Who is Earthquaker Devices?
When I originally interviewed my good friend Jamie Stillman, it was a much simpler time. COVID-19 did not exist. Social distancing did not exist. Dinosaurs did not exist.**
**I mean, they still don’t, but if I’ve learned anything from the Jurassic Park franchise, it’s that if we can bring them back, we should bring them back. What could go wrong?
At the time, I was in Anaheim, California. It was January of 2019 and I was in about day three of the NAMM show. I'd lost my voice. I was losing my mind. The impossible had finally happened: I’d been exposed to too much guitar, and it was slowly making me hate guitars and everything to do with them. This happens every January...
So, I grabbed my good friend Jamie Stillman. We escaped together to my rental home across the street, and I interviewed him about my favorite Earthquaker pedals and his story of how Earthquaker Devices started. It's a riveting masterpiece, a mini-documentary about one of my favorite people, one of my friends, and one of my favorite pedal companies.
I’m going to transcribe his answers as faithfully as I can below. Bear in mind that I basically dove right into the deep end with my questions, because why not?
When did music first become important to you?
“As long as I can remember. My parents have a recording of me from like when I was like three [years old] singing ‘Hard Days Night’ and beating on hat boxes...I have a photo of me with my first drum set [at age five]...I can't remember a time where I wasn't a musician.”
That's cool. Are your parents musicians?
“No, that's the weird part. But when I was younger we lived at my grandparents house and...I know my uncle had a band there in the basement, and I have got a couple of other uncles who play instruments. But my Uncle Danny taught me how to play guitar and drums when I was really young. My dad was way into music, though. I think he could play drums a little bit. I remember...he would come down [to the basement] and, like, want to play Foxy Lady.
My parents listened to good music, but I didn't realize it until way later. They listened to New York Dolls, T-Rex, and Black Sabbath, but I just thought of it as old people's music until I probably just turned into an old person one day. To me, [these bands] are [still] kind of wild.”
How would you define ‘dad rock’?
“I don't know anymore. I like all of that stuff and I'm a dad, so it's pretty much anything...If you would've asked me 20 years ago, I would tell you I don't like stuff like that. It's way more into, like, punk rock stuff. But...now I'm a dad and now The National is good?”
What were the bands or the artists you tried to learn when you first got into guitar?
“Van Halen…the first song I ever learned on guitar was ‘More Than Words’ [off the album Extreme]. I was way into that kind of hair metal when I started playing guitar, [but I]...started to hate it [when I] discovered punk rock.
I'm like that jerk who, by the time Nirvana came out, I was way into bands that played to like four people in a basement. No one knew about it but me. And I was like, ‘That's what I like. Nirvana is terrible.’ And now as an adult I have to go back and be like, ‘Yeah, it was pretty good. I don't know what my problem is.’”
What punk bands really influenced you?
“The one that changed me was called Born Against. I saw Born Against when I was like 15, 16, something like that. That's what I like now. And they're, like, a weird band. If you go back and listen to it, it's definitely a Black Flag meets KISS kind of vibe...like a train wreck that is all in your face at all times, and kind of antagonistic, and that's what I always liked. Like, the louder and more terrifying the band is like the more I [like it]...and that's still how I am.”
Talk to us about the Dispatch Master.
“I think it was the first real digital pedal beyond the PT2399 chipset. We had just gotten a bunch of FV1s and I was trying to see what it could do. The Rainbow Machine actually [was] made before it, but came out after it. At the time there were no delay/reverb pedals that were real small except...BOSS was making another one at that point, but it was nothing like it and I [said], “This sounds super good and it was really easy to make and it kind of fills that hole, at least for me,” and then [it] took off right away. I think that this is the pedal that made it so we could move out of the basement.
I feel like...everyone's general reaction is that you can put the knobs anywhere and it just doesn't sound bad ever. It's still one of our most popular pedals. Yeah. I see it everywhere. It's amazing.”
Talk about Relaxer, the Earthquaker devices band.
“Well, it [didn’t] start out as an Earthquaker devices band, but eventually morphed into just ‘everybody works at Earthquaker’. [There are four members], but...I'm the only original member of this band and that feels weird. We've been around for seven years. We've written 13 songs. We barely do anything. But I guess it’s just my musical outlet.
It started...with the band Drummer, with Pat on the Black Keys, and he got busy with the Black Keys, so the rest of us started to play. And then, like, everybody sort of fell apart. And then me and Steve Clemons (who used to work at Earthquaker, he played keyboards), we just played for awhile and went through a series of drummers, and eventually...people from Earthquaker found their way [into the band].
I feel like every band that I've ever been in starts out with the intention of being something a little bit more experimental or like long-winded and just devolves into being a metal band... none of us want to be in a metal band, but it slowly just turns into it every time. So now Relaxer is kind of just like a heavy sludgy band with like a little bit of atmospheric elements to it.”
So you have a history with the Black Keys?
“I met [Pat] when he was really young and I kind of fell into my job with them...I was just drinking coffee and listing all of my belongings on eBay, and they hired me to drive their gear from Akron to Seattle. I went with them for a couple of days and watched what was going on, pretended to be the tech and tour manager. And then it turned into, ‘I am really your tour manager now,’ and that lasted for like five years.”
How did you get into making your own guitar pedals?
“It was probably around that same time. My band had just broken up and I was getting my s**t together to do something else...I had always been into pedals, but never thought anything of it. Just thinking about this is kind of funny to me because it's just 2003. At that point I'd been touring for 10 years playing guitar in a band, and I [still] didn't know why one person's guitar sounded different than others. I [also] had crazy gear for the kind of playing [we did], in a house smaller than this room. I had two Marshall full stacks and all these pedals and stuff, and that was totally unheard of at the time for punk rock bands.
So I had all this stuff, [but I] didn't understand it. And then I started to get really obsessed, right when [my] band broke up. I collected all these pedals and I [had] this old DOD 250. It broke and I bought a new one to replace it and it didn't sound like the old one. So I looked it up on General Guitar Gadgets at the time to fix it. And that's what started it.
But that was like right around the time where I think really started working for [Dan and Pat / The Black Keys]. It was a good test.”
Talk about the Erupter.
“The one knob distortion, essentially it's a super elaborate version of a fuzz face with a transformer pick up simulation in it, which I read about and something DIY forum. Works great, [it’s] buffered, and that kind of gives it a little bit more clarity.
But if you play a real Fuzz Face, you turn both of those knobs all the way up because that's the only way it actually sounds good. So you don't even need them. Also, it turns out when you take those out, like the pedal just sounds better in general.”
How did you end up being the creator/owner of a pedal company?
“The same way that I feel like I do anything. I don't have...any expectations for anything. I really have no plans beyond, ‘I'm just going to be in a band for my whole life.’ I went to school for graphic design. I had a job for graphic design, but even when I had it I was like, ‘Well, I'm just going to eventually just be in a band,’ and I feel like it's probably the same for you.
But like it worked in the way that business doesn't work anymore. It was old timey / word of mouth. [It’s like] you have like a hot dog [that gets] accidentally turned into a restaurant or something. [I’m] just standing there with hot dogs and all the people are like, ‘Your hot dogs are great. Make more hotdogs!’ and then [I] open a restaurant, and then [I] get my wife to handle it cause she's smarter than me.”
What are your pedal influences?
“Maestro stuff, love all that stuff. The first era of DOD, I would say it was a huge influence. Death by Audio. [I’m] obsessed with them. That was the first [time] where I [said,] ‘Their pedals look like the flyers I used to make,’ and I was like, ‘Pat, it's cool. It's just want one. I don't care what they do.’”
What Earthquaker pedal(s) are you most proud of?
“Everything until the second it's ready to be released? Rainbow Machine, Arpanoid for sure. It was...the only time where I was like, “People's heads they're going to explode!” and then people were like, “Yeah, it doesn't have tap-in.”
People don't know what they want...It's always kind of proof [when] people are like, ‘Yawn, Tube Screamer,’ but you've probably sold a billion of those pedals and, like, no one wants to admit that they have it or that that's what they actually wanted.”
Josh here again. To sum up, I am a massive fan of Earthquaker pedals. I think they're amazing. But I'm an even bigger fan of Jamie and Julie who created and run Earthquaker. They're good people. They've been great friends to me over the years. They've helped me, we've helped them, and they're a beautiful part of this amazing pedal community that I love to call home.
Also, go check out their stuff and go buy an Earthquaker pedal.
I’m serious. Right now.
If you're wanting to buy a pedal, don't buy a JHS. Go buy an Earthquaker. I love these people to death, so go support them. They are A++.