On this week’s podcast, we talk to Ethan Gruska (Belle Brigade) about his 2017 solo album, Slowmotionary. As Gruska tells it, he didn’t even set out to produce an album: He innocently recorded a handful of songs thinking they would serve as a sort of business card to remind friends that he was game for session work. Little did he know he’d eventually synch up with producer Tony Berg, record an entire album steeped in ‘60s and ‘70s singer-songwriter sounds and end up releasing it on Sire records.

Gruska talks to us about working with Berg on the project, Blake Mills (who plays guitar on the album) and what it was like to co-write a song for John Legend (“Right by You,” found on Legend’s Darkness and Light). And, though Gruska says “the guitar is a series of happy accidents for me,” he’s a stellar player and we talk about that and his instrument of choice.

This episode of the Fretboard Journal Podcast is sponsored by Retrofret Guitars.