I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: April 29, 2026] Tim Motzer 

About a year and a half ago I saw the exact same lineup in the exact same place.  Tim Motzer opened for Stick Men.  Last year I hadn’t heard of Tim, but this year I had a much better idea of what to expect.  Last year I wrote

Tim Motzer is a Philly-based guitarist.  For his live show, he plays acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, and electric guitar.  He loops his melodies and creates percussion by tapping on the hollow bodied acoustic (and gets a lot of different sounds from it).

Last time he played four songs.  This time it was five.  But the show started the same way (actually this time, someone in the front row said, “Take us on a journey, Tim.”

The first song was on the acoustic guitar.  It was fun to watch him build and then deconstruct the melodies and work within the drum beat that he created.

This year he said he had some new pedals.  One of the seemed to make his acoustic guitar sound like a glitchy electronic concoction. It was pretty neat.  Last time eh didn’t say the names of any songs.  But his year he told us he was working on an album and he was going to play songs that he was working on.  The first was Chaos Resolution.   He didn’t name the next one.

He switched to 12 string guitar and I loved the creation of this song–a cool bass line and lots of nice repeated melodies.  He even used an e-bow at one point.

The third song was on the electric guitar.  He used the ebow again and played with effects more.

He went back to the 12 string guitar in addition to the effects pedals, he used a metal slide to add some interesting metallic sounds.

For the last song, he returned to the acoustic six string and used a  shirt violin bow (made for guitars?) to generate new sounds that served as the backing chords for his exploration.

He played about 40 minutes and it was all fun and trippy.

Oh, he sang on two of the songs.  I didn’t love his voice, but it’s probably good not to only play instrumentals.

• Chaos Resolution (6 string)
• 12 string
• electric
• Stutter (12 string)
• 6 string acoustic with bow