WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 772 - David Bromberg

Episode Date: December 29, 2016

Singer-songwriter David Bromberg is a human bridge between at least a half-dozen different styles of music. David and Marc talk about the pivotal evolution of modern music, as folk transitioned into rock, and all the people David worked with over the years, including Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, The Band, The Grateful Dead, and Reverend Gary Davis. Plus, David explains why he quit for 20 years and developed a highly specific obsession. 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.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. 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 talked 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. Lock the gates! All right, let's do this.

How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuckadelics? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF.

How's it going? Are you okay? Did you get through the Christmas and the Kwanzaa and the Chanukah? Did you get through whatever you went through? You all right? I don't know what to tell you. You know, I was in New York and I had a nice time. I think the last time I talked to you, I was in the city, in the hotel room.

But I hadn't done a lot yet. I did one thing. I did one thing when i last talked to you and i was a little bit uh cagey about it non uh non-disclosing but i will tell you now because on monday our first wtf of the new year i will share a about an hour-long conversation I had with the boss, with the Bruce, with the Springsteen out there in Jersey. Hung out with him at his place. Not actually in the house, but out in the studio building.

A stable-looking building. Looks like a stable, but it's a studio. And I talked to Bruce. So that's going to happen on monday i thought i'd tease that out of the gate for those of you who are listening on the downtime or for those of you who uh listen no matter what even though you may not know who david bromberg is i i would imagine that's fairly common i'm not saying that in a negative way about david but i barely knew who he was i'll explain to you what happened with that and why it happened. But okay, so New York City.

What? It's amazing. I was there over Christmas. It was nice. It was quiet. The weather was pleasant. It wasn't chaos. The emperor incoming was out of town.

So traffic was reasonable. People were nice. I tell you, man, the one thing I noticed when I was walking around New York was, of course, just all the different kinds of people. Everybody in the streets enjoying themselves, walking through the streets. All is one in New York City in a lot of ways. And all the two, it just, I kept walking down streets thinking like, how is this bad? How is all this diversity bad?

How is all this? How are all these different kind of people not adding something interesting and unique and proactive to the to the world in the country we live in? How is this intersection and community of people, all different kinds of people moving through the streets in New York? Not a beautiful thing. moving through the streets in New York, not a beautiful thing. Then I started thinking about so many of the places that voted against tolerance, that voted against diversity and where they live. And they don't even have the level of diversity that you see in New York.

I don't know what I don't understand it. It was so nice to eat at places like Mogador and just be, you know, in a packed little restaurant with people from all over the world, speaking all different kinds of languages and just thinking like, this is amazing. This is how it's supposed to work. And then it all comes raining down on my head again. What the hell is going on? Do you know what I mean? Of course you know what I mean.

Of course you do. I mean, look, I hope all of you out there had a comforting holiday, as comforting and nice as possible. But, you know, it's just hard not to be pensive. I mean, we should be pensive. It's just we've entered this time where we don't know what's real and what isn't. And we only have our own perception to rely on. And how we load up that perception, that's on us. How we want to inform ourselves, what sources we draw from what are our our our what are what our priorities and beliefs are and how we buttress or question those priorities and beliefs do we detach entirely thinking that focusing on our own business and life in the most morally

responsible way possible is enough to be proactive i mean we have lives right but it just might not be enough because we have to be morally responsible citizens of a country we still believe in. We have to believe and we have to push back against an avalanche of anti-democratic, psychological brutalization on all fronts, soon to be government sanctioned.

And obviously some of it was before too, but you know what I'm saying? I mean, we can't buckle and be defeatist and we can't have blinders on, which is a drag because there are some really great blinder options out there. I mean, you can get all of them, all the blinder options you want on the internet. All different types of blinders are available. all different types of blinders are available. Bottom line is,

we might actually have to get involved, get our hands dirty and help others in a real way. I mean, me too. I'm talking about me. I'm not saying any of this in a condescending way. I think about what I need to do all the time. That's what I've been doing during this downtime. I have to stop thinking and start doing things. I can't think that talking about this in a broad and vague way is actually doing

something. I can't think that yammering on, but yeah, it is. I guess it kind of is, but I know there's more I can do. And I'm just like trying to figure it out, get clear on what that might be. And I hope you are too over these holidays. It's easy to get overwhelmed and terrified and hopeless. And then that becomes debilitating and can provoke a depressive state. Then that depressive state becomes the focus, the bleak feelings of dread. They are not the pathology. The events you are reacting to are pathological. Your brain and body are doing the appropriate thing.

And we need to relieve it by coming together. We cannot let a fucking half a nationwide gaslighting event stop us from keeping our brains and our sense of fucking focus and what is right and wrong. God damn it all right but all that said i hope you i hope you uh got some cool presents i hope you ate some good things i hope you don't feel too bad about yourself as we enter this new year there are enough external things to feel bad about let yourself off the hook a bit with your interior attacks. If you are waging those battles against you, let's externalize them. My friends use that critical energy for things that need to be criticized.

That aren't you. Myself involved. Correct minded people. Friends. Countrymen. So, New York City. Outstanding time. I saw, I ate at Mogador.

I ate at Butter. I got in touch with Alex Gornicelli, who I've had on this show. And that's her restaurant. I went there with Sarah and her friend Iris. And then, where else? I ate at Viselka, of course. I got a slice at Joe's Pizza, of course. And I went and saw Othello, this new production that is on now.

The guy who directed it is Sam Gold. He's the guy that directs Annie Baker's shows. And in the show was Daniel Craig. You know, he was James Bond, wasn't he? And David Oyelowo. I hope I'm pronouncing that the guy from Selma and uh it was pretty amazing because I can't handle Shakespeare because I can't follow it my eyes just peel back and I get lost pretty quickly but this was a it was a very up front production it was at the um the New York Workshop, so you're right on top of it.

The entire set and theater was covered in plywood. It was taking place in what was an army barracks, a contemporary army barracks. It was very broadly lit. The entire space was lit up for a lot of the show, except when other effects came into hand. You could see the actors spitting and talking, and I could follow it. I could follow the story, and I was so proud of myself. I was like, I know what's happening. I knew the basic story going in because I wikied it,

and I was able to follow it for the most part and parse the language properly, and it was very exciting for me. And that was no easy task because I didn't realize it at the beginning of the play, but towards the middle I realized, holy shit, I knew I recognized the guy in front of me because at intermission, I saw Frances McDormand, who was there, and she was with the guy. And I'm like, oh, shit, that's Frances McDormand and her Coen brother. They're married. So they were sitting in front of me and directly across from me was Rachel Weiss.

Weiss? Is it Weiss? Whatever. I like her. She's's a good actress but I guess she's married to Daniel Craig but she was sitting like directly across from me so I had those distractions Cohen brother Francis McDormand Rachel Weiss directly across from me and Othello happening in between us and I stayed on the Othello, occasionally glancing at the side of, I believe it's Joel Cohen's head, and asked myself, what's happening in there? How is the Cohen brother processing Othello? With Frances, I thought like, well, she's an actress.

She's watching the acting. She's enjoying the Shakespeare because she knows Shakespeare and she appreciates it. And she's doing that way. But what is the Cohen brother doing? How is he framing it how is it how is it entering his perception how is he boxing othello is it provoking things is he thinking of other things oh and i saw this amazing show at the new metropolitan museum of

art extension i guess it would be it's the old whitney which i have a a lot of childhood memories at going to the whitney with my mother seeing seeing James Calder's circus sitting right there in the foyer. But it's now the Brewer Metropolitan Museum. And they had Sarah wanted to see this Kerry James Marshall retrospective, which was probably the high point of my trip to New York. If you're going to New York, if you live in New York, go see that before it goes away. These spectacular large canvases, small canvases. It's a whole retrospective of a man.

He's still alive. He's an LA artist, primarily African-American themes, but so many layers and so many different stylistic elements to each painting and so powerful. Very socially conscious a very sort of gut and brain punching work and uh solid and it's a big retrospective and it just blew my fucking mind and that's why you go to new york to to engage in in immediate culture and enjoy the diversity around you and the miracle of New York City,

and then go and see some actual shit and get kicked in the fucking head with some fucking culture. That's how they say it. Get kicked in the head with culture, NYC. Christmas morning was very quiet at the hotel I was staying at. I went down to do some writing. And there was a guy there. He's the only other guy in the lobby.

And he's wearing headphones. And I could hear the music from the headphones filtering out. Which is not a pet peeve of mine, but it can be annoying. And I was like, ah, fuck. I'm trying to think. And now I've got to listen to what that guy's listening to. But, you know,

in a very kind of a broken up way, probably in the worst way possible. But I listened, I'm listening closer. And I'd recognize that tune. It was some early Tom Waits stuff. Just, you know,

I heard Tom Waits just, you know, phlegmally shouting out of this guy's ear phone. One side of his headset, one side of his Bose noise reductions was squawking out some early weights. But I did recognize that. I don't remember what it was right now. And I was annoyed.

And then I remembered that tom waits once at was asked what's his favorite kind of music and he said an am radio across the street and i'm like well that's exactly what that sounds like so i'm going to appreciate waits as he would appreciate his favorite music just for across three tables coming out of the side of a guy's head. Still annoying. So my guest today, David Bromberg. David Bromberg is a guitar player and multi-instrumentalist, but he was, years ago, I had this record that I inherited from somewhere when I was in junior high that I got a big bunch of records from my aunt's house,

and one of them had a sketch of a guy playing guitar on front, just really, just a line drawing. And it was a David Bromberg album. And I remember trying to listen to it, but I just couldn't lock in. It was a little folky, a little laid back, you know, and I just couldn't get into it, but I never forgot the record. And then some from somewhere, I got the new David Bromberg record in the mail. This was like some 30, 40 years later. And I'm like, this guy is still at it. What's his story? He did a lot of Sessions work.

He was involved with the Dead, with the band, with M.U. Harris in New York. I just, you know, I get nostalgic for an era that I missed. And I'm like, I want to talk to that guy. So I found him, and I'm like I want to talk to that guy so I I found him and I talked to him and he's got a new record out the blues the whole blues and nothing but the blues you can get that wherever you get music it's a straight up kind of blues record all different styles of blues uh David Brongberg is a very earnest guy and a very earnest player. And he took like a 20-year hiatus to learn about something else, which I found fascinating.

So here now is me and David Brongberg. 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. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead

courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. I'm Burke. I'm Burke. Of all the guitars I owned, I kept one. Which one?

An Esquire from 1958. Really? Yeah, and if I lose that, my career's over. So you're a Fender guy? Oh, yeah. All the way back. No Gibsons? I had a few Gibson Electrics.

Yeah. Too many knobs. Gibson Electrics. Yeah. Too many knobs. Yeah. You just want two knobs. Yeah. Just two knobs and a switch. Hell, one, you know, volume tone. Yeah. What the hell do you need?

Yeah, I know. Well, you know, it's funny because I listen to the new record and it's old blues tunes, right? Yeah. But you mix it up. I mean, you do acoustic and then you get, you know, you get dirty with it and, you tunes right yeah but you mix it up i mean you do acoustic and then you get you know you get dirty with it and you know and then you you do the whole the whole spectrum yeah yeah there's two guitar players on uh on there you know uh mark cosgrove a brilliant guitar player yeah you can tell him he's got a beautiful sweet sound yeah mine is the nasty

sound that's me and you like nasty was that always did you evolve into that because your earlier stuff isn't nasty is it uh no i i guess not i i used to play more off the uh uh neck pickup of the same guitar right now i play mostly off the so it has the bite to it yeah so um you know going back to that like here's the weird story about a couple things happened when I saw that you were around. Is that I had, when I was a kid, I'm 53, and I'd somehow inherited a stack of records. And your first record was in there. The first one. The one with the sketch on front. Yeah.

And I remember as a kid who was in high school listening to townie rock and some blues and stuff. I couldn't quite, you know, lock into it. But I kept it. And it was always just there. That sketch of you demanding, like, why can't I get this? Because I think it was just a little too laid back for me. I was kind of an amped kid.

And then I get this new record that you put out, and then I got to go back, and I'm like, I know this guy. He's the real thing, this guy, and I got to get it. And then I listened to the new record and I ended up playing it like six or seven times playing it along with that went back to the old records and like kind of regrouped around it and I knew you would play it on a lot of records and then I get this other stack of records recently and for some reason I pull uh Derringer's record all-american boy Rick Derringer's record and I'm poking around researching you and you're like

you're on that record and I'm like what the fuck is happening but the thing that that fascinates me about uh you and and guys of uh uh you know your ilk is that you were really there at that transition where that first you know people like you were a kid i imagine when you first started hearing those original blues records because i Because I just watched a documentary that involved the story of, what's his name, the guy who went down and found or tried to find Sun House. And it dawned on me that I didn't really realize that that generation, and that's like in the mid-60s, that those guys were just sort of these voices on records that didn't exist on the real plane in a way. And that was sort of where you were coming from, wasn't it? Kind of, except I was very lucky. I mean, I was a student of Reverend Gary Davis's.

Yeah. I was, you know. Where'd you find him? Like, where'd you grow up? I grew up in Westchester County. In New York. Yeah. But I found the Reverend when I was going to college.

And I'm walking down Bleecker Street. Where'd you go to college? Yeah. But I found the Reverend when I was going to college, and I'm walking down Bleecker Street. Where'd you go to college? Columbia. Okay. And what were you studying? I was only there for a year and a half. Oh, that music got you. I'm on a leave of absence.

I don't know if they'll take me back. Yeah. You can try. They might offer you a job. All right. So you're walking down Bleecker Street. What year are we talking? Must have been in the 60s, mid to late 60s. And you're like 20.

Yeah. Yeah, something like that. And what happened? So there's a sandwich sign out in front of a place called the Dragon's Den. It said Reverend Gary Davis here this afternoon. It was the middle of the afternoon. And you knew who he was. I knew because I'd already gotten a record of his.

Yeah. Like a 78? No. There was a record that he had half of and Pink Anderson had half of. And I had that. And it was a wonderful record. So I went in and listened. Was there anyone there? There were a few people there. Yeah. And it was great yeah i mean it was unbelievable and he must have been in his 60s yeah uh-huh and i went up to him after and i i

asked him if he'd give me lessons and he said yes uh five dollars bring the money honey uh-huh that was irreverent and that's that's how it started after a while instead of five dollars i'd lead him around. Yeah. What do you mean? He needed help? He was blind. He was always blind. There was another blind one, too.

Blind Lemon, what was that guy? Blind Lemon Jefferson. There was also Blind Blake. And Blind Fuller. Blind Boy Fuller, who was a student of Reverend Gary Davis'. Also. Yeah. So what was Reverend Gary Davis' history? He was a multi-instrumentalist, right?

Like he played a few things. Yeah, but mostly guitar. Uh-huh. Slide? No slide. He could play slide. He just didn't bother with it very much. Did you find, you know, in studying this and working with these guys, that there was a distinct difference in between those regions in terms of the music that was being played?

Well, the Reverend was just about unique. Some of Blind Boy Fuller's stuff sounds like the Reverend. And that's the only recorded stuff that I've heard that really sounds like the Reverend. And the only other guitar play that the Reverend would speak of complimentary was Blind Blake, who was another phenomenon. Yeah. And the Reverend used to say, on record, there's nobody could beat Blind Blake. And now, you know, he didn't have anything good to say about anybody else.

Really? Yeah. Very competitive or just critical? He was a whole lot better than everybody else. Uh-huh. And what did you learn from him? I mean, like, what did he show you? Were these open tunings?

What were you working with? No, it wasn't open tuning stuff. Yeah. Five-finger chords, and I do mean five finger chords yeah you know with the thumb over the edge and these uh but and you still use those yeah yeah and um when i started with him i was playing with three fingers and he only used two and i figured well i can do much more what picking yeah really he's one of those two finger guysinger guys. Guy talking to Matt Sweeney about this. The two-finger thing is really big in the blues and I just started hearing about it. Well, I thought that three fingers would be better and after a while I discovered it isn't. Why? For what he does. Yeah. For what the Reverend

does because he would do these rolls that were really syncopated and when you just did them like this with either double finger or double thumb, you got a great sound. So it's a unique sound. Yeah. If you want to play a certain way, you use three fingers, but if you want to have that sound,

you play two. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he did things that I can't really duplicate. He used to pick every single note with his first finger and some of that stuff was real fast how he did that is beyond me but he did it really so just running up the strings yeah moving up moving down moving up those top three three strings one finger yeah he was amazing all right so now you're down the village you're taking lessons from reverend gary davis

you're in columbia studying what the lessons were the Bronx to begin. Oh, that's where you lived? Well, when I first met him, he was living in a little hut, a shack that was in between two large buildings. And then at a certain point, Peter Paul Mary recorded his version of Samson and Delilah. Oh, yeah. And they got him to copyright it. And he moved to a little house in a nice neighborhood in Queens. Oh, so they did the right thing. They sure did the right thing.

And it was on one of their big selling records. Yeah. And it got him out of the garbage. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, it was. Well, they're not necessarily, you wouldn't call them blues people,

blues men. No. Peter, Paul, and Mary. No, but they had big ears, you know. Yeah, they're not necessarily, you wouldn't call them blues people, blues men. No. Peter, Paul, and Mary. No, but they had big ears, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's very interesting to me that there was, you know, just a few kind of like young Jewish dudes that really, you know, took to the blues and became real blues men. There were a lot of us.

Right. Yeah. Like Bloomfield. Yeah. Did you know Mike? I met him once and we played together once. How did you like his playing?

Oh, he was great. Because I know a lot of Jewish guys that love the blues and they're certainly part of the history of sort of resurrecting the blues on record and in finding blues guys and whatnot. Do you think there's a connection between being jewish

and the blues music blues bob dylan there's another good example yeah blues is soulful yeah and full of irony yeah so there you go there you go were you brought up religious no no no just kind of you know anything but religious. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. At Pesach, my father would always say, this God must be a very insecure creature to require so much constant praise. What did he do? He was a shrink. Oh, he was? He was a psychiatrist.

In the city? First in the city, and then he moved it out to Tarrytown, where we lived. And what were you studying when you went to Columbia? I thought I was going to be a musicologist because what I wanted to do was play music, but I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be something white collar. Yeah. What is the job of a musicologist?

Damned if I know. Well, you sort of are one now. Well, musicologists study different aspects of music i mean some of them study construction some of them study composers some of them study uh cultures yeah you know yeah so when you when you start taking lessons with with the reverend this must have been like you know an amazing sort of strange and beautiful opportunity that, you know, you knew you were integrating yourself into part of history in a way.

I didn't think of it that way. Yeah. I just knew I was learning some great guitar shit. But you knew he was like the real deal. Oh, yes. Like he wasn't like some more back of the music store guitar teacher. You knew you were being being there was a legacy you

were being passed along some very specific historical wisdom this is it's true that it was that i was being passed some historical wisdom but i i really you know i'm i'm not that bright and i i didn't see it as uh in that way at all all i knew was that i was learning to play some stuff that very few other people on the planet could play okay and it was blues specifically in that way at all. All I knew was that I was learning to play some stuff that very few other people on the planet could play. Okay, and it was blues specifically, and that was the music you loved? No, it wasn't blues.

No? The Reverend would not play blues in public. He played religious tunes. And what a lot of people miss is that, you know who Blind Willie Johnson was. Yeah. He sang only religious tunes. Right. And you know who Bessie Johnson was. Yeah. He sang only religious tunes. Right.

And you know who Bessie Smith was. Yeah. Yeah. When they pressed albums of Bessie Smith and Blind Willie Johnson, they would press twice as many of Blind Willie Johnson's because he sold twice as much. Because of the religious songs.

The religious songs sold much better than blues. Well, Sam Cooke was in the Soul Starters for years. I mean, gospel music is connected. I mean, that's right. And it was always connected, religious music, spiritual music. But the point is that in the community, the African-American community of the 30s even, also much later, I'm sure,

the people weren't listening to the blues. They were listening to religious music and sermons, recorded sermons. Was he a good preacher? The reverend? Yeah. He was, but he had a pretty thick accent, and I couldn't always understand him. Yeah. One night, Stefan Grossman, who was maybe his closest student, was doing a concert in the village, and I was playing at the gaslight down the basement.

Yeah. And I didn't know it, but the Reverend went to hear Stefan, and then I saw him when I came on stage sitting out in the audience. So I played one of his tunes, and I played one of mine and dedicated it to him, and he stood up and gave a sermon. And it started, I have no children, but I have sons. And boy, man, that was just a great thing for me. It's moving. So before you even started to take lessons from the reverend, you were playing. Yeah.

Out in the village in 19... No, I don't think I was playing out. No. No. But you were playing yeah out in the village in 19 no I don't think I was playing out no no but you were noodling around yeah I was playing yeah I started playing when I was 13 and what was your music at that point like what'd you like was it all always folk music and blues music no it was whatever I heard right you know I liked everything on the radio and that's how I started playing you know the three four chords yeah liked everything on the radio, and that's how I started playing, you know, the three, four chords, what was on the radio. Were you ever in a rock band in high school or anything? I wasn't in a rock band, no.

I was in a folk band. Yeah. Yeah. Folk was a big thing. It was a big thing. It's hard to imagine. Like, did you see the movie, the Llewyn Davis, the Cullen Brothers movie? No.

You didn't? No, I didn't, because Terry Thal, who was Dave Van Ronk's wife, said that she saw it. And I know Terry and I trust her. And she said what disappointed her was there was no joy in it and that they missed all the joy that we all took in playing the music. And I figured then there's nothing in it for me. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, if I think about it, that's sort of true. It is sort of a dark tale in a way. And they missed that. You know, they got a lot of things right.

But according to Terry, I mean, I can't say firsthand, but I believe that they missed. That's why we did it. Yeah. You know, we were having a ball. But it was before you, when it started, you started, the folk thing started actually before it, it wasn't political in nature to begin with. Oh, yes, it was. It was.

It very definitely was. And who were the leaders of it? Who were the inspirations? Like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie? Yeah. And that was the first generation? I mean, those were the guys before you? Well, before them them there was actually

carl sandberg and a guy named john jacob niles there were carl sandberg the poet yeah uh-huh but the the popularization of the the the the folk music and the working man's yeah then it was lead belly pete seger uh uh right yeah then did you see lead belly no never saw him never saw him oh pete yeah i saw pete a number of times uh-huh and so when you got to it when you got to the village who was around who were part of the crew who were you kind of like meeting at the diner afterwards and smoking cigarettes with well richie havens right he was, he's an interesting player, huh? Oh, he's a marvelous player. Oh, my God. And he invented his own, his whole thing.

You know, he invented his own tuning. Yeah. He plays mostly with his thumb over the neck. Right. You know, and his time, his right hand. Yeah, very fast. But breaks down the beat. I mean, he's brilliant.

And he was a big deal. Yeah. Well, you know, I And he was a big deal. Yeah. Well, you know, I used to play guitar for him. Yeah. When Dino wasn't around, there was a kid named Dino who learned from Richie and played great. Where did Richie learn? He taught himself. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. But that thumb over the top thing is very specific. I think Hendrix did it a little bit, too. Well, so did Gary Davis, but not across four strings or five strings. So, okay, so it's Richie Havens and you. Emmylou Harris, Paul Siebel. Emmylou Harris started down the village, huh? Well, I don't know that she started there, but she might have started in D.C.

and came up to the village for a few years. And this is mid-60s yeah who were the people that you would go watch go out of your way to see no matter when they played gil turner and zaharia malmoly uh-huh um let's see oh you know who we left out of the first wave of we left out odetta oh that's right yeah uh i I thought of that because I mentioned Zaharia's last name. She just performed as Zaharia. And I once called Odetta by her whole name. And she said, you don't do that.

That's too powerful. Oh, really? What's Odetta's last whole name? She didn't want me to say. And you can't say it still? I love her. All right. you didn't want me to say. And you can't say it still. I love her. All right, so when did you first start achieving success?

How did it happen? Like, when did you record? When did you start being recognized? Well, the first national act to ask me to play with him was Tom Paxton. And I played with him. And then it was back to the village. Opening. No, no, no, as his guitar player.

I was an accompanist. That was my whole thing. I didn't sing. Yeah. You sing. I do now. Yeah. Yeah, but back then I didn't.

I was guitar player for all the people that I, most of the people I mentioned. So Paxton's the first guy. These are guys that play as well though, right? You know, most of them. but yeah but I would I would add ornamentation and solos and things and when so he was the first guy that kind of uh the first national act I mean yeah you know I mentioned Paul Siebel and Emmy Liu I used to play guitar for them and for Richie and yeah anybody who'd let me yeah right yeah and so you. And so you toured with Paxton.

But the big thing was probably I ran into a guy named Donnie Brooks, who was a harmonica player. Yeah. Introduced me to a pal of his named, well, eventually named Jerry Jeff Walker. Right. And Jerry Jeff was part of a jazz fusion rock band. Really? Yeah. Called Circus Maximus,

along with a great songwriter named Gary White. The rest of the band hated Jerry Jeff's tunes, and I loved playing on them. We met and we played together, so I used to drag them around. Was it primarily country? His stuff, yeah, was very country. So, you know,ul colby might say well i'm looking for an opening act i was not an act right so so i'd

say well let me see if jerry jeff will do it you know yeah yeah bring jerry jeff and then we used to go to uh wbai fm and this was a very important thing in Jerry Jeff's career, and mine, because I became known through being Jerry Jeff's band. Right. And we used to go up to WBAI, Radio Unnameable, Bob Fass. It was an important show, and it went from midnight until. And what did you do up there? Well, we played.

Live? Yeah, yeah. I think it was someone else had brought me up there Yeah And so I would get Jerry Jeff to come When I could Right And the two of us would go up there

And we'd play And Bob Fast fell in love with Mr. Butch Angles And he recorded it three separate times And put them on a tape loop And if we weren't there He'd play that several times a night Your version of it Not mine Jerry Jeff Is that his song? Yeah He wrote that song He absolutely wrote it Yeah and put them on a tape loop. And if we weren't there, he'd play that several times a night. Your version of it?

Not mine, Jerry Jeffs. Is that his song? Yeah, he wrote it. He wrote that song. He absolutely wrote it, yeah. Some people have asked me, who really wrote it? He wrote it. Yeah? Yeah.

Like, that is one of those songs. Yeah. Like, everybody knows. Yeah, it's a great, great song. Did you play on the original recording of it? Yeah. Yeah, you want the story? Yeah.

Okay. There was a guy down in the village, a publisher and manager and doing a lot of things named David Wilkes. And I remember him taking me and Jerry Jeff to an airplane, a little Piper Cub, and we flew down to Memphis. Yeah. The song was already out before Jerry Jeff recorded it because at Jilly's Bar, which was where Sinatra would hang out, the piano player was a guy named Bobby Cole, and he heard it on the late night radio.

He figured, that's a great tune, I'll cover it. You know, he didn't know it wasn't out. So he recorded it for Date Records, and Jerry Jeff eventually signed with ATCO, which was the Division of Atlantic. But he credited Jerry, right? I don't know, but I think he did. Yeah.

But the only thing that a songwriter has that he can say about a song is he gets to pick the first person to record it. Right. After that, anybody can. Okay. And so Bobby Cole put out the first recording without Jerry Jeff knowing.

Well, he assumed it had already been out. Yeah. So David Wilkes, Jerry Jeff, and I flew down to Memphis where a brilliant engineer, a brilliant man, the guy who invented faders was producing and engineering the session. Okay. And the Dixie Flyers were the band.

Okay. And they were having a difficult time with it because it kept sounding like a Viennese waltz. Yeah. Oh, like the groove. And I really wanted to be in the studio. Yeah. And after a while, I was in tears.

I'm a little embarrassed, but it's the truth. You're sitting in the booth? I'm sitting in the booth because he didn't want some kid he never heard of. And finally- The engineer. Yeah, the engineer and producer, Tom Dowd. Okay, there you go. Who also was involved in the Manhattan Project, just so you know how intelligent Tom Dowd was.

Okay. But Jerry Jeff didn't say, I want the kid? No, after a while, Tom Dowd said, let's put the kid in. Okay. There was a woman who was playing 12 string, and he said, let him play your 12 string. And so I had a part. Yeah. And my part was in 6-8, not 3-4.

And that did it. That did it? That did it. you were the key yeah i i think i was yeah yeah and it's so funny because like jerry jeff walker is one of these guys i had to come back around to thanks to my buddy dan over at gimme gimme records like like because when i grew up it was up against the wall redneck mothers that was the song that was later i know much later but like it's like like not unlike you you know as a guy my age who missed the 60s really yeah so anything i got i had to

pick up from the rubble and i'm still doing it uh-huh like you know i'm still like you mean that guy was that guy you know like yeah like right now like you're the guy that was on the 12 string but then you you go on so i imagine that session how does it pick up for like because you played with fucking everybody of that era and i don't know how that works you might my false assumption is that you know because you know you play with uh you know the most of the grateful deads on what two or three of your records yeah and that you know and then you with ronstadt who i know i i just i just recently within the last six months got this the first two stone ponies records which i love yeah like

you hear her sing like that oh she's such a great singer and then but you did you have that moment though when you you listen to stone ponies and you're like she's above and beyond this that there's something transcendent that we you can feel that it hasn't been realized yet. That she was a great singer, but folk almost held her back in a way somehow. No. I just, you know,

here's the thing. Yeah. I live in the moment. I know. And that's all I wanted was to live in the moment. I heard her and she moved me. She was just great.

With the Stone Ponies? Yeah. She used to play The Bitter End. And she talks about this in her autobiography. One night she was there. After Different Drum, she released a number of tunes. High Muddy Waters was one of them. She sang that.

It was just great. But after Different Drum, nothing did Yeah. She sang that. It was just great. Yeah. But after Different Drum, nothing did anything. Uh-huh. So one night, when she was at the bitter end, I got her and dragged her

to the apartment house where I lived and also Gary White and Jerry Jeff lived and I rounded up Paul Siebel and Gary White and me and Linda.

And I was not a songwriter or singer at the time. I was everybody's guitar player. Right. So they sang her songs. And her next album was mostly Gary White and Paul Siebel songs. And the hit that restarted her career was Long, Long Time, which Gary White sang to her that night. Really? So if I'd sit in with her, she'd introduce me as somebody who helped her start her career was a long, long time, which Gary White sang to her that night. Really?

So if I'd sit in with her, she'd introduce me as somebody who helped her start her career. Yeah, yeah. Over the top stuff. But it was, I loved it. But that was a moment. You were like, come on. But there was more to that night. Yeah.

That night when she decided to go back to her hotel, she ran into Jerry Jeff in the hallway, and he was on his way uptown for God knows what. Right. And they shared a cab. Yeah. And he told her that she had to hear this song that the McGarrigle sisters had written and sang, Heart Like a Wheel.

Yeah. Which is one of her favorites ever, and that was a huge hit, too. So there you were. It was a momentous night. It's interesting. I imagine, for me, but I don't know for you, because you seem to not have the same sort of,

I romanticize groups of people and times and eras, but in retrospect, to be at the sort of like the pivotal juncture of these things and making these kind of impulsive decisions that have a kind of ripple effect must be sort of interesting and exciting. I loved playing guitar with these guys. You're not nostalgic. No, I loved playing guitar with these guys. And I wanted I wanted to do it as much as I could. I would get Jerry Jeff and Paul Siebel booked at the Folklore Center to do a concert so I could play guitar with them. And with Siebel, I got Siebel one of those, and I had just done an album with Paxton. Yeah.

So I got the producer to come down and listen to Paul. Peter Siegel was his name. Yeah. And he's an excellent producer. And so Paul got a contract. Uh-huh. It was a smaller business then too, huh? I mean, it was intimate. Not as small as it is today. Not as small as it is today. Well, I know recording in general, I guess, but it just seemed like there was more, maybe I'm wrong, it just seemed like there was a community. You know, that there were these, you know, you go to a certain city and then, you know, people were hungry for new talent and everybody was sort of around. You know, it doesn't seem to, maybe it works that way still, I don't know. Well, one of the things that the record companies did is they were editors because everybody wanted to make a record right and the recording studios didn't record everybody right so so they you know today the you have to be on youtube right along with how many million others right anybody can do it yeah but to to get, if you're really good, I mean, how do you stick out on YouTube? It ain't easy. No. I think it's harder

today. So you eventually, you played with Richie Havens? I played with Richie Havens I think before I ever met Jerry Jaffe. Yeah, and I'm just looking at some of the people you worked with. Al Cooper? Al, I didn't meet till later. Right.

He's a character, huh? Oh oh yeah yeah and i and i really love him good producer yeah and you can't write the history of rock and roll without al cooper sure like a rolling stone right yeah yeah that organ yeah well with that and the blues project and uh what was the name of that great horn band he founded? At Blood, Sweat, and Tears? Yeah. But, I mean, even before that, he wrote a song that Gary Lewis and the Playboys recorded, I think. Or was it Short Shorts?

He wrote one of those pop things. He was one of the kids, like Paul Simon was also, who lived in the publishing buildings. There were two buildings in New York. The most famous was the Brill Building, but there was another one too. And there were kids who would hang out there, do whatever they could because they wanted to.

They wanted to write songs. Yeah. Paul Simon was doing that? Yeah, I think he was. Yeah. Did you know him? No. They'd already come and gone.

No, I met him much later. I want to talk about the dead. Yeah. Because you seem to jive with those dudes. I mean, they played on your record. Yeah. And you played with them. Yeah.

What was the vibe there? Because I noticed in your playing, and when I listen to stuff, that it seems like you guys were able to really, and also the band too yeah um to find this this space there's a space to it that you know you kind of like you're not filling up every hole you're letting things sit there's a groove uh that that you know i think people are trying to get back to a little now but there's something about like i never really put it all together until I, it was a few years ago. And, you know, Eric Clapton had, you know, there were two, when Jimi Hendrix went to England, a lot of the rock guys were like, well, it's done.

It's over. Yeah. But for some reason, when the band's first record out, Eric Clapton said, it's over that, you know, they've achieved, you know achieved this perfection that I'm never going to achieve. And for years, I couldn't figure out what that is. And it's really about the space. I think you're right. Yeah, I think so. The band was so soulful. I mean, my taste is, if it's not soulful, if it doesn't strike me as soulful, I got no time for it. And the band was very, very soulful.

And I loved their records. And I used to run into them in later years everywhere. Really? Yeah. I'd run into them at hotels. Well, that's understandable. Gigs, yeah, sure. Truck stops.

Oh, really? Yeah. You just kept running into them? Just kept running into them. And I really liked him. Did you ever play with any of them? Sure. Yeah? Oh yeah, well Danko, I love Rick Danko. Well

Danko was my best friend in the band we were at the Chateau Marmont I was staying there, I forget why and I'm walking around the grounds for some reason and I bump into Danko and he says oh thank god he says i gotta do this ringo star album and he wants me to play fiddle uh-huh will you

play fiddle with me well i don't have i don't remember if i had a fiddle with me or not actually i said okay so that got me on a we were trying to hide behind each other because we were both pretty terrible fit uh and you know so i got that was the first of the ringo star albums i played on danko seemed like he was a pretty funny guy he was a sweetheart he was really wonderful and um and so was levon yeah yeah did you ever go up there to woodstock oh sure no not till later years yeah know, the problem was it was too fashionable to do that. Uh-huh. And I have always been, and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.

Yeah. Militantly anti-fashion. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So. Didn't want to be trendy? Didn't want to seem like you were part of the gang? I, yeah, I just wanted to find a way to do things myself, you know.

Uh-huh. You know, and you were talking about how I was playing in the folk thing. Yeah. But I wasn't playing that much folk music. I played as much rock and roll on the acoustic guitar as I did folk music. I played all kinds of different music. And, you know, it was a whole different thing. I always said if whatever,

if what I do ever becomes popular, I got a corner on the market. You're the only guy doing it. I'm the only guy doing it. But like when you play with, like Danko just struck me, like such a great voice and such like a fun spirit. Like when you talk about fun,

like, you know, in the folk stuff and that, the sort, like, you know, that in, in the folk stuff and, in that, the sort of like, you know, cause like I'm thinking about that, that there,

there's an ecstatic sort of, you know, communal feeling to that music. I guess it exists like with any band that has popularity, but, but there seems to be something simple and, and, and,

and pure about folk music in a weird way well maybe i mean i never really thought of myself as a folk singer right but you were there and you but i was there i came out of the full clubs absolutely but i was asked to give a keynote speech a couple of years ago yeah to the folk alliance and uh so i thought it, and I decided to talk about the difference between folk music and Americana. Okay. The term Americana didn't exist when I was first out there. That's sort of now. Yeah.

There's a bit of that going on now. So lay it on me. Help me out. Folk music is music that has been or is being played where there's no chance of money changing hands. Okay. I mean, if you think about it, that's true. But define it. So you mean it's done like, you know, at social events or gatherings or...

Or at work or in prisons or on ships or, you know, it's... It's a personal thing. It's a way... Nobody's getting paid for it. Uh-huh. So, and Americana music is music that kind of sounds like that, but it's written for profit. Okay. And I had T-shirts printed up, 50 of them, saying the David Bromberg Quintet making Americana great again.

If that's for the new record? No, it's just for the hell of it. So you consider yourself a rock musician all the time? I don't know. If that's for the new record? No, it's just for the hell of it. So you consider yourself a rock musician all the time? I don't know. I mean, I played on rock records, certainly. Country records? I played on some country records.

I played on all kinds of records. What instruments do you play, all of them? I'm really a guitar player. I can play a little mandolin. I play a little dobro. I can play a tiny bit of fiddle. you know i i can mess around with a few i used to play a little banjo i can mess around with a lot of different instruments so you know in your career you know you put out like 20 of your own records almost and you know you played with a very eclectic bunch of people. But like what I'm gathering, though, is that as you know, I mean, you played with Link

Ray in his country. Yeah. And what I'm gathering, though, is that like usually unless you start with somebody or you have a friendship like with Rick or Linda or Jerry Jeff that, you know, you're going in to do the job and you don't you know, you don't necessarily end up becoming pals with whoever is there, no matter how. And I know that in my heart, but for some reason, I still want to know that maybe you and David Amram were buddies.

Yeah, we're friends. You are. We were, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we are. Yeah. Because he was sort of an interesting kind of beatnik legacy. Very interesting man.

Yeah. And he does music that I wouldn't necessarily think that was your music. No. But you found a way in. Yeah. I'm on a couple of his records. Yeah. And we've played together on other people's records.

And like, but with someone like Link ray do you have impressions like like when you show up for work you know with link ray who at that point i imagine is in his more country mode as opposed to you know breaking apart amps uh with that sound you know what what do you walk in with i mean what do you what do you Um, in order to talk about Link Wray, I have to tell you about, uh, Tommy K. Okay. Thomas Jefferson K. Okay. He was a producer and, um, he never paid scale. Uh, he underpaid everybody, but it was work and getting on records. So I did a lot of records with him and he, And he produced the Link Wray record that I played on. And also I played on a Wilbert Harrison record,

the guy who wrote Kansas City. Yeah, yeah. And I also played on the very last hit that Jay and the Americans had. And it was a Tommy K record. And he produced a lot of records for Mercury, which was doing kind of a scam back then uh-huh they would get a band and they would put no not a band they would get studio musicians

to play a pop tune and if it was a hit somebody put together a band by that name if it was a real band and they did a record they'd print up a lot of them and then delete it from their catalog so that they wouldn't have to pay any royalties. I mean, it was a whole weird thing. But to explain Tommy K to you, Tommy K produced an album with Dr. John, John Hammond. I just got that album. And Michael Bloomfield. Yeah, it's terrible.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. How could anybody take those three guys and make a terrible album? Yeah. So eventually I stopped doing records with him, doing dates, because I started getting scale, double scale, triple scale. I was in demand. Yeah. And so he calls me one day and he says, listen, I got a session.

I said, I don't know. I think I might be busy that day, Tommy. He said, no, no, no, you got to play this one. I said, okay, why know. I think I might be busy that day, Tommy. He said, no, no, no, you got to play this one. I said, okay, why do I have to play this one? He said, well, the other guitar players are Clapton. I said, okay, I guess I got to play this one. Were you a Clapton fan? Yeah, sure. He's a great, great player. So I get to the studio and I see this other guitar player setting up.

Yeah. And I go up to Tommy. I say, Tommy, that's not Clapton. He says, I know, but he looks just like him, doesn't he? So you didn't get to play

with Eric Clapton. No, no, no. It was a typical Tommy K maneuver. But you played with Link Wright. Yeah. And what was your impression of him? It was so long ago. I thought he with Link Wray. Yeah. And what was your impression of him? It was so long ago. I thought he was cool, though.

Yeah. Yeah. And this was, but he wasn't playing that. Was it on a country record or was it on a dirty record? I don't even remember anymore. Really? Yeah. So that's where it goes.

Do you realize how long ago that was? That was more than 50 years ago. Okay. All right. I guess, yeah, you're right. And you recorded with Dylan as well? Yeah. Yeah.

And do you remember that? Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, but not that clearly the first recordings. What'd you do? Which record? The first record that I played on with him was Self Portrait. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I like that record. Yeah? Yeah. He called me up, and I was, at first I thought it was somebody pulling my leg. Right. And he said, I'd like you to, I want to check out the studio. Will you check, come with me and check out the studio?

Really? Out of nowhere? You'd met him before? I had shook his hand when he came to the club where Jerry Jeff was playing, and I was accompanying him, and I never thought he paid any attention to me. So, of course, later I learned that he knew the studio very, very well. Oh, really? He was just sort of, he was checking you out? Yeah.

Yeah. So we went in, and it was the way I love to work. Yeah. No rehearsal. This is it. Boom. Yeah. And so I had a good time.

I can tell you a great story. What? Well, years later in the 90s, and I was not performing at all. I stopped performing for 22 years. I know. I was going to ask you about that. We'll get to it. Yeah.

So I did a couple of shows here and there. And I did one at the bottom line. I used to play their anniversary every year. so i kept doing that from time to time and one of those times um uh neil young was playing uh at the beacon in new york and bob went to that and they both came down to hear me and uh evidently neil said to bob you ought to have this guy produce you. So Bob asked me to produce him. He thought it was a good idea, I guess. Yeah. And so I produced a bunch of tunes. Two of them have been released.

I think eventually they may all get released, but who knows. Like on which record? What period are we talking about? Well, it was in the 90s, but it was released a little later on one of the bootleg albums. Oh, okay, yeah. It was the one that was four, three discs yeah yeah but it was released as two discs and you paid extra for the third uh-huh and um so the tunes were missed the mississippi and you which is on the first or

second and the first tune on the third cd if you bought it uh duncan brady and that was had you done a lot of production previous? I always produced myself. Yeah. I produced Carly Simon's demo. I produced Johnny Shine's, but mostly I had produced myself. Yeah, and what was that like working with him as a producer? Oh, it was fun.

I mean, we had a very good relationship. We'd known each other for a very long time. From that day you went to the studio? Yeah. Yeah. And you stayed in touch oh yeah yeah there was a time when we would hang out together in the village um anyhow i really should have told this to bob before i tell it to you i've never told him this because i keep forgetting yeah but i gotta tell you this story my wife was the only white person in a church choir in Chicago. We were living in Chicago. And I asked the choir to come in and sing on a few of the tunes that we were recording. With Bob.

Yeah. Yeah. They never heard of Bob Dylan. Yeah. They, you know. What year are we talking? 95, I think. They probably heard of him.

No. Uh-huh. Absolutely not. Huh. They've probably heard of them. No. Absolutely not. You know, there's a very important record store in Chicago called Out of the Past. And I was there once and I found a Bob Dylan, what do you call it, pirate record? Yeah. Bootleg. Yeah, bootleg.

You know, they make up the prices when you bring it to them. I brought it to them and they had no idea who it was either. A buck. Really? That was the only thing in there that was a buck. It was the only record store which was the size of an airplane hangar where there are no Beatles records. Yeah. What records do they have?

Every block artist you ever heard of. Right. And people come from all over the world to that place it's a great record it's still there yeah as far as i know you bring the choir in so i bring the choir in uh and nancy tells me later um they were at one end of the studio and bob was in the vocal booth at another and he was doing a tune that i actually ended up recording twice called Nobody's Fault But Mine, which is a church tune. And the first time I recorded it was during the famous disco scare. And so I recorded a disco version and I hadn't yet done the second version. A disco scare?

Yeah. Well, what else was it? And so Bob has this, and for some reason he wanted to record a lot of my tunes or tunes that I'd recorded. And he's in the booth trying to get a groove that's not that one. Yeah. And it took him some time. He's working on it, you know. And Nancy told me later that they had a little prayer. Let's pray for this man. And they prayed, Dear Lord, please help this man find whatever it is he's pray for this man and they prayed dear Lord

please help this man find whatever it is he's looking for and with a quickness I'm not sure it worked in the big picture I'm not sure it worked but maybe that day it did

that day it did yeah good and Ringo Starr when when you worked with him, did you get to hang out with him, or did you talk to him? It always seems like there's a lot of people on his records. He told me some things that made me feel very good. Oh, yeah? He told me that John Lennon had sat the other three guys down and made them listen to my first album from start to finish.

Really? Yeah. I wish I'd known that before. That's one of those great moments in life. Tell me about it. Oh. Yeah, that was very nice. So, all right. So you put out all these records on your own and how's your following? When you go out and play, do you get a nice group? Amazingly enough, I do. Yeah. And I, you know, I mean, I'm able to play places that people who had hit records, which I never did, can't play. So I'm very, very, very lucky.

Do you find that there are people that you would maybe see yourself hanging out with? Are they your age? I mean, what is it like? Are they, you know, the crew from the 60s? I mean, who goes? Do you notice? There are occasionally some younger people, but they're mostly people my age. They are.

But recently we've seen more and more young people. But, you know, for me, I am who I am. I am my age. I'm 71. Yeah. And that's not a good thing in this business. You know, I'm old news. I don't know.

The Stones just put out a blues record. So did I. It's good, too, man. The record's good. I've been playing along with it. Because I like the groove. I'm proud of it. Yeah, it's great.

That's my band on it, too. What's it called again? The Blues, the Whole Blues, and Nothing But the Blues. Yeah. That's your band. That's your touring band on there. Yeah. What's it called again? The Blues, the whole Blues, and nothing but the Blues. Yeah, that's your band. That's your touring band on there. Yeah. It's tricky with the Blues, isn't it? Because the Blues is not really owned by anybody.

Right. So when you show up for them, you know, it's on you to make it your own. And it's a tricky thing. It's a very tricky thing because um there's something that happens to all kinds of music where it ossifies and there are people who say uh in uh dixieland jazz that you can't play high society without playing that one clarinet part right you can't play uh a bluegrass tune without roald schrug break. And there are people who were that way about the blues. And,

uh, um, well, the interesting thing about it is that because like somebody like me can play it, like it's everybody's music in a way. Yeah. And you know,

the structure of it has been sort of worn down and over familiarized. Like, you know, like any bar band can make their way through a blues tune, you know, give or take. Yeah. Right? Okay.

So how do you make it special? What defines that? It has to be what you bring to it. Exactly. Not what you do to it. Right. What you bring to it. Yeah.

That was the interesting thing about your record and also about the Stones' records. It's like those songs are for everybody. We're familiar with the song. thing about your record and also about the Stones records is like, you know, those songs are for everybody. You know, we're familiar with the song, but what's going to make you go like, I like this version? You know what I mean? It's interesting. Well, I discovered something about blues guitar playing in church. You go to church?

I used to bring the Reverend to church and it was the place on the planet where I felt the most welcome and the most at home. Ah. So I would check out a few other churches now and then. Yeah. Only African American churches. The white churches I didn't feel welcome.

Uh-huh. And I started to really dig some preachers. And then I realized something listening to bb king and albert king yeah if you listen to bb yeah he said that the tone that he gets is an attempt to uh duplicate uh lonnie johnson's sound on the acoustic guitar on the electric yeah and you can hear this yeah if you listen to lonnie and you listen to B.B. Yeah. His choice of notes is his own and it's brilliant. Yeah.

His phrasing is a preacher's phrasing. And that's the difference between the white blues players and the black blues players. Huh. Is the phrasing. Because the preachers will be talking to you and then at some point they will pause to make you really want to hear what they're going to say next. And you do that. That's what Bebe does on the guitar. See, like that what you just told me, I'm going to have that in my head now. While you were talking, you reminded me of something else that I think

I figured out. When I first heard bebop, I didn't care for it at all. It wasn't until I heard Charlie Parker that I realized this stuff is beautiful. And Charlie Parker, of course, is the source. He's what everybody was trying to sound like. If you listen to Charlie Parker, he's an extraordinarily melodic player he plays a thread yeah the gut but in the course of playing that thread he picks some notes that alter chords and creates different and unusual chords if you think of it as cord and all these people I listened to and didn't like

they really understood these chords he was doing and they would play instead of in a line they'd play vertically they'd play one chord to another chord to another chord right and it wasn't tied together right yeah so who cares right well no you're talking about the lyricism he was a melodic player. He was a blues player, and he played gorgeous melodies. And that's why he was great, and these other guys were kind of not. When you're playing your best, the music comes from somewhere else. You're concentrating so hard that you cease concentrating, and the music seems to flow through you and come out your fingers. You relax. Open up.

You don't know. It just comes from someplace and it works you. Right. When I was about 23 or so and I was playing in the village, that's when I did all these sessions. And that's when I was at my best.

And I discovered the first concert that I did where I actually sang, I discovered when I finished the first solo that I did in this performance that I couldn't find the English language. I couldn't speak English. I didn't know what the words were. I didn't know what any English words were.

And it took me a while. I had to play through another and withdraw my mind and find the lyrics. You were speaking guitar. I was speaking music. Yeah, you couldn't get back. Right. So I learned after a while, and I didn't learn it that night. I mean, I knew I had to do this, but I wasn't able to do it all that night.

Yeah. To when I could see the end of a solo coming up about 8, 12 bars away, I would also see what i was going to play then draw my mind out of the the music let my fingers do it yeah and try and remember lyrics uh-huh oh so you had to be conscious that you were going to make the jump yeah yeah so why did you quit i got burnt out and i was too stupid to know I was burnt out. But you never, like, you know, you're hanging around a lot of hardcore people. You don't seem like a druggie sort.

No. Well, but I'm also not an angel, you know, and I had my moments. Yeah. But what it was was I was on the road at one point for two years without being home for two weeks. Doing your own shit? Yeah. Yeah. With my own band. And I discovered when I was home that I wasn't practicing,

I wasn't writing, and I wasn't jamming. There's nothing of a musician there. And I didn't want to be one of these guys who drags himself onto the stage, does a bitter imitation of something he used to love. So I looked for another way to live my life. And what was that? Violins.

I studied violin making and violin identification. And I love it. I really like being able to pick up a violin. If your guitar says Fender or Gibson on it, the chances are it was made in Fullerton or Nashville, I guess. Early on. Yeah, still. But if your violin says Stradivarius,

the odds are not really that he ever saw the thing. Yeah. You know, so that doesn't make it a bad violin. Who made it? Yeah. You have to know. It's like fine painting. You have to know the chisel strokes and the purfling materials.

So you went full nerd rabbit hole on violins. I went full nerd rabbit hole on violins. And you can make a violin. I guess I could. I haven't touched edge tools since I graduated from school. Oh, so it was more about. My aim was always in identification. Do you repair?

No. No? Just identification? Just identification. I also am about to... I collected violins that were made in the United States. But you're not, like, in your own admission, you're not a great violin player. No.

You just like violins. Yeah. I just like the instruments and i i think i have a little bit of understanding of them what was the fascination with that was that always a thing did it come to you later i mean violin it's very specific what about it fascinated me that somebody would look at your violin that said stradivarius in it and say, no, this was made in Austria in the 1820s by, you know. Oh, okay, yeah. And I wanted to be able to do that.

With violins. With violins. And I actually made a place for myself in the violin world by collecting violins made in the United States, which everyone told me there were no good ones. And thinking about that, I couldn't understand. I don't think Americans are genetically inferior to Europeans. So why shouldn't they be as good?

Well, in truth, they are. But there's also tons and tons of really bad ones. Yeah. So you know. Well, I guess I'm told I'm the expert on violence made in the United States. I have 263 of them in my collection. And the Library of Congress is raising the funds to buy a third of the collection. I'm going to donate the rest.

Okay. Yeah. Now that you're back in the blues band. Yeah. I got a great fiddler in the band, too. Oh, yeah? Yeah. That's an interesting idea.

You know, when you were saying that that road and not practicing and not, you know, taking that time for yourself to engage in creativity in a way, that that's what really wore a lot of dudes down. Yeah, sure it did. Like it killed a lot of guys. Well, the hardest thing is getting the energy together night after night after night to be wonderful, you know, or whatever the hell you have to be. Yeah. You know, you got to put on the show, put on the show.

And talking about blues, you know, Albert King, I believe, had a rather unique way of doing it. of doing it. I think after having seen him a few times that if he was having trouble getting the energy together, he would manage to become furious at one of the guys in his band and kick him off the stage and play the rest of the set in a cold fury.

And everybody in the band understood this was going to happen. Because he was just tired. Because he couldn't work up another way to have the energy to deliver. That's interesting. And you've got to deliver night after night after night. You've got diarrhea.

It doesn't matter. Deliver. Yeah. Whatever's going on. People paid for the ticket. That's right. And they don't want to hear that tonight you don't quite have it. How much experience did you have in actually backing blues guys?

Not a whole lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although, I mean, you're thinking electric blues. I mean, Mississippi John Hurt and I spent two weeks in dressing rooms just playing with each other. That was a ball.

I was accompanying a singer named Jerry Moore, and we were in Philadelphia opening for John Hurt. And John and I just played together backstage. And then he invited me to go with him to the Philadelphia Folk Festival and play with him. And I'm very proud that I had the good sense to say, thank you so much. I can't do it. Why? Nobody would want to hear me play on top of Mississippi John Hurt.

He's a solo guy. Yeah. They wanted to hear what he did. I mean, there was a similar thing when I produced a record of Johnny Shines. I suspect that all the people who bought it probably hated it. Really? Yeah, because I produced it the way I produced myself. I used horns.

I used backup singers. I used piano. I used all kinds of stuff. And he said twice before he died that it was his favorite album that he did. And I think the reason is that I didn't make him sit on a bale of hay in overalls with a red bandana, which is what everybody wanted. They wanted to hear him sitting on that bale of hay with a red bandana. Yeah, but you took it up the next level. Well, I don't know if I took it up.

Added some stuff. I did what I would do for myself. I did for him. Yeah. And I think that probably the people who asked me to do it were terribly disappointed. Really? But I didn't realize that until years later.

But he loved it. He loved it. So fuck it. Yeah. Great talking to you, David. Great talking to you, David. Great talking to you, man. You feel good? I feel very good.

I've admired your interviews. I think you're the best. So I'm very, very proud to be doing this. And I'm very happy you came out. Good luck with the tour and the record. Thank you.

That's it. That was me and Mr. Brom mr bromberg also go to wtfpod.com to check on my upcoming tour dates get on the mailing list buy a poster whatever you got to do i believe i'll play some guitar i believe I will. Thank you. ¶¶ Boomer Live! 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. world's greatest challenges from right here in Calgary. From cleaner energy, safe and secure food, efficient movement of goods and people, and better health solutions, Calgary's visionaries are turning heads around the globe, across all sectors, each and every day. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com.