On The Record: Taj Farrant on Santana and songwriting aged 8

Taj Farrant, an Australian guitarist, talks about his career and upcoming projects in an interview. He discusses his influences, including Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and mentions meeting Joe Bonamassa. Taj is currently on tour in the US and plans to release an album in the near future. He also mentions his preference for playing guitar over singing, and how he uses music to express emotions. Taj's sister, Giselle, is a drummer and often performs with him. He shares his experiences with bullying and how it inspired one of his instrumental songs. Taj is self-releasing his music to maintain ownership of his masters. My old guitar teacher, we used to joke around, and we'd say there's the three P's of practice, practice, practice, and practice. The picking hand, if you get that down more than this hand, this one can always do this stuff. But if you can't pick the amount of notes you're trying to play. It's all about this hand here, for me. Hello, my name's Taj Farrant, and this is On The Record with Ultimate Guitar. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today, Taj, I appreciate it. Thank you for having us. So, where are you at? Are you on tour? Yes, we're on tour at the moment. We are in Ohio. How's the tour going? Yeah, the tour's going really good. We've been out for about two months almost now, so yeah. So I saw something on Facebook or Instagram, I saw you got to meet Joe Bonamassa, how'd that go? Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, it's cool getting to see someone that I look up to like that, so yeah. I would imagine at this stage of your career you've probably met a lot of the bigger stars or the people that maybe you looked up to when you were first learning to play guitar. Are there any that stand out to you that were really special? I think the Santana was the most special in that, you know, the people that I've met, so yeah. Did he give you any advice as far as playing or even business advice or anything like that? He didn't give me any business advice, he gave more of that stuff to Dad. But there was like one or two things he said, it was like, don't do drugs and don't fly in helicopters, so yeah, that was kind of what he told me. So speaking of flying, you're originally from Australia, for those who don't know. Yeah, I'm from Australia. Have you officially moved to the U.S. yet? Yeah, we have officially moved to the U.S. when the tour started, so three months ago, yeah. Do you have a base of operations? Are you living in California or are you guys just kind of touring around? We're just going around everywhere at the moment. We are thinking of places to live, so yeah. So as you mentioned, you're touring around. Have you been recording at all? Can we expect another single to come from you? Yeah, we're working on the album soon. We've got a pretty busy tour coming up after this one, so yeah. Do you have a date for the next single? Are we able to say when that is? Oh, a date for the next single, it'll be about a month or so, probably around there, for Christmas time at least, so yeah. I heard you have some plans to do a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute in December as well, so you've got a busy December tour. Yeah, so we are doing a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute in Texas, in Buda, Texas, so yeah. I'm only doing one of them, so it'll be like a one-and-done type thing, so yeah. Is that just going to be a show? Are you live streaming it? Is there a way that people can catch it? I don't know if we're going to be live streaming it, but we might, I don't know. I know for many of us guitar players, Stevie Ray Vaughan was such an inspirational player. What sort of impact did he have early on in your career? He had quite a lot. Well, he has more of an impact on my career now, more than earlier throughout my career, because earlier throughout the start of my career, it was more like rock and slash and ACDC, and then as I got into the blues, it was like Gary Moore and Stevie Ray Vaughan, so yeah. So I would imagine you're going to be playing a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughan songs. Are there some that you're just learning now for the first time? Yeah, I'm learning a couple. I'm learning like four or five for the new show. I'm learning like Cold Shot and stuff like that, so they're really cool, so yeah. Are there some that you've found to be really challenging that you've never tried to play before and you're like, wow, this is a tough one? There's one I actually have a problem with, and it's the timing thing. It's Testify, because it comes in on a weird time signature, so yeah. How did you learn to play guitar? Did you learn by ear? Did you use tablature? So I can't read music. I can kind of read music. I can't read tabs that well. It was more ear, and Dad obviously taught me a lot as well. But most of it, I learned the scales, and I knew what I wanted it to sound like, so as long as I knew where I was playing, I was kind of good from there. And what are you using for gear these days on tour and in the studio? My live rig is a 2x12 Wizard cab, and it's got a Red MacCream in it, like a Red MacCream back in it from Celestium. And I use a Friedman or a Wizard head 50 watts. And what are you using for guitars and pedals? So guitars and pedals, I have an arrangement of pedals. I've got a lot of different pedals. They're like Boss, Friedman, Strymon, Tube Screamers and stuff like that. Guitars would be Kiesels and Fender and Gibson pretty much. When you do the Stevie Ray Vaughan show, will you be playing a Strat or one of your Kiesels? My main guitar is a Fender Strat at the moment. But I've broken the toggle switch, so I have to replace that. Well, not me. Dad will. But I play Fenders mostly. I'm actually building Stevie Ray Vaughan's Butter or Scotch, one of the names. Like the cream one with the red pickguard. Wow. So you're just gathering the parts, or are you having it built by someone else? No, I'm going to build it, or me and Dad will. We'll find the guitar and put the neck on and stuff like that. That's super cool. It's a very DIY operation. It must be really nice to tour with your family. Is your sister drumming? Yep, Giselle drums. She opens a show because she wanted to be on her own tour as well. I said, you can open a show if you wanted to. That's got to be kind of cool. I would imagine it's a bit challenging sometimes to not have the tour bus, the supporting bands, to just have it be a family affair. That's got to be really cool to have such a tight-knit group. Yeah, it's good having family on the road with us. I want to take it all the way back. I guess it's not that far for you because you're quite young. What was your first guitar and what were some of the first songs you tried to learn? My first guitar was an Ibanez Prestige. It was really bad, but it sounds really good still because it had B8 and B7 pickups. I don't think many guitars have those anymore. They're really lightly potted and stuff, but I've had it for so long and it was hanging on a wall in the heat. All of the wax out of the pickups was coming out. It's funny. The first song I probably learned was Shook Me All Night Long, I think. As I understand it, that was the band that inspired you to want to pick up a guitar and learn it seriously. ACDC was the first band I saw live. I was like, yeah, I want to do that. Do you still feel as inspired as you did every time you pick up a guitar to play it? Yeah, if not more now because I get to play in front of people. Has it been a good crowd response and things like that, meeting all your fans? Yeah, on this tour we've sold out more than half of the shows. It's been quite a good crowd response as well. Everyone's really loud. We're doing another show in Cincinnati soon and it'll be our first big theater as well. Are you going to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Have you been there yet? Yeah, I've done the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To be honest, I was kind of disappointed because it was really cool there but Stevie Ray Vaughan and Gary Moore didn't have a part in it at all. I reckon they should have them in there. They did put Robert Johnson in there though, so that's cool. Yes, absolutely. We talked about you're going to be rolling out with some singles. Will there be a full-length record at some point? Is that something that's on the horizon that you're thinking about actively? Yeah, the funny thing is I've written a lot of songs but I don't think they're good enough to go onto the album. So I've kind of just put them in there. Oh, there's some random songs over there. I've got about four songs to put on the album at the moment and the album looks like it'll be early, late next year. So around mid-year next year. Do you have a record label that you're working with or is that going to be a self-release sort of thing? It's a self-release. I'm not with a record label because I want to be able to own my own masters. Is the door closed to that or is there any executive listening? I don't really cover that part of my career. I'm more of a show stuff. That was my only thing. I just wanted to own my own masters. So you mentioned that you don't feel some of the songs are good enough. What to you constitutes a good song? It's weird because the songs that I've released and I thought that I think are good enough to go onto the album, all of those songs come in 15 minutes, the whole song. And it was funny. The fast ones. And once I know, it's like you know when it's a good song and you're like, okay, that'll work on the album. I really enjoyed the song. I enjoyed all your songs, by the way. Thank you. I think you're a great songwriter, a great, talented guitar player. Thank you. So I want you to continue. I was especially struck with the song No Words. No Words. That you were able to turn this traumatic event in your childhood into something so positive and beautiful. I used to get bullied quite a lot. And I was 8 when I released that song. We never released it until I turned 11 or 12. But we had that song in the random song file. And I wrote it when I was 8 because I used to get bullied quite a lot. And I couldn't sing yet, but I knew how to play guitar. So I was like, oh, how about I make an instrumental? And yeah, that kind of came along from there. Do you feel there's things that you're able to express through the guitar that you're not able to express through words sometimes? Yeah, 100%. You can express way more with the guitar than you can through words, I think. To me, there's more feeling in playing guitar than singing. Can we expect some more instrumental music from you? Or do you think that the album, when it comes out, will have a lot more lyrics in it? There'll be a couple. There might be one or two more instrumentals that'll go onto the album because like Cruise is an instrumental and that one was like an homage to Gary Moore. And that one's going to go on the album as well, so yeah. Who are some other guitarists that really inspire you? Other guitarists would be probably Jeff Healy, Jeff Beck, probably Steve Weifler. He's more like the Allman Brothers for songwriting, obviously. So yeah. Yeah, I saw a thing where you visited Stevie's headstone. We saw the statue and then we also saw the gravesite as well, so yeah. I saw a picture you had a guitar. Did you play a song for Stevie? Yeah, I played Lenny. I sat on the rock in front of it, so yeah. I played Lenny. That's a cool moment, I would imagine. Yeah. It was quite cool. So in your opinion, what's the greatest guitar solo that's ever been recorded? Greatest guitar solo ever? Parisian Walkways, 100%, or I would say. But Parisian Walkways by Gary Moore. I love it. Most people go for the old standards, but that's a classic that a lot of us forget about sometimes. I like the live version better, though, because he holds that note for so long, so yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So you're closing in on a million Facebook followers as well. Yeah. Have you got there? No, I haven't got to a million yet. I'm literally 4,000 followers away at the moment, so yeah. Do you have something planned for when you get there? We'll probably have cake. Even though I don't eat cake, I'm probably going to eat the cake. When you released the video for Tennessee Whiskey, did it surprise you how successful that got? Yeah, because the first ever video I put out, we put up just for my nan and that to see, and we kind of did it with that one as well, but we just put it on there to see if anyone else would like it as well. And then it went kind of, as us Australians would say, it went schizo from there, so yeah. Yeah, it certainly did. It was a fantastic video. A lot of those, interpreting those vocal melodies is something that I hear a lot of guitar players doing nowadays, like Paul Gilbert and some others, and Sophie Lloyd's been doing it. Are there some singers that you really find just click with the guitar melodies when you're doing these covers? I don't really listen to a lot of people for singing and stuff, but when I practice phrasing and stuff, I listen to pop music, and Mariah Carey is the queen of phrasing. So yeah, there's a lot of runs, and it helps with your muscle memory as well. So on a day where you don't have a show or a gig, how many hours would you say you practice guitar, and what does a standard practice session look like for you? A standard practice session, that would probably be like four to five hours, maybe not even that much at the moment because I'm on tour. But an average one back home would probably be like two to three hours at the moment. I would just practice scales and just keep your fingers, and stretching exercises as well. One thing I used to do, I'd just put my fingers up against the wall, and I'd lean on my fingers to stretch them like that, so yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. I have small hands, so I need all the help I can get. I have really big hands. What do you have coming up for the rest of 2023, 2024? We've kind of covered a little bit of that, but what can people expect from you? Would we miss something? 2023, I've got three shows left, four shows. I have Cincinnati, Nashville, Hopewell, Virginia, and then the Stevie Ray Vaughan one. And then 2024, I have a lot, and I can't release a lot of it, so yeah. Well, we're excited to see what's next for you. Thank you. I always ask people this. Do you have any advice to that kid who just picked up a guitar, and he's trying to learn some songs, he doesn't really know where to start, and someone's starting that musical journey? My old guitar teacher, we used to joke around and we'd say there's the three P's of practice, practice, practice, and practice. But no, a lot of it is your right hand. If you get your right hand down, your left hand will follow. The picking hand, if you get that down more than this hand, this one can always do this stuff. But if you can't pick the amount of notes you're trying to play... So yeah, it's all about this hand here, for me. Are there some techniques that you've been really working on getting better at? I mean, it's a constant evolution, our guitar playing, so are there some things that you've been really practicing lately that we might hear in some future songs? A lot of it is more phrasing. I just want more licks, more... I listen to a lot of every kind of music, and if you hear a nice melody, you can try and play it on guitar. And that's where a lot of ear training helps a lot as well. Do you have any tips for ear training? So one thing, it's like scales. If you play the scales enough, you'll know where the note is, and then that's kind of where my ear come in from a lot. But I kind of pick that up fast. So a lot of it's just listening to songs, and then if you listen to the song enough, you'll hear the notes on your fretboard, and you'll be like, oh, I know where to play that, so yeah. And then we have a lot of guitar players who listen to these things and visit Ultimate Guitar, so is there someone that you would really like to collaborate with, or that you hope to collaborate with in the future? There's a lot, lots of things. If I got to choose one person to collaborate with, it'd probably be like Eric Johnson or something. It'd probably be Eric Johnson at number one, or Steve Vai. Solid choice. What is it about them that you feel you could learn from those guys? Eric Johnson is like his tone. The tone from Eric Johnson is very nice. And then Steve Vai, obviously, all his really technical stuff that he does throughout the songs, and even Joe Satriani as well, and even Joe Bonamassa's songwriting as well, so it's really nice. Well, we appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today. We appreciate the music you're putting out in the world. Please continue, because it does make a difference, and you're inspiring people to pick up the guitar. Thank you. That's a really great thing. Thank you so much. Also, thank you for having me. Thank you.