DATE OF INTERVIEW:

CHANTEL McGREGOR

16th October 2014

METAL DISCOVERY: For me, virtuosity on guitar is not just mastering technique, but also being able to express feelings in emotionally engaging ways, which is the essence of all good art, I guess. Do you feel like you always connect with your instrument in both those senses; technically and emotionally?

(Chantel McGregor on her substantial guitar hoard)

"Most girls like shoes and handbags but I buy guitars!"

Chantel McGregor in The Engine Shed, Lincoln, UK, 16th October 2014

Photograph copyright © 2014 Mark Holmes - www.metal-discovery.com

Interview & Photography by Mark Holmes

CHANTEL: Yeah, it’s a really weird thing because the way I see music, especially guitar, as a musician, is I see it that all the years of practice and the years when I was younger, learning the modes and the scales, and the chords and inversions, and how everything’s constructed and works together, that’s like your toolbox or your palette. And then, when you go on the road and you’re doing the live thing, that’s your emotions and that’s when you’re painting the picture. But without the practice and the tools, you won’t paint a good picture. So, for me, I don’t go on stage and think about what I’m playing; I don’t even think, “oh, I’m gonna play a melodic minor scale now, or I’m gonna go into this mode, or I’m gonna play these chords.” You just play it and it comes out and it’s what you feel, and some nights will be better than others because it’s emotions and it’s giving everything you’ve got into that performance. And I just see it, it’s not a conscious thing; it’s like an out-of-body thing for me, it’s weird. When I’m playing, I always come off stage and go, “how did I do?”, because I don’t actually remember what I played or how I played it or how it’s gone down, because you just don’t. You just play it and you connect with it and that’s what you do. But the technical things, that’s got to be rooted within you to be able to do that, I think. So it is really important to know all that, and like reading music, a lot of musicians don’t read.

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CHANTEL McGREGOR DISCOGRAPHY

Like No Other (2011)

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MD: Exactly. Some of the best musicians, yeah.

CHANTEL: Yeah. I mean, I read because I did a degree in it and I did all my exams as a kid and everything, so I can read and that’s fine, but I don’t read. There’s nothing in my life that I think, “well, I need to read.” However, if I needed to transcribe something for another musician, like a cello part, I could do it. I probably wouldn’t, I would just go, “play it like this!” [Laughs]

MD: So live then, are we talking a lot of improv you do?

CHANTEL: Yeah, every song. And every gig’s different. It’s good fun.

MD: You say that you don’t think about modes and stuff but you must be restricted by the chord progressions of the songs, so you can’t play Dorian or Phrygian over particular chords, for example.

CHANTEL: Not really, I just do it. I hear it and play it. I know that’s the complete opposite of knowing the stuff but you can feel where songs are going and you can feel the progressions. And, all of a sudden, if somebody chucks a different slash chord in and you go, “what?!”… but you’re only two notes away from the right one so it doesn’t matter, does it! You just slide up to it! [Laughs]

MD: Exactly, yeah!

CHANTEL: And if it sounds really wrong, you play it twice and it’s jazz!

[Laughs]

MD: You have a great, expressive voice too, but do you find it easier to channel your emotions through voice or fretboard?

CHANTEL: Both. Really both. I’ve really been concentrating more on my vocals, especially for this album, because I got to a point where I was singing and singing, and it was great and I was happy and it was fantastic… not me being fantastic, I was feeling fantastic… just to clarify, that wasn’t an egotistical comment! You know, and I was happy with it, but then I got to a point where I was thinking, I want to push this further now because I’ve pushed my guitar as far as I can, and I kind of sit back with my vocals and don’t push it as far as I can. So I got a vocal coach and had a few sessions with her and learnt different ways of doing things, and it’s made me connect a lot better with my voice. So, yeah, it’s weird because it’s both. In the past, I would’ve said my guitar but now it’s both.

MD: You play a John Petrucci Signature Series Musicman…

CHANTEL: I do.

MD: …as your main axe…

CHANTEL: I did! [Laughs]

MD: Oh, you did… you don’t now?

CHANTEL: It’s still with me.

MD: It’s down as your main guitar on your Facebook page! So what did attract you to that particular guitar? Are you a fan of Petrucci’s playing?

CHANTEL: I love Petrucci and I love Dream Theater.

MD: All of it?

CHANTEL: Not all of it, no. I find some of it is too much. Some of it is too much for me to listen to. It’s great in small doses. We went to see them and it was a four hour concert… and it was just a bit too much for me.

MD: Prog for prog’s sake sometimes.

CHANTEL: Yeah. It was just a bit too much for me. It’s great for some people, and I love Dream Theater and I really respect what they do and I would go and watch them again in an instant, just to sit there and analyse, “how did they do that?”…because it’s fun; because I’m a geek! But, yeah, the Musicman, I absolutely adore it. I’ve been playing it since I was about fifteen. A lovely guitar to play. My hands are really small so it’s got a really narrow neck, which is brilliant for me for small hands. The action’s incredible; a two-way floating trem without it having to be a Floyd Rose so no nightmare string breakages or restringing… and it sounds amazing.

MD: What are the pickups on there?

CHANTEL: I think they’re just Musicman pickups. I got another one, about two years ago, and it was the new updated pickups, and they sound unbelievable. They’re actually better than the old one I brought tonight, but that one’s got a dodgy fret on it so it needs re-fretting! [Laughs]

MD: Where do you stand on Ibanez? Obviously, Petrucci himself used to play an Ibanez for years.

CHANTEL: The problem that I have with Ibanez, because I’ve used quite a lot of Ibanez over the years - I used to use a lot of Satriani models and the Vai ones - but the problem that I have is the necks are just a bit too flat for me. They’re just a bit too wide and a bit too flat.

MD: The RG series have generally always had pretty thin necks.

CHANTEL: Yeah, they’re not as bad.

MD: I think the Jems have a slightly thicker neck.

CHANTEL: Yeah, and that’s what I was using, was a Jem, and I was obviously using a JS1000, and they were brilliant and a lot closer to the Musicman than the Jem. But, I don’t know, it was the problem with the Floyd Rose trem, and I was going from using the Ibanez to then that’s what got me onto Musicman because I was breaking strings left, right and centre, then taking ten minutes to restring one string and it was so frustrating. So that’s why I went onto a Musicman.

MD: What about PRS, have you ever dabbled with those?

CHANTEL: Yeah, I use a PRS as well. I normally use that on the shows but, since I’ve been recording the album, I’ve gone back to using my old Strat Plus Deluxe. I was using the PRS instead of the Stratocaster but I’ve just fallen back in love with it again… [Laughs]

MD: PRS are very lovely but very expensive as well.

CHANTEL: Yeah, I’ve got a lovely Custom 24, it’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous green… Steven Wilson had a green one so I had to have a green one!

[Laughs]

CHANTEL: It’s lovely but, I don’t know, it’s too nice! And I’m on the road so much, and I got really upset because pretty much the first week I got it, I went on stage, soundchecking, wore this belt, and put a scratch about four inches in the back of it.

MD: Oh no!

CHANTEL: Yeah, I was mortified. I was so upset. But it’s a road tool, you’re on the road with it. You know, it’s your tool of the trade, it’s gonna get knocks and scratches.

MD: Yeah, exactly. So how many guitars do you actually own? When I was writing these questions, I read an old interview, and I’m not sure exactly how old the interview was, but you said 43 at that time.

CHANTEL: We’re on a few more now.

MD: A few more?!

CHANTEL: Closer to the fifty mark now!

MD: Is that a guitar for every occasion or are you just a guitar-a-holic?

CHANTEL: I think it’s like shoes!

[Laughs]

CHANTEL: Most girls like shoes and handbags but I buy guitars!

[Laughs]

CHANTEL: It’s one of them things because my dad used to play and, over the years, he sold guitars and things like that, and regretted it afterwards. And I’ve always been like, I don’t want to do that; I don’t want to buy something and then regret selling it.

MD: So you’re a guitar hoarder, effectively.

CHANTEL: Pretty much, yeah. It’s like one of them houses where you just hoard things!

MD: You could end up on one of those Channel Four programmes in a couple of years - ‘Compulsive Hoarders’ or whatever it’s called.

CHANTEL: I bet I will!

MD: That would be an amazing episode, though.

CHANTEL: It would be pretty good.

MD: To walk in a house and you can’t move anywhere for guitars, that’d be great!

CHANTEL: [Laughs]

MD: There are various clips on YouTube where you’ve jammed with other great players such as Joe Bonamassa and whoever else, but I found one with Jimi’s brother, Leon Hendrix. How did that particular one come about? That’s pretty awesome.

CHANTEL: Yeah, it was. It was interesting. Basically, he was playing at the Cambridge Rock Festival the weekend that I was there this year and Dave, the organiser, got in touch and said, “will you get up and jam with Leon?” And I was like, “yeah, alright.” So we did and it was fun and everything, and he was a really nice guy; he was really sweet. So it was great fun and the crowd liked it, so it was good.

MD: So there was no practice before, you just went on and jammed?

CHANTEL: No, it was literally like, “will you get up and play ‘Foxy Lady’?” This was like half an hour before the gig. And I was like, “yeah, alright then.” Then, about twenty seconds before I went on, I was like, “I’ve never played ‘Foxy Lady’!”

[Laughs]

CHANTEL: So it was like, “oh dear!” So it was just like by ear. I was like, I had to go, “I guess it’s in F#... so, yeah, that’ll do, great”!

MD: My final question - you’ve been known to play a few covers here and there, but if you could choose anyone to cover one of your songs, who would it be and what song?

CHANTEL: Oh gosh! I reckon I would pick one of the new songs off the new album and it would be ‘Walk on Land’; it’s a mega-prog epic, and I would choose…

MD: Steven Wilson!

CHANTEL: Steven Wilson! [Laughs] Just to see what he’d do with it. The thing is, when I wrote this song, I was obsessed big-style with Steven Wilson, and I’d just been to see him at the Albert Hall, and it was just, oh my god, amazing. So I was like, “right, I’m gonna write a song that I would picture Steven Wilson playing.” So I wrote it, produced the whole big, massive, epic in Logic myself, all the string parts and everything and, at the end of it, I was like, “actually, this is really cool, maybe I should put this on the album.” And it’s a bit different to the rest of the album because the rest of the album is just three minute rock songs, whereas this has got a five minute guitar solo at the end of it. So it’s pretty cool. But, yeah, the album version’s just sounding crazy now.

MD: A future collaboration between yourself and Steven, maybe…

CHANTEL: [Laughs]

MD: Well, thank you so much for your time, that was really interesting.

CHANTEL: No, thank you, it’s been really lovely.