WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1127 - G.E. Smith

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

G.E. Smith started playing guitar when he was four. As he grew up, he liked The Beatles fine but it was really the Kinks and the Stones that grabbed him. Cut to many years later and G.E.’s had the opportunity to play with many of his heroes. He tells Marc about working with Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Roger Waters and more. They also talk about G.E.’s time as the bandleader on Saturday Night Live and the current dire situation for live music. This episode is sponsored by Patreon and Honey. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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it's fucking scary crazy righteous chaotic out of control focused a lot of things going on at once Righteous, chaotic, out of control, focused. A lot of things going on at once.

And I tend to be, at this point, somewhat paralyzed with grief and trying to compartmentalize. I don't want to be the guy at the protest crying about his own problems. I don't want to be the guy at the protest crying about his own problems. But I will throw some ideas out there for you in this time of few shekels, contribute a few dollars to show your support. These are places that make a difference. Black Voters Matter Fund. They work directly and successfully on increasing the political power of black communities through voter registration and engagement on the local level, not just during presidential elections. That's blackvotersmatterfund.org. NAACP Legal Defense Fund, police reform and racial justice efforts need litigation and advocacy to be successful. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund,

N-A-A-C-P-L-D-F, N-A-A-C-P-L-D-F.org. And of course, the ACLU will continue to be helpful for maintaining the First Amendment rights of protesters and fighting legal challenges in court it's the charity i support yearly aclu.org is where you can go to uh to do that so i'm still yeah before i get too far look you know with things coming undone at the seams

i don't really know what you you people want to listen to or what you know what is relevant to you but today uh my guest is g.e smith um who you know is the former band leader on Saturday Night Live. He's also been the guitarist for Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Roger Waters, Tina Turner, among many others. He's got a record coming out in August called Stony Hill. It's a collaboration with soul singer Leroy Bell. And, you know, I got the opportunity to talk to a guitar player before the shit hit the fan in my life and in the world. Well, obviously the shit has been hitting the fan. The shit has been hitting the fan in the world for a while.

But you know what I'm saying. So I took it and I talked to him. And it's, you know, it's me talking to G.E. Smith about guitars and stuff. Maybe that'll be nice for you i don't know maybe you want to break i uh i've been ranting and raving about encroaching fascism in this country for what since 2016 i don't know what's going to happen and i don't think these protests are going to stop. And I'm not sure they should. It's a lot of anger.

It's a lot of frustration. It's a lot of injustice. And I've just got to protect my mind from hopelessness. You know what I'm saying? And now I've become very focused on my cat, monkey, who is ill, old. Some days are better than others. But in this void,

in this absence of Lynn here, I wake up at four in the morning and I go through the memories most of them good it's hard it hurts i'm not obsessing about bad things but then i realized i got a sick old cat downstairs so i've gotten into the habit where i'll go downstairs and lay on the couch and see if monkey wants to get on my chest and lay there. My old sick cat and just like love the cat.

It's weird, you know, it's weird to be a guy who's 56 years old and is just sort of getting the hang of what love feels like. To give it and get it. You know, receive it and let it out. And I just started realizing like, well, I don't know how much time I got with this cat. So I go down there like four in the morning with a blanket and I lay on the couch and hang out with monkey for a couple hours in and out of sleep,

thinking about life, thinking about Lynn, thinking about the end of the world, listening to my cat purr and then that kind of levels it off the purr of an old cat is kind of like a some sort of universal frequency of calm i don't even know how he does it i can't't do it. A purr's got, like, there's several different layers of sound going on. Sounds like two or three different layers of sound for a good, wheezy old cat. So I've been doing that, just talking to cats, just yelling at Monkey, like, what's going on? Are you dying? Is today the day?

Are we dying today? Do we have to go to the vet and die today monkey so g.e smith has this new album coming out it's a collaboration with soul singer laroi bell you guys know him he might have been annoyed by him on saturday night live he brought that up some people were very annoyed by him but this is me and g.e smith Smith coming right up. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again.

Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. What's up, GE? How you feeling? Everything's good, Mark.

Looks like a comfortable situation up there. Where are you? Amagansett, out on Long Island. Oh, yeah? Yeah. But you don't come from there. That's where you settled, huh? Yes. I've been here for a long time, 40 years. Is that by the water? It's not far from the water. You don't really want to live right on the water unless it's just a summer house because the wind off the ocean

just tears the house apart. Oh, really? Yeah. It's really rough. The people that live right by the water, they're just spending money all the time. Fixing the house? Yeah. So where'd you grow up? In Pennsylvania. Like rural? Town of West Routensburg. Where is it in relation to a city? It's in the Northeast. If you're coming across Route 80 from anywhere in the West,

when you get right to the New Jersey border, it's called Delaware Water Gap. Oh, okay. And it's the next town west of that. Yeah. And when I was a kid, it was just a tiny little town. Yeah. But now, like every place else, it's all grown up and there's lots of people there. And there's about a thousand people that when they were working, commuted every day to the city. Oh, is that it's one of those commuter towns? Yeah. Did your dad work in the city? No, no, no. My dad worked right there.

Yeah. He worked right there. He was an engineer, structural and chemical engineer. And he worked, you know, for a big company there. Oh, really? Not for the city? Just for a big corporation? Yep.

And your mom, did she work too? Yep. corporation yep so and and and your mom was you did she work too yep my grandmother who i grew up with um had a gift shop holiday gift center and my mom always worked there with her oh that's nice like cards and stuff all that kind of stuff you know little glass yeah you know uh all kinds of stuff jewelry you know yeah the general you don't see many of those general gift shops anymore there was always one of those where it was just like a little bit a little bit of everything little tchotchkes that you know people could walk through and go like oh that would be nice right easy yeah and when when i was a kid at least it was a kid, at least, it was a big summer area. A lot of people from the city had second homes there.

In the summer, it'd be crowded. There was a lot of people around, a lot of jazz musicians from the city. From Philadelphia or from New York? From New York City. They'd come there in the summertime. So when I was a kid, you know, when I was like 12, 13, 14, I got to hear a lot of great music. Really?

Where'd they play? They have an outdoor thing? Nope. There's a bar, a place called the Deerhead Inn that was a jazz spot. And they let you in? No no but i could sit on the porch and like sometimes i'd go over there in the afternoon and sit out on the porch and these guys would be in there rehearsing and i heard uh a lot of great jazz players. John Coates, this piano player. Pharaoh Saunders, the sax player. Yeah.

Zoot Sims, Al Cohn. You know, a lot of those guys from the 50s, 60s jazz scene were there in the summertime. Wow. And you just took it in. Were you playing guitar yet? When did you start that? Oh, sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I started playing. I got a guitar when I was four. Four? Yep. I went down in the basement with my mother. that sure yeah yeah i started playing i got a guitar when i was four four and yep there were i went down in the basement with my mother to do that she was gonna do the laundry yeah and there was a good old guitar hanging on the wall i said what's that she said that's called a guitar that used to belong to your uncle george and uh i said can i have it she said sure it's been hanging up

there for a long time so she gave it to me and I just got obsessed with it. What was that guitar? It was just a cheap acoustic guitar. Like a harmony or a K or something? Collegiate. Collegiate brand. Uh-huh. Like a harmony.

Yeah. You know, probably made in Chicago. Uh-huh. Like a lot of that stuff was back then. And, uh. And that started it. Yeah, I wish I still had started that guitar but it's long gone oh yeah you i have a i have an old k from the 50 pro and a k acoustic that you know you know they make great stuff yeah i mean it sounds okay you know it's got a spray paint it's like the pick guard is painted on it's like not even right right yeah yeah yeah i got that a lot

of the great blues records were made on those kind of guitars you know i know they you can feel that i you can you hear the sound i once interviewed uh taj mahal in here yeah and uh he picked the thing up he didn't want to play but he picked that thing up for two seconds and played like a skip james riff and moved it and kind of track you of tracked it into the African groove. In like three seconds, you know, he just brought the thing to life. Like it was almost like a time machine. It was fucking unbelievable.

No, Taj is great. And he's a real musicologist. Yeah. He really knows. He's a very, very smart guy and knows his stuff. There's a bar here in Amagansett in this town where I live called the Steven Talk House. Yeah.

And they get, especially during the summer when all the people from the city are out here, they get big acts, you know, national acts. And I went there at one time to see Taj. This is probably like in the eighties.

And he had a band and they were great and they were playing. And at some point he got up from where he was in front of the band and he picked up an acoustic guitar, an old National, you know, metal body National. Yeah. And he kind of went up in the back of the stage and leaned against the wall and he played this old blues song. I think it's a Charlie Patton song.

It's called Peavine Blues. Yeah. And he just played it called Peabody Blues. Yeah. And we just played it all alone. No microphones. Yeah. It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. That's wild, man. I, I, I, when people can channel that stuff,

I had a similar experience in Tucson, Arizona, at the Tucson, Arizona Blues Society. I was visiting my brother, and they had paid John hammond jr to come out so it was just like 40 people in there and he did the same thing with uh hellhounds on my trail just him the robert johnson stuff man and like you to hear that stuff played properly is fucking crazy man it really is yeah he's got he's a he's really an interesting player too but so we now wait it's smith though you're real the family name yeah smith um my family's lebanese my

father was lebanese yeah and uh i grew up very much in that like the food you know because i said my grandmother was there you know my dad's mom so she was 100 lebanese my father's 100 lebanese and they so i grew up with that food and that kind of atmosphere you know and uh the family name had been hadad uh-huh and hadad in arabic means blacksmith yeah and the legend was that when my great grandfather, whose name was Boutros Haddad, when he came over, he didn't speak English, but they had written on a piece of paper in Arabic and then in English, Haddad. And then they'd written blacksmith underneath. Right. And the legend is he gets to ellis island and the and the the guy the immigration guy looks at it and he says well what do you want to be black or smith and he didn't even know what the guy was saying and he just pointed at smith and that's how we

wound up being smith that's a good story i don't know if it's true or not but it's a good story so when you start playing when do you start when do you get the first guitar that you make a choice to get so when i was seven yeah by then i i had figured out some chords and uh it was um the the folk music thing was happening you know what they call the folk scare yeah folks care yeah and who calls it that oh a lot of a lot of guys in the business call it you know um and uh i was learning that kind of stuff and a woman was at our came over to our house and she saw me playing that collegiate yeah instrument and she said oh you you can play you know she said do you want a real guitar i'm seven what am, you can play, you know, she said, Do you want a real guitar? I'm seven. What am I gonna say? Yeah, yeah. So then a couple days later, she shows up with it

with a little Martin. You know, a good acoustic guitar. Wow. And not only that, she brought along her, the girl that was working for her as a nanny, who was like maybe a 1415 year old Irish girl. Uh huh. And she showed me some stuff, this Irish girl. She showed me how to finger pick. Really? Which was so great. I want to do that better. Oh man.

Before that I was, I was playing with a pick. Yeah. And, and I didn't know what I was doing, you know, but she showed me that what they call Travis picking, you know, it's like the alternating bass with the thumb yeah and then if you pick out the melody with your fingers all three fingers that was great i was really lucky that that i got that when i was that young i talked to guys to do the blues two finger picking thing a lot of guys the real guys would do just one finger yeah thumb and one finger but i use all all five but see i got this

big long finger yeah yeah yeah i do these rakes with that you know oh that's not for coke no that was uh that used to be the thing that they did in the yeah no i know it was yeah people would always say that to me but no i always just let my finger go along to play you know yeah do the picking so so the irish girl showed you how to finger pick and then you locked into that that's a good thing to knock out when you're young huh i was lucky yeah yeah and then what what how does the how does the style evolve in in january of 1963 it was my 11th birthday yeah and i wanted an electric guitar right so my mother took me around there was a couple of little music stores out in the country or, you know,

and we looked at some electric guitars and we found a used Fender Telecaster. Yeah. And we got it. It was $100. I was born in January of 1952. And some years later, when I found out you could take the neck off the guitar and see the date, the guitar is January of 1952. No shit. Yeah.

You're both born in the same month. And I was then starting to play in bands. That's got to be one of the first ones, right? Yeah, pretty early. 1950 was the first one. A first telecaster or first broadcaster broadcaster was 1950 broadcaster and esquire right 1950 then by 51 they're making no more broadcasters they're making esquires and telecasters and the tele difference was

with the telecasters they added that pickup telecaster had a had the neck pickup on it too right right yeah funny my guitar says esquire but it's got the two pickups huh but they did make you know fender always just made whatever they needed to make that day you know use all the parts that they had and right chip them out so i figure it must have been one of those or i don't know so so that was the guitar and then you're 11 and you got a telecaster and you're playing in bands already yes there was uh some older folks yeah um probably like in their 30s you know yeah and they had a band and there were so few musicians there that where you lived such a small town and yeah my parents knew everybody so my dad knew these people and i got into this little uh band and it was like you know uh

kind of lounge music you know standards sure old time stuff and some polka music you know right yeah there was an accordion in the band the guy with an acoustic guitar it was hysterical but you were in those chords you were in that groove i learned yeah see that was great i got right away i started learning um songs and the polka groove didn't check not just um blues based songs at all but you know like standards we change nat king cole songs right uh louis armstrong but my grandmother listened to louis armstrong nat king cole uh duke ellington that kind of stuff sure and so i i had heard that stuff since i was a baby on her floor yeah so i had that had that in my head. I had that sound in my ear.

Yeah. And that was very fortunate, you know, to be able to start out with that good music. But yeah, but you're like, it seems to me that the core of who you are as a guitar player is a blues trip, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the music that I really loved.

And then, like, you know then when the Beatles came out, about a year after I got that Telecaster, the Beatles came out. And I liked the Beatles, and I thought they were really cool, but I didn't want to play that. Yeah. But then when the Rolling Stones came out and the Kings, when I first heard You Really Got Me,

that ba-wa-wa-wa-wa. got me that ball yeah yeah oh yes i get it now electric guitar that's what it does so that's the rock element where do you get the where do you get your first dose of real guitar blues um when when the stones came out yeah the yard birds and those bands oh yeah i would you know obsessively read the the album covers right and they you know the old you know lp yeah you know and that had who wrote the songs right i'm feeling these names you know and i'm reading interviews with with the stones and and the yard birds and the who and and those bands and they're talking about muddy waters and howlin wolf and elmore james right so then i went and got those records yeah that's weird

those records from the little music store in town you know you got them you got them to uh to oh they ordered them for you yeah yeah they didn't have those in stock you know they were hard to find you know even when i was a kid i I mean, there were collections and stuff, but the real stuff is... So it was Muddy and Howlin' Wolf, the regular guys, Elmore James. Elmore James. I loved Elmore James. Yeah, it's great. So you're fucking around with that slide?

Yeah, slide, which of course I didn't know that it was slide. I didn't know what that was when I first heard it. Yeah, yeah. In the middle, 64, 65, I heard that. I didn't know what that was yeah you know yeah yeah in the middle 6 64 65 i heard that i didn't know what it was but then i saw brian jones play with the stones i saw him play slide and i went oh he's got this thing on his finger that makes that sound where'd you see the stones i saw them in 1965 in atlantic city at the steel pier and uh the mccoy's opened hang on sloopy sure you know rick derringer yeah yeah so that was so what was that do you remember that being uh in terms of

in looking back i mean you've played with everybody and you've seen everybody but at that age at that time those guys was it a great fucking show it was to me it was like the most exciting thing i'd ever seen you know yeah yeah i love this i also that year saw the who ah and 65 that 65 yeah oh and that was um that changed my life you know years later when i got to work with all these people yeah you know i would always ask especially the english guys yeah when you were coming up i asked jagger i asked david bowie uh a bunch of different guys i said when you were first coming up now let's leave your band out of it but who was the best live band every single one of them said the who really yeah nobody ever said anything else that's wild of course when i asked jagger that

i didn't even finish the question he just went to who so they all like to watch they all went to watch the who did the who live because great songs they could all really play and they could sing they could really sing just like the record because townsend and entwistle would sing the background vocals and daltrey singing the lead they had the harmonies they were doing it you know and then he played that stuff live and oddly you you know the sound i mean no one plays guitar like that guy nope right it's some sort of like power rhythm lead hybrid rhythm lead yeah yeah it's um he he was he was really unique and he always said townsend always said you know that he was a banjo player first but not like country finger picking banjo skiffle plectrum banjo you know with a pick

yeah so he learned all those things from right and banjo yeah and translated it onto the guitar uh uh and you know obviously a great songwriter and a very angry guy you know so that anger came out in the music and they were just great you know you know their song I can't explain yeah the who record you listen to that I mean I bought that 45 when it came out in 65 yeah you listen to that record that's live in the studio there's no overdubs on that record when when when Townsend and Entwistle come in with the background vocal,

I can't explain. You hear the compression. You hear the cymbals go away because they went up to their microphones and the drums weren't bleeding anymore. You hear it on the record. When the

guitar solo comes on the rhythm guitar stops because he's playing the solo now he can't play rhythm yeah yeah that's an amazing record but that really shows you know how good they were live yeah i i you know i came to the who late i liked some of the i you know i always liked the who but i was like not a fanatic you know when i was a kid but now you know that live it leads and all of it is pretty amazing yeah his anger is great you work with roger waters for a while that guy's angry too i talked to him too he's angry he's an angry dude he's another guy real smart guy oh yeah yeah real poet real political activist got a real chip on his shoulder

for fairly righteous reasons. Yeah. It was funny because I talked to him. He's one of these guys, a lot of times you talk to these dudes who are known for one thing, a singular thing, but they always think they're doing their best work now, of course. So, yeah. So he tells me, he's like, I don't want to talk about Pink Floyd. I'm like, what are we going to fucking do then, right?

But within five minutes, he was talking about Pink Floyd. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Right away. I worked with Roger for six years. Six years. Yeah, we went all over the world, you know, doing The Wall. Yeah, that must have been.

Now, how, you know, in doing something like that, so you're playing the Gilmore parts, basically? No. No. I played a lot of bass in the show oh wow because roger was was acting interesting i did play some guitar yeah but uh uh there's a guy named dave kilminster that plays roger who does the gilmore thing okay okay so you're playing he's got it great Great, great musician. And Snowy White was also in the band. So there were three guitar players. But I played bass on probably about 80% of the show because Roger was acting.

You know, The Wall was very much a theatrical performance. And people love that thing, man. Yeah, man. I've never seen fanatical fans like those Pink Floyd, Roger Waters fans. No kidding. They are fanatical fans like those, like those Pink Floyd, Roger Waters fans. No kidding. They are fanatical.

Yeah. It's, it runs deep with them. They, you know. Even when I worked with, with Bob Dylan, who obviously has very fanatical fans. Yeah. You know, in a kind of a different way. Yeah.

They're all like 70 now. Yeah. A lot of them are 70 them but there's younger ones too you know but what always really got me was like like with bob and and with roger there's people that really think that that song was written for them specifically sure even though they knew that Bob didn't know them or anything, they, Bob wrote that for me. It speaks to him. It beyond speaking to him. It's a,

it's a weird kind of obsession. No kidding. Well, the thing about the wall, you know, and that album in particular, it's sort of a, a kind of timeless encapsulation of,

uh, an adolescent anger that goes all through your life and i think that you know the possibility of that continuing to attract generations of younger people forever is probably pretty high yeah yeah when when we would play you know i mean obviously with with with roger we played the big places you know we we'd have minimum 25 30,000 people at the show up to 90,000 100,000 you know depending on where it was outdoors um and the audience range would be from in their 70s to young teenagers right and they all knew the words yeah everybody sang songs and yeah that's beautiful yeah that's powerful so what's this dynamic with um like you know in terms of you got muddy you

got elmore and you got you know uh howlin wolf but like i've seen you speak about this this bloomfield obsession yes now like you know he's a guy that kind of fascinates me. So do you think that that first Paul Butterfield album, that's the one that kind of blew your mind out in terms of how you approach guitar? Definitely. That record, which from everything I've ever been able to find out, they started recording right at the end.

It's 1964. Yeah. started recording right at the end. It's 1964. Yeah. And nobody can imagine now how that's unimaginable that a bunch of, you know, these young white guys from Chicago were so into that music. They had been hanging out in the clubs. They knew Muddy. They knew Wolf. They had gotten up on stage and sat in with them. Yeah, yeah, a little Walter. And they were smart enough.

Butterfield did this. You know, when he put that band together, he hired Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold, the drummer and the bass player, from Howlin' Wolf's band. Right. And I just saw the other night in a little interview with Sam Lay. And he said, well, yeah, the reason I went with Butterfield

is because he offered me $20 a show. And with Wolf, I got $7 a show. So it was just like a financial thing for him, you know. He's got a gig. But yeah, that record is to me really groundbreaking. Like in my mind, in my world, that's right up there with like the Beatles or something, you know, that's right. That's a life changing record for me.

So you're saying that this was the first example of a bunch of white kids who weren't just covering the songs. They were living the life and directly in mentorship with the original guys. Yeah. And Bloomfield's playing on that record. It's so, I mean, it's very stylistically correct. He's playing the blues right you know right but he's playing it um so technically advanced right from almost anything that had been played before

almost you know there were people hubert sumlin right howard wolf yeah played some stuff there's a there's a howard wolf song called louise yeah that was recorded and i think 61 or something where wolf it's a great song wolf singing great but hubert plays a solo in that song that says everything anybody's going to say for the next 10 years about bluefield clapton yeah jimmy page whoever you want to talk about yeah hubert solo on the weeds says it all that's the template that's yep to me yeah i gotta check that out because i've listened to a lot of stuff but i can't identify that in my head and yeah people don't know that song but listen to that and listen to hubert solo the way he comes in and the notes he chooses and it's just brilliant yeah are you

friends with uh vivino oh sure yeah i know jimmy like because i used to do you know i'm a comic i do conan a lot and jimmy would always you know let me play one of his guitars and show me links and stuff he's got a lot of great guitars yeah and he's also you know he's also one of those guys not unlike you you know he you know he did you. He studied the guys, right? Oh, yeah. So if you've got a question, he can resolve it for you. But I think he produced a record for Hubert later on. Yeah, yeah.

He did a bunch of stuff with Hubert. I got to be good friends with Hubert. Yeah. That was a real honor. Yeah, he's an interesting guitar player. He was a real wonderful guy um what about bloomfield no i never met never met bloomfield yeah but hubert you got to know him huh he lived a long time i got to know uh and we we would do gigs and a couple times i picked him up and we

we would have like maybe drive from new york down to washington dc or something yeah and him in the car so we really got to talk oh that's beautiful man yeah it was great so you heard some of the good stories huh he had like a kind of stock repertoire yeah stories yeah they do but but we had spent enough time together that he got away from those. And we really had some good talks. He, you know, he really, he was a very expressive guy. And he told me some great stuff. That's great. He taught me a great chicken recipe. He taught me a great thing, how to cook.

Because he was a good cook. Oh, yeah? Is it simple? Yeah, it's simple. Yeah, it's a simple thing. You know, you get one of those rotisserie chickens yeah mark it's already cooked and you bring it home and you cut it up and you got to carefully take the skin off yeah you know and then you put a bunch of you melt some butter and a big

iron skillet yeah and you fry that skin and and you fry up some of the chicken meat yeah and you take the wings and you fry the wings in that butter, you know, so they get really crispy and good. Man, it's good. I just had that last night. Hubert Sumlin's chicken. Hubert Sumlin's chicken. Oh, yeah.

I talked to Buddy Guy and he's got a bunch of, he's got one of those repertoire, the blues man repertoire. Oh, yeah. He's amazing. He is amazing. Both him and Hubert really kind of like they go out there man there's nothing you know kind of uh average and it's not a matter of average but they take real risks i mean they they they do some weird shit on their guitars oh yeah buddy

i made a record with buddy with um with the saturday night live band yeah he when i was doing the tv show uh after i was gone i started in 1985 right after i was on a couple years the show had gotten pretty successful yeah i remember seeing you you always you were like the first thing everyone saw almost yeah yeah you know the that was nice you know they lauren gave me that spot there lauren michaels the producer yeah he gave me those little spots and and i really owe a great debt to him you know yeah that you know there's nothing as powerful as tv yeah united states yeah and that really got people to to know me and and what i was playing and stuff but anyway after we've been on like two years maybe three years by about 88 yeah uh i could get a guitar player who was in town anybody that was passing through town and they would sit in

with the band and this wouldn't be announced or anything oh yeah i remember that yeah the camera would come up and there would be hubert sumlin yeah david gil or Johnny Winter or um Eddie Van Halen you know right all different kind of but just great guitar players yeah and that that that was wonderful yeah and play with all those different guys and get to hang out with them and stuff that was because I'm a fan you know yeah of course so but you got to you got to actually do a record with Buddy, huh? Got to do a record. Yeah. So we had Buddy Guy on. He was in town playing. And he liked the band. The musicians in the Saturday Night Live band, only a corporation like NBC could afford to hire that band. Right.

Because they're the best. They're all great jazz guys. I'm this bar band guitar player. And I get to be in that band with these incredible musicians. I learned so much there. It must be nice to have that behind you, to have a band backing you. They're never going to let you fall down, right? Nope.

I had to work to keep up with them, believe me. Yeah, I believe you. To try to play up to their standards. Which record did you do with Buddy? It's called, I think it's called The Real Deal. Okay. The live record. We did two nights in New York City and two nights in Chicago at Buddy's Club.

We did some great stuff. I got him to do an Elmore James song. Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. Not from maybe his normal repertoire. And we were, one night we were playing and Buddy was just on.

Yeah. And he was, just the sound he was getting, you know, the electric, it just filled the air. Yeah. It was just incredible. And he hits a note and he holds his guitar up in the air and he looks at me and he goes man i got some extortion on my amp tonight i say extortion on my amp and i used to think when those those guys yeah would say those kind of things because hubert would say stuff like that all the time yeah they knew exactly what they're saying it's poetry right it's poetry these guys are geniuses you know yeah sunny boy williamson's records he is a poet oh yeah yeah fantastic lyrical content he was funny

like that yeah the guys the real blues guys yeah yeah yeah so the telecaster thing and the bloomfield thing i mean i saw you talk about your uh the g. GE Smith, uh, signature telly, right. Which I, you know, I'd never seen it before. Now I feel like I need to find one. Um, but that commitment to the telecaster is sort of interesting. So because Bloomfield eventually went to a 59 West Paul, right? Yes. Yeah. And I'm a big, uh peter green guy you p like peter green what do you think about him fabulous you kidding the supernatural yeah that's all yeah supernatural what is that nobody else ever did anything like that that is impossible to play yeah he was out there, dude. He was so good. He was so good. The great blues phrasing. Oh, my God.

Yeah. He was very, obviously, very influential. Yeah. Amongst guitar players. You know, Kirk Hammett has his guitar. I know, Greeny. He's got it. And my buddy knows him.

And he said I could come play it one day, which is just crazy. Wow. I wouldn't mind doing that. I mean, do you feel. Just to touch it. Yeah. Just to touch your hands too do you do so you you you kind of feel that right you know you you know that these these old guitars and these guitars that were used by certain people they've got a magic to them right well you just i think there's a psychological factor when when you pick up a guitar like that yeah and you know the music

that was played on it yeah it's inspirational yeah that's right you know the funny thing though that i found um i got to play a lot of the the famous guitars that that people have. Like I got to play Clapton's Blackie. Uh-huh. Stratocaster. Yeah. You know? I got to play Neil Young's Black Les Paul. What, that old weird P90 thing with the tremolo on it?

Yeah, with the P90 and the Firebird pickup. Yeah. Yeah. And both of those guitars, if they didn't belong to Neil and and eric yeah and just it belonged to to just some guy and he walked into a vintage guitar store and tried to sell it you wouldn't be able to sell it you know it's not like yeah this you know in the vintage guitar world there's this like it's got to be all original and it's got right right guitars were pieced together

you know yeah put together things right they're ruined they're ruined in the eyes of a ruined in a way yeah but look what they did in the hands of these guys yeah yeah wild so it's it's the person it's not the guitar i think that's true i just bought a 60 west paul jr oh man great guitar double cutaway it's fucking great so you have the real thin thin neck a lot of 60s have that really skinny neck yeah it's really thin they have a sound they do man spanky they call it they got a spanking sound yeah i plug it into that 53 and it's like it's magic magic yeah so you were you were uh at snl but you played now tell me about this band and we'll get to the new record but you know i don't want to keep you too long but i can't

imagine we got too much to do but um what is this roger c real and the morgue rue morgue like you know the french word for yeah roger c real and the room org right so in um 1971 when i was 19 uh i was still in my hometown of pennsylvania yeah i would always play you know i've been playing by by now i'm playing seven nights a week yeah Yeah. You know, I would play any gig, whatever kind of music, any place, whatever. I didn't care.

Yeah. No, as long as I was playing, I'm still that way. And, but in 71, a buddy of mine had been to Vietnam. He's a Hammond organ player,

guy from my hometown. Yeah. And I've been in bands with him and he had been to vietnam and then come home and went to the uh new haven university like yeah thing right so he's up there in the new haven area and he calls me up like in the late spring around this time of year and he says hey our guitar player and his band up there our guitar player has to go in the hospital and get an operation or something. He said, he's going to be out for two weeks. Can you come up and fill in for him? I said, sure. So I went up to Connecticut. I never went, never looked back. That was it. Yeah. I just got up

there and got in this band and I stole the guy's spot, you know, in the band. But, um, I stole the guy's spot, you know, in the band. But so I get in this band after about a year or two called the Scratch Band. Scratch Band. And the Scratch Band was a Connecticut band. I have my old calendars from like 75, 76 and stuff. Yeah. We would play 250 gigs a year and never leave Connecticut. Really?

Yeah. And you know how big Connecticut is, right? I know. Yeah, man. There used to be a lot of places to play live music. So I was in that band, and that band worked out of a recording studio in a town called Wallingford, Connecticut, which is just north of New Haven. Yeah.

And Roger Real was around there at that studio. Got it. And in 1977, you know, by now, we're listening to a lot of reggae. It was a big Jamaican community in Hartford, Connecticut. And me and Bob Orsi, one of the other guys in the Scratch Band, would go up to Hartford to the Beltone record shop and get all these incredible records just in from Jamaica. You know, we're listening to that stuff.

And then the punk stuff is starting to come out of England. Yeah. You know, the early, early punk stuff. And Roger Real's really into that and i'm listening to that stuff too so he says i want to make a record you know would you play on it because he knows that i know that style of playing right uh and so we made this this record and i thought it was a really good record at the time, but this tiny little studio had no means of getting it out there.

Right. People hear it or anything. Yeah. So it kind of just, there it was. And it was something cool I had done. It's one of my favorite records that I've ever recorded on, but,

uh, and then recently in the last couple of years, it, it resurfaced somehow and some people put some money into it and remastered it and they've put it out and and i'm it's making a little noise you know so yeah i listened to it it's great there's there's some good stuff on that record yeah and you sound great and is that still that 53 Tele? Actually, on that record, it's a 55 Tele because by then I was buying old guitars and had a lot of stuff. I still have the 52 Tele that my mom got me.

I've had that my whole life and played that with everybody. I took it on the road with Bob Dylan for four years and played all over the world. You played your first Tele with Bob Dylan for four years? Oh, yeah. years and played all over the world your first you played your first telly with bob dylan for four years oh yeah yeah when you tour what what years what what album was that through well i don't know album uh i played with him live shows from 88 and then the last thing i did was in 1992 when they did that big uh bob dylan 30th anniversary concert at Madison square garden. Yeah. I was the, Bob hired me to be like the musical director for that.

And, uh, and your relationship with him was good. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like how big of an operation was it when you were playing with him? Who was in the band? He had,

he had in the previous couple of years before 88, when I started with him, he had done a tour with the grateful dead backing him up no i remember that yeah then he did a tour with tom petty and the heart yeah yeah man great band yeah great band yeah tom and the heartbreakers great always always delivered i saw them a lot but um he had done those tours with those very established bands yeah right so now i think he wanted to get uh a small band of just some guys that that weren't necessarily you know an established unit right he would have to kind of fit into right he wanted somebody that was going to fit into him right so he uh he hired me and uh a couple buddies of mine and and you know we we

went out and played it was just a trio you know uh guitar bass and drums and bop no kidding yeah did you do a record with him i i never recorded with him other than live right you know yeah i never did any studio work with with and when we're and when you work with him what he because he's a guy that approaches his own music so differently you know over and over again right what you know what was it about the way you guys work together the what he expected of you or how did he evolve how'd you guys do the songs differently and what's what's his genius in in in approaching his? I think that what he liked about me and that band was that he likes to change.

He doesn't like to play the song the same way all the time. A lot of people I've worked with, it's the same every time. They get a show together and that's kind of the way it is and the song goes like this and that's it. Bob liked to change stuff up and we were able to follow him. You know, I was able to, because I always loved doing that. My favorite thing is to play with a good singer, songwriter person and just follow them, just watch their hands. and just follow them, just watch their hands.

A lot of times with Bob, he would just start some song that we had never heard in front of 15,000 people, you know, and we'd just play it. I would just follow along with him, and we'd play it. It's like playing with Chuck Berry. In a way. I mean, there's that story about Chuck Berry when, who was it? It was Bruce Springsteen, and he always hired the local guys to back him. And I don't think it was Bruce.

Bruce goes, you know, what are we playing? And Chuck goes, Chuck Berry songs. Chuck Berry songs. Yeah, exactly. So what was your big break with playing these? What got you in with these guys? I mean, how did you start in the legit music business? Yeah, the legit music. I'm still not in the legit music

business. I was in, so I'm playing in Connecticut, right? And at some point, a guy named Dan Hartman, who had been in the Edgar Winter Group, he wrote Free Ride. Oh, yeah. Come on

and take a free ride. He was the bass player in that group. But he wrote great songs. And Dan had made a record and wanted to go out and tour behind his record. And he had seen me play

with the Scratch Band. Right. And so he had a home studio in Westport, Connecticut. Dan passed away some years ago. But another great guy and happened to be from Pennsylvania. So I played with a lot of Pennsylvania. I played with Daryl Hall and John Oates, you know, Pennsylvania guys. Then I just started meeting people and getting these different gigs, you know.

And I was at a party one time in New York city and David Bowie was at the party. And David had a woman named Coco that worked with him for many, many years. Yeah. And Coco came over to me at this party and she said, I'd like you to, you know,id wants to meet you so i go over and say hello to david i'm thrilled you know i can't believe it and then a little later she comes back over and she says david's doing a video tomorrow do you want to be in it yeah and i said well yeah of course she said great she tells me where it is and what time you know two o'clock and i said should i bring my guitar and she goes you're a guitar player and i said yeah she goes wait a minute she goes over then she comes back bring your guitar

you can play the part of the guitar player in the video yeah and then i wound up doing a very limited amount of of live playing with david but i did get to play with him a little bit so you know you just be somewhere you'd meet somebody and then but did get to play with him a little bit. So, you know, you just be somewhere and you'd meet somebody. But you recorded with Hall & Ozo, right? Yeah, yeah, a lot. I was with them from 79 or 78 maybe to 85. And that's when you got the SNL gig. And then I had been around SNL in the late 70s in the first five years oh because you were didn't you were involved with gilda right didn't you marry gilda gilda were married yeah um she did a uh one woman

show on broadway yeah in the summer of 78 and i i was in the house band there that's how we met no kidding yeah she was kind of amazing right right? She was the greatest, man. Nice, nice person. Yeah, so funny, so talented. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, Hall & Oates, they were like hit machines, man. I mean, she was.

They were huge. When I joined them, they were kind of in a slump. They had had like the Sarah Smile rich girl. Yeah, yeah. Mid 70s, 75, 74, 75. Yeah, yeah. And they got real big but then some stuff that they did didn't hit as as hard and um when they hired me at first i was getting 200 a week

100 to play guitar and 100 to drive one of the station wagons yeah so you know and we and we were playing bars no kidding that way they went down that hard yeah yeah holy business is very music business is very unforgiving you know yeah for sure yeah but i mean it seems you're not wow but then then pretty quick within about a year uh we were recording and and they started having some hits and then private eyes was the first one that was a number one and then they had a then they just got huge huge you know man eater yeah and and uh you make my dreams come true like so many songs wow so but in between sarah smile and man eater they were playing dives yeah oh my god that must have been a fucking lesson uh yeah but for me you know it was the same kind of places i'd always been playing

when i first started yeah so it was no different but then when it took off then all of a sudden now we're playing you know the the big arenas and play in towns and we're traveling and we're, they got gigantically huge in Japan. We would go to Japan for weeks. Wow. And base out of Tokyo and fly out to Osaka and Fukuoka and Nagoya and Hokkaido and all those places. That must've been exciting. It was amazing.

It was wonderful. And that, and that was my first taste of like the big time, you know, playing them. So it was really exciting. And that was my first taste of like the big time you know yeah yeah so it was really exciting and you know we were young and a band like that uh a pop band like that attracts you know uh a lot of beautiful girls that's for sure yeah yeah seemed like it yeah yeah so that's fun so It was. What about when you recorded with Jagger, did you feel that there was tension in the band, in the Stones? I didn't know anything about the Stones, because at that point, I only knew Mick.

Later, I got to meet Keith. But I mean, you love the Stones. Bill Wyman and stuff. You love the Stones. You know Jagger was doing a solo record. How'd he pick you to do it? I mean, you love the Stones. Bill Wyman and stuff. You love the Stones. You know, Jagger was doing a solo record. How'd he pick you to do it? I mean, we were around.

Mick was living in Manhattan and I was living in Manhattan and we were around. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had met him. Yeah. And I was doing Saturday Night Live. So he had seen me. Okay.

And he would come to the show and stuff. I remember sitting with him watching stevie ray vaughn play oh wow really yeah you know and talking about stevie and and how he played and stuff wow but um what do you think what do you think of that uh you know stevie was something huh oh it's great stevie to me is the ultimate and i mean this as a compliment i mean this not in any derogatory way he's the ultimate bar band guitar player right the ultimate he could cover somebody else's song cover a jimmy hendrix song yeah do it pretty much almost as good you know as as jimmy did it yeah which is really going somewhere yeah nobody else nobody else could do that right yes stevie was fabulous and and really based in

the blues knew what he was doing could really play and a sweet guy yeah it's so sad like it's so sad man the way he went down because he and he was clean and just like what a fucking horrible accident at that place alpine valley i had just played there two nights before with with dylan wow that same gig and then two days later stevie plays and and that thing happened and i remember being at soundcheck and we we heard you know we heard the news and and we were we were just devastated oh god it's just terrible terrible i his brother's a good player too jimmy's great and a great guy great amazing guy yeah he now he was in the fabulous thunderbirds yeah i love him

love the 70s like mid 70s when i was still in the scratch band living in connecticut we would go and see the thunderbirds great and and man they were they were great i loved it yeah i love seeing them i grew up in albuquerque new mexico they came did this old biker bar the golden inn in between albuquerque and santa fe and i was in high school and i was like gotta see these fuckers yep you grew up out there yeah i did yeah i like albuquerque i do too you know it's a it's a weird place now uh and it got a little beat up but i love it yeah the whole country got beat up man that's for sure it's still about now it's still being beat up yeah the way things are now the live music business is destroyed half the clubs won't come back they'll go they're gonna go bankrupt right they can't take off three months yeah these little places yeah you know the bigger

places yeah you know city winery will still be there but the the little places the joints a lot of them won't be able to come back and it's terrible and it's going to have an effect for years on music yep it's fucking sad and we're in the middle of it we don't even see i don't see the i don't see how we get out of it We're still in the fucking tunnel here. We're still in the middle of it. And nobody, nobody knows. So, well, this record that you did with the Leroy bell is a pretty powerful record.

It's a, it's sort of a, a, a sort of a socially and politically relevant record. These are songs. I'm glad that you hear that. I'm very glad that you hear that. Yeah, man. I mean, you know, these are songs written. I'm glad that you hear that. I'm very glad that you hear that. Yeah, man. These are songs written

to the moment that we're living in now in a lot of ways. Yep. There's an intensity to it and honesty to it. He's a hell of a singer. How did this record come about? My wife, Taylor Barton,

heard some of Leroy's songs about a year and a half ago now maybe two years ago she heard this stuff and then in january of 2019 we got a hold of the roy and invited him to come here to the house and sit and i've been looking for a singer for 30 years well you've done a few records but not that many right solo records yeah he's he's done some records what about you you how many were solo records you do i did a few solo records i don't know two or three i don't i don't remember i listened to the first one it's sort of the the kind of punky one oh that one yeah in the world yeah in the world 1980 yeah yeah yeah so anyway uh laroy came to the house and we sat down

and he had just written that song america yeah it's on the record and i just loved it you know i said well yeah okay and we started playing it and the way I played and the way he sang, it just fit together. You know, it was exactly what I had been looking for for all those years. So we started recording right away. A friend of mine has a recording studio right near here. We went over and right away started making some music. And we wound up getting this deal with BMG. And the record was going to be released at South by Southwest in March.

But of course, that got canceled. Right. You know, again, this whole thing with the virus closing everything down. Yeah. Now, fortunately, here the digital world will work in our favor that we will be able to get the record out in front of people uh-huh made a video already for um for america uh there was just talk starting around today uh doing another video for one of the other songs but yeah we we, we, Leroy just writes that stuff that it is political and it is saying something,

but he doesn't slap you in the face with it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I liked the, I liked also that song code code. I'm going on. Yeah.

That's I've always played that song. I always loved that song. I, when I was back in the folk scare, I saw Buffy St. Marie play that song i always loved that song when i was back in the folk scare yeah i saw buffy saint marie play that song probably in 1962 or something you know and i always loved that song i've always performed it you know so i was glad to be able to get that on record well yeah it's like you know that that kind of folk groove played you know with that you know with your you know

with your electric guitar it's got like it's great like you don't, you know, with that, you know, with your, you know, with your electric guitar, it's got like, it's great. Like you don't, I, you know, it's familiar, but you don't hear it a lot anymore. And it just, it sounds great. And that's a, it's a song about drugs, right? Yeah. I mean, it's a song about Kodak. Yeah. Yep. And so, you know, that, that always, you know, is kind of an evergreen topic, but, but who the fuck, who's playing drums, dude?

Yeah, right? Who is that? Now, on Kodan, I believe that that's Josh Dion, who is a great drummer, lives in Brooklyn, and he's kind of like a really happening guy right now. And I was lucky I met him and got him to come and play on. So Josh plays on a bunch of stuff. Sean Pelton plays on some of the songs.

On America, it's both Josh and Sean. Yeah. Good drum sound on that record. Guitars sound great. Thanks. Yeah, I thought that we did wind up getting some good sounds yeah man so well i i mean i wish you all the luck with that and also like uh so now you're still only do you do you got to have a 59 les paul no i sold the last one i had i've had a bunch of them over the years oh

yeah yeah yeah um after a while you know uh i just wasn't ever playing on les paul oh really that was that was it yeah yeah yeah i had kind of like you know worn that out i still have a couple you know but not a not a 59 sunburst oh no all right right 54 junior oh yeah 54 junior one of the first ones that is magic i saw it on ebay about 10 years ago i saw the picture of it and i went that's really primitive you know look at that the finish is weird everything about it's weird and uh it's just a magical guitar oh that's like that's a great looking guitar i can picture it With the one pickup right Yeah yeah Like yours

But the single cut away And the somber is finished But I always play My Telecaster you know Yeah But the guitar that I did A lot of this record with The Stony Hill record

Is a 1962 Epiphone Sheraton Huh Wait I got it right here I'll show it to you is a 1962 Epiphone Sheraton. Huh. Wait, I got it right here. I'll show it to you. Oh, yeah. That's beautiful.

Right? Yeah. And this is a 62. Yeah. And again, I saw this on eBay. No kidding. Like about six, eight years ago. And I could tell.

I've had Sheratons before. I've had other 62s. I had a blonde 62. With this one, I could tell something about it was magical. And it is. It's either somebody worked. At this point, Gibson was making epiphones yeah by 1958 they started they brought up and um this guitar was either made by an employee or was a custom order or something because it's got a lot of unusual things it's a little bit wider yeah

but you know the fingerboard's a little wider and i like i like i got big big palms well man it's been great talking to you yeah um oh yeah i wanted to ask you like i remember a while back you got some flack for uh playing at the republican convention that must have sucked well it was um it didn't doesn't bother me you know uh you're always gonna like when i was on saturday night live i would get fan mail you know yeah and if i got a thousand letters you know 900 of them would really like me and 100 of them would hate me yeah hey there were people that hated me you know if you go out in the public that's gonna happen so here's my thing about playing the Republican convention.

I'm not a Republican. Yeah, I do not support Donald Trump. I don't like Donald Trump. I think he's done a lot of really ugly things. Yeah, I think his subtle approval of this white nationalism thing is just horrible. Yeah. And has set this country back a hundred years yeah that's what america's about yeah that's what that song america's about right yeah is that attitude

you know um so it's just a gig you got offered a gig i played at the 2012 republican convention for mitt romney yeah and he didn't win. I don't care. I've played at mafia weddings. They were great gigs. They paid a lot. They were nice. The food was good. They were nice people. I don't know if they were nice all the time, but they were nice to me.

I think we can probably bank on them not being nice all the time. Probably not. No, I get it. The Republican convention, I'm a New York City guy, right? I lived in New York City for 40 years. Yeah. Trump, before he got to be president, right?

All those years before, he was a joke in New York City. Nobody took him seriously in July of 2016 when I played at that thing. Yeah. He wasn't going to win. Yeah. Everybody thought Hillary. Yeah. Hillary's in. Yeah. You know, the first night at that convention, when he was introduced and he came out. In the in the rock and roll smoke. Right. You know? Yeah.

It looked like a poison show. Yeah. A Motley Crue show or something. Yeah, right. And I looked at Jeff, the keyboard player, and he looked at me, and Jeff said, he's going to win. We went, yeah. Oh, shit, man. So the crowd went crazy?

The crowd went crazy. And here we are. Here we are up yeah yeah well no i'm not i'm not i'm not a political person is it yeah you just took a gig yeah it was a gig it paid a lot you know i got to pay all my guys give them a real good payday for three or four days work and i took home a bunch of money you know um but i never ever thought when i when i first got the gig yeah and took i never thought he was gonna win yeah yeah yeah and i wouldn't i wouldn't now that i know where the guy's really at i would never do it again sure yeah no you're not gonna play trump's party yeah no well that's good well man i wish you great

luck with this record and uh it was certainly great talking to you i love talking about music and uh you know and take care of yourself man thank you you too okay that was ge and me talking guitars and whatnot uh the new album coming out in August is called Stony Hill. It's a collaboration with the soul singer Leroy Bell. Let's play some guitar. Thank you. ¶¶ Boomer lives. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

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