From Buddy Music magazine, August 1995
The Texas Tornados of Bass and Guitar, 1995
Mike Graff
Dallas native Mike Graff was born in 1964 into a musical family. His father was
a member of the surf band The New Pyramids, and Graff said his earliest memories
were "of crawling around on shag carpeting amongst guitar chords to Rolling Stones
records" while his father's band practiced at the Graff home.
After learning Santo & Johnny's "Sleepwalk" from his father, Graff taught himself
guitar, becoming influenced by Cheap Trick ("I could play the whole Heaven Tonight
record note-for-note before discovering how easily I could piss off my dad with
the Sex Pistols," he adds), Generation X, Gang of Four's Andy Gill, the progressive
rock band Killing Joke, and Japanese percussion wizards the Kodo Drummers.
Graff uses three guitars: a red 1958 Guild Starfire hollow body for studio work,
and two Epiphone Sheratons with Bigsby and Pearly Gates pickups for live shows.
His amp system includes a rackmounted Ampeg preamp (for distortion) and a Custom
Audio 3+ tube for clean sounds, both of which are split between two other setups:
a Mesa Boogie Simulcass 2/90 power amp and a Marshall 4x12 cabinet, and an Ibanez
DM 2000 digital delay and Art SGK 2000 for distortion and harmonizer; the split
sound is then remixed through a custom mixer. Graff also utilizes a Bradshaw
switcher to feed his effects through loops for any additional sounds he requires.
Beginning his music career with a short stint in Peter Schmidt's Three on a Hill,
Graff soon chose to form his own band, Course of Empire, in the summer of 1988.
Course of Empire has recorded two albums, beginning with a self-titled effort on
Carpe Diem records in 1990 which Zoo Entertainment re-released in 1992. Before
releasing Initiation for Zoo Entertainment in early 1994, the band issued their
first single, "Infested," including a remix version of that song incorporating
Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing," which landed his band on the Billboard dance
charts. Course of Empire is currently conspiring to record their third album in
Deep Ellum, to be released in January.
Photo caption: In the studio working on third Course of Empire album: Mike Graff
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