Robbie Robertson’s new release Sinematic features a BAE Audio Royaltone stompbox.
“When I found the Royaltone, it seemed like it was part of a family of organic sounds,” says Robertson. “And most of these distortion pedals I find pretty boring, really. I like a real distortion where the speaker is crying out of the amplifier. For me, the Royaltone was like ‘Whoa! This is part of a sonic experience that fit right in, and not going to an ordinary place.”
“For my guitar work on this record, I didn’t want any ‘acrobatics,'” he adds. “Anything remotely acrobatic, I got rid of. In my playing on this record, I was really trying to find the poetry, and relay a sonic experience that was telling a story. For me, sometimes a song is able to come out of a sonic experience. It isn’t necessarily just chord changes, a beat or a lyric. It can be a sound, and I just think, ‘I want to follow that. I want to go deeper into that place.’ And sometimes, with the help of technology, it can be like stirring up a potion.”
