Hey remember the “Spook-Reverb” Pedal ? …Well it seems I am finally posting some audio clips,

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Gerry Leonard

Hi there all you Ghouls and Ghoulettes,

As promised I am posting some soundbites of the new custom Spook-Reverb Pedal.

I am hoping to post some video also but am afraid it will have to wait as we continue to tour relentlessly for the Suzanne Vega “Queen of Pentacles” record.

As we tour and I get to re visit Prague and Czech Republic I have been fortunate to become friends with Pavel Horkey, the genius electronics wizard behind “Hot Amps” and now a line of killer stomp-box pedals.

(If you look closely you will see he also makes a Fine Walnut Liquor which makes the it ultimate combo)

Hot Amp and Liquor

 

When he showed me his reverb pedal last year, we got to chatting and I told him about my idea for a momentary reverb effect. The idea is very simple, its a kind of reverb that will just engage when you step on the momentary foot-switch and cut off when you let go. Pavel asked me a few pointed questions and then said he could build it for me.

Lo and Behold this summer when we played Prague, he presented me with the pedal.

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He went further and made a pedal that behaves like a regular stomp-box on one side; click the switch and you have beautiful reverb that you can adjust from short to long with a single knob. We called this “Spooky”. However on the other side you have the “Ghoost”* button, which is the momentary reverb. Again you can vary the length from short to long with a dedicated single knob but the reverb only sounds when you step on the foot-switch. The reverb also cuts off abruptly when you let go the switch. so you can have single note or phrase drenched on reverb and the rest of the riff or melody dry.

*The term Ghoost came about as a translation error between Czech and English, but I loved it and wanted to keep it, it’s like a combination of “Ghost” and “Boost”, what could be wrong with that !

Here are some clips demonstrating the effect:

I call this one the “Peter Green Effect” after the brilliant English bluesman Peter Green, one of the founders of the original Fleetwood Mac (and by the way in my humble opinion the best British blues man there was). But you can go there and back again without waiting for the drugs to kick in …(Sorry Peter, bad joke)

But it seems to have nice possibilities…

 

Here is another:

This is something i would have loved to have on my record in the 80’s

Remember when we were into those nice big long sad chords, but with a twist,

It also has a nice western landscape feel … you yourself can choose your era !

 

Last but not least almost my original thought to have it as an accent in a percussive loop …

 

 

 

Okay there you go,

A few more credits:

In some clips I also used the Ronno Bender Fuzz (Custom)  and the Lo Fi Looper from Z-Fex

Ronno:Z fex: SRVB

Here is a picture of Pavel and I when he presented me with the pedal…

Pavel and Spooky

 

Here is a picture of the two amps he loaned me for the Summer 2013 “Czechomor” Tour of Czech Republic and Slovakia …

IMG_3505

 

And yes thats my white custom “Liberace Ghost” Les Paul from the Bowie Reality Tour.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed

Best Ghost

 

 

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Paul Krugman’s review of Suzanne Vega show at Joes Pub

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Gerry Leonard

We played four shows over two nights at the renowned “Joes Pub” this past weekend in New York City. We had many fine friends and guests in attendance, among then the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman from the New York Times. Seems he liked the show…

Suzanne Vega Saturday (Personal)

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By PAUL KRUGMAN
NOVEMBER 15, 2014

Notes:

1. Gerry Leonard, who plays guitar on tour and produced her new album, is incredible.

2. If you saw Suzanne Vega years ago, as I did, and wondered if she’s still as good in live performance, she isn’t — she’s better. She seems to have grown into her stage presence, and now shows wonderful energy and rapport with the audience.

3. You forget how good a guitarist she is. Some of the most amazing passages were instrumental, with Vega and Leonard playing off each other or engaged in dense counterpoint.

4. Has there ever been another widely heard song, let alone a massive hit, written in blank verse?

5. Ironbound! Apparently by audience request; it turns out I’m not the only fan who loves that song.

6. The food in Joe’s Pub was very good — and my friends and I shared a bottle of Malbec, which I never did manage during my whirlwind trip to Argentina.

7. I didn’t intend to be a groupie and go backstage, but her manager recognized me. And luckily I was wearing black; for those of my station in life, all other colors lie.

Posted in Gerry Leonard, Press | Reviews, SPOOKYGHOST, suzanne vega, Tour | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Suzanne Vega Ithica Review

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Gerry Leonard

LIVE REVIEW: Suzanne Vega performs an expansive but intimate set in Ithaca, New York

Posted on September 19, 2014 | by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

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Onstage Thursday night at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York, Suzanne Vega gave a shout-out to Fall Out Boy for taking her little a cappella ditty “Tom’s Diner,” first released 30 years ago, to number 4 on the week’s download charts. The rockers wove bits of “Tom’s Diner” into their new song “Centuries,” joining a long list of “Tom’s Diner” samplers that include DNA, R.E.M., Ludacris, and 2Pac.

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Vega’s latest version of “Tom’s Diner,” performed with Gerry Leonard looping funky scratches and bass riffs on electric guitar, served as the main set’s climax—right after her other extremely unlikely pop hit, “Luka,” which brought the narrative of an abused child to No. 3 on the charts in 1987. Back then, Vega sounded like no one else on the scene, with her super-soft vocal delivery and vivid literary language, and the same is true in 2014. Her music is a one-woman genre.
Vega’s set mixed some material from her latest album,Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles,with older gems like “Marlene on the Wall,” “Small Blue Thing,” and “The Queen and the Soldier.” She introduced “Gypsy,” written when she was 18, with an extended story about her days as a “folk-singing and disco-dancing camp counselor” in the Adirondacks. Of the new songs, standouts included the rocking “I Never Wear White” and the dreamy “Jacob and the Angel,” accompanied by Leonard’s highly nuanced layering of sounds.

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I remember seeing Vega live back in her commercial heyday in big venues, and though she fleshed out her sound with a full band for the occasion, the music always seemed a little out of place. At its core, Vega’s style is intimate, and the small theater atmosphere in Ithaca was ideal for it. With Gerry Leonard adding all sorts of textures over Vega’s precise acoustic picking (and also allowing her to focus solely on vocals on a number of songs), the sound was expansive without drowning out Vega’s singular voice.
Her tour continues through November around the U.S.

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– See more at: http://www.acousticguitar.com//News/LIVE-REVIEW-Suzanne-Vega-performs-an-expansive-but-intimate-set-in-Ithaca-New-York#sthash.xON5LlIG.dpuf

Posted in Gerry Leonard, Press | Reviews, SPOOKYGHOST, suzanne vega, Tour | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How to play “I Never Wear White” by Suzanne Vega Re-Post

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Gerry Leonard

Hi there Folks,

As we tour around Europe again this summer with Suzanne promoting the new “Queen of Pentacles” record, I have been asked about the post for how to play “Never Wear White” from the album. It’s something I did very impromptu with my Tech Mark Dyde. So here it is again. This was filmed in a van last Feb so we are all wearing our winter coats !

Ghost

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So here we are again …

I was inspired the other night after a Suzanne Vega show in Germany, a guy came up to me at the signing and asked where he could find the chords to the new songs. Maybe he liked the songs or maybe he wanted to start his own band and beat us to the punch …

But either way it got me thinking about how to share the knowledge so I , along with Mark Dyde our super-tech started to improvise.

Suzanne had a radio promo date in Saarbrucken Germany that started out asking for two songs acoustically , then one song, then none …

So whilst sitting around in the van while Phil Sullivan, our tour manager and Suzanne were off in the radio station doing the radio interview, Mark and I got busy in the van and thru Marks ingenuity we shot this impromptu video on his iPhone 5. We added a fretboard shot from his fancy camera and Mark edited all together on his laptop.

By the way, you will see that Suzanne and Phil came back before we could finish, so Mark and I decided to do the last section outside the roadside cafe in France on the way to Paris for our next Radio date.

Well, it keeps us off the streets …and what could be safer

Hope you guys enjoy.

Got it ? I hope you rock it !

Ghost

P.S. The Guitar is a Furch Acoustic model 34SR

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