Organ Thief began in Memphis Tennessee in 2002--the brain child of Kirk Rawlings Brian Costner, Tom Arndt and Dik LeDoux. In 2004 they released their first CD Orphan Teeth. Last year Arndt and LeDoux left the band and made it a duo.

"Since then, Brian and I have taken the reigns of Organ Thief with many different rhythm sections filling in. In October of last year, drummer Tony Sojourner added a whole new sense of vibe and dynamics to the Thief," says Rawlings. "This fall we are recording our second record, this time will some reputable label interest. In May, we are relocating to Nashville and plan to tour shortly afterward."

The music is a schizophrenic mix of syncopated rhythms, noise, and a song specific focus that lends itself to extreme diversity. Rawlings, when forced to, compares the band's guitar work to such diverse artists as Captain Beefheart or Fugazi. He also notes the "trance-like noise rock-ish" sound of the band.

"Its gets a lil’ heavy with some off-time things at times, Queens of the Stone Age-ish or the Melvins. It’s all over the map really." says Rawlings.

Rawlings is more comfortable talking about his guitar, a 1974 Telecaster.

"I played as Strat with Hot Gold Lace pickups for the years, but when we played in any tuning besides standard, it would get all out-of-whack. So I got a cheap Mexican ’72 Tele Custom as a backup. It was really heavy with a thick neck and a bridge that I would slice my finger open on every time I played it. But, people freaked about it," says Rawlings. "Everyone was commenting to me after shows about the tone I was getting from that particular guitar. I use the middle position that splits the difference between the humbucker in the neck position and the single coil in the bridge position. It sounds a little hollow and jangly, kinda like a Jaguar but beefed up."

The Mexican Tele snapped at the neck. Rawlings says it " bowed like a rancher’s legs." In a pinch Rawlings made calls to musician pals asking to borrow a guitar. It turns out his cousin had two American made Fenders--a black Tele Custom made in ’74 and a sunburst made in ’72.

"He let me borrow the black one indefinitely. I still have it and plan on buying it," says Rawlings. "The tone is somewhat similar to the Mexican version, but it has a little more clarity and presence. It feels more solid than the Mexican but it is actually lighter with a thinner neck."

Rawlings says Costner plays a red 95’ Gibson SG with two custom pick-ups. One from a British company called Bare-Knuckle and the other one he cannot recall.

Bare Knuckle are a North Devon-based company in the UK. They make all their pickups by hand and specialize in recreating classic pickups. The company website says that they "scatterwind" the coils of each pickup individually with different gauge enameled copper wire (differing based on the desired sound. The site says a scatterwound coil is better than machine wound because the wire isn't as even--layer on layer. This leads to a lower distributed capacitance which lets more top end through and leads to a flatter frequency response. Basically a scatterwould pickup should sound cleaner and allow more detail through.

Costner also has a 12 string Schecter and a "Frankenstein" guitar put together by a friend of the band, Jobu Babin.

More on effects pedals used, and wanted, by Organ Thief soon.