Interview: Tyler Armstrong from The Band Feel on the vintage Gibsons that powered their debut album

A 1959 Gibson Flying V, 1960 ES-355, and 1960 Epiphone Casino from the Gibson Certified Vintage Collection all feature on What of Now 

One of the things I enjoy most is watching a musician exercise their craft with precision, and that’s Tyler Armstrong sorting through guitars. A few unplugged strums, a quick run around the fretboard, then a pass through the controls plugged in to an overdriven amp. Within a minute, he’s already got a baseline understanding of that guitar’s voice, what it wants to do, and where it wants to go. Spoiler alert: our 1963 Epiphone Casino™ does a great “Day Tripper.” 

This past January, while The Band Feel was in Nashville working on their debut full-length record, What of Now, guitarist Tyler Armstrong stopped by the Gibson Garage to check out a few of the guitars from the Gibson Certified Vintage Collection. Dozens of vintage Lifton™ cases later, and following our best attempts to wear out the standby switch on a MESA/Boogie® Fillmore™, Tyler had narrowed it down to three guitars: a 1963 Epiphone Casino, a 1960 Gibson ES-355TDC™ Mono, and a 1959 Gibson Flying V™. Not a bad lineup.  

As we were packing up, Tyler mentioned how much he loved our original hollowbody double-neck guitars from the late 1950s and early 60s. I smiled because they’re some of my favorite guitars too, and I knew there was one sitting upstairs. “I’ll bring that one, too.” 

The next morning, I loaded the cases into the car and headed over to Paul Moak’s studio,  Smoakstack,  in Berry Hill, where Tyler was preparing to spend the next few days tracking guitars. While I sat in the control room, I had the chance to watch Tyler do more of what he does really well: find the guitars, amps, and effects—the right tools for the right moment—and make something special. 

A few months later, with the record nearing completion, Tyler and I sat back down to talk about growing up around vintage guitars, chasing great sounds, making What of Now, and why, at the end of the day, he’s far more interested in good guitars than simply old ones. 

In the days of Craigslist 

One of the things I appreciated most while talking with Tyler was the honest, practical way he came into vintage guitars. Like a lot of us, there’s some guitar you keep coming back to, and then it’s just about figuring out the dollars and cents. “Part of it was, when I first got started, I had to go on Craigslist and see if I could buy something cheaper than what a new one was,” he says. “My first real amp was a Marshall® JCM 900® because I could get one for less than a new Marshall JVM410H™, which was what I thought I wanted at the time. 

“Then I’d start seeing things like a ’73 Les Paul™ Custom pop up. They were always around $2,000 up until maybe 2016. A new one was $3,499 or something like that, and I remember thinking, ‘Man, that’s a lot of money for me,’ especially when I had a paper route to pay for this stuff. When we first started playing gigs, we weren’t getting paid.” 

As Tyler spent more time playing, the musicians around him started to shape the way he thought about guitars, amplifiers, and the sounds they could make. “By the time I was 13, probably that spring, we were opening shows and playing between bands’ sets in bars. We were doing ‘Living Loving Maid’ and ‘2112.’ We were taking on some pretty heavy stuff. Luckily, my mom videotaped just about every gig until I was in college, so I can go back and watch them. Some of them are brutal—some of them were pretty bad—but we went for it. 

“The singer in that band, his dad’s name was Pat Rollins, and he was my first guitar hero. Even before Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page—I loved that music, but I hadn’t really identified with those guys yet. I was still just learning to play their stuff. Pat had a ’76 master volume JMP™, and he pulled a couple of tubes to make it a 50-watt. That’s what gave me the bug. I remember hearing that and thinking, ‘Oh man… that sounds like records.’ I feel like that’s what a lot of old gear does. It sounds like records.” 

Listen up 

There are plenty of proven gear pairings that have stood the test of time—a 1959 Les Paul Standard into a 100-watt Plexi, or a black ES-355 (if it’s not already black, you might have to “Paint It Black”) into a high-powered Tweed Twin®. But the whole universe of guitar sounds and gear combinations comes alive when you truly sit down and learn the tools in front of you. 

While in the studio, Tyler’s intentionality is on display. He’s confident in his choices, and it’s evident that he’s put in the time with his gear to know the possibilities at hand. “I’ve always had this thing about me—I didn’t really realize it until somewhat recently, having to explain myself—but I’m able to really absorb information and sounds.  

“When we’re in the studio, Paul doesn’t really question much of what I do because he knows that if I’m putting this guitar and this amp together, I know what’s going to happen. It’s just been that way forever. I can think of a sound, and I know what I need to do to get there. 

“As I kept listening to older records and got really deep into them—Hendrix, Deep Purple, Zeppelin—I eventually went all the way back to the beginning of electric guitar music. Somebody like Charlie Christian… you can hear, especially on those old records, the different guitars and amps they’re using. 

“I’ve been in a lot of situations where I’ve either been able to handle this gear extensively, or I’ve had the chance to own it. It’s hard for me to think somebody came up with an incredibly unique, personal sound just by picking up one guitar without any experience. It comes from spending a lot of time with these things.  

“It’s like cooking. I know if I put this and this together, it’s going to taste like this. If I add too much, because I messed it up last time, it’s going to taste like something else. They’re like little recipes.” 

I asked Tyler if there was any shortcut to developing that kind of intuition. “You can fast-track it by listening to people who are more educated than you,” he says. “So much of what I know comes from people who’ve been doing this since the 60s—collectors who just love guitars. They love an old Harmony just as much as they love a Burst. Maybe it’snot something everybody can do. That doesn’t mean I’m special!” 

Good guitars, new and old 

Spend enough time around vintage guitars (about three to five minutes) and eventually (usually around minute three and a half) someone will say, “You know, not every old guitar is great.” There’s truth there, but it also misses the point. Watching Tyler work in the studio, I never got the impression he was looking for the “best” guitar. He was looking for the one that had something to contribute in that moment. 

“I’m not just vintage, but I am just good guitars, you know? With Gibson, I feel at this point I can go to any rack that has three Les Pauls, and I know it’s going to sound good. It’s going to play good. It’s going to feel good. It’s going to have that thing. Old guitars aren’t always like that. 

“I don’t know if you have to spend 10,000 hours with a guitar, but I do know I have multiples of the same kind of guitars that react differently, just because of the water level God decided to let that wood retain—small stuff like that. It’s intricacies that literally no one else is going to hear, but they make you do things differently. 

“We were just talking about Greg Martin’s Burst, and it had been asleep for a while. I thought, ‘Maybe this is just kind of cool,’ but when I played it and learned, ‘This is what it’s giving me, so I have to play in response to that,’ then it really came alive. Am I playing them for Instagram, or am I playing them because this guitar makes me play a certain way?” 

Tyler kept coming back to the same balancing act. History matters. Great instruments matter. But neither means much if the guitar doesn’t inspire you to make music. “There are things with new guitars that have improved,” he asserts. “Even with the holy grail of a ’59 Les Paul, there are little things that aren’t perfect. But a new guitar is still being made with the same general concept and the same principles. You guys are literally using some of the same machinery because it just worked. Some things can’t be improved on… but that’s just an opinion.” 

Making What of Now 

By the time I showed up to Smoakstack with a few old Lifton cases, What of Now was already well underway. I was thrilled to have the chance to be a fly on the wall and watch the band work, seeing firsthand how Tyler approached adding his guitar parts to an already well-defined record. Months later, I asked Tyler how the band arrived at this point and what they were hoping to capture on the record. 

“We had met some producers who’d worked on some insane stuff. They were super-nice folks, but it felt like we were being sold a little bit. Everybody kept saying, ‘Work on songs, work on songs.’ Then we met Paul Moak, and he said, ‘You don’t need to work on songs. We just need to get the best takes. I need to help you become you.’ 

“A good producer can have different roles with different artists. What I love about Paul is that he’s very hands-off, but intentional. He lets us be us. This record is 51 minutes, which is long for a debut, but it’s 51 minutes of dynamic songs. There are straight-ahead rock songs. There’s a kind of proggy 10-minute song. There’s a lot of acoustic material. We just wanted to play what we like. 

“I think what I love about the band so much is that we are a rock band, but especially with this album, there’s something for everybody. There’s heavy stuff, there’s soft stuff, and there’s stuff on the record my mom would love—and she’s a Carpenters chick.” 

The right guitar, the right moment 

Listening to Tyler talk about the record, I realized he has an incredibly functional approach to so much of what we discussed: know your options, then pick a good one. At only 29 years old, he’s already put in so much time to train his ears, expand his tonal library, and distill that information into actionable choices. That philosophy played out over and over during tracking, but one moment in particular stood out to me. 

When we first met at the Garage, Tyler had chosen our 1959 Gibson Flying V because he believed it might have had something to contribute to the record. Months later, he shared what it felt like for that guitar to find its place. “The first track is called ‘Thousand Mornings.’ You were actually sitting in front of me when I tracked the solo we ended up keeping. I’d been playing my Les Paul, and I’d played an SG™ I have, but I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to try the ’59 V on this.’ Boom. It just did something. That solo is that solo.” 

Tyler paused for a moment before continuing. 

“Maybe edit this part or preface it with saying, ‘I know this sounds pretentious,’ but there was a moment where I played something and thought, ‘Man… I’m getting emotional.’ It was just something about it. I thought, ‘Wow… this is exactly what’s supposed to be happening right now.’ This guitar is exactly what’s supposed to be in my hand. It started in Kalamazoo in 1959, and it’s in Berry Hill in January for me right now.” 

Hear it on the record 

If you’re curious where a few of these guitars found their way onto What of Now, check out the following tracks:  

1959 Gibson Flying V Listen for the guitar solo on “Thousand Mornings.” 

1960 Gibson ES-355TDC Mono The Mono ES-355 made it onto two tracks, “What of Now” and “Heavy Echo.” 

1963 Epiphone Casino You can hear the Epiphone Casino on the title track, “What of Now.” 

1958 Gibson EDS-1275 While it didn’t ultimately make the record, it did make an appearance during Premier Guitar’s Rig Rundown with Tyler, filmed at Smoakstack while these sessions were underway.  

One of the greatest joys of running the Gibson Certified Vintage program is getting to watch these guitars—some of them built 60 or 70 years ago—go back to doing what they were made to do: making music. Experiences like this are a good reminder that we’re all just custodians of these instruments for a little while.  

Whether we’re preserving them for the next generation or taking them into the studio to make another record, they’re more than remarkable examples of American craftsmanship. They’re cultural artifacts still creating culture. We hope this conversation has you reaching for your guitar or grabbing an old, favorite record to listen a little more closely. 

What Of Now is available now on all major streaming platforms and wherever you find music. Find out how to attend the free album release show in Nashville on September 19 here. Make sure to follow Tyler Armstrong and The Band Feel on social media for news, behind-the-scenes updates, and upcoming tour dates.