Interview: Getdown Services’ Josh Law hates pedals, loves cheap guitars, and used to be sick of the instrument entirely!

Image credit: Sion Waters

I had the absolute privilege of sitting down for a little chat with Josh Law, one half of my favorite new band, Getdown Services. The UK duo are equal parts brilliant melody makers and absolute jokesters. A text from my buddy introduced me to their single “Crisps” and the rest was history, as the bands brings a weird combination of White Strips, Daft Punk, Beastie Boys, and soulful music to the table. But trust me, it all works! I had written about the undeniable “fun” behind Getdown Services earlier in the summer on Ultimate Guitar.

If you want some funny lyrics, catchy tunes, and a surprisingly deep understanding of the guitar and music creative process, I’d suggest you read on and give Getdown Services some love. The band’s been on a heater, releasing a load of great new music, and is currently out and touring! Join in as I chat with Josh about his approach to guitar playing, music recording, his not-so-boutique gear collection, and how it all combines to form Getdown Services with his long time friend Ben Sadler, based in Bristol, UK.

Note, this interview has been edited only for clarity and brevity to fit within the article. The whole, unedited discussion can be found at the bottom of the article!

Matt Dunn: The first one is about the role of guitar in Getdown Services, who I think of as a genre-bending band. Where is the guitar in your creative process?

Josh Law: When the band started, we started this band just about 4 years ago. Guitar has been my main instrument my whole life, but when we started the band I was kind of sick of guitar. The band started as a way to try and do something different. I was always into garage rock bands, I liked the White Stripes and stuff like that. But I was just sick of the whole guitar world for a little bit. So for a lot of the stuff the guitar was just kind of begrudgingly in there. I don’t really know how to play any other instruments, we do all the recording ourselves, so we have a go at everything. But I have to get the guitar in because it’s the only one I know how to play.

But just over a year and a half ago something happened. I started playing guitar live, the guitar came out and I was like I really like this. There’s something about the context of this band that made me feel more free. I didn’t feel so constrained by blues rock. It’s kind of become the main instrument now. When we write new music now, the guitar’s the main one. The thinking with the guitar playing now is a bit more, how can we take this recognizable form of guitar playing, and how we can we put that in a context where it doesn’t feel so familiar.

The most guitar-y song we got is probably “Dog Dribble”. The idea there I had there was can we sort of sneak this in. It feels kind of ZZ Top or AC/DC, a cheesy thing, but it is a more disguised in there. Using the guitar like a synthesizer, using it more rhymically than anything else. How can I use the limited knowledge of musical theory that I have to make something that’s, it’s basically blues rock, but it’s more disguised and hidden in there. There’s something about it that makes it feel more electronic or disco-y perhaps?

MD: When I first head Dog Dribble I was like, is that a guitar? Is that a synth programmed to sound like a guitar? And then I watched some of your live videos and realized you were using a guitar, a cheap Epiphone SG maybe? What guitars have you been using?

JL: At this weekend I broke two guitars. The shows have got a bit bigger for us and we got a bit overexcited. Not full on Jimi Hendrix, but feeling it, and that guitar you’re talking about, is an SG guitar. About, March 2024, all of our stuff got stolen. For years and year I always just had one guitar, it was a Danelectro reissue of the old amp-in-a-case guitar. The Silvertone, I had it for years and years, it’s the only bit of musical equipment I got attached to and that got stolen.

So after that I got trust issues with guitars, I’m not going to get attached to anything. So that SG came from needing a guitar to replace that guitar. I went to a shop and it looked interesting, the guy didn’t know the brand. It was a Japanese copy of a SG from the ’80s. I was playing that, recorded “Dog Dribble” on that. But I broke that this weekend beyond repair, the necks all snapped.

A couple of months ago we were playing a gig in Germany and I bought, I like the no-brand gear, I find it quite interesting, it was an unbranded sort of Les Paul copy. But I broke that the life after, I don’t know what’s wrong with it, maybe an electrical fault. I just bought this a few days ago though, the brand is North Star, it’s a Les Paul copy. The guy who I was chatting to about it, I’ve met him a few times in Brighton and I trust him, he’s not just a salesman, he said these are really underrated guitar. And they’re really cheap, if I’m gonna keep breaking guitars, I’m gonna buy cheap guitars, because there is no point. So I bought this! This is the guitar I’ve been playing for the past week, and I’m really really enjoying it. I’ve been recording with it all week.

I really like Les Pauls. I always thought SGs were my dream guitar, but I may save up to buy a proper Les Paul. So to answer your question that SG was an old Japanese copy which is what all the guitar on the past year or so was recorded on. But I don’t get particularly attached, my only preference in guitars is I like humbuckers, I don’t like single coils. Other than that I don’t care. I like to think it’s all in the fingers.

MD: I had noticed that you were playing pretty affordable guitars, but in the gear world right now there’s real romanticism around using cheap gear again and trashy gear again, like the new JHS pedal based on the Tascam. But you seem to live in this reality, do you use a laptop? An amp? Pedals?

JL: Recently I downloaded my first amp simulator. I use Ableton, I was always kind of against using it, this is a free one, I think called “Build Your Own Distortion” but occasionally I’ve got a Roland JC, the most clean amp ever, as everyone knows. I record out of that sometimes, I record a lot of bass out of that.

One of the reasons I don’t use equipment was because when the band started I had fallen out of love with the guitar. I’d had quite a big pedal collection, I was playing psychedelic rock, like everyone did in the mid 2010s. I’d realized when I’m watching bands and the guy’s just fiddling with pedals, it’s the most frustrating thing to see. I sold everything, all my amps, everything, with no intention of starting a band. Then this band started happening and I’ve got to figure out a way to record guitars somehow.

It was always like, well just for now I’ll plug it straight in. I was using like a Behringer audio interface, and using that as the distortion really, because it clips really easily.

MD: Just like the Tascam thing!

JL: It really is, I think about that a lot. Like, I wonder if people just like the romance of that or is there something about the sound, it’s so direct, right in your ear, maybe it’s kind of like the sound of it actually does work with how we listen to music now. It’s so compressed and close. I don’t really have any attachment to recording like that as a philosophical thing, it was just like, that’s all I had. And because I was learning to record and produce at the same time, it became part of the routine. But now I am more interested in recording out of amps, after four years of making hundreds and hundreds of songs, it’s like, putting a microphone in front of an amp is new for me.

In terms of pedals I use only one pedal. It’s called Sweat Cream, it’s like a saturation pedal. I was playing a gig, I was using a Green Rhino, because all I use is gain. I use a Big Muff sometimes, but that Green Rhino broke because I put the wrong power supply into it, I fried it. Well now I need a gain pedal, and my friend Ethan from the band The Family Battengberg had this spare with him and said I can use that. Now I really like it, and he said I can have it, and that’s my only pedal now. I do want to avoid using pedals, I don’t like pedals, I like the limitation of trying to get different sounds a different way. It’s such a black hole, the world of guitar pedals, and as you know, they are so expensive now. When I started playing guitar, pedals were genuinely affordable, but now even the cheap ones are expensive.

MD: This year I’ve been very minimalist with my guitar gear, and one of the things I loved about your music when I found it was how fun and easy it was. It’s nice to see the sort of recording process matches that energy.

JL: Ben and I grew up together and were in like a two piece garage rock band when we were teenagers, like the White Stripes, Jack White was a huge for me as a kid. I started thinking recently how much his sort of ethos is a massive thing for me. There’s an interview from when I’m younger, from Jack White talking about their album “Get Behind Me Satan” barely has any guitar on it. And the interview asks why there are no guitars, he says ‘well the studio we were in had a piano and like marimbas, so that’s what we used’. That’s kind of how we do it, whatever is there, I’m not gonna get more stuff, I just don’t use it. Whatever is lying around, you can make something out of it.

I always find it funny how a lot of everyone’s favorite drum sounds and drum breaks in hip hop, they have all this content about how to recreate it with different mics and things like that. But all these original soul drummers were just using one microphone in a room with all sorts of bleed. When we record drums, whatever we got, we’ll find a way to make it work. For awhile I was making sample-based music, like Daft Punk is a huge influence on us, so we have quite a bank of drum sounds and samples. But the recording with guitars and drums and everything is about immediacy, and trying to get a vibe out of whatever you got. It’s more creative.

Recently we did a live session with a full band, a band called The Bug Club, they were playing the drum, bass, and guitars. We went to a proper studio to do it. Being around all the gear and these hardware compressors, stuff and gizmos and flashing lights, it really gave me a sinking feeling. It didn’t make me feel like I’d love to have this. For some reason, it felt like this would kill my creativity, being around all of that. There’s just something about being around that much stuff, it’s just clutter, it clutters your mind. That stuff doesn’t make ideas.

Full Interview Audio Below