Sonic by Kenny Schick – Jazz Master Guitars were the inspiration for SONIC! 

Inspiration from Sonic Youth and Kenny’s love of guitars and guitar sounds. 

Released a new Kenny Schick song called ‘Sonic’. Clocking in at nearly 7 minutes, this song won’t be everyone’s cup o’ tea — not Americana like a lot of my stuff, but rather, noisy and quirky with some ‘sonic’ exploration. 

 

This one was inspired by the purchase of my Jazzmaster guitar—a Squier actually—and specifically, the J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.) version that so many rave about in terms of quality/price point. I got it with the intention of having another guitar for more ‘crunchy’ tones, and as such, I began to listen to some famous Jazzmaster players like Nels Cline (Geraldine Fibbers, Wilco), and of course, Sonic Youth guitar slingers Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. 

I went on a Sonic Youth deep dive for about a month, going back to all the albums of theirs I used to love, and ones I hadn’t heard. I got in the mood to write something in that vein, and so I came up with a riff that I recorded into a session entitled ‘Sonic’. 

As I built the song, lyrics started to come, and they started to form a story of someone trying to out-drive the demons and chaos of these past several years(we all know what I’m talking about). It’s a ‘road trip’ song in the weirdest of ways…. The whole ‘Sonic’ theme made it’s way into the lyrics as well…The song was going to be called ‘Super Sonic Highway’, but I decided I’d tip my hat to original session name, which was meant to be a temporary name—it just seemed that single word was the thread that tied this whole puppy together. 

Hilariously, as I’ve played that guitar more, I ended up string it up with .012 gauge flat wound strings, and often like it for clean single note kind of stuff. Though it still does the grind nicely, if desired.