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A Visual Book About Guitar Pedals??

Hi, I’m Eilon Paz, I made that cool book about record collectors. I’m also a motorcyclist, photographer, and director of another project coming your way, a book about stompboxes. Stompboxes, or guitar pedals, come in many shapes, forms, and colors, with hilarious names like Granny Puker, Fuzz Munchkin, Bag of Dicks, Erogenous Moan and the list goes on and gets…weirder. These little mechanisms have so much character and life. I’m here to create a window into their world and the great guitarists who use them. The connection between a guitarist and their pedal is the key to unique sound with personal flair and physical involvement.

The goal of the book is to focus on the personal side rather than the technical side, a backdoor to some of the greatest guitarists’ sound/history/connection with music through that little device called a stompbox.

After publishing the Dust & Grooves book, I was in search of another project that was visually striking with content that has a strong community behind it, and the stompbox was the answer. I was enthralled by its complexity, intrigue, and fetishization quality. Seriously – people go nuts over these things. I wanted to create a visual project that had not been done before and all that existed about stompboxes.

I started to recruit the team by finding a pedal expert to consult. My main man from the Dust & Grooves years, Jamison Harvey of Flea Market Funk came through to connect me with Chris Buono, known as a “Multimedia Guitar Madman;” a guitarist, educator, music journalist, “sound diabolist.” Chris suggested a few good names to start with. I enlisted Barry Cleveland as my editor and Shiran Mostovoy as project manager. With the kind donation of Jeff Hoedebeck and Cornell Johnson we are kicking this off and ready to produce a book dummy. Our buddies over in Sao Paulo at Studio 45JJ who designed the Dust & Grooves book are back on board again, so great to continue to work with these peeps.

The dummy would physically represent everything we envisioned for the book. It is something we could carry and show to potential publishers but mainly to artists to get them to participate. In most cases, we have one shot only, so I want to present a really awesome book sample that would capture the idea.

The idea itself is simple really – collecting personal stories from renowned guitar players about a specific pedal of their choice. That idea transfers to the layout and design: a super detailed and sexy shot of the chosen pedal on one page and a short intimate interview on the adjacent page.

Visually, I want to portray the life of the stompbox with all its nicks, imperfections, and wear and tear from usage over the years. I want to capture the character of the pedal and the relationship between the pedal and artist in a book that brings the pedals to life the same way the pedals bring unique sound to life.

There’s nothing like producing something physical that you can hold that has a life of its own full of amazing stories inside. Can’t wait for round two with this project and to explore the world of the stompbox with all of you!

 

Glad to have you along for the ride, thank you for reading!

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