I wanted to take techniques they use and incorporate it into the record. But I also love hip-hop as well-Pharrell and Kanye and what they do and how they produce music. Obviously, I love Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Mayfield, and Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. You have to take influences and inspirations from different places to find something new. How do you find your own sound within these big inspirations? Your music still sounds really distinct from those references, though. There are a lot of vintage references on Black Hole Rainbow: On “The Good Life,” you shout out Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand,” and there are times where you’re singing falsetto and I hear a strong Curtis Mayfield kind of vibe. “We also got weird and did things like spinning a microphone in front of a speaker to emulate a Leslie, or throwing water on the ground to make a splash noise so we could make the snare sound like water splashing.” That was my introduction to guitar and how I started to fall in love with it. After I put that in my ears, my brain exploded and I needed to know everything, and that threw me down the classic-rock hallway: Led Zeppelin, Allman Brothers, AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd, anything that was guitar-centric. I learned “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and my dad was like, “This guy sounds like Jimi Hendrix.” And my dad hit me with a Jimi Hendrix greatest hits CD. I had a buddy in high school who was playing guitar, and I thought it was rad, so I picked up an Ibanez acoustic-electric. He was the one to share that knowledge with me when I was a kid. He was playing Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Donny Hathaway, and all this good soul music in the house. He was in a band back in the ’80s called Cafe Olé, which was R&B and island music mixed with a rock ’n’ roll vibe. He’s been a singer all his life, and he plays percussion. Did he have a big impact on how you got into playing music? Louis’ The Pageant, where he and his band had just wrapped up a tour opening for Grace Potter. PG caught up with Gilfillian the morning after a sold-out show at St. And while Gilfillian’s guitar no longer sits at center stage, where it had in his earlier work, layers of effected guitars, funky riffs, and dramatic chord changes are essential to the sound of Black Hole Rainbow. From the anthemic hooks and fat beats of “Unchained,” to the retro Afrobeat grooves that form the foundation of “Go Out and Get It,” to the electric piano-driven neo-soul ballad “Even Though It Hurts,” every song is packed with layers of sonic treats that reward repeated listening. The effect is a thoroughly modern-sounding album that, much like the music made by West and Williams, is able to draw on vintage soul and blues references while maintaining a cutting-edge sound. Gilfillian and Everett drew on creative production techniques inspired by contemporary hip-hop and R&B, going as far as cutting all of the instrumental tracks to vinyl and re-sampling them before adding vocals. They created an album that showcases Gilfillian’s musical evolution by drawing on the full breadth of his influences, from old-school artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Otis Redding, and Fela Kuti to the modern sounds of Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. Since then, he’s landed opening slots for the Brothers Osborne, Mavis Staples, and Michael McDonald while continuing to develop his sound.įor his first full-length, the new Black Hole Rainbow, Gilfillian joined with producer Shawn Everett-known for his work with the War on Drugs, Alabama Shakes, and Kacey Musgraves-and songwriter Jamie Lidell. With Smalt as his drummer/manager, Gilfillian recorded his 2016 debut EP, Devon Gilfillian, introducing his guitar playing, songwriting, and expressive, soulful voice via five tracks of raw, gospel-inspired, bluesy rock. He received the encouragement he needed to take his songwriting more seriously after playing some of these tunes for his restaurant co-worker, Jonathan Smalt. Once he settled in, Gilfillian began writing songs as a personal project. After playing in cover bands during his time at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, the ambitious guitarist had the chops to believe he could hang in Music City. He’d grown up obsessed with the instrument after his father, a wedding singer in suburban Philadelphia, had hipped him to Jimi Hendrix while he was in high school, setting the teenager on a listening journey through the classic-rock canon. Devon Gilfillian arrived in Nashville in 2013 hoping to find a career as a hot-shot hired-gun guitarist.
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