ND: What about wearing the producer’s hat versus wearing the musician’s hat? How does Rich the producer tell Rich the guitar player when it’s enough?
RB: It depends on where we are with stuff. If I’m in the studio with Robert, for instance, a lot of times, I spend much more time nitpicking my stuff when I’m producing it than when somebody else is producing me. When I go in to play for someone else, I put something down and they say, “That sounds great,” and my reaction is, “If you like it, there it is.” But if it were me, I’d spend another hour working on this thing….I’ve just built my own studio and so I can sort of allow myself the luxury of spending the time I want, and then charging for the time it should have taken to get the part down.
ND: Let’s talk about your guitar collection.
RB: My main touring instruments are, right now, a 1970 D-28 that my wife got me for our 10th anniversary to play on the road. It’s a good road guitar and it’s opening up real good now.
I still have a 1971 D-35 that was given to me by a friend when I graduated high school. I put a new top on that in 1994. I used it on the road and got scared finally and decided I was just going to leave it at home. I gig with it around town but it doesn’t ride the bus anymore.
I have a Paul Reed Smith. It’s a Custom 24 model; I would have liked a McCarty, but that’s only available with a wide/fat neck, so instead I got them to put McCarty electronics and pickups in a Custom 24.
And then there are the Epis. Many years ago, Epiphone gave me a couple of guitars. They gave me a Riviera, which is like a Gibson 335, and they gave me a reissue Texan which is like a Gibson J-45. I travel with those guitars. They are like Korean guitars and they’re dipped in plastic and if they were to die on the road, it would just be a matter of buying another one, but they are great for that. They sound good, and they play good.
At home I’ve got a Collings, I’ve got a National Polychrome Tri-Cone, I’ve got an old Telecaster Custom, like the Keith Richards kind, with a humbucker in the neck position. I’ve got a real Epiphone Texan, a ’63 or ’64; it’s a beautiful thing. I’ve got an Epiphone Frontier that’s kind of their version of a Hummingbird or a Dove or something like that, whichever one of them is maple.
There’s a sack of other oddball things. I’ve got a cittern that was made by this guy named Charlie Fotheringham in Scotland that is a cool thing. It’s like a ten-stringed giant mandolin. I use it all the time in the studio. It doesn’t have a pickup in it. I used it all over Robert’s last record. Just about everything I do I end up using it on, because it’s just a really cool texture, a really cool sound.
ND: Do you have any endorsement deals?
RB: No, not as such. Not as an individual. A couple of folks gave me some guitars over the years; a couple of folks have given me breaks on guitars.
ND: Who are you playing with these days?
ND: Playing with Robert, Ed Miller. Caroline Herring when I can. Occasionally I get to play with Warren Hood, Champ’s son.
