There probably aren’t too many artists out there as busy as Mark Tremonti. Aside from his celebrated careers in alt-rock mainstays Creed and Alter Bridge, the guitarist, songwriter, and singer organizes guitar and songwriting clinics while on tour; has a line of signature PRS gear; and cut a 14-track charity record, Mark Tremonti Sings Sinatra. Did we mention he’s aiming to become a pinball kingpin, too?

Tremonti joins Cory Wong on this episode of Wong Notes to dig into his musical trajectory since the late ’90s, when he blasted to the top of the charts with Creed. The band drew comparisons to other grunge-era staples like Pearl Jam, which irritated Tremonti but pleased Stapp. Tremonti discusses the gulf between the band’s popularity and the critical backlash they received: “People can be cruel, but it’s part of the world. You gotta deal with it.”

Tremonti analyzes what makes a good riff and why everything in “the middle” is boring to him, and unveils his songwriting and demoing routines. (“I think melody is the most important part of everything,” he says.) But his biggest passion project these days is his step into classic crooner music. Inspired by his daughter to do a charity project to benefit the down syndrome community, Tremonti recorded a Frank Sinatra covers album, complete with more than a dozen musicians who played with Ol’ Blue Eyes himself.

Tune in to hear all about Tremonti’s artistic life, plus a peek at what happens during his pre-show guitar and songwriting clinics on Creed’s fall 2024 tour. Expecting him to demonstrate some ferocious warmups? Think again: “I play like grandma’s in the room,” says Tremonti.

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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong

Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger

Presented by DistroKid

What's happening? Welcome to Wong Notes Podcast. I'm your host, Cory Wong. I'm excited today. I'm in the middle of a tour right now. I'm about halfway through.

My tour band is feeling good, shows are feeling great. Tons of people have come. Oh, man, it's been so much fun. And it's a guitar tour.

I got Mark Letieri out with me, giving that double guitar money action, double shreds going. It's fun. I'm also excited because today on the show we have Mark Tremonti. Mark is a great dude. I. This is my first time ever chatting with Mark.

What a nice guy, smart guy. Honestly, I didn't. It didn't even click to me until after doing this interview. What an incredible songwriter this cat is.

I went back after doing the interview and listened through so many different things that he was principal songwriter of. This guy has got chords, this guy's got melodies. Are you kidding me? Tremonti can write a song. I'm telling you that right now. Incredible guys.

Guitar player, you know him from Creed, Alter Bridge and many other things. As a matter of fact, I think at one point was a guitarist magazine.

One of these magazines rated the Blackbird guitar solo, not the Beatles, Blackbird, the Alter Bridge song. Greatest guitar solo of all time. Okay. If you can get anybody to say that about you, you're dope. Okay.

Mark Tremonti is an incredible guitar player, insane. And also has a great ear for gear, which we get into in the podcast. I'm so excited to have him on the show. Thank you for hanging out with us today.

If this is your first time with us, welcome. Nice to meet you. I've got a lot of interviews with a lot of legends. It has been so much fun to do over the last several years.

So if it's your first time here, listen to this interview and then go back and see who some of the other guests are because we've had some really great ones. Anyway, let's get on with it. Mark Tremonti. Hey, you guys know about Distrokid yet?

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Mark, thanks so much for being with us today, man. It is great to see you. Fun to finally have you on the podcast.

It's my honor to be here.

Yeah, man, it's great. I see you. Are you in a home studio right now? I see. I see a bunch of pedals, some nice genelecs. We got a lot of gear there. I'm liking what I'm seeing.

Yeah, this is my studio at home.

Question I have is how do you mic those pinball machines?

What?

Do you stereo? You stereo mic those?

You know. You know what? I actually put subs underneath those machines and I wire into the sub of the bottom speaker. And these things are loud as hell.

They're awesome.

I didn't know you're a pinball guy. That's pretty cool.

You know what? I was actually. I did the soundtrack for a couple machines. I did two of them that are in here.

I did the Godfather machine with Jersey Jack pinball, and I did Venom for Stern.

That's so dope.

That's one of my dreams. I want to infiltrate the pinball world, dude.

I think if there's any cat to do it, I think you're the guy.

Well, thank you. You got to get in there yourself.

All right, all right. I'll see what I can do.

Well, you seem to have something figured out because you have helped found and be a member of two multi platinum selling bands.

And I was going through the discography, and I've just been listening through a bunch of the stuff that you do, and I realize you have not just Something figured out on that side. But guitar wise, there's a few angles to your playing where you have some stuff figured out and some things that feel so iconic.

I'm just wondering how you. How you found yourself there. And I'm curious on your approach. There's three things that I think make you an X factor on the guitar.

One of them is you just know how to make great rock riffs. Okay, that. That one is like. Okay, yeah, like rock riffs, guys. Sure. Cool. Like you can do that.

But you have a very unique thing where you're also able to really create unique and interesting parts with clean guitar tones that don't feel so guitaristic, but they just lay out so great on the guitar stuff that it's not just like, oh, I'm playing chords. It's really playing sort of arpeggiated things or utilizing aspects of the guitar, but making it seem like there's so much more motion.

It's almost more like a classical piano player playing through a thing rather than just somebody chording through. Right. That's number two that I feel like you have as your X factor. And then number three is you've got some of the.

Some incredible, most insane guitar solos out there also. So these three things, the riffs, the clean guitar approach and the solos, make you just such a deep threat in the guitar world.

Can you talk to me about how you approach each of those realms when you play?

Yeah, I think. I think something that's kept me alive through all the years of not falling into a rut, of not being able to be creative is alternate tunings.

Alternate tunings, to me are crucial. I.

I was never really a great player that could sit in with a jazz band or, you know, if some band was going to say, hey, we're going to play a 2, 4, 1, whatever it is, that's not me. I always like to throw out the rules, tune the guitar crazy and see what I can come up with.

And I think because of that, some of the chord voicings might sound a little different than most people's. And the guitar solos. I love writing a guitar solo where I have no idea what's going on. You know, I want.

I want to find some cool open strings that normally wouldn't be there or just kind of invent something. That's where there are no rules. I'm not following certain scales. I'm just kind of using my ear and my heart.

And that's kind of what I've done with the alternate tunings. It's kind of Helped me just kind of be more creative.

Yeah, that's cool. What about the riffs? Because there's.

I mean, there's so many versions of rock bands where, I mean, obviously you can just sit down and play a riff, but for whatever reason, some stick around and some don't. Like, what is it that makes a good riff?

Gosh, I like. You know, when I was a kid, I loved metal. You know, I still love metal, but I love speed metal.

I love just throwing on a drum loop of some sort and just hammering it out until something sticks.

Yeah, I don't know necessarily what makes a great riff from an average riff, but I love something that feels good under your fingers that's fun to play. That's, to me, is a good riff. Something that, if I can.

If I can have a vocal melody that fits something that's interesting on the guitar and is fun to play at the same time, that's a win win for me.

When you, when you're working on writing, are you starting from that sort of place? Are you starting from riffs? Are you starting from discovering something alternate tuning wise and then just building a song around it?

Or are you starting with melody and then just building chord progressions around and then finding something interesting to do with the chords? What's your process?

Yeah, I have. I mean, I come at it a few different ways sometimes. Sometimes a melody will be what starts it all.

I think melody is the most important part of everything.

I remember being, I don't know, 10, 15 years into my career and being annoyed when somebody's like, yeah, you're just a guitar player that the singer writes all the vocal melodies like. Listen, that's my thing. I write vocal melodies. To me, I spend more time writing vocal melodies than I do trying to play lead guitar. By far.

You know, when I pick up guitar, 80% of what I do is songwriting and 20% is I'm in the dressing room, might as well noodle on the guitar and learn some new things.

Yeah.

So vocal melody is the most important thing. When I write songs, a lot of times I'm not warmed up.

I'm just grabbing a guitar off the wall and I'm just fumbling around with it, seeing what, what happens. And I'll. I've got a way of logging my ideas where I have. I kind of have a sense and intuition. Is this a verse? Is it a chorus? Is it a bridge?

And I will log them with their beats per minute, what tuning it's in, what vibe it is. And I'll put it in my laptop.

So if I ever have a song where I'm like, all right, I'm almost there, but I don't have a bridge, I can go back through my files and be like, okay, 132 beats per minute and drop detuning. Maybe it's in six, eight. Here we go. So I log all my ideas from all the years and just try to make sense of it.

That's cool. I like that. I heard Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has a similar.

Like a Google Doc or like a spreadsheet of lyrics and ideas that it'll just randomly reference for things. But I've liked that idea of. It is amazing in the modern era how easy it is to just catalog ideas.

Oh, yeah.

That you can just pull back.

I'd be lost without it. I mean, it's. I have.

If the world ended and I couldn't play the guitar another day, I'd be able to go back and put together a ton more records just from what I've written over the. Over the last 30 years, you know, so it's. I never get rid of anything unless it's.

If I go through and I'm logging new ideas and something doesn't move me in any way, I'll erase it, but other than that, I keep it.

Sure, I dig that. So what does it take for you at this point to feel like you're truly inspired by something that you're writing?

Like, you've written on tons of records, you've played on tons of records, written tons of songs. What is it nowadays where you're like, ah, yes, this. I haven't said this yet.

Yeah, it's different every day. I used to be. I like something either really triumphant and positive or really dark and sad and horrible. I don't like anything in the middle.

I like the most or the least, you know, I don't like anything in the middle. But nowadays I'm getting into more of a setting of a moody vibe, you know, I want somebody almost like a translate state to fall into a song.

And it's. I like. You know, I like stoner metal a lot, you know, I like.

I get inspired if I hear a stoner band playing something just a nice slow, groovy, almost like Sabbathy kind of thing, I fall right into it. I like synthwave stuff. You know, if I hear a synthwave jam and it's got a cool progression to it, I'll. I'll get inspired to do something around that.

I'm hearing stuff all the time. My wife will play there's something on satellite radio. It's like Chill Vibe or something like that. And it's all this programmed music.

And so much of it is so good. I'm like, what the hell is this? And I'll shazam it. And I'll just listen to these.

These artists and they'll inspire me to, you know, to come up with their unique and clever chord progression. What, you know, the changes they would make. Some of them are just. Some are. Some of them are just great.

So I'll try to see if what I could do with that.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say the very dark and the very positive because that's pretty obvious to me now that you say it.

Like, I'm trying to think back.

What's interesting about the album Human Clay, is that two of the biggest songs on there, Higher and With Arms Wide Open, are very positive songs and these huge hit songs, but they're like, buried deep in the album. And the first half of the record is pretty dark.

Yeah.

Like, there's a lot of these minor riffs and a lot of half step motion that kind of the average listener, the person that doesn't just listen to pop radio, they'd be like, whoa, this is dark. But people who are into rock, it's just like, oh, no, that's this thing.

And it's interesting to me that you see such a widespread of emotional expression on most of those records that you've been a part of and the songs that you've written. And also the fact that these two gigantic hit songs are buried on the second half of the album. Talk to me about that.

Because nowadays, I mean, if I'm trying to make a record, it's like I need to capture people's attention in the first 10 seconds of when they throw this on Spotify or whatever. You know, it's a. It's a little bit of a different game. Or maybe it's not. I don't know. Maybe I'm overthinking it.

What I mean, those two gigantic songs as songs like Number eight or nine or whatever in the. In the album.

Well, I think whenever we had a ballad on a record, we'd always put it three quarters into the record kind of a thing. You know, it's typically. That's. I think that's what we do. I can even. I can't remember what the first song in that record is.

I think.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

Are you ready? Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Are you ready? You can't have another song open up the record. It's Are you ready?

It's just that it was the obvious choice, you know, I think once you start there. Here's our first song, Are youe ready? It's got an up tempo thing. It's kind of a up tempo rock song.

We gotta make something a little moody or next we just kind of go song by song. And I'm still that way. It's very important, I think, the order of a record.

Yeah.

And you know, because back then we. We knew that even though the.

This Higher might have been number seven on the record or eight on the record, we knew it was going to be our first single. So it didn't matter. It was still going to be the first thing people heard.

Sure.

But yeah, Al Mortar is critical and we'd always have. Everybody always have their opinions on it. That was always a stressful time.

No way.

That should be first. That should be third.

That should be. Yeah. So when I was growing up, I was an MTV kid. I was watching MTV as my babysitter when I'd get home from school.

And I had my own interpretation of what the music scene and the industry was like at the time. And, you know, I was an alternative rock grunge kid, punk rock kid, whatever version of that was at the time.

I'm curious from your standpoint, because it felt like my own Prison and Human Clay were kind of transitional records. Like the first record felt like it could have. It just could have fit right in the.

To me, when I went from my vantage point at the time, it could have fit right in with the alt rock and the grunge thing.

Although some people would say, you know, at that time, of course, the tide was kind of shifting from what people would consider like the nucleus of grunge or whatever. So it was a little bit of a shifting time, of course. And then Human Clay being more of a. It was like. It was more of a produced sound.

And I don't mean that in a bad way. In the same way where I would say Evil Empire is more produced than the Rage against the Machine self title record. It's not. It's not a good.

It's just like, oh yeah, it's more. I don't know, it just sounds more pro to the average person.

Yeah.

I'm curious, at the time when you guys were making those first couple records, were you aware of how you fit into alt rock or grunge or did you care or were you trying to do something different? Where was your mindset artistically at the time?

You know, we wrote how we wrote there was no way of changing it. But I remember trying to get on alternative radio because alternative radio was huge compared to active rock radio, that this reach was much bigger.

So we would.

We have a few songs like, all right, we're going to get to number 30 on the charts and alternative, but we can get top 10 or top, you know, number one on active rock. So we were.

We constantly wanted to get on those charts, but we never specifically sat down and said, you know, let's look what these bands are doing and try to do it so we can be an alternative band. I just don't think that was ever us.

We were way more, I don't know, straight ahead rock band to be super, you know, super artsy alternative band at the time. Yeah. But luckily enough, when we came out with Higher, we broke into the pop charts, which was an even bigger reach.

Yeah.

And I think that opened the door for Arms Wide Open, which is our first number one across the board hit. I think that went number one at pop. And I don't know if we were one of the first rock bands, I think, to do that at the time.

And that really changed the game for us.

Well, I imagine, obviously you go through different versions of the band. You go through different versions of what are you. Where are you aiming on the dartboard? You know, are you aiming for the bullseye of pop radio?

Are you aiming for the Triple 20 of alt rock or whatever? You know, there's different places that you aim for. And then, you know, people who might want you to.

To shoot at the 20s, see you shooting at the 16s and they're like, what are you doing? You know, obviously there's a lot of. A lot of misconceptions or a lot of things that fan bases, you know, expected or didn't expect that happened.

What is one of the biggest misconceptions that you see?

Where did people get things wrong or where did they as far as your fans, what was the biggest misconception that you feel like you saw from your fan base?

You know, I think a lot of, you know, a lot of the critical stuff on the outside were like, you know, it sounds like a Pearl Jam ripoff band or whatnot. We heard that a lot.

And me on the inside, I'm like, you know, I wrote all the music for the band and I wrote the songs with Scott Stapp where he, me and him would get together and he'd write most of the lyrics. We'd work on melodies together. But me hearing that over and over, I'm like, I never. I had one Pearl Jam record. I was not influenced by Pearl Jam.

I was influenced by Metallica and Slayer and this band and that band and punk bands, you know, Black Flag and Minor Threat and all this stuff. So Pearl Jam was something that happened way later into me playing my instrument. So that always kind of irritated me.

Cause I was like, you know, if you take the songs of this band, you take the songs of Pearl Jam, the songs don't sound alike, maybe. And Scott Stat, he took it as a compliment when people said that he thought Eddie had better had a great voice. And he said that many times.

But that was something that always irritated me. Cause I'm like that. You know, I worked my whole life to do this. I don't have any similarities to the music of Pearl Jam.

Yeah, I understand, though, how the untrained ear might just be like, oh, the vocal quality has a rasp to it and it's rocky. Or it's like.

So it's a rip off.

Yeah.

Are you kidding me? The amount of airtime we had. You're gonna have to take the criticisms.

Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting thing because you see so many people where it feels underground, and everybody's like, oh, my gosh, this is my band.

This is my thing. And they feel like they have ownership of it, and then that gets released to the rest of the world.

And then all of a sudden there's less of a relational thing where they feel like it's theirs, and all of a sudden it's also everybody else's. I mean, that's just naturally gonna happen when anything gets really popular.

I mean, I'm sure the people of Seattle thought that about Starbucks when they went global, you know, or it's like, whatever. I don't know. But you guys have seen a lot of.

You know, there's several bands that have been the brunt of a lot of unfair criticism, or just Internet Hive Swarm or whatever you've had to deal with a lot. And as somebody who is a legit great musician, you took a lot of heat and you had to learn how to deal with that.

And I'm just curious, what is it that got you through that? Because now, I mean, what's interesting is the last year, the tide has completely shifted.

Yeah.

And it felt like there was a lot of years where it was like, man, these cats are taking heat. And for whatever. I mean, whatever. How do you. How did you get through that?

And how did you maintain your sense of identity and just your ability to address, hey, I am Great. I bring value to the world. Even though a lot of people on the Internet are pricks. How did you get through that?

Because a lot of people are going through that and. Or will go through that.

Yeah. You know, I just realized. And if you want to. If you want to have that level of success, you're gonna have to deal with it.

You're gonna have to have thick skin. You see it everywhere nowadays. I think the most obvious person you could point out would be Taylor Swift.

She's the biggest touring stadiums around the world. Anytime she does something, somebody could attack her, what they do, and it's. It's just unfair. You know, she's.

You take this little metal band that thinks they're the best band in the world, and that Taylor Swift sucks. I bet you she works 10, 100 times harder than you do. She's out there touring around the world. She's putting on these crazy shows that everybody.

I mean, I've never been to one of her shows, but I respect her as an artist. I think she writes her own music. If you can make it as a stadium act touring around the world, you're doing something right.

Yeah.

But that being said, if you want to have that level of success, you've got to have the thick skin, because there's going to be people that they root for the underdog and they want to tear down the guy on top. And I've been lucky enough to be on both sides of the fence where Creed was selling lots of records and getting that heat.

When I started Alter Bridge, like in Europe, nobody knew who the hell Creed was mostly. And Ultra Bridge took off over there, and we were always kind of critical darlings over there.

And I got to see what it was like to get critical support but not have a lot of record sales. And I got to see how you could have critical hatred and tons of record sales. Like, which is better? I don't know. But I got to live both of them.

Yeah.

So it's. You know, people can be cruel, but it's part of the world. You got to deal with it.

Yeah. I did not know that about Europe with those two bands.

Yeah. Creed, we went over there on a couple tours and they got canceled. We never went back. And Ultra Bridge, it was good for Ultra Bridge.

We went over there. We were a brand new band. We're just a group of guys nobody had heard of.

And you kind of saw in the States it was moving real slow, and in Europe, it took right off over there for Alter Bridge. So it's. It's what's kept me. That's why I'm sitting here still today, because that's kept my career going for the last 20 years.

Yeah. Okay, so you had two bands. Have two bands where a lot of the same members, different singer.

Obviously there are certain parts of it that are going to be similar because you as principal songwriter and. And the cats that you're playing with. But I also assume that it gave you a different artistic outlet in some way.

So can you talk to me about what is it that Creed gives you artistically that's different than Alter Bridge and that's also different from your solo project?

Yeah, well, starting with the. Well, the most. I think the most fun of all my projects right now is the Sinatra thing. That's. That's my, like, yes, that's my dream.

We'll get there. Because I just listened to that record and that's. It's very interesting. That's like the curveball of the century for me.

But that's my. I tell all my bands. That's probably my favorite thing to do.

But with Tremonti, with my solo band, Tremani, I get to go back to my childhood years and play all the speed metal and stuff that, you know, I look at Brian and Scott from Creed and Alter Bridge and I'll play these riffs and they'll just kind of laugh at me. They're like, dude, what are you. What are you playing? You know, so like, all right, screw you.

I'm going to start my own band and do this and have get my metal out. But that was in the first few records. Now when I do the Tremont thing, I don't necessarily just push the metal thing.

I'm just trying to write the best song I can write. And I love singing, I feel. Funny thing is, me and Miles are opposites.

Miles loves playing guitar solos and he loves singing as well, but he feels no pressure when he plays guitar solos. I feel all the pressure in the world playing guitar solos, but no pressure at all singing, because people are going to judge me as a guitar player.

Nobody's going to judge me as a singer because I'm just, oh, if I can sing decent.

Oh, he's great for a guitar player, you know, so you'll catch me at every karaoke bar in town because I could give a shit what anybody thinks about my singing. Because I like singing.

Yeah.

So in the Tremonti band, I get to sing, which I love doing. In Altar Bridge, I'm working, you know, in Creed, I write all the music. Like, I Said. And I work on the.

The melodies, and Stapp writes most of the lyrics and writes melodies. Great melodies as well. And. But in Alter Bridge, me and Miles do the same thing. We'll write complete parts and put them together.

So Ultra Bridge is kind of like two. Two guys in a band coming together and putting half of their songs on a record.

Then Brian and Scott on the rhythm section, they really make it Alter Bridge. They come in and they take our ideas and they blossom from there. But like I said in Creed, it's.

You know, when I wrote those original songs with Scott, we were just kids, college kids. We were just learning our ways, and we always wanted to write the most triumphant.

Like I said, the most triumphant thing or the most angry or sad thing.

Yeah.

And still I love. I love those. Those two vibes. Now, like I said, I like getting more into the stony kind of thing, but, yeah, epic. Nothing in the middle. Nothing.

Everything in the middle is boring to me.

Well, the opposite of boring is knowing your guitar work and then hearing your Sinatra record.

Because Jason here, the producer, the other producer of the podcast with Premier Guitar, he was like, dude, a long time ago, he's like, yo, you gotta check this straw anti thing happening, dude. He's singing. I was like, oh, what's he. You know, it's like. It's not like. Not like the solo records, not like the metal stuff. Check this out.

Like, wait a minute. This is a big band record. What is. What inspired you to do this? Tell me. Tell me a little bit about the Sinatra project.

Yeah, so it's one of my proudest projects. It's. I think. I don't know, maybe five or six years ago, I was at a Christmas party and they had a karaoke stage set up.

I think I was singing White Christmas or some Bing Crosby's White Christmas, and I sang some Sinatra Jingle Bells. I'm like, you know what? This feels good. This feels like my voice. I'm not pushing, I'm not pulling.

It just feels like if I lived back in the 40s and 50s, I'd be singing this stuff. So I remember reading some Frank Sinatra biographies and watching some documentaries and just being pulled into how interesting his life was.

And you have this almost shy kid step on stage at this auditorium with this, like, Navy band. And when he's talking he just seems like this shy guy. And as soon as he starts singing, you're like, shit, there's Sinatra. And he just steals.

He's just magic. And just as a guitar player, just like you, you hear somebody growing up and you're like, I want to play just like that.

And you spend all your time practicing. And I just became obsessed. So the song Is yous was really the song that made me say, I want to sing like this gentleman.

And I went down the rabbit hole, was singing and singing and singing. And then during COVID my wife was pregnant and she. And we. Our daughter was diagnosed with down syndrome.

That's why you see all my down syndrome stuff behind me. That's my. That's my daughter right there. But anyways, she was diagnosed with down syndrome. And I was like, the bulb went off. Mike, you know what?

Maybe there was a reason for my obsession with Frank Sinatra and singing like this. He was a philanthropist who raised over a billion dollars for charity. I'm going to do a record.

I'm going to sing Frank Sinatra songs, and I'm going to raise money and then partner up with the biggest down syndrome community I can find. So I called my manager, I said, hey, let's call some local musicians and record a record and do it for charity. And he said, why local guys?

He said, my guitar teacher growing up, Stan McIntyre, he toured with Frank Sinatra. Are you kidding me?

So he set up a lunch with Dan and Mike Smith, who was Frank Sinatra's band leader, the alto sax player, and sat him down, told him the plan, and they're like, can your boy sing? And my manager had never heard me sing anything but rock. He's like, of course he can sing. Of course he can.

So the next issue was they're like, all right, you have to get the Sinatra family approval. And that's almost impossible. You know, they've. They only do things for like, Michael Buble and Tony Bennett.

You know, it's not, you know, you don't to get the Frank Sinatra name on there. So we told him the whole story, begged and pleaded, said, we're going to record two songs. We'll let you hear it. He loved the songs.

He said, the band loves you. This is great.

I need you to do original versions of some of a lot of these songs because we can't support you playing Sinatra's version of these songs. We have to have you doing your original thing. So I took my way and put it, put, you know, my, my Dan McIntyre played it on a nylon string guitar.

We made it more of a ballad.

Yeah.

We took I Fall in Love too easily and added a rhythm section to it. We did all kinds of things to about half the record. The other half, like Luck Be a Lady and Fly Me to the Moon.

Those are like the typical arrangements. And when I sing Luck Be a Lady, Mike Smith hands me Frank's chart and it's.

It said, if you look at all the charts you have, every position has like, you know, trumpet one, you know, sax one, whatnot. Mine said vocal chart. Frank Sinatra. I thought everybody said that until I looked at everybody else's charts. Mike.

I'm the only one that has Frank Sinatra on here. So it was actually Frank Sinatra's chart that he used when he tracked that. That song.

Wow.

Which blew me away. And then he handed me. He handed me the T. He's like, this is exactly what the old man would. He always called him the old man.

The old man would drink before he sang and he mixed up this tea. I still have the packet.

And when I, when my voice was getting a little hairy in the studio, he's like, I don't know if you want to do this or not, but when the old man would ever have trouble singing, he'd smoke a cigarette. Like, I'm an ex smoker. I'm not going to smoke. I don't think that was a good choice for him or me. So I'm not going to do that. Wow.

Well, that explains why all of it sounds so legit. Man, that's incredible.

It is his guys, man, 17 guys in that studio that played with Frank Sinatra on that record.

That's amazing.

And I mean, obviously so incredible and so beautiful that you found a way to have something that you're passionate about and really help out a community. And obviously something that is very close to you and that you're passionate about. So that is beautiful. That's amazing.

There's a lot of people that just be like, yeah, yeah, you know, do their thing or maybe even just find the support of a community. But for you to be able to have the support and also contribute to it is a huge testament to your character and how much you really care about it.

Well, thank you. You know what? I started this thing called Take a Chance for Charity that I'd ask you to participate in.

Everybody, anybody with a platform, if you can think of something, because I'm a big fan of yours. I think you're an excellent musician. You've played with some of the baddest ass cats in the universe. Thank you.

But say something Your fan base would never have it, never see coming. And it's a get out of jail free card. Say, I've always wanted to do this, but my fan base might not get it. You do it and you do it for charity.

You know, I've had a few people do it and it's been great. You know, I had a friend of mine, Klein Mount Everest with the down syndrome flag up there and did it for, for charity.

And it's been a great, it's been a great mission. You know, we got some shows in December, some shows in Florida and shows in Jersey. All the shows are for charity as well.

I love that. Well, I'm a dad also. What I mean, you know, obviously being a dad, you learn a lot of things and it gives you a bit of a different perspective.

What is one of the things about being a dad that you've learned and has changed your perspective on your artistry?

I always want to make sure that whatever I do, my kids would not be embarrassed to dad about doing. You know, I, and I try to present myself in a way where I don't want to be the guy in the news who got arrested for this or that.

You know, I always keep that in mind. I don't want to embarrass my children in any way and make them proud, you know, in any way I can.

Yeah, I love that. Well, let's get back to some guitar stuff.

You have, you have a long running relationship with PRs and I know you have the new MT100 head which looks really dope. I saw the YouTube demo and the, you know, all the promo material for it. Can you talk to me about some of the projects you've done with prs?

Why PRS for you and what are you stoked about as far as those products?

Yeah, so when I was, when I was working at guitar shops in college, you know, I worked at Chili's as a cook. And then I, for about two or three months I got hired at the local guitar shop just because I had a song on radio.

And I think I begged for years to work there and I never got the job. But finally I got a job there. And I remember the PRS is on the top shelf.

We weren't even as employees allowed to bring them down because they were so, you know, they were the most expensive guitars in the shop. So I always had this thing. I wanted a PRS so bad that when I had all my gear stolen, we were in Boston and we were, we were just dumb.

We would put all the radio Stickers on our trailer. So somebody saw us a mile away, stole our trailer, stole all my guitars. So we got an insurance settlement.

And I think I had like $8,000 or something I had to spend. So I went to the local guitar shop, bought a prs. I was so excited about it, but when I got it on stage, all the knobs were in the wrong spot.

I could sit down and play it at home and love it. But when it came to being in the moment, I needed that toggle switch up here like Les Paul had. And I need the tone switches.

I need everything to feel the same way. And it felt very different. So I went back to just playing Les Paul's. And then a few years later, I got a call from Jeff Lanahan from prs.

He's like, hey, we'd like to send you a guitar. So they sent me a McCarty, which I love. One of my favorite guitars is probably sitting. Yeah, sitting five feet from me right now.

I've written so much stuff on that guitar, but I would never play it live because it's. The layout's different, the tone is different, it's way rounder than my other things. A great blues guitar. It's a great Paul Reed Smith style guitar.

But I said, you know, it doesn't really work out for me. So he sent me another one. Like, all right, now we're going to put a Dragon 2 pickup in here and we're going to do this and we're going to do that.

And I tried it and like, yeah, it's just still not my thing. Even though I love these guitars and I appreciate it.

So after sending back three or four guitars, like, why don't we just design a guitar for you and make it a signature model? And I was, are you kidding me? Yeah. I mean, it's. At that time it was Carlos Santana was the only guy at prs. So I was the second signature artist.

And it was funny how Paul, Paul is the same guy he was then as he is now. He's a big kid. He's like a 15 year old genius. Oh, I know. He gets so excited. He gets excited about everything.

And he sends me the first body of this guitar and it looks silly. It's like a big blue whale. It's got a big head on it and a tiny little cutaway, single cutaway on it.

Because he wants to be really conscious of not doing, you know, less Paul, you know, but it's a single cut. It's like a car without. How many times, how many different ways can you do a single cut. Every other company was.

Was doing something that looked very similar, so we just made the contour different. Eventually we got the body shape dialed in. The neck at first was just the traditional PRS neck that he used on almost everything.

But I begged and pleaded to get my neck the way I wanted it. Yeah. And then once I. Once they're like, all right, we'll make yours that way, but we'll sell the other ones in shops.

And then I'd have other artists play mine. They're like, I like yours way more. So finally they made the neck like mine. After the years went. As the years went by, we would change. We would.

First it was just black, and then we had platinum. Then we had gold top. Then we started incorporating all the charcoal bursts and all the different colors.

Now you can pretty much get it any color you want. And the only real changes that have happened other than that are like, the tuners get better every year. You know, they just get.

And the pickups look a little cooler and sleeker, but the guts of it all are the same.

Yeah.

Beautiful guitars. Love them. When I first came out with the guitar, it had a bar on it, you know, but now I like a stop tail. I like. You know, I like.

I like to be able to tune up and down without having to tune a million times because I got a floating bridge on it. So now you can get the guitar in both styles. You can get it in. Gosh, we changed things so much. I can't even remember what's going on right now.

But I think there's three different levels of guitars you can get. You can get up to the straight se, which is the most affordable guitar.

And then I think there's the step in between that and the American made version. But even the se, when we came out with the first se, guitar World, I think, came out and said, this is the best value for a guitar ever.

And it was incredible. That guitar, super cheap. I think the thing was like 700 bucks, and it played so good. But they've changed it since then.

That was still my favorite se, but the body's different now. Now the bodies look like the American made version. But the whole time, I'm a big guitar fan, but I'm a bigger amp fan. Like, amps are my.

Amps are my jam. I have. I have an amp room over here with all my amps. It's. I think I have way more amps than I have guitars.

What's that mic'd up all the time?

I don't I take them out, I have them in racks, and I'll pull them out and I'll put them out. Like, I forgot, like these. So I'm setting up for the tour. So I've got these just kind of set out right now.

So for the tour I'm going on, I want to make sure that my live rig is set up in my room and then I'll take it out. So on. On this tour, I'll be using an MT100, obviously. And I've. These. These guys were nice enough to send me.

I don't know if you heard of the Synergy amp stuff. Yeah, everybody's been talking so highly about them.

My tech reached out to them and they sent me a bunch of the modules and, man, they sound incredible. Mixed with the MT100, it sounds like. It's almost like a mixture between when you have a band that has like a Kemper and then a.

And then a tube amp at the same time. You get the super tightness and the. And the perfection of the Kemper, but then you have the warm analog sound of the thing. So I think the.

That's kind of what I get out of the Synergy mix. With the MT100, you have the. The perfect tightness out of Synergy. And then you have the big, warm, rich.

Yeah.

Big, bold sound of the MT100. So I'll be using that on my tour. And then these cabinets.

I worked and worked and worked on trying to find the perfect cabinet for the MT100, but we just never got to the finish line with it.

Sure.

Um, what I had put together was Mojo Tone makes great cabinets. And we. We used, you know, their birch cabinets with English finish, 30s and then eminent CV75s in an X pattern.

Yeah.

Because at my home studio, I found that these two cabinets on either side of my desk sounded so good together. Why did they sound so good together? And how could you put that in one cabinet? And that's what I did.

I just took two speakers out of one, two out of the other. X pattern. It my favorite cabinet in the world now.

Cool.

So it'll be the first time on tour I've used it this tour.

Yeah.

But like I said, I'm a. I'm a fanatic when it comes to amplifiers. It's.

You still have your dumbbell?

Cool.

How many can I.

How many Watts on those 100 watts.

Are the Overdrive Specials and Overdrive Deluxe.

Yeah.

Cool. And I don't necessarily buy those amps to actually ever use them on tour. And they don't get used.

The Overdrive Deluxe got used in the studio this time. But I buy those amps to make me play different. It forces you to play differently than I would on the MT100, for sure.

Yeah, totally.

And I want to be that kind of player. I want to be that guy that can just pick up and improvise and play with Larry Carlton.

I can't, you know, But I think if I buy an amp like that, I'm like, all right. That will force you to try to play like that.

Sure. I love that. I love that. That's why I have so many guitars behind me.

I know you got a great. You got a collection. Yes.

Like, this one is just going to draw something different out of me than the Strat, you know, so.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Well, I did notice you're also doing something really cool on this tour where you're doing guitar clinics on the road. Can you talk to folks?

Because I'm sure people listening here are interested in it as well. Can you talk to me logistically, how that's working and what you're doing for that? Because I read the website. It looks cool.

Yeah, I love doing it. I've been doing it for years. But then Covid happened and we had to stop. So I haven't been able to do a guitar clinic in three years or so.

Um, but what I'll do is about 2:00, I think. We start. We have soundcheck at 4. We schedule it for an hour. But I always go way over the hour. They're always making me stop before soundcheck.

So sometimes I go over two hours. But when I first started doing clinics, I was doing all lead stuff.

I would take solos from the bands or whatnot, and I play them and ask and show, like, the key techniques or whatnot in those solos. And I'd have asked. People would ask questions. A lot of times I would sit down, I'd improvise for the first. And I try to be truthful with what I.

What I do behind closed doors with folks. So. And that was. It's also good. You get. You get 20 people in a room, guitar players, and you improvise.

You're putting yourself on the spot, which I think is great. And I always tell people, I'm like, one of the first things I do every time I pick up guitar is improvise. Two songs and it's.

And I don't play to impress. Impress anything. I just, I'm. I'm playing like almost like grandma's in the room.

And I want to play something nice and sweet and have good vibrato and have good phrasing, you know, not. I want to be doing sweet arpeggios the whole time. I'm just, I'm just warming up. So I start a clinic like that.

I'll go into some of my favorite techniques. And then my manager actually talked me into showing people how I write songs. And that really is what's the most exciting part for people, I think.

So that's what takes me forever to explain. So I'll. I'll get into alternate tunings. I'll get into a few different techniques you can use to explore alternate tunings.

Like I'll sit down and I'll say, hey, take this right hand finger picking style and just watch TV for a week until you get it.

Yeah.

And once you get it, take, learn something. You know, take a tune, take a tuning like open D5. I'll always show everybody open D5, that's one of my favorites.

And I'll also show open G and open G minor, open E. And I'll say, take that finger style technique and let your left hand do whatever you want it to do.

Sometimes I say, try to create the most odd sounding chord you've ever played on the guitar. Try to finger what you think would sound just crazy.

And then take this technique and play through it and you might be surprised, you might come up with something. Keep doing that with your left hand. Just get, experiment as much as you can with that left hand.

Experiment with open strings, experiment with chord voicings that you're used to even. And they're going to sound way different in this tuning and use this pattern the whole time.

And I guarantee you within five, ten minutes you're going to stumble upon something that's beautiful or sad or whatnot. And I can't tell you how many times in these clinics I've had to tell everybody, hold on, stop, stop.

Grab out my computer and I'll have to record these ideas and I'll sing. I always tell people we're in the trust tree. I'm going to sing in my falsetto because that's how I write melodies, because I can't.

Sometimes I won't be able to hit notes and I want to limit myself with my melodies to my natural voice.

So I'll sit, you know, sing with my falsetto And I actually have a recording on my laptop of me writing the title track of my last solo record in a clinic while people were sitting there. I'm like, okay, now I got to write the melody. I wrote it there with everybody in the room.

Wow.

So it's. That's the toughest part about doing a clinics is letting your guard down.

Yeah.

Telling everybody we're in the trust tree. This is actually how I do it. I might suck 9 out of 10 times, but that 1 out of 10 times is where it happens, you know?

So I love that, man. That's so cool. And that's such a great idea. I love that because you're act. It's.

You know, a lot of bands will do a meet and greet or some sort of VIP experience. That feels like, all right, we're trying to pay for the bus, or, you know, we're trying to cover the cost of the hotel rooms, whatever. Just fine.

That's totally fine, especially in today's music business. But I can tell that this is something that you're really passionate about.

I could tell that it's something that breathes life into what you do as an artist. And that, to me, you know, that motivator on its own just feels really cool.

Cause I can tell even just from this conversation that you're somebody who likes to give back and you're just stoked about what you're doing, and I love that.

Absolutely. You know, and it's. There's been a few times when I've gotten invited to do, like, Joe Satriani's clinic or Andy Wood's clinic.

And I'm friendly with Andy. I'm like, dude, no, I'm not doing it. I'm not gonna. My. My kryptonite is having to improvise in between Eric Johnson and Guthrie Govan.

And I'm not doing it. Like, that's not the type of guitar player I am. But I. If I'm in my own. In my own environment, at my own pace, it's. It's. I love it.

Yeah, that's great. Well, to close off, I have a question that I ask a lot of my guests, and it's a gear question, because guitar players love talking about gear.

Oh, yeah.

There's. There's advice that people are looking for. Let's say there's a piece of guitar gear that every guitar player needs. There's only three.

Three types of gear. One, what does everybody. Every guitar player need? That's around 20 bucks or less. What's a piece of gear that Everybody needs.

That's a couple hundred bucks or less. And what's a piece of gear that everybody needs? Price is no factor.

I think 20 bucks or less. Everybody needs a snark tuner. Yeah, Love my snark tuners. 200 bucks, maybe. 250 bucks. I'd say the. Do I have one right here. The Micro cube.

The Roman Micro cube.

Yeah.

I mean, back in the day, every band would have those in the dressing rooms. I think it's one of the best sounding little amps that you can carry to your hotel room.

Yeah.

They've come out recently with another little small amp that everybody loves called the Spark.

Okay.

So if you're more. If you're more of a technical guy that wants to have all these digital different modeled amps, the Spark's awesome.

I like, I like the Micro cube because it's. It just sounds so great. You could. You could put a mic on that thing on stage. It would sound great.

Yeah.

Price is no. Price is no object, I would say.

And you'd have a lot of people hating on it, but I'd say a dumbbell amplifier is the most beautiful thing, the most inspiring thing. If you get the right one. It is just the most inspiring thing in the universe. And you get a lot just because they're so expensive.

People are like, oh, those things are so overrated. They're not overrated if you get the right one. Are they worth as much as they're going for? No.

But is it the most inspiring piece of gear I've ever plugged into? Yes.

I love that. I mean, that's the answer we all want, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember a guy came, I had put an amp on reverb, and it was a. It was a Dumbo clone. It was an expensive one. I won't want.

I won't name the name of it because I'm friendly with the person who built it. But I sold it and the guy's like, yeah. My wife's asking me, this is an expensive amp and is it as good as a Dumbo? I'm like, no.

Even though I'm trying to sell it to you, it's not as good as a Dumb. And I'm like, tell you what, if you want to.

If you want to come over to my place and check out all the Dumble clones and the Dumble its stumbles themselves, I'll let you hear for yourself. And he drove. He's a. He was a fireman who drove from Houston.

Oh, wow.

All the way to My place. So I plugged him into all my Dumbo clones.

You know, I did the Bluto tone and the Van Wheeldens and the Brunos and Amplified nations, and he's like, wow, this is great. This is even better. This is awesome. When I plugged him into my. One of my favorite Dumbles, he's like, I get it. I get it. It's. It's just.

It's perfection. It's what these amps are all going for. The clean tones on a dumbbell are the best clean tones I've ever heard in my life. The.

You know, when you turn that preamp gain all the way up on a dumbbell on the clean channel, that is the one most classy sounding things in the world. And it's not. Not something I'd ever be known for is that double style of playing.

But like I said, when I plug into it, I want to play like Larry Carlton. I want to play like Robin Ford, you know?

Okay, well, then here's. Here's a follow up for me. Just my own question. Have you played any models that inspire you even remotely?

Like digital model modeling apps?

Any, like, any of the neural DSP stuff? Kemper line 6 fractal, any of those?

Yeah, I have. I have an AX effects to that I thought was great for. Especially for writing.

I would just sit here and I would just turn the knob to the preset and find some new wacky sound that would make me write something different. I actually toured for maybe three weeks with a fractal because I was. I was the last guy that I know that that didn't use in ears.

I couldn't stand them. And finally I got convinced to use them.

Miles was always, you know, Miles would move to the way other side of the stage because he didn't like the sound of the cymbals and my amps and all that stuff. So it always irritated him to have a loud backline.

So finally I gave in and everybody's like, you know when you do your solo stuff and you're singing, the in ears are so good.

So finally I went in the in ears and I was like, all right, I'll try the digital stuff, because I'm not really hearing the real sound of my amps and these in ears. And I did it for a while and I loved it for rhythm stuff, but I hated it for lead stuff.

And I even had producers of mine go, hey, dude, I've got the best 10 different lead settings ever on the fractal. And they'd send them my way And I'm still like. There's just. There's something about it. I just. There's no heart and soul to it. There's something.

Something weird about it to me, so. So I went back to using tube amps. But that being said, I think an amp sounds better if there's two guitar.

A band sounds best when there's one guitar player playing a tube amp and one guitar playing. Playing a fractal. When that together combines to me, it sounds super tight and super rich and all. All mixed together. Sounds excellent.

Interesting.

Yeah.

But I think if it's all Kempers, if you know what you're looking for, I just hear some, and they're getting better and better and better, you know, I think Kempers are incredible pieces of gear, but there's just something about a tube amplifier that has a richness you can't yet replicate.

Yeah. Seems to be the common thing, you know, with people who have played through a lot of tube amps.

Yeah.

When you. When you've experienced and have felt that sound. But you're right.

For my whole career, too. Yeah.

You're right that they are getting so good now. There's some that are just insane.

Maybe one day I'll change my mind, you know?

Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah.

It would be a lot easier on your back, I'm sure.

Yeah, of course.

Yes.

Awesome.

Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining us, man. It's an absolute treat to have you on the podcast. I appreciate everything that you do, and it is.

It's so great to hear about all the things you got going on, man.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Hopefully we can meet in person.

Let's do it. We'll jam. I want to play through all your amps, too. I'll drive from Minneapolis.

Come on. Come on down.

I'm here.

You know where to find me.

Awesome. Well, thanks, man. We'll talk to you soon.

Awesome. Thank you.

There you have it. Mark Tremonti. What a nice dude. Cool cat. That's what I'm saying, man. This guy's got writing credits. I'm telling you that right now.

I mean, we all know him as an amazing guitar player, but think about the writing. Think about all that. That's so. I mean, yeah. It's. It's its own skill set. And he's got him. He's got them both.

So thank you, Mark, for being on the podcast. I am very stoked about this episode. And, hey, again, like I said at the beginning, if this is your first time here, welcome.

Go back and check out some of the other episodes because we've got a lot of great guests that we've interviewed, that I've interviewed. So thank you for being here. We'll see you next time. Peace.