Guitar Player Magazine - BUZZ: Tishamingo
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March Issue, 2005

“We want to break new musical ground eventually, but for the time being, we’re just playing what we love—straightforward Southern rock,” says Tishamingo guitarist/singer Jess Franklin. “But seeing as how there’s not a whole of that going on in the mainstream these days, maybe we actually are breaking new ground.”

On Wear N’ Tear [Magnatude], the Athens-based band’s second album, Franklin and co-guitarist/singer Cameron Williams offer up a straight-to-tape, no-nonsense affair that sports deep-fried tones and soulful leads with harmonies aplenty. Magical stuff for sure, but with Tishamingo’s propensity for jamming, the group is often compared to the Southern rock band.

“I started playing with [drummer] Richard Proctor in the 6th grade,” explains Williams. “At that time, I was into metal players such as Randy Rhoads. But then Richard began taking drum lessons from the Allman Brothers’ Butch Trucks, and that turned him on to the Allman Brothers Band in a big way. When he finally took me to my first Allman’s concert a couple of years later, that was all she wrote. My life was changed forever.”

But it’s Franklin’s sultry slide technique—which he performs on a PRS McCarty through a Fender Super Reverb—that really begs for the Allman comparisons. Franklin, however, doesn’t mind the association one bit.

“It’s a great compliment to even be mentioned with great players such as Derek Trucks, Duane Allman, and Warren Haynes,” he admits, “But, hopefully, I’ll grow. Not beyond them, necessarily, but beyond sounding like them.” —Jimmy Leslie


By Jimmy Leslie, GUITAR PLAYER Magazine

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