On the stage of the Ryman Auditorium, nation music’s ‘mom church’, the legends of Nashville and past are coming thick and quick, both in individual or spirit. That is Tele City, a one-off, all-star gig hosted by Fender, the energy of the invoice chatting with the pulling energy of the musical instrument firm that makes the signature guitar of nation: the Telecaster.
The Fender Telecaster on the stage at The Ryman
(Picture credit score: Fender)
Sheryl Crow receives her flowers by way of a canopy of her 2002 hit ‘Soak Up the Solar’ by Andrea Benz and Maggie Baugh. Emma Zinck leans into the enduring riff ‘Again on the Chain Gang’ in tribute to Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders. John Oates, of Corridor & Oates, performs ‘Please Ship Me Somebody to Love’. Sister act Larkin Poe blow off the roof with the help of shock visitor Billy Gibbons of ZZ High.
Rebecca and Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe play with ZZ High’s Billy Gibbons
(Picture credit score: Fender)
Recreation is aware of recreation: Ricky Skaggs performs ‘Solely Daddy That’ll Stroll the Line’ in tribute to Waylon Jennings. Right here’s Jack White, adoptive Nashvillian, with a fierce model of The White Stripes’ ‘Ball and Biscuit’. Because the live performance approaches its climax, nation music famous person Brad Paisley – an arena-scale phenomenon in America – tears into his hits ‘The Nervous Breakdown’ and ‘Alcohol’.
Jack White on stage at The Ryman, 4 Could 2026
(Picture credit score: Fender)
And nonetheless the surprises maintain coming. Gently ushered onstage in a chair is 86-year-old James Burton. The guitarist all-timer has performed with everybody from The Everly Brothers to Johnny Money, Joni Mitchell to Suzi Quatro, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2001 by lifelong fan Keith Richards. He’s sporting the baseball jacket he wore on the ultimate 1977 tour by an icon who’s lengthy left the constructing: Elvis Presley. Paisley duly pays homage to one of many best guitarists in historical past, the OG exponent of the paisley-patterned Telecaster: he items Burton the 001 prototype of his bespoke ‘Misplaced Paisley’ guitar.
Rebecca and Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe
(Picture credit score: Fender)
The near-three-hour present climaxes with many of the night’s gamers again on stage. Which means 14 guitarists letting rip on Telecasters to rejoice the seventy fifth birthday of the foundational rock’n’roll and nation and western instrument invented by Leo Fender. Not a lot Tele City as Tele Metropolis, an electrifying, wailing, thrilling symphony of twanging. If I wasn’t sporting cowboy boots after I entered the Ryman, I used to be after I left.
The occasion celebrated 75 years of the Fender Telecaster
(Picture credit score: Fender)
Fender’s Artist Showroom, East Nashville
The next morning, because the stage tools from the live performance is trucked in by a loading bay, I’m having a tour of Fender’s Artist Showroom. Positioned within the inventive, hipster ’hood that’s East Nashville, it’s a purposefully discreet location.
As Tim Shaw, the chief engineer who runs the guitar R&D division right here, explains: ‘We’re the ministry of the attainable, and a variety of what we do is stuff that will not exist for a few years. That implies that this design and manufacturing facility is ‘a no-camera, no telephone, no recording zone… You have observed there is no signage. There’ll by no means be signage. We’re not on Google Maps. We’re intentionally onerous to seek out. Amazon nonetheless has hassle.’
seventy fifth Anniversary American Skilled II Customized Telecaster in 2-Shade Sunburst
(Picture credit score: Fender)
‘And all that’s designed on function,’ provides Ben Blanc-Dumont, director of artist advertising, ‘as a result of the first function that we’ve right here is to work with artists and be a spot for them to return and be snug. It’s non-public, and it is about them partaking with us. So we’re hiding in plain sight.’
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In delight of place on the second flooring of this facility is proof of that artist-focused craftsmanship. The ‘Jack White shrine’, as Blanc-Dumont calls it, options core parts of the musician’s Fender Assortment: his signature Triplecaster and Triplesonic Acoustasonic guitars, and his Pano Verb – a specialist amplifier that lets the musician ‘pan’ his reverb.
seventy fifth Anniversary Participant II Telecaster in Diamond Mud Sparkle, £949
(Picture credit score: Fender)
‘Loads of artist devices, just like the Jack White stuff, began downstairs [in the workshops],’ explains Shaw. ’Jack had concepts, stuff he needed to strive on tour… He would take prototypes out for a leg of a tour, and we might strive [different] pickups and he’d say, I am unsure, what about this? So I make him one thing else and we strive that. That went on near a year-and-a-half.’
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However Fender’s artist-facing artistans and luthiers can try this. The small group right here collectively have over 100 years’ expertise constructing guitars. As Shaw says, they’ll construct one among one thing, or they’ll construct hundreds of one thing at, for instance, Fender’s flagship manufacturing unit in Corona, California.
Which means that ‘every thing we do right here is designed for manufacture’, says Shaw. Or, alternatively, ‘if an artist needs one thing idiosyncratic – like Jack has half-scalloped frets, beginning on the twelfth fret, on one among his guitars. And after we introduced that guitar to Corona, Corona checked out that and took a tough move. They have been like, “Oh, no, we’re not going to do that.” [But] if it is one thing we wish to do, and it is one factor, nice.’
The unique Fender Telecaster headstock blueprint
(Picture credit score: Fender)
That player-friendly utility and suppleness is ingrained within the grain of the company-founding creation of Leo Fender, a creator who was not a guitar participant however an engineer. ‘Leo was trying to make a guitar for the working participant,’ Edward ‘Bud’ Cole, CEO of Fender Musical Devices Company, tells me. ‘And it was all about tonality, reliability of use. You must assume again to how a lot self-discipline and pure sign he was working [with] versus noise. He created one thing that was a full, mental, engineering distillation of perfection and never a single cell extra. He needed to fully reinvent what a guitar may very well be for the working-class musicians at the moment.’
The timeless type of the Telecaster
(Picture credit score: Fender)
The end result was a guitar that will shred its away throughout each varietal of rock, from Fifties rock’n’roll to late Sixties/early Seventies blues-rock to Nineteen Eighties New Wave to Nineteen Nineties indie-rock. Push him to decide on a private favorite exemplar of the Telecaster sound (‘fuck, it’s a onerous one, man…’) and Cole will spotlight Jimmy Web page and the primary Led Zeppelin album (1969). ‘Everybody makes the error of considering possibly it is one other guitar. However that album was all recorded with a Telecaster. The Yardbirds used Telecasters, too.’
seventy fifth Anniversary American Extremely II Telecaster in Liquid Gold, £2,899
(Picture credit score: Fender)
Then once more, Cole admits he’s torn. He’s a Radiohead fan with direct expertise of the Telecaster abilities of their guitarist Jonny Greenwood. ‘I performed in a band, Rain Conference, again in Arizona. And we did a bunch of exhibits with Radiohead on the “Creep” tour. We have been enjoying golf equipment to a thousand folks. And, I imply, these fucking guitar gamers, man!’
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For all that ubiquity in rock music, although, Nasvhille is Tele city. What’s it in regards to the sound of the Telecaster, I ask Fender president (Americas) Justin Norvell, that makes it and nation music the right match? ‘It’s uncooked honesty,’ he replies. ‘Electrical guitars earlier than the Telecaster have been extra like jazz guitars, with a mellower sound. And this guitar had a way more current [sound]. It poked by in a means that introduced itself and adjusted the path of the place music was going – to some extent the place it grew to become the ever present device for nation music.
seventy fifth Anniversary Vintera II Highway Worn 1951 Telecaster in Butterscotch Blonde, £1,599
(Picture credit score: Fender)
‘The phrases folks use – [country music’s] “twang” – relies upon the sound of the Telecaster,’ Cole continues, ‘it was a kismet, zeitgeisty intersection of the guitar because the music was forming. The guitar was there, and so they grew collectively.’ Style and instrument, in essence, ‘have been intertwined from the roots.’
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It is this marriage of device and creation that, to Cole’s thoughts, is greatest exemplified in Lucinda Williams’ 1998 masterpiece Automotive Wheels on a Gravel Highway. ‘That may be a report with a readability and a crispness to the guitars that’s superior. However I additionally love [The Clash’s] London Calling and [Radiohead’s] OK Pc,’ he provides with a smile. ‘The Telecaster wears so many various hats. However in its Western put on, that clear, bell-like, twangy, direct tone – it’s similar to it is asserting itself and saying, “I’m right here”.’
seventy fifth Anniversary American Skilled Traditional Cabronita Telecaster in Ice Blue Metallic, £1,799
(Picture credit score: Fender)
Now, three-quarters of a century on from its creation, the instrument is receiving a zing-up. The seventy fifth Anniversary Telecaster Assortment includes 5 fashions channelling a heritage whereas additionally heralding a future – you’ll be able to see a YouTube playlist right here. Followers and gamers can select from the Vintera Highway Worn 1951 Telecaster, Extremely II Telecaster, American Skilled Customized Telecaster, American Skilled Traditional Cabronita Telecaster or the Participant II Telecaster.
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‘They’ve actually let me design, from scratch, all these new concepts – and put them into manufacturing’
Jack White
Or, after all, they’ll select a road-proven machine hand-crafted by one of many best residing guitarists – the Jack White Triplecaster. It’s, says the person himself, a dream instrument born of a dream collaboration.
‘I’m loving my relationship with Fender,’ White tells me. ‘We’ve been working [together] 5 years now or extra, making an attempt to place all these collectively. They’ve actually let me design, from scratch, all these new concepts – and put them into manufacturing. I can not thank them sufficient.’
Jack White Triplecaster Telecaster, £3,849
(Picture credit score: Fender)
As a ceaselessly creative businessman along with his personal, multi-limbed firm, Third Man (a report label, publishing home, {hardware} model and extra), he appreciates that it’s ‘straightforward to assume up stuff. However to truly get an organization to place some cash behind it and really make it actual and put it into shops and stuff – it is a greater deal than everybody thinks it’s.’
Jack White and the Fender Telecaster
(Picture credit score: Fender)
Nearly as huge a deal as pulling collectively all these stars for Tele City. How, I ask White, was it acting on stage with James Burton? ‘Oh, that was fairly cool man,’ he replies, beaming. ‘What an honour. It is wonderful. And what a gorgeous factor that Brad gave him that guitar … Loads of legends standing on the market final evening. These are cool moments that this city [fosters]. These issues can solely occur in Nashville.’
