It's the return of Pedalpocalypse, “the Desert Island Discs for pedals”, with Henry James from Robert Jon & The Wreck and King Tree & The Earth Mothers on the three pedals he would take with him in the event of a future lockdown
(Image credit: Future/Growvision)
Pedalpocalypse – the show where we ask guitar players which three effects pedals mean the most to them – is back and this week we sat down with Henry James, guitarist for both Robert Jon & The Wreck and his own band King Tree and the Earthmothers.
James grew up in Huntington Beach and formed King Tree and the Earthmothers with friends from high school. He met the guys from Robert Jon & the Wreck not long after that, “just rubbing elbows, playing in the same scene, the same clubs and things like that”.
He was initially turned on to rock music and guitar playing by Green Day's American Idiot. “I was in elementary school when American Idiot came out and there was something about it and just being, like, a kind of angry kid – the aggression and Billy Joe Armstrong's whole thing on stage – that just resonated with me.
“I still like some Green Day. Dookie's probably my favorite album, but through that I got a real fascination, and then finally my parents got me a little acoustic guitar.”
Later, in a car journey with his dad, he heard Eruption by Van Halen. “That just set off a huge explosion in my brain. I haven't been the same ever since – thanks, Dad! It just set off a whole chain of events where I was just like, ‘I gotta get more of this stuff. Who else does this?’” Guitar lessons with “a great guitar teacher by the name of Jon Sosin who's currently touring with Toad The Wet Sprocket – he also plays with Kacey Musgraves” settled it: he had a life-long obsession.
From Southern California, but with a sound evoking the Deep South, Robert Jon & the Wreck are part of what’s been called the New Wave of Classic Rock, with critically acclaimed albums that have spurred comparisons to Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Black Crowes. King Tree and the Earthmothers are a much more psychedelic but no less accomplished outfit.
"We did a Pepsi Challenge on the Klon!" Henry James of Robert Jon & The Wreck's favorite pedals - YouTube
But what three pedals are at the heart of the Henry James sound? “This is tough for me,” he says, “but I got turned on to the Klon a while ago. My bass player owns an actual Klon and we did a ‘Pepsi challenge’.”
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They did a blind test on each pedal. “And he was like, 'I couldn't tell you what the difference is'. So: a big shout out to Wampler. I know a lot of people make Klon clones, and I'm sure they all sound amazing, but this one has a special thing. The Wampler Tumnus is probably my first choice on that list. It's such a great sound.
“I've used it a couple of different ways over the years. It used to be my go-to clean boost and I love that you can get so many different sounds out of it. And it has this amp-like thing to it as well. Right now I pretty much have an either/or relationship between this and the Wampler Plexi Drive.
“It’s kind of a song-by-song thing, I'll just kind of rotate between the two. I always have one overdrive pedal going at all times. I generally run my amps clean, teetering on the edge of starting to develop some static, where the tubes are working a little bit, but also that I have headroom. Because of the way we play in both bands, I prefer to have a noticeable volume boost on stage during solos or important lead parts, or any point in which the vocal drops out.”
Robert Jon & The Wreck - "Dragging Me Down" - Official Music Video - YouTube
His second choice? “I would probably have to go with the Alter Ego by TC Electronic. I use it for multiple things and I just incorporated into my set-up.
“It has the functionality of an expression pedal, like a lot of these multi-delay things do, but you basically can sort of ramp through two presets. There's a lot of versatility to it – I'm still figuring out the functionality for it – but it also works as a looper and I use that when I do the solo acoustic gigs that I do to kind of keep myself afloat when we're not touring.
“I'll use it as a looper and just kind of play songs that are a couple of chords that you can just kind of loop the same thing and play over over that. So it has numerous functions that I love.
“It's a delay. It has quite a few different presets on it. When you have it in the delay mode, you can scroll through some different things. This is kind of like an Echoplex. My go-to preset is supposed to be like a Space Echo. It's just endless fun."
King Tree & The Earthmothers - "All You Are" - YouTube
Pedal number three is the Walrus Audio Kangra. “It's great because it does two things: it does the envelope filter, which is really great, then it also has like an Octavia circuit basically, and what I really love to use it for is instant doom metal. You can hear that low octave clearly defined there. Sometimes people will hear me playing it like, 'Are you down-tuned?' and I'm like, 'No, I'm in standard'.
“It's great for a super-intense chorus. I have a couple of songs like that with King Tree and Robert Jon and The Wreck that if you really need to take it up to the next level and have some really devastating-sounding powerchords, it does the trick. And with them both combined, it's really fun. Super wacky. It's a staple.”
Tom Poak has written for the Hull Daily Mail, Esquire, The Big Issue, Total Guitar, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and more. In a writing career that has spanned decades, he has interviewed Brian May, Brian Cant, and cadged a light off Brian Molko. He has stood on a glacier with Thunder, in a forest by a fjord with Ozzy and Slash, and on the roof of the Houses of Parliament with Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham (until some nice men with guns came and told them to get down). He has drank with Shane MacGowan, mortally offended Lightning Seed Ian Broudie and been asked if he was homeless by Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch.
