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Converge’s Kurt Ballou on “disappointing the gear heads” by choosing digital gear live: “It makes it about the songs”
Kurt Ballou of Converge has opened up about his use of digital modelling gear on stage and the reaction it sometimes gets from gear enthusiasts expecting more traditional rigs.
Speaking on the Garza podcast with host Chris Garza, the metalcore guitarist discusses his use of the Line 6 Helix Stadium, explaining how it helps streamline his approach to tone and keep the focus on the band’s performance.
“I kind of love it when people show up expecting me to have JMPs and V4s and other vintage stuff, or boutique amps,” he says. “I played Bad Cat for a long time. I still do play the cabinets. I love that company.”
While he acknowledges the appeal of traditional amp setups, Ballou says going digital helps remove distractions and keep the focus where he wants it: on the song itself.
“There’s something about disappointing the gear heads with using this modeler, “ says the guitarist. “I don’t necessarily want to disappoint them, but it’s cool that it makes it about the songs, is what I’m getting at.”
“I think this thing sounds sick. It lets me focus on the song,” Ballou continues. “All the gear in the world – that’s cool and stuff, but how many times have you gone to see a band and watched them set up their full stacks and massive pedalboards, and then they just suck? Or everything is breaking all the time and it’s detracting from the show?”
“Let’s just get to the songs, because that’s the thing that I really care about,” says Ballou. “This lets me do that.”
He adds that using a modeller also brings practical benefits when touring, particularly in maintaining consistency across different venues.
“This thing lets me go to a festival and plug into whatever they have as house backline and get my stage volume that way,” he explains. “I can have my sound that I’ve worked hard to craft in my studio every single night. It’s consistent.”
Ballou is far from alone in his support for digital gear. While once seen as a divisive alternative to traditional tube setups, digital modelling is now increasingly finding its way into the arsenals of players who built their reputations on analogue gear.
Vintage amp and gear collector Joe Bonamassa is one such example. Known for housing one of the largest private collections of classic tube amps across his Nerdville East and West studios in Nashville and Los Angeles, the blues guitarist might not seem like an obvious candidate for digital adoption.
But Bonamassa has recently been exploring Fender’s Tone Master range on tour – a fully digital line designed to replicate classic tube amp tones.
“It’s honestly really amazing what they did digitally,” he said, revealing in April that he has been “beta testing” the amps on the road.
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Kiss’s Paul Stanley says bands should play hits “the way it became famous” and not ‘minimise’ fans: “The idea of going on stage with a sold-out audience and showing disrespect by fulfilling some need in me is unimaginable”
For every musician who can’t wait to dust off a forgotten deep cut, there’s a fan who just wants to hear the song that changed their life.
Paul Stanley has little patience for bands who grow tired of their most famous songs, arguing that live shows should prioritise audience expectations over an artist’s desire to reinvent familiar material.
In a new interview with Vulture, the Kiss frontman dismisses the idea that playing a band’s biggest hits should ever feel like a burden.
Asked to name a song his guitar has a “love-hate relationship” with, Stanley replies: “This may sound corny, but I’ve never, ever found playing any of those songs a chore. They made me what I am and I love them all dearly.”
Stanley’s latest comments feed into a long-running debate over what fans should expect from live shows. While some artists use concerts as an opportunity to reinvent older material or spotlight deep cuts, others argue audiences are primarily there to hear the songs that defined a band’s career.
For Stanley, moving too far from those original versions risks undermining the experience.
“When I would go see a band and they were bored and would rearrange a heavy rock song and do it as a reggae tune, I was terribly disappointed and felt minimised,” he says. “I paid to hear the song that I loved, the way I loved it.”
He adds that personal boredom should never take precedence over the expectations of a paying audience, particularly when it comes to the songs that built an artist’s career.
“The idea of going up on stage with a sold-out audience and showing disrespect by fulfilling some need in me, or boredom, is unimaginable,” Stanley says. “Play it the way people know it, the way it became famous, and show the respect you had for it when you wrote it.”
“You’re only deviating because you’re bored and that’s irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. The worst I can say is if you win the lottery, you shouldn’t complain about taxes.”
That said, not everyone agrees with the sentiment. Metallica frontman James Hetfield has previously spoke about the importance of “challenging” fans with deeper cuts from the band’s catalogue, while Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows has argued that leaning too heavily on hits can leave artists feeling creatively stagnant.
“There’s bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden that continually play new stuff and reinvent themselves,” Shadows said. “And it pisses people off, but it allows them to be interested in what they’re doing.”
By contrast, Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx has voiced support for hit-heavy setlists as a way of meeting audience expectations. Speaking to Utah’s 103.5 The Arrow, he explained that audiences generally want to hear the songs they already know.
“I hate it when a band goes out and doesn’t play their hits,” Sixx said. “I just remember [David] Bowie doing that, and I was like, ‘He’s one of my favourite artists. I don’t want to go hear a bunch of C and D tracks off of records that I love. I want to hear songs like Rebel Rebel.”
The post Kiss’s Paul Stanley says bands should play hits “the way it became famous” and not ‘minimise’ fans: “The idea of going on stage with a sold-out audience and showing disrespect by fulfilling some need in me is unimaginable” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.