Dan Strain plays guitar for me.  He played the bulk of theparts on White Flag and tours with me when I take a band.  Originally a session guy in LA who built pedal boards and rack systems for big names on the west coast, he eventually started a band called Porcelain, which changed it’s name to SparkleDrive when it signed to Columbia/Aware. Dan now lives in Nashville and works as a producer and player.

He’s a self-proclaimed “gear slut” who is constantly buying and selling pedals, amps and guitars on-line.  I don’t know the first thing about guitar gear but I know his phone rings constantly when we’re on the road.  People are always asking his advice on what to buy.  He has suppliers with names like “The Pedal Nazi” and pedals named after Monty Python characters.  He’s sold guitars to and for some huge names in music.  And Bono even plays a guitar he once owned and fixed up.  It’s a strange world Dan lives in.

I hope to cajole him into an interview here on the Music blog soon.  To prep for that, what questions do you have for Dan?  Post them here and I’ll ask him.

In the meantime, here’s a blurry picture of a small pedal board he took out on the White Flag Tour a while back:

I’m salivating just looking at it and I don’t even know what all of that stuff does.  Hopefully we can get Dan here to shed some light on it all…or the parts he hasn’t vowed to take to his grave.