This Month's Featured Artist

Bill Hyland

RG: Which guitarists have had the greatest influence on your playing style, and how have they shaped your approach to music?

BH: My top two are Trey Anastasio and Jake Cinninger for sure. Trey influenced my tone big time. He also has great melodic sensibilities, and his compositional ingenuity is very deep and complex. He can be very harmonious with his insatiable love for triads, but he can also take you to the darkest depths of your soul with atonal insanity. Jake’s speed and athleticism on the instrument are a huge inspiration, not that I can get anywhere close! Jake is the type of player who can basically do anything and sound like anyone while always maintaining his unique identity. His versatility and depth of knowledge are on full display at every show. He can be a full-on metal shredder, prog monster, or straight-up country twanger at any moment. I try to channel him every show and make my right hand move as fast as it can! Those two might seem like pretty different players, but the connective tissue is improvisation, and they are both geniuses in that realm.

RG: When did you start playing guitar, and do you currently play any other instruments?

BH: I started when I was 12. At that time, my biggest influence was Angus Young from AC/DC. I was a little headbanger, and that’s why I got into guitar. I did a talent show in 5th grade where we did a lip sync band to You Shook Me All Night Long. I made a cardboard SG and took my shirt off in the elementary school gym. After that, I needed to do it for real. I am a one-trick pony, though; no other instruments for me.

RG: How did you first discover the Jake Blade, and what was your experience like the first time you used one on your guitar?

BH: I discovered the Jake Blade because I’m a huge Umphrey’s McGee fan. I saw Jake and Brendan with these weird little teardrop things on their bridges. I could tell that it was a kind of whammy bar, and then some friends who were more in the know told me what they were called. I didn’t own a guitar with a trem, but I always thought that if I ever got one, I would immediately get a blade for it. When I first used it, I was surprised by how easy it was to use. It allows you to be very subtle with your tremolo. I find it to be way more convenient than an arm as well. I love that it isn’t in the way and flopping around like a bar.

RG: In what ways has using the Jake Blade enhanced your playing or changed your sound?

BH: I didn’t have a tremolo bar before, so it’s added a lot. I find myself reaching for it more and more often every time I play. I like giving a slow, shallow wobble to harmonics or chords at the end of a line. I am also super interested in learning how to do the classic dive bomb! I notice Jake doing that all the time, and it’s never been in my bag of tricks. So now I have a new goal!

RG: What’s your go-to guitar for most of your playing, and what makes it special to you?

BH: I play in several bands, so I don’t have one go-to. I play my Tele in the country band. That’s pretty obvious! I have a semi-hollow body PRS single cut (like Brendan Bayliss’, but with one F-hole) that I use in various situations, particularly when I’m doing Phish covers. My Fender Ultra Strat is my go-to for my Ween tribute band, and that’s the one with the Jake Blade. I bring that guitar to a lot of other gigs as well, though. And I do acoustic gigs with a Gibson. So that’s really not a lot compared to some people out there, and they’re all very special to me. You really form a bond with any instrument you play often enough. I do find that the Jake Blade adds to the mystique of my Strat, though, for sure. Every time I play it, someone asks about it, band members and audience alike, so I get to talk it up a lot!

RG: Are there any exciting new projects or collaborations on the horizon that fans should look forward to?

BH: My two newest projects are a Ween Tribute called Object and a country band with an artist named Kailey Marie. They are both exciting and fun as hell. They’re pretty different too, although Ween does have a bunch of country songs. Both bands are booking local shows and paying our dues with aspirations for bigger and better gigs.