GUITAR WORLD
January 1987
By Alan Spero

Mitch Easter is a really nice guy. He's got a band called Let's Active. Their latest I.R.S. release, Big Plans For Everybody, is filled with solid songwriting and Easter's versatile, distinctive guitar playing. But, perhaps more important, the album could change your
perception of what the new "Southern Pop" phenomenon is all about. The bands don't all come from Athens, Georgia, and they don't all "jingle-jangle-jingle."

As a producer, Mitch Easter is, in many ways, one of the creators of the new Southern rock 'n' roll scene. Many of the hands he produced (R.E.M. being the most popular) had a certain minimalist style and sound; a sound that surfaced in the early eighties as an alternative to the boogie-blues rock 'n' roll of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. But Easter's guitar-playing roots go back even farther, to those lazy, hazy, drug-crazy days of the late sixties, when he was a boy growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"I started playing guitar when I was 12. That was the summer of '67 and everybody on earth started playing guitar that year. I really liked rock music and guitars, although I never really thought of myself as a musician. But I remember hearing the James Bond theme one time. The guitar on that was just so tough that I had to devote myself to learn how to do it. And then finally some guy showed me how to play 'Secret Agent Man' and I thought if I could do this, you know, look out! So I finally got a guitar and started taking lessons."

Easter picked up a Gibson 330 and started playing in bands with names like The Imperturbable Teutonic Griffin ("I mean, this was '68, man.") He later joined a band called Sacred Irony, which, in 1970, provided him with his first chance to record in a studio.

"I do think I have a kind of recognizable sound. You know, I'm sort of in one of these 'new music' bands but I play a little more like a metal guy. Because when I first started playing lead guitar it was the real Clapton-Beck-Page-Hendrix years and I really try to play sort of like that.

"On stage I use a red '68 Gibson SC Special. I also have an '82 Rickenbacker 330, which I used to play a lot but not as much anymore. I really like the tone of an SG, especially with a fuzz. I also use a Hagstrom twelve-string which I got at a pawnshop a few months back. I think it's from the late or middle sixties.

"I also play a Robin Octave guitar. I think the octave guitar is a really great idea because it's just basically a half-length guitar and so it's twice as high."

Asked if he fancied himself a collector of guitars, Easter smiled. "Well, they're like my friends, and I don't want to get rid of them. I only get guitars I like. I don't think I've ever bought one and thought, 'Why did I buy this?' I have gotten rid of a couple of guitars, but even though it might have been 10 years ago, I think about them and regret it.

"The other day we added up how many guitars we have in the band, between me and Angie. We had 29 guitars, which was really embarrassing. I didn't know it had gotten that out of hand. We take about 10 or 11 with us, I think. And they're all used in the set between the two of us. The acoustics, twelve-strings, six-strings, and some with different tunings. Unless we changed the set, we've really got to take that many guitars with us."

The future looks promising for Mitch Easter. He's already looking forward to working on the next Let's Active album. "You know, when it comes to music, I like whatever works," he says. "And I guess that's why I like production because in production you just take all this junk and put it together for a total sound. I think of my own guitar playing like that, too. Like, 'What's going to work here?' So sometimes I play the standard rock licks, but I try to be a little bit more offbeat. I really like it when you can do something that's a little bit unexpected."

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