Who is the next guitar god and where will they come from? Some have faith they will emerge out of progressive metal guitar, some virtuoso perched on the outer limits of what’s possible.
Others look to TikTok, scanning social media for a sign, any sign. But can you believe anything that the algorithm serves you up?
But who’s to say the next guitar god isn’t already here, and has come out of the indie-pop scene? Lucy Dacus says she has seen this god, has worked with her too – and her name is Madison Cunningham.
In an interview with Acoustic Guitar, Dacus explains how Cunningham’s guest spot on her new solo album, Forever Is a Feeling, convinced her she was in the presence of something special, something godlike.
Dacus, who was playing only on acoustic guitar on the album (one of her rules to help focus on the material), brought Cunningham in as a pinch hitter to play electric guitar on Best Guess. The boygenius guitarist/vocalist wanted something atypical on the track, and she got it.
“I think it must be hard to be a guitar god, because a bunch of people fancy themselves guitar gods and are annoying about it, but she actually is,” says Dacus. “It’s hard to say, like, ‘No, I’m different than those guys at Guitar Center.’”
Cunningham’s solo is not the sort of thing you’ll hear on the shop floor of Guitar Center on a Saturday afternoon. It tracks Dacus’s melody, but being a Madison Cunningham solo, it seems to do more.
And yes, it is just a solo, performed on a Jazzmaster, with some modulation from her signature pitch vibrato, the JHS Pedals Artificial Blonde, always on, giving that gently heated electric guitar tone a bit of movement, and yet deepens our understanding of the song and its melody – it’s like watching a movie with the director’s commentary on.
Dacus is not the first to herald Cunningham’s genius. Last year, John Mayer, who has been covered by Cunningham and had the Californian singer-songwriter support him on tour, described her as a “monster” player.
She is a monster guitar player who’s found new ground on the instrument
John Mayer
“Watching her perform inspired me every night. She is a monster guitar player who’s found new ground on the instrument,” wrote Mayer on Instagram. “When she plays, I feel like if I’d never played a guitar before, I would race out and buy one the next day. And that’s an awesome headspace to take the stage with.
“Playing solo was a challenge to myself, and I’m very touched that Madison (as well as the other guest artists on this last year of touring) took that challenge along with me, and just absolutely mesmerized everyone in the crowd. Brilliant artist, brilliant human, and someone I greatly admire.”
Dacus has her own thing going. Genius? It takes one to know one. Dacus has no pretensions on being a guitar god, however you want to define it. But she has some thoughts on how we can find ourselves as a songwriter; the first and most important step in this whole business.
She takes a leaf out of Joni Mitchell’s chordbook, putting her guitar into alternate tunings – Open D is a favorite – and searching for open tunings that don’t even have a name yet, and whatever “sounds cool” is cool.
“In an open tuning, you can bar it at any fret and that’s a chord,” she says. “So if you really just want to write songs, and your goal isn’t to become a guitar master – you just want an accompaniment to your thoughts – that’s a very easy way to start.”
