With his well-worn Primer Gray Tele in hand, Brent Mason has redefined session excellence throughout his stellar career, which includes appearances on over a thousand albums.
While appearing on records by George Strait, Alan Jackson, Shania Twain, Zac Brown, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire and Willie Nelson, to name a few, there’s a simple six-string principle that’s guided Mason: “When things get worked out too much,” he tells Guitarist, “they kind of lose their charm. The first takes are usually the best takes.”
Simple as that sounds, Mason’s unparalleled longevity, and habit of ending up on hit albums by iconic country musicians, is anything but.
In short, there are plenty of players who aspire to what Mason doesn’t but few who understand what he learned long ago: “You’re playing to service the artist,” he explains. “You want to complement their record. It’s not about you. You need to get into the head of the artist and try to connect with them. You need to be a real listener and you’ve got to pay attention. It’s like school, you know?”
What’s your secret to being so effective across so many genres?
“Gear-wise, it’s a little bit of everything, along with the education of the different styles of music. I’ll bring in a lot of different guitars when I come in to record. My main arsenal might be an ES-335, a Les Paul and a Fender Tele, of course. But a lot of times, a baritone is real useful in sessions.
“I’ll grab one of those if somebody wants something a little different; it transforms things into something else. But most of the time, it’s the Tele, and mainly it’s just the whole mindset. It’s just about conforming to whatever they’ve got in mind and [what they’re] wanting.”
Specifically, what’s the key to getting into such an open-ended mindset?
“It’s just understanding the character of the artist. Artists bring a certain characteristic to the music, and I’ll say, ‘Okay, I see where he’s coming from.’ But if you join in with them, they still might hear something different, and say, ‘Well, I want to do something a little different…’
“Sometimes you get a heads-up when you walk in – because in Nashville, you really don’t know what you’re going to play till you get into the studio. [That’s] what sets Nashville recording apart from just about anything, really. Somebody just makes out a number chart and you kind of fill in the blanks from there.”
Do you have a tried-and-true method for nailing your parts in one take?
“Just by letting the emotion escape. Right away, when you feel a song, you go, ‘Wow, that’s a great song,’ and sometimes, instead of sitting there and working out a solo note-for-note, you just turn it on. Your thoughts about the song and the emotion and soul just come, and that’s the first take, and you go, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I can top that.’”
And is it that easy to accept that you can’t do better?
“Well, I’ll go, ‘I think you’re right, that’s pretty good…’ but then my perfectionism comes into play [laughs]. Literally, it’s like, ‘I wish I woulda ended it right there,’ you know? Sometimes I’ll paste an ending onto something, maybe on that first take, just because it’s hard to resist. But it’s that first take that really captures that emotion. Any take after that is you trying to play something you like on the first take and duplicate that. You’ll think you did, but it never comes off that way.”
Why do you think that is?
“Oh, you know, it doesn’t have squeaks or the right vibrato. In other words, it sounds ‘worked out’. That starts to get into the sound and it becomes redundant. There are some songs that you need to work out, or some solos if they’re melodic, and you mess up the melody. You’ll want to perfect that.”
Are there any techniques that you needed to master to get to the point you’re at now?
“When I first started doing sessions in Nashville, you needed to have a great sense of timing. I remember a lot of times, I was working up things and didn’t have a metronome – and we all hate metronomes [laughs]. It’s just clicks that are uninspiring. But now, you can set up in your hotel room and practise, so it’s about timing.
“When I first started doing sessions, I found out that I was speeding up a little bit, and guys would go, ‘Hey, you’re on top of the beat, man.’ I always heard that and now I know that it’s about timing and dynamics. Those two things, timing and dynamics, without even bringing up melody or notes, it’s about those things.”
What are some common pitfalls that session players often fall into?
“You gotta watch out when you go in there. Studio musicians like to play a song, jam and get loosened up to check and see if everything is clicking. But sometimes you can play too much. You’ve really gotta listen to the vocalist and mark down on your chart where the fields go, make sure you’re off the vocal point and make sure you understand what the artist wants.”
Is it just a matter of simple communication?
“Yeah, a lot of times, you can ask the artist, ‘Hey, give me your vision of what you’re looking for on this…’ Then you can sit down with a pen and pad of paper and take notes… if you want to look real dignified [laughs]. Or you could just nod your head, and go, ‘Yeah, I got you!’”
We touched on gear a bit earlier, when you mentioned the 335, Les Paul and Tele. Those aside, do you have a very large collection of vintage gear, or do you mostly use newer guitars?
“It’s a little bit of both. I’m always real fond of vintage instruments, you know? But I always have a Gretsch 6120 as a main guitar; it’s not a real vintage one, but it sounds killer. I bought it in the ’80s. And I’ve a ’65 sunburst Strat that I’m pretty fond of. I just make sure that I’ve got the guitars I need, you know?
“It’s good to have some different kinds of guitars that are a little bit off-kilter. I even have a sitar and, like I said, I carry a baritone, which I use a lot. And the Gretsch has got that nice Bigsby, and the Strat, you know, I like to set it up to where I can bend the tremolo bar a little bit. So it’s just carrying different things that inspire you to play a little differently on a song. It helps to have those extra guitars, and I have quite a few different ones.”
Do you find yourself using mostly studio amps, or do you generally use your own?
“I bring my own amps. Lately, I’ve been using a [black-panel] ’67 Deluxe with a lot of reverb. It has some vintage Celestions in it and it’s sturdy. I found myself using that thing a lot because it marries up to pedals really nice, especially different distortions. And I’ve got a Matchless and a Marshall, but it’s mostly that Deluxe lately. It’s surprising what that thing will do.
“So I bring my own amps and I’ll only use the studio amps if mine all blow up or if I see one in the studio that’s cool. I’ll go, ‘Hey, is that an old Vox? You mind if I use that?’ Some studios have a good supply of amps and some you really can’t count on at all, so you want to make sure your amps are working really good and are tubed up.”
In terms of pedals, do you have any particular secret weapons?
“I love those old EHX Memory Man pedals. It’s got one feature that’s really cool, which is that it’s got a gain knob on it, so it’s like you’re taxing an amp. It’s so natural-sounding, and when you start adding a little edge on it and crunch, it’s perfect. And I’ve had the Boss GE-7 seven-band equaliser, the kind of off-white one, since the ’80s.
“Now, when I walk around and see other guitar players, I see one of them stuck to their ’boards and I say, ‘You get that off of me?’ [Laughs.] They go, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did. Man, you’ve used these for a long time.’”
Your own personal contribution to the tone of many sessions, even ones that you’re not on…
“I kind of puff my chest up and say, ‘Yeah, I can probably take credit for that [laughs].’ But those pedals right there – and they’re just basic pedals – are great. Other than that, I’ve probably got more distortion pedals on my ’board than any other kind of pedal, like a Tube Screamer and my [signature Wampler] Hot Wired pedal.”
What’s the story behind your first signature guitar, the Valley Arts Custom Pro Telecaster?
“That was the first deal that I had with the Valley Arts Custom Shop. It had a bigger neck on it – it really had a lot of wood and it had an oil finish, which made it nice… but it was really big. When they were shaping that neck, I said, ‘Stop right there, it sounds great. It feels good… but the neck is big [laughs].’
“Some guitar players say, ‘That neck is just too frickin’ big,’ and some of them shave it down a little bit. But I haven’t played that guitar in a long time, and then I went to Paul Reed Smith [for the PRS Brent Mason signature], but we weren’t trying to duplicate my Telecaster; it was kind of a three-pickup guitar that had a floating tailpiece and all that.”
It sounds like the Valley Arts Tele was nice but not quite right. Is that why you eventually hooked up with Fender for your Stories Collection signature Tele?
“Yeah, this guitar with Fender, finally it was the right people. And why is that? It’s a Fender Telecaster that I’ve always played, right? It was like the perfect match-up and, finally, with the right company and vendor. They got it perfect for the most part.
“It’s got the Glaser G-Bender, which Glaser showed the guys at the Custom Shop how to work and put together. So that guitar is definitely my favourite. It was a dream come true for me since I was a little youngster to have a signature guitar of my own.”
Why do you prefer the Glaser G-Bender over the B-Bender system?
“With the Glaser, I can set the tension a little bit better. And now, these new signature model Fenders have the new Glaser with the new and improved G-Bender in it. But my original guitar still has the old one in it because I’m just used to it. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks [laughs]!
With my Tele, I didn’t want to alter it too much and the Glaser only takes out about one per cent of the wood
“With the old Clarence White [B-Bender], I played Marty Stuart’s and you know that he plays the shit outta his. I grabbed it and it was a little too flimsy, but he had it set light. With mine, a lot of guys go, ‘Holy shit, is this working?’ because the tension is so high. I say, ‘Yeah, that’s the way I want it, man. You just gotta muscle it down, so it doesn’t warble.’
“With Marty’s, it’s like having two guitars glued together or something. That’s the whole thing. But with my Tele, I didn’t want to alter it too much and the Glaser only takes out about one per cent of the wood; it’s just a pathway to the saddle from underneath the bottom, right where the neck goes in the body. But everybody likes a different thing. I’m just kind of stuck with my style, so like I said, it’s like trying to teach an old dog new tricks.”
You seem as busy as ever. Will you ever slow down?
“I’m getting more selective about what sessions I do now. Back in the day, I was hitting the sessions until my eyeballs were popping out. I’d go in early in the morning, start at 10 and get home at 11 or midnight. It was starting to wear me down, so I’m happy to say that I don’t have to do that any more. So I don’t hit it that hard any more, but there’s some young guys who do.
“I see them doing it, and there’s some great players out there right now. I see a lot of young guys doing what I used to do and hitting it hard, and they get them big black eyes, you know? It’s like Don Kelley used to say when he saw somebody tired like that, ‘Your eyes look like two piss holes in a snowbank!’ [laughs]”
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
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