“It felt like going fully digital would force me to think in new ways”: Guthrie Govan on his tech revolution and why he wrote a song about a rockhopper penguin

Guthrie Govan has just played an arena tour with soundtrack composer extraordinaire Hans Zimmer. “I’ve had worse jobs,” he grins. 

Last month, he led his instrumental trio The Aristocrats for a UK tour that included some of their biggest headline shows to date, including a night at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. 

We caught up with him in the weeks before the tour to discuss the set, his rig, and learn what accommodations he has made for the electric guitar super-fan wondering where the amp has gone in the wake of his digital revolution.

What are you most looking forward to on this run?

“There’s a new track from me we’ll be introducing called Sergeant Rockhopper. People might remember the cover of our Freeze live album, which had three lego Aristocrats being apprehended by a giant penguin in a police helmet. 

“I decided that character would surely be called Sergeant Rockhopper – rockhoppers, of course, being a type of penguin with the big comical yellow eyebrows. I had this picture of a penguin officer on patrol, charging around the Antarctic on his snowmobile and thought, ‘What would the soundtrack be to that?’”

You also performed a couple of new tracks on your recent Asian tour…

“We played Aristoclub, written by Bryan [Beller, bass] as his homage to '90s dance. Not a style we’re associated with, but we’re always looking for new genres to corrupt and defile in an affectionate way! Bryan’s demo was full of sequencers and keyboards. I was thrown for a minute and then realized it was a great opportunity for me to brush up on my Fractal programming. 

“I went down a rabbit hole to get that sequenced gated filter working in time for a band who don’t play to a click! And there’s another by Marco [Minnemann, drums] called Hey… Where’s My Drink Package? – which is polyrhythmic insanity. We all feel like we deserve a whiskey if we get to the end and magically stop at the same time!”

So it sounds like you will be touring amp-free once again, with the Fractal FM9 handling pretty much everything?

“That’s it, plus two expression pedals. It felt like going fully digital would force me to think in new ways. I still use my Victorys in the studio. I’ll have two of my signature Charvels, one in standard and the other in dropped D, going into the Fractal and coming out of one or two monitors. That’s something I’ve learned over the last year. 

“Sometimes we’ll play and the world’s biggest guitar fan will get there three hours early, standing right by my spot where the guitar amp should be but isn’t. Now I have a wedge behind me so I can feel air being moved and another for the audience. No one should lose out just because I’m having fun in my digital playground!”

A typical Aristocrats show tends to involve a lot of improvising. How much would be too much?

“That is something we’ve always strived to get right, that balance between writing songs with recognizable choruses versus extended stretches using ‘the force’. If we just did the jamming thing it would get old. But if we just wrote songs and played them the same every night, the audience would miss out on what makes this trio so fun – the natural chemistry we have. 

“We can be spontaneous and fearless because we trust each other. We like to go off the rails, get lost and explore new territory, but we’re also there to help each other if it gets too bewildering.”

• The Aristocrats With Primuz Chamber Orchestra is out now via Boing.