Casey Jones, Young Aussie Kramer Endorsee & 80's Rock Specialist

by Jon

YouTube is a wonderful thing, to think that only a few years ago video on the web was pretty scarce, now there are millions of videos of young shredders strutting their stuff and giving us a peek at the future of guitar. One such young shredmeister is 18 year old Aussie Casey Jones, not only does Casey have the chops, hair and attitude of 80’s rock guitarists from a time before he was even born but Casey also has a collection of iconic 80’s guitars to match. Not only does Casey have a collection of Kramer guitars, he is now an Endorsee and he’s not even out of Uni yet! Just check out his cover of Mr Scary above to see what I’m talking about, then check out a few more tracks on his YouTube channel such as his cover of Reb Beach’s Black Magic . I was so impressed I wanted to know more so I approached him for an interview and he was happy to oblige.

GN: So first up to give Guitar Noize readers a bit of background, when did you first pick up the guitar? CJ: ooo, i’d say i would have been around 15… It was the start of grade 10 when i picked guitar up so i think i was 15. I had actually started guitar lessons for about 2 weeks when i was about 8 years old, but then quit and my father had to get the lessons instead of me, because we had already paid for 10. 

GN: What was your first guitar? CJ: Ummm…. well 4 kramers, a gibson explorer, Southeast Guitars prowler, 2 acoustics another 2 electrics… and a banjo haha.. so i’d say about 12. Theres a lot but they’re all beautiful, except my throw around guitar which i take to university thats barely working at the moment haha… I gotta find a new guitar to take to uni. CJ: I guess it was the whole fun attitude and sound to it all. Plus I was looking for something that could rival Van Halen. So thats what got me onto the whole Glam metal scene. Plus these days there aren’t a lot of musically interesting songs on the radio., not here in Brisbane anyways… so I searched for something, and this is what I found. CJ: I’m not sure… I had been talking with a few of the guys from kramer for a while, some from the factory and some from the management side of things and they had asked me to do a video or two promoting them and in return they would upload it onto their gibson/kramer website. A few months later I hadn’t really heard anything from them, then out of the blue i received an email asking me if i would want to play their guitars and be an endorsee. That was a really tough decision… not. It was a real honour!!

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