First-call Nashville studio guitar ace, Justin Ostrander, has had his fair share of anecdotes. He has, after all, featured on over 20 number-one hit country records, with his recording credits including Steven Tyler, Cody Johnson, Luke Bryan, and David Lee Murphy, to name a mere few.
Being a busy session guitarist means keeping an eye out for guitars and accessories that can give you an edge over other players and help you land the gig – and, in Ostrander's case, one of his trump cards is a Coricidin bottle slide...
The story starts with Ostrander's search for an offset, specifically a Jazzmaster, that he could add to his arsenal.
“So Dan, of Danocaster [Guitars in Nashville] fame, is a huge Fender offset nerd, and I bought a Tele from him a few years ago,” he tells Vertex Effects.
“He said, ‘Well, if you find one that you think you want to buy, let me know, and I'll go with you and we'll check it out. I know those guitars inside and out, or I could just build you one.’”
Ostrander explains he scoured the menagerie of guitar stores in Nashville, but he still didn't find anything that tickled his fancy.
“So I said, ‘Okay, let's do a build then,’ and he asked me what color I wanted. And I said, ‘You know, I've always really liked that Burgundy Mist Metallic from the ’60s.” Dan worked his magic, and lo and behold, the guitar was finished – but, as Ostrander puts it, there's another cool part to the story...
“I went to play it at his house and to pick it up. He told me, ‘No pressure. Play it. See if you like it.’ And he actually had this slide sitting on his [Fender] Deluxe Reverb. And so I picked it up, and I started goofing off.”
The slide wasn't just any slide. As Ostrander notes, “I was like, ‘Man, this sounds different than all the glass slides I have,’ and I noticed that it's kind of wavy on the sides, and it's got this little logo on it.
“It was this old Coricidin bottle – one of the ones that people pay way too much money for on eBay. And I was like, ‘You know what you've got here? Like, this is a really great slide.’”
Traditional bottles of the cough and cold medicine Coricidin, from which DIY glass slides were made, were favored by Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, and Gary Rossington, and famously formed a key part of Duane Allman's signature tone.
They have since taken on a life of their own, with vintage bottles fetching insane amounts on the secondary market.
“And he goes, ‘If you take the guitar, you can take the slide.’ And I was like, ‘Are you sure? Because the last time I saw one for sale on eBay, somebody wanted $300 for it.’”
“I mean, it had the original label in it and everything,” Ostrander details. “But that's literally the Duane Allman slide, and it's real glass. It's not like the Pyrex thing that people do now. And so I got a free slide with my sweet Jazzmaster.”
However, as the guitarist explains, there's a downside to playing such a highly sought-after slide...
“I'm terrified to play at most places because I don't want to drop it!” he adds with a laugh. “Especially [if] backstage has a concrete floor.”
In other session legend tales, Dann Huff recently talked about his intimidating experience recording with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones for the first time.
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