Episode 596 - Blake Mills
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nuts?
Marc:What the fuck bots?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Glad to be here.
Marc:Happy to be in your head, sharing my brain with your ears and on into your soul.
Marc:I got Blake Mills on the show today.
Marc:Guitar Wizard.
Marc:How'd I come across Blake Mills?
Marc:How did that happen?
Marc:Well, I do know this about him.
Marc:He's got a record out that I listen to.
Marc:The song, If I'm Unworthy.
Marc:Kills me.
Marc:Just kills me.
Marc:And I believe I'll get him to play it.
Marc:But man, this guy is like... He's real earnest about guitar playing.
Marc:But he's also one of these wizards that the sound is so perfect.
Marc:And he honors the kind of... The real tube and distortion and stuff that happens naturally in the electronics.
Marc:I'm just fascinated with him.
Marc:And it's a good conversation.
Marc:Especially if you're a guitar guy.
Marc:If you're not...
Marc:I think you'll still enjoy him.
Marc:But he did just produce the new Alabama Shakes record, Sound and Color.
Marc:I've been listening to a little of that, and it's sweet, sweet production, man.
Marc:I mean, it's got that old R&B soul vibe to it, but it's also just kind of very beautifully defined by a wizard.
Marc:And he's like 12 years old.
Marc:This Blake Mills kid.
Marc:It's always interesting to meet the young wizards.
Marc:The guys who just, obviously they work.
Marc:And they do it, but some dudes and gals just have a knack.
Marc:A God-given gift for Christ's sake.
Marc:Maybe it's just the luck of the draw, genetic rolling of the dice, the tumbling down the DNA strands into pure brilliance on those guitar strings.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:I don't.
Marc:I do all right.
Marc:I was just playing a bit before I cranked on the mics.
Marc:So...
Marc:What is happening, man?
Marc:So I did the Toronto shows.
Marc:That was the night after I talked to you last.
Marc:I did two shows in Toronto up there in Canada, and they were fucking awesome.
Marc:The tour has just been great.
Marc:I'm so grateful people are coming out.
Marc:And I had a good time in Toronto.
Marc:I did the new Q show on CBC.
Marc:It's their big radio program.
Marc:It's an interview show.
Marc:I did their first, the premiere episode with the new host, Shad.
Marc:And that was pretty great.
Marc:It's rare that, like a lot of times, I do interviews.
Marc:But when I get interviewed, I got moved.
Marc:There were some good moments there.
Marc:And it was in front of a live audience.
Marc:You should look that up.
Marc:It's Q with Shad.
Marc:And I'm the guest.
Marc:And there were some other guests there.
Marc:There's a great guitar player.
Marc:Now I'm going to forget everyone's name, and a great poet.
Marc:The poet's name is Shane Koyzan, I think, K-O-Y-C-Z-A-N, and I really liked him.
Marc:He's a great guy, great reader.
Marc:He recited his piece, and he gave me a book, and they're delightful poems, and the guitar player was this guy, Bahamas.
Marc:I think his real name is Afe Jervanen.
Marc:And I was backstage with this dude, and he had this like 52 Strat, which is a rare piece, man.
Marc:It was just amazing.
Marc:And the stage was beautiful in the CBC there.
Marc:I'm not sure what the facility was, but it was amazing.
Marc:And Chad did a good job.
Marc:Yeah, I'd done the show a couple of times with the past host, Gian Gomeschi, who was in trouble.
Marc:Got himself into some trouble and doesn't look good.
Marc:But nonetheless, I had a great time doing that.
Marc:And I did the global morning show in Toronto.
Marc:It's always exciting to do morning shows when you're up at 730 and you're sitting there with four or five perky hosts just going at it for like four minutes and you're out.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:But all in all, I love going to Canada and I did what I do sometimes.
Marc:And now I'm not going to be able to do it now after I talk about it.
Marc:But I always buy like a few Cuban cigars because they're legal up there.
Marc:Maybe eventually they'll be legal here.
Marc:I hope not because I still consider them a treat and I don't want to get strung out on the fucking cigars.
Marc:And I'll take like four or five of them out of Canada.
Marc:I feel like the guy in Midnight Express.
Marc:Like I might as well have two or three cigars.
Marc:hashish belts on and at any moment I'm going to be thrown into some horrendous Canadian prison where I'm locked in the basement and I just I eventually walk the wrong way and piss everybody off and figure out a way to get out by throwing the warden up on a coat hook almost by accident and then just walk out just steal an outfit and walk out I got it all planned out but now the cat's out of the bag so when they put me in the lock up
Marc:They know how I'm going to get out.
Marc:I'm never going to take Cubans out of the country again.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:Also got this letter.
Marc:I don't know when I said this.
Marc:I guess it was like last week.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:My name is Bobby and I am the woman with laryngitis in Philly that you mentioned during your intro to the Henry Winkle Show.
Marc:I wanted to respond to your implication that I might have caused your voice weakness during the intro.
Marc:I'm willing to take the blame for that.
Marc:However, I don't feel that I am responsible for a few reasons.
Marc:A, your voice didn't sound very bad during the intro and I could barely speak above a whisper.
Marc:Two, I'm pretty sure that my laryngitis was caused by allergies.
Marc:Three, you did five shows in three nights just prior to recording your intro.
Marc:Now, here's where the loyal fan part comes in.
Marc:Nevertheless, if you would like to blame me, I have broad shoulders, and also it is fun to be mentioned on your podcast, so I'll be happy to accept responsibility.
Marc:By the way, the show is terrific, and my brother and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Marc:Thanks for keeping us entertained.
Marc:Bobby, well, it didn't turn out I had that laryngitis.
Marc:Bobby, everything worked out.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah, I got pretty strung out, man.
Marc:I'm doing all these shows.
Marc:I put everything I got into it.
Marc:Beats me up.
Marc:I woke up in Toronto.
Marc:With chest pains.
Marc:Yeah, that was exciting.
Marc:And then you start to realize, you know, I'm not always so clear on how old I am or what's happening.
Marc:But, you know, you can have a heart blast.
Marc:You can have a heart attack at 51, at 48, at 37, whenever the fuck it is.
Marc:But, you know, I also have a tremendous amount of anxiety that I maintain and nourish on a day-to-day basis.
Marc:A good amount of dread and a lot of repressed anger.
Marc:Am I working this shit out?
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of things that I've solved as of late.
Marc:I feel OK about who I am in the world and what I'm doing for the most part.
Marc:Occasionally, I will be attacked by a fit of jealousy for something I don't want for someone that I don't care about against what I don't know.
Marc:Why does that happen?
Marc:It's the it's an jealousy.
Marc:And self-loathing is like inverted competitive spirit.
Marc:It's like, you know, I'm competitive, but I don't think I can win.
Marc:So I'm just going to fight with myself and see who wins that battle.
Marc:There's no winning because the loser is you.
Marc:And depending on what course that takes, who the fuck knows?
Marc:You can have a battle to the death with yourself.
Marc:Oh, by the way, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas tonight.
Marc:It's at Moon Tower Comedy Fest.
Marc:I'll be there.
Marc:I'm doing a screening of a Marin episode.
Marc:That's the fact that we premiere there with a Q&A.
Marc:And then I'm doing a live Dr. Katz reunion.
Marc:Of sorts with Jonathan Katz.
Marc:That's a moon tower.
Marc:And then Saturday, Houston, Fitzgerald's 26th in Dallas.
Marc:You can still get tickets to Dallas.
Marc:For some reason, Dallas is not one of my stronger cities.
Marc:I'm just I'm happy that some of Texas likes me.
Marc:I can't expect everyone to like me.
Marc:But the Dallas gig, the South Side Music Hall, still tickets available for that.
Marc:Friday, May 8th, the Neptune in Seattle, the Late Show, still some available.
Marc:May 9th at the Vogue in Vancouver, some tickets available.
Marc:May 10th, San Francisco, Davie Symphony Hall, definitely tickets available.
Marc:The Orange Peel, that's in Asheville, North Carolina, Late Show available.
Marc:Charleston Music Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, still a few tickets left.
Marc:Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, still some left.
Marc:Joy Theater, New Orleans, few left.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:oh you know what deaf black cow came back it's been like months you guys he was making funny noises the last time i saw him like he had something stuck in his nose there was like maybe one of those burrs and there was nothing i could do to get him he was very infrequent and not consistent in terms of how much i fed him but he was usually around and they just disappeared and again i grieve this motherfucker i grieved him and then i just saw him for a split second on my deck and i was like are you fucking kidding me
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Marc:He ran away when he saw me, but he's still, I don't know where he's been.
Marc:This is the deaf cat.
Marc:This is the baddest cat in the fucking world.
Marc:And I thought he'd been done in by whatever.
Marc:But he was back, man.
Marc:The journey continues with Deaf Black Cat.
Marc:Big Head, Big Balls Cat.
Marc:He's around.
Marc:The Black... I'm calling him Big Head because his head's oversized and he's got oversized balls.
Marc:He's around.
Marc:He seems to be like... I don't know.
Marc:I think he threw up a bird the other day.
Marc:Not great.
Marc:Not great.
Marc:Scaredy Cat's back on the deck.
Marc:He's been coming around for a decade.
Marc:There's a couple of new younger cats coming around.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe there's a litter somewhere.
Marc:They're definitely wild.
Marc:Totally new one came by last night.
Marc:Tuxedo Cat.
Marc:We'll see if they keep coming.
Marc:They're all doing all right.
Marc:Monkey and LaFonda are fine.
Marc:Happy as hell.
Marc:And that's the cat report.
Marc:All right?
Marc:It's a little tweaky for them when I go away for a couple of days and I come back and they have to readjust to my frenetic intensity, which makes them uncomfortable.
Marc:Hey, look, they could have gone somewhere else.
Marc:You know, they could have died in an alleyway.
Marc:But no, they just have to deal with a neurotic, aggravated man who takes care of them and wrestles with his love for them.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Let's talk to Blake Mills.
Marc:The youngin', the youngster, the young guitar wizard and producer.
Guest:Lee Sklar, the bass player, has a switch on his bass that... You don't know what a switch is.
Guest:It doesn't do anything.
Guest:It's confirmed it doesn't... You know what it did is when a producer or an engineer would walk into the room and say, it's not quite, it needs a something, and he would flip the switch, and they would go, that's perfect.
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:It was a buffer.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Between him and the producer.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What we did was...
Guest:We took an amplifier and we tricked the amplifier into thinking that it was seeing a speaker.
Guest:So you've got the tubes and the preamp and the power amp and all that stuff, and then that all sends to a speaker.
Guest:And if it's not connected to a speaker, it'll freak out.
Guest:It's like plugging up a hose or something like that.
Guest:So we created a way to create like a speaker impedance, but no speaker.
Guest:We just took the amp and sent it straight into a DI, into the board.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that crazy distortion you hear on Revolution, you know, the Beatle when they plug straight into the desk and just distorted the channel.
Guest:It's kind of like that, but it's even another, you know, stage of distortion.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:great sound it's a great record thank you i really liked it i mean i i put it like i had it for a while and i didn't know who you were and i'm like no i'm gonna put this on then like i put it on i'm like what's happening what the fuck is happening who's this guy it's a weird record no it's it's it's not that it's a weird record it's very grounded in something very american sounding like there was a few like at least in those first few songs like the second tune
Marc:Sounds like a Randy Newman song almost.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there is that foundation in what I know as sort of, not traditional American music, but definitely roots music.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was that there for you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I've spent a large part of my life listening to a lot of those guys, and especially Randy Newman.
Guest:Why him?
Guest:Well, he's kind of...
Guest:One of the top tier ultimate American songwriters.
Guest:Isn't he?
Guest:I mean, it's like Dylan and Tom Waits and Randy Newman.
Guest:And then if you go a little further north and include guys like...
Guest:Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, you start to get a picture of who in the last, what, 50 years have kind of shaped American songwriting.
Marc:Is it interesting the guys that you say that you mentioned there are like you can listen to at least the first five or six Randy Newman albums and they're timeless.
Marc:You can listen to almost any Neil Young record and it just transcends
Marc:Time.
Marc:Dylan as well.
Marc:I mean, stylistically, there are some shifts, but it doesn't seem to age.
Marc:It's its own thing.
Marc:No.
Guest:When they're firing lyrically, especially, like the Leonard Cohen records that a lot of people shy away from because the production is...
Guest:guilty of being dated or whatever, a lot of people don't realize that he was completely on top of his game lyrically.
Guest:I keep trying to listen to him.
Guest:Even more, just on a whole?
Marc:Well, I've never been like, I'm a fucking Leonard Cohen guy.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And the other night I listened to songs about love and hate all the way through, and I've listened to songs from a room, and I keep trying, and I understand the poetry of it, and I like it, but it still doesn't grab me like it should.
Marc:It doesn't feel like the kind of thing you want to just be alone with in a room?
Marc:Well, it does, but there's something like...
Marc:It's not even it's not the the emotions of it.
Marc:I like this sort of gypsy music sometimes that he does or wherever that's from, because nothing sounds like whoever played guitar on some of those records.
Marc:But but his lyrics, I understand the poetry of them and I feel it, but I don't feel the emotions of it doesn't connect with me.
Marc:I'm not feeling the rage or I'm not feeling like, you know, with Neil Young or with Dylan or Randy Newman, there's definitely an edge to some of that shit.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And I feel like that that Cohen is reaching for something different.
Guest:Well, it's presented in maybe a different way.
Guest:It's sophisticated.
Guest:It certainly is, but there's something beautiful about the lack of sophistication in the delivery of his early records.
Guest:So you've got that dichotomy, and then as the records get cleaner, the writing actually gets a little more focused.
Guest:There's a record he's got called Various Positions, and it sounds like the demo button on a Casio keyboard, but the lyrics are...
Guest:Solid.
Guest:Are so... Yeah, it's like the... There's just so much in each stroke, you know, each brush stroke.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I like... You know, I like Suzanne and I like Sisters of Mercy and I like that period.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And that shit's great.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:I mean, it's beautiful music and he's actually singing at a pretty good level.
Guest:But what gets me is like...
Guest:I'm your man, you know?
Guest:It starts to get so kind of crummy and seedy.
Guest:Yeah, okay, all right.
Guest:That's pretty cool to have wrapped in a package that sounds like, you know, the intro to a newscast or something.
Marc:Yeah, I got to do it more.
Marc:I got to do more comedy.
Marc:Well, yeah, I just got to sit with it more.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when did you start?
Marc:Because I know we were both at the Derek Truck Show, Tedeschi and Trucks, and I missed you.
Marc:Amazing, wasn't it?
Marc:Where's that guy come from?
Marc:All over.
Marc:He's like a savant or something.
Marc:You're kind of like that too.
Marc:Do you go to one of those shows where you guys are at a level?
Marc:Did you talk to him after?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:What did you talk to him about?
Guest:How beautiful the show was.
Guest:It was just a...
Guest:You know what I noticed was, I mean, it's a big band.
Guest:There's a lot of power behind that band.
Guest:So good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's like a, it has an engine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've played at the Greek before and I've seen shows at the Greek before and it's an outdoor venue that is situated in a neighborhood and the residents of the neighborhood have successfully managed to keep the decibel limit
Guest:At a certain point where if you cross it, you've got to pay a lot of money.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it's pretty low.
Guest:I've gone to shows there and felt like there was a lack of energy there.
Guest:But at that show, man, it didn't feel quiet.
Guest:It felt like he was cranking and his tones were so interesting for a live show.
Guest:And he's conducting too.
Guest:That's the interesting thing.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:That's what I noticed is that he is like...
Guest:And a guy who doesn't really, he's not the most animated guitar player by any stretch.
Guest:He pretty much tunes in and he's in the zone for the whole show.
Guest:But everybody's watching him and what they aren't seeing, they're hearing.
Guest:So when did you start playing?
Guest:I was 10.
Guest:I started playing.
Guest:And you grew up where?
Guest:I grew up in Malibu.
Guest:You grew up in Malibu?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are your parents old Malibu residents?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:My dad actually lived on Topanga Beach through the 70s.
Guest:Is he a music guy?
Guest:A huge music lover.
Guest:uh-huh yeah um and my mom he's not in show business no no he sold real estate yeah my mom's a paralegal oh yeah yeah so you just grew up down there by the beach yeah down by the beach down by dylan's house kinda i didn't know it was dylan's house at the time but i had a lot of weird the the the one that looks like a mosque like a gate up there i don't know i don't know anything i've never been i've never been to bob's house up there
Marc:And who, are you friends with those?
Marc:Are you friends with Jacob or anything?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've known Jacob for, I don't know, maybe I was like 20 or something when I met him.
Guest:We were working on his first solo record together.
Guest:You were playing on it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, I was kind of, there was a stage of him making that record where we were working with a very good friend of mine named Tony Berg, who I grew up with working with.
Guest:He's a producer, and Jacob and Tony were working on Jacob's material, and I came in and kind of built demos, sort of.
Guest:Just like played everything, and then we went and tracked it, and we tracked it, and that was the first time I played with Jim Keltner on that session.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I'm guessing I was probably 20.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I could be a couple years off.
Marc:So let's chart the wizardry, if we could.
Guest:If you don't promise not to use that word.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I know you're humble, but I mean, at some point you've got to like, you know, you're, you're okay.
Marc:I won't use that word.
Marc:Fine.
Marc:So you're 10 years old.
Marc:The first guitar you get is what?
Marc:Strat.
Marc:A Squire Strat.
Marc:You got a Squire Strat?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sunburst.
Marc:It's still in pieces in my mom's garage.
Marc:And who bought that for you?
Marc:My dad.
Marc:And now when you picked it up, you didn't have an acoustic.
Marc:You started on electric.
Guest:Yeah, I started on electric because the only reason I really wanted to play guitar was because Kurt Cobain just looked so fucking cool.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're 10 years old and you're like, that's it?
Guest:I was totally seduced by music videos.
Guest:And what did he play though?
Guest:He played a jazz master or something?
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, to be unintroduced, there's no difference.
Marc:No, no, right.
Marc:But to be like, he played with like piano wire or something.
Marc:Fuck.
Guest:And the guitar was so low.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It was such an iconic image of this guy playing this thing and stooped over and the hair in his face and the sound of his voice and guitar.
Marc:It's a real deal, that guy.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:It's weird because it took me years to realize that, you know, you play what you play, but it's your commitment to, you know, what you play and how you play that really is going to transcend anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because there are guys that.
Marc:If you believe it.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:If you believe it, that's the magic, isn't it?
Guest:Totally, and we were talking about J.J.
Guest:Carroll earlier, and the level of difficulty or technicality in his playing, and there's something that a lot of people, they'll glance over when they're learning something, and it's feel and touch, because there aren't a lot of words or ways to document and notate that.
Guest:describe the touch of how something was played.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, so a lot of people will, will, will learn a figure, but there's still this huge part of it that, that they haven't got.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and, and, and that's a, uh, uh, how do you, where do you, yeah, totally.
Guest:Where do you, where do you, where does that fall from?
Guest:on the hierarchical chart of what's good and what's difficult.
Marc:And also because there's so many, like when you're playing an amplified instrument, there's a whole range of things that you can get out of that without changing a note.
Guest:And an acoustic.
Guest:I mean, the guys that can get that out of an acoustic instrument is even more important.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when you start playing your Strat, what are you playing?
Marc:Who teaches you initially?
Guest:Well, the store that I bought the guitar from offered guitar lessons and you could get like 10 free lessons if you bought a guitar from them.
Guest:So there was a fellow by the name of Ralph who had like Kirk Hammett hair and showed me the greatest hits from the Black Album and Soundgarden and the Nirvana songs that I wanted to learn.
Guest:And I walked out of there being able to play Come As You Are.
Guest:And it's like the foundation for all of the guitar playing that I do today.
Guest:Still.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, even though I've gone on such an interesting journey as far as discovering other kinds of music and just being turned on to stuff, I still find myself, when I pick up a guitar...
Guest:falling onto these sort of two note couplings you know these shapes yeah yeah they're all over the nirvana records huh shapes that was so that was it yeah that laid it down for you yeah whether i knew it or not you know i mean there's there's a lot of musicality and in like in like in the pinkerton record the weezer sure in record oh yeah he's a
Guest:monster guitar player and a writer you know and so if you and my dad used to have these musician friends who he grew up with in the 70s guitar players and they would come over to the house and ask what I was listening to and I'd put on Pinkerton and it wasn't the kind of disconnect that you know a lot of parents you know the generational gap they were going okay there's music in this and they would listen and be able to go okay yeah it's a one one the progression is one five six four you know and and that seemed like such a magic
Guest:trick to be able to not have a guitar or an instrument around and listen to a piece of music and go I understand what's going on here and you know you pick that up well I mean I saw that that was happening I want to do that you know I want to be able to that's that's cool those guys
Guest:I want to be able to do that.
Guest:Yeah, to see that.
Guest:I used to go in my garage and I would play handball by myself against the wall.
Guest:And I would fantasize because I wasn't a very popular kid when I was in elementary school.
Guest:I would fantasize like, well, what if there was this competition, right?
Guest:Where it was like I was representing my school or these people that didn't really know who I was.
Guest:but I was the handball wizard and I could just do these things and I'm playing down there in the garage past 10 o'clock and hitting this thing going wouldn't that be great if I was just able to do something that nobody else was able to do.
Marc:But initially it was handball.
Marc:I'm glad you decided on guitar eventually.
Guest:Yeah, because there still isn't a handball Olympics in the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District.
Guest:Try as we might.
Guest:You would have been just the weird kid that could play handball really well.
Guest:Well, I think I probably still was.
Guest:Were you just quiet?
Guest:Not really quiet.
Guest:I think I was actually kind of a little shit.
Guest:My mom has a collection of, they were called pink slips, things you would get when you get in trouble.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:You're a smart ass?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I was probably really hard to deal with.
Guest:My principal in elementary school said he'll be in jail by the time he's 20.
Guest:Oh really?
Guest:Which is funny because once I hit like 14 and everybody else was starting to get into mischief, I was so sort of focused and obsessed with music that I became an adult.
Marc:It wasn't even an option.
Guest:It just didn't like I start a neighbor turned me on to pot when I was 10.
Guest:I started smoking when I was 10.
Guest:And then by the time I was 14, I was going out.
Guest:I was hanging out with with people who were in and out of rehab and I just lost interest.
Guest:You were done with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is it interesting, though, because you never then bought into this idea about rock and roll or music that because so many of the people that I look up to and I'm sure you as well were disasters.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, with drugs and alcohol.
Marc:And you somehow avoided making the connection, like thinking that that was necessary.
Guest:It's one of the things that I would attribute to growing up in Malibu.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Well, because you're around, you're in proximity to some of that to see the reality of it.
Guest:It's no longer this thing on a poster.
Guest:Oh, the broken people.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:The people I was playing music with were in their late 20s, maybe early 30s at the time.
Guest:And their idols did all the stuff that you're talking about, right?
Guest:And so that was the excuse for the behavior that I was seeing that was clearly not something that was glamorous.
Guest:Or adding to the music.
Guest:At all.
Guest:I mean, I would join a band to replace a guy who would be in rehab.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, and he was one of my favorite, still is one of my favorite guitar players.
Guest:Is he still playing?
Guest:Yeah, and he's doing really well.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Really well.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He's sober.
Guest:I think he's living in Malibu again.
Guest:He's doing yoga every day.
Guest:It's fucking great.
Guest:He's a big guy?
Guest:No.
Guest:What do you mean big?
Guest:He's in a big band?
Guest:No, but his father was a heavy, heavy, heavy, still is a heavy guitar player.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's cool.
Guest:I mean, I don't think he would mind me saying it.
Guest:It's Dwayne Betts, Dickie Betts' son.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I grew up playing with him and the band that he was in, and it was like a Southern rock band with a bunch of really talented, famous people's kids.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Who was in that band?
Guest:Roy Orbison's son was playing drums.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dwayne was in the band.
Guest:At one point, Barry Oakley Jr.
Guest:'s- Was he named after Dwayne?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:The Allman Brothers family, the band as a family.
Guest:Pretty tight-knit.
Guest:It's wild to me, man.
Guest:It's pretty wild.
Guest:I brought a guitar that'll freak you out.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:It was a gift from Dickie.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is he still down there?
Guest:He's in Florida.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Dwayne plays with him.
Guest:Dwayne's playing with Dickie now.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, they play together in the Great Southern.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know what happened between him and the Allmans, but whatever.
Guest:What happens between people and all bands?
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:The inevitable collapse of this idea that things can be democratic forever.
Marc:It's so wild.
Marc:I just was listening to the Dwayne Allman anthology.
Marc:I got both of them.
Marc:And...
Marc:There's some stuff on there, man.
Marc:I didn't really realize the full scope of it, but there's an eight minute blues number where he's not playing slides, he's just playing straight up.
Marc:The feel is just insane.
Marc:So young, too.
Marc:He died, he wasn't even 30.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Doesn't it blow you away?
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's nuts to consider what these guys were capable of doing.
Guest:At that age?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Well, not even at the age, but just in such a short amount of time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The conversation, like Dwayne- Because you're 28, right?
Guest:I'm 28, yeah.
Guest:And Dwayne, I think, alludes-
Guest:a lot of musicians as far as like, you know, why he's held in such esteem.
Guest:And I was actually having that conversation, um, uh, with my friend Tony Berg the other day and, and found myself struggling to kind of, um, um, get him across, you know, and do him justice because there's something kind of intangible about the, the, just the fire he's playing.
Guest:And on top of that, there have been so many people since Dwayne, he's, he's influenced so many people that have taken that and, um,
Guest:kind of right out of the gate just been you know like played with that sort of intensity and it's nowhere near as thrilling as when you have to go on that eight minute journey like you're talking about to arrive there with him yeah there's something to be said for that and I don't know that there were a lot of players that were playing like that at the time so I think that's true the context is is also something to um to to place things in to to fully understand what these guys were doing
Marc:Okay, so you're 10, you're going through elementary school, you're playing Nirvana, and then when you get into these bands, you're in high school by then?
Guest:Yeah, I was in middle school.
Marc:Who are your guys then?
Guest:When I was 14, I think I heard Derek.
Guest:Somebody put me a bootleg of a Derek Trucks Band concert, and it finally- Is he that much older than you?
Guest:He's a little bit older.
Guest:Not that.
Guest:I don't know how much older.
Guest:I mean, he was probably like around my age at the time.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:One of the reasons it was so big for me is because at the time, I had been playing with a guy named Bob Brosman, who's no longer with us, but he was a world music... He was an ethnomusicologist, and he was really big in making records that would come out in the world music genre.
Guest:He would just go around to different countries and make records with...
Guest:Not much unlike Ry Cooter does, where he'll go and make a record with this person that celebrates the indigenous music of that person and that culture.
Guest:So Bob Brosman made a living doing that, but he would play exclusively national resophonic guitars, metal acoustic guitars.
Guest:Like a dobro.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I saw him, my dad took me to see a show, playing like McCabe's or something like that, and he would do seminars at his house in Santa Cruz, and after the show, my dad took me over and asked if we could attend one of the seminars, and so my dad drove me up to Santa Cruz.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I think I was maybe 13, 12 or 13.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And my dad drove me up to Santa Cruz, which is quite a drive.
Guest:That's like a six-hour drive or something like that.
Guest:Yeah, trippy place.
Guest:Totally trippy.
Guest:And so we went to his house and, you know, there was like 10 old guys in sandals and cargo shorts hunched over in a circle and learning, you know, like Blind Blake riffs and stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think Bob could see that I was interested in the world music aspect of his playing.
Guest:I was just really enamored with the sounds of other instruments.
Guest:Like which ones?
Guest:Well, he made a record with this guy, Jelly Musajuara.
Guest:Musajuara, I think I'm pronouncing that right.
Guest:He's a guy from Mali, West African musician who played Kora.
Guest:Kora is like a harp.
Guest:Yeah, I've seen those things.
Guest:They're really impressive looking.
Marc:Aren't they in Senegal too?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I know.
Marc:Like Baba Mal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a gourd with a pole and leather straps.
Marc:Hell of a sound.
Guest:It's so intoxicating.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And all the notes ring across each other and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I fell in love with the sound of that instrument and became fascinated with the idea of trying to get a guitar to sound like that.
Guest:It's sort of like I had become familiar enough with a guitar that it'd be easier for me to try to coax some of that out of the instrument than to pick, and I got a Quora and it's like, you know.
Guest:Can you play it?
Guest:Walking on a hammock.
Guest:I mean, it's so hard.
Guest:It takes so much finesse and a different sort of connection between your two hands than guitar requires.
Guest:Kind of like piano.
Guest:Piano's sort of backwards for a guitar player.
Guest:Do you play piano?
Guest:Barely.
Guest:How's the chorus coming?
Guest:I'm closer on a guitar than a chord.
Guest:So you're 13, you're this kid.
Guest:13, I'm in love with music from all over the world, but I'm also really starting to come of age and appreciate the Rolling Stones and also contemporary rock music.
Guest:I remember being a huge fan of me and my old bandmates would listen to Third Eye Blind and Phantom Planet and all kinds of pop songwriting and stuff.
Guest:But at that age, they felt like I had to keep one a secret from the other.
Guest:But did that guy see you as a gifted guy?
Guest:uh i think so i mean he i think in in ways he he was a little disappointed that i didn't carry the torch in the naturalist way that he had so you kept in touch with him yeah i kept in touch but but no i would say i fell out of touch you know when i decided to start playing electric guitar in a band with drums and and and when when he got wind of that i think he was a little heartbroken but he
Guest:He took you under his wing to a degree for a few years.
Guest:Yeah, and a lot of the slide playing came from that period.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:Bob Brosman.
Guest:And if you look up videos of him, his shows were kind of academic.
Guest:I think he was a professor at UCLA or an ethnomusicologist that they would come in and do seminars and stuff.
Marc:You're in this band with Orbison's Kid and Derek and Dwayne.
Marc:Yeah, Dwayne.
Guest:And you, and who else?
Guest:And the writer and singer of the band, his father is a guy named Jerry Lynn Williams, who was a songwriter.
Guest:He wrote a couple things for Clapton, I think.
Marc:And that was your first band?
Guest:That was the first band that I played with.
Guest:And how old were you?
Guest:I was 14.
Guest:And I was filling in for Dwayne when he would get sick or he would go into rehab or something.
Guest:And I didn't fully comprehend the heaviness of that, but I was just, oh, I get to play one of my favorite guitar players.
Guest:I get to play like Dwayne with the band.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And then he was fine.
Guest:He would get out of rehab and then they would just keep me in because there's no limit to how many guitars you can have in a southern rock band.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, the more the merrier.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you want to do a couple now?
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:Let me continue setting this stuff up.
Guest:Around the time I graduated high school, Gibson was doing a signature model.
Guest:They were doing a signature model of Dickie Betts guitars.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And... Les Paul.
Guest:Yeah, Les Paul.
Guest:That was built... Basically trying to copy the gold top Les Paul that he had.
Guest:The gold finish had all flaked off.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So underneath the gold top, there's like a lacquer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's this color.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:It's crazy red.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:So look at all this shit on here.
Guest:Look at the input jack.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:This is all stuff that he made.
Marc:So that's one that they made for him.
Marc:That's not the original.
Guest:No, this is a prototype.
Guest:That's prototype.
Guest:Oh, that's wild, dude.
Guest:So he gifted it to me when I graduated high school.
Guest:a few years later i kind of realized the significance of of the gift and the importance of this guitar and said i'm not going to tour it with it or play it anymore i'm going to keep it safe what was the significance that it's a gift from one of the you know coolest guitar players of all time and uh and it's rare and and a special instrument and so uh i went down to guitar center yeah in hollywood the vintage room and i brought this and
Guest:and set about trying to find a Les Paul that sounded better, that I could invest some dough in and go, okay, this will be my instrument that I use, and then this will be safe, and I'll put it away.
Guest:Did you find one?
Guest:No, this thing killed every guitar that was in there.
Guest:Just slayed it.
Guest:It's so much better.
Guest:How do you determine that?
Guest:with your ears you know but i mean like those are those are straight up they're like burst buckers pickups they make you know they make different ones yeah but there's just the magic of that wood huh total well the wood the combination of everything together i mean i guess one can be magic right totally i mean like you could have three consecutive instruments you know like built consecutively and then they may not have any resemblance to each other
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or like you could be in the studio with a band and they do three takes in a row.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a reason why, you know, hopefully one of those takes will be the one, you know, because the other two aren't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like there's, it's just, there's no rhyme or reason to it.
Marc:But you seem like a guy that's attached to very specific instruments and, but do you have a lot of them or do you, are you committed to like... I'm starting to, yeah, it's starting to pile up.
Guest:It's starting to happen.
Guest:Because I use them for such different things and I start to get obsessed with application.
Guest:I just found this acoustic instrument that projects like an electric instrument.
Guest:And they don't all do that.
Guest:And so when you start to realize and you've been in a situation where you're playing an acoustic instrument in a room and you're just fighting to get your idea out, you start going, okay, there's a problem.
Guest:It's like the way an inventor's mind might look at it.
Guest:Okay, the problem's identified.
Guest:Now you might go 25 years before you come across an instrument that solves that problem.
Guest:And it might not be until you play that instrument that you even were aware that the problem existed.
Guest:You could just go...
Guest:Oh, man, I can play.
Guest:When I go to Largo and I sit in with these guys, this will be the perfect instrument for me to play.
Guest:And I no longer have to lug around, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:An electric guitar so that I can play along with, you know, the violin and mandolin.
Guest:Who do you play with over there?
Guest:Who's the violin?
Guest:Benmont and those guys?
Guest:Yeah, Benmont and the Watkins.
Guest:And I went and saw John Bryan the other night and played a little with him.
Guest:It was beautiful.
Guest:He had a collection of acoustic guitars and I think a 67 mic.
Guest:It was a recording session.
Guest:And he mic'd it like a recording session.
Guest:And if you don't have an instrument that makes that mic react, then you're just kind of going uphill.
Marc:I got a thing that I bought when I was looking for that.
Marc:I wanted to get a J45, and I just couldn't find a new one that sounded good, and eventually I just got one.
Marc:It was chosen for me.
Marc:I got a deal on it from Gibson.
Marc:But I bought this weird FJN.
Marc:Have you seen those things?
Guest:No, I don't know what that is.
Marc:It's this big body guitar with two white flamenco pick guards on it.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:With a short classical neck.
Marc:Steel string?
Marc:Yeah, steel.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I think Jackson Brown plays them.
Marc:So I got one of those, and it's the biggest sound I ever heard out of an acoustic, but I didn't...
Marc:I think there was something a little off about it.
Marc:It still needs to be set up properly, but it's amazing.
Marc:Just the playability, you mean?
Marc:Yeah, there's some buzzes to it I couldn't quite get out.
Marc:And the neck's really short and fat because it's like a classical neck.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And wide.
Marc:Yeah, I think it was made to transition classical players out of classical instruments into folk instruments or into steel string instruments.
Guest:In the 30s, they were making a guitar that was made for Hawaiian style, for slide playing, for slack key.
Guest:And for slack key, it's what it sounds like.
Guest:You tune the strings way down.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They have a bunch of slack.
Guest:So having that space between each string was part of the design for those sort of features.
Guest:and uh and it has like a classical neck but it has a v-shape on the back and it's uh i just i just found one it's that instrument i'm talking about that projects like an electric it's an hg double o and it's unbelievable i was totally unaware unfamiliar with these guitars yeah and my friend said uh again tony berg he's he's kind of
Guest:He's keeping a good eye out for me for instruments over the years and gigs and stuff.
Guest:He said, you should go down and hear this guitar.
Guest:And I went and played it and fucking swiped it, man.
Guest:He had it on hold.
Guest:And I was like, you know, getting this guitar.
Guest:And that's the one.
Guest:That's the one.
Guest:The new magic guitar.
Guest:Because a lot of them don't do that.
Guest:A lot of that year, they kind of fold in on themselves if you start picking harder.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It doesn't get any louder.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It just kind of compresses.
Guest:And that one does?
Guest:It gets louder.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:There's like extra headroom in it.
Guest:It doesn't make any sense.
Guest:It's just you lucked out.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Is that thing plugged in?
Guest:Let's see.
Guest:I did the Crossroads Festival, the Clapton Crossroads Festival.
Guest:Did you play with Eric?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, he invites everybody that's there, and so I went and played.
Guest:I sat in with Booker T and the MGs.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Yeah, another maestro.
Marc:Oh, dude.
Guest:It's like 50 years of, like, you know, it's crazy.
Guest:70 years.
Guest:So deep.
Guest:And a guitar player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a badass guitar player.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He was a guitar player before they asked him to.
Guest:I thought he was, like, a tuba player.
Guest:Well, maybe that too.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But he was a guitar player at the time that they asked him to play organ on a session.
Guest:So what's your dad think of all your success?
Guest:He's very proud.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, he's a happy dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was making Hi Ho, I got to a point where I felt comfortable showing him, you know, and having him come down to the studio.
Guest:And some of the people that were playing on that record were people who, you know, if he wasn't familiar with their names, he knew they were playing.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Jim Keltner, Don was.
Guest:And he came down and his reaction was, I mean, that was enough for me.
Guest:I got what I needed to get out of the experience of making the record and having anybody getting any kind of feedback on it.
Guest:Just seeing him?
Guest:Yeah, seeing him react to it.
Guest:That's beautiful.
Guest:It was really a heavy experience.
Guest:And your mom?
Guest:My mom's funnier.
Guest:My mom's, I mean, she loves it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great, but she's always asking me questions about what lyrics mean, and she's like, what does that mean?
Guest:Yeah, and I go, you don't want to know.
Guest:My mom's on Facebook, so she's doing all the wonderful paternal promotion stuff.
Guest:What's Don Woz's magic?
Guest:Because he's everywhere and always has been, it seems.
Guest:What is great about him?
Guest:All right, well, as a musician...
Guest:One way you could describe it is... So, let's look at it like... On this record, Don was playing bass on a few songs.
Guest:And on a couple other ones, Mike Elizondo was playing bass.
Guest:The drummer was always Jim Keltner.
Guest:The difference in who Jim was and what Jim did from when he was playing with Don and when he was playing with Mike kind of helps you see what both of those guys are about and Jim.
Guest:But it does help you see the difference a bass player makes.
Guest:And just his touch and when he decides to pull a note so hard that it goes sort of sharp and kind of buzzes against the neck.
Guest:The rhythm of that buzz and the economy of notes and feel and everything.
Guest:It's...
Guest:It does start to get a little esoteric to describe the kind of musician he is, but it's a beautiful thing to be able to play with a trio and have so much music and information come out from three guys.
Guest:And a lot of it's just after a certain point is feel.
Guest:totally yeah i mean kind of everything really right because yeah the note choice you know and what you don't play and stuff is is huge but the the language that everything you know leaves the brain and and gets to the ear i mean that's that's the feel part of it that comes into play once you sort of move through an uh you know your high school band and and then you know how and opening your mind up to world music and
Marc:these other instruments and trying to make your guitar sound like things.
Marc:I mean, what was the real goal for you?
Marc:I mean, when did you start, did you have another band after that band?
Guest:Yeah, I was in a band called Simon Dawes, and those guys are still playing.
Guest:Are they Dawes?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:people like them I played the record I don't know if it really connected with it but I know that people love them so you were with those guys those guys and when we were in a band together it was we were listening to like the kinks I mean first we were listening to like Steely Dan we were in high school and it was really uncool to listen and like you like Steely Dan I did I mean I still do but but but not for the same reasons that I did when I was in high school for production reasons
Guest:Just, yeah, I mean, some of the slyness in Fagan's writing and how bizarre that music is and feels when you put it on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It no longer, to me, like when we started a band, the archetype for it was like, well, what if there was a band that like presented themselves like the Strokes, you know, they walked, they like stumbled on stage, but then they sounded like Steely Dan.
Guest:How cool would that be?
Guest:To me, that was like the, you know.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:um the coolest why didn't that band work out for you um well for a while it did i mean i mean that was like the the some of the most um uh i learned a lot yeah you know but but for the reasons why i think most bands ultimately don't work um it it kind of crumbled like it went from being um a a time where two people who were
Guest:And coming of age and discovering records together, more than writing and making music inspired by those records, it went from that to people who were listening to pretty drastically different things and writing different things, but feeling like there was this...
Guest:design of the band where it wasn't a band song until both of us had made our stamp you know right and we hadn't really figured out the uh you know we hadn't matured enough to to know like if if one of us had brought an idea and it was complete and fully founded to to have the stamp be that's great and i fully endorse it
Guest:And when did you start doing session work?
Guest:After I left that band.
Guest:How did that start?
Guest:Tony Berg again.
Guest:He's sort of like a mentor.
Guest:And he'd produced the Simon Dawes record.
Guest:And he's got a studio in his backyard, a home studio, that he sometimes does sessions in.
Guest:So he would call me to play on stuff.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Like who were your first sessions?
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Man, well, I played on a Jessica Hoop record, which is fun because she's an alien.
Guest:She's out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's so good and very musical.
Guest:And I played with Jacob Dillon there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was this, like...
Guest:amnesty international in a charity record and and jacob did a Everyone was doing John Lennon songs.
Guest:That was the theme Jacob did give me some truth.
Guest:Yeah, and Danny Harrison sang background vocals on it and I played that slide Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was a and George had played the original slide solo on my record beautiful solo
Guest:and uh and so i played slide on that and that's how i met danny and um actually we danny had overdubbed his vocals so he wasn't there when we tracked i hadn't met him when we made the song but then i was at the echo for a show or something a few weeks later and it's dark and loud there and you know i'm watching the i'm watching the show and in front of me through the crowd like walks
Guest:the spitting image of George up to me and he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says hey we haven't met I'm Danny I just sang on that track and I just want you to know that my dad would have been really really proud of the solo
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I fell apart.
Guest:Yeah, I bet.
Guest:It was really cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we've been friends since.
Guest:And, yeah, that house in Brentwood, Tony's house, has been a kind of like a, I don't know, I'm sure there's a great term for the kind of, you go back there and become reenthused, you know?
Guest:But by doing that, like by being the kid who pulls it off,
Guest:Then other people are like, where's that guy?
Guest:Who's that guy that was on that thing?
Guest:I've heard stories that people would ask that.
Guest:You heard somebody play on a record or something, and then they would ask him who it was, and he wouldn't say.
Guest:Keep it a secret.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Just keep it in his back pocket.
Guest:I don't know if there's any truth to it.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:What was the first time when he played that George Harrison thing?
Guest:Because then you've got to lock into George's tone and you want to respect that piece and you want to honor that piece, right?
Guest:It wasn't even that.
Guest:It was just respecting the sort of beauty, innate beauty of the song.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's all you really, I think, have to...
Guest:Because I wasn't playing his solo.
Guest:I was doing something different.
Guest:And I really feel like I've learned from getting to play with the people that I've gotten to play with and the common denominator being that sort of heartfelt, like, it doesn't really matter.
Guest:All that other stuff of, like, what was the amp and, like, you know, where do your ideas come from?
Guest:All that bullshit is secondary to the thing that everybody tends to respond to, which is that kind of honesty, you know?
Guest:And the confidence in what you're doing and musicality in it will...
Guest:That's never been uncool.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And you can feel it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know when Nirvana was big and guitar solos were sort of uncool?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or that's the stigma in retrospect.
Guest:There's guitar solos all over Nirvana Records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're beautiful.
Guest:And they're musical.
Guest:And they're more musical than the guitar solos that they were a departure from that were going on at that time.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Because they're melodic and simple?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were melodic and simple.
Guest:And there was a...
Marc:a feeling behind them you know well yeah that's a feeling yeah the trans that's the you got to transmit it yes and there was there was no feeling in the kind of like the no that's other shit yeah well you can feel like even when you listen to like if you listen to albert king and you know even if you watch that stuff with albert king and like stevie ray vaughn where you know albert is doing
Guest:the limitations of what he does and Stevie obviously started there but went somewhere else with it you don't sit there and go like no he's getting his ass kicked because you know because the feeling totally is delivered totally it is it's weird it's this weird like withholding yeah thing that has so much power in it yeah and when and you know what when I was 14 and heard that Derek Trucks record
Guest:That was something, I think that was the first time I'd ever heard such a clear example of how powerful that could be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like an electric guitar, an incredible electric guitar tone, and what he's doing with it and what he's not doing with it.
Marc:And you played with Lucinda, you toured with her?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Guest:For a lot of dates?
Guest:About a year.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I toured with her, yeah.
Marc:And that's a pretty raw band.
Guest:She's like so fucking honest.
Oh.
Guest:I mean, one of my favorite writers.
Guest:It wasn't the kind of thing where I learned about her afterwards.
Guest:My friend called me and said, hey, my friend Val McCallum was playing with her and he said, hey, I can't make this tour.
Guest:They're looking for a guitar player.
Guest:Would you be interested?
Guest:I said, fuck yeah.
Guest:you know yeah and i hate touring yeah i really hate touring and and and but there are a few artists that it's just like if you know if you ever get the opportunity to go out and play with them and she's one of them and and uh as a singer and as a writer to to to get to have that kind of intimate uh relationship with that material you know and to learn it and to play it and hear how it how it evolves every night and
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I mean, that's a huge learning experience.
Guest:And you got along with her?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's sweet.
Guest:I talked to her once.
Guest:She's so great.
Guest:She's the best.
Guest:She's the best.
Guest:So great.
Guest:And she really lets the music kind of stay raw.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:I mean, she doesn't have a choice.
Guest:I mean, her language that she uses, there's nothing cerebral about it.
Guest:It's like right to the guts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you see ZZ Top at the Greek?
Guest:No.
Guest:You didn't go?
Guest:No, no, I didn't.
Guest:You play with Billy, though?
Guest:You play with Billy and Sweeney on that?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That was our first, I think.
Guest:On that Peter Green thing?
Guest:What do you think of Peter Green?
Guest:How great is that guy?
Guest:He's so good.
Marc:He's another one of those guys where you're just listening, and you're like, all the notes, you know where those notes are.
Guest:I know, but you've never heard them like that.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's a lot of mystery in the way that he, I think.
Guest:You haven't figured it out?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, there's some stuff that I go, oh, wow, what a sound.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But the train of thought, you know?
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:When he's on one of his flights of fancy, what he gets to with that.
Guest:It's so, it's like, and with his voice, it's like he takes minor blues.
Guest:He was the guy.
Guest:He was the guy who had everything everybody else wanted.
Guest:Whew.
Guest:And that band at that time Amazing They were one of the biggest bands in the world And it's such an interesting legacy The Fleetwood Mac legacy of like No other band has as many of the fucking rock and roll qualities Like biggest band in the world We lose our lead singer and writer and founder And then we get these You know we get two other guys And then we become an even bigger
Guest:Bigger band, right?
Guest:And, okay, well, other bands have done that before or whatever.
Guest:Like, maybe you got the ACDC.
Guest:Yeah, but nobody in ACDC was fucking each other, right?
Guest:And, like, there weren't these, like, interrelationships.
Guest:And just the story of that band is... So different.
Guest:The bands that the Peter Greenfleet would make.
Guest:So different.
Guest:And then the Walsh.
Guest:I didn't love the...
Guest:Welsh, what's his name?
Guest:Well, the guy who passed?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Well, there was a couple, there were a few.
Guest:No, there was, yeah, I listened to him.
Guest:Kirwan, the Kiln House record.
Guest:He was great, that's a great record.
Guest:Beautiful.
Guest:I love that record.
Marc:He's not alive anymore?
Marc:Kirwan?
Marc:I think he is.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:And the other guy,
Marc:Danny, and then there's Spencer, Jeremy Spencer, was the original rhythm guitar player with Peter Green.
Marc:Oh, I didn't know that.
Marc:And then Kerouan came in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, why am I forgetting his name?
Marc:Welsh or Welsh, not Walsh, ah, fuck.
Guest:Welsh sounds kind
Marc:of familiar welsh yeah bob welsh bob welsh he came in after caravan left yeah and then like they were looking that that's part of that whole sound city thing they were at sound city mick fleetwood and mcvee and uh they were looking for a guitar player and they were listening to mixes of the buckingham nicks record yeah and said well ask buckingham dude and he said yeah you can if you take my girl and that's how that happened yeah but did you watch that documentary man of the world
Marc:about peter green oh no no no i haven't seen it yet it's on go on netflix a bbc thing i will i will not on netflix it's on it's hard for me to watch music stuff no but no but it's like i bet it's great but the thing is is like um you go to uh you just go on youtube and look for peter green man of the world it's a bbc thing and some guy i have seen it
Marc:Well, some writer found him sort of rotting away in a mental hospital, over-medicated, got him back on his feet, you know, and pulled it together, and then interviewed McVie and Jeremy Spencer and McFleetwood about what happened to Peter Green.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he's this little old man now, and he's, like, cognizant, and he's, you know, he's together, and they all track it back to this one night in Berlin at a party.
Marc:With an axe?
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:That was Skip's fans.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:It was some party where he got dosed.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And they all build up to this moment where he goes downstairs with these people and they're jamming.
Marc:And Spencer's like, I don't want to go down there.
Marc:Some weird sounds.
Marc:Something evil was going on.
Marc:And then the guy, finally, after they build this thing up, the guy asks Peter Green, like, what about that night in Berlin?
Marc:He's like, no, I think we sound pretty good.
Marc:Didn't even register.
Marc:So sick.
Marc:Dude, I love that guy.
Guest:He's the king.
Guest:And how beautiful is it to put a band together and name it after the bass player and drummer?
Marc:Yeah, he had this fundamental... He was humble, and he didn't want... I don't think he ever wanted to be... You know, he just wanted to... Like, I've never heard someone feel so hard as that guy with his singing and his playing.
Guest:And writing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:All right, let's go.
Guest:Let's do some tricks.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So...
Guest:That shape, the pentatonic shape, let's say we're in... B, you know, B minor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that box... Now, what if you, instead of that sort of fixed kind of, okay, here's that bottom fret, that thing, what if instead you ventured a fret down, but you bent a half step up?
Yeah.
Guest:All of a sudden you start to lose that kind of boxy sound of everything.
Guest:And it becomes a... You're taking advantage of what a guitar can do that a piano and so many other instruments can't.
Guest:You get this...
Guest:Vocal quality.
Guest:I mean I heard I think I first heard the the mixing and matching of that pentatonic stuff When I was like You know I was like on the shitter or something and on Instagram looking at people's photos and somebody posted a picture of this record that looked really interesting the cover of it and it was this
Guest:And I don't totally know how to pronounce her name yet, but I'll sound it out.
Guest:T-S-E-G-U-E.
Guest:T-S-E-G-U-E.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sege or something like that?
Guest:Sounds good.
Guest:Miriam Gebru.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:M-A-R-Y-A-M-G-E-U-G-U-E, sorry, B-R-O-U.
Guest:And she's this Ethiopian piano player, and somebody's going to place one of these songs in a movie, and it's going to be the most sentimental scene of 2015.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But this record is, and the titles of the songs, The Homeless Wanderer, The Last Tears of a Deceased, The Madman's Laughter,
Guest:You know?
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Ballad of the Spirits, Homesickness.
Guest:So what did this tell you?
Guest:Uplifting stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's that color.
Guest:She just dances around in these rooms.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Well, just looking at it as a room is, I think, helpful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To me.
Guest:It's an environment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:It's just like a painting.
Guest:It's a certain, it's a choice selection of colors.
Guest:And you find this out when you, do you find that you make most of your discoveries alone with your instrument, with the instrument?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I mean, some things you definitely hone in the live setting.
Guest:It's kind of fun.
Guest:Well, if you want to, why don't we do one song from the record and wrap it up?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I like that thing you do with the... Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I could do that one.
Guest:This was a tune that was based on this Howlin' Wolf groove, 44 Blues, in that track.
Guest:So in that song, they've got the upright bass playing this bass line and the guitar doubling it, and the piano doing the kind of pretty chords on the top.
Guest:it kind of amps between two chords two and a half chords almost like they go to the five in a cool way it's sort of a half five yeah and then back to you know it's a blues progression so I thought well what if that bass line were part of a progression that had a few more chords in it and some some piano moves and things like that
Guest:You know, stuff that's a little out of the wheelhouse of blues music, but still has that kind of like familiarity of that bass line and the feel and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, I knew there was something haunting about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I found a new meaning The oldest words in use Now I no longer ask myself
Guest:What have I gone to lose If I'm unworthy of the power I hold Over you And this lined up thinking
Guest:Wonders it can induce Oh, I'm twisted in my sheets now What can you love can do?
Guest:What if I'm unworthy of the power I own?
Guest:Time before was wasted With you Life is not long enough I'll wrap you in my arms Pretty babe And I'll
Bye.
Thank you.
Time before was wasted But with you life's just not long enough So I'll wrap you in my arms, babe
Guest:And see if they're strong enough What if I'm unworthy of the power I hold Over you What if I'm unworthy of the power I hold
Guest:Yeah!
Guest:That was great.
Guest:It's been a second since I've had to use my voice.
Guest:That sounded great, man.
Marc:Thanks so much for doing this.
Marc:My pleasure.
Marc:The album's called Hi Ho.
Marc:Hi Ho.
Marc:It's a big, beautiful record.
Marc:Two big old discs.
Guest:Yes, you know how... Vinyl, big plates.
Guest:We put all this money into making this record sound good and then listened to it on Spotify one day.
Guest:Well, get both.
Guest:Yeah, get both.
Guest:Yeah, that'll be the day.
Guest:Thanks, boy.
Guest:Thanks, dude.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:That was pretty intense, wasn't it?
Marc:That jam.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get your JustCoffee.coop over there.
Marc:They got a bunch of new... I told you about the new machine.
Marc:Get the WTF blend.
Marc:I get a little on the back end of that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:Marin on IFC.
Marc:That premieres on the 14th of May.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I didn't realize some of you were so hostile about cable.
Marc:Watch it however you want.
Marc:What else?
Marc:I'm not going to play guitar.
Marc:Not after that.
Marc:Come on, man.
Marc:Boomer Lives!
Marc:Boomer Lives!
you