Multi-instrumentalist Angie Swan hails from Milwaukee, WI and developed her chops at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.
She was invited to join the Cirque du Soleil production of Amaluna, and toured throughout the United States and Canada for three years. In 2017, Swan toured Asia with the pop sensation girl group Fifth Harmony, followed by a South American run with the five-time Grammy-winning crooner CeeLo Green.
Since March 2018, Swan has been sharing the stage with Talking Heads legend David Byrne on the American Utopia tour, and her debut EP scheduled to be released soon.
Below, we catch up with Swan to discuss working with top-tier artists, performing live, and her rig of choice, the Kemper Profiler.
What is your approach to getting your guitar sound?
I’ve always felt sound should come from your hands — the tone, vibrato and the dynamics. For a long time, the clean channel of a Fender Twin Reverb was my first choice, and I combined it with chorus, wah, overdrive for a boost, distortion and delay. Five basic sounds.
With David Byrne, it was all different. We were sent Kemper Profiler units and told to listen to the music and find sounds that would work for us. Since I like lots of different sounding amps, it was a really cool thing to dig into the Profiler. I worked my way through all 21 songs, and took notes on which tones I would need for the parts. It took a few days, but it was really worth the effort. My typical sound comes from a Twin Reverb profile and I switch to a Dual Rectifier profile for a few high-gain sounds.
Meanwhile, I purchased my own Profiler with