Courtney Barnett’s three solo albums have been slathered with awards in her homeland of Australia and graced charts internationally. Her 2015 debut was nominated for a Grammy, and her 2017 collaboration with US singer Kurt Vile landed on many album-of-the-year lists.
Fender – which spotlights artists using their instruments in their video session series – invited her to take a break from working on her next album to shoot an episode. She chose to reinterpreting two tracks from her 2021 album Things Take Time, Take Time.
“It was fun to choose polar opposites,” Barnett says of the songs Turning Green and Before You Gotta Go. “One is really bandy and jammy and the other is a lot more timid, fingerpicky and small.”
She adds: “I might not play the same thing live as I would in the studio, because it just needs more of something. Simplifying things in the studio sometimes works better. It comes through stronger.”
Turning Green, in particular, is a different animal. “We spent a while picking it apart and putting it back together. The album version is drums and organ and the bassline is driving it. The guitar doesn’t even come in until the end. Live, it just needed a bit more energy.
“I started creating that kind of ambient sound, just swells and little stabs here and there. Because the organ isn’t there when we play as a three-piece, it’s just substituting instruments and filling some of those spaces. I love the album version – but I’ve really come to love what it’s turned into live.”
Barnett describes Before You Gotta Go as another of her favorites from the record. “It’s all around the guitar riff,” she says. “It’s such a fun song to perform solo because it bounces between the guitar and the vocals and it’s simple and stripped back.”
The left-hander performed Turning Green on her Kurt Cobain signature Jaguar, and Before You Gotta Go on an American Vintage II ‘61 Stratocaster.
“Over the years I’ve used Teles and Strats here and there, but I always find myself going back to that Jag,” she muses. “Recently though, I’ve been really loving playing with the Strat. I use that for the more fingerpicky songs.
The Cobain Jaguar has become her number one instrument. “I had played a regular Jag before that, which I also love. But something about the Cobain Jag just sounded extra-beefy. I really liked the range of sounds and dynamics it had.
“The Jag has been my go-to and my universal guitar. Sometimes it takes a producer to say, ‘Why don’t we try another guitar for this song?’”
She admits relying on that guitar “can be a bit of a safety thing,” adding: “I feel like it can cover all ground. The Strat just feels a bit cleaner. I got a Roland Jazz Chorus recently – running the Strat through that is really fun, and it just makes sense. It wobbles nicely! I love the Jag, but it does make things feel a bit dirtier.”
For the Fender session, she employed a pair of ‘68 Custom Deluxe Reverb amps. Her usual choice is a Deluxe or a Twin. Although she coaxes a wide range of tones from her guitars, they come entirely from her fingers and pedals – she rarely touches the guitar controls, which she leaves on 10.
On the Jaguar she uses the bridge pickup exclusively. With the Strat, she’s a little more adventurous: “I’m still experimenting with the pickup selector, finding sounds I like.”
She has no fixed amp settings, instead tailoring her sound in the venue. “I try to listen in the room,” she explains. “I normally start on fives, and then I usually find myself dropping out a bit of the mids. I’ve always gone for more treble, because that’s what my ear wants.
“I’ve got to be careful with it though. I like it more because I can hear it, but I’ve got a feeling that over the years, I’ve lost a little bit of high range in my ears. So it can come across too shrill. It can be a fine line, so I work with whoever’s doing front of house to find a happy medium.”
I can be really lazy at reading manuals or watching tutorials… I just want to get on with what I’m doing
The ambient tones on display are the result of her experience making 2023’s End of the Day, an instrumental collaboration with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa that soundtracked Barnett’s Anonymous Club documentary.
“I was experimenting with a few pedals on that album,” she says. “Some of those pedals have crossed over into my live set up now, like the Space Echo.”
The expansive tones came from a surprisingly compact pedalboard. “I’ve normally got three stages of distortion: The MXR Micro Amp boost, the Blues Driver and the OCD. It depends on what song, but normally they kind of build up towards the end. It’ll be one step of each distortion, and then together, so they build on top of each other.
“I had the Boss RE-202 Space Echo for all those ambient sounds at the beginning. I’ve always got a EHX Freeze pedal on my board. I use that in Before You Gotta Go. I started off with a drone of the G so it hangs over the whole song.
“I normally have the amp pretty clean. Sometimes I’ll play the Micro Amp as a kind of cleanish sound, Normally I try to have a clean clean with no pedals, especially if I’m playing as a three piece, so that if a song needs to build, it has somewhere to go
“Sometimes I use the footswitch for the amp effects, but normally I rely on my pedals. I’m pretty sure I was using the Space Echo to make the swells on Turning Green. Sometimes I use a wah pedal in that song, just for movement.
“I also use the EarthQuaker Avalanche Run, another delay. I love that one – I feel like I’m still learning how to use it properly. I’ve had it for so long, but it’s still a little bit of a mystery, which is fun. I can be really lazy at reading manuals or watching tutorials. Sometimes I just want to get on with what I’m doing, and then it’s all hit-and-miss and guessing.”
Barnett is continuing work on the follow-up to Things Take Time, Take Time. “I don’t have a piano at the moment where I’m living, so it’s always guitar,” she says. “I’ll normally come up with a really simple chord pattern that’s like bordering on folk.
Everyone should trust their instincts… sometimes options can be so overwhelming and stressful
“I’ll mumble melodies and make up nonsensical lyrics, then patiently let them turn into an idea from my subconscious. From there, I’ll write it along to a drum machine, and just get in a loop.
“Electric parts and lead hooks normally come later, in the studio or in pre-production. I think the studio is the place to experiment with sounds and pedals. I’ve noticed over the years that songs normally start off softer and slowe before I take them into a studio. Then they get louder and faster – and on tour they get faster again.
“Sometimes I have to go up a key, because when things get louder or faster, you gotta sing it higher to break through. I try to keep that process in mind and not be too attached to the different stages.”
While Barnett is most often described as a singer-songwriter, guitar is central to her art. “I was just so obsessed since I was a kid,” she says. “When family friends had one, I always wanted to pick it up.
“I think curiosity is the greatest part of learning an instrument. You have to be willing to go along with that process, being bad at something. Instead of a chore or something that was difficult, I just found it really exciting to slowly get better at something.”
She argues: “Everyone should just trust their instincts and what they like. Sometimes the options can be so overwhelming and so stressful. If you don’t know what the right thing to get is, who cares? Just get whatever and start playing.”
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