Sixty Scales and the Truth with Niels Guns

"It's just a shattered human and an acoustic guitar."

Devin Townsend said he needed a break. Then The Moth, the rock opera he spent ten years writing and premiered with the Noord Nederlands Orkest in Groningen, cost him a fortune when a company involved went bankrupt. So he went back on the road: alone, with an acoustic guitar, in a van.

This conversation was recorded near the end of that tour. Devin talks openly about what the past year has done to him: the end of a 36-year relationship, losing his dog while on the road, and the fatigue of performing every night at the edge of his emotional capacity.

We also talk about the hug with Mike Keneally after the final notes of The Moth, and why Mike changed the way Devin works with other musicians. He explains why he wrote around 100 songs last year and then shelved them, and what The Moth turned out to be about only at the very end. Anneke van Giersbergen asked a question for this episode: does Devin chase a sound, or a feeling? And yes, we also discuss the perfectly timed fart.

Above all, this is a conversation about change: the end of the people pleaser, setting hard boundaries, losing his stage fright, and learning to accept that you deserve the good things you've worked for.

Sixty Scales and the Truth: Niels Guns meets the world's greatest guitarists, face to face.

Primus guitarist Larry LaLonde on Joe Satriani, Les Claypool, Frank Zappa, Rush and losing 60 guitars in the LA wildfires.

Recorded backstage at Dynamo Metal Fest in Eindhoven. Larry talks about taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani as a teenager, playing in death metal band Possessed, and how he found his own voice next to one of the most dominant bass players in rock. He shares what Rush and King Crimson taught him, what it was like to play Xanadu with Alex Lifeson watching, how he's dealing with the fire that destroyed his home, and how new drummer John Hoffman is energizing Primus as they work on a new record.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:47 Joe Satriani
08:10 Playing with Les Claypool
11:56 Frank Zappa
15:44 Rush and Alex Lifeson
17:54 The fire
21:18 John Hoffman and the new Primus
27:30 King Crimson and BEAT

Misha Mansoor founded Periphery in 2005 and helped define a sound he never set out to name. Recorded backstage at Jera On Air, this conversation goes back much further than that.
He describes a childhood of being moved — Brussels at eight, Zimbabwe at twelve — and rebuilding a friend group from nothing each time. He talks about a strict religious upbringing, spending his bar mitzvah money on a drum kit, a guitar and a PlayStation, and walking away from it all. He is open about the two directionless years at the University of Toronto that ended in a breakdown, and about the conversation with his father, an economist at the World Bank, who told him he would statistically fail.
Misha tells the complete Meshuggah story: dismissing them as noise, then the single remark from a bass player that made the whole thing legible. He explains what obsession means to him, why he only has two modes, and why experimenting with gear reliably produces songs.
On 'A Pale White Dot', he is candid about the creative dead end that preceded it — a band that had refined its own formula to the point of boredom — and how starting with a title, artwork and a single theme of loneliness broke the deadlock. He also explains his long-held view that most albums, including his own, are too long.
Also discussed: Nirvana's songwriting, Dillinger Escape Plan, Max Verstappen, and the difference between talent and work.
Sixty Scales and the Truth with Niels Guns.

Bryan Beller — bassist for The Aristocrats, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa and Mike Keneally — on why it took him until 42 to make it.

Recorded face-to-face in Eindhoven, the morning after The Aristocrats played to their biggest European crowd yet, in week nine of a van tour across Europe.

Bryan is the fulcrum: the guy holding it together while Guthrie Govan and Marco Minnemann go crazy around him. But there was no early-prodigy story. He picked the upright bass at 12 purely to annoy his parents, switched to electric at 13, and describes himself at 15 as "nothing." At Berklee he found out what real players sounded like. At 27 he was broke, in debt and depressed, and took a job testing amplifiers at SWR — which turned into eight years and, eventually, running a $10 million division of Fender. Then his best friend died at 34, and Bryan gave his notice with no plan whatsoever.

We talk about:
- Groove over chops, and why he never tried to be Billy Sheehan or Victor Wooten
- Berklee, ego, and getting outplayed by European jazz majors
- Joe Travers, Dweezil Zappa, and meeting Frank Zappa three times
- Mike Keneally's solo catalogue and why more people should know it
- Eight years in the music industry, and the "poor man's MBA" that later ran The Aristocrats
- Quitting at 35, moving to Nashville, and why the Steve Vai gig killed his session career there
- LA vs Nashville vs New York, in one sentence each
- Scenes from the Flood: ambition, loss, and getting Joe Satriani and John Petrucci to play on it
- The new solo album — 43 minutes, six songs, Joe Travers on drums throughout
- Why every song needs its title before the music

For anyone who thinks they started too late, or who plays with people far more technical than they are — this one's for you.

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Andy Timmons — guitarist's guitarist, known for instrumental rock, jazz, bossa nova and his Chopin-influenced nocturnes — joins us backstage on his European tour, recorded one hour before he walks on stage.
In this episode, Andy Timmons explains why he treats every gig as the most important one he'll ever play, how he recovers when things go wrong mid-set, and why he believes "the gift is the hard work." He breaks down the difference between shredding and intentional note choice, introduces his concept of the "auralect" (learning music by ear rather than theory), and traces his path from a shy kid with three older brothers to the University of Miami and beyond.
We also get into his obsession with Chopin's nocturnes and Django Reinhardt, the role of jazz in shaping even his rock playing, his daily practice routine, and how an hour with coffee and a guitar became essential to his mental health and his album "Recovery."
Topics: Andy Timmons, guitar, jazz guitar, instrumental rock, guitar technique, Pat Metheny, Django Reinhardt, Chopin, songwriting, practice routine, music and mental health.
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