In 2008 Cage The Elephant enjoyed singles chart success and released an acclaimed debut album. Lead guitarist Lincoln Parish now explains how Orange amplifiers will feature on the next album:  “Back home at the music shop I go to I tried a Rocker 50 which is like a remake of the old Orange amps and I loved it. So that’s one of my favourite amps now and I’m hoping to use it for some of my lead lines with just a single channel. And when we start recording our next album in our producer Jay Joyce’s studio I’d like to mix and match different Orange sounds by using a Rocker, Rockerverb and AD30 depending on the style of song that we’re recording.”

 

Cage The Elephant come from Bowling Green in Kentucky – a town also famous for the General Motors factory which assembles Chevrolet Corvettes.

The band - all in their teens or early 20s – was formed in 2005 by front man Matt Schultz and his brother Brad on rhythm guitar. The Schultz brothers grew up in a Christian hippy commune listening to Christian music; so they only got to hear the guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page in their late teens. Doing so changed their lives. And for eighteen-years-old Lincoln Parish (seen below at the band’s Nov 18 gig at the London Scala) it all began when he first heard the guitar playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan:

“I left high school when I was fifteen and was on the road with Cage The Elephant by the time I was sixteen. I’ve always been into blues – at first I got really into Stevie Ray Vaughan and then through him and finding out what his influences were, I found out about all these great old blues players like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

 

 

“Stevie Ray Vaughan was the player that sparked everything for me along with Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. Every guitarist is into those guys but I also got into more obscure players like Tom Morello in Rage Against The Machine. I like guitar players who don’t play like everybody else. I think part of being a guitar player and having a style is all about individuality and being yourself and not playing the same licks as everybody else would play over a certain progression, you know you’ve got to make it your own. I’m still working on getting a lot better on guitar but you don’t have to be technically-minded as a guitar player to be good.

I first got into slide guitar when we wrote our single Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked which was a bouncy thing that kind of suited slide. I played in regular tuning on that but I also play in open tuning. I first put the slide on my little finger but then found I could do a lot more by putting it on my ring finger.

 

I first heard how an Orange amp sounds when we did a show with the Nashville punk band Be Your Own Pet . Jonas Stein, their guitar player, had one of the old vintage Orange amps that looks like a Rocker 50. I’ve never been big into Marshalls or anything like that and when I heard Jonas’ Orange, the amp just shot a load right into my ear!

 

Before I used an Orange I played through a Fender Bassman reissue which has a real beefy sound with a lot of balls to it. And I wanted something that was the same kind of concept but had a little bit more kick to it and that’s why I chose the AD30 twin channel which I actually prefer with a 4×12 cabinet but I tried out a 2×12 and I’m liking that a lot now too.

 

I started out playing Strats but now onstage I need something with more sustain like a Les Paul but I also use a Telecaster - it all depends on the song. I’ve got two Les Pauls both of them are quite new – a gold one and a sunburst -  but I like the gold one a lot better.. I don’t think the sunburst plays as well – the gold one feels super-comfortable – it’s an 2005 which I got maybe about six months before the band got together and I would never get rid of it.

My acoustics include a Taylor electro-acoustic but my prize possession which I got in the States just a couple of months ago is a 1965 Gibson B-25  like a Robert Johnson kind of guitar. I just wanted a cheap guitar to write songs on and this has got a red sunburst finish and is all kind of beat-up. It’s one of those guitars that you just pick up and immediately know you have to buy it. I got it for a thousand dollars.

I think our new album is going to throw people through a loop: stylistically, we’ve all grown so much and been exposed to so much more music. We’re due to start recording early next year and hope to have it out by the summer.”

 

View the band and Lincoln in action with his AD30HTC

Official website: www.cagetheelephant.com

 

With thanks to Lincoln Parish and tour manager Andrew Dobbins for all their help in producing this feature. Photographs courtesy of Dean Fardell.