Stefan Hedenström. Guitarist extraordinaire! I spent 4 intensive years as the bass man in blues band B-sides together with Stefan. And I came to love his playing. His soloing is varied and he adds just what is needed in the song. That´s actually rare. The world is full of musicians, and espesially guitarist I find, that just has to put more into any spot than what have to be there. They put in all they can manage .... as a show off? Stefan is different. He works with the pauses and the soooo intreresting spaces between notes. And small silences. Just small. But all important.
In B-sides we had a song that kind of defined us as a group. It was a cover version of Neil Youngs "Down by the river". We had two great guitarist so we often had more than one and long solos in our songs. In our most proud-spirited moments we made "Down by the river" almost 15 inutes long.....on stage. Jesus! But people listened and liked it. Stefan was the soloplayer in "Down by the river". And he started the solo of by staying on one note, just rythmically pumping on the same note for 8-12 bars. He dares to. And he's so careful about every note that it all sounds ... like it was supposed to be that way from start.
So, Fangs, an up coming Gus Muller release, had to have a solo in. A long one. And an outro. I wanted it to be "dreamy" and soft as on a opium tripp. So I called Stefan. Of course I did. And he did exactly what I wanted him do do. When we started recording, first take on the main solo, I thought he just missed the start so I almost hit the stop button. But no .... he thought a couple of bars of silence is the right way to go for a start. And it is .... when you hear it. He brought two guitars and we recorded several tracks on each guitar. When mixing it earlier this week I choose take 4 on the Fender Stratocaster. It's so nice, soft almost mellow althought intense with a delicate and thin tone. Just like a opium high, right?
Stefan also recorded some clarinet onlays to Gus next release Tell The World.
You can hear take 3 on the Les Paul Special from the outro solo for Fangs on the video.
/Gus
