What do Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, and ZZ Top all have in common? If you answered “They’re all legendary artists.”, you’d be half right. Besides boasting catalogs that have stood the test of time, they’ve all at one point in time or another praised Lance Lopez. For the better part of 30 years, Lopez has been touring and recording relentlessly, boasting an incredibly strong work ethic and an even stronger brand of hard rocking blues. Despite all of the odds that have stood in his way (addiction, divorce, and a global pandemic), Lopez has risen from the ashes more confident than ever with his latest album, Trouble is Good. We sat down with Lopez to discuss this new album, working with his heroes, and why trouble IS in fact good.
Greetings Lance and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Lance Lopez: I’m great Joe! Thank you so much for having me. It’s such an honor.
It’s an honor for me to have you on here, although I must admit that I am ashamed of myself. The reason being up until very recently, I had never checked out your music. I had heard your name over the years, and I know we have a mutual friend in Eric Gales, but I never got around to listening to your music until this latest album, Trouble is Good. I’m happy to say that I’m proudly all aboard the Lance Lopez bandwagon now! So I guess to start this interview, how would you describe your music to somebody who has never heard it before?
LL: Well Joe, first off, thank you so much for all of those wonderful compliments. I’m glad we’re here now. I’m a blues guitar player. It’s blues infused rock music, especially the direction we’re headed with this record. It’s blues infused hard rock. I grew up playing blues in Texas and Louisiana and all over the south my entire life. I also was influenced by rock. I grew up playing guitar in the 80s as a little kid when guitar was prominent in music. I had all that influence as well. What comes out now is just a combination thereof. I’ve played with R&B and soul and blues artists as well, and also played and lived in New Orleans as a kid, so I had all of that kind of influence. That’s where I did a lot of my early recordings. That’s pretty much what I would say. It’s blues rock, blues infused hard rock.
You make a good point of growing up in that era. The 70s had the blues rock explosion, but the 80s had guys like Stevie Ray Vaughan who kept the sound on the radio and in the charts. It never really went away, even though it was at its biggest in the 70s. I don’t see how you could’ve been a young musician in the 70s and 80s and not be influenced by the blues rock sound.
LL: Right. I’m glad you’re bringing that up. In the 80s, I was listening to music of the 70s, especially once I discovered Jimi Hendrix. When I heard Hendrix for the first time in the mid 80s, I thought it was brand new music. I didn’t even know it was music from the 60s. That’s how powerful it was for me. Then I discovered Cream. Of course, Led Zeppelin was very prevalent growing up in that era. That’s what I really gravitated towards while shredding and whatnot became prevalent, and I was also getting influenced from that as well. I was absorbing that and I was drawn to more of the blues rock feel during that time. That’s an interesting point. Hearing “Mississippi Queen”, “Crossroads”, those songs in the middle of that era, it was like, “Wow, what’s that?” Hearing the guitar tones and the sounds and the guitar being played like that, before I actually knew that was the blues.
It sounds like it was the best of both worlds in that regards. It certainly shows in your playing today. Sure, there’s the blues, but there’s so much more, hence why a metal guy like me can get as much out of it as a blues guy or soul guy or so forth.
LL: Wow, thanks Joe. It’s a combination of the influence. I pour everything out that I’ve been a part of musically my entire life and do what I do now. That’s rock, soul, blues, R&B. I just translate it in that way.
Your latest album, Trouble is Good, is your first in 5 years. What events led up to the making of this album and what separates it from past releases?
LL: Those are some good questions. First off, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee to refocus on my wellness and my health. I took a bit of a break. When I went back to start playing again, we did a show in Little Rock for the Arkansas River Blues Society, and we were starting to book dates and had offers come in from Europe, it was time to make a record. It had been a couple of years at that point since Tell the Truth had come out on Provogue.
Joey Sykes, who produced Trouble is Good, and I had worked on songs for Supersonic Blues Machine. I was in that band. Then he had a couple of cuts on my solo record as well. I cut a succession of 3 albums in Los Angeles in a 2 and a half year period: 2 of Supersonic and my solo record. It was probably more like 4. I can’t remember. It was quite a bit of time, so Joey and I were working on songs together. When I moved to Nashville, Joey contacted me because he had connections here because he used to come here and write.
He was a songwriter here in Nashville and he was super excited. We had songs leftover from the last album and we both had ideas we had been working on. I had songs I had been writing when I moved to Nashville, so we were like, “It’s time to make a record.” Then COVID hit. It was like, “This is what’s happening.”, and then screech! Why “Trouble is Good” is because that happened and everything grinded to a halt, we still moved forward with recording. It pushed me into home recording. I got a home recording setup and interfaces and microphones and the whole thing.
We started exchanging ideas, Joey and I, between Nashville and L.A. He would flesh out an idea. I was jamming with guys at the house and cutting work tapes of songs that I was working on. I would send those to him. I’d send an idea and he would take it and put a rhythm section on it in L.A. We had incredible musicians show up to play on the record. All of these great bass players and drummers that are just iconic that I was so grateful to have that came and played on these tracks. Then, I would received the track back and cut lead or vocals or however.
We worked like that during the pandemic. That’s why Trouble is Good. It pushed me into these different areas like the home recording, which I had been saying I was gonna do for a long time. “Oh man, I need to get a setup. I need to work at home.”, but I was always out playing gigs and on the road and focused on playing live shows more than I was recording at home. I’m still from the old school era of going into a big room with a studio console and a control room and I got the headphones on and I’m in a big room with my amp. That’s where I’m like, “OK, now I can make a record.”
It’s been very interesting for me to do that. It’s not like I’ve recorded in houses and done that before, but it was just an interesting process. When things began to open up, Joey and I then went to New York. We were seeking certain sounds for the album. Like you mentioned, we talked about the era’s sound to deliver what I was willing to translate as blues rock, traditional, real deal blues rock. It required a certain sound and certain drummers and bass players. We thought of guys that would be amazing, so we worked with Bobby Rondinelli, who was in Rainbow and Black Sabbath and Scorpions, etc. The great Bobby Rondinelli and Danny Miranda from Blue Öyster Cult. It was great. It was amazing.
We got in a room together to record the tracks and we recorded “Voyager” and “Uncivil War”, the title track. It was incredible to be in a room again with such iconic musicians. It gave such hope. That’s the story of Trouble is Good. It pushed us into all these different directions. Like the song says, “changing my attitude”. I was repairing guitar amplifiers. I got into electronics and tube amps and went this entirely different direction, and used that whole thing to do something good.
In what ways did the home recording process impact how these songs developed and subsequently came to be?
LL: It was an interesting process. There was a lot of editing that we would do. I tend to write real riffy jamming stuff because I’m a lead guitar player and I like to jam. What was good with Joey is he’s a very good hook writer, great melody, great pop sensibility. We wanted to try to also infuse that into what my influence already was that we discussed earlier. That’s where that came to play. Joey was writing great material that we were working on that was translating stories of what we were trying to tell during the era. It’s an era piece. Trouble is Good is an era piece for COVID-19.
It walks through all that and I had a marriage that just ended, which is what brought me to Nashville. There was a lot of healing getting through the album, as well as trying to get through the pandemic. It translated that. That’s why the title track embodies what we all went through. It was like the entire world had the blues *laughs*! If you didn’t have the blues, you had it by then. We all did great things. Everybody got video setups, Zoom. Everybody started to livestream and play. It pushed everybody in these directions that they probably normally wouldn’t have gone. That’s the story of Trouble is Good.
You mentioned you’re in Nashville now. I haven’t been there in at least 4 or 5 years. That said, it’s probably the fastest growing city in the country right now, and specifically for the music industry. It’s not just country anymore. There’s a lot of rock guys moving there, blues guys and so forth. What has the Nashville scene been like for you and how has it affected your music?
LL: Great question. I love where I live. I live in a beautiful home with other guitar players. We share techniques and all we do is dial in. I’m sitting here in a pile of guitars and pedals literally next to me right here *laughs*. That’s what we do. That’s what’s been great is to learn so much from so many great guitar players, to be around most of the great guitar players here in Nashville and to have the honor to call them my friends. Ford Thurston, Guthrie Trapp, Tom Bukovac: Guys like this that are just iconic amazing players that I came to Nashville and befriended and learned from.
If not watching them and being here and discussing different things, it’s been really cool to have that experience and not just be focused on one thing. Before, it was being on the road and being focused on being an artist and that freight train locomotive thing that’s happening. It was really good to come here and begin to absorb different things. When I came to Nashville, I was into world music. I was really, really focusing on my songwriting. I had the great privilege and honor to hang out with John Hiatt, the great songwriter, for an extensive period. He actually gave me an acoustic guitar and was like, “Write!” So I started to write in open tunings. That’s where “Voyager” began and where it’s such a spiritual piece. When I came here and was focused on my wellness, that’s kind of where I was at.
I’m just so honored that I was able to come here and be around such great people and learn so much. We have a couple of really great spots that we play, one of which is The Underdog in east Nashville, which is a great place to see great guitar players. You can see most of the great guitar players in Nashville there at any given time. It’s been really great. It’s been really interesting and, like I said, it pushed me into home recording. Once COVID started happening, now I’m doing sessions at home, writing at home, recording artists, bringing them in and letting them overdub tracks. That’s Trouble is Good. That’s what Nashville also did for me. I began to do so many sessions and so much more recording that it was incredible. That’s been my experience in Nashville. It’s been great.
You mentioned earlier being a riff based guitarist. This album is absolutely loaded with smokin’ hot riffs. For you, what makes a killer riff and when does that eureka moment occur when you know it’ll be the backbone of a song?
LL: One of the key things is when a riff is coming to mind, I’ll have bits and pieces of riffs for years sometimes. I lived with Buddy Miles back around 1997 and 98. We had a house in Fort Worth and we jammed all day and we would write riffs. I still have riffs from back then today that I’m still working on from just jamming. I think extensive jamming is a key to finding those riffs for me. That’s why sometimes long jams live with a great band can really pull that out. Jamming on certain sections and then, “Oh wow, I’ve found something.” Then I’ll develop that over time.
I never wanna push a riff or force something or, “We have to write this way.” It should just be easy. That comes from just playing and jamming. I feel for me, picking up my guitar and getting a great sound, having a great guitar, the guitar staying in tune, I’m feeling good. My vibe is good. The vibe around me is good. That’s really the key to developing those riffs into developing a great song and great jamming as well.
That’s cool to hear. I feel with guitarists there’s two schools of thought. One is, “All of the riffs and solos have to happen right here and right now for this record and nothing else.” I recall asking Steve Vai a similar question and he was in his home studio. He said something along the lines of, “Oh, this riff came from up here.”, and he points to this shelf of tapes: Tapes that contained all of his ideas of the past 40 years. I think that’s a really cool approach, and then seeing how said idea grows from there. In your case, how a Buddy Miles era riff or jam can be expanded upon in 2023 that you couldn’t do back then.
LL: Exactly, and developing then over time. It’s important to have those archives. When it’s time to sit down and put something together, that’s what I can draw back on. I’ve got GarageBand on my phone. I’ve got ideas on that. If nothing else, the voice memo on my phone where I’ll be humming a riff. I’ll be at the airport and I’ll have a riff in my head. I’ll voice memo it and hum it in the phone so I don’t forget it! It’s like, “OK, I’ll just take that idea and what else can we add to that?” That’s why somebody like a Joey Sykes or a great producer or songwriter can come in and add to that as well. Add a great chorus, add a great bridge, add a great ending or intro, or however a great producer or songwriter comes in and helps me mold and shape whatever I’m writing or working on.
I want to ask you about the last song on this album, “Voyager”, which really stands out for its classic prog moves and mystical atmosphere. How did this song come to be and do you have any major progressive rock influences?
LL: Oh my God yes! It was definitely that way. I think during the pandemic and first coming to Nashville, that’s what I was saying. I was writing in open tunings and I was listening to world artists like Ali Farka Touré and Anoushka Shankar and Rahim AlHaj and all these different artists from the Middle East and West Africa and India and the Orient, and combining that into open tunings. I developed an open A tuning in which I dropped the low E down to an A and started working on this song.
I remember having coffee with John Hiatt and we were discussing it. Then we wrote down a lot of different open tunings because Hiatt was very interested in writing that way too. I didn’t just want to write with D, C, G, and E minor and A minor like everybody else. I was thinking, “How can I make this very orchestral?” That was the open tunings and everything very chiming and droning and, like I said, orchestral. I wanted to also feature a lot of the English influence that I’ve grown up with that’s embedded into my DNA. That’s Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rainbow, bands like that.
Ritchie Blackmore was a heavy influence on me, which was very influential on the lead guitar track. I was working with a producer here in Nashville that was in L.A., Doug Bossi. I was in his studio at Dreamland and he had a Michael Landau Stratocaster. I’m a Gibson artist *laughs*, but he had this and it was one of the most perfect strats I ever played. The tremolo was amazing. That was what really influenced a lot of the sound because also we had Bobby Rondinelli who had replace Cozy Powell in Rainbow. I wanted to also pay tribute to the fact that I had Bobby playing drums. What an honor it was.
It reached back to that and it reached back to everything. In the end, it was a tribute to Jeff Beck. The end, I was really channeling Jeff in a spiritual sendoff. It was a lot of really esoteric, metaphysical…I was reading a book called The Law of One, which is a really interesting research book by this guy Don Elkins. This girl was having extraterrestrial contact and spiritual contact from the spiritual being. It’s a very interesting book, so I was reading that and trying to tell the story like the prog artists did. They were very well read. Neil Peart was very well read. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were very well read. All of these artists were very well read.
That was also that side of that art form too. How do we read a book, take time to read a book *laughs*, and then translate that into a progressive rock song? I grew up on Rush, Yes, all of those bands. “Starship Trooper” is one of my pinnacle Yes moments. And then “2112”…my first band, we strived to play “2112” note for note *laughs*. We stayed up all night and learned “Temples of Syrinx” when we were little kids first playing guitar. Heavy influence with that. When the pandemic happened, and it was a dark period, I was talking to someone who was walking me through it and he said, “Man, why don’t you go back and play guitar like you did when you were a little kid and you had fun? What did you play?”
That then brought out the Rush records and the Yes records and that progressive rock music. It really also influenced that as well. I was really grateful to have Bobby Rondinelli and Danny Miranda on it, and then also to have the great Dan Rothchild mix it and finish the production on it. That was amazing, to have Dan on it. Dan’s father produced The Doors and Janis Joplin. It was such an honor for him to put his finishing sparkle on it. It came out exactly how I envisioned it in my mind, which is just amazing. I’m very grateful for that coming out that way. Thank you so much for noticing that.
You mention how much you love Rush. Say no more. Behind me right here *points to Rush poster on wall*…
LL: Oh wow! That was like the first Rush album, right?
Yeah, right around when Neil joined. I’ve had that poster above my bed literally half my life now, maybe even longer. I tell everybody that Rush was my gateway metal band. I was lucky that I grew up in a house that played The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and all the classics. However, A Farewell to Kings was the first album I heard and thinking, “This is something different. This is heavy.” The vocals were high. The guitars were aggressive. The songs were epic. I heard Black Sabbath and Judas Priest for the first time that same summer and it was game over. So yeah, you say the word “Rush” to me and we could be here all day. What a band.
LL: They were a heavy influence on me. It’s funny you say that because I was kind of late to the party with Rush. You brought up Black Sabbath. When I was a kid and I discovered Black Sabbath, it was Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell. All I knew was Ronnie James Dio as the lead singer of Black Sabbath and Ozzy from his Blizzard of Ozz band. It wasn’t until I then discovered Ozzy was singing in Black Sabbath. When I heard “Iron Man” and “War Pigs”, it was life changing.
It was so interesting to have that kind of introduction, and then afterwards, everybody was telling me, “You have to check out Rush!” I had all of this influence around me. We’re talking the mid 80s. I was a little kid, so they took me to see the Hold Your Fire tour or one of those 80s era tours. That was the first Rush tour I saw and it was just mind blowing to see them live, to see Neil Peart. Then it was A Farewell to Kings and getting really into the earlier period. You listen to what Alex Lifeson’s playing and I feel a lot of us guitar players don’t credit him enough.
Alex Lifeson was playing some great, great guitar, hollow body Gibson through Marshalls. Incredible tone. They were out touring with KISS. They were out with all of the great rock bands, so that era was heavily influential on me as a kid once I discovered it. Going back to it at the beginning of the pandemic was so fun, to relearn the riffs to “Tom Sawyer” and “2112” and all of those songs that were so influential. Neil Peart was such a great loss because that happened around the same time. We lost Neil Peart and we lost Ginger Baker. Cream, I can sit here all day and talk about them being the pinnacle of my influence, the earliest of the progressive and jamming. A lot of that comes from that as well. I like to try to feature a lot of that influence live as well.
That never occurred to me about Sabbath that if you were a child of the 80s, Dio WAS the singer. The 70s were a world apart by then.
LL: It was because that was at the time of Ozzy and the bat. Randy Rhoads had just passed, so it was an interesting time period. I was growing up in the record stores and seeing Speak of the Devil and Blizzard of Ozz, but then there was Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules. Mob Rules was my introduction to Black Sabbath, via the Heavy Metal movie.
My favorite soundtrack ever!
LL: It was like, “What was that?!” Everybody was like, “That’s Black Sabbath!” Straight to the record store for Mob Rules. “Voodoo”, “Country Girl”, all of those great songs. That’s what I knew as Black Sabbath. Vinny Appice and Tony (Iommi) taking it to the next level. I don’t think we talk about that enough. We talk about a lot of the earlier records from the 70s, but he shifted gear in the 80s in his style and his tone and his tunings. He began to tune down, which I know they did on some of the earlier records, but it was interesting to see that evolution. That’s all embedded into my DNA. That’s where being a blues player and having all of that influence as well, how that translation of rock I filter out.
You mentioned the closing of “Voyage” being a homage to Jeff Beck. There’s a quote attached to you from Beck himself, in which he described you as “a very exciting and intense blues guitarist”. What are some of your fondest memories of Beck and a quote like that now, is it humbling, overwhelming, all of the above?
LL: All of the above. My manager at the time called and got that quote after we had done some shows in Europe. It was overwhelming and it was very influential. I learned a lot. I changed my amp setup completely, everything. My fondest memories are those hangs that we had and the stories of the early days. I had expressed to him how influential Truth, Beck-Ola, and all those records were to me, that band with Rod Stewart with Ronnie Wood. We had great talks about that era and the Beck, Bogert, Appice era.
That’s where he would influence my stage setup. He had a 112 Marshall wedge down on the floor. He was like, “But you need to have 2 of them or a trio.” He turned me onto the JCM2000 Marshall, the DSL 100, which he was using. I was still using old plexis and vintage amps that were blowing up and overheating and breaking down. We were continuously working on them backstage and they would blow up. They would sound amazing right before they blew up *laughs*. Then Jeff has these JCM2000s and he’s like, “This is what you need to be using. These are brand new Marshalls. This is what you need to play.” I came home and traded a bunch of old Marshalls and got the JCM2000.
I was so honored that we had a young man here that resides with us at times. He’s a great slide guitar player from Mississippi named Lach Thornton. We went to see ZZ Top and Jeff Beck at our FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee. We got to sit within 20 feet of Jeff Beck’s last performance here in Nashville. By the fourth song, he did “Prelude” and I was just sobbing. There was a moment where we connected. That was something that I knew was special and I didn’t know what it was. It turned out to be the last time I would ever see Jeff play guitar.
I had a young man with me that had never seen him live and didn’t know and got to witness his amazing band and watch Jeff at the peak of his game. He played some of the best guitar I ever heard him play. He is very revered among all of us here. All the great guitar players and everybody here, Jeff Beck is highly revered among everybody everywhere because of who he is and what he was. It was an amazing gift that I was able to sit and watch his last performance here. It was so special, and to have a young artist a live Jeff Beck show, which would be his last.
That’s how it was for me and Stevie Ray Vaughan. I got to witness him and go, “Wow!”, and then he was gone. It was a very, very similar situation. However, I was glad I was present and able to do that. Jeff was highly influential on all of us. We all love him. It was such a gift to know him and meet him and hang with him and work with him and for him to say such a gracious thing about me.
You mention how Beck influenced your rig. What is your go-to rig at the moment?
LL: Right now, I’m using a Category 5 TBR-50, which is a Bassman. It’s an old tweed Bassman that Joe Bonamassa acquired. He loved it, so he wanted a brown early 60s reverb tank installed into the bassman. In Texas, some of the traditional blues guys like Mike Morgan and Anson Funderburgh and Jimmie Vaughan at times would have a brown reverb tank connected to a tweed Bassman. Bonamassa acquired this great bassman and a great reverb tank, and took it to Barry Dixon at Category 5. He said, “I want you to build me this. Clone this amp and this reverb unit. Put it into one box.”
The speakers are a configuration of American and English. There’s Celestion G10’s on the bottom and then there’s Eminence Legends on top. That’s more of a Fendery thing and then you have more of a Marshally thing in there. It’s heavily modded on the circuit. It’s got an effects loop. A Fender Bassman has 4 plugs, so we use 2 of them. There’s an effects loop in there to run delays. The channels are internally jumped like we would jump a Marshall, so you have control of bright and treble. Incredible amp. Todd Sharp at Nashville Amplifier Service and Jeremy Pratt and those guys also went through it and put their sparkle on it so it’s tip top. It’s one of the best there is.
I went to Buddy Guy’s club a few years ago in Chicago. We played up there. We were walking up to the backstage private area and there were amps up there. I saw a couple of twin reverbs and a Bassman and a couple of other ones. I was walking there with Buddy Guy’s nephew, and I looked over there and went, “What’s all that?” He said, “Oh man! Some guy had a party up here and he hired Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Buddy. They all got up here and jammed for somebody and those were the amps they played through.” I go, “What’s that?” “That’s Buddy’s amp! You wanna play through it?” “Hellyeah!”
So I had Buddy Guy’s Bassman onstage and played the show. It’s on YouTube. The quality I don’t think is really great, but there’s some footage of me at Legends and I’m using my Firebird, which is my main guitar, through a Bassman. That’s where I went, “I gotta get one.” And then it blew up *laughs*. I was playing and it blew up! On the last song, it went. That started the hunt for a Bassman and it just became the primary amp. I also use a Mojave Scorpion that was built by Victor Mason out in Napa Valley, California. That was a guy that Billy Gibbons introduced me to for a more Marshall sound. Category 5 also has a Marshall style amp.
My main guitar is the Bluesbird ’65 reissue that was a made to measure build at the Gibson custom shop several years ago. It’s a Firebird with the shape of a Les Paul neck on it. Firebirds tend to have thin necks on them, so I said to my A&R person who was with Gibson at the time, “I would love to have a Firebird.” They sent me a new Firebird and I was having some issues with it. I was having tuning issues and feel issues. We were discussing what it would feel like. I didn’t even really get into Firebirds until working with Johnny Winter. I played Johnny’s guitar, thee Firebird, and went, “Oh, okay. I need a Firebird.” *laughs* Johnny was like, “You’d sound good on one!” That sounds great! Time to play a Firebird I guess! That’s where it came from. They sent me one, so I discussed it, and the Bluesbird came to be in a beautiful pelham blue color.
The other main guitar is the Creeker here. It’s another made to measure build that had specs of a couple different Les Pauls in it, great bursts. This guitar came to be through that program. I was gonna do a show for them. What they do is whatever you can dream up at Gibson custom, they’ll build for you. I was gonna do a show for them and sadly, the show got cancelled. As a show of gratitude for me hanging in there like a trooper and the show cancelling, this made to measure build came to me via Rick Gembar and Cody Higbee at custom shop. They had specs of a couple really great Les Pauls, like Pearly Gates and Jimmy Page’s Number 1, and fused those into one guitar.
They built it here in Nashville and they shipped it to Austin. I went to Austin during South by Southwest to get it. Me and my wife at the time, we stayed at the Omni Barton Creek Resort. I stayed up all night and played the guitar. When the sun came up the next morning, I had it in a chair and I snapped a picture. The sun hit the top. When the sun hit it, I snapped a picture and I sent it to Billy Gibbons. I said, “Here’s my new guitar.” He said, “Where are you at?” I said, “The Barton Creek resort.” He said, “Well that’s the Barton Creek Burst.” That’s what it got named. He loves this guitar. The neck shape is Pearly Gates, the same as what his guitar was. It’s a very special guitar.
Funny story, we were on the cover of Guitarist magazine. Billy Gibbons and I both are holding this guitar. They superimposed it. People think Billy is holding Pearly Gates and I’m holding the Creeker, which is the nickname of this guitar, but it’s the same guitar they superimposed us holding. So you know man, that and just an array of pedals. I’m just trying to keep it simple.
Speaking of Billy Gibbons, from what I’m aware, you were mentored by both he and Johnny Winter. When did you first cross paths with both of these giants and what are the greatest lessons you learned from them?
LL: It was such a privilege to grow up around such iconic great musicians in Texas. I didn’t even have any clue. It was like when I went to see Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time. I didn’t even know he existed. It was just, boom, here he was, and I was like, “Oh my God! What is that?!” That’s how it was living in Texas a lot as a kid. There was a lot of that with great guitar players and artists there. When I came back to Texas after moving around the Gulf Coast with my father in New Orleans and Florida and we came back, there was a venue in Dallas at that time called the Greenville Bar and Grill on Greenville Ave., which is a strip that has lots of restaurants and bars.
During that time, it was an A list room. Very iconic, lots of celebrities. Lots of musicians, actors, actresses, that whole thing. Everybody was telling me, “Lance, you gotta go play!” They had a blue Monday night jam and they would have different house bands. There was a pretty hardcore blues rock band playing, so I decided to go this night. It was the first time I went and I had my little white Stratocaster. I got onstage, got to jam with these guys, and I go, “Let’s play some Jimi Hendrix. You guys know “Purple Haze” and “Foxey Lady”?” You know, the standard Hendrix songs. That’s what we did.
I got up there and played “Purple Haze” tot he best of my ability as a 16 year old kid trying to play Hendrix *laughs*. I played these songs and then it was over. As soon as I ended the second or third song or whatever it was, the manager came onstage and grabbed me by my arm. I thought I was in trouble. I thought, “Oh man. I’m underage. I’m a kid.” I thought I was getting thrown out of the club. I unplugged my guitar and he dragged me to the back of the room by my arm, and he said, “Somebody back here wants to talk to you!”
Halfway back, I saw the beard and the hat and the glasses and silhouette, like a cartoon character. I saw Billy standing there like, oh man. He took me to Billy. I’ll never forget as long as I live, I walked up to him like, “Hey, how are you doing? Nice to meet you!” He leaned in and lowered his glasses and goes, “Jimi Hendrix was my friend.” *laughs* That was the beginning of our relationship. He had a loft in Dallas and we used to hang out at Deep Ellum. Those were great times. It was during the Antenna era. “Pincushion” was a big MTV hit at that point.
My first experience seeing ZZ Top was at a stadium. I saw ZZ Top at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in 1990, right after SRV had passed. That was our healing concert for Texas. It was ZZ Top, Santana, Steve Miller Band. I can’t remember who else, but it was a big massive stadium show. That was my introduction to ZZ Top, the lasers and all of it. It was iconic to us as kids in the 80s, the car and the whole thing. It was really a great honor and a privilege to have that friendship, and then years later, work with him on the road and open shows.
Billy would always talk about producing a record for me and wanting to work in the studio with me and putting something together. For years we talked about it, and that led to Supersonic Blues Machine. That was years and years in the making by the time we got to that point. It was really, really cool to do that and then actually go out and play live together. Not just my band opening for ZZ Top, but to actually share the stage and play and to play backstage and play guitar, really absorb all that mojo and all that education of groove and taste and tenacity.
Johnny Winter was on tour in Europe, years later, probably around 2010. I had seen Johnny many times live down in Texas and on the road. We opened some shows for him in Europe. That led to our friendship immediately. As soon as we met, as soon as I told him I was from Texas, as soon as we talked about Beaumont and Port Arthur and Lake Charles, Louisiana and Sulphur, Louisiana and that whole area of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana, when we talked about that, it was instantaneous. He loved that. He had somebody else from Texas he could talk to that knew where he was from. We both had family in that area.
My love for delta blues and country blues, that was the next bond that we had. To be honest with you, the slid guitar techniques and slide guitar licks that Johnny to the best of his ability showed me at that time, a lot of what it was was the knowledge of the delta blues and country blues artists. Johnny knew where these guys lived. He knew some of these guys addresses, like in Mississippi and south Louisiana and Chicago. He went to Muddy Waters’ home. When he produced those records in the 70s, he went to Muddy Waters’ house, so he had to find where these guys were.
He just passed on so much knowledge because he knew my love of it and my knowledge of it, which began as a 12 year old boy. There was no internet or any of that stuff *laughs*. I hate to sound like the old guy, but we had to work hard to find it. Looking for music from the 20s and 30s like delta blues? It was pretty crazy. One of the best gifts was my stepfather had taught at the University of Southern Mississippi. We were on a trip and we went through there. I went down to the basement of a vinyl and bookstore. They had 10 records for a dime.
There were boxes of delta blues records: various artists records and Son House and Blind Willie McTell and all this other stuff. I went in there with $30 and came out there with 2 stacks of vinyl. That was where it all began for me. I shared that bond with Johnny Winter. He knew that I loved that and he knew that was part of what I did and what I was about. That was where we bonded the most. It was so iconic. It was so great to tour with him. He wanted to play blues mostly, and we were there as the heavy blues rock era that Johnny encompassed in the early 70s, which worked really well. It was a great show. We had some great times on the road. Everything was wonderful and I miss him everyday. We had some great, epic hangs. He was such a great dude.
An interesting thing about your era is that there were so many young blues guitarists in the 90s. You, Eric Gales, Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang. What are your thoughts on that era looking back on it? Was there something in the water? Post-SRV fever? Furthermore, how did it help or hinder you?
LL: I don’t think it hindered anything *laughs*. I will say that you’re right. It was an era where that music was very powerful. We talked about the 80s with SRV and his impact. I think the 80s spawned all of us young guys to…we had guitar heroes to aspire to. Eddie Van Halen was on the scene. Angus Young was there. These were artists that it was incredible to witness live. That spawned all of us to have a great foundation of great guitar heroes to look up to. I wish that younger players today had that impact of seeing “Panama” or “Hot for Teacher” on MTV for the first time and watch Ed do what he did. Watch Angus Young play “Back in Black” and see that at that time it was happening. We just had all those great guitar heroes.
The blues, that era, did spawn all of us young guitar players. I’m fans of all of those artists and friends with most of them and known and grown up with them. Eric Gales is my lifelong dearest friend. Eric and I go back decades and have worked together and have done so many projects. It is an honor to have such great contemporaries and be amongst that. Thank you for putting me in that category with such great artists.
In closing, what does the rest of 2023 have in store for you?
LL: I’m gonna be getting on the road starting Labor Day. We’re starting in Naples, Florida at Z’s Music Kitchen. We’ve got tour dates on our website. Click the tour date button and there’s a Bandsintown calendar. Dates are being added literally everyday. We’re starting Labor Day in Florida. We’re going back through Louisiana and Texas. September 30, I’m playing the Red River Revel fest in Shreveport, Louisiana on my birthday with Eric Gales. Eric is headlining, so we’ve got some really great shows happening.
We’re planning on touring for the rest of the year. We’ll be in the east coast in November and October we’re looking at the Midwest. Dates are coming in for next year. We’re looking forward to getting out and supporting Trouble is Good and translating these songs live and seeing how they develop live. Like we said, with the riff rocking and jamming and some of the guitar playing, it’s gonna be really interesting to see. I’m here and I’m working out guitar parts for them live and how we’re gonna pull them off as a 3 or 4 piece band. It’s gonna be really fun.
So we’re gonna be out playing live as much as we can and then I’m gonna start work on a follow up. I’m already beginning work on a follow up album. I’ve got ideas. I’ve got a direction. I’m getting inspired. I’m absorbing. I’m working. I’m around all these great guitar players absorbing and adding to and continuing to create. That’s what the rest of the year looks like for me in good ol’ Nashville, Tennessee and out there on the road!
The new Lance Lopez album, Trouble is Good, is available now on Cleopatra Records. For more information on Lance Lopez, visit www.lancelopez.org.