Release:

Abstract Sounds / Soulfood

Info:

Ned Evett used pliers to remove the frets from the fingerboard of a cheap Fender Stratocaster, and inspired a completely new way to play modern guitar. He is now internationally known for modifying the fretless neck of a guitar with durable mirrored glass, pioneering the largely unexplored fretless variation of the conventional guitar and mastering the unlimited melodic range that playing a guitar sans the interposing frets allows. Ned was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Boise, Idaho.

His music originates in early classical guitar training of which he gained proficiency by 14 years of age. Ned watched players like Adrian Belew and Andy Summers weild a fretless guitar for the occasional track, and it occurred him that an entire discipline may lie just beyond their efforts. Today the sumptuous sounds he seduces from his trademark instrument’s strings fuse rock and pop with jazz, blues, and soul. Fernandes Fretless guitars are what meet Ned’s fingertips and it is his own mirrored fingerboard modifications that are gaining mainstream popularity. His web sites, www.nedevett.com and www.fretlessguitar.com are the leading internet resources for custom guitar building, and fretless guitar purchases. Ned’s most recent glass fingerboard conversion order came from John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Ned Evett’s musical history reads like a manual for global rock success, as he’s proved in eight solo tours through Canada, England, Ireland, France, Italy, and Australia the strength of his international appeal.

Ned has staged over 700 concerts, opened more than 50 times for guitar legend Joe Satriani, and performed in hallowed music halls like the renowned Manchester Apollo and Birmingham Academy. Time and time again audiences are treated to Ned’s onstage myriad of sounds and effects licked from one of a kind guitars, and his arresting stage performance connects audiences all over the world to music that was once completely unknown. Armed with the critical acclaim of such major national publications as USA Today, who recently extolled, “Ned Evett is the perfectly sane, and vastly entertaining master of the fretless glass-necked guitar,” the fretless virtuoso packed up his extraordinary catalogue of jazz-derived grooves for his ninth world tour, dispatching his searing sound, earnest lyricism and the essential sweat that define his stage show.

A truly original artist, Evett is revered among his peers for transcending musical boundaries and continually delivering unpredictable, and innovative content. Evett has had the courage throughout his recording history to broaden, and diversify his musical palette. His new studio album, Middle of the Middle, only strengthens his legacy. If Evett’s music was hard to classify before, this album won’t shorten the description. He seamlessly transitions through many genres in this eclectic, iPod ready mix.

There's an affinity in creating a note’s shape that all musicians enjoy; bend a string, tweak a filter, clench down on that reed a little harder, scratch a record, or process a wave file into something unrecognizable. Just remember to make a noise.
- Ned Evett