Episode 1127 - G.E. Smith
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening what the fuck nicks out in the streets fighting the good fight thank you for doing that
Marc:It's fucking scary, crazy, righteous, chaotic, out of control, focused.
Marc:A lot of things going on at once.
Marc:And I tend to be at this point somewhat paralyzed with grief and trying to compartmentalize.
Marc:I don't want to be at the guy at the protest crying about his own problems.
Marc:But I will...
Marc:Throw some ideas out there for you in this time of righteous ignignation, peaceful protesting, fury.
Marc:A few places where you can kick in a few shekels, contribute a few dollars to show your support.
Marc:These are places that make a difference.
Marc:Black Voters Matter Fund.
Marc: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.
Marc:That's blackvotersmatterfund.org.
Marc:NAACP Legal Defense Fund, police reform and racial justice efforts need litigation and advocacy to be successful.
Marc:The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, NAACPLDF, NAACPLDF.org.
Marc:And of course, the ACLU will continue to be helpful for maintaining the First Amendment rights of protesters and fighting legal challenges in court.
Marc:It's a charity I support yearly.
Marc:ACLU.org is where you can go to do that.
Marc:So I'm still... Before I get too far, look, you know, with things coming undone at the seams...
Marc:I don't really know what you people want to listen to or what is relevant to you.
Marc:But today, my guest is G.E.
Marc:Smith, who you know is the former band leader on Saturday Night Live.
Marc:He's also been the guitarist for Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Roger Waters, Tina Turner, among many others.
Marc:He's got a record coming out in August called Stony Hill.
Marc:It's a collaboration with soul singer Leroy Bell.
Marc: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.
Marc:Well, obviously the shit has been hitting the fan.
Marc:The shit has been hitting the fan in the world for a while.
Marc:But you know what I'm saying.
Marc:So I took it and I talked to him.
Marc:And it's, you know, it's me talking to G.E.
Marc:Smith about guitars and stuff.
Marc:Maybe that'll be nice for you.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe you want to break.
Marc:I've been ranting and raving about encroaching fascism in this country for, what, since 2016?
Marc: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.
Marc:There's a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of injustice, and I've just got to protect my mind from hopelessness.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:And now I've become very focused on my cat, Monkey, who is ill, old.
Marc:Some days are better than others.
Marc:But in this void, in this absence of Lynn here...
Marc:You know, I wake up at four in the morning and I go through the memories.
Marc:Most of them good.
Marc:It's hard.
Marc:It hurts.
Marc:I'm not obsessing about bad things.
Marc:But then I realize I got a sick old cat downstairs.
Marc:So I've gotten into the habit of...
Marc: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 you know 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
Marc:And I just started realizing like, well, I don't know how much time I got with this cat.
Marc: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.
Marc:Listening to my cat purr and then that kind of levels it off.
Marc:The purr of an old cat is kind of like some sort of universal frequency of calm.
Marc:I don't even know how he does it.
Marc:I can't do it.
Marc:A purr's got like there's several different layers of sound going on.
Marc:Sounds like two or three different layers of sound for a good wheezy old cat.
Marc:So I've been doing that, just talking to cats, just yelling at Monkey, like, what's going on?
Marc:Are you dying?
Marc:Is today the day?
Marc:Are we dying today?
Marc:Do we have to go to the vet and die today, Monkey?
Marc:So G.E.
Marc:Smith has this new album coming out.
Marc:It's a collaboration with soul singer Leroy Bell.
Marc:You guys know him.
Marc:He might have been annoyed by him on Saturday Night Live.
Marc:He brought that up.
Marc:Some people were very annoyed by him.
Marc:But this is me and G.E.
Marc:Smith coming right up.
Marc:What's up, GE?
Marc:How you feeling?
Marc:Everything's good, Mark.
Marc:Looks like a comfortable situation up there.
Marc:Where are you?
Guest:Amagansett, out on Long Island.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you don't come from there.
Marc:That's where you settled, huh?
Guest:Yes, I've been here for a long time, 40 years.
Guest:Is that by the water?
Guest:It's not far from the water.
Guest: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.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, it's really rough.
Guest:The people that live right by the water, they're just spending money all the time.
Marc:Fixing the house?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So where'd you grow up?
Guest:In Pennsylvania.
Marc:Like rural?
Marc:Where is it in relation to a city?
Guest:It's in the northeast.
Guest: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.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And it's the next town west of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I was a kid, it was just a tiny little town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But now, like every place else, it's all grown up and there's lots of people there.
Guest:And there was about a thousand people that when they were working commuted every day to the city.
Marc:Oh, is that it's one of those commuter towns?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did your dad work in the city?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:My dad worked right there.
Marc:He worked right there.
Guest:He was an engineer, structural and chemical engineer, and he worked for a big company there.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Not for the city, just for a big corporation?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And your mom, did she work too?
Yeah.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:My grandmother, who I grew up with, had a gift shop in town.
Guest:Holiday gift center.
Guest:And my mom always worked there with her.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Like cards and stuff.
Guest:All that kind of stuff.
Guest:You know, little glass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, all kinds of stuff.
Guest:Jewelry, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't see many of those general gift shops anymore.
Marc: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.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Easy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when when I was a kid, at least it was a big.
Guest:summer area, a lot of people from the city had second homes there.
Guest:So in the summer, it'd be crowded and there was a lot of people around, a lot of jazz musicians from the city.
Marc:From Philadelphia or from New York?
Guest:From New York City would come there in the summertime.
Guest:So when I was a kid, when I was like 12, 13, 14, I got to hear a lot of great music.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Where'd they play?
Marc:They have an outdoor thing?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:There's a bar, a place called the Deerhead Inn that was a jazz spot.
Guest:And they let you in?
Guest:No, but I could sit on the porch.
Guest:And like...
Guest:is sometimes I'd go over there in the afternoon and sit out on the porch and these guys would be in there rehearsing.
Guest:And I heard, uh, a lot of great jazz players, uh, John Coates, this piano player, Pharaoh Saunders, the sax player.
Guest:Yeah.
Um,
Guest:Zoot Sims, Alcone, you know, a lot of those guys from the 50s, 60s jazz scene were there in the summertime.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And you just like took it in.
Marc:Were you playing guitar yet?
Marc:When did you start that?
Guest:Oh, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started playing.
Guest:I got a guitar when I was four.
Guest:Four?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:I went down in the basement with my mother.
Guest:She was going to do the laundry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was an old guitar hanging on the wall.
Guest:I said, what's that?
Guest:She said, that's called a guitar that used to belong to your Uncle George.
Guest:And I said, can I have it?
Guest:She said, sure.
Guest:It's been hanging up there for a long time.
Guest:So she gave it to me.
Guest:And I just got obsessed with it.
Guest:What was that guitar?
Guest:It was just a cheap acoustic guitar.
Guest:Like a Harmony or a K or something?
Guest:Collegiate.
Guest:Collegiate brand.
Guest:Like a Harmony.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Probably made in Chicago.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Like a lot of that stuff was back then.
Guest:And that started it.
Guest:Yeah, I wish I still had that guitar, but it's long gone.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I have an old K from the 50s.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a K acoustic that, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Great stuff.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it sounds okay.
Marc:You know, it's got a spray paint.
Marc:It's like the pick guard is painted on.
Marc:It's like not even that.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:A lot of the great blues records were made on those kind of guitars.
Marc:I know.
Marc:You hear the sound.
Marc:I once interviewed Taj Mahal in here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he picked the thing up.
Marc: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 tracked it into the African groove in like three seconds.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, he just brought the thing to life.
Marc:Like, it was almost like a time machine.
Marc:It was fucking unbelievable.
Guest:No, Taj is great.
Guest:And he's a real musicologist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He really knows.
Guest:He's a very, very smart guy and knows his stuff.
Guest:There's a bar here in Amagansett in this town where I live called the Stephen Talk House.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest: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.
Yeah.
Guest:And I went there one time to see Taj.
Guest:This is probably like in the 80s.
Guest:And he had a band and they were great and they were playing.
Guest:And at some point he got up from where he was in front in the band.
Guest:And he picked up an acoustic guitar, an old national, you know, metal body national.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he kind of went up in the back of the stage and leaned against the wall.
Guest:And he played this old blues song.
Guest:I think it's a Charlie Patton song.
Guest:It's called P-Vine Blues.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he just played it all alone.
Marc: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
Marc:So it was just like 40 people in there.
Marc:And he did the same thing with Hellhounds on My Trail.
Marc:Yeah, he did the Robert Johnson stuff.
Marc:Man, and to hear that stuff played properly is fucking crazy, man.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:He's really an interesting player, too.
Marc:Now, wait.
Marc:Is Smith the family name?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Smith.
Guest:My family's Lebanese.
Guest:My father was Lebanese.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And 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.
Guest:So she was 100 percent Lebanese.
Guest:My father's 100 percent Lebanese.
Guest:And so I grew up with that food and that kind of atmosphere, you know, and the family name had been Haddad.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And Haddad in Arabic means blacksmith.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the legend was that when my great grandfather, whose name was Buthris Haddad, when he came over, he didn't speak English, but they had written on a piece of paper in Arabic.
Guest:and then in English, Haddad, and then they'd written blacksmith underneath it.
Guest:And the legend is he gets to Ellis Island and the guy, the immigration guy looks at it and he says, well, what do you want to be, black or Smith?
Guest: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.
Marc:That's a good story.
Marc:I don't know if it's true or not, but it's a good story.
Marc:So when you start playing, when do you get the first guitar that you make a choice to get?
Guest:So when I was seven, by then I had figured out some chords, and it was the folk...
Guest:music thing was happening you know what they call the folk scare yeah no folks scare 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
Guest:a woman came over to our house and she saw me playing that collegiate instrument.
Guest:And she said, oh, you can play.
Guest:She said, do you want a real guitar?
Guest:I'm seven.
Guest:What am I going to say?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then a couple of days later, she shows up with a little Martin, a good acoustic guitar.
Guest:And not only that, she brought along her
Guest:the girl that was working for her as a nanny who was like maybe a 14, 15 year old Irish girl.
Guest:And she showed me some stuff, this Irish girl.
Guest:She showed me how to finger pick.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Which was so great.
Guest:I want to do that better.
Guest:Oh man, before that I was playing with a pick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't know what I was doing.
Guest:But she showed me that, what they call Travis picking.
Guest:It's like the alternating base with the thumb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you pick out the melody with your fingers.
Guest:All three fingers?
Guest:That was great.
Guest:I was really lucky that I got that when I was that young.
Marc:I talked to guys that do the blues two-finger picking thing.
Guest:A lot of guys, the real guys, would do just one finger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thumb and one finger.
Guest:But I use all five.
Guest:See, I got this big, long finger in there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I do these rakes with that, you know.
Marc:Oh, that's not for Coke?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:That used to be the thing that they did in the 80s.
Guest:Yeah, no, I know it was.
Guest:Yeah, people would always say that to me, but no, I always let my fingernails go along to play, you know.
Marc:Yeah, do the picking.
Marc:So the Irish girl showed you how to finger pick, and then you locked into that.
Marc:That's a good thing to knock out when you're young, huh?
Guest: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 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
Guest:a uh used fender teller caster yeah and and we got it it was a hundred dollars i was born in january 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 11 and um i was then starting to play in bands that's gotta be one of the first ones right
Guest:Yeah, pretty early.
Guest:1950 was the first ones.
Marc:A first Telecaster or a first Broadcaster?
Guest:Broadcaster was 1950.
Guest:Broadcaster and Esquire in 1950.
Guest:Then by 51, they're making no more Broadcasters.
Guest:They're making Esquires and Telecasters.
Marc:And the difference was with the Telecasters, they added that pickup?
Guest:Telecaster had the neck pickup on it too.
Guest:My guitar says Esquire, but it's got the two pickups.
Guest:Fender always just made whatever they needed to make that day.
Guest:Use all the parts that they had and ship them out.
Guest:I figured it must have been one of those.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:That was the guitar.
Marc:You're 11 and you've got a Telecaster and you're playing in bands already?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:There was, uh, some older folks, um, probably like in their thirties, you know, and they had a band and there was so few musicians there that where you lived in such a small town and my parents knew everybody.
Guest:So my dad knew these people and I got into this little, uh, band and it was like, you know, uh,
Guest:Kind of lounge music, you know, standards.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Old time stuff and some polka music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pennsylvania, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was an accordion in the band.
Guest:The guy with an acoustic guitar.
Guest:It was hysterical.
Marc:But you were in those chords.
Marc:You were in that group.
Guest:I learned.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:See, that was great.
Guest:I got right away.
Guest:I started learning.
Yeah.
Guest:And the polka groove.
Guest:Not just blues-based songs at all, but, you know, like standards.
Guest:We've changed Nat King Cole songs and stuff.
Guest:Louis Armstrong.
Guest:My grandmother listened to Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, that kind of stuff.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so I had heard that stuff since I was a baby on her floor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had that in my head.
Guest:I had that sound in my ear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was very fortunate, you know, to be able to start out with that good music.
Marc: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?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the music that I really loved.
Guest:And then like, you know, when the Beatles came out,
Guest:About a year after I got that Telecaster, the Beatles came out and I liked the Beatles and I thought they were really cool.
Guest:But I didn't want to play that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that.
Guest:But then when the Rolling Stones came out and the Kings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When I first heard you really got me that.
Guest:Oh, yes, I get it now.
Guest:Electric guitar.
Guest:That's what it does.
Marc:So that's the rock element.
Marc:Where do you get the where do you get your first dose of real guitar blues?
Guest:When the Stones came out, the Yardbirds and those band, I would obsessively read the album covers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:you know, LP, you know, and that had who wrote the songs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm seeing these names, you know, and I'm reading interviews with the Stones and the Yardbirds and the Who and those bands, and they're talking about Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So then I went and got those records.
Guest:Yeah, that's weird.
Guest:I ordered those records from the little music store in town, you know.
Marc:You got them to, oh, they ordered them for you?
Guest:Yeah, they didn't have those in stock, you know.
Marc:They were hard to find, you know, even when I was a kid.
Marc:I mean, there were collections and stuff, but, you know, the real stuff is... So it was Muddy and Howlin' Wolf, the regular guys, Elmore James.
Marc:Elmore James.
Marc:I loved Elmore James.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:So you're fucking around with that slide?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, slide, which, of course, I didn't know that it was slide.
Guest:I didn't know what that was when I first heard it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:In the middle, 64, 65, I heard that.
Guest:I didn't know what it was.
Guest:But then I saw Brian Jones play with the Stones.
Guest:I saw him play slide, and I went, oh, he's got this thing on his finger.
Guest:That makes that sound.
Guest:Where'd you see the Stones?
Guest:I saw them in 1965 in Atlantic City at the Steel Pier.
Guest:And the McCoys opened.
Guest:Hang on, Sloopy.
Guest:Rick Derringer.
Marc:Rick Derringer, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So what was that?
Marc:Do you remember that being in terms of looking back?
Marc:I mean, you've played with everybody and you've seen everybody.
Marc:But at that age, at that time, those guys, was it a great fucking show?
Marc:It was...
Guest:To me, it was like the most exciting thing I'd ever seen.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I love the songs.
Guest:I also that year saw The Who.
Guest:Ah, 65?
Guest:65, yeah.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And that was, that changed my life, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Years later, when I got to work with all these people, I would always ask, especially the English guys, when you were coming up, I asked Jagger, I asked David Bowie, a bunch of different guys.
Guest:I said, when you were first coming up,
Guest:Now, let's leave your band out of it, but who was the best live band?
Guest:Every single one of them said The Who.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody ever said anything else.
Guest:The Who.
Marc:That's wild.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:When I asked Jagger that, I didn't even finish the question.
Guest:He just went The Who.
Guest:So they all went to watch The Who.
Guest:The Who live because...
Guest:Great songs.
Guest:They could all really play and they could sing.
Guest:They could really sing just like the record because Townsend and Entwistle would sing the background vocals and Daltrey singing the lead.
Guest:They had the harmonies.
Guest:They were doing it, you know, and they could really play that stuff live.
Marc:And oddly, you know, the sound, I mean, no one plays guitar like that guy.
Marc:Nope.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's some sort of like power rhythm lead hybrid rhythm lead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's he was he was really unique.
Guest:And he always said Townsend always said, you know, that he was a banjo player first, but not like country finger picking banjo skiffle.
Guest:plectrum banjo with a pick so he learned all those things from playing banjo and translated it onto the guitar and obviously a great songwriter and a very angry guy so that anger came out in the music
Guest:And they were just great.
Guest:You know their song, I Can't Explain, the Who record?
Guest:You listen to that.
Guest:I mean, I bought that 45 when it came out in 65.
Guest:You listen to that record, that's live in the studio.
Guest:There's no overdubs on that record.
Guest:When Townsend and Entwistle come in with the background vocal, I can't explain.
Guest:You hear the compression.
Guest:You hear...
Guest:The cymbals go away because they went up to their microphones and the drums weren't bleeding anymore.
Guest:You hear it on the record.
Guest:When the guitar solo comes on, the rhythm guitar stops because he's playing the solo now.
Guest:He can't play rhythm guitar.
Guest:That's an amazing record, but that really shows how good they were live.
Marc:Yeah, I, you know, I came to The Who late.
Marc:I liked some of the, you know, I always liked The Who, but I was like not a fanatic, you know, when I was a kid.
Marc:But now, you know, that live at Leeds and all of it is pretty amazing.
Marc:Yeah, his anger is great.
Marc:You work with Roger Waters for a while.
Marc:That guy's angry too.
Marc:I talked to him too.
Marc:He's angry.
Marc:He's an angry dude.
Guest:He's another guy, real smart guy.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, real poet, real political activist, got a real chip on his shoulder for fairly righteous reasons.
Marc:It was funny because I talked to him.
Marc: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.
Marc:So he tells me, he's like, I don't want to talk about Pink Floyd.
Marc:I'm like, what are we going to fucking do then?
Marc:But within five minutes, he was talking about Pink Floyd.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Guest:yeah right away i worked with roger for 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
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:I did play some guitar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's a guy named Dave Kilminster that plays with Roger who does the Gilmore thing.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So you're playing.
Guest:He's got it.
Guest:Great, great musician.
Guest:And Snowy White was also in the band.
Guest:So there are three guitar players.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But I played bass on probably about 80% of the show because Roger was acting.
Guest:You know, the wall was very much a theatrical.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Performance.
Marc:And people love that thing, man.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:I've never seen fanatical fans like those Pink Floyd, Roger Waters fans.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:They are fanatical.
Marc:Yeah, it runs deep with them.
Guest:Even when I worked with Bob Dylan, who obviously has very fanatical fans, in a kind of a different way.
Marc:Yeah, they're all like 70 now.
Guest:Yeah, a lot of them are saying, but there's younger ones too, you know.
Guest:But what always really got me was like with Bob and with Roger, there's people that really think that that song was written for them specifically.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Even though they knew that Bob didn't know them or anything, Bob wrote that for me.
Guest:It speaks to him.
Guest:beyond speaking to them.
Marc:It's a weird kind of obsession.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:Well, the thing about The Wall, you know, and that album in particular, it's sort of a kind of timeless encapsulation of an adolescent anger that goes all through your life.
Marc:And I think that, you know, the possibility of that continuing to attract generations of younger people forever is probably pretty high.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When we would play...
Guest: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 show up to 90,000, a hundred thousand, you know,
Guest:depending on where it was outdoors.
Guest:Um, and the audience range would be from in their seventies to young teenagers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they all knew the words and everybody sang the songs.
Marc:And yeah, that's beautiful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's powerful.
Marc: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, how and Wolf, but like, I've seen you speak about this, this Bloomfield obsession.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Now, he's a guy that kind of fascinates me.
Marc:Do you think that first Paul Butterfield album, that's the one that kind of blew your mind out in terms of how you approach guitar?
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:That record, which from everything I've ever been able to find out, they started recording right at the end.
Guest:It's 1964.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody can imagine now how...
Guest:that's unimaginable that a bunch of, you know, these young white guys from Chicago were so into that music.
Guest:They had been hanging out in the clubs.
Guest:They knew Muddy.
Guest:They knew Wolf.
Guest:They had gotten up on stage and sat in with them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Little Walter.
Guest:And they were smart enough
Guest:Butterfield did this.
Guest: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.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I just saw the other night in a little interview with Sam Lay,
Guest:And he said, well, yeah, the reason I went with Butterfield is because he offered me $20 a show.
Guest:And with Wolf, I got $7 a show.
Guest:So it was just like a financial thing for him, you know.
Guest:But yeah, that record is amazing.
Guest:to me really groundbreaking.
Guest:Like in my mind, in my world, that's right up there with like the Beatles or something, you know, that's, that's a life changing record for me.
Marc:So you're saying that this was the first example of a bunch of white kids who weren't just covering the songs.
Marc:They were living the life and, and, and directly, you know, in mentorship with the original guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They,
Guest:And Bloomfield's playing on that record, it's so, I mean, it's very stylistically correct.
Guest:He's playing the blues, you know?
Guest:But he's playing it so technically
Guest:advanced right from almost anything that had been played before almost you know there were people hubert sumlin right howlin wolf yeah played some stuff there's a there's a howlin wolf song called louise yeah that was recorded and i think 61 or something where wolf
Guest:It's a great song.
Guest:Wolf singing great.
Guest:But Hubert plays a solo in that song that says everything anybody's going to say for the next 10 years.
Guest:About Bluefield, Clapton, Jimmy Page, whoever you want to talk about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:hubert solo on louise 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
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know Jimmy, like, cause I used to do, you know, I'm a comic.
Marc:I do Conan a lot and Jimmy would always, you know, let me play one of his guitars and show me links and stuff.
Marc:He's got a lot of great guitars.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he's also, you know, he's also one of those guys, not unlike you, you know, he, he, you know, he did, he does, he studied the guys, right?
Guest:Oh yeah.
Marc:So, you know, he, you know, if you've got a question, he can resolve it for you, but he produced that.
Marc:I think he, he produced a record for Hubert later on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did a bunch of stuff with Hubert.
Guest:I got to be good friends with Hubert.
Guest:yeah that was a real honor you know yeah he's an interesting guitar player he was it 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 and him in the car so we really got to talk and
Marc:Oh, that's beautiful, man.
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:So you heard some of the good stories, huh?
Guest:He had like a kind of stock repertoire of stories.
Guest:Yeah, they do.
Guest:But we had spent enough time together that he got away from those, and we really had some good talks.
Guest:He really was a very expressive guy, and he told me some great stuff.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:He taught me a great chicken recipe.
Guest:He taught me
Guest:a great thing how to cook he because he was a good cook oh yeah is it simple yeah it's simple that simple thing you got 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
Guest:You melt some butter in a big iron skillet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you fry that skin and you fry up some of the chicken meat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you take the wings and you fry the wings in that butter, you know, so they get really crispy and good.
Guest:Man, it's good.
Guest:I just had that last night.
Guest:Hubert Sumlin chicken.
Marc:Hubert Sumlin chicken.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I talked to Buddy Guy, and he's got one of those repertoire, the blues man repertoire.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:He's amazing.
Marc:He is amazing.
Marc:Both him and Hubert really kind of like, they go out there, man.
Marc:There's nothing, you know, kind of average.
Marc:It's not a matter of average, but they take real risks.
Marc:I mean, they do some weird shit on their guitars.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Buddy, I made a record with Buddy with the Saturday Night Live band.
Guest:Yeah, he...
Guest:When I was doing the TV show after I was on, I started in 1985.
Guest:Right.
Guest:After I was on a couple years, the show had gotten pretty successful.
Marc:Yeah, I remember seeing you.
Marc:You were like the first thing everyone saw, almost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was nice.
Guest:Lauren gave me that spot there.
Guest:Lauren Michaels, the producer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He gave me those little spots, and I really owe a great debt to him.
Guest:You know, there's nothing as powerful as TV in the United States.
Guest:And that really got people to know me and what I was playing and stuff.
Guest:But anyway, after we'd been on like two years, maybe three years by about 88, I could...
Guest:get a guitar player who was in town, anybody that was passing through town, and they would sit in with the band.
Guest:And this wouldn't be announced or anything.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Guest:The camera would come up and there would be Hubert Sumlin or David Gilmore or Johnny Winner.
Guest:Or Eddie Van Halen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All different kind of, but just great guitar players.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was wonderful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And play with all those different guys and get to hang out with them and stuff.
Guest:That was, because I'm a fan, you know?
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:But you got to actually do a record with Buddy, huh?
Guest:Got to do, yeah.
Guest:So we had Buddy Guy on.
Guest:He was in town playing.
Guest:And he liked the band.
Guest:the musicians in the Saturday Night Live band, only a corporation like NBC could afford to hire that band.
Guest:They're all great jazz guys.
Guest:I'm this bar band guitar player, and I get to be in that band with these incredible musicians.
Guest:I learned so much there.
Marc:It must be nice to have that behind you.
Marc:I mean, to have a band backing you.
Marc:They're never going to let you fall down, right?
Marc:Nope.
Guest:I had to work to keep up with them.
Guest:Yeah, I believe you.
Guest:To try to play up to their standards.
Guest:Which record did you do with Buddy?
Guest:It's called, I think it's called The Real Deal.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:The live record.
Guest:We did two nights in New York City and two nights in Chicago at Buddy's Club.
Guest:We did some great stuff.
Guest:I got him to do an Elmore James song.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, things like that.
Guest:Like not from maybe his normal repertoire.
Guest:And we were, one night we were playing and Buddy was just on.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And he was just the sound he was getting, you know, the electric.
Guest:It just filled the air.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Incredible.
Guest: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.
Guest:I say extortion on my amp.
Guest:And I used to think when those guys would say those kind of things, because Hubert would say stuff like that all the time.
Guest:They knew exactly what they were saying.
Guest:It's poetry.
Guest:It's poetry.
Guest:These guys are geniuses.
Guest:Listen to Sonny Boy Williamson's records.
Guest:He is a poet.
Guest:Fantastic lyrical content.
Guest:And they talk like that.
Guest:The guys, the real blues guys.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So the Telecaster thing and the Bloomfield thing, I mean, I saw you talk about your the G.E.
Marc:Smith signature telly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which, you know, I'd never seen it before.
Marc:Now I feel like I need to find one.
Marc:But that commitment to the Telecaster is sort of interesting.
Marc:So because Bloomfield eventually went to a 59 Les Paul, right?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm a big Peter Green guy.
Marc:Like Peter Green.
Marc:What do you think about him?
Guest: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 the um great blues phrasing oh my god
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very, obviously, very influential.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Our players, you know, Kirk Hammett has his guitar.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Greeny.
Marc:He's got it.
Marc:And my buddy knows him.
Marc:And he said I could come play it one day, which is just crazy.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I wouldn't mind doing that.
Guest:I mean, do you touch it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just to touch your hands, too.
Marc:Do you do it?
Marc:So you kind of feel that, right?
Marc:You know, you know that these these old guitars and these guitars that were used by certain people, they've got a magic to them, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think there's a psychological factor when you pick up a guitar like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know the music that was played on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's inspirational.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:You know the funny thing, though, that I found?
Guest:I got to play a lot of the famous guitars.
Yeah.
Guest:that, that people have.
Guest:Um, like I got to play, you know, Clapton's Blackie.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, uh, I got to play Neil Young's Black Les Paul.
Marc:What that old weird P90 thing with the tremolo on it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With the P90 and the Firebird pickup.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:Both of those guitars, if they didn't belong to Neil and Eric and just it belonged 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.
Guest:You know, it's not like this, you know, in the vintage guitar world, there's this like it's got to be all original and it's got to.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Guitars were pieced together, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest: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 les paul jr oh man great guitar double cutaway it's fucking great so you have a 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 it's
Marc: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
Marc:What is this Roger C. Reel and the morgue?
Marc:Rue morgue.
Marc:Rue morgue.
Guest:Like, you know, the French word for speak.
Guest:Yeah, Roger C. Reel and the rue morgue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So in 1971, when I was 19, I was still in my hometown of Pennsylvania.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would always play.
Guest:You know, I've been playing.
Guest:By now, I'm playing seven nights a week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:I would play any gig, whatever kind of music, any place, whatever.
Guest:I didn't care.
Guest:As long as I was playing, I'm still that way.
Guest:But in 71, a buddy of mine had been to Vietnam.
Guest:He's a Hammond organ player, a guy from my hometown.
Yeah.
Guest:And I'd been in bands with him.
Guest:And he had been to Vietnam and then come home and went to the New Haven University.
Guest:So he's up there in the New Haven area.
Guest:And he calls me up.
Guest:like in the late spring around this time of year.
Guest: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.
Guest:He said, he's going to be out for two weeks.
Guest:Can you come up and fill in for him?
Guest:I said, sure.
Guest:So I went up to Connecticut.
Guest:I never went, never looked back.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just got up there and gotten this band and I stole the guy's spot, you know, in the band, but, um,
Guest:So I get in this band after about a year or two called the Scratch Band.
Guest:Scratch Band.
Guest:And the Scratch Band was a Connecticut band.
Guest:I have my old calendars from like 75, 76.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We would play 250 gigs a year and never leave Connecticut.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know how big Connecticut is, right?
Guest:I know.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:there used to be a lot of places to play live music.
Guest: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.
Guest:And Roger Real was around there at that studio.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:And in 1977,
Guest:You know, by now, we're listening to a lot of reggae.
Guest:It was a big Jamaican community in Hartford, Connecticut.
Guest: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.
Guest:You know, we're listening to that stuff.
Guest:And then the punk stuff is starting to come out of England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know, the early, early punk stuff.
Guest:And Roger Reel's really into that.
Guest:And I'm listening to that stuff too.
Guest:So he says, I want to make a record, you know, would you play on it?
Guest:Cause he knows that I know that style of playing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so we made this, this record and I thought it was a really good record at the time, but I,
Guest: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 years it it
Guest:it resurfaced somehow and some people put some money into it and remastered it and they've put it out and, and I, it's making a little noise, you know?
Marc:So yeah, I listened to it.
Marc:It's great.
Guest:There's, there's some good stuff on that record.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you sound great.
Guest:And is that still that 53 telly that actually on that record, it's a 55 telly.
Guest:Cause by then I was buying old guitars, you know, and had a lot of stuff.
Guest:I still have the 52 telly that my mom got me.
Guest:I've had that my whole life and played that.
Guest:with everybody i took it on the road with bob dylan you know for four 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 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
Guest:Bob Dylan's 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden.
Guest:Bob hired me to be like the musical director for that.
Marc:And your relationship with him was good?
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like how big of an operation was it when you were playing with him?
Marc:Who was in the band?
Guest: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.
Guest:No, I remember that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then he did a tour with Tom Petty and the heartbreakers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Man.
Guest:Great band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tom and the heartbreakers always, always delivered.
Guest:I saw them a lot.
Guest: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
Guest:a couple of buddies of mine and you know, we went out and played.
Guest:It was just a trio, you know, guitar, bass and drums and bop.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you do a record with him?
Guest:I never recorded with him other than live stuff.
Guest:I never did any studio work with him.
Marc:And when you work with him, because he's a guy that approaches his own music so differently over and over again.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What was it about the way you guys worked together, what he expected of you, or how did it evolve?
Marc:How did you guys do the songs differently, and what's his genius in approaching his own music?
Guest:I think that what he liked about
Guest:me and uh that that band was that he he likes to change he doesn't like to play the song the same way right all the time you know a lot of people i've worked with it's the same every time you know they get a show together yeah and that's kind of the way it is and the song goes like this and that's it bob like to change stuff up and and we were able to follow him you know i was i was able to
Guest:Because I always love doing that.
Guest:My favorite thing is to play with a good singer, songwriter person, and just follow them, just watch their hands.
Guest:A lot of times with Bob, he would just start some song that we had never heard in front of 15,000 people.
Guest:And we'd just play it.
Guest:I would just follow along with him and we'd play it.
Marc:It's like playing with Chuck Berry.
Yeah.
Marc:In a way.
Marc:I mean, there's that story about Chuck Berry when who was it was Bruce Springsteen.
Marc:He always hired the local guys to back him.
Marc:And I don't think it was Bruce.
Marc:Bruce goes, you know, what do we play?
Marc:And Chuck goes, Chuck Berry songs.
Marc:Chuck Berry songs.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:So what was your big break with the playing these with what got you in with these guys?
Marc:I mean, how did you start in the legit music business?
Guest:Yeah, the legit music.
Guest:I'm still not in the legit music business.
Guest:So I'm playing in Connecticut, right?
Guest:And at some point, a guy named Dan Hartman, who had been in the Edgar Winner group, he wrote Free Ride.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Come on and take a free ride.
Guest:He was the bass player in that group.
Guest:But he wrote great songs, Dan.
Guest:And Dan had made a record and wanted to...
Guest:go out and, and tour behind his, his record.
Guest:And he had seen me play with the scratch band.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he had, he had a home, a studio from Westport, Connecticut.
Guest:Dan passed away.
Guest:So to go, but, um, another great guy and happy to be from Pennsylvania.
Guest:So, um, I've played with a lot of pencil.
Guest:I played with Daryl Hall, John Oates, you know, Pennsylvania guys.
Guest:Then I just started meeting people and, and getting these different gigs, you know, and I was at a, uh,
Guest:a party one time in New York city and David Bowie was at the party and, uh,
Guest:David had a woman named Coco that worked with him for many, many years.
Guest:And Coco came over to me at this party and she said, I'd like you, you know, David wants to meet you.
Guest:So I go over and say hello to David.
Guest:I'm thrilled, you know, I can't believe it.
Guest:And then a little later, she comes back over and she says, David's doing a video tomorrow.
Guest:Do you want to be in it?
Guest:And I said, well, yeah, of course.
Guest:And she said, great.
Guest:She tells me where it is and what time, you know, two o'clock.
Guest:And I said, should I bring my guitar?
Guest:And she goes, you're a guitar player.
Guest:And I said, yeah.
Guest:She goes, wait a minute.
Guest:She goes over.
Guest:Then she comes back.
Guest:Bring your guitar.
Guest:You can play the part of the guitar player in the video.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I wound up doing a very limited amount of live playing with David.
Guest:But I did get to play with him a little bit.
Guest:So, you know, you just be somewhere.
Guest:You'd meet somebody.
Guest:But did you you recorded with Hall of Notes?
Guest:All right.
Guest:yeah yeah a lot yeah 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 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 yeah
Marc: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 she was the greatest man nice nice person yeah so funny so talented yeah yeah yeah um well i mean hollow notes they were like hit machines man i mean they were huge when i joined them
Guest:they were kind of in a slump.
Guest:They had had like the Sarah smile, rich girl, mid seventies, 75, 74, 75.
Guest:And, and they got real big, but then some stuff that they did didn't hit as, as hard.
Guest:And, um, when they hired me, um,
Guest:At first, I was getting $200 a week, $100 to play guitar, and $100 to drive one of the station wagons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were playing bars.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:They went down that hard?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:The music business is very unforgiving.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:You're on the top or you're not.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But then pretty quick, within about a year,
Guest: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 uh you make my dreams come true 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 lesson
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But for me, you know, it was the same kind of places I'd always been playing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was no different.
Guest: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.
Guest:We would go to Japan for weeks.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And base out of Tokyo and fly out to Osaka and Fukuoka and Nagoya and Hokkaido and all those places.
Guest:That must have been exciting.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:It was wonderful.
Guest:And that was my first taste of like the big time, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was really exciting.
Guest:And, you know, we were young and a band like that, a pop band,
Marc: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 what about like when you when you recorded with jagger yeah was did you feel that there was tension in the band in the stones i didn't know anything about the stones because i at that point i only knew mick yeah later i i got to
Guest:you know meet Keith but I mean you love the Stones 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 in Manhattan and I was living in Manhattan and we were around okay yeah yeah yeah so I had met him yeah and uh I was doing Saturday Night Live so he had seen me okay he would come to the show
Guest:I remember sitting with him watching Stevie Ray Vaughan play.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And talking about Stevie and how he played and stuff.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:What did you think of that?
Marc:Stevie was something, huh?
Guest:Oh, it was great.
Guest:Stevie, to me, is the ultimate.
Guest:And I mean this as a compliment.
Guest:I mean this not in any derogatory way.
Guest:He's the ultimate bar band guitar player.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The ultimate.
Guest:He could cover somebody else's song, cover a Jimi Hendrix song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do it pretty much almost as good, you know, as as Jimmy did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is really going somewhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody else.
Guest:Nobody else could do that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Stevie was fabulous and really based in the blues.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:knew what he was doing could really play and a sweet guy yeah so sad like yeah 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
Guest:Stevie plays, and that thing happened.
Guest:And I remember being at Soundcheck, and we heard the news.
Guest:And we were just devastated.
Marc:Oh, God, it's just terrible.
Marc:Terrible.
Marc:His brother's a good player, too.
Marc:Jimmy's great, and a great guy.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:An amazing guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Marc:Yeah, I love him.
Guest:Love the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Guest:And in the 70s,
Marc: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 so you grew up out there yeah i did yeah i like albuquerque
Marc:I do too.
Marc:It's a weird place now.
Marc:It got a little beat up, but I love it.
Guest:Yeah, the whole country got beat up, man.
Guest:That's for sure.
Guest:How about now?
Guest:It's still being beat up.
Guest:How about the way things are now?
Guest:The live music business is destroyed.
Guest: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 won't be able to come back and and it's terrible and it's going to have a an effect for years on music
Guest:Yep.
Marc:It's fucking sad.
Marc:And we're in the middle of it.
Marc:We don't even see, I don't see the, I don't see how we get out of it.
Marc:We're still in the fucking tunnel here.
Guest:We're still in the middle of it.
Marc:And nobody, nobody knows.
Marc:So, well, this record that you did with the Leroy Bell is a pretty powerful record.
Marc:It's a, it's sort of a, a, a sort of a socially and politically relevant record.
Marc:Record.
Marc:These are songs.
Guest:I'm glad that you hear that.
Guest:I'm very glad that you hear that.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:I mean, you know, these are songs written, you know, to the moment that we're living in now in a lot of ways.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And, you know, there's an intensity to it and honesty to it.
Marc:He's a hell of a singer.
Marc:How did this record come about?
Guest:My wife, Taylor Barton, heard some of Leroy's songs about a year and a half ago now.
Guest:Maybe two years ago, she heard this stuff.
Guest:And then in January of 2019, we got a hold of Leroy and invited him to come here to the house and sit.
Guest:And I've been looking for a singer for 30 years.
Marc:Well, you've done a few records, but not that many, right?
Marc:Solo records.
Guest:Yeah, he's done some records.
Marc:What about you?
Guest:How many were solo records you do?
Guest:I did a few solo records.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:two or three.
Guest:I don't remember.
Marc:I listened to the first one.
Marc:It's sort of the kind of punky one.
Guest:Oh, that one, yeah.
Guest:In the world.
Guest:Yeah, in the world.
Guest:That was in 1980.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:1980.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, Leroy came to the house and we sat down
Guest:And he had just written that song, America, that's on the record.
Guest:And I just loved it.
Guest:I said, well, yeah, okay.
Guest:And we started playing it.
Guest:And the way I played and the way he sang, it just fit together.
Guest:It was exactly what I had been looking for for all those years.
Guest:So we started recording right away.
Guest:A friend of mine has a recording studio right near here.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:we went over and right away started making making some music and uh we wound up getting this deal with bmg and the record was gonna be released at south by southwest in march but of course that got canceled right you know again this whole thing with with the virus closing everything down yeah now fortunately
Guest:Here, the digital world will work in our favor that we will be able to get the record out in front of people.
Guest:We've made a video already for America.
Guest:There was just talk starting around today doing another video for one of the other songs.
Guest:But yeah, Leroy just writes that stuff that it is political and it is saying something
Guest:but he doesn't slap you in the face with it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, I like also that song Codeine.
Guest:Codeine.
Guest:Yeah, I've always played that song.
Guest:I always loved that song.
Guest:When I was back in the folk scare, I saw Buffy St.
Guest:Marie play that song.
Guest:probably in 1962 or something, you know, and I always loved that song.
Guest:I've always performed it, you know, so I was glad to be able to get that on record.
Marc: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.
Marc:Like you don't, I, you know, it's familiar, but you don't hear it a lot anymore.
Marc:And it just, it sounds great.
Marc:And that's a, it's a song about drugs, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's a song about code.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yep and so you know that that always you know is kind of an evergreen topic but but who the who's playing drums dude yeah right who is that um now on codon i believe that that's josh dion who is a a great drummer uh lives in brooklyn and he's he's kind of like a really happening guy right now and i was lucky i met him
Guest:And got him to come and play on.
Guest:So Josh plays on a bunch of stuff.
Guest:Sean Pelton plays on some of the songs.
Guest:On America, it's both Josh and Sean.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Good drum sound on that record.
Marc:Guitar sound great.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Yeah, I thought that we did wind up getting some good sounds.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:So, well, I mean, I wish you all the luck with that.
Marc:And also, like... So, Del, you're still only... You've got to have a 59 Les Paul, no?
Guest:I sold the last one I had.
Guest:I've had a bunch of them over the years.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:After a while, you know, I just wasn't ever playing a Les Paul.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I had kind of, like...
Guest:worn that out.
Guest:I still have a couple, but not a 59 Sunburst.
Guest:54 Junior.
Guest:One of the first ones that is magic.
Guest:I saw it on eBay about 10 years ago.
Guest:I saw the picture of it and I went,
Guest:That's really primitive.
Guest:You know, look at that.
Guest:The finish is weird.
Guest:Everything about it's weird.
Guest:And, uh, it's just a magical guitar.
Marc:Oh, that's like, that's a great looking guitar.
Marc:I can picture it with the one pickup, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like yours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cut away in the summer is finished.
Guest:But, um, I always play my Telecaster, you know, but the guitar that I did a lot of this record with, um,
Guest:The Stony Hill record is a 1962 Epiphone Sheraton.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Wait, I got it right here.
Guest:I'll show it to you.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's beautiful.
Guest:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And this is a 62.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And again, I saw this on eBay.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Like about six, eight years ago.
Guest:And I could tell I've had Sheritans before.
Guest:I've had other 62s.
Guest:I had a blonde 62s.
Guest:But this one, I could tell something about it was magical.
Guest:And it is.
Guest:It's either somebody worked.
Guest:At this point, Gibson was making Epiphones by 1952.
Guest:58 they started.
Guest:They made Epiphones.
Guest:And this guitar was either made by an employee or was a custom order or something because it's got a lot of unusual things.
Guest:It's a little bit wider.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the nut.
Guest:You know, the fingerboard's a little wider.
Guest:I got big, big palms.
Marc:Well, man, it's been great talking to you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I wanted to ask you, like, I remember a while back you got some flack for playing at the Republican convention.
Marc:That must have sucked.
Guest:Well, it doesn't bother me.
Guest:You know, you're always going to.
Guest:Like, when I was on Saturday Night Live, I would get fan mail, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if I got 1,000 letters, you know, 900 of them would really like me and 100 of them would hate me.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:hate me.
Guest:There were people that hated me.
Guest:If you go out in the public, that's going to happen.
Guest:Here's my thing about playing at the Republican convention.
Guest:I'm not a Republican.
Guest:I do not support Donald Trump.
Guest:I don't like Donald Trump.
Guest:I think he's done a lot of really ugly things.
Guest:I think his subtle approval of this white nationalism thing is just horrible and has set this country back
Guest:100 years.
Guest:That's what America is about.
Guest:That's what that song America is about.
Guest:It's that attitude.
Guest:So it was just a gig.
Guest:You got offered a gig.
Guest:I played at the 2012 Republican convention for Mitt Romney.
Guest:And he didn't win.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:I've played at mafia weddings.
Guest:They were great gigs.
Guest:They paid a lot.
Guest:They were nice.
Guest:The food was good.
Guest:They were nice people.
Guest:I don't know if they were nice all the time, but they were nice to me.
Marc:I think we can probably bank on them not being nice all the time.
Guest:Probably not.
Guest:No, I get it.
Guest:The Republican convention...
Guest:I'm a New York City guy, right?
Guest:I lived in New York City for 40 years.
Guest:Trump, before he got to be president, right?
Guest:All those years before, he was a joke in New York City.
Guest:Nobody took him seriously.
Guest:In July of 2016, when I played at that thing, he wasn't going to win.
Guest:Everybody thought, no, Hillary.
Guest:Hillary's in.
Guest:The first night at that convention when he was introduced and he came out
Guest:In the rock and roll smoke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It looked like a poison show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Motley Crue show or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I looked at Jeff, the keyboard player, and he looked at me and Jeff said, he's going to win.
Guest:We went, yeah.
Marc:Oh, shit, man.
Guest:So the crowd went crazy?
Guest:The crowd went crazy.
Marc:And here we are.
Marc:Here we are.
Marc:Hold up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a political person.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You just took a gig.
Guest:It was a gig.
Guest:It paid a lot.
Guest:You know, I got to pay all my guys, give them a real good payday for three or four days work.
Guest:And I took home a bunch of money, you know,
Guest:Um, but I never, ever thought when I, when I first got the gig and took the, I never thought he was going to win.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wouldn't, I wouldn't now that I know where the guy's really at, I would never do it again.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, you're not going to play Trump's party.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:Well, man, I wish you great luck with this record.
Marc:And, uh, it was certainly great talking to you.
Marc:I love talking about music and, uh, you know, and take care of yourself, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:You too.
Marc:okay that was ge and me talking guitars and whatnot uh the new album coming out in august is uh called stony hill it's collaboration with the soul singer leroy bell let's play some uh guitar
guitar solo
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.