Interview: David Love.

David Love is a versatile and busy professional guitarist and singer based in Toronto. He has been a member of the Randy Bachman/Burton Cummings band (featuring the two principals from the legendary Canadian rock band the Guess Who) since 2005, and has played with Cummings since 1996. He has performed all over Canada and the United States, and earlier this year travelled to the Canadian Forces base in Kandahar, Afghanistan to perform with his band the Carpet Frogs. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions via email.

How important is authentic gear when trying to get vintage tones?

Well, it’s important to me to be inspired by the tones I’m getting. Having authentic gear – the same model of guitar and amp -  gives me a sort of confidence in my performance. I think the audience enjoys it too – at least the guitar players in the audience do or so they’ve told me.

Could you describe your guitar rig?
 

With The Frogs, we do anything from Johnny Cash to Led Zeppelin so I have to have gear that allows me to dial in a wide variety of tones. With Burton, I have to try to replicate the tones of some pretty iconic records. Burton is quite insistent on trying to reproduce those sounds faithfully.  Primarily, I use my Koch Multitone 100 watt three channel head and a Koch 2 X 12 cabinet. Some guys gasp at the prospect of somebody still using high powered heads but I like the clean headroom I can get from it. It will give super clean sparkly Fender tones as well as that dry Marshall bark.

I always take my Rickenbacker 360-12 string with me because we like to do a lot of British invasion stuff. It is strung with Pyramid Gold flatwounds like Harrison, McGuinn, and Townsend used on their Rickenbacker 12 strings.

My main six string guitar is a 2005 G & L ASAT Deluxe which is Leo Fender’s spin on his Telecaster design. Mine has Seymour Duncan pick ups that I can switch from single coil to humbucking which allows me to cover a lot of ground sonically.

My pedal board consists of an Ernie Ball VP Jr. volume pedal, a Peterson Strobostomp II, a Diamond Compressor, a Keeley compressor, a Keeler Push overdrive, a Diamond Memory Lane analog delay, and a Catalinbread Semaphore tremolo and is powered by a Voodoo Labs isolated power supply.

My acoustic rig is either my Gibson J-185 or my Gibson J-160E into a Peterson Strobostomp II, Fishman Spectrum DI, and a Radial JDI Direct Box.

I use Evidence Audio cables.

You've been working for some time with Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings. How did that come about?

The Carpet Frogs had a Thursday night residency at some joint in Toronto many years back. One night, a friend of ours, who happened to be Burton Cummings’ road manager, walked in the place with Burton in tow. Burton was in town doing one of his Up Close and Alone shows and our friend, Sam, said “Come and see this band with me – you’ll love them.” We invited Burton up with us to do some of his favourite cover tunes and 5 hours later, we were friends. Burton got an offer to do a show but the promoter requested that he have a full band with him. Burton remembered our jam that night and called us to ask if we’d like to do a gig or two with him. Of course, we jumped at the chance. That was 12 years ago. We’ve been his band ever since.

When talk of a reunited Randy Bachman/Burton Cummings project came up in 2005, Burton insisted that they use our band. It’s been a pretty cool ride playing with those guys – they are Canadian music royalty. Playing for Randy and Burton has taken me all over the U.S. and Canada.

How do you approach working out guitar arrangements for the Bachman/Cummings live shows?

We are told what songs to learn. I go to the original recordings, the internet, youtube.com, tablature sites, sheet music – whatever - to nail down the parts. We all show up at soundcheck – there are no rehearsals – and you had better know your parts. Usually, the other guitarist (Michael Zweig or Tim Bovaconti) and I will watch what Randy is doing and try to pick the alternate part on the record and stay out of Randy’s way.

The same thing goes when learning a Burton Cummings tune. We’ll assign each other the parts and play them for him to get his reaction. Usually, if he nods his head and just rocks out, we know we’re on the right track!

I’ve been pretty fortunate to be able to play in Bachman Cummings and The Burton Cummings Band with a couple of outstanding Toronto guitarists: Michael Zweig and Tim Bovaconti.

You've been in the music business for quite a while. Do any hard-learned lessons come to mind?

Yes – you ain’t all that and a bag of chips – even if you are. If one is serious about being a professional musician in Canada, one soon realizes that you’re not going to be on a tour bus playing stadiums every week. Being a player means working and gigging – period. You may play for 160,000 people one week and playing the local pub the next. It goes with the territory in this country. If you can scratch out a living doing what you love in the Canadian music business, you are a raging success in my book.

What is your philosophy of teaching guitar?

I work primarily with adult learners who come to me to fast-track the art of singing and playing the guitar. I am not a very learned musician or a technically gifted player – I don’t read notation very well so my emphasis is on blending performance skills with guitar ability. My expertise lies in singing and playing the guitar and entertaining. That’s something that a lot of people want to know how to do and I help them do it.

Any career highlights that you'd like to share?

I am a child of the 60s and I grew up on The Guess Who so the first time I played "These Eyes" and "No Sugar Tonight" with Randy and Burton on a big stage in front of tens of thousands of people, I had an out-of-body experience!

Highlights? Let’s see…. (in no particular order)

Playing Live 8 in 2005 and ending up on the DVD

Doing a CBC special with Randy and Burton

Recording with Randy and Burton

Opening for Bon Jovi

Flying in a private jet

Seeing Canada from a tour bus

Watching Deep Purple sidestage

Playing for 160,000 people in Tennessee

Playing on the same bill with Mark Farner of Grand Funk

Playing on the same bill as and meeting Sir Elton John

Playing on the same bill with The Moody Blues

Having my Mom and Dad watch me play at the Molson Amphitheatre

Playing the 2010 Olympics with Burton

Playing in Afghanistan for our troops

Being interviewed for Gitbox Culture!

Thanks very much to David Love for taking the time to answer my questions.