Trever M. Keith, frontman and guitarist with punk band Face to Face, and now Americana artist, told us about his Martin love...
Trever M. Keith: For decades, my anchor on stage was a heavy 1980s Gibson Les Paul Custom. I was used to the thick, warm sound from that electric guitar because of its heavy solid mahogany body. When I started playing country and Americana music, I needed an acoustic guitar, but I didn't want anything too bright or piercing. I bought a secondhand Martin D-15 sight unseen via Reverb from a small guitar shop down in Memphis, Tennessee. The second I pulled it out of the box and dug into a heavy-handed rhythm pattern, it felt and sounded familiar.
The transition to this acoustic felt entirely natural because the Martin D-15 shares a similar tonal DNA with my old electric. The all mahogany build is why. But in particular, the solid mahogany top acts like a natural compressor, absorbing the harsh, piercing high-end brightness that you usually get when you hammer a traditional spruce-top acoustic guitar. Instead, it has a deep, dark, and beautifully woody midrange that handles a heavy flatpicking attack without ever sounding boomy or brittle.
When playing this guitar live, I didn't want the synthetic, artificial 'quack' that plagues almost every modern acoustic equipped with a standard undersaddle piezo pickup. To bypass that entirely, I installed a Curtis Novak DA-1200 soundhole pickup. Combined with the D-15's natural acoustic properties, the Novak pickup delivers a beautifully rounded, magnetic warmth that honors traditional roots music while giving me the reliable plug-and-play stage presence I grew up on.
In the studio, the D-15 has a balanced, woody tone that is smooth and velvety when mic'd up. I play it with flatwound strings. It just has the best feel. I used this guitar on most all of the recordings for my upcoming debut Americana album We Drank From A Poisoned Well. The no-nonsense simplicity of the satin 15-series design, paired with the bedrock of legendary Martin craftsmanship, makes this specific guitar the ultimate instrument for this chapter of my musical journey.
Trever M. Keith's album We Drank From A Poisoned Well is out now.
Photo by Julian Lambert
