Worship Musician Magazine | March 2022| Full Uncut Interview
Jem, thanks for hanging out with us today!
Thank you so much for having me! Its an absolute joy and pleasure! I’m very excited about this!
First off, playing guitar on a skateboard - what's that about?! Where the idea came from, how you do it etc.
Haha! What a hilarious question to begin with! Well it started off by getting some inspiration from seeing people on the internet playing guitar while riding a skateboard multiple times over the years. One day i was watching the music video for “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton and the moving piano has always fascinated me ever since i saw the music video as a little kid. I was driving to church on a sunday morning and i looked at my street and was like “hmm…what if i try skating downhill while playing guitar and riding a skateboard at the same time.” So i threw an audio interface and my laptop with the line 6 helix native plugin and “A thousand Miles” in a backpack, a go pro attached to a guitar headstock and away i went! The coolest thing about the whole skateboarding thing though is that specific skateboard i was riding is my original Penny Skateboards 22” board which I’ve had since 2011 and once the company of Penny Skateboards found out about that, they decided to partner with me for a penny skateboards endorsement haha! Pretty random and amazing at the same time haha!
Can you tell us a bit about your musical history? How you got into music, where it's taken you. Who you've played with and how those relationships came about.
Music has been a part of my life from the day i was born! My mum is a worship leader, brother is a guitar player and he’s the guy who got me into electric guitar and gear, my sister sings and plays piano, my cousins can sing and play an instrument so its been part of my upbringing! The only person who isn’t musical is my dad BUT he LOVES his music too! I loved music so much as a little kid that i would even sleep with CD’s like a teddy bear. I grew up surrounded with music from so many different genres ranging from being influenced by my parents music DVDs and CD’s like Abba, Bee Gees, Eagles, James Taylor, Eric Clapton, Celine Dion, Kenny G, Bonney M, The Beatles, Journey, Toto, John Farnham, Englebert Humperdink, Country Music and Filipino OPMs and my older brothers music which ranged from rock bands like yellowcard, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, green day, blink 182, dashboard confessional, muse, relient K, switchfoot, hoobastank, Anberlin, and Anime music from shows like Naruto and so much more. It wasn’t until youtube came about and when i got my first guitar magazine back in 2006/2007, thats where i was introduced to my guitar heroes like Eddie Van Halen, Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Satriani, Doug Doppler, Yngwie Malmsteen, Malcolm and Angus Young, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn, John Mayer, B.B King, Andy Timmons, Brian Setzer, Buckethead, Tom Morello, Jack White, The Edge, Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield, Nuno Bettencourt, Prince, George Benson, John Petrucci and so many other guitar players that really inspired me. Also since being in a Christian household, the christian music that surrounded me were people like Don Moen, Ron Kenoly, Michael W. Smith, Hillsong, Delirious, Planetshakers, and kids worship like Psalty the singing song bible and the donut man were very influential to me.
Music has taken me places where i never thought i’d only dream myself of doing, but to have actually experienced what I’ve wanted to do and surprisingly still doing music as my career to this day when there’s a lot of odds against me is pretty special. My journey in music started out at home and in my home church Come To Jesus Church located in the Western Sydney suburb of Glendenning. Like i said earlier my mum and brother were musicians so there was at least a guitar around. I would have a little toy guitar and i would actually go on stage next to my mum and other musicians in church while worship was happening so it was a no brainer that music was always in me and i had so much joy with it. Funny thing is my first instrument my parents tried getting me lessons on was piano (typical asian parents) but that didn’t work out well for a 3/4 year old kid as i would always fall asleep during the lessons and wanted to get red rooster instead haha! My first instrument that i actually learnt was the drums and my cousin and I who is an incredible drummer would get lessons together on sundays. Guitar was always the instrument i was always drawn to though and i was drawn to how it sounded and the cool creative things you could do with it. My brother was a big gear head and he started out with an Ibanez RG320 and a Marshall valve state VS30r 1x10 combo and a zoom effects pedal and overtime he got more serious with his gear and went into the ebay rabbit hole of buying effects pedals, selling pedals, getting pedals modded and so forth. I didn’t start learning guitar properly though til i was around 8 or 9 years old and it was such a great time to learn because the mid-late 2000s were the last era so far where you had real musicians and organic instruments played on the radio and video games like guitar hero were the big craze! So bands like paramore and fall out boy and so many other bands were all over the radio waves and TV which inspired people to go pick up an instrument and jam out! My first guitar was my brothers Ibanez RG which became my 9th birthday present hand-me-down as he went on and used a Fender Japan TL68 Mongolian Chop Squad Telecaster which he got on his trip to japan. My first guitar riff i learnt was purple haze by Jimi Hendrix and i then went on to get guitar lessons and began to be inspired and learning songs by all those guitar players which i mentioned from magazines and youtube videos. A lot of rock, blues and metal music was the foundation of my guitar playing. So my childhood was a mixture of video games, sport and tweaking guitar pedals and amps and spending A LOT of time practicing for hours in my room and spending a lot of time on guitar company websites such as Ibanez, Gretsch, Fender, Marshall, Dimarzio and spending hours on hours just watching video clips of guitars, pedals and amps.
However my journey with music was never smooth sailing and still to this day it isn’t. Being a really young passionate kid who loved music so much, all i wanted to do was play music (besides basketball and video games haha!) when i got into my first year of high school, i wanted to make music with people whether it would be at church or at school and as a fresh youth kid, i wanted to serve in the worship team alongside my friends and family members. But my school wasn’t a very good musical school and when i wanted to be a part of the worship team, i actually got rejected and told i wasn’t ready and no one would actually follow up and train me meanwhile while my cousins were all up there playing and serving. So i was actually thrown off with music or touching an instrument and i didn’t pick up a guitar for about 3 years. It wasn’t until i went to my first youth camp in 2013 where i encountered God for the first time during an alter call at the final night and heard the voice of God telling me to go pick up a guitar again. Funny thing is a month before the youth camp (the youth camp was in January), i got a brand new guitar (which is my Yellow ibanez RG1XXV) cause i asked my dad for one mainly cause i was bored. Coincidental? I think not. God definitely had a plan for that. So i practiced a lot and finally was part of the church worship team for youth and in the mainstream service after waiting for so long! It all went skyward after that. I played for the youth camp the year after (which was 12 months after my first youth camp) and i entered into my new school which was St Marys Senior High School where i did 11th and 12th grade and that changed my life big time because my music career started thanks to my music teacher at St Marys, Fatima De Assis who was also a musical director and a multi-instrumentalist who plays a lot of broadway style musicals. She offered me my first professional paid gig which was to play guitar for a production of “Hairspray” the musical. I didn’t realise you could get paid to do music so that was a huge moment for me where i really wanted to take music seriously. Fatima really believed in me, pushed me and wanted the best for me. Still to this day i stay in contact with her and she never fails to always encourage me. Another person who helped me get on with music and taking it seriously were a few dear friend of mine Blessie Pilapil and David Eco. David is a pastor who is a huge music fan and also is great friends with pro musicians in the local sydney scene and Blessie was a backup singer for Australian Artist Jessica Mauboy at the time and she was well connected with the sydney music scene and she got connected to me after she discovered me on instagram and those two got me going to sydney jam sessions during my last year of high school.
Fatima De Assis - My Senior High School Music Teacher
However, i never really knew what i was going to do after high school. I knew i wanted to do music, but i didn’t know what it was when it came to music. My dream was always to be touring and doing sessions but i never had a sense of direction of what to aim for. However, that all changed when i met Nigel Hendroff in my last year of high school in 2015. Theres 3 people who have really inspired me a tonne in my journey of music and faith growing up. And those people are Nigel Hendroff, Michael Guy Chislett and Stu G. I’ve grown up watching those guys on all the old hillsong and delirious DVDs growing up and when i was around 3 or 4 i would be grabbing my toy guitar and imitating them funny enough. Out of those three, Nigel was the guy who i saw play a tonne in person. Since my brother has been attending hillsong since the early 2000s and hillsong being only 10 minutes away from where we live, I would tag along with my brother whenever he went to rehearsals and served as part of the youth worship team or on sunday services, christmas spectaculars and special events and i would always be fascinated with Nigels guitar playing and music directing. He has such a versatile and diverse musicality on guitar that he seriously could play anything of any genre and the way he conducted a band with an electric guitar going from playing soft acoustic stuff, to jazz and a full rock and roll solo always blew me away! I remember also seeing him play with Brooke Fraser (now Ligertwood) in the earlier days of her career on TV like the live shows in New Zealand with Paul Mabury on drums and the albertine shows and just being blown away with how he fitted the electric guitar in a pop setting. Just incredible! I even got to play his 2014 W/D/W rig that he used on the “No Other Name” tour when Goodwood Audio were running a guitar pedal event called stomp town back in early 2015. I even saw Nigel play in Memphis when he was on tour with Elevation Worship & Casting Crowns (CCM tours don’t happen in Australia so it was still pretty special) and he got me a free ticket to watch! So back to the point, Nigel has been one of the BIGGEST musical influences of all time. The journey to meeting him came when i got invited to a thursday night team night at the hills campus through my next door neighbour Jason Temu who is one of the worship leaders at the hills campus and he sent me an instagram message telling me that Nigel was doing a guitar workshop and to bring all your gear. That night was amazing because Erwin Mcmanus spoke on that night. It was incredible and you pair that with a guitar masterclass with one of your guitar heroes and it was something that I’ll never forget. But I didn’t start to hang out with him until a few months later after he got back from a tour. I would attend team nights to connect with people and for some reason during that time, Nigel’s guitar masterclasses would keep going on so after a guitar session i went up to him and asked if i could hang with him and get to chat about music and stuff. Surely enough he asked me to come to his studio at church where he worked and we hung out and got to know each other. That night was really life changing and it was crazy cause the day prior, he made an instagram post of two telecasters in his studio and prayed that one day i would get to check it out. Next day, what do you know…im there haha. Pretty crazy. I kept on going back many many times and i sat behind him and watched him work on his pro tools projects, how he prepares to music direct a band, setting clicks and tracks and i learnt so much from him just by hanging out at his studio and watching him work. Like who does that for a 17 year old random kid who doesn’t even go to his church? He has been such a huge blessing and he really opened my eyes on what i could do as a musician and i could be more than just a guitar player. Everything he does is literally my dream job haha! he inspired me to get into music production and get studio gear and really reinvent myself as a musician. I seriously owe a lot to Nige and his influence, kindness, generosity and his heart to serve God and people with the gift of music.
Nigel Hendroff
After high school, i actually dropped out of two music colleges. My first one being Excelsia College and i only lasted a week there as i didn’t want to do music in a class of 12 people and a ciriculum which really didn’t have much connections to the music business in terms of what i was going for like gigs and sessions. I then transferred over to the Australian institute of music which was a great experience, met a lot of people, gained lots of musical knowledge but only lasted a semester there. Music colleges here never really prepare you fully for the music business and the opportunities you’re able to have. Most pro musicians don’t have degrees anyway. I didn’t want to waste my time with people who didn’t have the drive to do music full on. Not saying there weren’t any people who weren’t driven or committed, but i couldn’t fit into the whole music college system. That was also a pretty hard time for me because i had no support or people in my circle who did music as a full time profession. I even worked at a food factory for a few months and didn’t last long either. It was hard and i was always misunderstood and felt like i was never taken seriously. So i went on and tried doing music full time by going to gigs, jam sessions and getting connected, but my parents weren’t very happy with that and sometime in the middle of 2017, i got into a heated argument with my dad about my music career and ran away from home for a few days to reconsider my career options. So not too long after that, i received a prophetic word from God at a friends church around September of 2017 that God was gonna give me a job that was totally unrelated to music but it was gonna prepare me for what was going to happen in the upcoming future. So i winded up working at the Australia Post factory where my dad worked and i was working everything from night shifts, early morning shifts and afternoon shifts. That was a crazy time because i had no idea what i was working towards and just wondering what i was saving up this money for, i even did gigs where one day i would finish at 5am, have a rehearsal at church at 9am, then go to the gig venue at around 2pm to rehearse for a show that didn’t start til around 8pm. Crazy times. During that time i would be playing for musical theatre shows like shrek the musical and a Dr. Seuss musical called “Seussical”, my first gig getting to travel was playing bass for a country artist, playing local RNB and pop artists and doing some gigs in random venues here and there so it was okay. But i always felt out of place in the Sydney scene. Gigs would be inconsistent, didn’t really fit in with any cliques and never really got followed up much by musicians. So as I was continuing to work at the factory i was asking God where is this leading me to? So while i was working, i actually used that money to invest into musicians in my church, primarily the youth and also use that money to invest into a home studio and build my music business. But on the day after my 21st birthday in 2018 which was october 4th, I received an email from a friend of mine Wayne Magee who is a lead pastor at his church telling my “Hey Jam, i feel like the Lord was telling me to send you this email.” So I opened up the email and it was an invitation to a church conference in Nashville, Tennessee. That email gave me a confirmation of where this journey was going to lead me next. Prior to the email, I always had in mind two locations of where i would go in terms of doing music and those places were L.A and Nashville as those were the only places in my mind i knew where music was very active.
Nashville was somewhere i would have loved to check out especially cause i’ve made connections with people over there from the Gear Talk Praise & Worship facebook group so seeing this email was exciting but at the same time terrifying. I had no idea what i was gonna do, where to go and who to contact. I told my parents i knew what i was doing even though i really didn’t LOL. So January and February 2019 arrives, i book a ticket for my flight to Nashville one way which was the same flight Pastor Wayne was going to for the conference (even though i knew i wasn’t going to attend the conference) and i applied for a B-1 Visa which so happened to get approved on the spot when i went to the U.S embassy. That Visa allowed me to going in and out of the US 6 months at a time so i knew if i was gonna go overseas, i didn’t want it to be a short trip. So i contacted some friends in nashville that i met from Gear Talk P&W that im heading over to nashville and if they had a place to stay or if they’re looking for a musician to hire, i was gonna be available. So my flight wasn’t until May of 2019 and i really didn’t know what i was gonna do. It wasn’t until 1.5 weeks before my flight where my dear friend and session musician and current guitar player for grammy award winning gospel artist Jason Crabb - Spence Peppard gave me a video call. Spence was one of the first people i messaged and he is a man of many talents and such an incredible heart for people. He called me out of random and it really caught me off guard in the best way possible. I remember Spence telling me that he wanted to try and help me and that God was pressing into his heart to call me for this opportunity which popped up quite unexpectedly. He told me that he was producing an artist who just came off being the top 5 or top 10 finalist of the 2018 American Idol season and his name was Cade Foehner (who I interviewed for the November 2019 edition of Worship Musician Magazine and also the husband of fellow American Idol finalist/Country superstar Gabby Barrett). He told me that they were looking for someone to fill in on bass or guitar and if i would be interested to play on the tour. So without hesitation i accepted the offer. Funny thing is i didn’t really have time to work on the songs that were sent much because i was still finishing off my last few weeks of work. So i quit my job, flew from Sydney to Nashville on a one way ticket knowing i didn’t have to come back in 6 months, and two days later after i landed, i went with spence and we drove to texas to begin rehearsing with cade and began the 2019 “Southern Hallelujah” tour promoting with just us 3 and a Chevrolet suburban travelling an entire month from the 30th of may to the 28th of june. We went to 18 different states, at least 30 cities and it was pretty wild for my first touring experience. Funny thing is the tour was poorly managed by Cade’s old manager so the promotion was bad, some venues people rarely came to the shows and places were disorganised so not only did i play bass on the tour, but i also became the social media promoter for the tour, making VLOGs, tour highlights and instagram posts for cade AND i even played guitar AND drums on the tour for one of the dates because Spence (who was the drummer for the tour) had to fly out to Nashville to play for Billy Ray Cyrus at Nissan Stadium for the CMA festival. But at the final show of the tour in Banita Creek Hall in Nacogdoches, Texas. There were so many people who came out to the show and a few of them actually came after seeing the VLOGs I was posting on my social media pages funny enough! So it was such an interesting and fun first touring experience for me and during that tour and travelling places, i really fell in love with the USA and i met so many incredible people who have such a very special place in my heart after that run of the Southern Hallelujah tour.
So after that tour, the REAL journey began heading back to Nashville. I had no idea what i was going to do, where I was going to stay or what the journey was going to be like. But God opened so many doors of opportunity and AMAZING people to surround me with. Within the next few weeks and months, i found a place to stay which was owned by Sidewalk Prophets guitarist Daniel Macal who i became incredible friends with him and his family, i was getting flown or driven out to different parts of the country to record guitars on albums, play in peoples original shows, going to some of the most amazing studios in nashville to play guitar, film sessions to do social media work for artists and gear companies like 440 sound, gear talk, tone junkie and worship musician magazine, getting to meet my musical heroes and create friendships with people like Stu G (Who is one of my biggest musical influences like i mentioned earlier), Drew Shirley & Jon Foreman of Switchfoot (which is my favourite band of all time), Matt Hoopes of Relient K, Michael W. Smith, Matt Podesla, Michael Pope, Brent Milligan, Nashville session cats like R.J Ronquillo, Ford Thurston, Chris Condon of Billy Ray Cyrus’s band, J.T Corenflos, Tim Galloway, Gordon Mote, Jeffrey Holm, Sol Philcox, Billy Sheehan and i even met so many of my online connections that I’ve made over the years through gear facebooks groups in events like the Summer NAMM show or even when i was on tour in their cities! People like Doug Doppler, Lance Seymour who ran gear talk, Brian and Bradford from worship tutorials, Steven Burgos who plays guitar for Maverick City Musica (Espanol) and so many others! I was so surprised that people even knew me or they would travel just to meet me in person. It was the most special thing I’ve ever experienced in my life so far. Just the fact that i was surrounded by people who did music 24/7, having a community who understood what it meant to be a musician, living in the city and country where music is so appreciated and so valued and that people really take it seriously and you are surrounded by music everywhere you go. I can never shake that feeling off and i’m very grateful to have experienced that. Its something i never will take for granted and it’s made me who I am today and its an experience that people where i’m from never get to experience. The experience of leaving your family, friends, job, hometown to pursue a dream and a God calling and throwing all your chips in the table ready to risk everything when you don’t know what’s gonna happen. As a 21/22 year old at the time, It’s crazy that i even thought of doing that and i really can’t take any credit for that moment in my life. That’s all God.
So where am I currently in my music journey? Well, after coming back to Australia at the end of 2019 and entering into 2020 onwards into the current pandemic era of our lives, things couldn’t have gone more uncertain with my music journey and even in my personal life. Knowing that i was coming back to a place where i don’t have any crazy opportunities like touring or going to studios and doing sessions or being surrounded with a large number people who did music for a living and having a studio in every house like nashville. I knew I was gonna have to find ways to reinvent myself a little and be more creative in the business side of things if i were going to continue the risk of going music full time in Sydney. Finance as a musician is one thing, but having the drive and courage to do music as your job, your business and holding a reputation and trying to market yourself and taking big risks is another and that’s the thing i actually find the most challenging. So i started up my website, promoted a lot of my music production, mixing & mastering, remote sessions, lessons and also i began to work on selling my original Line 6 helix and HX stomp presets which has been amazing! When 2020 came along, not only did the pandemic take away any hopes of opportunities that I had, but my mother also suffered a stroke on mothers day of 2020 and that put my projects and music work on hold for majority of that year. So no gigs, no sessions, no tours but i had to find a way to continue to do music so by the grace of God, he made a way for me to do music and not have to find something else. Especially in a time where people lost their work in music or have had to switch careers because of it, I was able to continue to keep on doing music. I even got flown out on a plan in December of 2020 by former Hillsong United Drummer Luke Munns to help out his church’s worship team for the Christmas period! In march of 2021, i got appointed to be on staff at my home church - Come To Jesus church to have a paid role as a music director which totally caught me off guard because it’s never been a dream or a desire of mine to work at church and I didn’t ask for a role in church either. My pastors just brought it up to me because they felt that where the direction that God is taking the church, music and worship is a big part of that. To be honest at first when i got offered the role and i accepted it, i sorta was bummed about it and it wasn’t because of the pay, but it’s the feeling of knowing you’ve travelled the world and have done some incredible things and you know your value, your worth and how much hard work and sacrifice you’ve put into your craft and your dreams and to be offered something at the church you grew up at with tasks you’ve been doing voluntarily for years, it just kind of gave me a feeling of “Is this it God? Really?” However, it wasn’t until we had our second lockdown from the end of June to november of 2021 where we took our online service production to such a high level and i was mixing, producing, making tracks every week for the online pre recorded services and providing our worship team inspiration and new ideas and blessing our church with worship during lockdown and i was so grateful that this role has helped play a significant part in blessing the church and impacting people to lead them into music because of this role. I found a new sense of gratitude for the role and its provided me with work during a time where a lot of musicians couldn’t do music. I was doing music on a daily and weekly basis while still even being able to serve God and people during such a tough time. During that time as well i even made my debut EP “Peace In The Chaos” during a 14 day COVID isolation period as i was a close contact with someone who was positive. It was just me, listening to the voice of God to make music to bless people during such a chaotic time in life and i was thrilled to have actually released original music for the first time in my life which was sort of a dream come true and it got more than 2,000 streams in the first 48 hours. I was shocked and grateful!
I currently don’t know what’s gonna happen with music going forward, but I’m gonna trust God in every step of the way and do whatever it takes to continue to do music.
Tell us more about your EP “Peace In The Chaos” What inspired it and what was the process like making it?
So for a few years, I’ve always had the thought of wanting to release original music. I didn’t know what it was gonna be like, what it was gonna sound like or when I would actually create original music to put out. Over the years of me working on my producing skills, I’ve just made a whole bunch of ideas either finished or unfinished and left them in folders. A lot of ambient and orchestral stuff surprisingly. I just had a knack for creating cool textures and making music that just speaks to emotions and makes you feel some certain way. In 2020 while the world was locked down, Doug Doppler did a live stream and he called my name out and said i need to create original music and have faith in what God is gonna do with it. So August of 2021 hits, we’re in the middle of what should have been a two week lockdown which actually turns into 5 months and in the month of august, I had to go into a 14 day strict quarantine because i was a close contact with someone who was covid positive at the time. So knowing i was gonna be locked up in 14 days, i gave myself a challenge (and maybe cause of pure boredom) that i was gonna make original music in 14 days while in this isolation LOL. So it started going through my folders and finding some previous stuff that i made and seeing if i could use any of them or draw some inspiration, but i couldn’t. So i decided to start from scratch. Trying to find sounds and draw some inspiration. I think what really clicked it for me and what the catalyst was for what i was going to make, i turned on the news and i saw the disasters happening in Myanmar (Burma) and Afghanistan and my heart just broke. Just seeing so much chaos going on in the world around me from lockdowns, protests, people being separated and just so much noise. So i opened my bible a stumbled into the passage of John 14:27 where Jesus says “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” That was the heart behind Peace In The Chaos. Music to give peace to people who are finding it hard to find peace, to find rest when all things are chaotic, to find hope when things are hopeless, to find shelter and a safe refuge in God.
So within those 14 days, i finished making 7 tracks in 10 days and i gave myself the next 3 days to mix, master and to upload to streaming services. 5 original tracks and 2 covers. I spent an entire day just listening to music from different artists and inspirations from people like Explosions In The Sky, Bethel’s “without words” albums, Lowercase Noises and just immersing myself and drawing concepts and ideas of how these songs paint such colourful textures which hit you to your core. So when i started creating, Ideas and sounds came very quickly and i was just locked in. The opening track “Chaos” starts off with audio samples of what’s been going on in the world in the news around the world. From the pandemic, to wars, to protests and everything else chaotic happening in 2020-2021, i thought that it would be a good starting point of creating a story of trying to find peace amongst all the noise. The end of “Chaos” then leads into track two called “Breathe”. I just had this concept of someone running away from all the chaos and noise just trying to find a place to breathe so it then opens with a long ambient pad and me breathing into the mic very heavily like i just ran. The concept for the song “Breathe” actually came from an idea i created back in 2018. The idea for that came from going on a walk to visit my grandmother on a really nice sunny day. I was on the way to the nursing home she was living in and it was only a few minutes away from where i lived and i remember how nice that day was and it inspired me to pick up an acoustic guitar and write an idea. So i incorporated that acoustic riff in with a bunch of ukuleles, electric guitars slides with lots of reverb and singing “oohs and ahhh” synths and keys and it was really lovely. On my second day while making “Breathe” My grandmother passed away and it was quite unexpected and it was rough because we couldn’t see her due to the lockdown rules and her being so close, it was really sad. But God and the music being created gave me such peace so i guess “Breathe” is a song dedicated to my grandmother.
Tracks #3 and #4 “Safe Refuge” and “I Will Exalt You” are connected to each other. “Safe Refuge” is a prelude track which was inspired by the lyric in “I Will Exalt You” (which is one of my favourite hillsong songs)- “My hiding place, my safe refuge, my treasure Lord you are.” When i thought of that line and thinking of the concept, i thought of the people in Myanmar and Afghanistan. People fleeing from somewhere to find a safe refuge and i just thought of this musical idea of what could represent the feeling of finding somewhere safe to be in. God is our shelter and our protector, so finding ideas to bring that feeling were a bliss and it was a really nice natural transition into my instrumental cover of “I Will Exalt You”. I chose that song for a reason because its one of those songs where whatever happens in life, whatever season we’re in, God is with us, and he deserves to be exalted in every stage of life and we shouldn’t have any fear in life because we serve and worship a God who is not of fear.
Track #5 “Sunlight” is a short interlude and i came up with that idea back in 2017 and in fact the recording on the album was the same one i recorded in 2017. I tried playing it the same way but i couldn’t replicate the vibe of it because it was spontaneous and it was done without a click. So i just added some ambient textures around it to make it sound more full.
Track #6 “Glimmer Of Hope” Was a really fun one to make. I was thinking of a track that could be used in peoples videos, memories, skits and just create a mood that generated hope or a feeling of something emerging that was positive and hopeful and peaceful. And i used that to transition into the final track which was my electric guitar rendition of “Blessed Assurance”.
Recording, Mixing and Mastering this project was an absolute blast and i’m blown away with the results i got using the most basic things. My audio interface i was using was the Roland Octa-Catpure, i only used one Microphone for vocals, ukulele and acoustic guitars using a Rode NT-1 and all my electric guitars were recorded using my Line 6 Helix with a preset based off my “Ultimate Ace” preset with a few custom tweaks where i could use 3 of my ultimate ambient pedals into the fx loop of the helix which were the Boss RV-5, Mooer Tender Octaver MK1 and a Foxpedal “The Wave” Tape delay and spring reverb pedal. I used EVERY electric guitar i had and my acoustic guitar i used was my Taylor GS-Mini.
All my synth sounds were mainly from “That Worship Sound” Designed by Abel Mendoza and they are wonderful sounding synths and pads designed by Abel using the stock logic synthesisers and plugins which sound absolutely FANTASTIC! I love them so much. they are my go to synth sounds.
My Drum and percussion sounds were the stock logic drums and loops from acoustic textures and shakers, to beats and 808s, all from Logic.
Mixing and mastering were done using my favourite plugins like the stock logic EQ, waves SSL E and G Channel EQs, Waves API 550, Waves CLA-76 and CLA-3A, Waves SSL Comp, Waves H-Delay Logic Phat FX, exciters, dada life sausage fatter, Ozone EQs and Limiters and the Logic Chroma Verb which is an amazing reverb plugin!
Let's get down to business - rig rundown. Talk to us about your guitars and which is your favourite. Same with pedalboard. Highlight some of the reasons why you chose some of the gear. Nerd time!!
Guitars:
Tolvanen Guitars Zebrawood Sisu
Tolvanen Guitars Flamed Maple Sisu
Tolvanen Disciple T Custom (White)
Tolvanen Disciple T (Sunburst)
Duesenberg Starplayer TV
Ibanez RG1XXV 25th Anniversary Edition
Cort AD810 Dreadnought
Taylor GS Mini
Bass Guitars:
Squier Jazz Bass
SX 3/4 Scale Precision Bass
I LOVE all of my guitars! My guitars are all versatile and they each have their unique character and make me play a certain way and they all inspire me and they all have great pickups and specifications which all suit me as a player in the feel and sound. I love guitars which are versatile and all my guitars are versatile and they play great and sound great for any genre. Gosh i wouldn’t say i have a favourite cause when i pick each of them up they’re hard to put down, but right now as my #1 are my Tolvanen Guitars Disciple T (Telecaster) guitars. Both my White and sunburst ones. My discovery of Tolvanen guitars came through my dear friend of mine Lucas La Spina who is an amazing guitarist and guitar tech and he introduced me to the luthier of tolvanen guitars Timo Tolvanen located in Cherrybrook, Sydney. Lucas took me to Timo because i was looking for a luthier who could fix up the frets of my Ibanez as it was my main guitar i used for years and i had worn out the frets on them. It so happened that at the same time i was on the hunt for a dream telecaster. The telecasters i tried out at the time and which i fell in love with were the Suhr Classic T antique and the Fender Ritchie Kotzen model. I’ve always loved telecasters ever since i played my brothers telecaster and i was just blown away how i could literally play EVERYTHING on it and it can handle every kind of tone from the cleanest of jazz tones to the heaviest of gain tones like nobodies business and they really forced me to bring out the best of my playing and they are just so cool to look at. I loved the Ritchie Kotzen model because i loved the fat C shape neck on it, the flat radius and how nice and fat the pickups sounded. I actually was going to buy that ritchie kotzen telecaster on the day i got my Duesenberg Starplayer TV (Which is my favourite semi hollow body guitar) but when i wanted to get it, someone already got it so i got the duesenberg instead. With the Suhr Classic T, i became a huge Mateus Asato fan in 2015 and i LOVED the tone that mateus was getting with the suhrs and i love all the modern appointments on it like a roasted maple neck with stainless steel frets, the pickups which sound FAT and dynamic and not as bright and traditional and as twangy as a traditional tele, a cutaway to reach the higher frets and it kinda was like my dream of if ibanez made fender guitars. However Suhrs cost like $4000-$5000+ here in Australia and no way was i going to invest that kind of money on the most basic plank of wood with microphones that wasn’t custom made to my specs! So when i went to Timo’s place, there was a sunburst telecaster in the corner which kinda looked like the ritchie kitten tele and when i picked it up, it was really heavy but when i felt the neck, it was a nice and fat 50s style C shape neck (Like the kotzen), it had double white binding and when i strummed it for the first time it was bug and FAT, the highs weren’t shrill and the neck pickup sounded like a strat which was what i was looking for! This guitar had the blend of the look and feel of the Ritchie Kotzen tele with the sound of the suhr! I was blown away and that telecaster started off with my wonderful relationship with Tolvanen guitars. Timo is also a Christian as well with such a great heart for people and he really displays his excellence and care in his work on the instruments and even in the music he makes. i took that with me overseas and it has played in live shows and studios and everyone including me never ceases to be blown away with how good it sounds! I can play everything on it and it just cuts through the mix and blends well with anything i throw at it!
Since that sunburst tele, I’ve got a total of four tolvanen guitars in my collection. My white Tolvanen Disciple T is actually a duplicate sunburst tele guitar but it was repainted with white painted on the body and headstock with a tortoise shell pickguard and the only difference is the bridge pickup on the white tele is a matching Mick Brierely broadcaster style pickup which isn’t as aggressive as the sunburst tele which has a toneerider hot classic pickup and it still fat, its warmer and very well balanced but a full bodied sound and its just so good to look at. And i have two Tolvanen “Sisu” models which are Timo’s original take on his own tele shaped guitar with Les paul type appointments such as 2 PAF humbuckers, a 4 knob two volume/two tone configuration and a les paul scale length and neck shape and i LOVE them to death. “Sisu” Is a Fininish word (Timo is from Finland) which means hard work or something along those lines. One is made out of Zebrawood all over and it is so beautiful to look at, and its got a chunky maple neck like a les paul, and it is loaded with Lambertones Crema’s which are my favourite PAF style humbuckers to date. The zebrawood is actually a really dark sounding tone wood so its taken two pickup swps the get to where it is sounding now and the Lambertones cremas give it a wonderful brightness, clarity and it really is like those old PAFs which sound like tele on steroids only in HD! The other “Sisu” model i have is a black flamed maple top and mahogany back and the neck shape is more slimmer and it resembles a PRS in the way it feels and looks! Its loaded with Lambertones Grinder Pickups which is more of a traditional PAF type pickup with more mids and a bit more output. It’s still low output but has more of a midrange character and oomph to it, but still has lots of clarity and dynamics and the neck joint on the issue is more rounded so it plays much faster and the neck is sanded so it feels like a PRS with a satin neck. Both “Sisu” guitars have a series/parallel switch in its circuit to give me single coil tones whenever needed and it is fantastic. I even took the zebra wood Sisu with me to the US and i played it on albums and it was just amazing. The Tolvanen guitars are like part of my body now.
My latest pedalboard was inspired by many nashville session players, primarily the late and great J.T Corenflos who I had the pleasure of seeing do a session live back in 2019. This board was designed for versatility, flexibility and being able to be used for being creative and instant tweakability in the studio or live for electric, acoustic or bass guitar.
This new rig was constructed by my long time friend Matt New from www.pedaltothemetalmusic.com
Pedalboard: Pedaltrain PT-2
Power Supply: Truetone One Spot Pro CS7
Cables: Various Mogami Cables
Signal Chain:
Dry Section: Guitar> Goodwood Audio Interfacer Passive Input>JHS Mini Foot Fuzz>Cry Baby GCB-95 Wah> GWA Interfacer Buffered Input> Empress Compressor> Mooer Tender Octaver> Jetter Jetdrive> Mi Audio Crunchbox V2> Foxpedal Vixen> Jackson Audio Prism> Dunlop Volume X.
Wet Section: Tc Electronic Nova Delay> Boss RV-5>Line 6 Hx Stomp> Stereo Out To GWA Interfacer>Amp(s) Or Direct Out
This is the first time my pedalboard has had any major changes since 2016. A lot of these pedals were either hand-me-downs, gifts or i bought them for a really cheap price and they all sound amazing and i love simplicity of the pedals and the workflow of them. The only changes for this new pedalboard were that i took off my Boss DD-7 and My TC electronic Hall of fame reverb to make space for my Line 6 HX stomp and that left and extra space so i filled that space with my brand new Foxpedal Vixen Dimensional drive. I chose the HX stomp because it was a no brainer to have a mini helix on my board for extra effects and i could run it with electric, acoustic and bass guitar going into an amp or direct thanks to the HX stomp’s amazing amp and cab simulation.My favourite overdrive is the Jetter Jetdrive and it will never leave me haha! I designed this pedalboard because after using my helix a tonne in the studio, having a combination of actual pedals in front of me helped me more in the creative process and there weren’t some sounds in the helix that could replicate some of my favourite effects such as my Mooer Tender Octaver and My boss RV-5 modulate reverb. But it could do everything else. Hence why i threw in a HX stomp on my board so i got the best of both worlds of analog and digital.
You're a proud Helix and HX Stomp advocate. What makes you love them? How do they compare to your analog board?
I LOVE all the helix units and Ill share my journey with the helix and why i love it so much! In 2018, my pedalboard actually blew up on me and it was during a rehearsal where i was playing for a big conference. It was at that moment i knew i needed a back up rig. I’ve been interesting in the new digital units like Kemper, Helix and Axe FX after getting to try a helix and a Fractal AX8 and being blown away with how realistic they sounded and felt, but i was a tone snob who had my pedalboard and carried my Vox AC30 and AC15 to run stereo so i had no intention of owning any digital unit…until that pedalboard incident happened. Because the digital units are quite expensive here in Australia, it didn’t make sense for me to spend $3000 to almost $4000 in a digital rig when i already have a nice pedalboard and amps. So the most affordable option at that time was the Helix LT. So i bought it and after a bit of tweaking, i was BLOWN AWAY. This thing sounded like my pedalboard and my amps Mic’d up so accurately. The feel, the sound, the dynamics. It had it all. It was a bit of a learning curve, but it didn’t take long as the HX user interface is just so user friendly. It didn’t take long for me to create a patch which replicated my pedalboard sounds, delays and reverbs and amp sounds to near perfection haha! What winded up becoming my “backup rig” winded up becoming my main rig because of the convenience and how easy it was to setup and get a consistent sound and i could just plug in to an amp or directly with a single XLR and know I’ve got a great sound. I winded up giving my Helix LT away to our youngest guitarist at the time Bella for her 16th birthday as she had just gotten a brand new telecaster for her birthday and she didn’t have amps or pedals so i felt in my heart it was right to give it to her. I then winded up getting a Helix Floor when i went to nashville for WAY cheaper than what i got my Helix LT for in Sydney and when i got the Helix Floor, i just transferred all the presets i made for the Helix LT and dragged them into the Helix Floor and away i went. Thats another thing I love about the helix is the ability to make presets, save the sounds and transfer them from unit to unit and have the same consistency across all Helix platforms! Not to mention the constant amazing firmware updates and community support. Line 6 just keeps on giving the goods! I also LOVE how future proofed they made the helix with all the inputs, outputs and fx loops and the built in expression pedal! A lot of companies are catching up and are trying to copy Line 6’s genius approach for inputs, outputs. I also love the fact that it has snapshots and you can use it as a MIDI controller if you waned it to control midi pedals! Snapshots is a feature where you’re in a preset and you can press different scenes where you can create your own combination of effects on together, parameter changes with one button similar to how rack effects are made having multiple pedals turned on at the same time with a single button for a different section of the song so I don’t have to do a big tap dance. I just love everything about the helix and it is seriously such a God send for me!
How does your Helix rig help you at your local church and while you're on tour?
For my local church, it has helped us IMMENSELY to the point where now most of our guitarists have a helix and our church now has 2 dedicated line 6 HX stomps as our bass and guitar amp for people who want to bring their pedalboard in. Because my church is quite small, we don’t have the luxury of having an Iso box where we can isolate our amps and mic it up so back in the day, stage volume was an issue, but now with our in ear system and amazing FOH sound, running direct with the helix units is such joy and they sound so good in ears and i really don’t feel like the need of having an amp next to me because it feels so natural with the HX amp and cab sims. I also love how snapshots helps me when music directing so that i don’t have to tap-dance when changing sections of songs and changing song banks especially when you’re in a locked temp with a click, having everything all preset and ready to go for the next song is a breeze! It also helps our younger guitarists who don’t have much experience yet make getting sounds very easy for them with snapshots and having things programmed.
On tour, it is just wonderful. On a plane, I don’t have people ripping my cables apart, i can just throw it on the overhead and be fine with it and i can rock up to any venue with any P.A, plug in an XLR cable or 1/4” with a DI and get a consistent sound everywhere i go. Its so convenient and no hassles at all!
You recently announced a new partnership for releasing your presets. Can you tell us a little bit about that.
Yes! I am now partnered with the wonderful people over at multitracks.com to have all my presets for Electric, acoustic and bass guitar and i am super honoured and stoked to be partnered with such an amazing company and people who have incredible hearts for music, people and the church! The partnership came about quite unexpectedly. I never thought people would be interested in partnering with me, yet alone in my presets that i make. I started making presets for sale on my website because so many people on social media liked the tones i made and kept asking me if i had presets for sale, so i decided to do that and it has been quite awesome! People sending me messages saying how my presets have helped their tone so much or their FOH people saying that its the best tone they’ve heard from peoples rigs has been a wonderful surprise to me. The multitracks partnership came from Daniel Fergusson who is an incredible bass player, music producer and sound designer and he’s from the UK and is part of the multitracks sound design team. He messaged me on Instagram and asked if i’d be interested. I said yup lets do it, Daniel got to work and the partnership is here! I’m so stoked to continue to build my relationship with Daniel and the rest of the multitrack team and i’m blown away to have my sounds up there next to my heroes and friends like Nigel Hendroff, Peter James, the guys from BOTTEGA, David Liotta and so much more!
What advice would you give to someone who's considering moving from pedalboard x amp rig into the Helix world?
Take your time to dig in and learn it or buy some presets as a starting point and don’t expect it to sound like your amp standing next to you moving air. Thats not the intention of these units. The digital stuff is to give you a representation of what your pedals and amps sound like Mic’d up in a studio and recorded super well that it sounds like a rig that is ready to go in the studio and on stage. Also, join the Line 6 helix facebook groups for support! They really are amazing! Also, updates are amazing! There are so many demos out there on youtube that you can learn how to maximise your helix off anyone! I suggest to check out Worship Tutorials, David Hislop, Rhett Shull, Tone Junkie, Stever Sterlacci, Ben Vesco, Jason Sadites and even the Line 6 youtube channel!