Mark Tremonti Interview: PRS Guitars, Alter Bridge and Creed

By: Rick Landers

Creed made their mark during the ‘90s after gaining traction with their debut album My Own Prison, which landed the band headlines, radio airplay and world tours. But, it wasn’t until around 2000 that Creed reached deep to pull out their monster hit “With Arms Wide Open”, a track that reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

The group would become a force in and of itself, resulting in three multi-platinum albums, selling 26 million records in the U.S. alone. During that time, Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti would begin to emerge as one of rock’s top-notch guitarists, a heavy rock hitter with melodic strength.

After keeping the Creed flame alive for nearly a decade, vocalist Scott Stapp would leave the band and Tremonti would continue with other members of the group; Brian Marshall (bass); Scott Phillips (drummer), as well as pull into the fold, Myles Kennedy, who was with The Mayfield Four, on vocals and rhythm guitar.

The four would form Alter Bridge while living in Orlando, Florida, naming the group after a bridge located in the Detroit area that separated Tremonti’s affluent childhood neighborhood, Grosse Pointe Park, and an economically depressed area that was considered verboten by the Grosse Pointe Woods crowd.

Alter Bridge has released three albums to mixed reviews beginning with their 2004 debut album, One Day Remains , followed by Blackbird, Live From Amsterdam and AB III. It’s important to recognize that the critics would tend to reach back to compare the group with Creed in some fashion, rather than allow the group to form its own musical identity. Alter Bridge’s AB III seems to have turned that corner and received not only positive reviews, but ran up the iTunes store to the #1 rock album position.

I interviewed Mark just after he released an excellent new instructional DVD for guitarists called Mark Tremonti: The Sound & The Story, where he shows guitarists how to play his solos from Alter Bridge’s second album, Blackbird. A key feature of the video are the guest appearances from some top guitarist friends of Marks that include: Myles Kennedy, Michael Angelo Batio, Rusty Cooley, Bill Peck and Troy Stetina.

A short time after this interview took place, the rumors of a Creed reuniting crystallized, with the original members back together, releasing their fourth album, Full Circle. And there are reports that Creed will unleash a fifth album in 2011.

******

School Days and the Creation of Creed

Rick Landers: You went to Florida State, right?

Mark Tremonti: I went to Clemson my first year and then Florida State for three years after that.

Rick: Was there a particular reason you went to Florida State, because you grew up there or there was a curriculum you liked?

Mark Tremonti: No, it was just a financial thing. I lived in state and Clemson was just too expensive.

Rick: Were you a kid when you picked up the guitar?

Mark Tremonti: Yeah, I was 11 years old. You know, when I was first playing I went to take a guitar lesson. The guy wanted to teach me, you know, “Silent Night” and all that kinda stuff out of the Mel Bay’s Instruction Book No.1. I just had no interest in that. I asked him if I could learn Metallica. I think “Blackened” was the first song I wanted to learn or, no, it was earlier than that. It was like “Ride the Lightning” or “Fade to Black”, something like that.

The guy said he would bring in tab the next time around. So the next lesson I came in and he wasn’t prepared. He wanted to teach me some more of the base stuff. So I quit taking lessons and I just started buying videos and books. I mainly learned how to write songs and use a four-track for a bunch of years before I really took the playing side of it seriously.

Rick: So you met Scott Stapp in Florida?

Mark Tremonti: Actually Scott went to my high school. He was a year older than me. We didn’t know each other very well in high school. But, when it came to college, I remembered he was a singer and he remembered I was a guitar player. It’s really tough to find a singer. In Tallahassee there weren’t too many floating around so we got together and started working.

Paul Reed Smith Guitars

Rick: I saw that like most of you started with a pretty cheap guitar and moved up to better guitars. What persuaded you to get together with Paul Reed Smith Guitars?

Mark Tremonti: I grew up on Les Pauls and then I got a call from PRS who offered to send me out a McCarty model. I’d already bought one PRS with some insurance money I got after all my guitars were stolen. I bought an Artist Series, but as soon as I played it live the knobs were on the wrong spot. It wasn’t heavy enough. It played great when I was in the room, but not live. So they sent me out a McCarty and it was the same thing.

I liked the guitar. I could write well with it. I could play well with it. It just didn’t do what I needed it to do live and so they sent me another guitar. Finally, from being picky, I lucked out when they asked me if I wanted to just design a guitar with them. At the time it was Carlos Santana who was the only other guy with an endorsement for an Artist model.

Click to Check Out the Mark Tremonti PRS at Musician’s Friend

Rick: Yeah. That was a long time ago.

Mark Tremonti: Yeah, with PRS. I still felt like I was a young, undeserving kid who really couldn’t play that well when I got that deal. I was also a songwriter, but as far as playing leads, I could play all the flashy mix I learned off of instructional DVDs. But, when it came to improvisation or just being a well-rounded player, I really needed clout in there. I really tried my hardest to be somewhat deserving of that guitar.

Rick: Was it a hard transition for you to go from basic pentatonic type stuff and then move into different scales and improvisation?

Mark Tremonti: Yeah. I mean I still struggle with it. Some days I’ll feel like I’ve got it. Some days, just like anybody else, you just don’t have it. I’ve been trying to cut those bad days out one by one over the years. [Both laughing] Every time I think I’ve got it, I play with somebody that really does have it and it makes me go work that much harder.

Rick: I was watching your video and I think it was you who said, you could learn something from an eight-year old and if you could, you’d ask him so you could learn something from them.

Mark Tremonti: Absolutely. Every guitar player I play with I always ask “What are your top three go to licks? I want to learn your flashiest lick.” When a guy gets onstage and he’s got it all on the line, what are his core licks that work at the time? That’s what I want to ask.

Rick: When you were working with PRS, were you working directly with Paul?

Mark Tremonti: Oh, everybody. It seems like it’s a bigger company now, but it’s always been a very family-like organization. Everybody is really close. You never hear a bad word said about anybody in the company. They’re very generous and they’ve always been great to me. It’s just like family over there.

Rick: The Tremonti model, the neck on that has a pretty thin profile, but it’s also a pretty wide neck. Why did you choose that? Is that better for bending notes or do you have big hands?

Mark Tremonti: I grew up playing the Les Paul Studio that didn’t have the real fat neck. I wasn’t used to the neck that they used, so they narrowed it down a little bit. It’s not thick like an Ibanez or anything like that. It’s kind of in between. I have better control of the guitar with that neck carve.

I remember when they first put the guitar out they put the original neck carve on there. When people would come out and play my guitar they absolutely loved it. They liked it better than the one they’d put on there in a lot of cases, so we finally talked about putting the neck carve that I use live, in the stores. That’s what the new model, the new release has on it. You know mine is similar to that Mira; not that huge, baseball bat.

Rick: Did they build pickups just for you then?

Mark Tremonti: They sent out a couple of batches, it was about 10 pickups. I think it was the third one we popped in there. I thought it was too bright and too distorted, but I remember my sound engineer, Curt Kelsey, back in the day saying “Hey, hold on a minute. Let’s just tweak your amp because this thing has got some bite to it.” He was right. We just reset some stuff and it’s been great ever since.

Rick: You got it in the right zone, I guess.

Mark Tremonti: Yeah. I used to scoop my tones a lot more back in the day. Before I really got into lead guitar my rhythm stuff was really scooped. So we took some of that scoop out of it. Now my EQs look like a normal guitar player’s EQs, rather than a little 13-year old going into the guitar shop doing the middle scoop.

Rick: I was also surprised that your Tremonti model comes in like 13 finishes.

Mark Tremonti: That was one of the things we decided to do the second time around. I think the first round we just had black, then we added platinum and the special triangle edition, but now we’ve got it all.

Rick: Are you using any of their amps?

Mark Tremonti: I love the amps. They’re great for the bluesy thing. I talked to the builder. He wanted to get together and design a high gain, like a 100-watt high gain head, so we can use it on the harder rock stuff. They’re great for me.

I got up and played at the PRS Open House and I always hate plugging into somebody else’s amp and guitar, then play in front of a bunch of great players. But I really dug that sound. Real rich and they’ve got that nice, spongy lead stuff.

Alter Bridge and Creed Rumors

Rick: How about telling us how Alter Bridge got together and what each member brings to the group? Not what they bring into the group musically, but as far as personality and other strengths.

Mark Tremonti: We got together right after Creed broke up. Me and Scott Phillips had already decided to move on and we decided to call Brian, our bass player, and he wanted to join right away. Then it wasn’t long, I think just a couple months before we narrowed down a list of a few guys to Myles Kennedy.

From the day the band broke up, he was the first on our list. He’s got a really great voice. He’s also a tremendous guitar player. The guy is kind of like a hard rock Robben Ford. I mean he’s really, super great. He played in jazz bands for years and won some big guitar shred competition in the Pacific Northwest area. He never told me he could play guitar when he got the gig.

Rick: [Both Laughing] Really?

Mark Tremonti: Yeah. I knew when I heard him playing one day, when he was staying at my house and we were writing. I heard some great guitar playing coming out of his bedroom. I thought it was on a CD and when I went in there I had no idea the guy could play that well. His feel is just amazing.

Rick: I suppose there will always be rumors about Creed getting together.

Mark Tremonti: A lot of years that have gone by since Creed has broken up. Hell, I’ve got two kids and so does Scott. At some point you’ve got to look out for your families and it’s just one of those things. Creed was one of those big household names that would be a shame to just let go forever. That being said, Alter Bridge is artistically a real big passion of ours and it’s never gonna go away.

Rick: After having been with Creed for a while, how did you feel starting a new band? Or maybe a better question is was there any anxiety of leaving and going from a known quantity to an unknown quantity?

Mark Tremonti: Oh, it was terrifying. Every step of the way in this business seems like you’re teetering on going away. It’s just a constant battle. Every single that comes out, every record that comes out, no matter what kind of success you have, you’ve got doubters. Every time we came out with a new Creed record people would say, “Oh, your first record was big,” but everybody has this sophomore slump. So we were worried about that. After the sophomore record does well, Creed is old news.

They’re looking for something new. So, this new record is not gonna sell. Then it sells. And then going into the new band we knew that people would compare us to Creed and that would be a big battle. It has been since day one. The band does really well in Europe, but not so well here in the States. That almost works fine for us because we can go and do our thing and kind of live a double life.

Rick: Growing up in the ’80s, I imagine you were mostly influenced by some of the big hair bands of the time, but I thought in at least one or a couple of songs that I heard a bit of Mick Taylor from Foreigner in some of your…

Mark Tremonti: Oh, Foreigner, cool! [Laughs]. My favorite bands were all the heaviest things that I could get my hands on. But, when it came to lead guitar, I bought a lot of Paul Gilbert VHS tapes, some Gary Moore and everything you could get back in the day of Hot Licks Videos.

Rick: Melodic stuff.

Mark Tremonti: Yeah, but then, like I said, I’m a fan of the heavy stuff but when I wrote songs back in the day, I wrote with a different vibe. I don’t know how to explain it. It just came out. It didn’t come out as heavy metal, but I always wanted to be in a heavy metal band.

Rick: I saw that you liked Celtic Frost.

Mark Tremonti: Love Celtic Frost. Alter Bridge is kind of halfway there. We have some heavier, edgier stuff so I can get some of that out of me, but I still want to do my metal band one day. I’ll be playing that ’til I’m 50.

The Sound and The Story DVD and Beyond

Rick: Your DVD, The Sound and the Story , has some background on you, but the lessons offered by some of the guitarists really have a lot of value, especially the guest stars. I got the impression that it wasn’t thrown together to push a product, but there was more thought behind it than that. So how did you approach the project and with what types of objectives did you have?

Mark Tremonti: For a few years I talked to some guys from Hal Leonard and a couple other companies about doing a guitar instructional video, but at the time I didn’t feel like I had enough meat to do a video. Then finally my brother Dan, who’s a genius when it comes to online marketing; he’s worked for Steven Spielberg; that ’70s Show, and Nike and Mercedes. He’s just really good at what he does.

He finally convinced me, “Why don’t you put a guitar instructional video out? I’ll get a production team together. We’ll make this thing what it needs to be.” He said, “I’ve been watching all these other instructional DVD’s. You have a lot of great players but the production quality is a joke.”

Rick: True, yeah.

Mark Tremonti: And it’s just like, “Hi! Here’s Exercise No.1. Here’s Exercise No.2?” So what he did is he went out and found a production team who specialized in the documentary side, story telling. What I brought to the table was that I was a huge fanatic. I love fine instructional stuff. I know what I want out of one and I know what’s been missing all these years from every one of them.

I know those things just as well as anybody out there, so I knew I wanted to teach my actual guitar solos, because when I’d buy everybody else’s stuff they’d never teach their guitar solos. They’d teach exercises and this and that, but never what I was into them for. I wanted to teach the solos so people can hear licks and see how they flow. And then on top of that we wanted to do the documentary side of just philosophies on playing guitar and how long it takes to practice and that it’s not easy.

This is how many hours I’ve put in and this is how I’ve done it, but you can do whatever you want. I wanted to show everybody that when you surround yourself with musicians that you respect and look up to, it’s inspiring and you can learn so much more from them than books or DVDs.

Rick: It helps you raise your game, I think.

Mark Tremonti: Oh, big time. That’s why I’ve put these guys on the DVD, because they’re kind of my little guitar circle and I respect them all greatly. And I’m not afraid to put somebody on my DVD that can play circles around me because guys like Stetina and Rusty, these guys are so fast. It would take a lifetime to master that. I just wanted it to be well-rounded. Like I don’t do a single tapping lick at all, ever, pretty much. So I wanted to put my buddy, Bill, on there who’s a tapping genius.

Rick: Bill Peck?

Mark Tremonti: Yeah. Bill is just a phenomenal tapping guitar player. So you know if some kids want to buy this thing and learn how to tap, it’s there. Doing that hour-long extra guest lesson section, I think, really rounded the video out. Then put in there on top of that what everybody else has in their DVDs – the exercises. Legato exercises, picking exercises. I didn’t know if I should put the whole vibrato section in there because it’s kind of sacred ground. So I just did one little exercise to show somebody how they can think about working on vibrato.

Then I got into alternate tunings because it’s been something that people ask me all the time more than almost anything else. They think it’s some kind of magic. “How do you figure that out? How do you find these tunings? How do you learn how to play in them?” It’s much easier than people think, so I just showed people the tunings that I’ve used, examples of what I’ve come up with in those tunings. I wish I could have gotten deeper into that section but the video was just getting too long.

Rick: Yeah, well there’s always a chance for another DVD right?

Mark Tremonti: Yeah. I figured once I come out with another album or two, I’ll break down those solos and give another round of exercises. And guests; I’d like to put on there all the guys that I’ve met since then that I think are great.