At a time in his life when many professional musicians are a bit jaded and burnt out, Brian Ray still has the same sense of fun and enthusiasm of a 15 year old in his first garage band.  Never mind that he may be at what many might consider a musical pinnacle by being in Paul McCartney’s touring band, or that he’s had a career studded with great gigs and hit writing (like a #1 in three formats for Smokey Robinson), Brian’s still the same down-to-earth guy that you’d expect to find at the local Tuesday night jam.

Brian was kind enough to share some of his insights garnered from a wide range of experiences that vary from starting out playing clubs and parties to writing a number one song to sharing the stage with a number of musical legends all over the world.

How did you get the gig with McCartney?
At my birthday party my friend Abe (drummer Abe Laboriel Jr.), who toured with me with Mylene Farmer and Johnny Hallyday, told me he was now working with Paul McCartney and they were going on tour but were looking for a guitar player who could play bass.  I just put my arm in the air and said, “I’d love a shot at that,” which was way out of my character to do something like that. I’d always gone from gig to gig by word of mouth and I was normally too shy to stick up for myself like that.   A couple weeks later I got a call from Paul’s producer David Kahne to come to his office in Hollywood.  We just talked music and then he handed me a bass and I played a little while we were just chatting. Then he handed me a guitar and we chatted some more when he finally said, “We’re doing one song at the Super Bowl in 2002 and we’re looking for someone to play bass. Are you into it?”  Of course I was into it!  He said that they were looking at a couple of other guys but he had a good feeling about me and would put my name forward.  The next day I got a call to see if I could be on a plane to new Orleans the day after that to play a song with Paul McCartney!

I played the gig and it seemed to have worked out well. I was shaking Paul’s hand at the end where I said, “Thank you.  It was a real privilege and if I don’t get to see you again, thank you very much,” when I realized that I couldn’t let go of his hand (laughs), but he invited me back to the bar for a drink with the rest of the band.  At the end of the night he was saying his goodbyes to everyone when he said, “Welcome aboard, Brian.  Stick with Abe and Rusty (guitar player Rusty Anderson) to show you the ropes and I’ll see you in five weeks.” I couldn’t believe that I was in after only one song!  So I just ran home and started woodshedding and cramming.  I set myself up like I was training for the Olympics and went through all his material from The Beatles to Wings to the solo stuff and just applied myself to it for five weeks, knowing that he may come in and change everything that I learned or even just let me go.  So I didn’t treat it like I had the gig, I treated it like I had another audition.  It just so happens that we had five days of rehearsal as a band before Paul got there so we were all prepared by the time he arrived.  After the first rehearsal he said, “Hey guys, sounds great.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”  That was really the first time I allowed myself to think, “I’m going on tour with Paul McCartney.”

It must be intimidating to play his parts with him being there.
I just didn’t put that in my mind.  I guess I was nervous but I just didn’t look up too much for the first couple of weeks.  It was all I could do just to play and sing the parts right at the same time because there’s a lot of counterpoint vocals where you’re singing and playing in two directions.  I didn’t have any time or energy for the existential idea of playing bass for The Beatles bass player (laughs).

What are your live rigs like?
I have two Ashdown bass rigs with the heads kept off-stage.  Then I have two Divided By 13 guitar amps as well.  I use two 19 watt 9/15 heads and two 2×12 cabinets on stage with a simple pedalboard.  Also, I play 12 string on Band On The Run and acoustic 6 string on a lot of songs, so I have to be ready to play a different instrument on every song that we do.

What guitars and basses are you using?
When I’m playing with Paul I use a ’61 Les Paul SG, a ’65 Reissue SG and a ’59 Gretsch Double Anniversary that I like to use.  For bass I use a Gibson SG bass and a Guild M85 bass from the early 80’s.  I also use a Taylor 12 string and a ’63 Gibson Dove six string.  Sometimes I’ll also sometimes use a James Trusart guitar, a Patick James Eggle guitar, or a variety of other guitars like Les Pauls, although I think I’m going to play Les Paul Jr.’s on the next tour.

You said you use a simple pedalboard.  What are you using?
I’m using a Demeter Compulator, a Divided By 13 Joyride (a great overdrive pedal) and Dyna-Ranger treble boost, Line6 delay and modulation pedals, a volume pedal, and a Divided By 13 Switchazel that has a buffer in it.  Then, believe it or not, I use an Alesis Mirco-Reverb for some of The Beatles stuff where you want some reverb on stage.  It’s the best sounding stage reverb that I’ve heard.

How is it different playing with Paul than all the other gigs you’ve had?
He calls upon us to want to do everything we can at the highest possible level.  He’s really great to work for and he’s not tough on us but the material itself is very demanding and keeps you focused. There’s a lot to think about when you have to sing some of those background vocal lines while playing that intensely during an almost three hour show.  And lot of his post-Beatles stuff has a lot of the song structures that are not as simple or predictable as you would think they are.  We just learned a song from Wings called Mrs. Vanderbuilt that we played in concert in Kiev recently.  It only has three chords, then a release section with another three chords, and you’d think it’d be very simple but the song form is so strange and completely unpredictable that I defy anybody to play that song down faithfully the first time.  So the music just requires a lot of concentration.  You want to do your very best when you’re playing those songs along with that voice for that audience we get to play for.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out playing in bands?
I would say to listen more than you play.  Pay attention to downbeats from the drums and bass and play those downbeats with total conviction.  Play with good time and think of that as more important than playing with energy or technical ability.  Playing with good time and with good attentive energy is the most important thing.

And keep your ears and your body pointed towards whomever is the singer.  People just showboating and facing the other way when somebody’s carrying the song doesn’t help the whole.  It’s really got to be about the singer when you’re playing.

Peter Thorn is the perfect example of the fact that if someone who is willing to take the giant step of leaving home for the big city and work hard at his craft, a lot of really good things can happen along the way.  As you’ll soon read, Peter left his native Canada for Hollywood, soaked up as much information has he could, worked constantly on his chops and sound, and eventually became a much in-demand session and touring guitarist and artist in his own right.  Peter is a shining example of a professional musician – excellent chops, excellent sounds (who sings great as well), yet easy-going, humble and approachable.  Below he outlines his keys to success.

How about some of your background?
I grew up in Edmonton, Canada and started playing guitar when I was fourteen.  When I was nineteen, I moved to Los Angeles to go to Musician’s Institute and attended that for a year.  When I got out of school I joined a band with a couple of older musicians who were pretty well known in LA (Frank Simes and Jennifer Condos) who were touring with Don Henley at the time.  Frank had a bunch of songs and was trying to get a record deal when he wasn’t playing with Don.  It was cool because they were much older than me – they were in their mid-thirties and I was like nineteen – so I learned a lot from those people.  I spent about five years in the band and we did a record for Japan and Southeast Asia.  When that ended around 1995, I started doing a lot of sessions and touring.

Right now I’m playing with Chris Cornell but before I played with a bunch of other artists like Jewel, Daniel Powter, Alicia Keys and Courtney Love. I was also in the group Five For Fighting for a while and toured with them.

What’s your live setup like?
With Chris I’m using a “wet-dry-wet” rig which uses an typical head and speaker cabinet combination, but takes a tap taken off the signal that’s going to the cabinet.  That’s fed at line level out to some some effects that are fed into a stereo power amp that’s connected to a couple of cabinets that sit on either side of the main one in the center.  So the center cabinet is the dry, direct guitar sound and the outside cabs have a stereo delay or a bit of reverb in them.  That allows both me and the sound man to have independent control over the dry signal and a blend of the stereo effects, so if I’ve got a stereo Leslie thing going on, or stereo delays bouncing back and forth on those outside cabs, he can control it if he thinks he’s got too much in the house.  The other thing is I can mix the dry signal into the wet cabinets to get louder if I need to for a solo boost or something.  It’s just a very flexible way to do it.

What kind of amps?
Right now I’m using a few different things.  In the studio I’ll use all manner of different amps from vintage amps like Fenders and Marshalls and weird things like Supros, but on the road I use a combination of different heads.  I’m using one built by a guy named John Suhr (suhrguitars.com) that’s a custom-made head based on his OD-100 amp and called a PT-100 for my name.  It has two channels – one that’s Fender clean, and one that’s a Marshall-like distortion channel.  I also use a Divided By Thirteen (dividedby13.com) RSA-31 head, which is another boutique amp.  At times I’ll also use an amp by Comet (electrosonicamplifiers.com), so I’m sort of a boutique amp guy.  I like the hand-wired, small company stuff.

What guitars do you take with you?
With Chris I’m using five different Les Pauls, as well as a Darco model which is like a 335, then I have a tele and two strat-like guitars built by John Suhr.

What are your effects?
Right now I’ve got the TC G-System which is my MIDI controller as well as a loop switcher that I can integrate various pedals like a Trinity overdrive, a Boss Fuzz, Line6 rotary simulator and a Peterson tuner that are on the pedal board.  Back in the rack for the wet-dry-wet system I use a unit called the Axe-Fx (fractalaudio.com), which is a two rack space processor that’s like a big super powerful Pod because it has amp simulators and everything in it, but I’m only using it for effects.  So I have the TC and all the pedals in front of the amp (signal-wise) and then post-amp I have the Axe-Fx for long delays and reverbs and stuff like that.

What do you usually bring with you to the studio?
I don’t bring much any more because if I’m working at (producer/writer) Linda Perry’s, she has so much stuff there that it’s sort of fun to go and just pick through the stuff that’s there. (authors note: Linda’s studio has the most fantastic collection of vintage gear I’ve ever seen in a studio, and I’ve been in 100’s of studios all over the word.)  If I am going to do a session on my own and I need to bring something, I’ll bring the TC pedal board and either a 1×12 or a 2×12 speaker cabinet with these little heads built by Suhr called Badgers – there’s one that’s 18 watts and another that’s thirty watts.  I really like them because they’re versatile and sound great with pedals.  For guitars, I’ll try to bring a Les Paul, a Strat, a Tele, and maybe one acoustic.

Do you have any tips as a session musician?
I would say an important thing for me is to serve the song at all times.  Try to keep an open mind and if someone has an idea in the room then always let that idea be heard.  If it involves you trying something different in the part that you’re playing, you can’t get defensive about it.  You have to just let it happen because that really goes a long way towards creating a good atmosphere in the room.  When everybody drops their ego and just tries to serve the song, I find that the best idea will rise to the surface and everybody will recognize it.  It’s human nature to want our ideas to be the best ones, but if you can be open to others suggestions you can learn something and maybe do something that you wouldn’t have thought of doing.

Now that you’ve worked your way up through the ranks to where you are now, what kind of advice would you give to someone who’s just working in a club or cover band?
If you’re in a bar band and playing covers, it really depends upon your goals and aspirations.  A lot of people don’t want to write songs and go any further than that because they’re happy just playing on the weekends, so then it comes down to honing your songs and your chops and maybe taking singing lessons to make sure that your background vocals are really tight.

If what you’re trying to do is break out to have a career as an artist, I’d be playing in the clubs on the weekends but be constantly writing songs and recording as much as possible.  When I first moved to LA in that band I was telling you about, we’d go play cover gigs two or three nights a week for fun and to make some money, but during the week we’d always be writing and recording.  We cranked out about 50 songs over a couple year period and that eventually got us a record deal (which is what everyone wanted back then).  When you do that you just get better and better at writing and honing the sound of your band.  I’ve got a lot of friends who played in cover bands, particularly where I came from in Canada because there was a really strong cover band scene there, but they never were really able to bust out of that because all they did was play covers and never tried to write anything.  But like I said, it all depends on your goals.  Some people don’t want the work that comes along with developing your own music because they only want to do it for fun.

One of the things that will really help if you’re in a cover band is to work individually on your parts before you get to rehearsal because you can get so much more done.  You can get through a lot of songs if everyone has done their homework because it’s just fine tuning the song in rehearsal at that point.