Growing up in the snow-capped nothingness of Alaska with a raft of his father’s records – but no record player – John Gourley fell in love with the aesthetic of music. “I would just look at those record covers. They felt so awing to me,” he remembers.
“They gave me this feeling of something happening on the outside of the woods where we were, and it made me feel less isolated. To me, the aesthetic is the most beautiful thing about music. It’s the sound – it’s the shape of the guitar, the clothes the player’s wearing, the way they carry themselves and make their instruments speak.”
Living in the wilds of Alaska, Gourley recalls his dad’s vinyl collection as all he had by way of inspiration. “I don’t even know why he brought it because we didn’t even have a record player!” he says.
“But I’d hear a lot of Motown and The Beatles on the radio on the two-hour drive to get groceries. I always gravitated to Aretha Franklin’s guitarist, Joe South. I loved that thumpy guitar sound on Chain of Fools, but I never really knew what it was.”
He continues: “I sound very ignorant to guitars, and I am generally. I always thought people played Stratocasters and Telecasters, so I started playing a Telecaster because it was easy to throw around.
“One day we were passing through Tennessee and we stopped at a guitar shop. I heard someone playing a Gretsch – I said, ‘What is that? That’s the sound I’m looking for!’
“So I got this second-hand Gretsch Viking, I can’t remember what year it was, but I put flat wounds on it and I would crank the reverb on my little Fender Reverb and I would get that super-rich Aretha Franklin tone.”
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Gourley used that tone on Feel It Still, the 2017 hit single from Portugal. The Man. “People look at that song as if it’s this pop song and there’s no guitar in it, but there’s guitar in that song,” he points out. I’m just using it how I remember hearing it in Motown, where it’s just a nice little texture. It’s not meant to be poking out a whole lot.”
That song – and more importantly that sound – helped propel Portugal. The Man to dizzying heights. With over a billion Spotify streams, reaching No. 1 in seven countries, TV ad placements and more, the world went mad for the band’s R&B, Motown, and pop rock modern-vintage blend.
Now their success – which continues with 2023’s Chris Black Changed My Life – has earned Gourley a signature Gretsch Broadkaster guitar, and it’s a thing of beauty.
Asked if his interest in the aesthetic made him want to build a guitar that looked as it sounded, he agrees: “My favorite guitars sound the same way plugged in when they’re unplugged.
“That’s one of the greatest things to me about a Gretsch guitar. I can sit down, strum a chord and I can feel it before I even plug it in. They’re guitars that have songs within them.
“Every single time I plugged in my [non-signature] Broadkaster – and this is straight out of the box, with nothing done to it – people would turn around and look to see what was being played. It gave me the same feeling I had in that Tennessee guitar shop.”
I don’t like being too gentle with my guitars – it’s my homie, it’s my trem, and it’s there to get loose
That’s why he went for a signature Broadkaster. It features a double-cutaway and thinned-out maple body with a thin, U-shaped neck. The stock USA Full’Tron pickups – responsible for creating “that tone” – remain, while a springy Bigsby B70 tremolo has become his favorite feature.
“I remember watching Wayne’s World when it came out in 1992,” Gourley reflects. “Seeing the white Stratocaster with the whammy bar made me think about the importance of a tremolo on a guitar.
“Bigsby is fun for me because it has a really nice bounce to it. I love strumming chords, pressing down just so slightly, and letting it bounce into tune. There’s prominent use of that in Purple, Yellow, Red, Blue. At the very end, I’m kind of slamming it down and letting it bounce up.
“The Bigsby can take a lot of abuse. I like a guitar that you can take out to the woods and you can camp with. I don’t like being too gentle with my guitars – it’s my homie, it’s my trem, and it’s there to get loose.”
The guitar’s 12-inch radius laurel fretboard houses 22 medium jumbo frets with subtle yet eye-catching cloud inlays. Artist and friend Cleon Peterson is responsible for that after the pair worked on its aesthetic collaboratively.
“What I love about Cleon’s work is that it shows the darker side of human nature,” Gourley says. “I've always gravitated to social observation with my songwriting. I’m not a love song person; I love that The Beatles ended the Vietnam War, and Cleon’s very much the same.
“I could do things myself, but I want to see what somebody else will do. And that’s me as a musician, too: I’m more interested in what other people have to say than myself. It makes me feel less isolated; just like that music made me feel growing up, looking at the stars every night. I found something really special in that.
“I wanted it to be affordable so that kids can play,” he adds. “But I wanted it to be really fun for people to pick up and see that it's different.”
I wanted it to be super-colorful but present as a goth kid who’s secretly happy inside. Honestly, you should see it in sunlight
Meanwhile, the guitar’s iridescent black rainbow finish is his homage to the ‘90s, when Gourley discovered post-‘70s music and worked out “you could still make music today.”
“Wu-Tang was massive for me,” he reports. “I loved how they sampled songs from the past to make something new from it. As a guitarist, I’m always looking for that little line or hook that will be the four-bar loop.
“So, thinking about that era, I wanted an iridescent finish. I wanted it to be super-colorful but present as a goth kid who’s secretly happy inside. Honestly, you should see it in sunlight. It’s incredible!”
Typically, Gretsch will champion the heritage of iconic artists who have played its instruments, including George Harrison, Malcolm Young, and Billy Duffy. But a month after boygenius were awarded a signature build, Gourley is part of a new generation of Gretsch signature artists – for a new generation of players.
It’s so cool being able to be a part of a kid picking up a guitar for the first time – it’s the reason I’m playing music
“Progress is what music is about,” he says. “It’s about what’s next – and man, I want to play the boygenius guitar! I’m one of those kids that wants to play the other artists’ signatures.
“It’s so cool being able to be a part of a kid picking up a guitar for the first time – it’s the reason I’m playing music,” he expands. “I was a kid sitting in a car, driving two hours to get groceries, hearing a guitar and saying, ‘I want to play that. What is that sound?’ And I searched for that sound my whole life.
“Creating this guitar is the most little-kid feeling I’ve felt in my life next to my daughter being born,” he concludes. “I cannot believe I got to sit down and make the thing that I’ve always wanted to play. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a guitar and it’s such a dream.”
- The limited-edition John Gourley Electromatic Broadkaster is available now for $1,199. For more information, visit Gretsch Guitars.
