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Transcript

More Than Guitar: The Tommy Armstrong-Leavitt Story · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:35
  Steve: All right, in this video, I had the privilege of talking to a buddy of mine, Tommy Armstrong Levitt from EMG.
• 0:42
  Steve: Um, just super amazing guy, super talented, super cool.
• 0:47
  Steve: He's done so many really amazing things in his career.
• 0:51
  Steve: Um, and we talk about all of it.
• 0:53
  Steve: We talk about his playing, uh, going to uh GIT, his teaching, um, you know, just his his experiences.
• 1:02
  Steve: And ultimately, he's got a new CD out called uh Lullabies for the Living.
• 1:07
  Steve: He has, he's still doing everything that he does.
• 1:10
  Steve: He's a super hard worker.
• 1:11
  Steve: Um, but now he's doing this um certified music practitioner, music therapy.
• 1:17
  Steve: And I've always been really interested in why he got into that and and what that's like to actually do that for uh a career, um, being able to play for people who are maybe on hospice or you know, different kinds of situations like that.
• 1:31
  Steve: And it was all of those experiences that inspired him to make this CD, which um is available today, as a matter of fact, on September 21st, when when we did this recording and now releasing it.
• 1:44
  Steve: So have have fun, enjoy this this interview, and please do me a favor and check out.
• 1:49
  Steve: I'll I'll have the link somewhere around here too for you to check out the music.
• 1:53
  Steve: Uh, and you can check out Tommy's uh YouTube page, things like that as well.
• 1:57
  Steve: So wonderful guy, you're gonna love him, and let's go ahead and get started.
• 2:01
  Steve: Tommy, how you been, man?
• 2:02
  Steve: How are things going?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna fix that in post.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: You got such the sick background, the sick lighting on all your amps and everything.
• 2:09
  Steve: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:10
  Steve: Well, I'd say the same for you with all your guitars back there.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I there is there is some guitars.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this door over here.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've never I've I've been threatening to like make it look cool, but it's the door, you know.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It goes to the laundry room.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you gonna do?
• 2:24
  Steve: Yeah.
• 2:24
  Steve: So this is awesome because you know, I've known you for a long time, but there's so many things that I don't know that much about.
• 2:32
  Steve: And uh when we decided we were gonna do this, I started doing a little research and I found out more stuff in a good way.
• 2:37
  Steve: You didn't go to prison, so that's good.
• 2:39
  Steve: Uh uh, but what I want to do here here's what I came up with, Tommy, is it seems like there are kind of five Tommies that I now know.
• 2:52
  Steve: The first one is the guitar player Tommy.
• 2:54
  Steve: That's what I'm gonna start with, okay?
• 2:55
  Steve: The guitar player Tommy.
• 2:57
  Steve: I like that.
• 2:57
  Steve: You, you know, your your history of guitar playing, you went to GIT and did stuff and funny fact.
• 3:04
  Steve: Yeah.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated 40 years ago this month.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, wow.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had I tell those kids at work, you know, yeah, I graduated from they weren't even alive.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: They were like born 10 years after.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I was like, I probably should have done more in 40 years, but whatever.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: All right, no more sidetrack, sorry.
• 3:25
  Steve: Yeah, no, no, that's oh, I love it.
• 3:26
  Steve: So, so yeah, we're gonna go there and and talk about that, and then we're gonna go into teacher Tommy.
• 3:32
  Steve: We're gonna talk about your instructional stuff, your your books, all that kind of stuff.
• 3:36
  Steve: Um, which again I I know of, but I'd like to to dive deeper into the story of how all that came out.
• 3:43
  Steve: And you know, you you had mentioned that they're still quite successful, and and that's yeah, shockingly, yeah.
• 3:50
  Steve: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 3:51
  Steve: Yeah.
• 3:52
  Steve: And then there's you.
• 3:53
  Steve: This is the you I know, which is the emg Tommy.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there is EMG Tommy.
• 3:58
  Steve: Yeah, and how you moved from where you were to doing this, and just I mean, again, uh for those of you that that may not know who Tommy is, Tommy Tommy knows everybody.
• 4:10
  Steve: And Tommy is like the most down-to-earth guy that I know.
• 4:13
  Steve: He's a super, super great guy, one of my best friends.
• 4:16
  Steve: Um, but he's just such a uh a great guy when he's not doing the other stuff.
• 4:23
  Steve: He's he's the same guy doing that as he is doing this, which is what I love because I always think of myself as being kind of the same way.
• 4:30
  Steve: Um so the next Tommy I've got is your the newer Tommy, which is the therapeutic music Tommy.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is a newer me, yeah.
• 4:39
  Steve: Yeah, and then finally what's coming out soon is the composer recording artist Tommy.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So and that's been a long and that's been a long while since I've uh released any music.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So what you tell me where we're starting.
• 4:56
  Steve: Well, let's start with the guitar player, Tommy.
• 4:58
  Steve: Just tell me what I'd love to know is is like you know, when how old were you when you first picked up the guitar?
• 5:04
  Steve: What were you digging?
• 5:05
  Steve: What kind of stuff were you doing, you know?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like many kids, it was like, you know, you uh you see Kiss, you know, yeah, and just and then you you know argue with your friends over which guy in the band you are, you know, it's like no, I'm Gene, no, I'm Paul, no, I'm Ace.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, I was ace Ace, yeah.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, Ace was the guy.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then um uh I was liked I was into music before then, but I was like a Beatles kid.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I grew up my parents were younger, so I grew up like in a Beatles Stones house, and then they my I was like they listened to everything, so I was exposed to a lot of stuff, and I was taken to a lot of shows as a little kid, you know, because hippies dragged their freaking kids everywhere, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, oh, we're at the Jimi Hendrix show, okay.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who's Jimmy?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't remember anything about that show, but I get that did happen apparently.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was thinking four, you know, five.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But like uh, so I got to go to some shows, and once I started remembering, I remember seeing some some shows, and I was always the energy was always really good.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I wanted to play, I wanted to play drums, first off.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a hard no from the parent, the parental figures.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're big, they're loud, they take up room, they cost a lot of money.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: So here, we got you this crappy guitar, and I was, you know, the strings are about like that high off the front board.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The neighbor was like a a car mechanic, and um he played guitar, so he was gonna show me how to tune it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So he hooked over, everybody's gathered around to to watch me struggle through this tuning experience.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: He shows me how he would tune it by ear.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's got his finger at the fifth fret, and you're matching notes, and he's explaining it uh the best way he can.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then he puts it out of tune and says, You try.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So in the room I went and for the next two years tried to tune a guitar.
• 6:54
  Steve: Oh my goodness.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Unsuccessfully.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then uh, you know, then it was like kiss and and and uh you know, everybody was like, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, everybody's like, uh, you know, get your book covers and you're writing band names on there, and and then you meet another kid that plays guitar, but but this time I met a kid that actually could play guitar.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember his name.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had my Polly, he could play, he played like uh Smoke on the Water.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was probably like the only riff he could play.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But this other kid down the street goes, Oh, you have a guitar?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he picked up my guitar and he tuned it and he started playing like this blue shuffly thing, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, that was like Earth shattering.
• 7:32
  Steve: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, seeing somebody about your age, you know, five feet in front of you actually doing it made you think, okay, so you don't have to be from another planet to be able to do this.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I started just thinking, well, you know, Ace is from space, of course he can play because he's from another planet, and then everybody else, you know, from whatever planets they come from.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: This was you know, it was possible now.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um, my uh another friend of my parents, he was uh Larry was his name.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Larry, Larry Sepulveda.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I go buy a Kiss book, it was rock and roll over.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: They had okay, you know, it was like they're made for piano and vocal.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the guitar is a total afterthought.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it like writes C, and you he shows you how to play a C and you strum it, you listen to the record, you're like, that's not that's not what's happening on the record.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he goes, Well, just learn your chords, and so I I learned some chords, uh, strummed around, and and then I I didn't get much further for the next you know couple years.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I knew those handful of chords and and would kick it around once in a while.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went to a new school and there were kids that played.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like, okay, this is a thing here.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I started you know trying a little harder.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was surrounded, like in my I'll call it my rookie season of high school, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had I had an okay guitar and I saved up and got a pretty decent guitar.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wanted to be Jimmy Page more than life itself.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I go to the store and they had a Les Paul sunburst.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was, I think it was a deluxe, and it was 350 bucks.
• 9:10
  Steve: Oh my goodness.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, I well, I'm old, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So and so I go, can I put money down on this?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had I think I had like$50 to like it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is a down payment was how you did it back then.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: You there was you didn't have you didn't do credit, you put a down payment and you had a layaway and you could pay it off.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You had you had like three months, so you're gonna go mow lawn so you don't lose your deposit.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they go, Well, we can't put this on layway because it's on consignment, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the me then didn't know.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, would you do me a favor and call the owner and ask him if he'd be willing to put this on layaway or if he's in a hurry for the cash, I'll totally understand.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you're 15, you don't know to say that.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: You just yeah, the guy goes, So you like sunburst guitars?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes me over and he sells me this Washburn A20.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a Les Paul at all.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's right, it's like a mini dwarfed explorer kind of thing.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was a sick guitar, but I put that on layaway.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, man, I must be the easiest target for any guy in a music story.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I know what I'm gonna sell this kid.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's that.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I saved up, got a decent guitar, and uh so the decent guitar kind of got me in with a different group of kids.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, oh, you got a decent guitar, you can hang out with us.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was surrounded by uh a very small handful of these few guys that were all like ridiculous players.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: They could they could hear something uh which was not within my scope yet.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that you could listen to something and figure it out.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't there yet.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I was the monkey see monkey do kid.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And like some of us are, and so until we figure out, oh, you can do this.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had I had two buddies named Jerry, both Jerry, Jerry One and Jerry Two will call him another guy named Scott, all these guys, but they could play, so I would just hang out with them.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, how do you play that one Scorpions tune?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, how do you play this?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh just prior to that, what got me in knowing a few things is I took like the beginning guitar class at school, and okay, which is which is not taught by a guitar player, it's taught by the band teacher and team, whatever it was.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so you learn from the other kids in the class.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was a uh foreign exchange student from Spain, and he had this finger picking thing down, and all the girls were all about this guy, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Good looking, finger picking on the on the classical guitar.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I had him teach me a couple things.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: His his basic breakdown of how to finger pick was just hit the bass notes with your thumb and the other strings with the other fingers.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: In his broken English.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I started doing that a little bit, and and that got me a little bit more familiar with the strings and and going from string to string, and and then um other kids that I became friends with that that took lessons, you know, they would know parts of songs, you know, and so I would just you know learn a part of a song.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next kid I would meet, I would teach him the part that I learned from this guy in exchange for part of that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So and it just kept going, you know.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 12:03
  Steve: Um drug dealing for guitar.
• 12:05
  Steve: That's really what they yeah, rip trading, you know.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like um, and then I I became, I think it was my it was late compared to like some players are just like ridiculous going into high school.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm in the middle of high school, I think, and I decided to get serious.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was an opportunity for me to use guitar as a um an elective class, but it was an independent study.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you had to keep a practice log and you had to log hours and you had to like show progress and what you would do.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I became super organized about it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had a bunch of books you bought, again, the afterthought books.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Guitar was like, they just put guitar for no reason on you at all.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes it would steer you in the right direction.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so then I discovered um I'm I was still, but the ear thing didn't make sense to me.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I would just take, like, okay, well, the scorpions use these four chords, and so does this band.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna start making stuff up with these chords.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I began uh uh being very creative really early in the guitar, actually.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so they got me hanging out with some other guys that were like, hey, we're gonna we're gonna write songs, we're gonna be in a band.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and we were never very good, but we had a lot of fun.
• 13:20
  Steve: Right.
• 13:20
  Steve: And you're still like 15, 16 around there at this time?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was definitely 15.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh a buddy had a drum set, we would just be loud as anything.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like the rhythm guy that wrote the songs, and then we went to like, I don't know, five league guitar players.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever was had a guitar that could play better than me was our new league guitar player.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it there was a lot.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: You could find one pretty easy.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so and then, you know, uh we were dumb teenagers, so it lasted a little while, and then you know, that kid had to get a job, so we have to find another kid, you know.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, and then again, in that high school experience, I I met another kid who just like I was like, you know, to me, he was up here, you know, and I would just hang out with that guy and say, hey, I'll be your rhythm guitar player, show me what you want me to do, and you could be you could get the glory, you could be the star, you know.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to learn.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I love I always loved playing with drums for some reason.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, more so than I the other guitar players are great because you learn stuff, but I felt like drums you were actually playing music.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um you didn't have to fill every hole like you do when you're just sitting around playing guitar.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that was um yeah.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually every band I've been in, I've always been really I had a great relationship with the drummer.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So might be my my favorite other musician in the band.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 14:46
  Steve: Well that's awesome.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I use the word musician.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-oh.
• 14:50
  Steve: You're not allowed to be black for that.
• 14:54
  Steve: So where did you grow up, Tommy?
• 14:56
  Steve: Where was all this happening?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well I grew up in in Northern California, specifically to junior high and high school in Sacramento.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um through the adventures of me as a teen, I went to several schools.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um I went to uh two junior highs and three high schools.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew a lot of people.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh yeah, so you know, some people get to stay in one school and be the same people the whole time.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I um I I I got in some trouble, and so I was at some different schools.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I met some different people.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Each time I'd be like, okay, here's a whole new gene pool of music people.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and got by the time I was um 17, I got this, I got a job.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I well, I started working the minute I was able to work.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of what every kid would want to do back then.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it was, you know, I got a job as a dishwasher at whatever local restaurant would let you still have long hair, you know.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um I met these uh these older guys there that were like they had a jam night, you know, which uh which was great.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go jam with them, and then I kind of took the the that continued that mentality of it's like playing tennis.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want I'm only gonna go play tennis with somebody I know is gonna kick my ass.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I'm I'm not here to like whip your ass.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to learn, you know.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: I literally took that mentality as far as I I could.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Every opportunity I gotta go, oh I want to can I audition for these guys?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can I play with these guys?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just to get the experience of of playing and then robbing whatever riff I could.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and that all that was all through by the end of junior year, probably.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:36
  Steve: Yeah.
• 16:37
  Steve: That's awesome.
• 16:38
  Steve: You know, it's funny because so much of you're saying what what you just said reflects the same thing I went through.
• 16:44
  Steve: You know, I except the difference being is because I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, there weren't a lot of guitar players around.
• 16:50
  Steve: There wasn't a lot to connect to.
• 16:52
  Steve: So I started with my ear.
• 16:54
  Steve: I started with ear training.
• 16:55
  Steve: I started by learning how to play with records, but I did have the same experience as you where there was a guy in in this school, this you know, whatever I was probably in middle school at the time, and he came over to my house and he had a guitar and he played the beginning of Looks That Kill.
• 17:13
  Steve: And it was the same thing.
• 17:14
  Steve: I was like, it was the coolest thing ever because I'm like, he's really doing it, like he's really doing what I want to be able to do.
• 17:21
  Steve: Yeah, that's coming through those speakers, and it was just a super cool feeling because I had the sheet music for I remember buying the piano sheet music for Stairway to Heaven, same thing.
• 17:32
  Steve: I'm looking at these chords going, this sounds nothing like what that is.
• 17:37
  Steve: But but the the the the bummer for me was I I never really had anybody to jam with until I got to college.
• 17:45
  Steve: Um, you know, I was kind of the the the big kid on the block where you know at the school I was at because there really wasn't anybody else.
• 18:16
  Steve: Right.
• 18:16
  Steve: And um, and then when I went to high school, I just was blown away like so many good players, and I was so low on the totems pole, so to speak, you know, just sucking it all in, just absorbing as much stuff as I could.
• 18:31
  Steve: You know, we jammed till two, three in the morning, and I'd just be learning stuff, and it was it was a really great experience.
• 18:38
  Steve: Um, which is what I want to get to for you, is is so so now you're doing all this stuff.
• 18:42
  Steve: So how did GIT fit into this?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so I I'm in the I'm in this like local metal band, um, just uh just out of high school and you know, trying to play the clubs, and my one of my best friends, one of the Jerry's, was like in like the sick, you know, the sick metal band, you know, they were like uh they did an Iron Maiden cover.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They actually got signed to Metal Blade Records, these guys, you know, they were doing stuff.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so um when he left the band, they got this other guy who had just graduated MI.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he was just like this, you know, he has guitar way up here and played notes faster than anybody I'd ever seen.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um he had that weird like picking thing like Marty Friedman.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was it looked like it hurt, you know.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, so I took so I took a couple lessons from him, and and uh he was like super into health too.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, you know, carrot juice and and vegetables in the blender, and and here's the scales.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a yeah, and prior to that, there was a couple other scale patterns that got learned in that year being in a metal band.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you had a friend that could take lessons from the hot dude in town, there which we had a dude in town that everybody he was like the rock star guitar player.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like everybody wanted to be this guy.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's and he he looked the part, played the part.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it, you know, if you took lessons from him, it's like, oh, you took, you know, I want to learn that, you know.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So this guy set me on the path of like, oh, you can go to school for this.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm the the metal band I'm in, the drummer is very talented.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: He he's no longer with us, but he ended up being um, he was in the blue man group in the in the pit pit band, um, the pit rock band.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was in uh Henry Rollins band.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um very talented drummer.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But um we were again, me and the drummer, where we were really good principal.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was a very talented horn player.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I started having him teach me about scales.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wanted to write the notes down and then figure out how to put those on the guitar instead of looking at a a book of of shapes, you know, what are the notes?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you with him, you know, this is I'm still I could play, but I couldn't tell you half of what I was doing.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could definitely uh fool uh some people into thinking, oh, he must know what's happening, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so he uh so I get my entrance exam for for GIT.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we're scared to death, you know, not realizing they'll probably almost let anybody in if you could afford it.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know that.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you're scared to death, you have this test, you're like, I can't I can't fail this test.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I my buddy Jason, the drummer, I go, okay, what's in a harmonic minor scale?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: He would tell me the notes, and I would like, okay, that's this on the staff, right?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Yeah, yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do my entrance exam, and then my multi-track recording, I had two tape decks.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Two, okay, a little uh like a dictator one that you would your attorney would have in his office for a regular business, and like my little boom box.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I would record a track on the one tape player, then I'd play that back while and play to it and record it on the other machine.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: My rhythm from this tape deck and me, and then I would play that back and do the you know, whatever was the alternate part, you know.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I built this little uh demo tape that way, and then uh and and submitted.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of my best friends at the time was also going for the same thing.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: We were in the same band, but he got fired from the band, but we're still friends.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: So right?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we both submitted the same time, and and I remember he goes, Dude, I got accepted.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I didn't I didn't get anything in the mail, you know.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get in, you know.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, they did not accept everybody, actually.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like Jennifer Batten had been denied like two, three times.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, how do you mean Jennifer Batten didn't get in?
• 22:42
  Steve: You know, yeah, yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um so there was that fear, you know.
• 22:46
  Steve: That's interesting.
• 22:47
  Steve: So I don't want to interrupt you because I want you to keep going, but this is really interesting because I also wanted to go to GIT when I was a kid, right?
• 22:56
  Steve: And everybody I knew that.
• 22:58
  Steve: Would talk about it was terrified of having to take this admissions test.
• 23:03
  Steve: So, so what exactly did you have to kind of do on this thing?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: You had to make a demo tape of your playing and you had to pass uh like this theory test or whatever, okay, or you know, demonstrate your knowledge of scales.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you you get in, right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I'm accepted.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have to figure out how to pay for it.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you go down to the bank and you apply for a student loan.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just like you know, this is a big learning experience for me as a kid.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: My stepdad goes, here's how you do it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: We go to the bank, you tell them to school, you tell them the tuition, they're gonna you're gonna get a student loan.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so in doing that, you get to school, you're like, I got in.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't know how, but this is cool.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then they retest you.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy, okay.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: To make sure you knew what you said you knew?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that no, oh not at all.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't I didn't maintain any of that.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I yeah, so I could play and they go, okay, you could play.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is good, right?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but I also was that kid that could like fake a lot.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they retest you, and you immediately get put in a a group of like-minded kids.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I was on putting the short bus of the theory kids.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Oh, we have a special class for you.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna be with these other kids over here, and then and then there's the class, the group in the middle, and then there's the the I think they were called ABCs, literally.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was a C.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: So as in C later kid.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I made it my goal, right?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, I'm just I'm gonna be like this with theory.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be a nerd and study and memorize every last thing they throw at me.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my goal was to get from A to B to C in the first quarter, and I did.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: I got to the highest group in the end quarter and transferred over to a different class of people or whatever, um, which was maybe not the best thing, um, because I understood it all on paper.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: It all made sense on the chalkboard.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But application is where where so now you have to use it, you know, and they say use it or lose it.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can memorize all this stuff unless you start using it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a big thing for me.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time, you know, utilizing the information.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was uh I became a nerd for sure.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:23
  Steve: So now you're in GIT.
• 25:25
  Steve: So how long did you did you because the the old running joke was people would always go to G in GIT and nobody ever graduated from GIT.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there was 500 guitar players in my starting class and 120 people graduated.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's the deal.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's people in my class that I'm like, why are you even here?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, well, they came to LA from Indiana or wherever to get thrown into the music scene to network, you know.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Gilbert did not need to go to GIT.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: But he did.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: He went to all the classes and he's an avid learner.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can any player could learn from anything there.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you it's there's nothing that's above you.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And some of these teachers are monsters, they've they've got decades of experience and the different styles.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and the big thing for me is I I wanted to get out of the rock box.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted so I wanted to be a fusion studio guy.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be Larry Carlton, literally.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's I was like, I mean, you get to MI, you find out where all the other Steely Dan nerds are.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're at your school, yeah.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you found the right place.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, so I there was in my class was uh in my class that started there, Bruce Bouillet was in my class, and we used to jam all the time.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: He actually um I'd have a progression in the real book, and he'd go, No, let's cross this out and this out and just play these chords.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, that's more fun.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he showed me a couple cool progressions for like uh some parallel key changes, which was fun.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then he actually, he's the first guy I saw that that uh successfully played major and made it sound not stupid to me.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I didn't I didn't grow up in a you know Almond Brothers uh vibe or any of that that major stuff that's amazing.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't have a feel for it.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was like a rock or blues kid.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally get it.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: He he helped me uh not not intentionally, but you know, just sitting there playing over some of these things and watching, you know, where you know, landing on the right notes, which is that's all it is, you know, and uh he had brilliant freaking phrasing.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um Danny Gill was in my class, and Danny Gill's like ridiculous.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just like you know, so the first week you walk around looking like a trout, you know, your mouth is just open, you're like, you know, okay, close it back up, and uh and then you meet some other kids that uh you know are you know you're like in the middle.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's some kids who can't need to catch up to you in some ways, and and then you meet all the different kinds of kids, kids that are like technical monsters but but couldn't, you know, jam or write a song, and you know, it's it's very interesting.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: You get you get the you get a little bit of everything, and then you start, you know, making friends just like he did in any other place.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's all these guitar players, you can learn something from every one of them, and right that's a really great thing.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, right.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people went just for networking, and I there were some kids there that probably you know it wasn't expensive for them to go, you know, they maybe came from a different economic background or whatever.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, it was they moved to LA to party and you know, kind of go to school sometimes, you know.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you're gonna find that in any college in the United States.
• 28:39
  Steve: Yes.
• 28:40
  Steve: I mean, that's the thing, is it to if I was being honest, that's why I went to college was to to connect with people.
• 28:44
  Steve: It wasn't really to get a degree, it was more so just I wanted to connect with other musicians because I grew up kind of alone, you know.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I I needed to get outside of whatever was happening in and where I was, you know, small town USA.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so you come from being like your big fish in the pond, and now you're in the ocean with the sharks.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, this is pretty scary yet amazing, you know.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that was uh at that time, it you know, uh mid-80s Hollywood, the strip was just like it was a thing.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like you see right in the movies, it was that's that's it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, uh the guys in and Poison were all sharing plays down the street.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: They had their their uh street team putting posters up and walks somebody behind them, puts their poster over it on every pole.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I watched the birth of Racer X.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, because I remember Paul school um auditioning Jeff Martin.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was like at eight in the morning.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um they were so was Bruce and Paul in the school at the same time was Paul in there too at the same time as you were?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul's graduation present was uh job teaching.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I started right when Paul graduated.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he was all of a sudden available for open counseling and taught a couple classes.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you had um like school, you have these subjects, and you have a class, and then you um, and then there's a you know a computer lab, computer lab in 1985 is like ridiculous and very archaic.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then uh uh homework, yeah, live playing workshop, LPW, they called it.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and LPW, you'd get there and they're like, here's the tunes this week.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: We had like Blue Boxa and like Autumn Leaves.
• 30:28
  Steve: And you were like, Oh, sure.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know, I've never heard either of these tunes.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um did Aerosmith do this by chance, you know, literally.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then so the class had such a big uh uh population of rock-oriented people, they invented a new class, rock LPW.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and rock LPW was born during my time, like after the first quarter, and it was ran by Tim Bogart, vanilla fudge, he's a bass player singer, and uh uh Paul Hansen.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul Hanson is this guitar player who had like just the Michael Shanker vibrato.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just like he was such a smooth player, he played the strat that had the splatter paint on it.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: He later played for uh one of the Taylors, who's was it John Taylor or whatever, one of the guys from Duran Duran.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: He played in his band and great player.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So these guys were talented players, but they were really good at at you know performance, and so you'd have to pick a song, get a group of guys, perform it, and then get critiqued.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the whole idea behind the you know live performance classes.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just a you're you're gonna hear what happened, you know.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what I would have done, you're gonna hear you're gonna hear all those valuable things, you know, and and which is which is great.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: That also um that experience makes it easy to um take communication the way it should be when you do go to play in a band.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a better way to how to communicate to others, not like yeah, and most people don't have that opportunity to have something like that.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bro, you jack the tune, you know.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah that's not how you you do it, you know.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that was the the communication, the communication skills uh were invaluable, you know, just from the experiences.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so much happened that year.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I remember, you know, seeing um Slash hanging out on the corner all the time, you know, and uh we'd go out and he'd be handing out tickets to come see his band on Monday night at at the Troubadour.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so during my time there, like I saw uh Guns N' Roses Poison get signed, but there it was so saturated, I'm like, how can anybody even rise to anything?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I there's some great players here, and probably some bands that are ridiculous that just can't get past you know that next slot to be seen.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right, you know, right?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when you're especially when you're a kid, you don't know the ins and outs of of all that anyway.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're throwing darts at the wall there, you know.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I saw a lot of a lot of interesting things.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it has some interesting jobs in LA, too.
• 33:06
  Steve: Right.
• 33:07
  Steve: Well, this is so what again, what you're talking about is so cool because I when I was a kid, so you know, this is 1987, 1988, right?
• 33:17
  Steve: This is when I'm I'm my buddy and I are looking at going to California.
• 33:22
  Steve: We're gonna go to GIT.
• 33:23
  Steve: We're gonna go and I and I chickened out, I didn't go.
• 33:28
  Steve: And I'm very, very glad I didn't go because of everything you're talking about now, it wasn't just playing.
• 33:35
  Steve: I had a lot to learn in guitar playing anyway.
• 33:38
  Steve: I I wasn't even near where I needed to be in my guitar journey, but everything else from experience of playing in a band to having that on stage thing, all of that kind of stuff, and the and the the the business itself, like because you're right, it was so saturated, I would have just gotten eaten up because there's no way I would have been able to survive.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And my my roommate stayed there, slugged it out for for uh several years in bands and uh you know, did some good stuff.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I I thought, well, you know, you can always play LA.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can always play San Francisco.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: You could always, you know, if your home base was in a town you could afford to live in and commute within reason.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my my reasoning to to go back home, which was Sacramento, which is you know, a seven-hour drive from LA.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I think uh I I've had people go, Oh, I would regret not going.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I go, Well, no, you just had a different journey.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna learn different information there than you learned in the world.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: You just learned it a different way.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I have a student, so most of my students now are just teachers, and so I help them to become a a better teacher.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and so uh a couple of them have said that.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I wish I had gone there, and I go, you know everything I know.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you didn't have to go there.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you just studied a different path, you know.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um that experience, and and when you go there, it's a vocational school, it's like cramming four years of college into four semesters, and your your brain is like, you know, you pass your test and you walk out of there.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: But they actually tell you you're gonna learn more your first year out of here, your first six months out of here than you did the whole year here for sure.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've learned how to learn.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like kind of like high school.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: They taught you how to learn.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, what you do with it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's up to you.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I would I wouldn't have traded it for anything.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, God, there's just some great players, some great people.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I wouldn't trade the experience, but like I told other people that that didn't go that wish they did, I got it's just you you know everything I know, or maybe more.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it's you don't think don't look at it as like you didn't get something.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: You just went away.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I got done with there, I I was I want to go to Berkeley, you know.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I moved back here.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was I was in a band.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, uh, you know, do I want to be a rock star or do I want to be a musician?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, maybe I should go do a summer session at Berkeley.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I applied for that and I chickened out.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: I chickened out of that one, you know.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I my girlfriend at the time goes, Well, I can transfer my job out there.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can go out there for the summer, you know, and see what happens, you know.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I I because probably wouldn't survive a winter in Boston.
• 36:22
  unknown: Right.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so I chickened out.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think some of it too is like, oh, I think my band's gonna do something, you know.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I got back to my small pond and you know joined one of the the bigger bands in town that I could get a hold of that had a slot, you know.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 36:40
  Steve: So now you've done that, you've had that experience.
• 36:44
  Steve: So when did when did the teacher Tommy come in?
• 36:48
  Steve: Like now you're doing all this stuff.
• 36:50
  Steve: And obviously you're you're more passionate, it's not just about being a rock star, you actually enjoy the instrument, you enjoy the learning, which is one of the those are foundations of wanting to teach, you know, to pass that on.
• 37:02
  Steve: So so how does that come into the play then?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I took when I when I got this job as a dishwasher at this restaurant and I was jamming with these older guys, I still didn't have a car.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I signed up for guitar lessons with this guitar player who is he had played with Lou Graham, he's like the hot dude in town.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it was at the local music store, Skips Music, which years later, his room became my teaching room.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so I go and I I go, all right, I want to learn this Black Sabbath song on how to play eruption.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the tapes.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Well, do you know the names of your strings or the names of the notes?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Eruption, let's go.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Got 30 minutes here.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes, Well, the strings and the notes, that's important.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so okay, I'm gonna fill that out, I'm gonna do the homework.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: I come back the next week, so I'm borrowing this guy's car from work, driving over on my lunch hour from my dishwashing job at the deli.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I get there and I'm sitting on the couch in the lobby, sitting, door doesn't open, I knock on the door, nobody answers.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I go downstairs and I go, Oh yeah, Scott's not here today.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Oh, huh.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Scott's not here today.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that that was a negative, right?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then another guy I took a lesson from, and the next week he just kind of repeated himself.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you want to learn?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I if I knew what I wanted to learn, I obviously I thought I wanted to learn eruption, but I was told that it's not what I what you need to know is how to you how how your instrument works, you dumbass.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so those were two things that carried forward to me, like um, you know, the consistency and and kind of having a plan.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when I got out of uh music school, I was pretty sure I was gonna be a rock star within a couple months.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're gonna join a band, you're gonna be huge, right?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, well, to make some money in the meantime, I'll start teaching some lessons.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I put an ad out in the little local um thing, and it's and I get like one student, you know.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then an opening, I'm I'm doing a telemarketing job, by the way.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay right out of music school and uh one of the one of the jobs.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so there's an opening for a music instructor at the music store.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: The the music store that I took a lesson at.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I go, dude, I lie through my teeth, I bullshit my way through this interview process, and it goes from the guy who was running the department to this other guitar guy who's been there for 10 years, and he gave me scenarios like what would you do if it was a seven-year-old girl and she wanted to learn this, you know, all this stuff.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh at the end of my interview, in walks a guy that I graduated music school with.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't even live, he lives in Woodland, which is like an hour away.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And but I forgot, you know, I'm like, Jimmy, what are you doing here?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh crap, I got competition.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally, I don't know what it was, they must have just liked the way I bullshitted, but they uh they had fired, they had let a teacher go.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's allegedly a group of students that needed a teacher.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: So they were gonna divide that amongst a couple of us.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I was gonna get like, you know, six students on this one day and maybe five on this other.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I got so overzealous.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I wrote out all these assignments.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what these people are gonna learn.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know them yet.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't even met, I haven't even met the first kid that I'm gonna scare to death.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and literally it's like, all right, we need to learn our modes, we need to do this, we need to do this exercise.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this kid's like, I want to learn Iron Maiden.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, we're gonna get to that.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so then I realized, okay, so it's not the information, but it's the order of the information, yeah, the amount of information.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have to remember, how did I learn?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not like that.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was yeah, you know, it's like how you eat an elephant, you know, one bite at a time.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: One bite at a time, that's right.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is literally it's like, oh, that makes sense right now.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: So but I did have, I wanted to have like a plan, you know, so that from the beginning, and I don't know why, I just thought being more organized would be helpful for the student.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I came up with uh like an evaluation process, you know, they'd have an orientation.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what do you want to do?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what okay, so this is great, but I mean you play sports, you're in school, you know, so let's realistically talk about your investment of time, you know, because you could be absolutely and we could be right where we were today, you know.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as I love your parents' money, at some point you're gonna have to play something for them.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I, you know, that was the thing too.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I at first I was a I was scared to death to lose a student, but then I got to the point where I would I would fire students, you know, nicely.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, look, yeah, no, I get you.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've done you've had the same experience.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: So became super organized and and built up, but literally I was I was starving to death.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would I, you know, my folks were letting me stay there, but I was like, how am I gonna ever get out of this house, you know?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: So at the music store, um it came Christmas time.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: The owner of the music store gave me a job, part-time job downstairs while I was building up students of tuning guitars on the floor, you know, it's the Christmas rush.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: So they had this row of guitars, you know, a mile long.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: These are the big beginner guitars.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd start up one and then tune them and get all the way down to the end, and then you just write in the beginning and start over.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was like it was like I was spent spending four hours tuning the same 20 guitars, and I'm like, and so the the lesson in that was you have to get a better guitar to start with.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because if it doesn't stay in tune, we're gonna play.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that reminded me of my first guitar.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, so I I made friends with everybody at the store, and then I would, you know, like, oh, here's how here's how you play that lick, you know, and so then they would go, oh, when a kid would come into the store, they'd go, Oh, you know who you should take lessons from?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tommy.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tommy knows how to do that stuff, you know.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: So building that relationship with the people at the store helped build that.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's awesome.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I, you know, the the mentorship I had from the other teachers there was was great because they they I won't say they were lifers, but they've been doing it for a long time and they still liked doing it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: You everybody's got that teacher in high school that hates their job.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's right.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's teachers that like teaching.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it shows in because you learned, you know, so I thought, okay, I so I really liked it.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and staying organized and like coming up with new ways kept me engaged, you know, while I was waiting to be a rock star only months away.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the uh the teaching I I I I would come up with ideas, but I would still I'd have uh what I was gonna do, but I'd be handwriting it all the time.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a student at one point years into this, um, he'd be like it he'd be sitting there playing while I'm writing stuff down.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you could tell it bothered him.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, uh you should get a computer.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I go, well, uh computers are really expensive, you know, and whatever it was.
• 44:09
  unknown: Right.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: If I had enough money for a computer, I'd just buy another Marshall.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what you would do with you know that much money.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he goes, I should show you, you should come around.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: He had a a business that they did graphics and all this, and and uh so why don't you come around and I'll I'll show you how you can design stuff if you had a computer.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he opened up this program and he drew a guitar neck and he talked about you know different types of graphics like vector and it was all just over my head.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, you can make sick looking things, you don't have to cut them out of another guy's book and steal it, you know.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started making uh he he uh he showed me how to do this, and I was like, wow, that's really cool.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, See that computer?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah, he's all it's yours.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: So he gave me this little Mac.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was this big.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say you could probably fit my.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: More on your iPod than you could this Mac.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like it holds 256 gigs, you know.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bow maker.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he gave me that and um uh a program on there to use called PageMaker.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh PageMaker later became uh Adobe bought it and then it became uh InDesign.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you have an Adobe product that you have um, you know, Photoshop and Illustrator in Design.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: So InDesign is how you would lay out a magazine or a newspaper or a pamphlet.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: You combine all the different types of graphics and text, whatever.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I started making like formal pages and like oh I could make a graphic in here, and um then I tried to learn other software like uh finale when it came out.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Finale produced uh, which I think that had like three manuals that thick, you know, and 27 floppy disks to install so um so I you know I I kept learning more by making these things.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: I learned more about how to present, uh, and I just I really I enjoyed it.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that was great.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I I thought, you know what, I liked this order of events.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't invent the material, I didn't invent the A chord, the D chord.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you learn things in this order, I seem to think that people retain it.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I would present it in a certain way that I thought and then uh that became uh my first book.
• 46:32
  Steve: Okay, that makes sense.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so um I was so excited with my first book, I I crammed and made a second and third book, which were full of grammatical errors, um, which my students found for me.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my students who was probably like in sixth grade.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: He found the the errors?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, no, no, no.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was he's very focused, he's an amazing guitar player.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's um Luke Yeager is his name, uh guitar player and and just like this extreme metal, just uh and and like but mixing all different genres from like psycho surf to metal.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: He said, and he subbed in a couple pretty big bands and he became also a bodybuilder.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: But this kid was like he's he's just focused individual, right?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he was like, he found stuff in my second book, so I gave him a complimentary copy of my third book, knowing he would find everything I need to change for my next edition.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he was so nice about it.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Hey, I noticed that you put this, but over here, I'm like, you're right, you are correct, sir.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Good job finding that.
• 47:36
  Steve: I did that intentionally, so you couldn't.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, no, I wanted to.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: You were being tested for sure.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I was uh much I was a lot more uh careful on the next book, which there was a big gap.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I had the chord camp one, two, and three.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Chord camp one is just a beginning book, chord camp two is like a beginning theory book, but it's the way it's a theory through, you know, learning to build triads, learning your key signatures, how to play progressions in key, and then how to like uh turn these chords into you know the difference between turning it into suspended chords, all basic stuff.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the third book got all into you know sevens, nines, elevens, thirteens, all the voicings and versions, all the you know, but in a order I thought was useful rather than and it's the same thing.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy any encyclopedia, you know, has all the information by like bits of information and then something that something to work with.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do something with the information, and and yeah, above anybody know that because you've been teaching for as long as I have, so um, but the the finger fitness books came after that, and that was the stuff that I would have people do in between these things, you know, like we're gonna learn our pentonic scales, and we're gonna do blues soloing and rock soloing, then we're gonna learn these.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: So finger fitness one, um, I had a student who uh was a lawyer, and she um was I'd see little marks in my book.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of of things that she thought could be worded differently.
• 49:09
  unknown: Okay, okay.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would go, what's that?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nothing.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I go, so it turns out she's the editor of the paper at her law school, right?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: So she's like, you know, she probably looks at some pretty major contracts and and and I said, Well, I'm trying to make this layman, you know.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't want to make this complicated, but she's like, Well, you could say this with this.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: So she was really good.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: I learned a lot from her, more than I did from all of my English teachers in high school.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I gave her my next book, complimentary.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: You got a good thing going here.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: This one and see what you think.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, redlined everything.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a free edit out of that book.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's great.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, you know, and again, I you know, I was a guitar player and it was guitar information, so writing a book was was new.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then the first experience, I did have a friend, uh a colleague, so we there's a little side school that happened called Guitar Activity Center.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so one of my mentors from GIT opened a small pilot program, which was based off that live playing workshop.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we opened one in um Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sacramento.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he recruited GIT graduates to be his co-teachers.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, gotcha.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: We helped him find a rhythm section in town.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: You would learn these tunes, but with a live rhythm section, you could play them at different tempos to accommodate different uh levels of ability.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so um in that program, I met this guy, Jerry Jennings, and he had written a book called The Guitarist Link to Sight Reading.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And him and his wife gave me some brilliant insight to, you know, um information on a page and having some white space and and you know the layout and how it looks.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that that I did get I just lucked out.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: I got some help from people who had already done it, you know.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing if you do a record, you know, and you get a producer.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's like he's already done this, so he's gonna prevent you from making a few mistakes.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Probably more than a few.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, he uh we at one point talked about doing a book together, but you know, I zagged he zagged, something happened.
• 51:21
  Steve: So Yeah.
• 51:22
  Steve: So with these books, how did you how did you distribute them?
• 51:26
  Steve: How did how did that whole thing?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um through the friend of mine, they had self-published, and so I actually made mock versions of my book and I went to the NAM show, right?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have my little backpack with my mock version so it looks like the book, and here I am at the Hal Leonard booth, you know, like may I speak to whoever's in charge?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna find the guy you need to find at the Nam show for the book, you know.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Being you know, 20, whatever.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm a dumbass.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know different.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and so I did um, you know, there's Alfred's and there's all these companies.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, so who's in charge of publishing?
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get a book?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I have more than one person go, you should just put it out yourself.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: More than one person.
• 52:10
  unknown: Right.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then I get to the Mel Bay booth, right?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so everybody's got their name tags on, and I see uh Bob Bay, yeah, and I see this old guy sitting in a chair, it says Mel Bay.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah, oh my god, you're Mel Bay, and he goes, Yes, I am.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, I introduce myself and I was and and he goes, I go, it's just amazing.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm trying to do what you already did, you know.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Well, have a seat.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: You like hamburgers?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm gonna have a burger with Mel Bay.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he tells me a story about he goes, I made my books myself, and I threw them in the trunk of my car, and I would drive to whatever town, I would find the phone booth, open the phone book at the phone booth, as one would do in whatever year that was, look, find the local music store, go to the music store, sit there, play a little bit, talk about his books, meet all the teachers, and see if he could sell some of his books to that store.
• 53:06
  unknown: Right.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: He does whatever little money I had, I'd find the hamburger stand in town, get myself a hamburger, and that would be my food for the day, and then I would drive to the next town.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah through the Midwest.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that was his story.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, so moral of the story, make your own books.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a hustle.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: So with these mock-ups, I shopped to like making your own record and shopping to a distributor or a label.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um hoping to, you know, get a big enough distribution to warrant actually manufacturing these things.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because otherwise you're gonna make you know a huge investment of printing, which price breaks in printing come at volume.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, at least they did when you're on printing press for sure.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: And these were in the the printing press days, and so there were the digital multicopy wasn't really in full fashion yet.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so the uh um, you know, you had a couple colors on the on the cover, and then how are you gonna have it bind coil bind versus all these all these things, decisions you would have to make.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, my super ghetto versions, I shopped to a couple of distributors and I got a distributor to say, yeah, we love we love the book.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll take 500.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me check with the warehouse.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, so I I was trying to buy um my first house at the time, so I couldn't put anything on credit.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: So my buddy's dad actually said, I'll loan you the money and you pay me back out of your first few orders.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I did this one time deal 500 for with this distributor, 500, and they were gonna be like in um, you know, it's these major stores in these cities.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, well, can I still sell them at the local music store in my town?
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, to for my students.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I go, yeah, you can have your your town, you know.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even think your stores are part of our network.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I just sold independently to local stores, and then later, students that became teachers at other stores end up buying my book, but it went through me.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the distributor had this book, and then they actually took the bite on books two and three.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so so usually when you you get that initial buy that warrants the manufacturing, and then so that usually will pay that one bulk wholesale will pay for your lot, and then you could the rest of it go ahead and sell and reinvest in your next run.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, uh Core Camp One just turned 31 in my first book, was 31 years ago.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that's awesome.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the most popular because that's you know, it gets more beginners than anything else.
• 55:45
  unknown: Yeah.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that book in Finger Fitness One have probably and and Core Camp 2 have been the most uh done the best.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Core Camp 3, not a lot, not everybody gets to that one.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: So but that's like, you know, if I tell these kids if you want to get savvy in the real book, this is this vocabulary is what you need.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is the language you'll be speaking.
• 56:07
  Steve: Right.
• 56:08
  Steve: And you so do you st you still sell these, right?
• 56:12
  Steve: I mean, but you sell them digitally now, right?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, they're still you get mailed a copy.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: I figure the minute I go digital copy, I'll never make a penny again.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 56:21
  unknown: Okay.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: They'll just pass around the PDF, which is, you know, maybe it's time to do that, you know.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So but cordcamp.com.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's cordcamp.com.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's perfect.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, I still I get orders there, and and you know, it's it's you know, I'm not driving to Maserati, but you know, the books they pay for themselves, and um they uh and you know, every few years I have to re-up certain orders.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um which boy, I'll tell you what, the price of printing would make you want to go digital.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um the price of printing doubled at pandemic and has doubled post-pandemic.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and so now you see people outsourcing, you're like, well, where do you get printed?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, oddly enough, it's cheaper to get material printed in Canada, but Canada doesn't make paper.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: America makes paper from Canadian pulp.
• 57:17
  unknown: Right.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: So Canadians chop the trees down and put it in a blender, sell it to the US, they make paper, they sell the paper back to Canada.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I go to Canada, have them print on that paper, and then it's cheaper for me.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah.
• 57:30
  Steve: And you're right though.
• 57:31
  Steve: I mean, physical product in general has escalated so much in cost.
• 57:35
  Steve: You know, we used to sell lots of DVDs, but it just it just started getting out of hand.
• 57:42
  Steve: The cost of, and then, you know, then you're dealing with inventory and how much inventory do you have versus where what you need versus too much versus you know, yeah, and then on-demand publishing or on-demand supply is is more expensive per unit, you know.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you you're like, yeah, well, I don't want to triple the price for the consumer, else they're not gonna buy it.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, YouTube was a game changer for for lessons in general because there's lots of guys teaching for free, and then and then guys were able to um build a a business of like a subscription base, or they or they pay for courses like like yourself, and they were good at it, you know, and got in at a right time, you know.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: But that that market also became really saturated.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that that changed the whole book DVD market for sure.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it did.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: And some people still like books, which is amazing to me.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: I like a book, you know.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have a couple students that have the digital copy of of uh the PDF of the real book, but I I I like flipping the page.
• 58:40
  Steve: You know, yeah.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, yeah, I'm also a senior citizen.
• 58:44
  Steve: So well, and that but that's the other thing, is that you know, we we we came from this fascination of the digital realm with videos and all this stuff, and you could learn.
• 58:55
  Steve: Man, I can just go on YouTube and I can learn.
• 58:58
  Steve: But there were many people, and there still are many people that went, that was fun, but I still didn't learn because I still can't just watch a bunch of videos, and you can make me 10 million more videos this year, and that's still not helping the problem because I still can't do this by just watching a bunch of videos.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, you can't, you know, the video can't tell you.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, wait, wait, wait.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, try it, move your finger a little bit right to eight, you know.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I tell kids I go, hey, if you want to learn a bunch of like riffs from songs, it's awesome.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and and you'll start to just through the doing it, you'll go, oh, you'll start hearing these things yourself.
• 59:32
  unknown: Yeah.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can show your friends, you know, like yeah, that's right.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because it's like, oh, that band is always in this key or always uses these chords, just a different order.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you've gotten so familiar with it, you you're now not on YouTube, you're just with your recording and listening to it, being able to do it.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and then there's guys on there that uh, you know, great information, maybe not the best presentation of that information.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I was reason looking at a tutorial recently, um, just a recording tutorial for the for the DAW that I'm using.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this person talks so fast, I'm like, pause, pause, pause.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the information was brilliant.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's an I found another guy who like explains it so well in a short period.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's again, it's just like teaching, it's communication.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's right.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: Since the digital information has changed everybody's attention span to zero.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like if you don't tell me in five seconds, I'm gonna push next.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: But like that's right.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: What I wanted to learn, you're not gonna learn in five seconds.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's I need somebody to explain how this works, you know.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:40
  Steve: Well, and through comments, you realize that those there, those are the different people that are out there that are watching material, those people that have no patience whatsoever and want something, and which is why now we have reels and shorts and everything else like that, is they have 30 seconds for this, you know.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like it's like speed learning, but you didn't learn anything.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Once you learn an idea, you actually have to use it, or else it's you know, use it or lose it is like yeah, how is that so simple and yet so accurate, you know?
• 1:01:09
  Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:10
  Steve: Yeah, you totally you it's it's like talking in a mirror because you everything you're saying is ex is totally the truth.
• 1:01:17
  Steve: It's it's absolutely the truth.
• 1:01:19
  Steve: I always tell people you can have all kinds of experiences, you can you can watch this video or learn this thing or go, oh my gosh, that was awesome.
• 1:01:26
  Steve: But unless you actually now take it and absorb it, it's gonna be gone in two weeks because you're watching five other videos and you've moved on and that thing's gone.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's back with teaching.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if like if we learn something, we have an assignment with it.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna actually have to play something.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: And usually it's like we're gonna these are these chords, you have to create your own song from this group of chords, you know, or you actually have to make a melody with this scale over the you have to do something with it.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna go, yeah, I got this, bro.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna go with that.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's another teacher that will let you slide.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 1:02:02
  Steve: I I actually knew a teacher locally that used to teach, and the the students would come over to his house and they play video games.
• 1:02:11
  Steve: And and like, you know, that was never something I would have done, but but I I I very very much remember that that that's what he did with his students is if they didn't want to practice or they didn't do anything, they would just play video games.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's it's teaching is tough because if you know somebody didn't practice, it's like it's you're uh you're you know, you're repeating yourself and trying to think of a new angle of a way to like, you know what we could do.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: We could divide our time this way, you know.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:02:40
  Steve: That's right.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and they can take this skill and apply it to anything, anything they want to learn.
• 1:02:45
  Steve: Well, and and so what you're talking about, Tommy, is that's what a good teacher, no matter what it is, whether it's math, whether it's guitar, that's what a good teacher does.
• 1:02:56
  Steve: The thing about that is it takes effort and it takes energy.
• 1:03:01
  Steve: And if you have students, if you have a load of students where you have to do that all the time, it starts wearing on you.
• 1:03:07
  Steve: That's where the problem came in for me was well, how can I get these kids who really don't seem like they want to do much?
• 1:03:15
  Steve: And it started wearing on me like I just started getting tired.
• 1:03:18
  Steve: I loved teaching.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 1:03:20
  Steve: But when I moved from that realm to the digital realm, the beauty of the digital realm was I could make that video and then I could send people to watch that video, and then we could talk about it.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:03:36
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  Steve: And it was it saved a lot of a lot of uh energy.
• 1:03:41
  Steve: I could save a lot more energy by doing that.
• 1:03:43
  Steve: And then of course, then I got out of teaching entirely and just went digital all the way.
• 1:03:47
  Steve: Right.
• 1:03:47
  Steve: So for you, like so now you're you're you're doing the the you're doing the guitar lessons, you're doing the books.
• 1:03:53
  Steve: Um when does EMG come in?
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does that so that was an interesting that was an interesting gig.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was literally, I was um, I was teaching at I was back at I was still at the music store, um basically there for 28 years at this music store.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh doing uh going from being just a teacher there to running the teaching program to market development.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I was hired to expand the teaching department and expand our reach.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: So market development, like what can we do with music education programs?
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: That store had a program called Stairway to Stardom, which was before me, but that predated any school of rock.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically it's kind of the same thing.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're in little league, you get thrown in a band, you have some dude like me who's your coach, and there's a battle of the bands at the end.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: That won the number one music education program from NAM eight years in a row, and they've NAM retired the the award.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I ran that program for uh 18 years and coached in it for eight before I took it over.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we had an adult program there called Weekend Warriors, which is franchise through the world, um, all these things.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my job.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: So in my time there, I I tripled the size of stairway to start them and tripled the size of the teaching department and expanded it to this the other locations.
• 1:05:16
  Steve: Um, so back to your um initial question was oh, just how you converted from doing what what because I didn't know about that either, but but then how did EMG come about?
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I when I was doing my um I started trying to do videos.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be Steve Stein, I wanted to be able to do the instructional videos.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: So a buddy of mine says, let's do this thing, and it was called smart guitar.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: So trying to do some videos, and uh, you know, it turned out I was pretty good at explaining stuff.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing it for you know 30 odd years, you know.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you can put a camera on and and usually there's no there's no editing.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: You give me the subject, we talk about it, and I, you know, break it down and present it, but it was a very saturated thing.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I did a couple clinics, and I was an EMG artist.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um I so I did a couple clinics and uh with EMG, my buddy was the sales guy there, and we did them at uh a couple music stores that were carrying EMG.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I did a clinic called Mode Madness, right?
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay down the modes, and I do it.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's tunes that you can apply to the modes, and then a breakdown of um if you're good with the pentatonic, how to modally transfer your pentatonic to that mode and what what's the magic note you need to sound this way?
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it was a great little thing.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I did a string of those, and so my buddy's like, okay, you you can actually, I think he thought you can talk to people.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it came up.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was playing, and he goes, Hey, uh, so we we're gonna need an AR guy over at EMG.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know anybody?
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, No.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: What does the AR guy do?
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right?
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he goes, Well, what about you?
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I Scott, I'm in five bands, I've got a job.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I I and uh it's not even The same town, you know.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Why don't you come take a tour?
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I took a tour of the facility and it was like, Oh, this is really cool.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Uh, all right, so we're gonna put this job up.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want I want to give you the job, I want you to come do it.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I talked with my wife and she's uh she she hated where we lived.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's all yeah, let's move.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, really?
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've been here for like a long time.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right, you know, and she goes, Yeah, what are they gonna pay you?
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go interview, you know.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I interviewed, and it was more the people the boss is awesome.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's literally like the nicest guy, the greatest guy to work for, he's easygoing.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know how you could be this easygoing.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's just um super smart.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: I learn something all the time.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, it's interesting how each of my skill sets, whether it was you know, being a a a great listener by doing people's hair, or a talker by being the an instructor, or just being a music fanatic from the the kid on, you know, I've got you know, I know all the bands that your dad likes, I know all the bands that you like, and I know all the bands that your kid likes.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've got you know, I'm right in the middle, so it's a it's a good place to be.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it just turned out I was kind of a good fit for it, and they made an offer and we said, let's give it a shot.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved, actually.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: We packed up, moved, and what year was this?
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: This was third okay, so next month out it'll be 13 years.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, October.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, that was an interesting thing to, you know, to give your notice of these places that you've been for 28 years.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: It skips.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: Skip did not take it so well.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was not that happy, actually.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um for a minute, you know.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: He knew it was probably the best thing for for me to do.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so yeah, gave notices on everything.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh I'm I moved here, I rented a room uh from a friend of mine, and uh, and then we looked for a place here, we were renting a place here, we kept our house back there, rented it out for a while until we just couldn't be slumlords anymore.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: It took a few years.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then uh we really got lucky getting a house here for sure.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, California's freaking expensive as all game.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh moving to where we did kind of raise that a lot higher.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and when we moved here, I saw the house prices.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was like my dad, I'm like, that's ridiculous.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna pay that kind of money.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then it just kept going up and up and up.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you're a dick shit, dude.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife will bring it up once in a while.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when that house was only blah, blah, blah.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: I do remember that.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when that house was half of what we paid for this one.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: I totally remember.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I I won't say that I'm the smart one.
• 1:09:53
  Steve: Well, you never know.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, no, you don't.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: It could have gone the other way, you know.
• 1:09:57
  Steve: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it did not.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:01
  Steve: So you get in, I mean, you know, it's funny because growing up in the Midwest, you know, when I started trying to get out of what where I live and and move into this digital market and start meeting everybody.
• 1:10:14
  Steve: And I the the the greatest part about my life has always been like the the guys I've played with in bands and stuff, very similar to you, we've we've developed friendships.
• 1:10:25
  Steve: They're authentic people, and and I've always enjoyed that.
• 1:10:29
  Steve: And so when I started connecting with people out in the industry, that's how you came across to me.
• 1:10:34
  Steve: Like I remember reaching out to you about the EMG thing, and um, you know, I was like, hey man, I'd love to be part of EMG.
• 1:10:44
  Steve: And you said to me, you sent me an email going, hey man, I've seen something like I've seen your stuff before, but it looks like you have EMGs in all your guitars already.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:10:52
  Steve: And uh, and it was funny because back in the 90s, I I had a buddy that played EMGs.
• 1:10:58
  Steve: I I was always, you know, I grew up in a trailer court, I had no money and was a dishwasher.
• 1:11:03
  Steve: I worked at a pizza place and and um, you know, there was you had one shot at pickups.
• 1:11:08
  Steve: It's not like I go buy different pickups and swap them out.
• 1:11:10
  Steve: I didn't have that kind of thing.
• 1:11:11
  Steve: No, but I, you know, love Metallica, I love Slayer, I loved all this stuff, and he was playing them, and I was like, man, so I went to I started playing EMGs, and every guitar that I had, which wasn't many at the time, would have EMGs in it.
• 1:11:26
  Steve: So that's that's how you and I connected initially was from that conversation, and um it was really cool.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I told you I knew exactly who you were.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I told you you were my second favorite guitar teacher.
• 1:11:39
  Steve: Exactly.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I do remember that too.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so EMGs for me, I bought um, so I was enamored because the Steve Lukather video, the REH publications, he's got his Bradshaw rack, and like I told you I wanted to be a studio guy, fusion guy.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we had Larry Carlton, his e his EMGs and his in his Valley Arts.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I knew the history of these initial players, and then the rock guys, yeah, you Zach Wilde, Vernon Reed, Reb Beach, those three specifically, and yeah, all different kinds of players, but all from EMG.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and the a couple guys at school had them, and they were like, it's like this is this this is the studio guy's guitar uh uh pickup, you know.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I bought a guitar when I was at at Skips from this guy who had to sell his car his car, his he wanted to keep his truck, and so he had to sell his guitar to make his truck payment.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_00: He had a lowered mini truck in the 80s with all the graphics.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: He had this sick guitar, it was a custom, it was made by a guy named Steve Spaulding.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a Bournemouth, it was parts guitar, but it was like as custom as you get, like the disappearing jack in the side of the guitar.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um 85 SA 85.
• 1:12:51
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So hum single hum, Floyd, reverse headstock, the hockey stick, you know.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a six guitar.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I I got that guitar, it was my first guitar with EMGs, and then I I took them out, I put them back, I swapped, I was like on a quest, you know.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was a I was yeah, I became an Ibanez kid for sure.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it was Ibanez and and DiMargio, you know.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was definitely a DiMargio kid way over Duncan.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I I kept a guitar with EMGs in it, a couple, uh one, and then when I got into uh uh this heavier music, post post the hair stuff, I it was emg only.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I was an 85 in the bridge guy to start with.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So like like Reb or like Luke, but also depends on the guitar, you know.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I then you could see I have all kinds of pictures of my guitars.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have one EMG and I'd have the other pickup still in the guitar because I couldn't afford EMGs, so you know it was like, oh well, I guess you're not using the neck pickup on that guitar.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's great.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the same boat.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like they weren't they they weren't overpriced, they didn't cost more than the other guys, but it's like changing a pickup is like, why would I do that?
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I that's money, you know.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's right.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's martial money.
• 1:14:13
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:14:14
  Steve: And that's the thing, is what's once I once I started figuring that out, like I was telling and I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, but I always tell students when they start talking about guitar tone and all this stuff, I'm always telling them the the two two of the biggest things that make a difference in your tone, number one, are your pickups.
• 1:14:31
  Steve: And number two is the the the speaker, the cabinet that you're running through.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:36
  Steve: You know, if you take that martial head and you run it through three different cabinets, they're gonna sound it's gonna sound drastically different.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that that insight, I didn't know at first.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was literally just like, oh, whatever 412 is it.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that until I was at a buddy's place years later.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I should have I should have totally known by now.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he's making these amps, and they had all these 112 cabinets, and they're like voicing this amp, and they're like, here, play a little more.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like they're tweaking on it, they're like, Oh, try this cabinet, and they plugged into a different piece of group.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, What yeah, what just happened?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had I had zero idea.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it, that's an insight that I I did not have at all.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's a trip.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, you're right.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like the same amp, different speakers.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, it's yeah, it's a different everything now.
• 1:15:23
  Steve: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:15:24
  Steve: That makes all the difference in the world.
• 1:15:26
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:15:27
  Steve: So with this emg thing, I mean, I just I gotta think it's pretty, you know.
• 1:15:31
  Steve: I know I know you're a busy guy.
• 1:15:33
  Steve: I I know that you do so many different things, but this emg thing is so I again for for people that don't know, you know, I go out to NAM, I see you, we hang out, and you just you're talking to everybody because they all know you, you know, and and you're you're a very casual guy, which is so cool.
• 1:15:52
  Steve: So, like when you do like the the metal, what what's the metal show during NAM that you do that you guys that you go to?
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we you know, we always have a bunch of artists at Metal Allegiance.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't Metal Legions, yeah.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't sponsor it, but we usually have a lot of artists involved.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um Metal Legions, uh typically, I I think just I forget.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: They usually have one of the bigger companies that have or a few of the artists, it could be uh a Fender brand, you know, because they have Jackson Charbell or um or uh could have been ESP one year.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I it's usually somebody that's that's that.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, but I just go to whatever show I can, you know, to see whoever.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, because we have artists that are are there, so I want to at least you know go say hi to them, see them, yeah.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which is you know, as you know, those are long days if you're walking around all day talking all day and then going to a show and then you have to do it again the next day.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's nice that it's become a little bit shorter of a show, actually.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So uh but yeah, it's uh yeah, Metal Legions is one, and there there's uh the shows that they get a little far out, you know, down uh you know, hey, we're playing in Hollywood tonight.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm not gonna drive to Hollywood from from Anaheim.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's a track.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And people who are like uh from from somewhere else are like, oh, it's all LA, right?
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: You just drive up there.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, that's that's like a that's you're in the car for a couple hours.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_02: We have success.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Travel from other countries and they're like, I'm gonna be in LA.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna go to ESP.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just figured I could drive up and and check you guys out afterwards.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, absolutely, it's a good eight hours.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna spend it all day.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's like the end of the United States.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah it's pretty big.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:17:33
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Steve: So for you, what what's what's the biggest misunderstanding about EMG?
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the thing about pickups is a pickup is a microphone.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's passive, and then there's active, and then there's you know precision wound pickups, precision microphones, you know.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you get your your$100 microphone, you get your$200 microphone, you know.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So more, it's not you're paying for a name necessarily, you're paying for for what happened inside of it, the quality of the product, or perhaps the the quality control.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're usually not paying for development at this point on any of these things.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_00: But so an EMG pickup is a it's like a condenser mic, as opposed to, you know, an SM57, you know.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh there's some noise involved in that kind of a pickup that kind of gives it uh or that kind of microphone that actually gives it its character.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_00: The condenser mic is gonna hear your stomach growl while you're trying to track your guitar.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it hears everything.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So EMG the unfortunate part is it hears everything you do.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so if you suck, um everybody gets to know about it.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, EMG keep kept me a little more honest um than uh than I cared to be.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And which is good, but the clarity, uh so it was invented by the boss who metal wasn't even a thing, uh, but it's a nice uh pickup that it has amazing clarity for recording specifically.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the the bass stuff, which was big uh for EMG, the the original P set, you know, all those famous records done with this.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you can just plug direct and it's just the clearest, cleanest sound, you know, and the engineer has everything they need to build whatever's gonna happen, whether it be country music, pop music, funk, whatever it is.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_00: With the guitar, um it was became very popular at first just from studio guys, and that was in large I largely put a lot of that into Valley Arts because there were some fans, the builders at Valley Arts were like, Steve Lukather, you need these.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Luke heard about them from Peter Frampton, who was a friend of the boss.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Larry Carlton, we're building you a strat.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know what should go in here?
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is the EMGs, that's what should go in here.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's the cleanest, clearest for for your studio work, you know.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so that clarity is what made it popular in metal later.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's your articulate players, uh, even like um uh Zach, you know, clarity and and um it it raises the bar for the player a little bit, I think.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It makes them makes them better.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um Reb Beach, very articulate, you know, uh burning burning read, you know, your it it delivers everything you told it to, you know.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and like I said, I I think everybody that makes a I don't know if I said this right now, but I do say this a lot.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody that makes uh a pickup does a pretty good job of making a pickup.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a microphone, you know, and I I don't want to say anything negative about any of the brands, I just know what ours does.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, being the pioneers slash inventors of the active pickup, um I I still think the original recipes, the original flavors, there's really no substitute for them.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of pickups that we make that people don't even know, which is sad.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have too many skews, you know.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So uh a combo that I've been pushing on a lot of people lately is the 5860A.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And people are like, well, what is that?
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So now uh I I spread it out to a couple people.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've had people call and order it.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, uh 8185.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_00: That combo, like I said, I was an 85 in the bridge guy.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because a couple of the players I was, you know, wanted to be like did that.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And most people fall into that.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're um so 8185 as a combo in that order was popularized by by Zach.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um he liked the 81 in the bridge, which a lot of people do, especially with a less paul.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's can be a dark guitar.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: That 81's got that that bite, it's gonna cut through any mix.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the 85, buttery.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I think for me in the neck on a on a paw, you need to drop the 85 kind of low to get it the right balance for for what I like.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then the uh but Kirk Hammett made 8181 popular, but yeah, so because it became popular in metal, back to what you wanted to know.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: The battle is people stopped listening with their ears and started just listening with their eyes.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they see this black square pickup that the metal guys play.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't want to sound like Slayer or Metallica, so I'm not gonna use an 81.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, you like the black-eyed peas?
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_00: You like the guitar we heard in that song?
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's an 81.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh there's uh there's a lot of um great funk guitar.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Our single coils, too.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I will I will take the Pepsi challenge with any brand on single coils as far as clean tones.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you know, guitar players are are we're a funny bunch, you know, and a lot of us are never gonna change.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, I know players that have played a Duncan JB their entire 40-year successful career, and they're never gonna play anything different.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna ask them to either.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's silly, you know.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, if they decide to do a a solo album in a different genre, I'll give them a call.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so it it it is a battle a little bit, but um, and then there's trends that become a battle for any brand, you know.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm sure Coca-Cola was fine until Pepsi showed up, you know.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they're both pretty good colas, guys, you know.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_00: One's a little fizier, one's a little more flat.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So pick your, you know, yeah, pick your uh poison.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, there's there's challenges, and usually challenges come with competition, you know, another brand uh coming after your market share.
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know when we make a passive pickup, the passive people are, hey man, stay in your own lane.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I could say the same thing.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: You started this, yeah.
• 1:23:40
  Steve: You know, well, it's funny because okay, so going back, like not having any money, just having a couple of guitars.
• 1:23:48
  Steve: I had uh amp, one amp.
• 1:23:50
  Steve: Yeah, and and but but but this pickup thing was like so I got an 81 and an 89 with an SA in the middle, because that's that's what I was told would be the and so what's funny is I have crafted my playing ability, my my playing style around the fact that like I don't use a bunch of different presets on a pedal board or like I have a clean and a crunch and a rock channel, and that's what I have.
• 1:24:21
  Steve: That's what you need to do.
• 1:24:22
  Steve: And then and then the the the pickups, and this is where I run into people all the time when I play live.
• 1:24:29
  Steve: I I I basically everything is about volume and pickup adjustment.
• 1:24:34
  Steve: So I I I tear through, you know, I I'll have to put in a new pickup selector twice a year because I wear them out.
• 1:24:41
  Steve: And my my volume knob, same thing.
• 1:24:43
  Steve: My volume knob, I'll wear them out because that's and and people will hear me play, you know, Hendrix and all this stuff with an 81 or an 85 or an 89 in there, and they'll go, I always thought those were just metal pickups.
• 1:24:56
  Steve: It's like it's all in the way you set things and all in the way that you play.
• 1:25:01
  Steve: Like it's it's every and and when I teach people about tone, that's what I talk about, is not just go buy an amp and then set up seven, but learn all of the stuff that you can do, all of the sounds that you can actually get from your guitar and the pickups by adjusting those things.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and you and I came up at a different time, you know, where there was like an amp, a marshall.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it didn't have two channels, yeah.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so you would have a Marshall and a roll and JC and an A B box if you really were a clean, dirty guy, and uh a dispersion pedal, maybe.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh for the solos, you know, yeah, or a watt, you get that little, you know, that little high end on there.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and if it was a clean channel, you maybe some chorus, you know.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Delay came later, but all the players, you know, from uh uh you know, Dickie Betz, Jimmy Page, any of these players, they were just magic with the volume and tone knobs, you know.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so me not so much a tone knob guy, um with the amount of gain I would probably be using, but definitely um volume and and which pickup you're using and which combos of pickups and and yeah, and and playing your instrument, the attack, you know.
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so and then the the multi-channel thing became like oh, there's a a patch for every sound, yeah.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like but I I'm back to the you know, clean, dirty, and and dirtier.
• 1:26:25
  Steve: Yeah, it's me.
• 1:26:26
  Steve: This these are me.
• 1:26:28
  Steve: So every song we play will be me.
• 1:26:30
  Steve: Yeah, totally.
• 1:26:31
  Steve: Yeah, well, and my secret weapon, Tommy, was the SPC.
• 1:26:34
  Steve: Once I found out about that, because it's not that I use it very often, because I almost never use it, but if I have to do a fly rig or a fly gig or I'm playing on somebody else's rig or something, and there isn't enough to push over, I can just use that to settle into whatever amplifier I'm playing on.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:26:56
  Steve: So my guitar becomes multiple, yeah.
• 1:26:58
  Steve: It it that's that's what I've always loved about it.
• 1:27:01
  Steve: Is when I'm playing on my rig, I almost never have to turn it on because I never have to use it.
• 1:27:05
  Steve: But if I have to play on somebody else's stuff, I might need to bring that up a little bit to get me into a happy comfort zone, you know?
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:27:15
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I think you know, it working with a brand like this, I I'm I'm fortunate because I love the brand, you know, and I didn't have to like learn it and pretend that I like it, where I you know, maybe some people's sales gig, you know, they're they're sell refrigerators, and you know, they can tell you all about it and which ones are cool, but I I'm just super lucky, you know.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um that's awesome.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, they offered me the job, I took it, and and uh it was weird because they did say, well, uh a couple people, the average life expectancy of an AR guy is three years, you know, three to five years, and all these negative things, um, like well, I hope you're not married, you know, you're never gonna be home, all this best and everything's been great.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So like that's awesome.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: The company, the the people you get to work for is a big deal.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's not everybody's nice at every company, but I'm super, super lucky.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So right.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great, man.
• 1:28:08
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:28:09
  Steve: All right.
• 1:28:09
  Steve: So because I don't want to keep you here forever, but let's let's get into the this is the part that I mean, I'm interested in all this, but this is something here, which is your certified music practitioner therapy, music therapy thing.
• 1:28:24
  Steve: Like, how how did how did this come about for you?
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_00: A buddy of mine last week, Steve Brown, he plays drums in Tesla.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_00: He uh plays in oleander, he's been a friend of years.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was telling him about this acoustic music.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, if I would have told you this 20 years ago, you would have you would have smacked me.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be playing acoustic music, you know, from going from metal to industrial to all this stuff.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So interestingly enough, I have um a friend of mine, and she is a harpist.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we met in of all places um uh Pilates.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so So her husband was this yoga instructor who was like could do he's a pretzel, he could do any of this stuff.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was like insane.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Pilates is what uh helped me gain flexibility.
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had met there, and then um she knew I did hair, so I cut her hair, and she would talk about um she was a certified music practitioner, she played harp, and she and I'd go, okay, that's awesome.
• 1:29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm scared of the harp.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's huge, it's got all these strings, you know.
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she said, Well, yeah, so I played therapeutic music for patients, and she would tell me some stories and some some rewarding stories, and um, and then some some sad ones, and I I thought it was very interesting, but that's where I left it.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds interesting.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she had mentioned a couple times you should you should look into this.
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah, I you know, I have five jobs, I don't I don't need to do anything else.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so she uh she had never even heard me play guitar.
• 1:29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um, she just knew I used to play a lot, you know, and so I think she thought my my demeanor or my personality may be good for the field.
• 1:30:07
  SPEAKER_00: So she um was a volunteer at Music Partners in Healthcare, which is a um a place that gets contracts with hospitals and care facilities for therapeutic style musicians who graduated from certain programs.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So she said, you know what, they have a scholarship.
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think you should try and go through this program.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is during the pandemic, so I was like, okay.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes, well, now the pandemic's here, so you don't have to fly to go to these courses.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_00: You would they would, you know, the courses were in modules and you would do what it's like a three-day obligation.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, you're going nowhere for three days.
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're in front of your computer, you're playing with it, you know, playing for other people, learning, and um, and then you have to wait a certain amount of time to do the next one because you can't just like steamroll this thing.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_00: They make you make you wait.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you're required reading, you have a study buddy from whatever group that was, and you have all these different time zones.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fueling modules were East Coast time, you know, starting at at eight in the morning East Coast time, you know.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, gotcha.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, yes.
• 1:31:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's early for you.
• 1:31:16
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so these these would happen.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But so she goes, okay, well, why don't you apply for the scholarship?
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a partial scholarship which helped pay for this thing.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I really just thought, okay, you're they're gonna talk, you're gonna play pretty music uh in a waiting room at the doctor or at the hospital for people that don't feel good.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and you see this, you see people do this.
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_00: You see volunteers like I'm gonna play piano in at this place or play guitar uh for at the old folks' home for the memory care people who who do not have any kind of training.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're just out of the goodness of their heart, and they play some pretty music for some people, which is awesome.
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this required some education, and I I was blown away right away that um we had to study all these patient conditions, what's appropriate culturally, like how modes affect, you know, like what's happy for us is not a happy mode in the Eastern bloc.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, their happy songs are in Phrygian, right?
• 1:32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, oh okay.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the the theory um it is interesting too because being a nerd, you know, the theory thing was like super easy for me, but also fun.
• 1:32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'd have an assignment, you had to like create a piece within this mode.
• 1:32:35
  SPEAKER_00: But then the different patient conditions you would approach them very differently.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you learn a lot, and you know, some medical terms and things like that, but it comes almost full circle back to the same skill you have as a as a teacher, as a communicator, because or as a person who's uh performed, because when you actually do get to playing for patients, you have to read the room very fast.
• 1:32:59
  Steve: That's what I was gonna say.
• 1:33:01
  Steve: How do you decide what somebody needs to hear?
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so I overthought it completely when I was studying, and I and you have a mentor.
• 1:33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So my mentor was actually uh she's a uh violinist, and she was teaching at a school in China at the time.
• 1:33:13
  SPEAKER_00: So time zones just to get a meeting with your uh your advisor, you know, was was crazy.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the school's not difficult, you know, it's a it's a bunch of time, but all different instruments.
• 1:33:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I think I was the only guitar player in my group every time.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_00: So harp is the number one instrument in this field, and um which is scary because it's you know, I picture angels with wings, right?
• 1:33:37
  SPEAKER_00: But so you know, um you would play differently if you were like in an infusion lab, you know, where everybody's getting uh their treatments.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_00: You would almost play like distraction music, like if you're at a lobby of a hotel, you know, like the piano guy just playing songs.
• 1:33:52
  SPEAKER_00: You may know one of them, you may not, you know, it's just kind of distraction.
• 1:33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I uh for me, I get utilized a lot.
• 1:34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I did the program, graduated, but it was really fun because you know, the like you'd have to take a song and deconstruct it and apply it to a different um patient condition, you know, somebody who's in ICU um with on life support.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh tempo is everything.
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, somebody who's um and the the program I went through is called Music Healing and Transition Program, MHTP, and it um transition.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So people passing.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_00: So literally there's one of the one of the main categories you train for is what to play to help somebody let go.
• 1:34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which was mind-blowing to me.
• 1:34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I was scared that you know this is gonna happen at some point.
• 1:34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to play for somebody who's who's dying.
• 1:34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:34:51
  SPEAKER_00: So fast forward, I I get very lucky, and I was able to do my internship uh here not far from my house at Kaiser, and uh they have a uh a music program, and the the harpist there had been doing this for years, so I had to shadow her.
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so um they let me do my internship there, which was you know free free for them, you know, they they get me, and because you have to do a certain number of hours before you can finish your your certification.
• 1:35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and um and log everything and make notes, you know, it's like charting, you know, if you were uh uh uh working in a care facility for each patient, there's going to be some sort of a chart and uh generic, you know, and uh all within the law, you know, no names or anything like that.
• 1:35:35
  SPEAKER_00: But um so in doing that, it was really uh they tend to utilize me at this hospital a lot in palliative care, comfort care, hospice.
• 1:35:45
  SPEAKER_00: So palliative care, comfort care are kind of lumped together.
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're very similar, but they're phrased differently based on what the individuals, how much attention their care may need or what their insurance may allow.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, all the ins and outs, but musically it's similar.
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hospice, uh ICU, um, so people, you know, uh in rough conditions.
• 1:36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh high pain, high anxiety um a lot because so I I ended up playing, you know, I had this, I said I overthought it.
• 1:36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I downloaded all these charts that I put them on my iPad.
• 1:36:22
  SPEAKER_00: I got a little you know, Bluetooth foot switch, someone would be able to go alphabetically through.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, Blackbird, yeah, I got it.
• 1:36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm gonna remember 8,000 songs, you know.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 1:36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking, okay, all the age groups.
• 1:36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, you got your big band era people that are still here, you know, these people in their 90s, they know who Glenn Miller is.
• 1:36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know who Glenn Miller is.
• 1:36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should learn how to play Les Paul's version of In the Mood, you know?
• 1:36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you've got the large population in the middle, like people my mom's age, these boomers.
• 1:36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, any Beatles song, you know, or an Elvis tune, or you know, so I'm gonna have to have these, I'm gonna have to have that.
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and once in a while somebody will go, Do you know any of this?
• 1:37:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I have a couple at the ready, but I didn't want to carry all the stuff with me, you know, the iPad and and which, you know, with that number of songs, you're gonna that's a lot to keep up here.
• 1:37:13
  Steve: For at least.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um so a lot of what I do is I I improvise.
• 1:37:20
  SPEAKER_00: I improvise some sort of kind of a finger picking like pattern within this key that sounds pretty.
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so utilizing some of my favorite keys for acoustic guitar, um, you know, that that have the you know multiple open strings to use.
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm in E, you know, or A, I get get away with making it sound like you're almost in an open tuning, but you're not.
• 1:37:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I didn't want to do open tuning either because switching on the fly, too much to think about.
• 1:37:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I would have a little piece that kind of had two parts, you know, or maybe a third part, and um, I'd have a handful of these, you know, because you're with a patient for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe.
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then you're okay, so you're not in there for a long time.
• 1:38:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 1:38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're 10, 15 minutes, then you go to the next patient, you're like, I I could tax myself and play try and play something else, or I could or just do the same thing.
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I will say the intent and delivery each time is different.
• 1:38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so and if you uh if you find yourself thinking about something else while you're playing, you're you've lost it, you know.
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and in the schooling of this, they said the this will be you have to let go of ego.
• 1:38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I that's not a problem.
• 1:38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've got no ego.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized, oh, you're you're a liar, you're a guitar player.
• 1:38:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Your whole life has been about ego.
• 1:38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So now, you know, if somebody doesn't want to hear you, it's not personal.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're not there for you at all.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're there to be of service, which was interesting for me.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and it was great because I you can tell you you see this person, you see they're in pain, you watch their body language, and a lot of people are having a tough time falling asleep.
• 1:39:05
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people close their eyes and they see things when you play.
• 1:39:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the there's a vibe, you know, you try to create.
• 1:39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are they breathing heavy?
• 1:39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to bring that down?
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_00: You you see their their chest beating, you know, they're so you try and read the room and you read the other people in the room, the family members, are they stressed?
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of variables.
• 1:39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you make a quick decision on, you know, it's like a comedian, I'm sure, you know, which joke is gonna break this ice.
• 1:39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I'll how I start into it might change the tempo.
• 1:39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and improvising you can modify your tempo or change to another piece completely on the fly.
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you see somebody's uncomfortable, uh, you know, or clenching their hands or anything like that, you know, um uh within what you understand about what they're going through.
• 1:39:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I know that when I walk in, I know their name, how old they are, yeah, their religious denomination, and how many days they've been in the hospital, and basically why they're there, you know, right in in you know, Tommy terms.
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't need to have a medical dictionary or anything.
• 1:40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so um it was really weird at first because I would see some people in really bad shape.
• 1:40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea, like, you know, I see somebody half my age that's not gonna make it.
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's hard.
• 1:40:26
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say the first few times when I when I finished, I sat my my vehicle in the parking lot and just stared at my windshield for like 10 minutes before I even started the car.
• 1:40:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even live ten minutes away, you know.
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like I had to process it.
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then you see, wow, nurses have to do this every day.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_00: They see people die every day.
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then so training for I I played for all kinds of people that were in really bad shape that were going to to pass.
• 1:40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe that day, maybe the next day, and then I would find out.
• 1:41:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in this time I've been doing it, it's coming up on it'll be three years in November.
• 1:41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that I finished my internship.
• 1:41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so the uh in doing this, I playing for somebody while they pass has only happened a couple times, and it was pretty intense.
• 1:41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um those the first one was really weird for me, and um, you know, because somebody, you know, I had seen somebody die before in life experience, you know, so it wasn't that, but you don't know this person, you're providing something for them and their loved ones in the room, and it's it's it's heavy, it's a lot.
• 1:41:41
  SPEAKER_00: So um I would continue to play these pieces for for folks, and then you'd see somebody that was in there for weeks, you know, and you're like, God, I think I played everything I know how to play for this person.
• 1:41:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'd be trying to come up with new things for the reputation.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at one point I I had a few pieces that I'm kind of doing similar, you know, the arrangement's the same, just the intent or the tempo might be different, or the feel or the flow.
• 1:42:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I had somebody go, Does that have a name?
• 1:42:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, it's it's called the E song right now.
• 1:42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:42:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I I began kind of giving them names for reference, and usually based off of what somebody would say about it.
• 1:42:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I had one piece that somebody said, I it reminds me of water.
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody said this reminded them of water.
• 1:42:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's got a water title, you know.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Another one always reminded people of uh fields of flowers.
• 1:42:35
  SPEAKER_00: They would close their eyes and go, I see myself in a field, you know.
• 1:42:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that was great that they were able to like have a vision, you know.
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I began to uh give them names and then people would go, Is that yours?
• 1:42:51
  SPEAKER_00: I say, Oh yeah, it's just a little thing, you know.
• 1:42:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and they'd say, Well, where can I get it?
• 1:42:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, You can't.
• 1:43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've never I've not this I just gave it to you.
• 1:43:03
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 1:43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so then I thought, okay, maybe uh some people ask so often I finally said, Well, maybe I'll just record these.
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then um yeah, in the few years of of doing this now, coming up on three years, I've uh created quite a few pieces.
• 1:43:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so this came down to recording 10 pieces.
• 1:43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and which was a whole new experience for me to record acoustic guitar with no drums and no vocal.
• 1:43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, right.
• 1:43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're you're naked.
• 1:43:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:43:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I hope you like the way you look naked because you're naked.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was a humbling uh journey.
• 1:43:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:43:47
  Steve: And that CD comes out soon.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the 21st, September 21st, and and that's comes out digitally the 21st um through DistroKid.
• 1:43:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll be on all the streaming platforms, um, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and uh and then also on my YouTube channel, which is just now launched, I'll have videos for each of the songs.
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's awesome.
• 1:44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just pretty, pretty stuff.
• 1:44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's gonna see me play it.
• 1:44:13
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:44:14
  Steve: You know what's awesome, what's what's crazy, Tommy, is I always tell people like you can be in a rock band and play and play in front of five, ten thousand people.
• 1:44:23
  Steve: And it doesn't you can make mistakes and nothing matters.
• 1:44:26
  Steve: What matters is when you play a wedding, you can't make a mistake, and even worse, playing a funeral.
• 1:44:33
  Steve: Oh, yeah, because your music is impacting these people, both both wedding and funeral, but very much so on a funeral level.
• 1:44:41
  Steve: It's a it's impacting them in such a an emotional state.
• 1:44:45
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:44:45
  Steve: Where when you're playing on stage with a rock band, it's it's an entirely different kind of thing.
• 1:44:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there's power in that number, you know.
• 1:44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:44:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and you're liable to make less mistakes in there, too.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the confidence you get from that energy.
• 1:45:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when you've you know stripped down, you know, a funeral's tough.
• 1:45:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've only played one funeral, and I've been asked several times since I've done this work.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I somebody will contact the hospital and I'll have some one of the chaplains reach out and go, Well, you played for this family.
• 1:45:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were wondering if you would come play for their service.
• 1:45:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's usually falls on when I'm already doing this work anyway.
• 1:45:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I I haven't done it.
• 1:45:23
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, one of the that's tough.
• 1:45:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've played a funeral, I've I've I've played weddings.
• 1:45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, you're like, yeah, it is hard.
• 1:45:33
  Steve: Yeah.
• 1:45:33
  Steve: Well, and I just want to say that because what you just said was really important about the the the ego thing.
• 1:45:38
  Steve: When you're doing these kinds of things, it can't be about you.
• 1:45:42
  Steve: Like you really have to think about how you're playing and what you're playing because it's impacting somebody's in in your case, it it's impacting their transition from life to to to death.
• 1:45:56
  Steve: Um you know, in my situation, you know, you're playing a funeral and the mom is there with you know her 13-year-old daughter has passed away and you're there and you're the you're the conduit for this situation.
• 1:46:10
  Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:12
  Steve: And so I I uh so I I tip my hat to you because I've always thought you doing this is really, really awesome because you've got the spirit for it.
• 1:46:20
  Steve: Not everybody can do that.
• 1:46:22
  Steve: Right.
• 1:46:22
  Steve: And so when you say, you know, I've got you know an iPad with 500 songs and blackbirds in there, and then you say, but most of the time, and I know you said you didn't bring your iPad anyway, but I'm just saying you you then said, I usually just play something that fits the mood.
• 1:46:41
  Steve: Yeah, like that's even more powerful because Blackbird may or may not connect with somebody.
• 1:46:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:46:48
  Steve: But when you play, you're looking at the situation going, okay, do I do this?
• 1:46:52
  Steve: Do I play in this key?
• 1:46:53
  Steve: Should it be major?
• 1:46:54
  Steve: Should it be minor?
• 1:46:55
  Steve: Like, what am I trying to do?
• 1:46:57
  Steve: That's that's pretty powerful stuff.
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in in you know, different languages too, you know.
• 1:47:02
  SPEAKER_00: I uh it's like I play for a lot of Hispanic, uh so I have a very limited Spanish enough to introduce myself and ask them if they would like some music and then you know, uh play something that sounds culturally appropriate without nailing an exact song.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, also depends on how the room feels.
• 1:47:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, and you know, sometimes uh sometimes the room does feel minor.
• 1:47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you don't want it to feel minor.
• 1:47:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna in between, you know.
• 1:47:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:47:32
  SPEAKER_00: So but yeah, and and interestingly enough, a lot of uh what this does is you know, it's very tempo-oriented when you're with people hooked to machines.
• 1:47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And even with the uh the NICU or the intermediate nursery, the little babies, they're little hummingbirds.
• 1:47:48
  SPEAKER_00: So tempo is everything because they they're their heart rate, they're they need to be somewhere with their heart rate.
• 1:47:55
  SPEAKER_00: And with the other people, when you're trying to get them to relax, the more ebb and flow you have, the easier it is for them to be distracted from their pain.
• 1:48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:48:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to to to let go of things and want to fall asleep.
• 1:48:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this kind of ebb and flow out of not in time exactly.
• 1:48:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're not, you know, you're not having these, you know, tempo changes like this.
• 1:48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
• 1:48:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, I get you though.
• 1:48:19
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that was in creating these pieces, that was one of the hardest things to do to commit to record them because building a you can make a tempo map, yeah, um, but now it sounds like a machine.
• 1:48:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't sound like this.
• 1:48:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this came down to um recording a few performances and and choosing one and saying, okay, now I'm gonna try and do a harmony to what I played without seeing me, you know, and so like you know, like we used to do back in the day.
• 1:48:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, but he was on the grid.
• 1:48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was definitely an off-grid experience, which was yeah, which was interesting because the the machines want you to be on the grid.
• 1:48:59
  Steve: Right.
• 1:49:00
  Steve: So these songs, so there's ten songs on this.
• 1:49:04
  Steve: And what kind of vibe do these ten songs have?
• 1:49:10
  Steve: Do they do they fluctuate quite a bit?
• 1:49:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a it's a 30-minute listen, you know.
• 1:49:16
  SPEAKER_00: So front to back, 30 minutes, and um it does take you on a journey, you know, little ups and little downs.
• 1:49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I tried to arrange them so you know uh it didn't, you know, there's a couple songs in E that they weren't next to each other.
• 1:49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, things to consider, you know.
• 1:49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so, yeah, and it was hard, you know.
• 1:49:40
  SPEAKER_00: I it I don't think like anybody who's ever recorded anything out, you know, a record is never done.
• 1:49:46
  SPEAKER_00: You just turn it in.
• 1:49:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I hemmed and hawed and sat on this thing for a couple weeks and didn't listen to it, and I was doing it again.
• 1:49:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you know, it's that's if I don't like it, that's too bad because that's who you are.
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're this is how you play.
• 1:49:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you bad.
• 1:50:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, warts and all, here it is.
• 1:50:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 1:50:04
  SPEAKER_02: So September 21st.
• 1:50:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was fun to do the um the violas and violence, even though on the keyboard, because I was like, yeah, you know, the the the movement of this going this way, you know.
• 1:50:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a couple cool twists that I, you know, I don't get to do while playing for the people.
• 1:50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:50:20
  Steve: So you so there is acoustic, but you've got other stuff.
• 1:50:22
  Steve: You've got synth and some other things on there.
• 1:50:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I have one crappy acoustic guitar.
• 1:50:26
  SPEAKER_00: So my whole thing revolves around this Yamaha APX that I got in the late 80s when they were trying to compete with with uh ovation.
• 1:50:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the back is made of plastic, but it's not round.
• 1:50:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was like their selling point.
• 1:50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:50:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:50:39
  SPEAKER_00: So and I have an EMG ACS in it.
• 1:50:42
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like a cardboard box.
• 1:50:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but I put a tone wood amp on it.
• 1:50:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now it sounds like I've like in a sizable bathroom with a little bit of or or like a big kitchen.
• 1:50:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's got presence to it.
• 1:50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, when I started this work, I'm like, you know what?
• 1:50:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna, I'm gonna just Eat it.
• 1:50:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to buy a nice tailor or something like that.
• 1:51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, a good acoustic guitar costs a lot more than a good electric guitar.
• 1:51:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.
• 1:51:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you could spend five grand on an acoustic guitar and still not be where you want to be.
• 1:51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't prepared to do that.
• 1:51:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you're like, you could also say you're you're doing this and you're getting paid to do this.
• 1:51:16
  SPEAKER_00: You you actually could buy the right tools for the job.
• 1:51:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what steered me away right away was the hand sanitizer.
• 1:51:23
  SPEAKER_00: So in and out of every room, I have to sanitize my hands.
• 1:51:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're in the hospital, you're in this environment.
• 1:51:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I see these ladies with these$5,000 harps, and they grab the top handle, all the finish is worn off the handle, off the top hook horn from hand sanitizer.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_00: Alcohol of the wood.
• 1:51:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, I never thought of that.
• 1:51:44
  SPEAKER_00: This guitar is just fine, right?
• 1:51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:51:46
  SPEAKER_00: But then I wanted to record, and I'm like, so the boss was gonna throw away this 70s factory second guild.
• 1:51:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was missing a couple tuning pegs.
• 1:51:57
  SPEAKER_00: The side is split down the side.
• 1:52:00
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to have he goes, Hey, you you said you need an acoustic guitar, you can have this one.
• 1:52:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay.
• 1:52:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I bought some tuning pegs for it.
• 1:52:06
  SPEAKER_00: I put those titanium bridge pins on it, and I had a buddy look at the side, he tried, he couldn't fix it.
• 1:52:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I just duct taped the frickin' side, right?
• 1:52:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then I adjusted the truss rod and it's intonated, and it sounds pretty great.
• 1:52:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big old red knot, but even has a wood burn stamp on the inside that says factory second.
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was on its way to the trash can, right?
• 1:52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then um my my stepdad, who's my dad, he's who raised me from from pretty young, his wife gave me this classical guitar last time we visited them.
• 1:52:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's an 80s Takamini.
• 1:52:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um it hadn't been played in a lot of years, but it sounds really great.
• 1:52:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually did a whole piece just with that guitar.
• 1:52:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's great.
• 1:52:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then I used it as a texture on a bunch of the tracks, and then at my wife's work, this guy passed away, and his wife gave us this Gibson 12 string um from the from 1965.
• 1:53:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a student 12 string trap piece bridge.
• 1:53:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I I fixed that up and I used that on some tracks.
• 1:53:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 1:53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then my buddy at Schechter sent me an acoustic to use, and so I used that on some tracks.
• 1:53:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just used them all.
• 1:53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:53:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's I'm excited to hear it, man.
• 1:53:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 1:53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, it's it's acoustic guitar and violins and violas and cellos and some bass.
• 1:53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 1:53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was fun.
• 1:53:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's great, man.
• 1:53:33
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it comes out and I actually made uh physical CDs just because all these people keep asking, where can I get the CD?
• 1:53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not knowing that this is actually they were gonna come back in fashion, which is amazing.
• 1:53:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:53:44
  SPEAKER_00: People are looking for CDs again, but I'm like, I have a CD player in my truck.
• 1:53:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's all my vehicle is.
• 1:53:54
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, people still have them.
• 1:53:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm not gonna do vinyl, even though you know vinyl is popular, but it's it's a it's they're not they're not inexpensive, that's for sure.
• 1:54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:54:04
  SPEAKER_00: So where can people, when this comes out, where can people get the CD?
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know what?
• 1:54:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was maybe gonna put it up at chordcamp.com.
• 1:54:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had thought about it.
• 1:54:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't gonna be super worried about it.
• 1:54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just you know, if it's out there for people to listen to, they can stream it.
• 1:54:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if they want to buy it on Apple, they can, you know.
• 1:54:21
  SPEAKER_00: You bet so it'll be for sale on Apple and Amazon music.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_00: So but if I don't know when subscription, you could listen to it on, you know, because you're already paying for it.
• 1:54:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll just count as streams or whatever.
• 1:54:34
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:54:34
  Steve: Well, I'll put some links on obviously.
• 1:54:36
  Steve: Once this gets released, I'll put some stuff on there so so people can find it too.
• 1:54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um then the YouTube channel will have um the videos for that all too, so that'll count, you know.
• 1:54:45
  Steve: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:54:47
  Steve: Yeah, so just rem just let's make sure we connect and I get all those links from you, and I can I can add those.
• 1:54:52
  Steve: Tommy, dude.
• 1:54:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's the mini toms.
• 1:54:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about so many versions of me.
• 1:54:56
  Steve: Yes, all those Tommy's right there, right there.
• 1:55:00
  Steve: Well, thanks for your time, man.
• 1:55:01
  Steve: It's been almost two hours, and I just I I love talking to you, buddy.
• 1:55:04
  SPEAKER_00: I you know what?
• 1:55:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you are you gonna be a nam?
• 1:55:07
  Steve: Well, I talked to my wife, and we're not sure.
• 1:55:09
  Steve: We talked about going.
• 1:55:11
  Steve: And again, we go to see you would be 80% of the reason we go is to see you.
• 1:55:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's so expensive, but it is shorter now.
• 1:55:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um the show is only Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
• 1:55:21
  Steve: Yeah, which is so we'd probably we'd probably fly in Friday or Thursday, and then we'd leave Saturday.
• 1:55:27
  Steve: I know because normally I'd come in like Tuesday or Wednesday and stay until Tuesday, but um meeting with people, but yeah, I usually get it.
• 1:55:34
  SPEAKER_00: I we usually just bail Sunday, uh the last two times.
• 1:55:38
  SPEAKER_00: But um last year was very much a skeleton crew for us.
• 1:55:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll be interesting to see.
• 1:55:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a building back up, but it's not like the last time you went, it was like insane, you know.
• 1:55:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's definitely not that same, yeah.
• 1:55:50
  Steve: Yeah, well, I'll let you know.
• 1:55:51
  Steve: We'll figure that out.
• 1:55:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 1:55:53
  SPEAKER_00: If not, um I'll let you know when we're gonna do the Nashville thing.
• 1:55:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll happen this year.
• 1:55:57
  SPEAKER_00: But um we'll see each other at some point.
• 1:56:00
  Steve: Yep.
• 1:56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Outside of the screens in real life.
• 1:56:03
  Steve: That's right.
• 1:56:04
  Steve: Well, we gotta do another remote collab.
• 1:56:06
  Steve: I just talked to the other guys today, so we gotta we gotta make something happen with that too.
• 1:56:10
  Steve: So yeah.
• 1:56:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, yeah, I'm in.
• 1:56:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:56:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I've I've actually know how to work my gear now.
• 1:56:16
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike last time I had a call.
• 1:56:20
  Steve: No problem.
• 1:56:22
  Steve: So, anyway, brother, it was nice talking to you.
• 1:56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your time and my love to the whole family.
• 1:56:26
  Steve: Yeah, I will.
• 1:56:27
  Steve: And you do the same thing, buddy.
• 1:56:29
  Steve: All right.
• 1:56:29
  Steve: All right, buddy.
• 1:56:30
  Steve: Talk to you later.
• 1:56:31
  Steve: See you.
• 1:56:31
  Steve: Yep, bye.