The Current's Guitar Collection: Jamie MacColl of Bombay Bicycle Club, Farida custom
by Luke Taylor
April 30, 2014
When Bombay Bicycle Club were in The Current's studio ahead of their show at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, Jamie MacColl took a few moments to talk about the band's custom-built Farida guitars. He also shared a bit about what it's like to come from a long line of highly regarded musicians.
What kind of guitar were you using in today's session?
Today, Jack [Steadman] and I were both using our signature Farida guitars, which were kind of made to the spec that we wanted.
These guitars were made specially for Bombay Bicycle Club?
Yeah, then they produced 50 of each of them, made them, sold them. They're kind of like a really good entry-level guitar; the idea is that your actual fans can afford to buy them as opposed to those really high-end signature guitars, which are a few thousand dollars.
The one I'm playing here is the first one that they made; it was the prototype. And then for the main batch, the other one I have, they made some changes. So I've had this for about a year, probably.
I'd always played kind of bigger-bodied guitars, and it never really worked for what I was using it for live, which was mainly sort of strummy parts and it was too boomy. So we wanted to design something with quite a small body for that purpose, and then mine is made of rosewood and mahogany, I believe. The pickup is an LR Baggs, which is just, I think, the best pickup you can get.
How did you connect with the people at Farida?
They got in touch with us. It's strange, because we haven't made an acoustic album for a while, and I think the idea was initially to kind of design electrics, but I think it's easier to design an acoustic in a way, and I think it kind of suits what we do more because you write on acoustic. It's a good guitar.
As you're touring, have you had any issues with rising and falling action, or any other stresses due to changing humidity and temperature?
Surprisingly not. I just got quite a few new guitars for this tour in from Fender, and they've been so good that we didn't even need to de-tune them on the flights. They stayed in tune for the whole journey which is quite impressive. I never have to tune them on stage. It's great.
So beyond the Farida models, you obviously have quite a range of instruments.
It's mainly Fender that all of us use, I think. So it's just kind of a collection of Fender guitars and basses in a rack on the side of the stage. I use Teles and Jack uses Strats and Ed [Nash] uses a combination of Precision and Jazz basses.
In the interview with Bill DeVille, you and he talked a bit about your musical lineage [Pete Seeger was Jamie's great uncle, Ewan MacColl was his grandfather and Kirsty MacColl was his aunt]. Was music inevitable for you having always had it in the house?
I've always loved music, but I guess it wasn't until we started the band that I kind of loved playing and making music. So yeah, it wasn't even really a familial thing, I don't think. It really was the sort of creation of Bombay Bicycle Club.
Although we did make an acoustic album, I think I've always, personally with my playing in the band, tried to sort of stay away from that folk world. Because when you're kind of related to so many legends of it, I think you can get a bit bogged down in kind of comparing yourself to their output, which I think can be quite self-destructive, probably.
Resources
Bombay Bicycle Club - official site
