On Friday, July 11, the iconic trash metal band Slayer was in Québec city, on the Bell scene at the Festival d’été de Québec, better known as the FEQ. To be honest I have never listened to Slayer when I was younger, and the only song I knew was, like many people, Raining Blood. Same for Guillaume, he only knew the classics. However, we NEEDED to go to the show. Why? Because Gary.
Back in 2022, one of our followers wrote to us to let us know Gary Holt was talking about us in a written interview with Zakk Wylde in the magazine Metal Injection. Our first reaction was “who is Gary Holt?” (sorry Gary) and after googling it, our second reaction was “he must not have ordered with his real name”. He had. Not once but twice. We felt like we had missed something, but the good news was that he loved our pedals. Fiew! Then, he posted it on Instagram and POOF! The PdeQ, also called QUEBEC pedal, was now on the map (of the world). Gary and Guillaume started texting about tone. Fast forward last spring, when we learned that Slayer was coming to Québec, and we hadn’t been able to purchase tickets, we just told him and he said “I got you covered”.
On the morning of Friday the 11th, we had a special mission, we needed to deliver one of the stage-played-to-be guitars to Gary’s tech. Because of logistic reasons, he had had the guitar delivered to us on the promise to bring it before the show. This is when the magic happened.
We were supposed to meet Steve Brogden, Gary’s guitar tech. And we did. After scare jumping and screaming because he arrived from behind, he brought us to the stage to show us our PdeQs in their natural habitat. Wow. For over an hour, we just stood on the stage, in Gary’s corner, touching his guitars and asking all the questions any guitar nerd would ask, such as what strings does Gary like or how the guitars are tuned. Then, we got to see what was inside the tool chest. Wow again. Steve was amazing, generous of his time and quite funny. Warren Lee, Tom Araya’s tech was just there as well, such an interesting character, and he gave us some “Farmer Tom” bass picks. Cool. We were offered a cookie by someone else, couldn’t say who he was, all that while Mastodon’s sound check was casually happening. We left with many picks and some interesting anecdotes.
We were hopeful to meet Gary before the show, but I think we didn’t really understand how our passes worked, and what we could do with them. Plus, we didn’t want to be annoying but ended up exactly that when we decided to go meet him around the changing room (he was outside, tired, hopeful to be left alone) and finally “took” our 10 minutes with him. He was exhausted after such a great performance. Not surprisingly, Guillaume and he talked about pedals and tone. He looks passionate about it. We thanked him for everything, chatted about life and stuff, and I finally asked to get my picture and he gladly accepted. Wow. I felt bad afterwards because I hate to invade people’s spaces, especially when they just worked so hard. I never felt he owed me this picture; I just wanted it so badly and got selfish to get it.
We aren’t the groupie style but, I must admit I was blown away by Gary’s performance and I am a super fan now, and not only because we’ve developed some kind of business relationship, because he truly is a music legend. There are many great musicians on this earth, and Gary is definitely one of them. Playing is one thing, but owning the stage in a legendary performance like this one is the next level. It’s like he can do anything with his guitars. Holding a guitar by the whammy bar with a badass face is now my all-time favourite guitarist move. What a spectacular musician! The whole show was great, and we are grateful to have been there. I wish we can see Exodus someday, his first band, on a smaller stage, in a smaller crowd, with ideally less drunk people around.
