Jude Gold is a true Renaissance man in the world of guitar. He splits his time between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, working as a session player and sideman for many artists, including Jefferson Starship, Miguel Migs, JGB, Eddie Money, and more. He’s also a noted guitar journalist with Guitar Player magazine, with hundreds of interviews and articles to his credit. To top it all off, Jude is a devoted educator who’s served as the Director of the Guitar Program at the esteemed Musicians Institute for the last four years.

While he’s a highly versatile player and proficient in many different styles, Jude is noted for his signature “full-contact” slap-guitar playing. With a unique, energetic approach, he abuses his axe with slaps and taps to produce rapid-fire rhythms, harmonics, and raw funk grooves. You can sample Jude’s impressive and entertaining playing in this style by firing up YouTube and searching for his debut music video, “Funkytown.”

Jude has been a BOSS player for a long time, and he currently uses a wide range of BOSS stomps for his various playing activities. He also employs the Roland G-5 VG Stratocaster®, which he loves for its instant access to different sounds and altered tunings. For Edition 35 of the BOSS Tone Radio podcast, we talked with Jude about his diverse career, favorite BOSS gear, and more.

To listen to the complete conversation, visit www.BossUS.com/podcasts.

You’ve played a lot of gigs with Jerry Garcia’s band, Eddie Money, Greg Howe, Stu Hamm, Jeff Berlin, and others. Are there any that stand out?

Oh man, there are so many. I guess for me, it always comes down to the same thing though, which is the reason why many of us play guitar—once in a while, we all have those gigs where your feet don’t touch the ground, you know? For whatever reason, everything is just working and the music is flowing through you and you’re playing stuff that you didn’t even know you could play. I live for those moments, and those moments can happen anywhere. I think that’s the beauty of music. You never know when that magic can happen, and I do remember those gigs.

You’re definitely into the groove, and you describe your playing with the terms “deep pocket” and “evil funk.” What do they mean to you?

It’s always hard to describe music, isn’t it? It’s funny, but for me the groove always comes first. I really like the noise and aggression of the electric guitar, and I do play jazz standards and all that stuff, too. But I also love the abrasive tonality of the guitar. I just love the groove angle, but I also like heavy, hard textures. I guess if I say “evil funk,” it’s kind of like metal/soul or something. Maybe some big distorted [4x12 cabs] kicking in with a serious groove. My fantasy is I’d be able to play like some crazy guitar maniac while dancing around like MC Hammer on the stage. [Laughs.]

Funk is all about rhythm and time. Do you have any advice on how students can get better at rhythm? It seems like it’s the last thing that most players learn.

First of all, I think it’s important to recognize that with a lot of your guitar heroes, chances are they are great rhythm players. Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn…stunning rhythm guitar players. And then you go into the shred realm—Eddie Van Halen is a rhythm player. When he’s playing lead, there’s so much rhythm in it. His leads are just as rhythmic as his rhythm parts, and his rhythms are just as exciting as his lead parts.

As guitar players, I think it’s really helpful to have to learn something that you wouldn’t normally do. Nobody really wants to strum E9 for five minutes. But if you play in a funk band and you’re playing James Brown’s “Sex Machine,” you’re going to have to do that. You’re going to have to make it funky and you’re going to learn how to lock in. Something about band experience really helps you get that going, because you’re playing real gigs and being forced to do that.

When you’re sitting at home, how many of us really want to play E9 for five minutes straight? If you do that a few times a week for a few years on stage while you’re locking with a drummer and a bass player, you’re learning how to stay in your zone and groove and react with the audience. That’s where a lot of it really comes from.

You’re at Musicians Institute now, but you’ve put in a lot of years at Guitar Player magazine interviewing great players. What are some of the interviews that you remember most?

There are just so many. I still write for Guitar Player. Right now there’s a new cover story coming up on John 5. My first story was for Bass Player magazine, with a guy named That 1 Guy. I started off there, and then interviewed everyone from Brad Paisley to Pat Metheny to AC/DC to Slash. It’s hard to remember them all. It’s probably been 300 different players.

One that comes back to me quite a bit is Steve Kimock. I’m not sure if people know who Steve Kimock is, but [he’s well known] in the jam band community. He had this fascinating thing where he pointed out to me the fact that a lot of times the tone that we hear, that we love so much, is because some of these players like Jeff Beck or slide players like Sonny Landreth are kind of playing these intervals that aren’t officially in tune. [That] one interview changed my entire perspective about the guitar. I love that stuff, where a little spark of inspiration opens up a whole new door.

Speaking of tuning, don’t you have a BOSS TU‑2?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve had it forever. It looks like it’s been “relic-ed.” [Laughs.] It has paint chips all off it.

What’s it like managing the crew of great guitar teachers at Musicians Institute?

It’s magical really, because there are just so many different types of players on staff. One of the beautiful things and one of the tragic things is that the average guitar student will be here a year and a half, and [they don’t] necessarily get to play with every single teacher, although they could because there are plenty of open hours. It’s overwhelming—we have about 45 teachers on staff. Each one of them does open counseling.

Do you have a main guitar?

I always have a main one of the moment. [Laughs.] I’ve been on a real Telecaster kick lately. There’s something so magical about the Tele, whether you play country or not. It fits in the mix so amazingly well. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the secret to guitar playing is sweet midrange. You don’t have to spend hours EQing it, or find where it fits. It just fits in the mix, and the Tele is a great example of that. I play it on the “Funkytown” video.

Do you have any favorite pedals?

I’ve got zillions of favorite pedals. I think they breed in the night or something, because every morning it seems like there are more of them around the apartment. [Laughs.]

I just had a lot of fun with the DD-7 this weekend. That is one of the most clever delay pedals the way it has so many different modes, and it’s so small and simple. This weekend I went into stereo explorations. It’s fascinating to me that if you plug into the INPUT A jack straight on, you get a typical stereo ping-pong, that really wide left/right thing.

One of the many interviews I did was with Reverend Horton Heat, and I just love the way he [does a] slapback sound. He has the slapback echo coming out of [one] amp, and on the [other] amp, he’s going clean. That’s a really professional way to go, because you can have your stereo sound on stage, and then the front-of-house mixer can mix the level of the delay that he needs out front. And it’s so easy to do [with the DD-7] simply by plugging into the INPUT B jack instead of the INPUT A jack. Instantly the DD-7 pedal switches to that mode, and now all the effects are going out of one side.

When you’re doing that, do you have a single slapback or multiple repeats?

I usually have a couple repeats. I can’t get over how cool a stereo slapback sounds. I really like the guitar to sound huge, so that kind of doubles it a little bit and makes the guitar sound more three-dimensional. I’m just such a huge proponent of stereo. We have two ears—why shouldn’t our guitar come out of two speakers? The only reason not to be in stereo is that it can be difficult to mix on certain club stages.

The DD-7 does so many things, with its different modes and I/O options.

Yeah. There are so many ways to use it. It’s such an all-in-one pedal. It’s really cool, because it’s a really smart usage of all the various hardware components.

Is there a BOSS distortion or overdrive that you like?

I love the DS-1. I had a religious experience with that one as a teenager in high school. Me and my buddy were running a Strat through a simple Mesa Boogie combo. We were getting a cool tone and everything, but somehow when we put the DS-1 on there, it was perfect. We were actually doing a recording and it just killed.

I remember my first real rock gig was opening a series of shows for Joe Satriani with my band Zenner. I would be at soundcheck and his sound was so amazing. He had the DS-1 going into the Marshall. It sure was huge.

With every combination, it’s so important to consider which amp you’re running your pedal into. It always makes a huge difference. It’s so important to experiment until you find your tone. The hard part is that you always have to try it with a band, too. Sometimes in your bedroom or your garage, it’s the ultimate dream tone. Then you get on stage, everything from what kind of cymbals the drummer is using to the acoustical properties of the room to how much volume you have, all those things affect your tone.

Do you have any other favorite pedals?

I really like the BOSS Slicer. That’s a really fun one to run in stereo. It chops [the sound] up in all these different kinds of techno patterns. It’s fun to just kick it on for a second. If you’re running two amps, talk about the left/right thing going back and forth—that’s really fun! You can tap in the tempo, so that it’s instantly in tempo with the band. It’s a very modern-sounding pedal, and you can also adjust the cut and the attack, so it’s either a really hard square wave or more of a round wave.

One of the most amazing things about your playing is the slapping/tapping style you’ve developed. How did you come up with this technique?

I guess part of it is where I grew up in the Oakland/Berkeley area. Funk music was really huge there. When I was 18, that music was ruling the clubs, and the Chili Peppers came through quite a bit with the great Flea slapping the bass. They were packing giant clubs, but they weren’t playing arenas yet. I loved all that stuff, but also Van Halen, the way he would mostly tap and get the harmonics to ring out 12 frets higher with some really great distortion. On the beginning of “Mean Street” or “Dance the Night Away,” where you just get these harmonics screaming through, they sound magical. I just kind of mixed those two things together: basically the ’70s funk, soul, and disco with the hard rock. I love it.

Have you ever used the Slicer with that technique?

Absolutely. I use it on select notes within a riff. I’ll be playing a riff, and then for half the riff I’ll kick in the Slicer, where the Slicer’s in time [with the music].

Do you have any final thoughts about BOSS?

Sometimes I think that BOSS is almost underrated. It’s such an amazing company. It should be one of the elements on the periodic table. [Laughs.] People are obsessed with all this boutique stuff right now, but BOSS is just the most solid brand. And the quality control is so amazing to me. That’s one thing that I’m always stunned by. These pedals last forever. They’re built so well. I can’t say enough about BOSS and the consistency. My pedalboard has always been about 70 percent BOSS. It all runs off of one power supply. I just love the company. I always know that I’m going to be satisfied with every product that I purchase.

Another thing that I love are the BOSS pedalboard cases. Those are killer. There are all these pedalboards on the market, and they’re all kind of a pain. [The BOSS] is so simple. You can just throw a few pedals in there. If you’re flying, you can put that in your suitcase, and even with all your clothes it will come in under 50 pounds, so you don’t have to pay an extra $25.00. So I’m really happy with all of it.