JD McPherson Talks Telecaster, Troubadours and the Golden Age of Guitars

JD McPherson is nothing if not determined.

Growing up in rural Oklahoma - on a cattle ranch, no less - McPherson's interest in music was initially piqued with '70s classic rock and punk, with much of that indoctrination coming from his older brothers.

But as he got older, McPherson dove headfirst into the even more classic sounds of '50s rock and roll, country, soul and Delta blues, going to great lengths to feed his passion.

"The hard part (of living far from big cities)is that if you have like this all-consuming passion and need to read as many rock magazines as you can get your hands on, you can't actually get them," McPherson said. "So you have to plan that out way in advance. I would call a month ahead to the Fort Smith mall in Arkansas and order CDs.

"We would make the one trip there, I would pick them up and grab rock magazines and read them, and that's how I would plan my next CD purchase."

That resolute mentality also guided McPherson as he began to create his own music. Instead of farming, he spent much of his childhood navigating the guitar and playing in bands before studying film at the University of Tulsa. Upon graduation, he became a high school art teacher for a couple of years before he was let go.

That news was a blessing in disguise. McPherson dug deeper into his love of retro-sounding music and began to shape his own sound, culminating his 2010 debut album, Signs and Signifiers, which was followed in 2015 by the critically acclaimed Let the Good Times Roll.

In 2017, McPherson took yet another step in his march carrying the banner of rock and roll with Undisputed Heart & Soul, an excellent third effort that draws from even more influences than the likes of Buddy Holly and Sonny Curtis that shaped his earlier work.

Here, in his own words, McPherson discusses recording the album in Nashville's historic RCA Studio B, his early inspirations and his connection to the Telecaster:

"I remember reading an article about Black Flag's Damaged. It got like a tiny corner in a guitar magazine."

"It said, 'When I listen to Black Flag, nothing in this world can hurt me,' and at 15 years old, that sounded right on. I got my hands on that and the whole idea of punk rock music was the thing that enamored me at that point."

"I kind of discovered early rock and roll through a girl that worked at a CD store in McAlester, Okla."

"She gave me a Buddy Holly box set they were going to throw out, and it totally changed my life. That's the Sonny Curtis stuff that he was playing on, not just the pop stuff. That is great, but the early Sonny Curtis stuff is really killer guitar music. And it was like what I liked about punk rock … it was like kind of short songs, immediate, visceral, but also it had really good playing."

"The first guitar I had was a little no-name brand that was a short-scale student model, and I played it until it broke."

"And then one Christmas, everybody had opened all their presents. I remember my brother came in, and he said, "Santa forgot, forgot one present." I opened it up, and it was a white Stratocaster. There's video of me somewhere just completely going bonkers, rolling around on the floor screaming because I had a real guitar at this point."

"The thing that was probably most attractive to me about the Telecaster was that it was sort of the anti-hero's guitar."

"If you were a, a singer-songwriter, a revolutionary type or like a troubadour that wanted to say something, but you want electricity, they always had a Telecaster. Bruce Springsteen, Chrissie Hynde, Joe Strummer from the Clash, Wilko Johnson, all these people always had Telecasters. It struck me like, 'This is like the working troubadour's guitar, the us-against-the-world type of thing.' There is such a wide range of people that would play a Telecaster, and it speaks to how perfect an instrument it is."

"A guitar from the 50s, that's the golden age of guitars."

"There were designs introduced in the 50s that haven't changed since, and those if you think about it, those are like the Fender Stratocaster, the Fender Telecaster. Those are guitars that popped up out of nowhere, and they're still here. They were simple and beautiful and worked well, and that's all everybody needed them to do."

"Recording at RCA Studio B was a life-changing thing, for sure."

"You're talking like years and years of being completely obsessed with the music that came out of there, and suddenly we find ourselves recording there. That was a really heavy thing to deal with, but that was a thing that I will always sort of mark down as a big moment."

For more information on McPherson, visit his official website, and click here to learn more about the American Original Series.