Why I Play: Strand of Oaks' Tim Showalter on Being Saved by the Guitar

Tim Showalter, the leader of Strand of Oaks, has a new album on the way entitled Eraserland coming out March 22, and there's a full tour to back it up.

The Philadelphia-based songwriter has stated that his latest effort is “about existing and continuing on, a testament to the hope that even if we feel like we are disappearing, there is that glimmer of light.”

Here, he talks with Fender about his unabashed love of the guitar and how he believes it will never die in the current music scene.

###”From the ground up, we had a mission of reclaiming danger. We always said, ‘If you hear Exile on Main Street, it sounds like something almost criminal is going on in the way they’re playing guitars and recording.'”

“The guitars sounded illegal on some of those Rolling Stones records and other rock of that time. Horrifying in a good way. I just felt like the sterilization of music was creeping in. It’s so easy to record now and to improve things that shouldn’t be improves. With guitars on this record, we did all the wrong things in the best ways.”

###”It’s very apparent that I’m a primal player. I’m not a trained player, but I love the way I play guitar.”

“With the last song on the record, ‘Taking Acid with My Brother,’ we had a lipstick (Tele](https://shop.fender.com/en-US/electric-guitars/telecaster/). Everything in modern rock, the first inclination is to develop this huge pedalboard of giant time delays and things like that. What we did was put the driest, cleanest guitar on it. The same thing that [Jimmy)Page would have done. Sometimes, the tone quest is literally just plugging into an amp. It sounds bigger and crazier and more dangerous. Who would have thought a clean, twangy Tele sounds dangerous, but they do. If you listen to old Elvis records, and it’s like, ‘Man, that’s dirty.’ The little things that I learn when I play a show, I improve upon, but I’m not one of those technical guys. I would have a panic attack if I sat down and was like, ‘Show us what you can do.’ I can’t show you. It’s just there. I might make a mistake, and I love making mistakes. With this new record, all the songs were meant to be the genesis point of growth. They’re documented. And that’s just the beginning of their life. Over the course of touring, they’ll become their own creatures. Longer, more thought-out. Live, you go where the night goes.

“Now, the dichotomy of my band that I’ve looked for for years, my friend Jason (Anderson)my best friend for 13 years, he is an afficionado. He’s extremely tasteful, he knows what the neck means. Whereas I look at the neck as a mysterious wonderment. I don’t know what happens when I move higher. My primal approach is elevated through his technical vision of what the guitar could be. I’m like first through fourth gears. Jason can bump it in to another level.”

###”Guitars will forever be here. The piano can make you weep, but it can’t stab you and hug you at the same time.”

“I feel like the guitar can go through all of those emotions in a few seconds. Take you in the alley and beating you up or cradling you. When people say, ‘The guitar is dead,’ I say, ‘I’ll see you in five years.’ I’m not going anywhere. You will do whatever you do on this light-up pad on stage, and it will sound completely out of date. If you want me to prove it to you, listen to the music of my high-school years. But let me put on the Pixies, and they’ll forever sound good. It’s just the truth. When people thought Nu-Wave was big, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü came out in response. It’s so short-sighted and click-bait stuff to say that. If you want to abandon good music to stuff that is fleeting, you’re on the Titanic. Good luck.”

###”It feels amazing to just create a riff. ‘Radio Kids’ is C, D, $4 minor. The first chords that I learned.”

“If you’re a guitar player for over 20 years, like I am, it’s in the millions of times that I’ve played those chords. But within them, I found this riff that lived in there. I love the song, but to be honest, nothing else mattered when that riff was in there.”

###”I got sent a Telecoustic, and I rarely play acoustic. And I picked it up and wrote this song ‘Salt Brothers’ instantly. It just felt intimate.”

“As far as fingerpicking goes, I’m not super confident in that, but I felt like I could with that guitar. The second I picked up a guitar, I wanted to write my own songs, and they just live in random guitars you find. I’ve been playing so much bass lately. Start a song with it. It’s an adventure. I always start records in different ways, and I might start the next one completely rhythmically. If I don’t do something different, I don’t want to do it anymore. Moving ahead, I want to go back to just having people in a room, where what happens there should happen there.”

”How can you say that people don’t play guitars anymore? If you gave me five minutes, I could find five records where the guitar changed my life.”

“I found this guy, Doug Hreem Blunt, and it changed the way I look at guitars. The guitar is always going to be reborn, whether it’s in the past or where you find it in the present. I like synthesizers, but I like them when they’re played by people. It’s the human element. When people ask, ‘Why is this not moving me?’ it’s because you’ve lost the human connection. If you put Freddy Mercury’s best vocal on against an auto-tuned vocal, Freddy might sound a little out-of-tune.”

”I think it was aesthetics over sound, as to why I wanted to play guitar. I saw Jimi Hendrix holding one, and it looked like a spaceship.”

“I thought, ‘What does that do?’ It’s the same thing like how my dad sees a Corvette or a Mustang. He’s seen a million of them at this point, but if he sees a ’66 Mustang, he’ll stop and look at it. I don’t know what it is, but like a Strat, it’s just something. It just looks like something I’ve never seen. And my Tele is my Tele forever. I’ve hurt it forever, but that neck will be with me until it splinters. I’m never going to go in and rip ‘Stairway,’ but I’ll always find that joy in a guitar. I love rock and roll, and I love what guitars do.”

For more information on Strand of Oaks, click $4. And to start your guitar journey like Showalter, click $4 to start your free trial with Fender Play.