Brian Henneman

"Oh, hell no. No way. That 335 belongs to my boss at Killer Vintage, Dave Hinson. He just loaned us that because we wanted something with a Bigsby on it. That's the first guitar you hear on the album: that's “Monday (Everytime I Turn Around),” I was nervous having it. I don't want to drop it. I don't want to get it stolen. It was freaking me out because that's an expensive guitar. Dave's really cool like that, but still I don't want to be the one responsible for breaking the 1960 ES-335 when I trip over the cable in the studio and friggin' knock it off of the stand. We used it quick: got in, got out."

"That's totally true, especially the 360 six string. I had one twenty years ago, but I was so damned broke that I'd always have to sell guitars to make a damn rent payment or house payment or whatever. My first 360 fell victim to that. I made the house payment and then I didn't have one anymore. For some reason I was never able to land another Rickenbacker for 17 years. I couldn't get a credit card. I'd ruined my credit over the years. The only people who would give me a credit card, out of everything that I tried for, was Musician's Friend. They gave me $2,000 worth of credit and they were having a Labor Day sale. The 360s were down from $2,499 to $1,899 that weekend. It was the perfect storm."

"Then I fell into a 12 string. I had an old Fender Esquire, well, it was a Telecaster body. Nobody knew how old it was because it had been stripped and somebody had done this artwork all over the body and it didn't have one original part on in it. The neck was from the '70s. It was a cool old guitar, but I didn't really use it. The neck had been broken; I dropped it on my parent's steps when I was a kid. The body was probably early '50s, like super early. It was just too feeble to take on the road anymore."

"Even though it was cool and I'd had it forever, I have a friend who had a 340 12 string and my friend just said, "I'll trade you for my 12 string," and so we just did a swap. He's perfectly happy and I'm perfectly happy. Both guitars ended up in better homes. He had the 12 string he never really played. He wasn't a touring musician or anything. So my guitar was better with him because it can live a nice, peaceful old man's retired life in his house. So the old feeble man gets a good home; the 12 string gets a good home."

"The MVP of the recording sessions was the Vox AC4, which is a brand Chinese-built amp. We were using it straight as it came off the boat from China. There was not one modification done to it and we used it for so many things. It was such a versatile little recording amp. It was probably the least expensive piece of gear we had in the studio. We used it for heavy things, heavy guitar parts. It was just: Yay for the Vox AC4! It doesn't really do much for anything other than recording. It's not loud enough, unless you want to sound completely distorted while you play along with a folk singer. We loved it. We used it."

“Don, this EGOD is perfect. Precisely what I was wishin’ I could get the EGDM to do. I never want its fuzz, but I want its tone. That’s what the EGOD does. It maxes out right at the absolute highest I ever set the EGDM. It goes WAY lower on the gain, which was my dream, and it keeps the exact tone, which was part 2 of my dream. Perfectly executed my good man!” ~ Brian Henneman (Bottle Rockets, Marshall Crenshaw, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco)

"The other thing that was amazing was the Telefunken M80 microphone. That was the best mic I ever sang through. It was incredible. And we had it on a snare drum when we started! We were trying other vocal mics, and then Eric Ambel all of a sudden had the idea to try the M80. It was just the easiest mic. It was like singing live, like in a live concert. Usually we use those big friggin' hanging-from-a-rack-with-shock-mount crap; whatever those microphones are, they always get me uptight. I can hear myself too well. It's just like no fun for me to sing through. This was just like singing through a live damned band. And it was great. So we used that."