedy shares his top for getting the perfect take

If you caught Myles Kennedy live in concert in 2025, you will have seen a bass guitar in action that few people outside of the EVH Gear inner circle have even laid eyes on – a prototype four-string that may be coming soon to a guitar store near you. Some day. But not today.

For now, this bass is owned by Kennedy’s bassist, Tim Tournier, and at last summer’s Norway’s Tons of Rock Festival, he gave us a guided tour of its features, and explained how this was a first.

No one had ever given him an instrument before, but courtesy of his good friend Wolfgang Van Halen, here was this, a one of two prototype EVH Wolfgang bass, custom-built by EVG Gear master builder Chip Ellis.

The other one? That’s owned by Wolfgang, and presumably that’s the relic’d one that we have seen being played live by Mammoth touring bassist Ronnie Ficarro. As Tournier explained, Ficarro has been a willing guinea pig for this EVH bass.

“There’s two earlier versions of this that Ed [Van Halen] was working on for years that then got taken out with Mammoth,” says Tournier. “And the bass player in Mammoth, Ronnie, really put it through its paces – which has been the EVH mantra forever, ‘cos if you’re gonna develop something and put out a product, it needs to go out on the road, be toured, learn everything you can about it, how you can make it better.

“I played it, just at Mammoth show, and fell in love with it, so Wolf and Matt Bruck, who run [the] EVH brand, made this one for me.”

And Tournier is busy putting this one through its paces. It is similarly spec’d to the white prototype. His is finished in gold, matching painted headstock FTW, dual humbuckers and there’s – what’s that? – over-sized selector dial dominating the controls. That’s too cool.

What gets Tournier really excited, however, are the pickups. We’ll let him explain why in the video above, and also explain how a lifelong guitarist ended up on bass, and playing bass for one of rock-and-metal’s blue chip stars.

But then Tournier has done pretty much every other job in music (he's current filling in on guitar for Sevendust while managing Alter Bridge, Creed and guitarist Mark Tremonti’s solo band) so maybe it was just a matter of time before he ended up playing bass with Kennedy.

Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Yungblud and more have been confirmed for Tons Of Rock 2026. See Tons Of Rock for ticket details. Myles Kennedy's Art Of Letting Go is out now via Napalm.

• Myles Kennedy on why karaoke “terrifies” him, the secret to a perfect take – and the hardest Guns N’ Roses song to sing live with Slash
• Burned out recording vocals? Myles Kennedy shares his top for getting the perfect take

If Mark Tremonti is feeling any jet lag from flying into London for a round of press interviews for Alter Bridge’s eponymous new studio album, he isn’t showing it.

Here in a well-kempt west London hotel, it could be the coffee doing its thing, or it could just be that Tremonti and Alter Bridge frontman/guitarist Myles Kennedy are still basking in the afterglow of getting to make an album in 5150 Studios, the Los Angeles recording facility that the late Eddie Van Halen built from the ground up.

It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, tracking with their favourite producer, Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, in a studio both describe as a “sacred” space, all thanks to an invite from long-time friend and now owner of the studio, Wolfgang Van Halen.

“We’ve had such a long relationship. We love hanging out,” says Tremonti. “We’d go to 5150, he’d come hang out with us, we’d go out have dinner with him, and he’d let us into his sacred studio.”

Inside there was all kinds of stuff. There was a 5150 III tube amp that made converts of both Kennedy and Tremonti to the merits of the 50-watt head. There was some other stuff that you might call “sacred” too. Tremonti says they knew where the limit was. They didn’t actually play Eddie Van Halen’s instruments on the record. “No, no… We didn’t want to push it! ‘Can we play this on the record!?’ No, we respected the space,” he says. “It wasn’t something that we deserve.”

But there was everything they needed. Tremonti’s electric guitar tone has never sounded so good, and that was the platform he needed.

Tracks such as Silent Divide (where you really hear that 5150 III cook) and the wah-squawk of Playing Aces, both shared ahead of the album’s release on 9 January, are Tremonti pushing the envelope – because, as he admits here, in an interview in which he reveals his most underrated player, soloing strategies and discusses his Dumble addiction, he feels he is “yet to arrive” as a player.

Tremonti insists he is learning new things all the time – he's right now in the process of reinventing his picking style – and that is making him feel like a kid all over again. Is that so bad?

What guitar did you learn on?

“Well I had two older brothers who were huge music fans. My brother Mike was into KISS and Ace Frehley had this black, awesome Les Paul that I thought that was the coolest. A black Les Paul was something that I was just obsessed with. That’s when my friend, Geoff Blake, back in middle school, maybe sixth or seventh grade, he had said, ‘I’m buying a nicer guitar. I’ll sell you mine. Ten bucks.’

“It was black Les Paul imitation called Tara. I can’t remember how it played. It was so long ago. But to me it was amazing. [Was it a bolt-on?] No, it wasn’t! And I sold it for a hundred bucks and made ten times my investment on it. I wish I had kept that sucker but, y’know, I betcha I could put my eye out to find one just to reminisce.”

Was there a moment where you felt you had arrived as a player?

“I don’t. I feel like there is so much to learn, all the time, that I have just scratched the surface, but I have always focused more on songwriting. The guitar playing has kinda come along for the ride.

One of the most fun times as a player is after you’ve recorded a record, and then it’s like, ‘I don’t have to worry about the songwriting. I can just play fun lead guitar stuff.’ But my main focus has always been on songwriting so the lead guitar thing is fun but it’s not my number one.”

You never feel like you make it. There’s always something else to learn. The guitar humbles you.

“Oh it does, yeah. Every time I learn something new I feel like I’m a kid again. ‘Urgh! I suck at this.’ It takes a while to get it. And I have learned something about my playing that I have just given in to; I lean heavily on upstrokes, when probably 90 to 95 per cent of players are downstrokes.

“You see a lot of players who almost exclusively play downstrokes. My upstroke, when I am learning a lick that someone is playing, I’ve got to reinvent it for myself, because I’m a different player.”

That is a good thing, though, because sometimes these foibles give you the style that makes you you.

“Yeah. One of the biggest compliments you can get as a guitar player is when somebody says, ‘When I hear you play, I can tell it’s you.’ Because you can fall into the trap of learning, say, I’m obsessed with Steve Vai, and I learn all Steve Vai’s stuff. ‘Oh, you sound like Steve Vai!’ No, I want to sound like myself, but at the same time I wish I could play some of those Steve Vai licks as well as some other people!”

This is related. What is the technique you tried hardest to learn?

“Well, I am learning new techniques all the time. Right now I am trying to incorporate more economy picking into my playing because I used to think alternate picking is the way I want to play. I want to hear that snap of the attack. But more and more I just figure out patterns where I can get that attack and aggressiveness with the economy picking.

“I think what threw me off initially was I was trying to play like Frank Gambale or Eric Johnson. Like Eric, I would guess has got a light approach to his pick, and I have a very aggressive approach, so some of his lines wouldn’t necessarily work – it would work when I am sitting at home with the guitar on my lap but when I am onstage and have the adrenaline going, all that stuff is out the window, so I had to figure out ways to make it work for me.

“There is a lick I learned from a Zakk Wylde solo when I was younger that has some more aggressive economy picking, and I was like, ‘Okay, this can work for me. I just have to find the right avenues.’”

There is too much heartbeat going on when you are up onstage. That makes you you. You are so clean with that picking. And it jives with your amp choices. The Dumbles especially have a really fast attack. You like that immediate note transfer.

“I like a very quick attack. And a lot of people have said that about the Dumbles is that it’s uncomfortable because it’s such a quick response, but the quicker the better for me. I love it. And the reason why I like Dumbles is that it makes me play differently. If I sit down with a Dumble, the last thing I’m going to do is do any kind of fast techniques.

“I just want to express with a Dumble. You want the amp to sound good, so you are playing chord voicings, doublestops, things that bring out the best tones out of the amplifier – it’s not the shreddy techniques. It’s the bloom.

“It’s an addiction. I love it. Dumbles are definitely my addiction, and they’ve gotten so pricey it’s tough. The only reason why I can keep on buying and selling is because I can trade one.”

What do you play when you are just relaxing with the guitar?

“I’ll improvise. When I do guitar clinics, the first thing I start out with is improvisation. I tell people that that’s my warm-up. I just put on a backing track, pretend that grandma is in the room, and then I’ll play something sweet, start with a limited range of notes and then develop it, build up.”

Who would you say is the most underrated guitarist out there at the moment? And is he in your band?

“Myles! Like, when we first started in this band, I had no idea that he was that good on guitar. I remember walking down, he wasn’t even recording guitar on this record, I was walking by the room he was staying in at my house, and I remember hearing all this jazz guitar coming out. I opened the door to see what he was doing and he had the guitar in his hands; it was him playing the jazz. It was like, ‘You sonofabitch! I had no idea!?’ So that became our new secret weapon.

Because me and Myles’ styles have gotten more similar on the songwriting side of things but as guitar players we have different styles. I think Myles’ vibrato and feel is some of the best I’ve ever heard.”

It’s because he is such a great vocalist it pulls focus. Okay, here’s one: what is the greatest solo of all time?

“Greatest solo of all time? I’d go back to Comfortably Numb as something that you can’t ague with. It’s just the most emotive piece of music. [Both solos?] Yeah, actually right through the entire song. Another song that I think is a beautiful piece of music is Lenny… Like the point you make, it’s not the 20-second solo because there is solos throughout the song.”

This is something you do in Alter Bridge. Lead guitar is often this thread through the song rather than always just being the solo.

“Yeah, a lot of the solos on this record – and a lot of Alter Bridge records – are written in alternate tunings. I love writing in alternate tunings because you are not going to use the same patterns that you normally would.

“If I am playing a song that’s in standard tuning, I’ll rely heavily on pentatonics and diatonic scales that I am familiar with, but in an alternate tuning, I have to dive in and go, ‘Woah! What am I gonna do!? What open strings work? What little patterns can I remember quickly?’ And I have always been a pattern player to begin with, so with alternate tunings, you take that to my younger self, say, ‘Okay, these picking patterns work. How can I use them?’”

Which young guitarist should we be listening to right now? Who is blowing your mind?

“[Without hesitation] Oh, Matteo Mancuso. He is blowing everybody’s minds. And it’s not the kind of style you can just go and learn. His fingerstyle, it [takes] years and years.”

The thing about being fronting a rock band is that you’ve got to be cerebral enough to write lyrics and record the music and yet dumb enough to actually perform it, to throw yourself out there night after night without a second’s thought.

There is a time when the brain has to be shut down. Instinct takes over. Myles Kennedy knows this only too well, fronting Alter Bridge, playing with Slash and the Conspirators, performing solo.

“Well it’s either a talent or just too dumb not to know not to step into the arena, dumb enough to step into the ring,” he says. “You’ve got to be dumb enough not to know when to quit.”

Kennedy is joining us in an ante room in a west London hotel ahead of the launch of Alter Bridge’s eponymous studio album, which is out on 9 January through Napalm.

He and Tremonti have told us all about the surreal, once-in-a-lifetime experience of recording at 5150 Studios, and now Kennedy is going to talk all things vocals, how he takes care of it, the singers who influenced the most, and how he and Alter Bridge producer, Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette found the secret to getting the perfect take in the studio.

Oh, and while he was with us, we had to ask which of W. Axl Rose’s vocal performances were the hardest to replicate when out onstage with Slash.

Was there a moment when you thought that you had found your own identity as a vocalist?

“Oh, man. It took a long time! [Laughs] Because I think I was listening to too much of any specific artist and then it ends up rubbing off [on you]. I think I finally felt it about 10 years ago. I don’t know if I could pinpoint a certain moment but I thought, ‘Okay, this is who I am.’ And it really did take a long time. Some people find it in their early 20s, on their first few records – some people find it even earlier than that. For me, I had to do a bit of experimenting.”

Speaking to Mark, he says there is always something else to explore. Is that how you see it, that’s there’s more to learn with guitar over time?

“Definitely more on guitar. The vocal element? I feel that I am content with it. I don’t know if I am going to chase that down. I want to chase down more songs. You still want to write the song, right? Which I personally feel I will never achieve.”

When you do it is time to give up.

“Yeah, absolutely. If you think you’ve written The Song, you should give it up. But as a guitar player there is so much I want to learn and evolve with, without a doubt.”

Which singers have been the biggest influence on your voice?

“The vocalists I looked to would have been Stevie Wonder, that was probably the very first one, and then Jeff Buckley was a massive influence. Like, Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, together in the ‘90s, were big influences on me. And as the years have gone on – this is going to sound kind of interesting – I love female singers, and there’s just something about Ella Fitzgerald, and I could listen to her forever.”

How do you keep your voice in shape on the road?

“It is a life of no fun! [Laughs] It’s the lonely, lonely life of a singer. You sing and you go, you get to the bus, you shut up, and you get to your bunk and you get as much sleep as you can. And you don’t party. You don’t talk a lot.

“I think a lot of people assume I am kind of standoffish when I am touring because I am not talking. Some guys have a real fortitude that way, who just talk all day, and do press, and they can still do a great show, but the way my voice is, maybe because I am accessing so much of the range, it just gets real finicky so I have to put it away.”

You park yourself in the upper limits of your range – that’s demanding on the voice.

“Yeah, it is demanding – especially the older you get.”

Has it ever failed you?

“Oh, sure! Yeah.”

How do you get through that?

“With maximum amounts of stress! [Laughs] It has failed mainly due to getting ill. That’s the thing. As far as the technique and all that, I have figured out how to use it, how to utilise that and get through the tour, but if you get a respiratory infection there is only so much you can do.”

This is related to what we were talking about earlier about recording at 5150 Studios, and capturing the live energy, but how do you bring that into the vocal booth? Because the two scenarios are quite different.

“Yeah, they are different, and it’s interesting because the way I do it now, let’s say with vocals, that’s one thing where Elvis has really figured this out for my voice – he knows my voice better than any producer I have worked with because we have done so many records together – and it’s the idea of, ‘Right, we’re going to sing this down, we’re going to get it to open up, make sure everything sounds right, with preamps setup for the volume, blah blah blah.’

“But one thing we do is we’ll hit a certain part really hard, give it maximum intensity, and then let it rest for a few minutes. Instead of just going, ‘Okay, we’re going to do three passes, just give it a 100 per cent, and then we’ll put a comp together and take it from there.’ What we do is we’ll focus on a section, know what we need to do, and that way we are in and out of there – sometimes in an hour-and-a-half! – and we’re done with the track.

“It used to be, you’d be turning it in, just singing it down, singing it down, singing down and singing it down, and then the voice would get worn, it would get tired. Instead, you keep your voice fresh all the time. You just have a finite amount of power and pitch control, and once that stops with the human voice, okay, just put it away.”

What is the last song you sang at karoake?

“Karaoke terrifies me. The last time I did karaoke was in 2008. I think it was on my birthday, and we were on tour, and Mark and the guys got me very drunk.

“In fact this was probably one of the last times I drank on the road because they just obliterated me. We went to a bar down the road from the gig, I sang Here I Go Again by Whitesnake… And there I went! That was the last time I ever A) sang at karaoke, and B) got inebriated while on tour.”

You have to sing Guns N’ Roses songs and that isn’t easy with Axl, because he has this natural drive in his voice.

“He does. He’s got that overdrive, and the range! Incredible range.”

So, what is the hardest GNR track to sing live?

“I would say the hardest one for me is probably My Michelle, just because it’s so intense. But man, I love that song. Oftentimes, the songs I love the most are the most difficult to pull off. That one is definitely a challenge.”

What is your best vocal performance?

“Oh man! That’s a good question. My best vocal performance? I’m still waiting for that one. [Laughs]”

What like was it like tracking vocals at 5150 Studios?

“Interestingly enough, I didn’t track vocals at 5150. We finished guitars and vocals in Florida. And I will say there, there was a [Sheffield Labs] microphone that I borrowed from Mark that he got from Paul Reed Smith, which has been saying forever, ‘You gotta try this mic!” And sure enough, this mic is magical. And Elvis changed his preamps.

“He got a new console, and we basically ran through a Fairchild-esque compressor, that has all the sonic hallmarks of a Fairchild, and whatever that chain is, man, it just made it so much easier to track vocals because you can hear every detail. It helped me with the pitch. It helped me with everything.”

Red light fever. Do you suffer from it and how do you cope with it?

“No. I think I’ve been making records for so long that I am very comfortable in the studio., I don’t want to say too comfortable but I used to get red light fever as a young artist. I don’t really get it [now] but you know when I do get red light fever, it’s any sort of live television thing.”

Jimmy Kimmel.

“Yeah, like, big time! Totally.”

Are there any lyrics that you have been embarrassed by?

“Oh man, I can definitely tell you there have been moments as a performer that I have been embarrassed by, just by the way I was presenting myself. I went through a phase there, right after 2010, I was just trying to find how to present myself differently from when I was performing with Alter Bridge and Slash, and I kinda had some missteps there. Poor wardrobe decisions! [Laughs]”

• Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

Recording an album isn’t easy on anyone. It’s a marathon process. It’s hard enough on the guitar players, trying over and over to nail the perfect take, but it can be brutal on vocalists. There is only so much load the voice can handle.

Myles Kennedy knows this only too well. Vocal burnout is real. The Alter Bridge frontman and co-conspirator of Slash says it takes monastic discipline to keep his voice in working order when on tour.

“It is a life of no fun! [Laughs] It’s the lonely, lonely life of a singer,” he says. “You sing and you go, you get to the bus, you shut up, and you get to your bunk and you get as much sleep as you can. And you don’t party. You don’t talk a lot.”

In the vocal booth, it requires a more calculated approach, and over time he and Alter Bridge’s long-standing producer, Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, have got it down to a tee.

It wasn’t always like this.

“You’d be turning it in, just singing it down, singing it down, singing down and singing it down, and then the voice would get worn, it would get tired,” says Kennedy.

The secret is to pick your moments. Baskette knows when to push Kennedy’s voice, and crucially when to rest it. It’s all about maximising how much energy is left in it.

“You just have a finite amount of power and pitch control, and once that stops with the human voice, okay, just put it away,” says Kennedy.

Some producers might ask for a best of three then let the singer rest. The takes can be comped together to see what works. But Baskette is a a little more exacting about what he wants from Kennedy. They get the vocal engineering down cold so everything is all set up.

“It’s the idea of, ‘Right, we’re going to sing this down, we’re going to get it to open up, make sure everything sounds right, with preamps setup for the volume, blah blah blah…’”

They go over the song, take it section by section, and let it rip.

“Elvis has really figured this out for my voice – he knows my voice better than any producer I have worked with because we have done so many records together,” says Kennedy. “One thing we do is we’ll hit a certain part really hard, give it maximum intensity, and then let it rest for a few minutes.

State-Sanctioned Killings for Drug Offences in East and Southeast AsiaInstead of just going, ‘Okay, we’re going to do three passes, just give it a 100 per cent, and then we’ll put a comp together and take it from there.’ What we do is we’ll focus on a section, know what we need to do, and that way we are in and out of there – sometimes in an hour-and-a-half! – and we’re done with the track.”

Alter Bridge recorded the lion’s share of their new studio album at 5150 Studios, in Los Angeles, the recording facility built from the ground up by the late Eddie Van Halen, which is now owned by his son, Wolfgang.

With Wolfgang a close friend of the bend – playing in Tremonti’s solo band for a while and sharing management – he extended an invite that no one in Alter Bridge was going to think twice about.

“It was literally, the minute we walked in the door, it was very Wayne’s World. ‘We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!’” said Kennedy. “Being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true. I think Mark and I can both testify to that.”

You can read about Alter Bridge’s experience of recording at 5150 Studios here.

• Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

Mark Tremonti has no trouble putting a guitar solo together. That’s the fun bit for the Alter Bridge guitarist, an moment to cut loose once the difficult business of songwriting has been done.

“I have always focused more on songwriting. The guitar playing has kinda come along for the ride,” he says. “One of the most fun times as a player is after you’ve recorded a record, and then it’s like, ‘I don’t have to worry about the songwriting. I can just play fun lead guitar stuff.’”

But lead guitar is only fun if you feel like you are saying something meaningful in a solo. Those bars have to count.

First of all, that solo has to sound like you.

“One of the biggest compliments you can get as a guitar player is when somebody says, ‘When I hear you play, I can tell it’s you,’” says Tremonti. “Because you can fall into the trap of learning, say, I’m obsessed with Steve Vai, and I learn all Steve Vai’s stuff. ‘Oh, you sound like Steve Vai!’ No, I want to sound like myself.

“[Pauses] But at the same time I wish I could play some of those Steve Vai licks as well as some other people!”

Luckily, everyone has something that is unique about their style before they even consider the solo. Sometimes that something takes a while to notice.

Tremonti admits it was only recently that he realised he was swimming against the tide; where most players rely on downstrokes, he relies more on upstrokes – it means when he learns someone else’s lick he already has to “reinvent” it for his style.

“I am learning new techniques all the time,” he says. “Right now I am trying to incorporate more economy picking into my playing.”

But that’s just the picking. That’s how Tremonti is going to actually play the notes. He has a more developed strategy – proven over time – for choosing the right notes in a solo, and it involves getting his Boss TU-3 out and getting his electric guitar out of standard tuning.

Because that forces him not to rely on the scalar patterns that are hard-wired into all of us through practice and habit.

“A lot of the solos on this record – and a lot of Alter Bridge records – are written in alternate tunings. I love writing in alternate tunings because you are not going to use the same patterns that you normally would,” he says. “If I am playing a song that’s in standard tuning, I’ll rely heavily on pentatonics and diatonic scales that I am familiar with, but in an alternate tuning, I have to dive in and go, ‘Woah! What am I gonna do!? What open strings work? What little patterns can I remember quickly?’

“I have always been a pattern player to begin with, so with alternate tunings, you take that to my younger self, say, ‘Okay, these picking patterns work. How can I use them?’”

Tremonti has long deployed alternate tunings for Alter Bridge, Creed and his solo band. Sometimes those alternate tunings are simple/commonplace, such as Drop D on Creed’s Torn.

Sometimes they’re a bit more unorthodox – at least in metal guitar. Open D5 (DADADD) is a favourite (Open Your Eyes, etc), and often deployed a half-step down on (Ghost of Days Gone By). Looking to bust out of the same old riffs, the same old patterns? The guitar tuner is your friend.

You can read MusicRadar’s conversation with Mark Tremonti in full soon. But we’ll leave you with this. After all this talk of soloing, what does Tremonti consider the greatest guitar solo of all time?

“Greatest solo of all time? I’d go back to Comfortably Numb as something that you can’t ague with. It’s just the most emotive piece of music. [Both solos?] Yeah, actually right through the entire song. Another song that I think is a beautiful piece of music is [Stevie Ray Vaughan’s] Lenny.”

Funny enough, back in 2011, we conducted an online poll on the greatest guitar solo of all time. David Gilmour’s Comfortably Numb solo (taken from Pink Floyd’s 1995 live album, Pulse) was predictable high-charting at fifth spot. Number one? Alter Bridge’s Blackbird.

“It was an immense honour to be nominated in this poll. Looking at the other listed nominees it seemed absolutely impossible to win,” said Tremonti. “We definitely feel unworthy and want to thank our die-hard fan base for voting!”

• Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

Choosing the right guitar amp is just as important as choosing the right guitar, especially once you build up your chops and establish a sense of your own style.

Some amps just feel right. Others make you feel like you have never played the instrument before. And then there are those that make you see the electric guitar in a totally different light. That’s how Mark Tremonti, riffer-in-chief for Creed and Alter Bridge, fell head over heals for Dumble tube amps.

We’re in a hotel in west London, discussing the finer points of what it is like to actually record in 5150 Studios, the purpose-built LA recording studio of Eddie Van Halen’s now owned by his son, Wolfgang. Alter Bridge just tracked their new self-titled album there, which is out on 9 January 2026. And, inevitably, the conversation turns to amps. Tremonti is famously a Dumble devotee.

Speaking to AMS in 2024, he said it’s like… like this big, warm hug. “You plug into a great Dumble and it is this awe-inspiring warm feeling you get,” he says. “Dumbles, to me, are the best amps ever made.”

But it’s not just how they make Tremonti feel; it’s how they make him play, too. Choosing an amp is as much about that connection as it is about the sound itself. Dumbles? People debate if there really is a quote/unquote Dumble sound, and yet what they can agree on is that the dynamics are godly, and the note response super-fast.

Tremonti can’t get enough of that.

“I like a very quick attack. And a lot of people have said that about the Dumbles is that it’s uncomfortable because it’s such a quick response, but the quicker the better for me,” he says. “I love it, and the reason why I like Dumbles is that it makes me play differently.”

Tremonti says the Dumbles encourage him to take a moment and breathe with his playing. They’re not shred amplifiers.

“If I sit down with a Dumble, the last thing I’m going to do is do any kind of fast techniques,” he says. “I just want to express with a Dumble. You want the amp to sound good, so you are playing chord voicings, doublestops, things that bring out the best tones out of the amplifier – it’s not the shreddy techniques.”

It’a about letting the note breathe, too.

“It’s the bloom. It’s an addiction,” he says. “I love it. Dumbles are definitely my addiction, and they’ve gotten so pricey it’s tough. The only reason why I can keep on buying and selling is because I can trade one.”

Tremonti blames Paul Reed Smith for giving him the Dumble bug, which is ironic given that Smith designed and manufactures Tremonti’s signature amps, the MT100 and its lower-wattage sibling, the MT15. It was a 50-watter. Tremonti will never forget it – not least that Smith did promise to give him it and yet it slipped through his fingers.

Not all of them have been to Tremonti’s taste. His sold his first Dumble after finding it “too bright and hard and stiff”. His favourite is a prototype Overdrive Deluxe that’s believed to a prototype.

His friend, amp tech and Dumble expert Brandon Montgomery, had a client who was willing to sell it to Tremonti and it ended up all over his latest solo album, The End Will Show Us How.

“It’s an Overdrive Deluxe, not an Overdrive Special,” said Tremonti, speaking to MusicRadar in 2024. “So when it was in the mail I was like, yeah, it’ll be cool. It’s just a cool thing to have. I love everything Dumble but when I got it, it blew me away. What it's best for is like an over-driven percussive [sound]… I got a lot of use out of it. Anything that’s not full-bore, high-gain and anything that’s not clean I used that Dumble amp, and it’s just beautiful – I love it.”

And everything else was the MT100. The moral of the story is try before you buy, and try as many different amps as you can get your hands on. The one that sounds right? It will invariably feel right, too. Or maybe get a feel for them all in an amp modeller.

Alter Bridge's self-titled album is available for pre-order via Napalm Records, shipping 9 January. The band just shared the latest single from it, Playing Aces, which you can check out above.

It might be one of the most famous recording facilities in the world but no one gets to record at 5150 Studios, Los Angeles, unless your surname is Van Halen, and yet, somehow, Alter Bridge did just that.

Their forthcoming self-titled studio album, scheduled for a 9 January 2026 release through Napalm, was tracked there under the watchful eye of producer Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, with the band finishing the record off at Baskette’s studio in Florida.

Frontman/guitarist Myles Kennedy and guitarist Mark Tremonti can barely contain themselves at the thought of it, recording in the same studio that the late Eddie Van Halen built from the ground up, where all Van Halen albums from 1984 onwards were recorded, This, says Kennedy, is a “sacred space”, so when they got an invite from longtime friend Wolfgang Van Halen to work there, there was only going to be one answer.

“Y’know, look, [laughs] being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true,” he says. “I think Mark and I can both testify to that.”

“We planned to do preproduction there,” explains Tremonti. “It was an opportunity that came up. Wolfgang was nice enough to invite us there – because Wolfie is pretty much a brother of ours now. We’ve had such a long relationship. We love hanging out. We’d go to 5150, he’d come hang out with us, we’d go out have dinner with him, and he’d let us into his sacred studio.”

Alter Bridge and Van Halen go way back. Back in his Creed days, Tremonti supported Van Halen, with Eddie Van Halen famously gifting him one of his Wolfgang signature guitars. Wolfgang, the musician, played bass guitar on Tremonti’s solo project, and his band, Mammoth WVH, have spent months on the road with Alter Bridge, with both bands sharing management.

The enormity of Alter Bridge tracking an album in the facility that Eddie Van Halen built is not lost on manager, Tim Tournier, who knocks on wood that it might happen again.

Both Kennedy and Tremonti had been to 5150 before. This was Kennedy’s second visit. “It’s much different knowing you’re going to work there,” he says.

Tremonti already had some pretty good memories of 5150.

“I saw Van Halen play there, which was pretty nuts,” he says. “Wolfie was nice enough to call me when I was in LA and say, ‘Hey! You wanna come see Van Halen practise tomorrow morning?’ So he drove me to 5150. It was awesome.”

This would have been late 2011 or early 2012, when Van Halen were tracking their final studio album, A Different Kind Of Truth.

“They played the whole record,” adds Tremonti. “Roth wasn’t there. It was just Alex and Eddie [and Wolfgang]. But they played the whole new record.”

With Kennedy and Tremonti in the inner sanctum, ground zero for the Brown Sound, where some of the most iconic guitar parts and tones were put together, it begs the question whether they got to play Frankenstein.

“No, no!” laughs Tremonti. “We didn’t want to push it! ‘Can we play this on the record!?’ No, we respected the space. It wasn’t something that we deserve!”

“No, we’re not worthy!” says Kennedy. “It was literally, the minute we walked in the door, it was very Wayne’s World. ‘We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!’”

But when you press play on this new Alter Bridge record, you can be sure that 5150 – and Eddie Van Halen’s designs – left an imprint on its sound. Kennedy says the eponymous EVH Gear 5150 III 50-watt tube amp head was the secret sauce in the album’s reference quality rhythm guitar tone. Kennedy’s signature PRS signature model sounded all kinds of godly when played through the head.

“I don’t know if it was a prototype but it was a 5150 III, 50-watt version, which I just really grew fond of,” says Kennedy. “That amp turned out to be a pretty big part of the sound of this record. From the starting riff of Silent Divide, you can really hear the characteristic of that amp blended with my [Diezel] VH4.”

Looking at the pictures from the studio floor, there were other amps in the mix, too. Kennedy mentions his VH4, but there’s Tremonti’s 100-watt signature head from PRS, the MT-100, feating into a slanted Marshall 4X12 cabinet.

The EVH III in white vinyl pulls focus, but we can’t help noticing a more modest amp in white vinyl, the Positive Grid Spark Mini, that looks like it is being used by bassist Brian Marshall. What's that doing? Who knows. But it was the 5150 that was taking the starring role here, and Tremonti said it even made him rethink what he was looking for from an amp.

“As far as the amps go, that 5150 III, it made me reassess 50-watt amps. I was never a big 50-watt amp kinda guy, and I have the 5150 100-watt version and the 50-watt version, but there was something special about that 50-watt version,” he says. “I’ve just recently bought a 50-watt Dumble. It’s my first 50-watt Dumble, and versus the 100-watt, it’s got a different thing.

“It’s an Overdrive Special. It was very early. It’s serial number 49, so it’s very early. The first Dumbles didn’t have two master controls so you couldn’t get two live tones out of it, meaning you couldn’t set one channel at a different volume.

“But those 50-watt versions? There’s something about that 5150 III, the 6L6 that we used.”

Kennedy’s the same. He preferred 100-watters, too.

“Well I thought that the 50-watt wouldn’t carry the weight of the 100, it wouldn’t stand side by side in an arena or something, but it does, it does carry the weight, and it just has more bite,” he says “There is something in the upper mids that’s very unique about that amp, that really seem to work in the chain.”

Is that unique certain something in the upper mids an Eddie Van Halen quality? That kind of aerobic drive and harmonic response? “Oh yeah,” says Kennedy, and he advises guitarists to concentrate their efforts on nailing these battleground frequencies when dialling in a tone. Get them right and the rest will fall into place.

“That’s where we sit as guitarists,” he says. “It’s funny, guitar players are like, ‘Oh, the bottom end!?’ Well, once you put it in context, in the mix, a lot of that is getting drowned out by the kick drum and the bass guitar anyway. Upper mids are where you’re going to sit so you want them to be [right]. Wherever those upper frequencies are, you want them to cut, and also you want the right type of cut.”

Alter Bridge’s self-titled eighth studio album available to pre-order and is out on 9 January 2026 through Napalm Records.

Guitarist Mark Tremonti divides his time between three different bands - Creed, Alter Bridge and his namesake metal project Tremonti.

He tells MusicRadar: "Melody drives all the bands I'm in. If you apply melody to the guitar—because many melodies follow guitar lines—melody becomes the most important part. It's the glue.”

But there are differences between projects, too. “The Tremonti band is the easiest because it's any kind of speed metal influence," Mark says. "Alter Bridge is more experimental, progressive and atmospheric, and the Creed stuff is grandiose and anthemic.

"I have an intuition. When I hear something, I know what category it falls into."

While Mark spent most of 2024 touring with Creed, on the writing side of things his intuition guided him toward Tremonti's latest record, The End Will Show Us How, which drops on 10 January 10, 2025.

It’s a heavy and utterly guitar-laden listen.

Mark is also thinking about a follow-up to Creed’s 2009 Full Circle. "The turnouts we had on tour were great because we hadn't toured in so long,” he says. “But I think the next time we come out with a new cycle of touring, there will probably need to be new music.”

Here, Mark talks about the most important guitars and songs of his career.

How do today's guitars compare to the ones you learned on?

“In this day and age, you can get a much better instrument for a better value. The prices were lower back then, but just a relative price. If you take out inflation, back in the day you had to spend a ton of money to get a decent guitar—and they were nowhere near as good as they are nowadays.

“There was a period when I was growing up where there wasn't much you could get your hands on. The first decent guitar I bought was about three hundred bucks—and back then, that wasn't so cheap. But nowadays, the SEs that PRS makes are just absolutely fantastic. They play as good as anybody needs a guitar to play.”

What guitar has been the game-changer for you?

“One is the [PRS] Charcoal Burst that I play the most, and I have the Dimebag sticker on the back. It's the most well-known guitar that I play. I love it. It had a fixed bridge, and it's the guitar I play the most out of anything. That guitar speaks to me.

“And, of course, there's the Stella guitar that I hand-drew with Paul Reed Smith in his office. I've played that onstage a bunch. It’s got a different shape, and it feels great. It's balanced really well, sounds great, and plays great. It's one of my favourite guitars in the world.”

Which guitarist is your biggest influence?

“I try to learn as much as I can. Whenever I'm on tour, I try to learn at least one thing a day—and I try to mix it up. I try not to stick with one guitar player. I dive into a bunch of different people's styles.

“Lately, I've jumped into Shawn Tubbs, who is a great player. And there's a guy named Zach Adkins, who is a tremendous player. I'm always learning. It's a never-ending quest.”

In terms of technique, what was the last new trick you learned?

“I try to incorporate all different types of economy-picking approaches. It's something I wish I would have dived deeper into at a younger age. A lot of people think, 'Oh, you've just got to alternate-pick everything’, but a lot of these guys who are more advanced with their right hand are definitely incorporating a lot more economy picking than they might even know. It's a nice habit that makes your right-hand approach way easier—if you approach it the right way.”

What was the last piece of gear that you were excited about?

“I purchased a new Dumble [amp] that I absolutely love. I'm a Dumble fanatic, so those are my pride and joy nowadays. I'll sound like me through most amplifiers I plug into, so I like to find amps that make me play differently, like Dumbles, old Fenders, and unique stuff that adds colour to my sound.”

How much did you practice in the early days, and how much do you still practice now?

“I get to practice most when I'm on tour. When I'm at home, it's a little tougher because I've got a three-year-old daughter who takes up most of my day, which is great. But when I'm on tour, on some days, I'll practice five or six hours if I'm having a good day.

“On a show day, I'll play for at least three hours. When I'm on tour, I'm in top form because I'm playing all the time and because I do clinics in the morning, which is another couple of hours of playing. Outside of that, it's practicing for a few hours to stay in top form.

“When I get home, I get into songwriter mode, and that's when my lead guitar playing goes down a bit because when I'm writing songs, I'm not really learning things on guitar but trying to create on guitar. That's always the tough part. When you write an album and have to do leads, my lead playing is the weakest. And when I'm on tour, it's the strongest.”

As a player, do you have any bad habits?

“I'm very upstroke-centric. That's a strength in some small ways, but it's a disadvantage in a lot of other ways. It's something that I've tried to kick, but recently, I've told myself, 'Listen, that's just the way I play. I'm going to try to make the most of it.’"

Is there anything you can't play that you'd like to?

“I've tried pretty much everything that there is to try - within reason. But when you hear a guy like Matteo Mancuso come out and do his incredible technique, you try to approach that, and it's just such a new animal that it would take years and years and years to get that feeling of using all five fingers on your right hand the way he does.”

What technique did you have to work the hardest to master?

“What I've tried to get under my fingers is doing patterns of five in odd note groupings, but all alternate-picked. There's a solo on Let That Be Us [from Tremonti's Marching in Time] where you can really see that [technique] in the forefront.”

What is one song or performance that you're most proud of?

“From the new [Tremonti] album, I'd say the title track, just because it's more unique and less straightforward. It's in an odd-tuning, Open G minor, which allows for different chord voicings and different approaches when you write a solo. It's a journey.

“It's really rewarding when you can pull that off. When you have to come up with a solo, I consider it like searching for treasure. When you're in these unique and different tunings, when you come up with ideas, you feel like nobody's ever done it before, and it makes everything satisfying.

“For Alter Bridge, Blackbird is my most proud moment. It's got a little bit of everything. I like the mood, and I love the fingerstyle. A big part of how I play guitar is my finger-style approach, and that's the way that song starts.

“And for Creed, there's a song called Time, my favourite song from the Full Circle record. Before that, it was Faceless Man.”

And what do you play when you're just relaxing and playing for fun?

“I just find a new alternate tuning, explore it, and try to write something. Like I said, I'm trying to find that treasure within the tuning, chord voicing, or whatever pattern you can find that's never been written before that this odd tuning sparks in my imagination.”

If you ever find yourself guitar shopping with Mark Tremonti and momentarily lose site of the Alter Bridge and Creed guitarist, fear not, you will invariably find him in the amp section. Though, be warned, he might be in a trance.

The guitar amp has that kind of effect on him, because Tremonti is a self-confessed addict, and in a recent YouTube interview with American Musical Supply, he shares the story behind his life-long love affair with Dumble amplifiers, why this is all Paul Reed Smith’s fault in the first place, and how he beat a lawyer to the punch to bag one of the best Dumbles he has ever owned.

“I love guitars, obviously, but I am much more of an amp collector,” explains Tremonti. “With amps, man. Each one you buy pulls that certain something out of you. I’ve got a room at home that just has racks of just amplifiers. I like going in there and just looking at them!”

Tremonti is laughing but not joking as he shares this information. Talk of amplifiers and the search for the ultimate Dumble will have him glaze over. It all started when Paul Reed Smith let him play through a 50-watt Dumble combo onstage. 

“I was like, beeline right to it,” he recalls. “Plugged it in, every setting just sounded incredible – something I had never heard before. It did the rock thing but it had just this incredible, just great lead tone. That gave me my addiction.”

Tremonti and Smith are long-time collaborators. PRS supplies Tremonti with his signature guitars, his own range of tube amplifiers – including the MT100 head that forms such a crucial part of Tremonti’s live and studio sound. Smith personally betrothed this Dumble 50-watter to Tremonti and yet somehow this amp still managed to slip through his fingers.

“Paul was like, ‘I promise I’ll give you that one day.’ Never did. Never got that amp,” says Tremonti. “I wanna hunt down who has it, because that was the one that made me addicted to them.”

Given the prices that Dumble amplifiers exchange hands for, especially since the death of Howard Alexander Dumble in January 2022, the appeal of these amps can be limited. Not many can get their hands on one let alone part with a six figure fee. 

Here, Tremonti does his best to explain all the hype. “You plug into a great Dumble and it is this awe-inspiring warm feeling you get,” he says. Dumbles, to me, are the best amps ever made.”

Tremonti says he now owns four but has had six or seven, and he justifies it by the fact that each has been an investment, making him money after he sold them on. He didn’t get along with all of them and maybe that is part of the appeal, too, the search for one that gave him the same feeling when he played through Smith’s.

The first Dumble that Tremonti bought was “too bright and hard and stiff” and was sold six years later. He bought another one that sounded amazing in the shop but had too much low-end once he got it home. 

He had better luck with a Dumble-modded Fender Deluxe – “a great little mojo machine” – and a modded Bassman, and he had all the luck when he rocked up at a swap meet where he found one of the best-sounding Dumbles he ever owned. And, better still, he beat a non-muso collector to it who had no intention of ever playing through it.

“He kind of rubbed me the wrong way,” says Tremonti. “These are the guys who are keeping these things out of musician’s hands – they’re just trying to make money off them.”

This guy, whom Tremonti recalls saying that he was a lawyer, had a Dumble for sale on for $165,000, and was expecting to pick up another at the swap meet. He let slip that that was an older guy coming, and that he had a Dumble, serial number 91 – crucial intelligence that Tremonti made full use of.

“So I walk around this thing and about an hour later on this little stand I see this little brown Dumble and this older gentleman there,” he says. “I said, ‘This wouldn’t happen to be Dumble #91, right?’ He said, ‘Yes it is.’ ‘Don’t sell it to this guy over here! He’s not going to play it. Sell it to me.’”

This was soon after Dumble’s death in 2022. Tremonti bid over the odds, explained why. The amp was his. “That was one of the best Dumbles I’ve ever had,” he says. “Right after I bought it I went to Joe Bonamassa’s show and he was showing me his onstage collection and he had Dumble #92. There must have been something in that batch.”

Tremonti has had a crammed schedule these past few months with Creed’s reunion tour, but has found the time to finish his solo album, The End Will Show Us How, which is scheduled for release on 25 July. 

If you are looking for an example of Howard Alexander Dumble’s audio engineering magic in practice, look no further. 

Tremonti told MusicRadar that he got his hands on a very special Dumble Overdrive Deluxe that is believed to be an Overdrive Special prototype, and it is all over The End Will Show Us How, contributing to the “best-sounding album” he has ever made.

“It’s an Overdrive Deluxe, not an Overdrive Special,” said Tremonti. “So when it was in the mail I was like, yeah, it’ll be cool. It’s just a cool thing to have. I love everything Dumble but when I got it, it blew me away. What it's best for is like an over-driven percussive [sound]… I got a lot of use out of it. Anything that's not full-bore, high-gain and anything that’s not clean I used that Dumble amp, and it’s just beautiful – I love it.”

Indeed, Tremonti tells AMS that this Deluxe is the best Dumble he has ever owned. Check out the full interview above and subscribe to the AMS YouTube channel for more.

Mark Tremonti celebrates his 50th birthday today and his manager, Tim Tournier, has got him the ultimate gift, reuniting the Creed/Alter Bridge guitarist with his long-lost 1986 Gibson Les Paul that was stolen in Boston in 1997 and hadn’t been seen since.

We thought we already had the lost and found electric guitar story of 2024, when Jerry Cantrell raised the thankfully false alarm over his “Blue Dress” G&L Rampage, but this takes the cake, and it is a remarkable find. Some might say impossible. But you never know in life, especially if you’ve got a top-tier artist manager looking out for you.

Tournier shared the story behind the prodigal Les Paul on his Instagram page, revealing that he got a lead on the guitar’s whereabouts 18 months ago, and somehow managed to keep all of this on the DL until today. 

“Sometimes life gives you opportunities to right some wrongs,” writes Tournier. “In this case, that opportunity presented itself via a Reddit DM about 18 months ago. A deal was made, hands got shook and I was able to get my buddy his 1986 Gibson with a stock Kahler back for his big 50th.”

Creed fans will know just how significant this guitar is. This was the one Tremonti played during the early days of the band, when tracking their 1997 debut album, My Own Prison. As Tournier says, “This is the My Own Prison guitar.”

Check out the footage below of Creed playing Say I in August ’97, the month My Own Prison debuted, as the buzz around them grew. It wouldn’t be long before Creed got huge. They were already packing out shows and working on follow-up album, Human Clay, and workshopping tracks such as Say I live in front of an audience.

But it wouldn’t be long before that guitar would be stolen. It wasn’t just Tremonti’s gear; everyone got ripped off as the band’s entire trailer was stolen. Speaking to Mistress Carrie of WAAF Boston in 2019 [video below], Stapp revealed how it all went down.

“We didn’t have a bus yet,” he said. “We were just getting started. We parked right in front of the hotel. We got out of the hotel the following morning and our van is on blocks, the wheels are gone, and the trailer has been taken off our van, the chains connecting it cut and the trailer… Gone! And so all our gear for the show that night was stolen.”

Stapp described Tremonti’s Les Paul as his “prized possession”, and although the trailer was found some miles away, none of the gear was. That night they had to play a show in Boston and ended up borrowing gear from Fuel, whom they were touring with. The show turned out to be a triumph. But Stapp says the search for the Les Paul never stopped. 

“Not only are you upset, but there was an emotional attachment to some of those instruments because we weren’t at a place yet where we had endorsements and tons of guitars,” said Stapp. “For years, for years, we have been trying to find it. Still, that Les Paul, as far as I know, that Les Paul has never been found.”

Until now, that is, and Tournier’s remarkable intervention. Never mind locating lost mandolin strings in the middle of Austin, this is next-level management. As Stapp alludes to, Tremonti might have a long-standing PRS signature guitar partnership but some guitars simply can’t be replaced.

“The contents of the trailer were the instruments of their childhood,” said Tournier, “the gear they mowed lawns for – or – in the case of Tremonti, worked at a car wash for.”

An ’86 Les Paul with a Kahler vibrato? That’s a lot of cars, a lot of T-Cut, and a lot of pruned fingers, and an incalculable amount of sentimental value. Tremonti looks in a state of shock in Tournier’s photo. He cannot believe it is back. We can’t either. Happy Birthday!

Update: Tremonti has just shared footage of the moment he received the guitar. See below.

How many rock songs from the last five years can guitarists say are modern classics? It’s a tricky one – the passage of time creates that vintage. And yet, it became quickly apparent that the title track from Alter Bridge's second album was destined for that accolade. 

Composition, atmosphere, emotion – Blackbird has got it all, with one of the greatest rock guitar solos of the last 10 years as the heart. Its significance is not lost on the band.

“That song is special in many ways,” its co-writer, Alter Bridge’s singer and guitarist Myles Kennedy, told this writer in 2011. “I’m sure in years from now it’s something I’ll look back on as being a crowning achievement as a writer. We all feel that way in the band.”

The song came late in the sessions for Alter Bridge’s 2007 second album, which it would give its name to. It was a record that saw Myles contribute guitar to the band for the first time and work more closely as a writer with guitarist Mark Tremonti than before.

“It was our most collaborative song at that point,” Myles noted, “and that’s one of the things that draws me to that song – we were able to capture these moments. The way we were feeding off each other was like we were capturing lightning in a bottle. As a musician and a writer, those are the moments that keep you going – it’s like a drug. It will forever be etched in my memory as a special moment.”

The positivity of this writing dynamic contrasts with the mood of the music. Blackbird’s mournful atmosphere is set from the beginning by the fingerpicked verse part – a thumb and two-finger technique that has Tremonti’s hallmark all over it. The former Creed guitarist reveals it was the starting point for the writing session: “I’d been throwing it around for a while and I really loved it – it had such a sad classical feel to it.”

From there, the creative ball was rolling – even through an initial stumbling block. “We were all at rehearsals, and me and Myles were trying to come up with a chorus. We’ve always had trouble coming up with big choruses that are in a 6/8 feel. So we went into separate rooms at the rehearsal pad, and Myles came running back in with the chorus. We all loved it, and ran with it.”

The collaborative spirit made the song’s brooding bridge effortless… “Myles had a musical part and I had a part,” Mark explained. “We just stacked them on top of each other and they sounded great!” 

But the feeling of fate aligning in triumph at the time also had a tragic side that resonates sincerely and universally. It helps lift the song to classic status. Kennedy’s vocal and lyrics, and the subject matter they address, match the dark power of the music. “As we got to that point musically, I had a friend I’d known for a long time that was passing away,” Myles explained. “And I remember the lyrics came pretty quick because it was just capturing that moment. I wanted him to find his peace and he did. He passed away within days of completing that song.”

“It’s such a universal theme: loss and death,” he added, “so I think that’s part of the reason so many people gravitate towards that song; because we’ve all gone through it, and we’re all going to continue to go through it.”

When it came to recording the core of Blackbird, the duo lent on faithful tone tools – Tremonti’s signature PRS and Myles’ since-retired workhorse McCarty, dubbed ‘The Mule’. The singer would continue to use the Diezel Herbert live he utilised on the album with a Mesa/Boogie Mk IV, while Tremonti recalled his favoured Triple Rectifier for rhythm, adding a Bogner Ecstasy for the leads.

The emotive heart of Blackbird is lifted by its solo section – an alliance of the pair’s distinct lead approaches that finds them realising the potential of the two-man solo in a way few rock players do in the post-Hotel California era. Mark was the instigator of taking on the challenge as a duo…

“I remember from the moment we realised what kind of a guitar player Myles was, we tried to really push that to the forefront and show his skill on the guitar, because I felt that it was a secret weapon,” observed Mark. 

“For a band not to have a player of his calibre even touch a guitar on the first record, to come out blazing on the next record would really shock people – and give it that ‘wow’ factor. We felt it was a great moment for our two styles because he took the part where he could really follow the chord changes and throw his knowledge of his feel and phrasing into that then my more aggressive lead style back to back with that. It was a good combination.”

A poll in 2011 by Guitarist magazine saw Blackbird voted the greatest solo of all time – a controversial decision that saw the band’s fanbase rally behind them. Nevertheless, it highlighted that this is a solo that resonates with many – and that will only grow with the passing of time. 

“Once we had it all arranged, we all looked at each other and it was one of those hairs-standing-up-on-your-arms moments,” remembered Mark in 2011. “That was the point we were ready to record the album – we felt that it was complete at that moment. And I think that even after this last record we’ve made, we still think Blackbird’s our best song.”

• "I don't know how people can perform without them because it really is a game-changer" – Myles Kennedy on using in-ears and how he faces the most underrated challenge in guitar playing

PRS Guitars has officially launched the MT 100, the new 100-watt signature tube amp head for Alter Bridge shredder-in-chief Mark Tremonti.

The three-channel monster adds to Tremonti’s PRS signature range, joining his 15-watt MT 15 amp head, and his single-cut signature guitar, which is offered as part of the PRS Core range and more-affordable Cor-Tek-manufactured SE series. 

From the outside, we get the impression that this guitar amp, which is tasked with forming the cornerstone of his sound, onstage and in the studio, was the largest undertaking. Just where do you start with amp design from the ground up? 

Well, like any self-respecting player operating in the metal guitar space, Tremonti had gain on his mind, and it was the Lead channel that started the whole project off – “It is huge, chunky, and aggressive without getting harsh,” he says. 

Then it was crucial that the Overdrive and Clean channels had the character to complement it, with Tremonti admitting to getting “obsessed” over the Overdrive channel’s voicing, and how it would sit between high-headroom cleans and high-gain.

“A lot of high-gain amps focus on the gain and the rest is an afterthought,” he says. “In my opinion, the MT 100 – like the MT 15 – has the best sounding clean tones in the high-gain amp world. The Overdrive channel is a very special addition to this amp. We obsessed over this channel, using one of my favorite personal amps for the voicing. 

“We wanted the gain structure to fit between the Lead and Clean channels and for it to have a sweet midrange response all its own. I can’t wait for people to experience this amp.”

Those lucky enough to play through the MT 100 will not want for features. As PRS’s amp designer Doug Sewell notes, this might be designed for Tremonti’s every need but it’s got a lot more going on, and he promises the layout is “highly user-friendly”.

The three channels can be selected from the front control panel or by footswitch. Each channel has its own independent set of controls, comprising Presence, Master, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Gain, for the Overdrive and Lead, with the Clean channel equipped with a Volume dial rather than Gain. A LED illuminates to let you know which one is active.

All three channels use the same 12AX7s in the preamp section, and there are eight in total. A quartet of 6L6s can be found in the power amp. This thing will get loud. Indeed, it comes with a warning to keep the master volumes down when you switch it on.

We live in the golden age of the pedalboard so of course we have a tube-driven series effects loop. You’ll find the footswitch input around the back of the amp, along with 16-ohm and eight-ohm speaker outputs.

The MT 100 is available now, priced $1,849. UK price TBC. See PRS Guitars for more details.

YouTuber Stevie J is someone we can relate to as guitar modders trying to upgrade our instruments, and he also knows PRS's Indonesian-made SE guitars are some of the best mid-market electric guitars. So much so, they are often good to go straight out of the box, but what if you're looking for… more?

Stevie's dream guitar is a US--made PRS Core Tremonti model. Just over $5,000 in his preferred finish. Can he get close with a hardtail Charcoal Burst 245 SE that he picked up "used" but still with its tags on for just $569.

We think this is a useful video for anyone out there wondering how they can upgrade their own SE guitar. He starts with locking tuners, moves on to a black Tusq nut even darkens the fretboard to get closer to ebony. And for another cosmetic touch he switches the controls out for the PRS top hat variety that are on the Core models. And installing his own preference for strap locks. 

Most importantly there's the pickups; he installed the same pickups that are in the US Tremonti models.

Of course, Stevie knows you can't upgrade an SE to a 10 top and more premium tone woods but for feel, subtle cosmetics and sound, it looks like money well spent for him. You can follow Stevie's steps in the video above, as well as an A/B before and after sound test. 

We would add from experience that guitar nut upgrades can be a tricky area; just sanding them to the right height without going too far – something we usually take to our local guitar tech to either carve a bone nut or fit an aftermarket example. It's usually money well spent.  

Also, if you're looking to darken your rosewood fretboard, Monty's Montepresso wax is a great option. 

Andertons in the UK currently has the PRS SE 245 on sale here in the same Charcoal Burst as Stevie's for just £549. 

Paul Reed Smith not only makes electric guitars, he plays them. Stating the obvious, perhaps, but now you can see him in action after he took to the stage with Alter Bridge at a recent show in Maryland.

Sharing the stage-front with Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy - both PRS artists, natch - Smith was introduced as “a legend”. 

Ushering on the famed luthier Kennedy said, “I just want y’all to understand the gravity of the situation: in my opinion, this guy is a legend… he is one of the great guitar gurus of all time.”

Joining the band on Blackbird, Smith deployed his Paul’s Guitar model to good effect and was in no way out of his depth despite some Curb Your Enthusiasm vibes, adding competent blues bends before more than holding his own while trading licks with Kennedy.

Tremonti and Kennedy's relationships with PRS are long and successful, stretching back to the 90s, and yielding, amongst other things, the highly rated but affordable PRS SE Tremonti Standard.

Alter Bridge drummer Scott Phillips has enjoyed nearly three decades touring the world and playing on some of the biggest stages it has to offer. 

Here, Scott takes time out from soundcheck to give us some insight into the gear he uses to perform live, and why.

Drum shells: DW Jazz Series

Drum shells: DW Jazz Series

“I've been with DW now since 2009 and have been using the Jazz Series shells which are maple and gumwood. I had gone through some of their drums with my tech at the time, and we were looking at different shells. 

"At that point in time, I tended to like the ones without the reinforcement rings, which the Collectors Series have. They sound phenomenal, but I'm just used to playing the ones without reinforcement rings, so we ended up picking the Jazz shells. 

"My sizes are 10" and 12" rack toms and then 16" and 18" floor toms. The kick drum is a 22”x18”. There's just something about the Jazz Series shells. I’ve played the Collectors and a lot of DW's different toms and for whatever reason, the particular heads that I use on those shells just seems to work well. It's a really warm tone, but there's still plenty of attack as well, without it being overbearing.

"I definitely leave more of the tuning to my tech Eddy than myself. But, yeah, I think there's certain intervals that we look for between ‘tom one’ to ‘tom two’, and then to three and four to where there's plenty of separation between all four drums. 

"But the 10” is not tuned super high. It's not sort of timbale-sounding. It's just a nice transition where when I’m playing fills you can really hear the definition between each of the toms, but they all live within the same octave or couple of octaves."

Snare drum: DW Collectors Vintage Brass over Steel

Snare drum: DW Collectors Vintage Brass over Steel

“My snare is a DW Collectors Vintage Brass over Steel. I guess it's sort of a brass finish over a steel shell -  I'm not sure if it's just a finish or actual brass on the outer layer, but it was a snare that I had used when we were recording The Last Hero. 

“We were in LA and I'd just picked up a loaner kit from DW while we were out there, and that was one of the snares they provided. I had some snares of my own that I was using and ended up putting that one up. 

“In the room it just sounded like an absolute gun blast, it was phenomenal. Elvis [Baskette], our producer, was just like 'What snare is that?!' It weighs like, 30 lbs, it's very heavy and thick. I had never really played a steel snare before, to be honest, but this one just had some magic to it so I've been using it ever since.

“I've used a Black Beauty for years on-and-off for recordings and I still do use that and a couple of other snares that I've got, for recordings. But I find that this one, particularly in a live setting doing the larger rooms that we're playing in, just works right in the mix.”

Heads and tuning: Evans

Heads & Tuning: Evans

“I'm using the Evans G2 clears on the tops for all four toms, and then G1s on the bottom. I've used that combo, I think probably since about the day that I moved over to Evans, which had to be probably 1999 or 2000.

“I've tried some of their other Heavyweight tom heads in an effort to try and make them last a little bit longer on tour, and they make for a really great head. They're heavy and still keep their musical quality after four or five shows. 

"But I think we found we got a little bit better resonance from the G2/G1 combo, so we'll change them about every three to four shows - once or twice a week depending on what our schedule is.

“I like to have a little bit of a pitch decay at the end of the note, that kind of thing where you get the attack, but then the resonant note is maybe a step or two lower. But there's no specific thing that I'm asking for or looking for when the heads get changed as far as tone. 

"Eddy's been with me now for about six years, so he knows what he likes and what I like and he's very skilled at making sure the set is consistent from night to night.

“I've never really used coated heads live. I love the tone of coated heads in the studio. But I think for the style of music that we make, I always found the clear heads to be the best choice in a live setting.

“They are completely open. There might be a small piece of gaff tape on one of the bottom heads of the floor toms to keep it from over-resonating. But other than that they're wide open, no gels or anything like that on the toms. 

“We use a little bit of gel on the snare, right at the 12 o'clock position but not much. I've always found it better, and I think Eddy agrees with me that the best-sounding tom is the one that you can tune perfectly, and not the one that you have to mask with the gaff tape or gels or anything like that. 

I think for me, it kind of speaks to the quality of DW and their product, that their shells are very easy to tune and you can make them sound good without having to mask anything."

“I like the crack of the snare to be mid to slightly upper range but not super cranked. I have it to where you can still feel the air movement within the shell itself and not choking the drum to death to try and get more attack out of it. 

"I think we've got a pretty good blend of sort of upper/mid-range tuning and then the mid-range snare tension on the wires themselves. You get a lot of the ghost notes too where you can hear the natural tone of the drum." 

Cymbals: Zildjian

Cymbals: Zildjian 

• Hi-Hat: Zildjian A Custom Mastersound top/A Quick Beat bottom
• Crashes:  Zildjian 17” A Custom Projection Crash, Zildjian 18-inch A Custom Projection Crash, Zildjian 19” A Heavy Crash (or Projection Crash), Zildjian 18” A Heavy Crash (or Projection Crash)
• Ride: Zildjian 22" A Custom Ping Ride
• FX/other: Zildjian 6" Zil-Bel, Zildjian 10" A Custom Splash, Zildjian 20” Oriental China Trash

“I've been with Zildjian since day one. The first set of cymbals I ever bought were Zildjian. I was lucky enough a few years after that once we had gotten signed, I met a phenomenal photographer and sweetheart of the lady named Alyssa Wales who had taken some photos of us very early on and she introduced me to the guys from Zildjian. She really helped me a lot to get those endorsements and I've been with Zildjian ever since. So I'm very, very happy with that. 

“But as far as my cymbal setup goes, I'll start with the hi-hat. The top is an A Custom Mastersound, then the bottom is an A series Quick Beat. That's a combo that I've played for a really long time now. 

“I'd seen in different drum magazines that certain players who I really looked at two were using sort of a combination hi-hat style and I was like, 'Well, I'll try that.' I just love that sound. 

"You can get a really great tightness with those, where the air sort of escapes through the four holes in the bottom. But then when you open it up, it's got a really good sort of mid-range slosh to it. 

“From there on my far left is a 17” A Custom Projection Crash, then towards the centre I've got an 18-inch A Custom Projection Crash, and moving over to dead centre I've got a 10” A Custom Splash. 

“Starting at about my one o'clock position there's a 19” A Heavy Crash. On the last couple of tours and for most of this tour I was using a 19” Projection Crash in that spot, but I broke it about a week ago and the A Heavy was my backup. 

“I used the A Heavies for a lot of my career. They sound really good, they're very loud, but they're also super durable. They would hold up forever, but we were having a lot of stage volume issues with Myles and the level that he's got his mic set to. 

“You know, some rooms are smaller, some rooms are bigger. We had done some touring with Gojira, they were out with us on our 2016 European run. I was looking at Mario and his cymbals sounded fantastic. 

"Mario's a heavy hitter, and I saw that he was playing Projection Crashes. I'm like, 'Well if they work for Mario, I don't hit as hard as him, I should be able to make the switch.' 

“The Projection Crashes are still loud, but they're not nearly as loud as those A Heavies are. So I switched everything over to Projection Crashes. We try to make sure that they're still in the same family, sound-wise, but I definitely want the 17" to sound different to the 18". I use the 19” as a crash, but also a lot as a crash/ride. 

"So I tend to like it lower in pitch, just so doesn't get too obnoxious in the mix. If you're sitting there, hammering away on it, and it's, you know, higher in pitch, I feel like it eats into the mix too much. So something that's lower and sits outside of the vocal frequencies seems to work really well. 

“I've used a 16"/17"/19"/18" configuration before, but I always found the 16" just didn't quite cut through as much. I've done it where it was 18"/18"/20"/18" and there just wasn't enough of a separation between everything. 

"Even two 18” cymbals that are identical models, but completely different in pitch, once you really start laying into them they can start sounding too similar. So we decided to find some things that voice a little bit different, but not too drastically different.

"My ride cymbal is a 22-inch, A Custom Ping Ride. I've used that - not that actual one - but I have used an A Custom Ping Ride since day one. I've never switched, I love the way it sounds. 

“If you lay into it, it will sing, it will resonate. But for the most part that 'ping' really cuts through. I love the way the bell sounds on it, and I tend to do a fair amount of bell work here and there. So, it's a cymbal that I've always used and will probably continue to always use. 

“Right above the ride is a 6” Zil-Bel that I use sparingly, maybe two or three times a night just for a different sort of bell sound compared to the ride. They can 'ping' on for a really long time, but I don't mute it. I remember in recording sessions in the past I would have to go in and overdub it, because it would literally decay for almost, like, 60 seconds.

“It will ring forever! When I was using it during actual takes where they were going to be comped together, there'd be times where maybe I didn't hit the bell on one take, but did on the next. [The engineer] would be like, 'Don't hit the Zil-Bel! Just know when you're gonna hit it and then we'll overdub it in later so we don't have to worry about the decay!’ because it was ringing for so long. 

“In a live setting it's it doesn't matter nearly as much with a nice roar from the crowd and loud electric guitars and bass and all that stuff.  and decay that's within the room. But in the studio, we've definitely had to do some some trickery.”

“Then moving to my three o'clock, I've got a 20” Oriental China Trash, which I've used forever. I used an 18” earlier in my career, and I tend to overplay the China a lot. So I wanted to find something a little bit deeper in pitch that didn't quite stand out so much. 

“My last cymbal on my right is an 18” A Heavy Crash, which again, would normally be an A Custom Projection. A lot of these shows have been arena-size so the stage volume doesn't matter nearly as much because you're in a big wide open room. 

“There's plenty of depth and space between you and the rest of the mics. We still have some plexiglass up, They’re made by Smokin Ace and they’re smaller plexies that sort of sit right around the cymbal itself, but don't completely block the view of the kit. They just keep the cymbals out of the vocal mics as much as possible.

Electronics: Roland SPD-SX

“I'm using a Roland SPD-SX as a brain and then I've got two PD-8 pads that I essentially use as 808 triggers. The one on my left by the hi-hat is strictly for 808 sounds, and then there's one on the right that sits between the two floor toms. 

“I use that on a song called Slip to the Void that's got this keyboard outro. It sort of fades out and then there's one other song - Come to Life has the same sort of triggered outro. We're not currently playing it on this tour but we played it a tonne in the past. 

“[The rubber pads] are all I've really kind of used since we started using the electronics. I've got the sensitivity basically turned off. So if I hit it really soft or really hard, it's still a loud 808 sound at a consistent volume.

“I'm not doing anything really percussive on it. It's single shots, two times per-song, every third or fourth song. That kind of thing. It's not like I need it to respond like a drum, so the rubber works fine for how I use it."

“Those are the only times I really use those pads, then the brain itself is strictly for click tracks and there's a couple of samples. The last album (Walk the Sky) had some some keyboard-heavy parts so we went through after-the-fact and decided 'Well, this would be cool to have/We don't need to use this or we don't even use that…' 

“I'll go through and sort of cue everything up in Logic, especially for songs that we want to have on the click, but their tempo mapped because there's a time signature change or tempo changes that I can't manually do on the fly. So I'll go ahead and pre-program that ahead of time. Then I just load it into the brain, link the pads that need to be linked, hit the trigger and we're off to the races."

Sticks & Hardware

Porter & Davies BC2

“I'm using a Porter & Davies BC2 throne. I came across them a few years ago when my drum throne didn't get shipped over here with the rest of the kit. I had to borrow Barry Kerch from Shinedown's throne for the first couple of gigs. 

“We were in the UK and somebody had recommended Porter & Davies. I used to have a Roc N Soc style throne with one of those giant butt thumpers on the bottom of it.  It weighed about 80lbs! Porter and Davies happened to be very close to where one of our shows were so we called them up, got one sent out, and I love it. 

“It's a comfortable seat first of all, but the driver in it's great, the amplification included with it has been super reliable. It doesn't weigh 100lbs, it's still sort of the weight of the normal seat. So I've been very thankful to come across them.

“It really is [a revelation], it makes a huge difference. When it comes to thinking about touring in general, the amount of trailer space or truck space or whatever you're taking up. 

"You don't need a tonne of subs behind you anymore. It's all in the seat. I get just as much response from the kick drum, bass guitar, 808 and the lower toms - that's what I have in my running through it - as four 18" subs behind you. It just it makes total sense.”

Sticks: Vic Firth Exteme 5B

"Vic Firth Extreme 5Bs are the sticks that I use. I've been with Vic Firth now for over 20 years, and they are just a fantastic company. I've used different sticks through my career and for me, personally, I've just found that Vic Firth is the most reliable and consistent. 

"They do a great job with the manufacturing process and, all the heating and treating and that kind of stuff. I've never had a stick that weighs different to the other, and it's rare that I have one that splits. Normally if I'm discarding a stick, it's just because I've whittled through it over the course of the show." 

Hardware - DW/Gibraltar

"For my hardware, I use the DW 9000 - or rather the 9002, the double pedal - and I normally use a 9000 hi-hat stand. On this particular tour, I've got a 5000. Then all of my cymbal stands and rack system is Gibraltar. 

"I've been with them for about 25 years now. The very first kit I ever bought, I got a Gibraltar rack system to go with it and I've been with them ever since. They make great hardware, I went through and sort of designed this rack myself. 

"A couple of the cymbal stands are actually curved rack tubes that I modified to turn into cymbal stands, just to give it a little aesthetic from the from the audience perspective. But it's all they're rock solid. I've never had an issue with anything failing, knock on wood!”

Rising from the ashes of Creed in 2004, Orlando hard-rockers Alter Bridge – comprising singer/guitarist Myles Kennedy, lead guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips – have earned critical acclaim for their signature twin guitar sound and contagious vocal lines.

Following up 2019’s Walk the Sky album and 2020’s Walk the Sky 2.0 EP, the quartet have returned with what promises to be their most hard-hitting batch of tracks to date.

Alter Bridge’s seventh album – Pawns & Kings – is scheduled for global release on 14th October via Napalm Records.

Consisting of 10 brand-new songs, the album sees Alter Bridge ally with long-time collaborator, producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette (Slash, Myles Kennedy, Tremonti).

The result of nigh on two decades’ perseverance, Pawns & Kings represents the “blood, sweat, tears, and triumph” of a band dedicated not just to each other but also to their loyal fans.

Tracklist is as follows:

1. This Is War                                                           
2. Dead Among The Living
3. Silver Tongue
4. Sin After Sin
5. Stay
6. Holiday
7. Fable Of The Silent Son
8. Season Of Promise
9. Last Man Standing
10. Pawns & Kings

The LP’s title track has, today, been unveiled with an accompanying lyric video.

Watch it here…

Pawns & Kings is available to pre-order now in an extensive range of formats, as follows:

• CD Digisleeve
• 1 LP Gatefold BLACK Vinyl
• 1 LP Gatefold INKSPOT BLACK/GOLD Vinyl w/Slipmat and Record Butler (Napalm mail order only, limited to 500 worldwide)
• 1 LP Gatefold MARBLED WHITE/CRYSTAL CLEAR Vinyl (Napalm mail order only, limited to 400 worldwide)
• 1 LP Gatefold MARBLED ORANGE/BLACK Vinyl (Band Shop only)
• 1 LP Gatefold MARBLED WHITE/BLACK Vinyl (Band Shop only)
• 1 LP Gatefold CRYSTAL CLEAR Vinyl (Band Shop only, limited to 300 only)
• Deluxe Box Set w/ CD Digisleeve, Pendant, Tote Bag, Guitar Pick tin (Napalm mail order only, limited to 700 worldwide)
• Music Cassette BROWN TRANSPARENT (Napalm mail order only, limited to 150 worldwide)
• Digital Album

Supported by Halestorm and Mammoth WVH, Alter Bridge will be heading out on a European tour later this year in support of Pawns & Kings.

Click here for information on dates and tickets.

In typical prolific Mark Tremonti style, he's talking to us about one new album while recording another. As he takes a break from piecing together songs for Alter Bridge's seventh record with the band and producer Michael 'Elvis' Baskette in Orlando he's with us to discuss music that's very different to his usual hard rock; singing the songs of Frank Sinatra with musicians from the late legend's orchestra.

This fulfilment of his ambition to walk in the footsteps of Ol' Blue Eyes on the forthcoming Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra album isn't just a huge musical surprise and success (and he even painted the album's cover art), it's part of something much bigger in the musician's legacy. Mark's Take A Chance For Charity organisation seeks to encourage artists, actors and athletes to step outside their comfort zone for a good cause. And for Mark that cause isn't just close to home – it's part of his family life. 

His infant daughter Stella Monroe Elizabeth Tremonti has Down Syndrome and all proceeds from the Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra album will go to the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS). A charity that works tirelessly to support families and advocate for people with the condition. 

But just before we discuss how Mark became a crooner and new charity founder, how about some insider information on this new Alter Bridge record currently being cooked up… 

"We started the day before yesterday," confirms Mark. "Yesterday we did one song and the first day we did two songs. We're in preproduction right now. We did a bunch of writing and now we're going through getting the final arrangements down and beginning to record."

Can you reveal anything about the album at this stage?

"I think we're going to try and do a 12-song record.  That's it so far – we're in the baby stages so we'll see how it turns out. It's so early on I can't tell you what kind of record it's going to be yet. Today we're diving into my favourite song I brought to the table so I'm excited about it."

Where did the idea for a Sinatra album start? 

"Well, I was really, really obsessed with Sinatra… I've loved Sinatra for my whole life. But for the past three years, I think I've really been on a deep dive and I remember one night, I was on YouTube, looking up all kinds of old stuff. And I decided, I want to sing just like him, I want to try my best and, and, and practice almost like you practice the guitar and just imitate it as good as I could. And I didn't know what I was going to do with it. 

"After about a year and a half or so, I'm was getting pretty comfortable with it and I want to do something with it. But I just didn't know if it had a place in my career. So then, when my daughter was diagnosed with Down Syndrome, I felt like, you know what, there's almost a reason why I'm doing this right now. And all the stars kind of aligned. 

"Sinatra was a very charitable guy – he raised over a billion dollars for charity. [So I decided] I'm going to do it in the name of charity, I'm going to do it to raise money and awareness for Down Syndrome. And when I told my manager Tim [Tournier] about it, he said, 'You know, my guitar teacher growing up was Dan McIntyre who was Frank Sinatra's touring guitar player.'

"So it was just one of those crazy things that everything just worked out so perfectly. And the toughest thing was just getting the project approved by the Sinatra family because they don't [usually] allow you to use his name or likeness on albums unless it's some big important deal, like Tony Bennett, or Michael Bublé. They are kind of the guys. So it's just it was a huge honour for me to be able to do it with his name." 

Was there a process of convincing Dan and fellow Sinatra band member Mike Smith that you were up to the job and did you have to do a lot of preparation?

They never heard me sing until I was in the studio. Tim had lunch with Dan and Mike and they asked him, 'Can your boy sing?' And Tim had never heard me sing Sinatra but responded, 'Yep, he can do it'. He just believed in me as as artist. I think over all the years, he knows that if I am going to put my neck on the line, I'm not going to  embarrass myself. So he believed in me.

"I actually sent him an audio clip from my phone of me singing Luck Be A Lady. So that convinced them to really push with the guys and say, I was the right guy, the right fit. And once we got in the studio, Mike Smith pulled me out in front of the whole band. 

"I've got a video of that first moment and I think there's a little teaser that in the video [further down the page] where he's like, 'Alright Mark, come sing with us.' And that's the first time I sang for him. And after we did the first session, a lot of the guys came up afterwards and were like, 'I didn't know what to think of this'. You know, rock n' roll guy crooning, but they were all very complimentary. They're like, 'Wow, this is gonna be great.' And then, at the end of the sessions they were saying that we've got to take this on the road. So you never know."

Hearing your take on these songs, it actually makes a lot of sense for you to do this album because you've got that power in the lower register. But this kind of transition into big band singing can't be easy, so how did you rehearse?

"I did a deep dive and I searched everywhere online for any kind of resources for people's giving tips on [Sinatra's] pronunciation or where he got his lessons from or if he got trained in this and that. I found this book called Tips On Popular Singing that he wrote with his his vocal teacher [John Quinlan] when he was younger. But I didn't get much from that other than I noticed that when he said certain vowels, the shape of his mouth would line up with what he'd said in that book.  

"So I tried to follow that a little bit, but nobody online that was teaching how to sing Frank Sinatra sounded like Frank Sinatra. It would be like this tenor singing Frank Sinatra and it just didn't make sense. So I decided, I'm just going to dive in and learn myself by ear. And I remember Eric [Friedman], my guitar player in Tremonti, was like, 'Dude, nobody's gonna teach you how to sing this stuff like you're going to teach yourself by just diving in'. He saw how obsessed I was with it. 

"To be honest, the most beneficial thing for me was my son. My younger son Pearson had soccer practice about 45 minutes away [from our home]. And he was on two soccer teams for a while. So he would have three hour practices sometimes.  I'd have a good four hours at least of sitting in a car because during COVID, we weren't allowed to go on the field. So I'd sit in the car, break out my laptop; I would write down the lyrics and spell it how he pronounced it, I would move it how he phrased it. I would imitate how he breathed and I would just study my ass off and sing the whole time. 

"I'd sing for four hours straight and Pearson would have to listen to me sing all the way to soccer practice and all the way home for soccer practice. And I know that by the time I'd be going home, I felt good about it. Every day I'd start and think, oh, you got some work to do. And every day I'd go home and feel, alright, you got some work done today. Every day I felt better about it. And I would just pick my setlist and every time I'd feel like I got a song down pretty well I'd put it in the book and move on to the next song."

Is that the book of notes we can see in the video?

[Mark shows us the book of his Sinatra song lyrics and notes next to him] "It's always right here. I'm in my studio and this is right on my on my studio desk. So I got my Ol' Blue Eyes folder."

It's really interesting that you did this without any kind professional vocal coach coming in.

"I didn't really have training on the guitar, either. I think if you just have that patience and that passion about something, and you really just dive in, and listen to all the little nuances. That being said, not everybody is going to be able to sit down and sing Frank Sinatra. If I sat down and tried to sing Prince, I wouldn't be able to do it. Or if I sat down and tried to sing Michael Jackson, I wouldn't be able to do it. Finding somebody that you're passionate about that has your vocal range, which is sometimes hard to find. 

"And Frank Sinatra was perfect for me. His vocal range and my vocal range… he gets a little lower than I get. But when he sings his high stuff, there's not a lot of moments were I'm really stretching too much. You know, I think some of the highest notes that I sing on this record are maybe the end of Fly Me To The Moon. There's not a lot of stuff really stretching up there. And that's what I like about it – it's smooth, and it's it's confident. Frank wasn't a pusher."

There's a lot of control and subtlety, though. With the pronunciation, do you think there's a misconception when it comes to the challenge of this style of singing, that people overlook the details of that? 

"Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And then controlling your vibrato, knowing exactly where you're going to do it and what vowel sounds you're going to be making when you're pulling off that vibrato and where you're going to breathe out. A good example of Frank Sinatra is his breath control is told he covers Old Man River. And there's a note in there and when he hits the word 'jail', he just goes on forever. And then he vibratos at the end of it and does a little thing. He does this great little tail to that piece that if you don't have your breath, there's no way you're going to do it. 

"A lot of these guys that I recorded with would see him do that live and it's crazy how he held his breath that long. You have to prepare for it, like when I sing along to it I just know that I've got to take a massive breath before that part. But yeah, listen to him do Old Man River in Til The Clouds Roll By – it's a feature film where they had all these different singers come in and he sang in that. That was one of the videos that got me thinking, I want to sing like this incredible performer. Just such a great performance. So I'll always be a fan. I'm going to keep on digging on and hopefully I can do Volume Two of this."

Was Mike Smith able to give you any kind of insider kind of tips from his time with Sinatra?

Well, he, he gave me this right here [shows us a tea sachet]. Right before I sang for the first time, he gave me a cup of tea. And he said it was exactly what Frank would use when he would sing. It was so surreal – the amount of lemon and everything in there. So that was awesome. 

"I think at first Mike really wanted to kind of hold my hand through the process, but I think he then realised. There was a second in recording when Mike said, 'The old man wouldn't put vibrato on this particular word'. And I was about to record it and I was so used to singing it that way. So I asked, 'Well, can we pull out the recording because I've meticulously gone over all this stuff'. And we played it back. He said, 'Oh, you're right'. Because he's used to seeing it live night after night after night. I'm used to doing the recorded version, so I'm singing it like the recorded version. He's hearing it live. 

"I appreciate it all. He wanted to get it right and legit. I think he just realised that I did my homework. I wasn't winging it. I was singing it exactly the way I planned to sing it."

Where did you draw the line between what Sinatra did on these songs and putting your own spin on them? 

"I tried to stay as close as I could to what he did. And I think any any spin you hear me putting on it is just not being able to do exactly what Frank did. So I tried to get as close as I possibly could. And then he has so many different versions of some of these songs. You know, somebody might think I'm putting my own spin on something when I'm just singing another version he did. I'm just taking all his performances and putting them into a song. So I guess that is putting a spin on it. 

"But to be honest I just love what he did. Some of these songs that he sang were done by a lot of other singers, but he was the guy to me that really sang them right. So I wanted to learn exactly how he sang it and just enjoy doing it."

And for the first time in your career, this isn't guitar-driven music. 

It just never came into my thought process because when you're doing the big band thing, you have to really listen out for the guitar. And a lot of these songs… in I've Got You Under My Skin it's not a prominent instrument. But when we recorded the song Wave, that song was very prominent on the guitar. 

"I didn't want to have a whole record full of his most well known songs. I wanted to do some deep cuts. But when I decided to do My Way, I thought, if I'm gonna do this song, it's got to be different and we've got to put our own spin on it. So that was the only song on the whole record that we got rid of all the charts. Everybody just kind of sat in the room and felt it out. 

"I sat with Dan McIntyre, and he just started playing parts and played it three or four different ways. And we ended up going through the first verse and chorus section with maybe no percussion and then built it and then broke it down, and just made a lot of dynamics. I think we had piano, drums, bass, and guitar and then all the winds – all the wind instruments were put in after after the fact." 

It's more of a low key but emotive approach to it. And Wave is really interesting too. There's a really low note in that from you… 

"Oh, yes. That's that's the only song on the whole record that I might not perform live because that note is only happens certain times of the day for me, you know, it's it's a very tough one. It's actually better early in the morning for that low note. So if I did concerts at 10 in the morning, I'd be great. But at night, it might not happen."

So live shows are on the cards?

"We're trying to put a show on May 14 here in Orlando [this show at The Abbey has now sold out]. Every time we do an Alter Bridge record, or Tremonti record, we do listening parties where people will come in from all over the world and hear the record before it comes out. Then we'll do a live performance of these new songs. And so we'll do the same thing here. We've we've already reserved a room and it's a small theatre. I was talking to Tim yesterday and he's like, 'Man, what if this thing sells out really quickly? Because it's not a huge room'. I said, 'Well, we could do it like Sinatra did back in the day, he would go to the Paramount Theatre and just do a show at this time, and then another show at a later time, and all on the same day.'

"And this is the kind of music that you can do like that – it's not destroying my voice to sing, because it's in my range. It's not doing the rock thing where I'm killing my voice. So I could do the multiple show thing."

Have you felt that this project will benefit your singing with Tremonti and Alter Bridge?

"Absolutely. I was just talking to Myles [Kennedy, Alter Bridge vocalist /guitarist] about that yesterday. In the past I would write melodies and I'd write lyrics and just go in the studio and sing them. I wouldn't think too much about how I'm going to approach it, I would just do it by whatever emotion I had at the time. But now I will write down my lyrics and do the same thing I did with the Frank Sinatra stuff – really, really hone in on exactly where I'm going to throw the vowel sounds, how I'm going to breathe and how I'm going to throw vibrato and where I'm not going to throw vibrato. And just so when you sing it, you can sing it very confidently. 

"You would think it would make it more robotic, but it sounds freer, because when you're singing it, you can then have that confidence in that word you're singing and then put your own spin on it as you're going. Instead of just kind of falling down the stairs, singing something that you haven't practised. Because even if you know the melody, if you don't really hone in on every word and every syllable of that word, you're not going to get the most out of your vocal. So now I know and I never thought of that in the past."

What did you learn about Sinatra through through this process, even as a fan going in? Was there anything that gave you a kind of a new appreciation?

"Oh absolutely, I think he was just such a passionate guy with what he wanted to get into. When it came to singing, and he just was unstoppable. Then wanted to be an actor and he became unstoppable at that as well. One thing I wanted people to know, through this project, was that he was such a philanthropist. He raised a billion dollars for charity. And he was the type of guy that would not let people know when he would donate certain things and wanted to do things under the radar. Some people don't talk about that and I think through this project, hopefully a lot more people will realise that. The big tough, charismatic Frank Sinatra that everybody knows was also a softy and really did a lot of good things. 

"I realised that he had multiple personalities when it came to his singing. In his early days it was very airy, very light with almost a smile on his face when he's sang. He's happy with happy songs like The Song Is You and All Or Nothing At All. Even I'll Never Smile Again – a sad song but the same kind of airy approach. 

"Then I feel like there was that midpoint in his career where he kind of fell off for a while, for I think about three years his career kind of went down the tubes for a little bit. And then when he came back with this new style. He partnered up with Nelson Riddle and it was a more mature kind of a sound.

"I love them both. I think both both of his sounds were great. And I think in in his older life, [he had] an even more mature sound. If you listen to Send In The Clowns or something, listen to how confident and just how smooth and how much space he leaves and how just commanding he is. I think there were so many areas, and there's so much music – he recorded over 1,400 songs. And not only that, if you dig in deeper you can see all the television shows that he hosted, where he would sing nonstop, and so many other songs, you could spend a lifetime and still find new stuff that Frank Sinatra sang and performed on and acted in. So it's an endless resource. If you're a fan of Frank Sinatra, you're not going to run out of things to check out."

There's some great candid clips of you singing Sinatra to your daughter Stella in the video [above] introducing the album and charity. It that adds a whole deeper element to this.

"There were early clips of when she was a little itty bitty baby. And then my wife wanted to show some clips of her older now because little babies are cute, but when they're nine / ten months old they get adorable. So I sent my friend John, who was putting the video together, some clips, and then I realised every day I sing her The Song Is You  – The Song Is You is the song I sing to her when I want her to smile. So I sang Frank Sinatra to her all the time when I was practising.

"My wife would get up at 6.30am and get our kids off to school, then I would take the eight o'clock shift, and I'd get up with Stella and spend three hours in the morning with her and I would practice singing Sinatra, and she enjoyed it. I would sit there playing Sinatra songs and singing them to her. So whenever I'd sing to her, she'd smile. 

"I would send my friend John all these clips and just kind of show people this wasn't something that I did on a whim, this is something that's part of our daily lives. I must have 70 videos of me singing to her. Those are just four or five of the videos. I could have gone on for a whole hour-long session of her smiling. I sing [Mark starts singing I Hear Music] and she smiles."

How is Stella doing after her heart surgery earlier this year?

"She's doing so well. You know, that was the worst, most difficult time in my entire life. Hands down. When you don't know what's gonna happen, when your little baby's about to have open heart surgery where they have to bypass her heart, it was just terrifying. Then, two days later, we're in the hospital and she's smiling. She's got a smile on her face and she's laughing. Her chest was all tied together with wire…  she's a tough little girl. She's awesome. The doctor says she has a stronger chest now than other kids because because it's got more support."

All the proceeds from this album will be going to the National Down Syndrome Society. Can you tell us a little about the work they do?

"The NDSS is the largest of the Down Syndrome charities and they bring awareness – they have all kinds of support systems in place. There's no cure for Down Syndrome, and that's very clear, but families who have somebody with Down Syndrome have to keep an eye on physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy. People who don't have insurance, there's a lot of heart issues for a lot of kids with Down Syndrome. You'll see that they have the big scars on their chests just like Stella did. 

"I couldn't imagine a family not having insurance going through what I went through. There are independent programmes where the NDSS house people with Down Syndrome so they can be apart from their families and have a job, live on their own – there's whole communities that have that. There's local programmes where they teach kids with Down Syndrome to ride bikes. And you have all these people that volunteer their time. 

"Just the other day, my friend put on an event to try to raise a million dollars. I think they raised $300,000 and there's so many things that that they do. It's a very supportive community and they help so much with so many events all year long. These families need a lot of help. It's not something for people to be afraid of, having a child with Down Syndrome, but it's definitely a responsibility and it's great to have the community to support you."

This is also the first project for your new Take A Chance For Charity endeavour. You've thrown the gauntlet down with this for artists, actors and athletes to follow your lead.

"I've been really, really busy keeping up with trying to connect with as many people as possible to do this. Yesterday I was on the phone with a handful of people about it. I don't want to say all their names yet, because if some fall through I don't want people to be disappointed, but here's at least 10 projects right now we're talking about going forward with. 

In a perfect world everybody's raising money for Down Syndrome, but Take A Chance For Charity is for people to do something that nobody would expect them to do to raise money for charity. And I'd like it to be a charity that they really, really believe in. So there's a story behind it and they can talk about how important it is for them to raise money for that reason; maybe a family member needed help or whatever the organisation it is. 

"Obviously, for me, it's Down Syndrome. But right now, all the people we're talking to are going to go through NDSS because we already have that relationships set up where if you donate it goes straight to them, and all the legalities and all that stuff are taken care of. So if we're going to do a different charity, we just have to make that next step. It sounds easy on the outside; let's raise money for charity. But when you do it there's a lot of red tape that goes into it. For us it's great to partner up with NDSS and for them to make it easy for us. So when people donate, they can get that tax write off, feel good about what they did and it's all nice and easy through NDSS."

The album Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra is released on 27 May. For more info visit tremontisingssinatra.com and preorder the album here. 

Mark Tremonti the guitarist, songwriter, frontman… now big band crooner? Just when we think we know the Alter Bridge man, he surprises us with the announcement that he's releasing an album on Sinatra songs in May for charity. And you can hear his take on I've Got You Under My Skin above.

And doesn't he do well! Mark hinted to us last year that he had an exciting new project in the works, and it's all for a great cause too; the musician is gifting this album and proceeds from it to the National Down Syndrome Society (this 21 March launch also marks National Down Syndrome Day). It's a charity that is very close to the Tremonti's family heart. 

“For years, Iʼve loved singing along to Frankʼs songs,” Mark explains. “One night, I found an old video of him performing The Song Is Youʼfrom 1944. It made me want to dive into his vocal approach. I was all in and I wanted to do something with it. 

"When we found out about our daughter Stellaʼs Down syndrome diagnosis, the stars aligned. My obsession with Sinatra had its reason. Frank Sinatra raised more than a billion dollars for charity and that is a fact I wish the public the public knew more about. Beneath his cool and calm persona, he had a big heart. Doing this charity in his name was another way the stars had aligned. I decided to do this record to raise funds for families and individuals with Down syndrome. This project is the start of a new purpose that I will have for the rest of my life.”

That all-in committed approach has typified Tremonti's career as a musician. But he faced some the toughest challenges of his life when holes were found in Stella's heart. Barely 11-months old, his baby daughter needed open heart surgery.

“The waiting between the appointment and the surgery was the worst time in my life without exaggeration," reflects Tremonti.  "There's nothing like holding your little girl, feeling all of the sweetness and pure love that she is and knowing you have to prepare her for open heart surgery. They had to bypass her heart, and she was out for a day-and-a-half. When she came back around, it became the best week of my life. A week later, she had no idea she had surgery. Since then, she's been all smiles. 

"I would love to let other families know that they can get through this and become stronger because of it. After going through Stella's surgery, I want to raise as much money as possible to help other families that might have similar health concerns so they can focus on their loved ones and not the financial cost that comes with it.”

Inspired not just by Sinatra's music and charitable achievements, Tremonti proved to Sinatra guitarist Dan McIntyre and bandleader Mike Smith that he had both the commitment and vocal ability to take on the project. He was granted approval from The Frank Sinatra Estate.

“Mike handed me Frank's actual vocal chart with his name on top of it," says Tremonti. "I tried to give it back, and Mike said, 'I want you to have this to get that mojo.' He gave me the exact tea Frank drank before he sang with the right amount of lemon. I kept the packet in my Sinatra notebook. It was unbelievable to be working with the guys who were actually on stage with him.”

As well as well-known classics including Luck Be A Lady, My Way and Fly Me To The Moon, Tremonti and the big band tackled deeper Sinatra cuts when tracking in Chicago, including Wave and I Fall In Love Too Easily. 

“When the final recording session ended, it was truly a sad moment for me; he admits. "Seeing the last guys standing at the end of the session was a reminder that this chapter was coming to an end. We climbed a mountain, but I could've gone on forever with it."

This is only the first step for Tremonti's new Take A Chance For Charity movement that 'encourages and empowers artists, actors, athletes, and entertainers of all stripes to step into unexpected territory with a creative initiative for charity. Whether it be a football player singing country, an actor salsa dancing, or a guitar player singing Sinatra, it's all for a great cause.'

But at the centre of it all is Stella. “So many talented people have other skills that their fans or followers would never expect," Tremonti reflects. "This is the chance to do something you're passionate about for charity. It's a greenlight to do whatever you want to do. It's a win-win all around. I want people to talk about this enough to get other artists to participate," he leaves off. "Someday, I hope I'm a little old man who raised 100 million dollars for charity. My daughter has already made everyone around her a better person. To do this for her means the world to me.”

The album Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra is released 27 May.

Tracklisting:

1.  I’ve Got You Under My Skin
2.   I’ve Got The World On A String
3.   I Fall In Love Too Easily
4.   Wave
5.   Fly Me To The Moon
6.   Nancy (With The Laughing Face)
7.   My Way
8.   You Make Me Feel So Young
9.   Luck Be A Lady
10. That’s Life
11. Come Fly With Me
12. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
13. The Song Is You
14. All Or Nothing At All

 More info on preorders and Take A Chance For Charity.

Mark Tremonti: the 14 records that changed my life

Mark Tremonti's PRS signature guitar painted by Joe Fenton is a stunning piece of work, so the Alter Bridge guitarist and PRS have joined up with the English artist again for a strictly limited edition to mark 20 years of the Tremonti  electric guitar partnership. 

The guitars were hand-painted by Fenton, who met Tremonti in 2013 when the guitarist first asked him about creating the custom-painted PRS you can see in the video at the bottom.

For this new limited edition, only 20 guitars will be made. Each guitar is hand-signed by Mark Tremonti, Joe Fenton, and Paul Reed Smith and numbered.

“Working with PRS for the last 20 years has been one of the great honors of my career, and we wanted to celebrate that partnership with something really distinctive. Joe’s artistry was an immediate choice for me,” said Mark Tremonti. “I love the guitar he painted for me – I play it all the time – and making more of these together is really special.”

Fenton’s designs are inspired by surrealist art, with fantasy-themed monochromatic, gothic depictions. And each of the 20 guitars features a unique design that you can see in the gallery below. 

“Creating a design for a guitar is really enjoyable. PRS guitars are a work of art in themselves," says Fenton. "I approached designing each guitar as if I was embellishing a jewel with the shape of the guitar informing the final design."

The guitars were by painted Fenton with several thin washes of acrylic paints and other acrylic mediums and took over 100 hours to complete each. 

So you already know these satin beauties are going to be expensive – we're seeing that Peach Guitars in the UK has one for £12,750. 

While we head back to scouting out much more affordable pre-Black Friday guitar deals for you, there's more info on the guitar over at the PRS Guitars blog. 

Interview: Mark Tremonti talks Marching In Time, a new top secret project and designing the perfect 100-watt amp

Both Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy are great lead guitar players and here we focus in on some of the concepts and techniques at the heart of the Alter Bridge sound.

Our first tab example is a Tremonti-style run inspired by Down To My Last from the band’s 2004 debut album, One Day Remains. These shapes sound great played in between blues-rock oriented phrases.

The second lick is inspired by solos like Wouldn’t You Rather from the new album, where Mark uses five-note patterns in his phrasing.

Our third example shows how Myles adds ‘passing’ notes to scale-based licks by simply filling in the gaps between the scale notes. These notes can sound ‘wrong’ if you hang on them too long, but passing through them on the way to a ‘correct’ note gives a cool moment of tension.

Finally, we’re rounding off our lesson with a look at Myles’ jazz influences and jamming over a simple I-IV-V blues progression. There’s lots to learn here so take it slowly and have fun.

Click in the top right of the tab examples to enlarge 

1. Soloing with six-note groupings

Start with a downstroke and use strict alternate picking throughout. You can start by looping each group of six notes over and over to get comfortable, then link all the pieces together as you build up to the complete lick.

2. Unusual rhythms 

Start with your volume knob turned down then strum each chord before raising the volume to fade in. Add reverb or delay for extra sustain; we’ve added a panning delay effect set to a dotted eighth note rhythm. 

In bars 3 and 4 allow the two strings to ring together and keep your delay pedal engaged.

3. Adding passing notes for colour 

This lick is based in the B blues scale (B D E F F# A), so the 7th and 10th fret notes (F, F# and A) in bar 1 all belong to the scale. 

The notes in between are passing notes, which are not technically in the scale but can be used to bridge the gap between notes.

4. Jazzy sounding scales 

There are three scales in this lick. Bars 1 and 4 are based in the A minor pentatonic scale – the lick’s ‘home’ sound. Bar 2 uses the D whole tone scale, which moves in two-fret steps – no semitones. 

Bar 3 takes things farther into jazz with the E Super Locrian mode (E F G A b Bb C D). Don’t worry about the weird names – just play slowly through the tab.

5. Learn 5 of Tremonti's favoured altered tunings 

Mark has used loads of guitar tunings in the Alter Bridge, Creed and Tremonti back catalogues – it’s something you can use to inspire your own riffs and songs too. Here are just a few Alter Bridge and Creed tunings. 

If you want to experiment, remember that the lower you tune, the heavier the string gauge you’ll need to keep your guitar’s string tension and tuning stable.

6. Tremonti's three-note-per-string shapes

Mark uses three-note-per-string scales to create both smooth legato lines and shredding alternate picked runs. Play through this D major shape and pay special attention to the fingering while keeping your fingers nicely spaced and square on the fretboard. 

Try playing this shape in different keys by moving it lower and higher on the fretboard.

Alter Bridge's Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy: our 8 essential tips for guitarists

One of our favourite things is getting musicians together to talk about their experiences – sharing playing and tone knowledge plus stories from the road. 

So when we had the chance to sit down with Alter Bridge's Mark Tremonti and Zach Myers on their UK arena tour together we also invited upcoming guitar duo Ian 'Shiner' Thomas and David Winchurch from Welsh heavy rock five-piece Those Damn Crows to talk guitar.

Those Damn Crows recently released their sophomore album Point Of No Return on Earache Records and tour Germany in April. Alter Bridge and Shinedown are currently on US headline tours.

shinedown.com
alterbridge.com
thosedamncrows.com

Jeff Buckley fans will be familiar with L'Olympia in Paris as the venue where his posthumously released live album was record. Fitting then that it would be the same place Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy paid tribute to Buckley using the late singer's 1983 Fender Telecaster on my 9 December.

The guitar was Buckley's number one throughout his career, and now resides with Matthieu Lucas of Matt's Guitar Shop in Paris, who loaned it to Kennedy for the performance.

And what a performance it is. The Alter Bridge singer has made no secret of the influence Buckley has had on him, and frequently performed Hallelujah at gigs in the past. He brought it back to the set especially for the occasion.

It’s hard to picture many modern guitar partnerships that operate with same fluidity as Alter Bridge pair Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy. Seated next to each other in the cafeteria of a London hotel on a late summer morning, they both point out how – despite penning a lot of their latest tracks separately – it’s never been more difficult to pin down exactly who wrote what. 

The question even baffled producer Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, the man who’s been behind the desk on no less than five of their six studio albums, including the latest, Walk The Sky. “He thought Tear Us Apart was definitely a Myles track while In The Deep had to be mine,” grins Mark. “I guess the more you write and work with somebody, the more you adopt and assimilate what they do into what you do. Together you become more comfortable with what works for the band...”

“We’ll start dressing like each other next,” jokes singer/guitarist Myles. “I’ll have earrings on for the next tour. I’m not sure if I could pull off the haircut though, I have an odd-shaped head! Honestly, our ideas have kinda morphed into the same beast – it’s never been harder to tell the difference.” Quizzed further on the songwriting and lead playing that’s seen them become one of most passionately admired bands of their ilk, here’s what the Alter Bridge six-stringers had to say...

1. Try using loops  for songwriting 

Mark: “On this record, I experimented with new things to pull off different emotions. There’s a lot of great drum loops on YouTube. I’d start off by writing a riff, figuring out the BPM and then literally search for loops at that tempo. There’s so many, from really basic ones to metal drum sounds. There are loops for rappers that have different rhythmic approaches to what I do in rock. Anything that felt different I would use to pull new things out of and dive into new sounds.

"I found these synthwave loops that I fell in love with. It all made me a lot more open- minded, not doing just the rock thing and taking what I can from outside influences. Even with something like dubstep, you can find beats that will help you think differently. You can get rid of it when you actually record the song, but things like that can push you in a certain direction.”

Myles: "In The Deep is a song that came from a loop I found on Logic. I just found it and started messing around, then it all blossomed from there. Same goes for Indoctrination, which came from a loop that had an almost funky interplay between the rhythm and guitar parts. That’s the reason that song felt like a bit of a tongue-twister when it all got put together!”

2. Experiment with alternate tunings 

Mark: “I’d have retired already if it were not for the use of altered tunings. Seriously, I would have run into a creative wall long ago. I learned from this slide book I bought as a kid, which had lists of all these different tunings. 

"Eventually I started to notice certain voicings felt like they were lacking this open string or extra note wasn’t there, so I started to switch tunings. All of a sudden that would throw me in another direction. I’m quite un-theoretical about it all – it’s more about where my fingers can reach and what sounds the coolest and richest. 

"And then for soloing, your scale fragments are completely gone. It forces you to come up with shapes or ideas that are completely different. That’s probably terrifying for most people, but for me it’s an open-ticket to not doing the same damn thing over and over again. 

"These tunings have been around for years and the people who discovered them probably will have stumbled through them in the same way at first. A lot of it just comes from hours and hours of writing, eventually finding your own thing. 

"It sounds even bigger when we’re both using different tunings, and we do that a lot. It adds this whole extra wall of frequencies that you wouldn’t normally get with two guitars in standard.”

Myles: “It creates a very lively and broad sound from the unusual chord voicings. Using different tunings is a big part of the writing process for me. Nick Drake was one of the greatest for that. I love Pink Moon and all of that stuff. His music was so dark yet so awesome.”

3. Try to surprise yourself

Myles: “Unpredictability is incredibly important. Wouldn’t You Rather has me trying to mimic quarter tones to create this whole different vibe droning away on the D-string and getting real modal on the G. Those sounds can be quite dissonant for those of us who grew up only knowing 12 notes. When you hear those micro tones being used in Eastern music, they can twist your ear. Luckily it can work in a rock context...”

Mark: “It’s almost a bit Orient Express! Some of these ideas felt like the best we’d written in a long time. As it turns out, Myles told me he’d been watching Stranger Things and was inspired those original synth sounds. The early ones had the coolest tones, I think the more they developed them the less I liked them. 

"Listen to the soundtrack to The Warriors or any John Carpenter movie... that’s the vibe we wanted to add to this record. Even just one note or chord can really throw you, like in the chorus of Indoctrination. All it takes is one little ear-twister to keep people on their toes. None of us want to keep writing the same thing, it gets boring and redundant. 

"On the song Native Son I had this idea I showed to Myles, who already had a lot of the song worked out but no bridge, and together we flipped the time signature round. You’re bobbing your head to the song and then suddenly it all warps. There are a lot of those types of surprises on this album.”

4. Change your picking style

Mark: “There’s no one method for me, my picking approach seems to incorporate a bit from all of them. There was this Brad Paisley lick I learned where I noticed I was playing with a circular motion like Steve Vai, though I’d never thought of doing it that way specifically... it just happened! However, when I pick on one single string, I tend to go from the elbow. I find that’s the fastest way to pick, for me at least.”

Myles: “Picking styles can be a bit strange going from player to player. Eddie Van Halen hangs his arm over the guitar and flicks his wrist... I don’t know how he controls it but it sounds amazing.”

5. Use non-diatonic notes in your leads

Myles: “In Alter Bridge adding in the ninth is a big one for me, but some of my projects before that had more of a jazz background, so that’s when I became interested in passing tones and all that stuff. I got into it through listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I used to wonder what the hell they were doing and why it sounded so cool, taking it so far outside and then bringing it back in. 

"It’s all about those passing tones, which aren’t diatonic a lot of the time. Once I had that in my bag of tricks, I was hellbent on integrating it into the rock realm. I thought, ‘Let’s give it a try!’ I’ll experiment with diminished scales and even the whole tone scale, for that matter. 

"If I’m in a hotel room and not writing, I’m literally sitting there playing the blues. In a 1/4/5 progression, there are places you can work in those outside scales. If you want to get fancy, you can throw in harmonic or melodic minor. You change the mood of any dominant chord by using these different scales, suddenly it will sound like a dominant flat nine with an augmented fifth or whatever. You can get away with so much in that world.”

6. Use five note groupings instead of four

Mark: “I’ve really gotten into doing that Eric Johnson thing. On the solo for the title track I do this descending pentatonic pattern in fives, which I’ve never really done before. Throughout my career, I’ve mainly been a three notes-per- string, alternate picking kinda guy. I’m trying to break out of that mould, looking into the best pickers in the world to see what they’re doing. 

"Guys like Yngwie who might end on an upstroke with a little pull-off that you’d never notice – pick, pick, pull-off – where you don’t really hear the slurs because of how fast it all sounds. I’ve spent a lot of time with a metronome trying to dive into that. Eric tends to stick to his favourite spots in the pentatonic scale, you start recognising his patterns and ways of introducing these little flurries. He has licks to set up his licks, which really pay off. 

"So I’ve sat down, ascending and descending through the most gruesome shapes just to see if there are any dark little tunnels back here that might be usable in improvisation. I always try to remember the ending spots if I need my parachute to get out of something when I feel like it’s falling apart! 

"This style of picking feels like I’m starting over when I first sit down, but an hour in it feels great. Hopefully a couple of years down the road, that will change... just like any technique. I felt the same about fast legato and now I can do it comfortably whenever I want.”

7. Don't fear the bass frequencies

Mark: “In The Deep and Indoctrination are the two lowest tuned songs on the album. I guess Come To Life was our lowest tuning prior to this.”

Myles: “After finding that In The Deep loop I mentioned, the problem came when I got to the chorus. That’s when I decided to mimic the kind of gallop thing that Mark usually does...”

Mark: “He gets away with it, but when I do it everyone looks at me like I’m crazy ha ha! I’ve been trying for years and everyone’s always like, ‘What are you doing there, Mr. Horse Gallops?!’ That’s it, challenge accepted, for the next record I’m bringing all my down-tuned gallops to the table.”

Myles: “It’s a weird kind of gallop! Trying it on the fifth string wasn’t heavy enough, so I took my Telecaster and dropped the sixth string down to the same note one octave lower, so you have two A-strings essentially. That’s another where we’re actually tuned different to each other, Mark plays in standard. The interesting thing about that intro and outro lead I play was that it was originally going to be the vocal hook for the chorus, but I ended up playing it on guitar after finding a new chorus idea.”

8. Warming up matters

Mark: “Nothing gets you warmed up quicker than improvisation. I find backing tracks help me stay loose. What you should not do is sit down with the metronome and keep ripping through the same technical lick. Instead, focus on your bending, vibrato and the rest of your phrasing. 

"Start out in a box and then look for ways to stretch your pinky out to get those wider intervals, which can sound more exotic. Once I’ve done all that, that’s when I might look at the setlist and think about the trouble spots. 

"I remember once I was sitting with Michael Angelo Batio before a show, it was early in the tour and I was doing all of my solos to make sure I had them down. He was pretty shocked and said it had never occurred to him to play his solos to warm up. Now he does it whenever he plays. It’s always worth brushing up on the harder licks... a lot of people don’t though!”

Myles: “I like the spider...”

Mark: “Dude, not the spider ha ha! I’ve never done much with it and I hate practising things I don’t use. Have you ever actually used it?” 

Myles: “I actually have ha ha! The spider ended up on The Last Hero... I’m sure there’s a solo there with a little bit of spider. There’s another that I like that picks its way through seventh arpeggios, from Gmajor7 to Aminor7 to Bminor7 and so on. It helps connect the neck. I enjoy playing sevenths a lot, they’re probably more from my jazz years but I still enjoy throwing them into rock.”

Alter Bridge's Walk The Sky is out now on Napalm Records. The band tour UK arenas in December – see Alterbridge.com for more info

Alter Bridge's Mark Tremonti is offering guitar and songwriting clinics this November and December when the Florida band is on tour throughout Europe in support of their eagerly anticipated new album, Walk The Sky.

The one-hour group masterclasses will see the A-list shredder take a deep dive into his creative process, taking a look at some of Alter Bridge's biggest tunes and explaining how they were made and why they work.

Alter Bridge say there is something for all fans, not just the guitarists, but you can be quite sure Tremonti will be happy answering questions about importance of your pentatonics and how one should approach their vibrato, gear, and so on. 

The curriculum is sure to cover the Grammy Award-winner's solo work, too, and will go way, way back to his early days with Creed.  

The run of clinics begins on 12 November in Cophenhagen and finishes on 21 December in London. In the meantime, be sure to read Tremonti's 5 Top Tips for Guitarists here.

Walk The Sky is Alter Bridge's sixth studio album and is produced by the band's longtime producer Michael Baskette. It is released through Napalm Records on 18 October and is available to pre-order now.

The clinics cost £150 to attend and include a one-hour session, a Q&A, a tour of Tremonti's live rig, a photo opportunity with the man himself, and access to the band's soundcheck.

Note: gig tickets need to be purchased separately. Once booked, someone will be in touch with full details of where to be and what time to show at the venue.

See Alter Bridge for more details.

Commemorating one of the biggest nights of their career to date, American stadium-rockers Alter Bridge unleash a new live album. Bassist Brian Marshall meets Alison Richter for the low-end lowdown.

Clichéd as it may sound, the first thing one hears on Alter Bridge’s Live At The 02 Arena + Rarities - a recording of their November 24, 2016 performance at London’s biggest live venue - is the proverbial roar of the crowd. It’s deafening. It’s almost enough to drown out the band, and that’s saying something, because Alter Bridge - vocalist/ guitarist Myles Kennedy, guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall, and drummer Scott ‘Flip’ Phillips - are a loud band. 

Live At The O2 Arena is very much a ‘what you hear is what you get’ recording - nothing was added or overdubbed, says Marshall. “We brought out [mixer and mastering engineer] Brian Sperber for that whole UK run, and the cool thing about it is there’s nothing that we added in post-production, so what you hear is actually what we’re playing live on that stage. We pride ourselves on that and the fact that we don’t use any backing tracks or backing vocals.”

He adds: “We do use loops for beginnings and endings of songs, but they’re strictly for transitions and guitar changes to keep the flow of the show going. We don’t use all those things that some other bands tend to use, and there’s a certain amount of pride that goes with being able to do that. We started getting the mixes from Brian a couple of weeks after the tour and it was pretty much spot on. We changed some levels, but there was no overdubbing or changing what we played.”

Passively active

For years, Marshall relied on Music Man basses in the studio and Sadowsky basses live. “That has a lot to do with me being so stubborn about being a passive bass player,” he says. “I always wanted to perform passive, because I felt like there’s too much gain going on with the active pickups. Even though the Sadowsky basses have the active/passive option, I always steered away from it as a passive player.”

Last summer, Ernie Ball sent him a Stingray, though - and thus began his conversion. “I started playing their neck-through SR5 basses and was blown away,” he says. “I couldn’t go from a passive bass to an active bass on the same stage, because it’s such a drastic difference in tone and volume, but we went out with Disturbed and it was such a difference. I could hear myself better in my in-ears, the clarity was better, the front-of-house guy said it was amazing, my friends and peers were hearing bass tones, so finally I was excited about my live situation.”

Because Alter Bridge spend so much time on the road, both in the US and abroad, Marshall relies on two rigs. He goes wireless through a Shure system and runs a Tech 21 Sansamp that “dirties up the tone a little bit. From there, I’m going into an Ampeg SVT VR rig with two heads and two 8x10s. That’s the rig I use for the States. In Europe, I’ve been playing Ashdown for years.

“I recently started using an ABM 900, and again two 8x10s, their Classic Series speakers. They’re constantly shipping these rigs around, so I don’t have two of the same. They’re both completely awesome. They each have a little bit of a different vibe to them, but I love them both. The Ashdown has more bottom end and more round feeling, whereas the Ampeg rig seems to cut a little better for me in the midrange.

“So normally it’s two 8x10s, and if it’s a bigger show, two 8x10s and two 15s that sit in the middle. On the floor I have a tuner and a Dunlop distortion pedal, and I kick that on in different parts of the song. It’s usually sitting back right about where the drum riser meets the first cabinet. I choose where I want to hit that. If I want to fill the room with a certain part of the song, I throw it on for a minute. I try not to overuse it because I’ve got that Sansamp going 24/7 back there. 

“I tend to float around the stage a lot, but my sweet spot is in front of the kick drum, in front of one of my 8x10s. It’s where I can feel all the resonance of the stage and the low end. Sometimes, if I’m close enough to the kick drum and where I want to be, the sustain happens on its own. It’s like the bass plays itself. I find that sweet spot on the stage and it’s my little bubble. It’s where I can go to be safe!”

In the pocket

Logging in thousands of miles, performances, and hours of studio time, the members of Alter Bridge are locked in tightly as a unit. Still, says Marshall, it’s critical that he and Phillips stay in that pocket while balancing between two very different guitar players.

“Myles is theory-oriented and plays very soft but fast, while Mark digs in; he’s super-fast and more aggressive,” he says. “Trying to find a balance between those two, and with two totally different-sounding rigs - it has taken years to get it right, to where the bass sits in the mix and doesn’t step on the other instruments. It’s taken a lot of work to get it there.”

“The bass is a unique instrument in the sense that sometimes I’m playing with the rhythm guitar and the way that it’s moving, sometimes I’m cuing off the vocal, and at all times I’m locked in with the drums,” he says. 

“I’ve never been a bass player who likes to stay with chord progressions. I like to make the bass as creative as I can. I’ve always been a fan of space because that gives me more room to move, and that’s few and far between with Alter Bridge, so I try to take as much advantage of it as I can! I tell Mark, ‘Music is not a race to the finish, man’.”

Marshall and Phillips use a click during a portion of each show in order to stay on track between the two guitarists, and particularly to keep up with Tremonti. 

“We’ve all played together for years, so at this point there’s a certain comfort level,” he says. “I know what they’re going to do, but sometimes they keep me guessing and I do the same with them. For the most part, the guitars will be doing totally different things, and that’s when it’s important for me and Flip to lock in. 

“We use a click maybe 60 percent of the time. Some of the songs feel better off the click, like Blackbird - we’d never play that with a click and every night it’s spoton. But Metalingus - if there wasn’t a click on that song, we’d be completely screwed! I have that click blaring. It’s got to lock in because the passages are moving so fast.”

“Mark is never on a click; he’s the only one not on in-ears. He strictly relies on his wedges, so he pushes and pulls all night. It’s important for me and Flip to have that foundation consistently, so that we can reel him back in, especially at the beginning of the show. The anticipation about getting out there - he gets real aggressive and that’s when I tend to lay back more.

“It’s kind of a fine balance because I know he’s going to go out there with the aggression and he’s going to be rushing, so when I walk on that stage I want to make sure that I’m in the pocket, I’m in my sweet spot. That initial rush to get out there and get the song done, it leads him, and then the show really starts flowing. 

“It’s important for us as a rhythm section to always have that foundation, lock in, and be reliable, so that if someone, God forbid, gets lost in the song, they can always look back at us and say ‘Here it is, here’s the one, here’s where you’ve got to come in - boom ’. It’s that reliability. We really can’t afford a train wreck. At all costs, avoid a train wreck!”

Live At The O2 Arena + Rarities is out now on Napalm.

Alter Bridge’s new album finds Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy not just hitting new heights with their solos, but the way they work together, too. We take a look inside their creative process…

It’s 12 years since they first started writing together, and Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti now find themselves in an unusual position. Despite their lack of mainstream recognition, Alter Bridge have a huge UK arena tour looming on the horizon.

It’s a massive achievement for any heavy rock band in these times, and an intensely dedicated work ethic and hugely loyal fanbase have carried them far. But if you really want to understand the key to Alter Bridge’s success, you need to lift the lid on how Tremonti and Kennedy create their songs as a team. Because that’s where the real magic happens. “When it works, those are the moments that show us why we do this,” marvels Mark.

“Those are the most rewarding parts and they when we put our parts together, it makes what I’ve done on my own twice as good.” Myles concurs, “It makes each person feel part of the song. It’s truly collaborative.”

Though new album, The Last Hero, takes a look at the nature of heroism and leadership, even more fittingly for us, there’s plenty of guitar heroics going on as both players step up to new levels as lead players on some huge anthemic songs. But musicians can learn just as much from the way the pair work as a team to craft their albums…

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When did the heroes and leaders theme come into the writing process for these songs?

Myles Kennedy: “Very early. Because it was written in a relatively short period of time and the initial volume of what was going on in the world around us was so amplified, it was hard to avoid it and so the concept of leaders and heroes, how that plays an integral part of our world as human beings was weighing pretty heavily on me in particular. I’d been thinking about that a lot so it definitely manifested itself in the songwriting process.”

Does it help you focus when there is an ongoing theme at the back of your mind or can it also be an obstacle?

Myles: “At the end of the day I’m just hoping for inspiration. Because, let me tell you, there is nothing harder than trying to write a lyric when there’s no inspiration. When the well is dry and you’re trying to come up with something it’s such an arduous process.

"This was probably the fastest, easiest lyric on a record I’ve ever experienced and in a way it helped my guitar playing because lyrics were done so early on in the process, it allowed me to spend time working on solos. Which I never used to do. I used to just wing it because I was so far behind with the lyric process.”

The title track and This Side Of Fate are two examples of solos where we’re hearing more of your fusion roots coming through…

Myles: “I think you can definitely hear that at times. A lot of passing tones and a lot of chromatic runs. Some of that is the jazz language, some of that is listening to Steve Morse early on. The chromatic runs are something I think I got from him. And my friend Ian Thornley [Big Wreck], he does that quite a bit. So I thought I’ll throw a little bit of that in.”

Mark Tremonti: “He’s doing more and more soloing and from day one, ever since I heard how good a guitar player he was, I’ve been really pushing him to do more of this because it would be a damned shame as good as he is not to showcase that talent.”

Myles: “Elvis [Baskette, producer] and Mark were pushing me to do more of it. Generally I’ve been kind of hesitant because I like the idea that I sing for two thirds of the song and Marks takes over on a solo. I’m always thinking of a live context and how it takes attention off a person and I just think it keeps it interesting. But at the same time I do love playing lead guitar. As you know, it was how I started. And I really enjoyed the process on this record.”

What were your goals on this album, as guitar players – did you come into the sessions wanting to emphasise or focus on anything new?

Myles: “It’s funny, I’ve been the same way for years. Instead of focussing on other people’s licks and vocabulary, which can be really helpful and I used to do that a ton probably for the first decade of playing, I really get off on creating my own lines and creating shapes and patterns and getting them to where they’re just automatic.

“And I think a lot of that comes from years of jazz study and seeing how a lot of the jazz cats would do that. So when I look at the neck I see all this potential – I see the chord tones, scales and passing tones and I want to come up with interesting fun ways of playing those that can be uniquely my own.”

Mark: “I just came in knowing I had to write a whole bunch of solos and hoping I could do it. I’d just got done writing 18 guitar solos for the Tremonti records and I was thinking, ‘I sure hope I have enough ideas to keep going forward on the 11 or 12 solos I put on this album!’

“I always try to have a vocal approach when if you took every solo out of its song and played it by itself, it would stand alone as a composition. I love it when you can reintroduce the vocal melodies in parts of the solos and build off of that here and there. I love hitting the chord changes and for there to be a beginning, middle and end to every solo just like there is in every song. I don’t like it to be just a collection of repetitive riffs that are there for the sake of being there.

“I like to have as much emotion as possible. And when I can’t find that emotion in the solo, a lot of times I’ll say, ‘Hey Myles how do you feel about this solo section? Do you want to do it?’ And he’ll jump right on it. Like the Crows On A Wire solo, I wasn’t feeling that at all. And he did a great job.”

You put together songs quickly, but the solos suggest you’ve had the time to give each approach careful consideration. What’s your solo writing process?

Mark: “I just know as soon as the pre-production is done and I know what the target is, I will not stop until they’re done. Sometimes it will take me a week, sometimes it will take me a night. If I can finish one solo in one night I’m the happiest guy in the world.

“It will probably take me on average three days to put together a solo. But that’s with the kids going to bed at nine o’clock and me up until four in the morning every day. That’s with me playing over it maybe 150 times, recording it every time and seeing if there’s a piece I want to make work. The hardest part for me is how does it begin. Once I have that beginning down it flows much easier for me because then when I improvise over it I’ll start the same way then see where it takes me.

“If I come up with something cool then I’ve got the first couple of parts. A lot of times I’ll have the beginning and the ending first, or the beginning and where it repeats the chord progression now. Then I’ve got to fill in the other parts. In the studio sometimes I’ll fall off the rails into something else that’s cooler and improvised that works. Because sometimes improvised solos have a certain magic that you can’t repeat.”

Your writing process together is also unique. Mark catalogues his ideas and files them individually as intros, verses, mid sections and so on. Do you do the same ahead of meeting for Alter Bridge writing sessions, Myles?

Myles: “That’s the exact system we both use. Initially that was kind of a new concept because I would write songs and try to get the entire thing done in a very specific period of time, which I still do and believe in that approach, but with Alter Bridge this is the way we do things where we’re both stockpiling ideas and organising the ideas or separate files where you’ve got your bridges, separate choruses, verses and intros. Then knowing when you get together with your writing partner you’re going to try and marry your individual parts as opposed to coming in with an entire body of work done.”

How do you make these individual ideas fit together so seamlessly?

Myles: “It’s fascinating. This Side Of Fate is a perfect example. Mark had that fingerpicked verse and chorus and then I had worked up this very orchestrated thing that was very Queen-inspired. But all I would have to do was change my tuning, or tweak a little thing here and there to marry it. But I think that was the first or second skeleton of a song that we put together, while we were Skyping actually.”

Mark: “If you have to change the tempo a little or the tuning, you just try to make it work as best as you can. It’s heartbreaking when you can’t fit a part you thought would work so well with a song. But maybe it’s just too damned slow or fast and it just ruins the vibe of the song.”

The mid sections are a real strong point in your songs – especially Cradle To The Grave and Twilight. They can be a tricky thing for songwriters after the verses and choruses are written. Does your unique process help?

Myles: “Yes, and that’s the benefit of this approach to writing. Because it’s all about perspective. So if you stockpiled all of these bridges and you’re listening with your partner and presenting all of these ideas and you react… and it’s a weird primal thing, especially with melodies.

“I don’t understand why one melody seems to give you goosebumps vs another that doesn’t. They’ll probably design some computer programme to figure that out some day but right now it’s very mysterious – and that’s awesome. So when you stockpile ideas you go back and listen with a fresh perspective, like the listener would, as opposed to if you’ve just come up with a part and you’re thinking, we’ve got to have a middle eight here so let’s just write a part. It doesn’t have time to sit like a fine wine [laughs]. It’s all about that perspective.”

Mark: “We’ve always tried our hardest to make that bridge the best part of the song. Luckily we’ve had a lot of great moments but a lot of times it happens in the moment for us, too. Bridges have been the peak of the energy of the song a lot of the time – a huge payoff. When I hear a song and I turn it on I don’t want to just look forward to the chorus every time. I want to wait to hear this part, a part that only happens once. Then maybe the riff comes back towards the end. I like that you have something to look forwards to deep within the song. A lot of the times that’s the best part of the song.”

Alternate tunings are also an integral part of keeping the songwriting process fresh and inspired. Did you bring any new ones in this time?

Myles: “For Cradle To The Grave I used a new tuning I’d always wanted to try. It’s basically Open G down a half step but turning it into a G minor tuning - so you take the B and drop it down half a step to a minor third. And I like that tuning, I think that’s a lot of fun.”

Mark: “I used DADGAD for the first time on Twilight. I always think it’s a fun challenge to play in a new tuning and have to write a solo with it. People ask, ‘Doesn’t that drive you crazy?’ But it’s the best gift in the world because you’re not repeating yourself ever. You’re not going to repeat someone else’s licks yet because you don’t have an idea of what the hell you’re doing in the first place. And that’s where you find the magic.”

“My Champion also has a new tuning for this record. It’s half step down and the low string is tuned to C [B G# C# F# A# D#]. I really liked that riff because I could use a lot of the open strings and it had kind of 70s vibe that I dug. Then there’s another tuning that I still need to figure out what it is because I do it by ear.

“On This Side Of Fate I use a tuning that I’ve never used before and it’s a really great exciting one. I’ve written a lot of ideas in it but it’s just that only one made this record. That finger picked part in This Side Of Fate is one of the first things that surfaced from that tuning.”

And Show Me A Leader marks the first time you’ve used a seven-string on an Alter Bridge record…

Mark: “Yes, I remember getting on the phone with Myles and as usual we have this discussion where we have to decide how we’re going to make this record a little different than what we’ve done in the past, keep on developing and going deeper into the rabbit hole.

“I said that one thing I want to do is try to incorporate a seven-string because it’s never been my thing and it’s never been something that has really inspired me that much. But I want to break it back out and see if I can find some inspiration there. Then Myles showed me the part of the intro for Show Me A Leader and I started playing the seven-string over it. It just added so much depth. Such a big low end and something we haven’t had… we’ve had drop B stuff but this was even heavier sounding. Deeper sounding.

“When we play the song at soundcheck, when you hit that big F# chord – or whatever it’s tuned down to, in normal tuning it would be F# – it’s so big and different. That’s what I love about it, just introducing new musical flavours to what we do in the band over the years.”

What’s the adjustment to seven-string been like for you?

Mark: “I’m still in the baby stages of learning how to get the most out of it. But I’m approaching as if it’s a normal tuned guitar, it’s just got that extra string on the bottom. I still play like it’s in standard tuning but eventually I want to start going crazy with alternate tunings on that thing and keep developing. But that’s the one thing that keeps me away from spending too much time on it.

“That extra string messes with me when it comes to coming up with alternate tunings. It’s just that extra string that makes it more confusing once you go off the path. I’ve become really comfortable with going off the beaten path, coming up with alternate tunings and finding my way around. But when you add that seventh string it’s not my comfort zone. So I’ll have to do it in small doses and see if I can come up with something great.”

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Alter Bridge’s bass supremo Brian Marshall discusses the band’s new album, sitting in the pocket and the greatest fans in the world...

Hearing bands and artists say “We have the best fans in the world, man” is clichéd to the point that we don’t know why someone hasn’t made a recording of it - it would sell in ridiculous numbers.

But look at an Alter Bridge crowd next time you’re at one of the band’s shows, have a look at AB’s social media accounts, and spend a few moments chatting to supporters: the level of fandom among its audience in the UK would make Beliebers blush.

With people on this side of the Atlantic desperate to see the bandmembers - frontman Myles Kennedy, lead guitarist and songwriter Mark Tremonti, drummer Scott ‘Flip’ Phillips, and our dashing interview subject Brian Marshall - you’d think it’d reach fever pitch in their United States of America homeland, but in fact that’s not the case. Chatting to us while waiting for a soundcheck in Portland, Oregon, Marshall explains:

“We’ve spent the majority of our time over there but it hasn’t taken off as well for us as it has in the UK. There’s something to be said for selling out Wembley Arena, but when we first started touring here, we played smaller shows and developed an intimacy with the fanbase. It really means a lot to us because a lot of that hardcore fanbase are still with us today.

“We were nervous going into this tour with [metal band] Disturbed because they have a different type of crowd. We first thought we could play our epic songs, but we only had a 35-minute set and while those are great songs, on a first listen they might have gone over people’s heads a little. We had to hit them hard, heavy and fast, and it was much more well received.”

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Alter Bridge’s new album The Last Hero has been a long time coming.

The group took some time off to follow a few different ventures in recent years: Kennedy toured as part of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash’s group, Tremonti produced a double album, and Marshall had kids, got married and worked in real estate - so everyone is excited to get their teeth into the new material.

“I needed to find something to do as I had a lot of downtime,” says the bassist. “I wasn’t active on the road or anything. But with this particular record, Mark was a little tapped out because he’d just done his double album and Myles had just finished touring with Slash.

“When it was time to do a new Alter Bridge record, they met and stayed up until the early morning writing, then Flip and I would join them the following day and listen to what they had come up with the night before. We’re a good sounding board or filter for what AB should be.”

While fans of Alter Bridge and Creed, the band from which AB evolved, will know Marshall as the melodic maestro of the low end, he started as a marching-band dork.

“My dad was a drummer so we always had a drum set around the house,” he says. “I was always attracted to the rhythm section, which had a lot to do with watching marching bands at football games as a kid. I’d watch the drums and the bass marching together, it was a unique unit.

“Some people buy into writing lyrics, some people pick up the guitar: I was always drawn to the rhythm section. I’d watch people like Neil Peart and Geddy Lee and they were just so tight - when you can lock in with a drummer like that, it makes the band to me.”

Marshall also plays saxophone, and it was his tutor that introduced him to the low end.

“My sax teacher was called John Bastone and he was a virtuoso. He played a lot of instruments and I asked him what his favourite was - and he said it was bass guitar.

“I liked this guy, so I figured I’d take it up as well. I returned for a lesson with him and he said, ‘I think you’re gonna be a good bass player one day.’ And that was all I needed to hear.”

As for style, Marshall grew up listening to classic rock, citing bassists such as the aforementioned Geddy Lee as well as John Paul Jones, Steve Harris and John Entwistle as his favourites.

“I love Steve Harris’ fingerstyle and the way he attacks his bass in sixteenths, and is still able to embellish fills,” he explains. “I’ve always been a finger player. The only song I play with a pick is One Day Remains off the first record, so I’ve got much faster with my fingers. Keeping up with Mark and his writing has forced me to be a more prolific finger player - and that’s taken a lot of work over the years.”

Marshall has his own style when it comes to the type of bass he uses. What started out as a long-term fascination with Sadowksy changed on The Last Hero.

“I used to steer away from the whole active pickup thing,” he tells us. “Recently a friend built me a guitar and we were going through the specifications of how I wanted it to feel, and the type of wood, and we got down to finish the guitar, and we had some passive pickups there. For some reason I said ‘Let’s order some active pickups’, and I wrote the record with that guitar.

“But I went to record and there were some issues with the string gauges. I needed to bump up the gauge because we lower the guitars a whole step sometimes, but the bridge couldn’t handle it.

“I ended up recording the record with our producer’s bass, a Music Man. I went home and thought, you know what, I bet I could find a Stingray bridge to put on this custom guitar, so I found an Ernie Ball rep online and he put me in touch with an A&R guy and before I knew, he sent me a Stingray Classic.

“I love the Sadowsky bass, but I just felt like I could not emulate the tone that I got from the recording, so I steered toward Ernie Ball. I’d love to do a signature bass with Music Man at some point. The relationship is a bit new but I’m pushing it a bit.”

You can expect to see Marshall playing his three basses, the Sadowsky, the Music Man and his custom instrument - or Blanco, Sunrise and Gun as he refers to them - when Alter Bridge tour the new album around the UK in November/December. And you best believe that the band is looking forward to seeing the best fans in the world again.

“The UK and Europe have been absolutely phenomenal for us,” adds drummer Flip. “We saw the passion and excitement from fans on our first trip and knew we needed to keep returning. These countries quickly became a home for the band and we’ll continue to nurture that forever.”

The last word goes to the man himself. “At certain regular venues, we’ll do something special for our fans such as meet-and-greets or a different setlist,” says Marshall, “and the good thing about stepping up is we’re able to do something different each time. That’s what we’re looking forward to when we come to the UK this time, because we haven’t been able to do that on previous trips. This particular package is going to be really great.” See you there!

The Last Hero is out now. Alter Bridge tour the UK from 23 November to 2 December.

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With The Last Hero being Mark Tremonti’s third album in 18 months - after two releases with his solo band - the prolific songwriter could be forgiven for running out of steam. But whenever he meets with his Alter Bridge bandmate Myles Kennedy, there’s an embarrassment of riches between them when it comes to ideas.

“That’s how things are different in Alter Bridge in any other bands I’ve been in before,” he tells us, “because we both come to table with complete parts of music and melody. Then we piece our ideas together.”

Their unusual jigsaw method has reaped incredible results on five albums over 12 years of collaboration for the band, which is taking them all the way to the O2 Arena on this year’s UK tour.

As songwriters, their synergy is now at the point where they’re finishing each other’s sentences…

“We’re both big melody guys, and when Myles and I get together we’ll both spit ideas at one another,” Mark explains.

“I’ll say I’ve got this chorus that starts out with ‘Show me a leader that – blank – ’ and he finishes it off. So a lot of the lyrical vision is Myles’s, but I contribute a lot on melodies. Sometimes I’ll split out one line that he’ll chase down and finish off; sometimes he comes up with the part melody-wise and part-wise.”

“We’re both very driven and both work very hard,” adds Myles.

“I think because we’ve worked together for so long we’ve seen how this partnership has been very effective and we trust each other now.”

As guitarists, this mutual creative support is seeing both players hitting new form on The Last Hero.

Tremonti turns in his finest all-round performance yet as a soloist across an album, while Kennedy is showing more of his fusion roots than ever before in the band - which will come as a big surprise to anyone who only knows him as the man who sings with Slash.

“He’s doing more and more soloing,” praises Mark.

“And from day one, ever since I heard how good a guitar player he was, I’ve been really pushing him to do more of this, because it would be a damned shame as good as he is not to showcase that talent.”

We sat down with Mark and Myles to talk through every track on The Last Hero in detail (even the bonus tracks) to find out how they worked as a partnership to evolve their sound and raise their bar as players.

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Mark: “I remember getting on the phone with Myles, and as usual we have this discussion where we have to decide how we’re going to make this record a little different than what we’ve done in the past, keep on developing and going deeper into the rabbit hole.

“I said that one thing I want to do is try to incorporate a seven-string, because it’s never been my thing and it’s never been something that has really inspired me that much. But I wanted to break it back out and see if I could find some inspiration there.

“Then Myles showed me his part of the intro for Show Me A Leader and I started playing the seven-string over it. It just added so much depth. Such a big low-end and something we haven’t had… we’ve had drop B stuff but this was even heavier-sounding… deeper-sounding.”

Myles: “I had written the intro, and then Mark had the chorus and we built the rest of the song around that. I think we’d had that intro with another song at one point and then we changed it.

“In fact, it was kind of controversial when we put the song out initially and we did the edit. We didn’t know if it was going to work, and within a day Brian [Marshall] our bass player had read some comments and we decided to get the version out with the intro, because it was losing something to some of the fans. It seemed to help and we almost did the video version without the intro, but fortunately the fans helped us decide that one, real quick.”

Mark: “I think that song without the intro is a decent song, but that intro makes it a great song. I think I started riffing on the verse in the moment; I don’t think it was a part that existed at all before we tried to fit that chorus and intro together. I just started playing on it and Myles threw the melody down.

“I think the same happened with the bridge. I don’t think that bridge existed until we sat down that night to put it together. It was really built on that intro and that chorus. Myles had a lot of the intro worked out and then the seven-string over the top filled it out so nicely. I think that intro is still one of my favourite parts on the record.”

Myles: “It’s about the global warming denying phenomenon that is taking place. That song in particular has a very passionate vocal; that’s definitely one of my favourite songs, and I’m sure we’ll play that in the set. The chorus came from me, as well as the Mastodon-inspired middle part.

“Travelling is a massive component for me [with songwriting] - in fact, a lot of the music that I brought in that made it to the record was written when I was travelling in India last year with Slash. India was a hotbed of creativity for me. I almost couldn’t shut it off at times. The things I was seeing, the cacophony of sounds – street noise and people. It was heavy, man. It was good.

“The chorus happened one day and it was either at the hotel or on the streets of Mumbai. And that riff is Mark’s, and it’s one of of my two favourite riffs on the record by him; it’s just awesome.”

Mark: “Me and Myles always get together at my place before we go over to pre-production, and that was one we were both excited about. It came together nicely, and we couldn’t wait to bring it to pre-production. It was one of those things that as soon as we played it for everybody they said, ‘That’s killer’ and there was never any doubt in anyone’s mind that was going to be a song that made the record.”

Mark: “That’s in drop B. [Producer Michael 'Elvis' Baskette] Elvis was hellbent on having a swing song, something with a big heavy swing to it. He referenced one of our songs from ABIII and he wanted this heavy groove swing song. So I’d go home every night and I’d try to come up with the riff then present my favourite.

“I came up with the riff in that process. It doesn’t really have a swing to it, but when I was in that mode of trying to riff out on stuff I stumbled on that and I knew I really wanted to make it happen as it was one of my favourite ideas. It’s probably my favourite track on the whole record.”

Myles: “It’s open to interpretation. People have all sorts of theories about what that is about, but to me it’s ultimately about anyone who is trying to find salvation or redemption through means that are not necessarily healthy or good.

“Musically, once again, this was Mark’s riff and it’s just beyond heavy, and I think that’s going to be another great one live. The intro riff is something I had come up with last year on the road and it used to be so much slower. So every time I hear it, I still think of it the way it was originally written. Which was real doom-rock, and now it’s so sped up. But that’s one of those things, when you get together with people and write you have to hand it over and trust.

“I love that chorus riff, too - Mark came up with that real quick when we were trying to find a chorus for it. Elvis and Mark were talking and then Mark just started playing that riff. That was really special.

Mark: “That happened in the moment. We were sitting in pre-production and I was playing that progression. All the guys were pretty much, ‘Yeah, keep going with it - that’s killer’ and it just happened. It just seemed to flow perfectly.

“I was always on the fence when you’re in drop B tuning - the drop B tuning we use where it’s just the bottom string tuned to B - about playing a powerchord shape on the low two strings. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But in this case it worked really well. I was really happy with the way that one turned out.”

Myles: “The guitars in the middle eight were something I put over the top with that dissonance and the half-step bend thing. For me, that section really reminds me of Massive Attack.”

Myles: “That’s a Mark riff, and the first time he played that for me was on acoustic guitar. And hearing it in an acoustic setting totally changes the vibe of it usually - it’s not as anthemic. But that is such a super-strong hook, no matter what you hear it on.”

Mark: “That’s a new tuning for this record. It’s half-step down and the low string is tuned to C (but it's a B when down).

“I came across that tuning when I was jamming with John Connolly from Sevendust. He had said that was one of his favourite tunings, and I thought that was crazy because it's a half-step off of my comfort spot with the drop B tuning. So when I tried it I thought it was strange until I really figured out how cool it was.

“I really liked that riff, because I could use a lot of the open strings and it had kind of a '70s vibe that I dug. When it comes to writing sessions, you have a few parts you set aside for one of the first things you really want to make happen on the record, and that was one of my most memorable riffs that I really wanted to see happen.

Myles: The chorus reminds you of Steve Perry? That’s cool, we love the Steve Perry and the Journey!

“From a melody standpoint, I probably spent the most time fine-tuning that one. It was probably the last thing I finished melodically and lyrically because I knew that was such a special hook that he had guitar-wise. I didn’t want to take away from that at all so we’re real happy it turned out the way it did.”

Mark: “I think my whole influence is a mixture of speed metal and '70s and '80s soft-rock. I love melodic stuff and brutal heavy stuff.”

Myles: “That’s a Mark chorus. He’s really got a good arena sense - that arena-rock hook. The synth is from Elvis; he adds those kind of things. Neither Mark or I are much into [playing] synths, but Elvis likes to tuck those into his mixes.”

Mark: “I just like a chorus that explodes, that has this bigness to it. A chorus should be that big energetic part that you want to keep coming back to. That was one of the choruses that I really loved for this album, and in pre-production I had to keep on pulling that thing out.

“And it didn’t work in the first couple of songs. Elvis kept on shooting it down in the first few arrangements we had and I just kept on pulling it out there: ‘Come on, let’s try it again’ and finally it went from a part that I was struggling to get into to an, ‘Okay, this could be the first single’ kind of thing.

“I think it’s when I pulled out the verse riff that everyone loved; I think that’s when everyone fell in love with the combination of the verse and chorus. That verse riff is what really sparked it for Elvis and I really didn’t want to waste that chorus.

“Elvis isn’t like that all the time, just every now and then. And when it’s an idea you really love, it can get frustrating because you respect each other so much, if he’s saying something about a part that’s one of your favourites, I know now I have to really work hard to show everybody that this part deserves to make it on the record.

“I think Myles always loved the chorus, and the other guys loved it, but I think the earlier songs we placed around it didn’t have the same vibe and it kind of had a hokier sound to it. This sits better with what he have now.

“Speaking of Elvis and his input on the record, I had written a solo for that song, and the first time he’s ever said when I’ve been working with him that I shouldn’t do a solo a certain way was on that song. He was like, ‘I just don’t like the way the solo starts; it sounds like the ending.’ I responded, ‘Really?! I love the way it starts!’

“But once somebody says that, it will always be in the back of your mind, so I went and redid the intro. He said, ‘It’s just the intro; everything else I love.’ But there’s a part that happens in the middle of that solo that used to be at the start of the solo, but in a lower octave. There’s a repeating theme and he didn’t like that [being played at the start] because he thought it was an answer to something else. So I started the solo with a more obvious intro part, and he loved it.

“One thing I’m happy about is the old way it was written was really tough to play with these big bends that ran across the neck and you had to land on the quickly and bend precisely on. It was one of those things that maybe once in every five times you play it you’ll mess it up, so it’s much easier now.”

Myles: “Musically, the verses came from me and the main riff came from Mark. It’s a heavy song lyrically and was written right after my mother-in-law had fallen ill, and it essentially deals with the idea that our parents aren’t going to be around forever and the emotions tied in with that.

“My mother-in-law passed away literally two weeks prior to recording that, and it was pretty hard getting through it. My wife can’t even listen to that song; it’s tough.”

Mark: “The riff was one of my favourites that I played for Myles. We built the song on that riff, and then Myles had the verse part ready and then I wrote the heavy bridge riff - that was a riff that happened in the moment and I just kind of stumbled on it.

“Those are the kind of moments that make you want to do what you do. When something happens in the moment like that… it’s one thing when you log an idea for months and you can’t wait to get it out there, but when you’re in the moment and you’re making that final demo for the record and it happens right there it’s a great feeling.

“That’s one I’m really looking forward to playing live. That’s always been one of my favourites. It feels like an album track to me - it’s never going to be a single or anything - but it’s definitely one that I think a lot of fans will gravitate towards once they’ve really listened the album a bunch.”

Myles: “That was written about me from the perspective of after the Mayfield [Four] era [Myles’s band before Alter Bridge] and where I was at that point. And when I wrote the chorus, I’d had it since last year and it brought back all those [memories]. It was definitely written from the perspective of dusting yourself off and pushing forward. Like we tend to have in a lot of our songs.”

Mark: “That was one song that when we were working on it in pre-production, I liked it but didn’t love it at all. I was kind of half-hearted in it. I enjoyed playing it, but I thought, if there’s going to be B-sides on the record, this is going to be a B-side.

“But once we got it into the studio and recorded, doing vocals, I remember when I was doing my harmonised vocals and I heard Myles doing something at the end of the song. I told Elvis, ‘I absolutely love what Myles is doing on that last chorus; is there a way we can make that happen on every chorus?’ And he said absolutely. He had it going on through the entire chorus, but we changed it to the answer part with how the song is now.

“And I think that made me love the song. In the mixing stage, it went from being one of my least favourite songs to one of my favourites. I just think that chorus is one of my favourites on the whole record.

“When we were listening to mixes, I would always go back to that song first and it was so weird for me because I was the one that really had to be pushed along to get that song done because it wasn’t something I was inspired about. But I love the way it turned out.”

Myles: “Mark had that verse and chorus, and then I had worked up this very orchestrated thing that was very Queen-inspired. But what I would have to do was change my tuning, or tweak a little thing here and there to marry it.

“But I think that was the first or second skeleton of a song that we put together, while we were Skype-ing actually. So I wrote that mid-section as a standalone part and then Mark played me his verse and chorus and it was perfect. For the solo, ultimately the inspiration was the chord tone approach, touch on the changes and have the passing tones. Just keep it as emotional as possible.”

“It’s about living with the consequences of certain decisions you make. And for me, that song is almost a continuation of where Show Me A Leader starts. It’s almost like there’s a trilogy between Show Me A Leader, This Side Of Fate and then it ends with The Last Hero. It’s really about being at the point where you’ve made a decision and you have to live with it.”

Mark: “This Side Of Fate is the epic song of the record. The Last Hero, the last track could also be considered that style of song, but I think this song is more of the moody, deeper and more emotive kind of song. It’s probably my second favourite song on the record, next to The Other Side.

“There’s part of me that loves the emotional slower-paced epic - I don’t want to say Blackbird - but Blackbird kind of song. That’s what I think Alter Bridge does best. When I get together with these three guys, that’s what I think we’re best at. I’m really happy with that one. And the outro solo is probably my second favourite solo in the process. My favourite? That’s the B-side [see track 14].”

Myles: “We get told a lot of stories from an incredible amount of fans about their relationships with the songs. And they get tattoos with the lyrics on their bodies. It’s those fans that really remind us and keep us inspired to continue to write songs that resonate with people. It’s a wonderful feeling and it’s also a certain amount of responsibility - you don’t want to let them down. It’s a tribute to heroes, a tribute to people that sacrifice.”

Mark: “It’s a song about loss, but you’re celebrating these heroes. Every song about loss doesn’t have to be dreary; it can be little more uplifting. I remember when that song clicked. Myles played me an idea and said, ‘I don’t think this is an Alter Bridge idea, but I really like it’ so I asked him to play it for me, because I wanted to hear it. He played it and I loved it.

“It was the verse of the song, and once he started playing that I played that guitar line over the top of it [hums guitar part], and it really just filled the part out. It’s just that thing when you get two parts together and put parts together that don’t step on one another, it uplifts the idea.

“It’s like the bridge to Blackbird - when we added our parts together, it made it whole for some reason. Once we added our parts together on the verse to this song we just both lit up. It was like that Writing On The Wall moment when we took it into pre-production knowing for a fact that everybody would love this part we came up with last night.

“I had this chorus that I thought could be done really well if it was in the right song. I played it for Myles and he loved it.

“The melody used to be more sparse where it only had the answer part as the chorus. Myles put in the first line and we were talking about him sing the first line and me sing the second line, but then it was just too damn high for me to sing! I couldn’t sing it, so he just sings the whole thing. Live, we’ll just have to work it out and see what works best because I feel like a lot of these higher back-up vocals, I have to sing so loud and I don’t want to distract from what he’s doing, so I might just have to change what I’m doing instead of screaming.”

Myles: “That’s definitely a Tremonti riff. It’s about how we tend to put people on pedestals and then turn around and tear them down. It is a high chorus, yes, it’s a little bit of a stretch - that will be fun to pull off live!”

Mark: “Before we got together to write, I was sending Myles ideas over the phone and it was one of the first handfuls of ideas I sent him. When we got together and we put some of the ideas together, that was another idea where Elvis was like, ‘Nope, nope, I don’t really like it; let’s do something else.’

“And everybody in the band was like, ‘Man, what’s the deal? This is a good catchy riff. This could be like an Isolation and a song our fans really like.’ And he said, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t want it to sound too close to what you do with Tremonti. It sounds more like Tremonti than it does Alter Bridge.’ And then the rest of the guys were like, no we like it - it’s not speed-metal; it’s just heavy. But he kind of had it out for it. But he wanted to keep it sounding different from Tremonti, because it’s the same producer with the two different bands. But we finally talked him into it.

“It was his least favourite song for a long time, and on every record Elvis has his least favourite song. That was his least favourite song [laughs] and he’s allowed to have that. But I think in the end he loved it!”

Myles: “To me, that verse part is the most Pete Townshend thing I’ve ever heard Mark come up with. I like that one - that’s a cool track. That was one of the first things Mark played for me when I got to Orlando. One of the first early ideas, and I know it’s one of his favourites.”

Mark: “That is my first DADGAD [tuning] song. Very strummy, and the vocal melodies followed the guitar line - very grand and I thought it had a unique sound to it. That’s one of the songs that since we’ve started doing interviews about the record, Twilight hasn’t been a song people say really sticks out, but I hope in the long run people really dig it. Because I think it’s a unique song, and I really enjoy it.”

Myles: “That’s my very Mastodon-influenced riff. Hopefully we’ll play that one live. I play the solo before the middle eight and again, those dissonant bends… I call them irritating bug bends - if there’s a fly somewhere buzzing around you, that’s what we’re trying to recreate!”

Mark: “That was one of the heaviest Myles riffs on the whole record. The first time he played it for me, it just sounded like a machine grinding - very heavy. I think we’d tried to place it in a few different spots and finally we got it into where it sits now.

“My favourite contribution to the song is in the chorus, the rising guitar with the bent note there. I really dug how that built the chorus up.

“I think, early on, that was one of a lot of people’s favourites. At first, I thought that was going to be one of my top three favourites. It’s not, but it’s up there for me, but I had super high hopes it could have been my favourite song on the whole record when we first started putting that together.”

Myles: “I guess the riff is kind of an unorthodox approach for us. Besides the middle eight, most of that I wrote in my house - the melody, that riff part… all that came in one afternoon. That was a lot that came on that one pretty quickly, and I was pretty excited about that track.

“That might be my favourite solo I play on the album. It’s a real journey, and it’s going to be a real pain in the ass to play live! I was staying with Flip [Scott Phillips], our drummer, and because I was ahead of schedule with lyric writing, I’d get back, eat something after being in the studio all day and then get back to my room and just woodshed that, This Side Of Fate, the solo I did on Crows On A Wire and I’d just play them over and over. I wanted to go in there and make Elvis happy and not have him say, ‘Okay, try it again, try it again.’ I’ll give myself a B!”

Mark: “Elvis told me that this is the first album where Myles pre-wrote all his guitar solos, and you can really hear that, too, in a lot of the solos where there’s a lot of crazy technique and stuff that wouldn’t happen on the fly. Which is great because usually you hear Myles improvising these more held out singy notes with little bursts of technique here and there but these solos sound like the stuff he grew up on - the real shreddy stuff for the most part.”

“A lot of the riffage in that song is Myles’s doing. I remember being there that day, and there were two or three riffs from him and I was just trying to keep up. In pre-production, this time it wasn’t like me and Myles put that song together the night before. We did 90 per cent of the songs, but that was one of the songs that happened that day in the studio where the parts started changing so much. I’m trying to learn one Myles riff while he’s introducing another part to Elvis at the same time. I’m like, ‘Wait I’m trying to learn this riff and trying to harmonise with it and come up with my own thing.’

“I tried to put as much as I can into the song, but it’s a very complicated, long, complex song. It was one of toughest for me to perform on the rhythm side of things because Myles’s rhythm style is very different from mine, and sometimes it can be awkward for me to play, just as some of my stuff can be awkward for him to play. There’s some riffs in there that were very tough for me to get, so that’s one I’m going to have to practice a lot.”

Myles: “I can tell you something about that song; number one, Last Of Our Kind is not the title. It was a total screw-up. And we do this with every record where there will be some sort of mishap. So, the record is technically supposed to end with The Last Hero; that’s the whole statement. But we have this additional song that made it on there… whoopee!

“The title was actually supposed to be Symphony Of Agony. Last Of Our Kind was the original title, and then someone screwed up when it went to be pressed. So Spinal Tap. The lyric was actually inspired by when the exterminator came to our house because we had carpenter ants. And after he sprayed the house and I went up and looked at all the ants writhing around dying, I felt so bad and it broke my heart. So the song is written about being exterminated from the ants’ perspective!”

Mark: “This is the song I was so upset about. I wrote the solo and I remember my father was staying at my house while I was writing solos, and he’d say, ‘You know what, Mark, that’s fantastic,’ and I felt the same way. It was one of those solos where everything worked, and it told a story and it was really fun to perform, and then in the recording process everybody said, ‘That’s the B-side.’ My favourite solo is on everybody’s least favourite song!

“It was originally called The Last Of Us, and since everybody didn’t like the song as much and it was definitely the B-side, when I was doing my vocals me and Elvis were talking about it and I said, ‘There’s got to be hope for this song; I think the chorus just needs help.’

“So we put our heads together to come up with a different chorus, and that’s when I sang a different chorus over it and spat out lyrics on the spot. Myles came in a few hours later and we had him listen to it, and the Symphony Of Agony thing is what I sang over it, and he took it from there.

“So it’s a different melody to what was originally there, and I think we liked it a little more, but it still didn’t make the song one of the best songs on the record. It’s still one of the last-placed songs but we take pride in all of our songs. We don’t think it’s a bad song, we don’t think it’s a single or an epic track, but it does have my favourite solo on the whole record on it.”

Mark: “It was one of the One Day Remains-era songs I absolutely loved, and to be honest, I haven’t heard the version we did with Myles for years. I have my version [the original demo].

“It’s kind of a moody song… I love it. It’s heavy in its own way, but it’s definitely not fast heavy.”

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There's nothing better than learning guitar straight from the source and Alter Bridge's new DVD Fortress: The Sound And The Story allows you to get the inside perspective on playing every song from the band's latest album with Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy as your teachers.

Across two discs and over six hours the duo teach you every riff, lead and solo from their fourth album, recently voted Total Guitar's album of 2013. There's also behind the scenes access to the process of making and writing Fortress.

The DVD will be shipping from January 3 and can be ordered from Fret12 now.

When it came time for Alter Bridge to begin recording their upcoming fourth album, Fortress, the band members – lead vocalist-guitarist Myles Kennedy, lead guitarist-singer Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips – decided to build on their prior LPs successes by playing fast and loose with song structures.

“We were pushing for unpredictability," Tremonti says. "The last thing we wanted was verse-chorus-verse-chorus and all that. Songs should have you never knowing what you're getting next. We messed with time signatures, tones, key changes – everything we could throw at these songs, we did.”

As they've done since 2007's Blackbird, the group worked with producer Michael "Elvis" Baskette, who, according to Tremonti, wasn't adverse to adopting a more daring approach. "Elvis never tries to simplify our ideas," he enthuses. "A lot producers might want to shave edges off things and play it safe, but Elvis pushes us to be more extreme, more creative. It’s always, ‘Hey, that’s great. Now, how far can we take that?’"

During pre-production, songs were built up and torn down; sometimes multiple treatments for each one were considered. "We just didn't want to be easily satisfied," Tremonti explains. "It's so tempting to say, 'That's it. It's perfect' the first time you have something. But you never really know it's as good as it can be until you exhaust every possibility, and that's what we did."

Tremonti re-assessed his own guitar playing, as well, starting with his use of the wah pedal, which he admits has become something of a security blanket. "I saw an online post where a fan brought it up," he says. "‘I think you should use less wah on this record,’ somebody wrote, and I thought, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna use any wah when it comes to the solos.’ I wanted to get out of my comfort zone.

“I’ve also had a tendency to do too many descending legato riffs. They became a go-to, over-the-top pattern of mine – whenever a climax would come up, I’d do some fast legato stuff. I wanted to lay off that and concentrate on phrasing. There is kind of a new trick I’m doing – this chicken pickin’-type pull-off riff that I use in a few of the solos. It’s good to change your game around and see what comes from it."

On the following pages, Tremonti walks us through the writing and recording of all 12 tracks on Fortress. The album will be released 8 October in the US and 30 September in the rest of the world. You can pre-order Fortress at iTunes, Amazon and via AlterBridge.com.

“When Myles and I were throwing ideas back and forth, he played me a fingerpicked bit on a nylon-string guitar. It was really great, and I just said to him, ‘Man, we’ve got to use that for an intro or incorporate it into one of the songs somehow.’

“We kind of put it on the back burner – things like that always seem to happen – but it was too good to forget about. The bulk of the song came about in pre-production; we sat down for a few days and worked on it, and in the end we felt like we caught lightning in a bottle.

“Myles and I both take solos in the song. He takes the first one, the more elastic solo, and I take the second one. He’s a great improvisational player; his bends and vibrato are so striking. My solo is more ‘stingy,’ I guess, which is a nice complement to what he does.”

“It’s tough to always use your own experiences when writing lyrics, and I think, in some cases, Myles looked to people around him for inspiration. Somebody close to him was venting about his problems, and Myles felt as though he could touch on certain issues.

“The solo is a funny one: I had the idea of starting it out on a single bent note. I was improvising one night and kept playing around with this way of edging into it. It’s one of my favorite solos on the album.”

“OK, now this is actually my favorite solo on the record. I’m playing with my fingers to make it more expressive – it affects the whole tone in a really cool way. The song itself is tuned down to drop D, so it’s one of the heavier songs. We’re definitely going to play it live.

“For amps, on this song, like on the whole album, I used the Cornford RK100, Obershaw and a little bit of Boogie. Guitar-wise, I used two guitars, both of them my signature Paul Reed Smith models. One has a fixed bridge for the rhythm stuff, and for leads I used one with the bar on it.”

“We had most of the record together before we got to this one. The high-energy stuff was there, so we needed something to provide a different dynamic, something a little slower with a more atmospheric feel.

“There’s no real guitar solo, just a little lick before the second verse. We thought about a solo, but then we kind of left it up in the air. I was just going to improvise something, but one day I went to the studio and Elvis said, ‘You know, Myles put down this great vocal at the end; we should just forgo the solo.’ I listened to what Myles did and said, ‘Fine. It's great.' Hey, less work for me, right?" [Laughs]

“This song almost didn’t make the album. It’s got this hammer-on thing, and Scott was like, ‘That’s just like a Tool riff.’ So, for a while there, we were like, ‘OK, let’s shelve this and move on.’

“But eventually, we came back to it and said, ‘OK, let’s just make this as un-Tool-like as possible and go with it.’ Everybody is influenced by somebody or something – a lot of times, it's a subconscious thing – so if an idea is really strong, you just have to give in and see it through.

“The song was a dark horse, and for a while we were probably thinking it was a B-side track. Once we finished it, it seemed to jump out at us – I guess we didn’t know what we had all along. Now it’s one of our favorites.”

"We’re usually so busy with our own parts that we don’t often hear what Myles is working on with lyrics until after he’s done. When I’m tracking, that’s when I sometimes hear what he’s come up with. He blows me away. There’s only been a few times where we’ve wanted to make changes to his lyrics.

“I love this chorus. When I brought it to Myles, I said, ‘This one is very important to me; let’s make it special.’ The verses came from a riff I had; I built it up with some chord changes – at first, there were no chords – and it all came together after that.

“I wanted to make the solo an emotional one, so I kind of followed the chorus melody. Actually, this was the first solo I wrote for the record. I’m pretty pleased at how it turned out.”

“Another Myles opener – he's on the nylon-string. We already had the song worked out, but he and Elvis went in one night and came up with that part as an intro. I was knocked out when I heard it. It's definitely one of the highlights on the album.

“Myles and I do a lot of cool guitar stuff together. We’re playing two totally different parts during the verses. It’s only in the pre-chorus where we sync up with each other, but for the most part, we’re trying to really complement our separate approaches. It’s always very inspiring to see what Myles comes up with. I can’t say enough about him as a guitarist.”

“I wrote this song about a fictional apocalyptic scenario. Just watching the news every day, every week, it seems as though there’s always some way for somebody to end it all. After I’d written this song and I’d heard what Myles had done for Bleed It Dry, I was like, ‘Wow, we both went there coincidentally.’

“A lot of the solo happened by mistake. I had written a riff that I wasn’t feeling, so I was just improvising to see where I could take things. It was one of those situations where you fall down the stairs and you manage to land on your feet.

“For me, the biggest challenge was that it was my debut as a vocalist on an Alter Bridge record. A little daunting, but I think it turned out well.”

“We always have a go-to drop-B song on a record. This is probably our heaviest track because it’s tuned so low. It’s another one where Myles and I take back-to-back leads, which is always fun. It’ll be a highlight of our live set, I think.

“I tracked my lead first, and I didn’t hear what Myles did until I went in to do my vocals. Needless to say, I was blown away. Myles is always very soulful with his bends and the emotion he puts into his guitar playing. His vibrato and phrasing are always pretty impressive. On a few places, he really went for the shred.”

“Everybody’s playing these songs for the first time, so when it comes down to the arrangements, people are going, ‘Let’s try this, let’s try that.’ That’s the way a lot of these tunes come together.

“Actually, this solo was one of the tougher ones for me. I put it off for a while because of the chord progression – I just didn’t feel like it was a good sound bed for an emotional solo. One night I was up, and I came up with a little lick for the melodic phrasing for the beginning of the solo, and I was like, ‘That's it! Now I’m saved. I have something to work with here.’ After that, it came together pretty quickly.”

“We added this song to the record towards the very end. We knew we needed something different for the dynamics of the album, and we also kept in mind that our fans like things like Before Tomorrow Comes – the more uplifting tunes that we’ve done in the past. Things were pretty dark and heavy, so we wanted to make sure this tune wound up on the record.

“I had the verse music for a while, and I knew that I wanted to use it for something. I think Myles knocked it out of the park with his vocal over the guitar line. It was one of those places where I couldn’t play it and sing something at the same time, so I had no idea how it should work. Myles did a great job, especially on the chorus.

"The acoustic is a drop-D with the high E turned down to D, as well. Both of the E strings are D. It’s a great sound."

“A lot of people have said that they respect how we put this song near the end of the record – some bands might immediately go for the money shot, the more pop, cross-over-type thing. I think that we just wanted to let people know that it’s not that kind of a record overall."

“This is one of the first ideas that I brought to Myles music-wise. I sent him the verse and the chorus, and we kind of forgot about it after that. We came back to it after Elvis said, ‘Let me hear some of the other ideas you two worked on before we started.’ This one stuck out, and Elvis said, ‘Hey, that’s great. Let’s work on it.’

“As soon as the rhythm for the bridge came together, we all fell in love with it. Then it was a matter of getting in and out of the time signature and making all of the parts work.

“Myles and I took turns with the solos: I do the first and third, and he does the second and fourth. On the fourth round, he kind of mimics a descending thing of mine, but he does it with an ascending pattern.

“When my part happens, it’s in D because I was in open D5 tuning, which is a challenge because your B string is up a whole step and a half, so you can’t do some bendy stuff – you might snap the string. It’s hard to do some pentatonic things, as well, because your guitar’s a whole new beast when you tune it that way. I think it’s fun, though, because it doesn’t sound like standard-tuning solos.

"I made sure that I got the D portion that’s in a double-time thing, and then it switches to half-time with Myles in the key of A; after that, it goes back to D with me and back to A with him. Really cool stuff going on. Challenging ourselves on the guitar keeps things interesting for us, and I hope everybody else feels the same way.”