There’s something macho about guitars that I hate – this bullshit associated with the advertising for Gibson and Fender – guys playing like this (makes pained face). Guild make great guitars, they’re handcrafted and they sound amazing. It’s a guitar that can sit in your house for 30 years, and you can just pick it up and play it. Working-class guitars for working-class people. Mine’s beat to shit, it got some miles on it. It has a resale value of nothing. I’ve dropped it, scratched it up a bunch, thrown it across a stage – not in anger, you should only throw a guitar in celebration – but it holds up. It’s a warhorse, man! You can be on the highway doing 80 miles an hour, go „Fuck it“ and throw it out, and it’ll still come back going „I got one more song, man!“ I know the inside and the outside of that guitar, but it’s filthy. I think if I cleaned it, I’d lose it all. For recording I use a pickup, and i’ve a couple of mics trained on it. The pickup goes through an old amp which is mic’d up. I love the sound of the amp, it gives it some urrrgghh! It’s like the old cousin singing alongside the great tenor. You gotta have a mixture of those two worlds, I think.
A short film about Riley Walker …