Travis Dickerson Recording Studio Forum

from  http://www.dtmgallery.com newsletter:

BUCKETHEAD - Population Override (Ion Records
2020) Featuring our hero Buckethead on guitars &
bass, Travis Dickerson on keyboards and Pinchface
on drums. Commencing with "unrestrained growth",
Buckethead\'s slamming trio get down for mostly
Funkadelic-like groove fest with some great
scorching guitar, Dr. Woo (Bernie Worrell) like
synth and funky drums. From the heartfelt,
laid-back, down-home blues of "too many humans"
to the great title track, which features some
great organ, electric piano & synth work, this is
a most solid and well-matched trio. I dig the
eloquent "humans vanish", a touching requiem for
mankind with some touching electric piano and the
most delicate, melancholy guitar we\'ve ever heard
from our hero. Both Buckethead and Travis do a
great job throughout of layering a variety of
guitars, bass and keyboards in the most crafty of
ways and all the tunes feel like they have a
heart pounding at the center of this cruel world.
There is a constant ray of sunshine breaking
through. I am still a sucker for that tasty
Hammond organ sound and Travis knows how to do it
righteously. Splendid.

from http://www.guitar9.com website:

Population Override is Buckethead\'s collaboration with keyboardist/producer Travis Dickerson, and the tall guitarist states, "The best playing I’ve done yet!” This may the album for those instrumental guitar fans who haven\'t yet gotten into the chicken fried six stringer, as superlatives such as "soulful", "proficient", "melodic", "blues-fired", "barn-burning" and "biting" apply to the eleven, improvisationally enhanced instrumentals, which differ significantly from the great majority of tracks found on Buckethead\'s discography. Throbbing, groove filled drum work by Pinchface, and some exuberant keyboard riffage my Dickerson make Population Override one of the best picks for people who still have yet to discover what this prolific guitarist can deliver - and a must-have for the current Buckethead faithful.

Viggo Mortensen & Buckethead

The man who portrayed Aragorn talks about recording with the king of horror guitar.

March 05, 2004 - To the world at large Viggo Mortensen is known because of the various characters he\'s portrayed in films like A Perfect Murder, G.I. Jane, and of course the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yet Mortensen is one of those celluloidal thespians who spends much of his spare time between films working on other artistic endeavors. Not only is he an accomplished photographer and poet, but he\'s also dipped into the realm of music. To date he\'s collaborated several times with the outlandishly bizarre experimental guitarist Buckethead.

Ask Mortensen about his Buckethead connection and he\'ll calmly inquire "Do you know him? Have you seen him play?" Say that you have (truth is, I actually have seen Buckethead perform several times with the likes of Praxis, Painkiller, and The Deli Creeps, not to mention that once I even caught a glimpse of him sans his trademark KFC bucket and white kabuki mask) and Mortensen\'s face will light up, excited that he\'s not the only one hip to the six-string slaughtering of Buckethead.

Interestingly enough, several recent interviews, like one in Vanity Fair, for example, have mentioned Mortensen\'s alliance with the guitarist, though most of them have incorrectly referred to him as a Japanese guitarist. Mortensen laughs at this oversight. "He said \'Man I\'m so happy you told \'em I was Japanese. I love that!\' I mean [to the world at large] he\'s just a guy with a mask. And also he likes Japanese culture. He said \'That\'s so genius.\' I don\'t remember saying that he was Japanese, though. I might have said that he has an underground following in Japan, but now it\'s been repeated in other interviews. So now he\'s this Japanese [guitarist]. People think that\'s cool, I\'ve got a Japanese guitar player I work with. But I\'m not gonna correct it. Let\'s just say that he was raised by Japanese chickens." Mortensen\'s voice trails off in laughter at the mundane nature of it all.

Regardless of Buckethead\'s origins, one thing is true. Despite the fact that he\'s part of Axel Rose\'s re-formed G-N-R band, to the average Joe on the street he is pretty much an underground, cult musical figure. A tall, lanky underground, cult musical figure who wears KFC buckets on his head and hides his face behind a porcelain kabuki mask. "He\'s very pure, as a person and as a musician, at least in my experiences with him. I know that\'s the reason I like working with him," explains Mortensen. To date the two have collaborated on several recordings that Mortensen released through his publishing company, Perceval Press. Albums with titles like The Other Parade, One Less Thing To Worry About, and One Man\'s Meat. Many of these are now long out of print. The duo recently released Pandemoniumfromamerica, which also features turns from Mortensen\'s LotR chumlies Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan.

"The reason I think he has a good time when we\'re in the studio coming up with stuff is because I don\'t try to make him fit into repeating anything he\'s done and I don\'t try to make him fit a certain mold," Mortensen continues in regards to how the two of them interact in the studio. "From piece to piece that we work on, I don\'t have a set way that I do it, so I allow him to do whatever he wants to a degree, too. I mean we would never put anything out or call it a \'final mix\' of any kind if he wasn\'t completely happy with it. But he also feels safe to experiment and do whatever, you know, mess up. Though I don\'t think he ever ...

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