Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Lee Ritenour

Transcript

Lee Ritenour · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Lefsetz Podcast. My
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: guest today is Lee Rittenhour, who has a new album,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Live at Ronnie Scott's. So, I got to ask you, Lee,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: we're here, you know, on the coast of Los Angeles.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Were you affected by the fires?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, of course.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: I hardly, I don't know anybody in Los Angeles that is.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Somewhat.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: You have to take a number to pick a fire
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: now out here.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: It's crazy, right?
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: And of course, the last few days we had rain,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: which was amazing. But yeah, we were a product of
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: the Woolsey fire. I lost my studio and about 100 guitars.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: And I pulled out six that day. My wife and
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I left at 5 p.m. We were supposed to leave
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: at 8 a.m. We kept going down to the beach
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: just to make sure we had an escape route, and
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: we did. But finally, it got so intense, we left
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: at 5 o'clock, and the house burned at 5.30.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: And I think it was NBC News set up a
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: camera— not a camera, a whole truck— video and they were filming.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: It was on the news and my assistant and my son, Wes,
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: who couldn't get up here. He was in Santa Monica
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: and he couldn't get up here. And he said, and
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: our house was on the news burning that day, not
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: because it was Lee Ridenour's house. It was just, here's
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: another house in Malibu burning, happened to be ours on TV.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Okay. So what did you actually take with you?
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Well, I took the two Les Pauls that were made
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: for me by Mike McGuire from the Valley Arts fame,
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: and he was the head of the custom shop at
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Gibson for years. And he made me two beautiful Les Pauls,
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: both of which I still play and have. And then
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: I took my 1949 L5, and that my dad got
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: for me when I was 13 years old. And then
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I took the red 335, the 1960 L5, which was
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: been on a million sessions. And that's the 1960 and
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: the red dot inlay. And so that's sitting over there
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: on the shelf. And then as I was driving down
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: the highway with my wife and we'd gotten a couple
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: of blocks and I said to her, I gotta go back.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: And she said, why? I said, I gotta get one
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: more guitar. And so I went back and I got
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: the Ramirez guitar. classical guitar, which I paid 25 grand for.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: And so I grabbed that guitar. And the one that
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I forgot to grab, which was on many sessions, it
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: was not sort of the go-to Lee Rittenhour guitar for
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: my albums, but a very famous guitar nonetheless, was the Strat.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: And that was early 60s. And I forgot to grab
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: that one. And that went up in flames.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I see a lot of guitars here. Are
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: these all of the guitars that you took with you,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: or have you replaced some of the guitars?
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: No, I took about six or seven that day, and
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: so these are replacements. What was incredible about everybody, including— and.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I lost all the amps.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't take any amps.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: How many amps did you have?
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Well, I had all the ones that mattered, you know,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: the Fenders and the Boogies and the Ladners, and those
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: companies were very sweet. to immediately replace the amps, you know,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: the Mesa Boogie and the Fenders that are my choice,
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: and the Ladners, which is a custom company from America,
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: and a few others in between. But I never really counted.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Up how many amps I lost. It was probably.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: 15 or 20.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Now aren't weren't some of them vintage.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: Uh yeah they were all yeah what would mean by
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: vintage we mean i probably bought them new but i
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: had them most of my life okay.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: So Vintage by the fact that Lee Ridenour is old.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, but you know, people have different viewpoints, just like
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: with guitars. You know, what year they were built, tube, transistor, etc.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, I prefer tube over transistor to this day,
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: to solid state, yeah. And so almost all my amps
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: are tube. Just for me, I find that those sound
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: the best. And it's all about if the amp sounds good.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: I don't care if it's 1960 or 2026 you know
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: if it's a gray sounding amp it's a gray sounding amp.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Okay tell me about because i'm not familiar with the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: amp behind you the blue that you mentioned.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: That's the ladner andrew ladner and uh uh so the
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: ladner father and son they're back east and they they
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: came to a gig years ago somewhere back east and
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: and uh uh you know asked if they could send
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: me an amp and and they sent me an amp,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: and it was a 112 cabinet, I think, and it
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: was just an amazing amp right off the bat. It
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: was just, you know, one thing I can tell about
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: the guitar and an amplifier is how musical it is,
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: the relationship between the player, the guitar, and the amp.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: All the effects in between, that's like the buttons on
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: a shirt, you know, that's a, But compared to the
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: actual amp and the actual guitar and the actual player,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: those are the three things that matter. And the Ladner
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: father and son.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Makes an amazing amp.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: And all these years, the father has remained kind of
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: on the quiet side, just making one amp at a time.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: The Sun now works for Mesa Boogie, which is owned
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: by Gibson.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume I wanted to buy one of
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: those amps, which I'm not going to. How hard would
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it be for me to get one?
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: I would turn you on to the Latiners, and you
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: would talk to them, and he would maybe turn you
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: on to someplace where you could try it, besides Lee
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: Rittenhour's studio. And there's quite a few people that play them.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. The location we're at right now, is this
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: where your house that burned down used to be?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, uh-huh.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yes. Okay, well, I'm kind of astounded because I know
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of people's houses burned down that you've gotten
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: so much built up already.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: How did you get it done so fast?
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Well, we were in the Woolsey Fire, not the Pacific
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Palisades Fire, which was only last year, right? And the
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Woolsey Fire was a number of years ago, and Somebody
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: that's in the area called us up shortly after we
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: lost the house and we were with State Farm, Stiller
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: was State Farm, and they did actually an amazing job of.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Getting us the funds.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: Also, you know, I was smart enough to hire some
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: people who know how to talk to the people at
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: the insurance company. I like to say, the insurance guys
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: can't play in my band, and I can't play in
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: their band.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: But State Farm was amazing, actually, and they supported us,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: and we were able to get the funds to rebuild.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And there's every kind of story out there. There's people
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: that had no insurance. We actually lived at another house
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: that burned down. in the Pacific Palisades fire. And that
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: was at the top.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Of, uh, big rock.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: And, um, and so, uh, it was a beautiful house
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: up there. And, and this person lost her house last
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: year to the, uh, to the Palisades fire. And we,
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: we were, of course, no longer living there. We had
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: since finished building our house and we had moved back in. But, um,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: But this person, unfortunately, did not have insurance on her
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: house at all. And we didn't know that at the time,
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: and we heard that later, and we felt very bad
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: for her.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: So we heard about stories like that.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: And, you know, the Palisades, there were those blocks where
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: those houses that had been there for decades and decades
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: and handed down from family to family, A lot of
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: them were on small lots, and they were expensive because
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: they were in this golden, beautiful area. Some of the
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: houses were very nice, don't get me wrong, but they're
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: fairly small by L.A. standards, and they're on fairly small lots.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: I heard from sources that they were handed down from
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: the grandparents to the parents to the great-grandkids, you know.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: And now the kids were in their 20s or 30s
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: and they had these houses and they went up. And
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: sometimes they were not insured because they had been in
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: the family for so long.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I know people assume that everybody who lives in
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the Palisades is wealthy, but I know people like you. Certainly,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, south of the boulevard, a lot of houses
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: there they've had forever.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: So.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: The house that you've built here now, how similar is
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it to the house that was here?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Well, let me tell you that quick story.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: So we had a wonderful architect named Mark Mack, who
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: was the head of architecture at UCLA for years. And
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: he's a very famous modern contemporary architect in the style
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: of Berrigan and Legeret of the famous Mexican. So he
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: combined Mexican architecture, with sort of the modern world that
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: we live in today. And Mark is one of those guys,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: it's like in seconds he can draw anything that looks
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: exactly like your house on paper. And he's an incredible artist.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: You know, most of the young architects, they might be
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: very talented, but a lot of them obviously are very
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: well versed on the computer today. Naturally so, right? And
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Mark is old school, you know, well, what if we
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: put the bathroom over here and it would maybe look
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: like that?
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And it was wonderful.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: So he's become a really good friend. So when the
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: house burned, my wife Carmen called Mark, I think either
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: the same day or the very next day.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: And before.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: She said hello and he said hello, His first thing was,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: he said, I will rebuild your house.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Wow. And he did. So did you have to have
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: a separate insurance policy for the equipment?
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, that was all separate. And another great company. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: so the guitars and the amps, the studio was part
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: of the house. But everything in it. And I had
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: a Trident Series 80 board, a wonderful old school board. And,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: of course, we don't usually use those in the modern
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: technology today because we're all on Pro Tools or Logic
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: or whatever.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you got paid for your loss. To what
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: degree are you going to replace what you're talking? You
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: got the amps from the companies. But to what degree
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: are you going to replace the other equipment, the guitars,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: or they were all unique and you just can't replace them?
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Well, like I said, the first six of them, what
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I consider the most important ones, got, uh, you know, got, uh, uh, I,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: I took them out and saved them from the fire. Uh,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: like this LS 13 Sadowski, this, this is another great
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: friend and another amazing guitar craftsman, Roger Sadowski. And I've
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: been playing Sadowski's guitars for, for years. And he replaced
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: a couple that went up in the fire. And then
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: this one was, uh, was, uh, since the fire and, uh,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: It's my go-to guitar on the road and in the studio.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so for those who are uninitiated, what is special
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: about that guitar? It.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: What is special about this guitar?
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I could technically say all the stuff.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: The sound is perfectly balanced. It's got the right tone.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: It's got the right balance. It's got the right weight.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: It feels good. The intonation is perfect on it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: And that would be a technical description, but that really
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: doesn't say it.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: The main thing is that when.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: A guitar player, any professional guitar player, whether it's Steve
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Lukather or Pat Metheny or whoever you're talking about, picks
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: up a guitar and immediately there is a connection or
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: not a connection between the player and the guitar and
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: the hands and the and the relationship and of course, and,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: and how it sounds through the, if it's an electric guitar,
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: how it sounds through the player's rig, which is a
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: whole nother conversation. But the, the first thing that happens
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: is when I pick this up with no sound, you know,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: how does it feel? And Roger Sadowski, he, he's been
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: making me guitars for the last 40 years, acoustic guitars, uh,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: classical electric guitars, you know, uh, solid body classical electrics.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And, and, uh, he's just wonderful.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: The other company that has always been a part of
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: my life since the, since the seventies, uh, when I
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: sort of first started going over to Japan is Yamaha. And, uh,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Yamaha also helped out by coming to the rescue when
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: all the guitars burned and replaced my Yamaha classical.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Which is, uh, It was right in this slot. It's
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: somewhere else now.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: But, you know, Yamaha's another one that I would go
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: to Japan and go to the factory, and I would
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: play their guitars, and maybe they would show me. There
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: was one time in the room I had 20 Yamaha guitars,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: and I picked one out of those 20, and I
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: couldn't probably tell you technically why it was better than
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the others, other than it was better for me.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, in the old days, that was always the experience.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Every guitar was unique. Now, 50 years later, 60 years later,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: is the quality control such that if you pick, if
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: there are five strats there, they're going to be pretty similar?
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Theoretically, yes. But again.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: To the master player or the player that's been playing
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: 100 years, one will pop out more than the other.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Okay. And the way you have– this is Quincy when
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: he comes in and out of the screen here. The
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: way you have your guitar set up, how might it
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: be different from another person?
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, as far as talking about jazz for
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: a second, I've never been the super, super traditional jazz player, right?
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: I've always been kind of a hybrid.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: And if you talk about my studio career and then
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: you talk about my records, I've been from A to Z.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: I've been kind of over the map. So I need
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: a guitar that's set up so I can go all
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: those places. So On the jazz guitar, which this I'm
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: using as a jazz guitar, the LS-13 Sadowski, it's flatwounds
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: on the bottom and plain strings on the top. And
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: this is 12, 13, 17. So they're fairly thick. On
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: my Les Paul, for instance, which I have the two
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: Les Pauls that I saved out of the fire, and
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Mike McGuire made.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Those for me.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: They're amazing guitars, and that's a more traditional... lighter gauge string,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: and I use D'Addario strings for both guitars, but those
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: are wound to this 9, 11, 15, 26, 36, 46. But,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: you know, I think, you know, when people say, what's
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: the gauge of your strings? I think that stuff is really.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Not too important these days. I think the player, the
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: 13-year-old out there going to high school knows exactly what
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: gauge he wants to use, let alone the pro. So
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: in today's world, everything's on your iPhone, everything's on your
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: iPad and computer, and the kids picking up an instrument
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: today they're already dialed into who they want to copy,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: who they want to be like, who they, what kind
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: of music they want to write, you know, what kind
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: of strings they want to use, all that.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: To what degree are you tech savvy or tech averse?
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: Um, I mean, compared to, uh, teenagers out there, we're
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: all not tech savvy, but, uh, You know, I love
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Logic Audio. My engineer loves Pro Tools. We mix all
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: our albums on Pro Tools. And the new album was
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London on Pro Tools by
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: my engineer over there. And Decky recorded it. He's from Serbia.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: And then Don Murray, who is my engineer, that has
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: mixed all my albums since the late 70s. And Don
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: probably mixed 40 of my albums and recorded most of them.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: So he records and mixes on Pro Tools.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Okay. You're obviously the player and the engineer, and this
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: is a live album. He's recording that. To what degree
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: did you go back and fix anything?
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Uh, I don't think, uh, I set up the amps
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: and fixed anything, re-recorded anything. Uh, we would, the nice
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: thing about this project is that as an incredible young band, uh,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: we can talk about the band in a minute, but, um,
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: We had already been playing on tour for the last
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: year or two, and a lot of the material we
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: had already been playing. When we got to Ronnie Scott's.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: We did, I believe it was.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Eight shows, because we did two matinee shows on Sunday
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: and two at night, and then the three other nights.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: So it was a total of eight shows. And so
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: we were set up at Ronnie Scott's, which is an incredible,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: famous club, as you know.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: For those who don't know, describe what makes it incredible.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it has a history of being
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: pretty much in the same location for decades and decades.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: Miles Davis is recorded there. Nina Simone is recorded there.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Jimi Hendrix is recorded there. And everybody else in between.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: And the.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: the audience is so hip in London. I love the
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: London audience, right? Because they're sophisticated, yet they're just great
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: fans in general. And the club is nice because the first,
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: I'm on stage here, and the first row is right.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: There, you. And it goes all over the club.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I love the interaction with the audience,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: and especially in London, it's one of those places places where,
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: you know, they're part of the performance. And we didn't,
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: when we mixed the album here at my studio in
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Los Angeles here.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: We didn't.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Dial in the audience, the ambient sound with the audience
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: as much. It almost sounds like a studio album until
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: the audience comes in and claps. And And we had
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: the option of all these ambient mics set up with
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: our engineer over there. And so when Don and I mixed,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: we decided we kind of went tune by tune. Sometimes
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: we brought in a little more ambient sound from the house,
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: and sometimes we just kept it tight on stage. And
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: that's what's nice about Ronnie Scott's. You can either dial
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: in the ambient sound and have more of a room sound,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: if you will, Or you can keep it tight like
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: it's almost in a studio.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: To what degree do you play off or is the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: audience inspirational and change or improve your performance?
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: Well, always when you're out playing live, and I don't
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: care what band you are, if the band.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: Unless you're just syncing to a track. But if your
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: musician's playing live, which most of the good bands still
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: do that, and whether you're talking about rock or R &
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: B or electronic music or jazz or whatever kind of
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: music you're playing, always the band feeds off the audience.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: You cannot help it. And if you're having a bad night,
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: the audience feels it and vice versa. And if everybody's
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: in sync and everybody's having a good night, it makes
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: a huge difference. And Ronnie's is one of those clubs,
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Ronnie's Costs, that you have to be on your A
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: game to be at Ronnie's because everyone great in the
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: world has played there. And then it inspires you to
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: play better and be better And the audience comes in
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: and they know everything about you. They know a lot
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: of the music or most all of the music.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And it's really a special place.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Okay. You have a lot of experience, decades, both in
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the studio and on stage. You know you're going to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: do this recording. To what degree do you have anxiety
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: or stage fright in advance?
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Well, here's how I answer that question. an interviewer fairly
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: recently asked, well, you sort of asked it, do you
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: get nervous stage fright? But this particular interviewer asked, do
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: you also get stage fright on big stages, like, for instance,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, where it's 17,000 people?
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: And I said, For decades, I've never gotten nervous about
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: performing in front of an audience. What I get nervous
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: from is if the equipment's not going to work. Because
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: you do a sound check, and especially on, you know,
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: a lot of these big, you know, you go to
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Europe and you play these amazing, huge festivals where there's,
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: you know, thousands of people, you know, because you're part
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: of a festival. And, and so you sometimes, you know,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: you'll do the sound check early in the day, even
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: late morning, and then you don't play until nine o'clock
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: that night. And there's been five other bands and, you know, whatever. And,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: and you, even if you have a great crew, there's still,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: you're still rolling the dice a little bit. And so
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: you go out there. So I always, I don't get
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: nervous about the audience or my own playing or, you know,
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: this kind of thing. But I do get nervous about
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: if the gear is.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Going to work.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: And, you know, 98% of the time or 90%, let's say,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: it's usually flawless.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Okay. I've been to gigs where the equipment has definitely failed. Yeah.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And then I've also been at gigs where the performer
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: is hearing something. And they stop the show. They might
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: spend minutes trying to fix it. Frequently unfixable. Just a
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: regular gig for getting recording live. When you're in that situation,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: what do you do?
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Well, the other night we played at Jazz Alley in Seattle.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: And we did six shows at Jazz Alley. This was
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: last week. And another fantastic place, Jazz Alley. And I
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: love that room and I love Seattle. And, uh, I
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: love the audiences and, and it is a somewhat similar, uh,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: size to Ronnie Scott's might even be a little bigger.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: And the audience is also kind of right in front
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: of you all the way back, you know? And, uh,
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: so you're surrounded by people. And I had something happen that,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: that I hadn't had happen in a long time. I
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: had a guitar, bad guitar cable. And, uh, I was
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: plugged into the rig. The sound check went fine. And
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: I got up on stage and nothing, you know. And
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: then my tech came out. And it's like you never,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: in today's world, you never think of like a bad
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: guitar cable, you know. It's like something so simple. And
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: so it turned out to be that. But it took
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: us a minute to figure it out. And I had
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: to make some jokes to the audience. And I said, wow,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: that was an old school.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: you know, mistake.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, the people who are coming to see you, are
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: they people who are fans specifically of you, or are
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: they jazz fans? What kind of person comes to see you?
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Well, most of the time it's my fans that have
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: been with me my whole life that I've been making music.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: You know, once in a while you get put in
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: a situation where where you're on a huge festival and
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: there's other headliners and, and people are there to see me,
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: but they're also the fans of somebody else is there
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: to see them. And so you, you, all of a
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: sudden you have different fans hearing you. So, uh, and
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: then that, that's a little harder because you got to
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: try to win over the room, you know, but, uh, usually, uh,
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: festivals are great because, uh, the fans are there to
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: not only hear their favorite band, but, uh, to hear
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: a bunch of other people too. So you, especially the
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: jazz festivals, you know, if the players can play and,
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: and everything is, uh, happening, uh, you know, at, at
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: once and, and it's all the cylinders are, are happening, then, uh, the,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: the audience and the players on stage, uh, enjoy each other.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. I was once at this gig about 20 years ago.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: It was Def Leppard and Brian Adams who were flipping slots.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Brian Adams was opening on this day. They're playing minor
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: league baseball parks. And he's playing and the sun is out, whatever.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: And he's having a hard time. And he literally picks
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: up the set list, rips it in half, looks at
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the band. and then just goes to win the act,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the audience over. Nice. Okay.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: You're in that situation where you realize, hey, it may
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: not be your fans. Do you have special techniques or
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: things you do to try to win the audience over?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: I'm always coming from the point of view that I
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: have to win the band over first.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: And if I win the band over and we're all
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: in sync and we're all playing well, then usually the
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: audience goes along for the ride and it's all good.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: The other thing that I do I almost never have
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: a specific set list. So this drives, especially my young
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: players that are on the, the guys like the Ronnie
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Scott's album or what I just, the guys I used
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: recently in Seattle. And so there's a, a cast of
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: consistency of players that I use, uh, more than not.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: But, uh, But also.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: There's always, there might be a new keyboard player or something, right?
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: But it's people usually I've played with a little bit
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: and people that were recommended. But my assistant sends out
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: the production list of songs, the audio and the PDFs
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: of the scores. And I say, here's the 20 songs
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: that Lee's going to choose from. Make sure you know
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: all of them because he'll, probably go through all 20
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: songs but you know in the course of one evening
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: he'll play 9 or 10 right and so I'll have
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: the master list up on my amp and I'm fairly
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: consistent with the first song it's kind of a band
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: tune and it's easy for everyone to play and kind
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: of get warmed up but from there on it's anything
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: can happen.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: So how did you decide ultimately what songs were on
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: this record well.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: It's twofold.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: The Live at Ronnie Scott's album has a lot of, well, again,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: sort of having the players and bringing out what they
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: do best.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: You know, that's one thing.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: So, for instance, the singers, I brought up Tatiana Parr
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: from Brazil. who's an incredible Brazilian singer, and she's on
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: the Brazil album that I did with Dave Grusin two
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: years ago. And then she's been on tour with me
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: on and off whenever we can bring her up from Brazil.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: And she's very busy doing her projects and doing other
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: people's projects as well in Brazil. And, of course, you
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: have the expense of bringing somebody from.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Brazil up to the U.S. or to Europe or whatever.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: But we brought her up.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: And so that made a decision that, okay, I'm going
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: to feature a little bit of the Brazilian material because
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: she's singing in Portuguese. And then our bass player, his
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: name is Munir Hosan, and he's from the north of Brazil.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: And he's a very great bass player, but he's also
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: a very good Brazilian singer. And so Tatiana and Munir
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: were singing a number of songs. So at some point,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: somebody kept saying, Lee, why don't you do Is It
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: You again?
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: And that was the hit I.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: Had in 1981. It was a pop R & B hit, right?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: And it was top 10 around the world and did very.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Well for us. But it was an L.A.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Kind of Stevie Wonder-ish singer-songwriter that was working with me
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: at the time. Eric Tagg sang it. Bill Chaplin from
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Chicago was also on it. David Foster was playing keys
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: and helped arrange the tune. It had all these great players,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: Abraham Laborio, Alex Acuna. And so it was a very specific,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: almost LA sound, if you will, back then. So then
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I went through decades where sometimes I would perform the
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: tune with the band and sometimes not. And then there
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: was a lot of period where I did not do
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: the song because I'd moved on to other kind of music.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: But then I thought, well, maybe I'll pull it out
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: with this band. I called Munir up, the Brazilian from
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: the north of Brazil, who lives sometimes in Miami, but
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: also lives in Spain sometimes and lives in Brazil sometimes.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: And I said, Munir, can I send you a song
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: and see if we could do the song? Because we
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: were going to do the Jack Jazz in Jakarta and
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: he was in the band and the promoter, Izzy U,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: was a huge hit over there. And He said, Lee,
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: you got to do that tune. I said, okay, let
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: me see if we can pull it off. So I
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: called Munir. I said, Munir, what do you think of
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: this song? And he listened to it. He called me back.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: He says, yeah. He said, Lee, I think that's a
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: great tune.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: What year was that? I said, 1981.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: And he said, before I was born.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I know.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: And then he said, yeah, I think it'll be okay, Lee.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: He said, there's one thing I should tell you, though.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: There's one little problem. I said, you want to change
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: the key.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: You want to make it lower, right? He said, yeah, that.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, that's not a problem. Anything else?
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: He said, yeah, there's one other problem. I said, what's that, Munir?
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: He said, well, I've never sung a song in English.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: He sang songs in Portuguese. He sang songs in French.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: He sang songs in Spanish.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Not English.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: And I laughed and I said, were you up for it?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: And he said, yeah.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: So anyway, the version you hear with Tatiana and Munir
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: singing on the live album, they got this wonderful Brazilian,
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: north of Brazil, Brazilian accent.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Both of them.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden, Is It You has
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: this kind of other charm. And it doesn't sound like
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the 80s version. It sounds like Kind of a Rittenhour
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: meets Brazil meets R & B meets, you know, typical
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: of what Rittenhour would be doing, you know, so I
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: like it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. You know, Stevie Winwood has a Brazilian guitarist. What
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: is it about Brazilian musicians?
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you know, we have to be
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: careful when you're talking about Brazil and me.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: My wife is Brazilian.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, that begs the question, how'd you meet her?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Well, which question do you want to answer first?
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Start with her.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I'll tell you that story.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: But also, I've been loving Brazilian music since the invention
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: of the bossa nova when Tom Shobim and João Gilberto
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: and all those players came up with, you know, the
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: Girl from Ipanema and all that.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: And, you know, that.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Groove was part of the culture. And that was in
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: the 60s, right? And I was just a little kid.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: And I said, wow, what is that? And Stan Getz
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: was playing saxophone and Astrid Gilberto was singing. And it
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: was a huge pop hit, right? And Tom Shobim was
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: the composer, Antonio Carlos Shobim.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: So Brazilian music.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: And it turns out AI.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: Went to work on my discography recently and came up
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: with that. I was in Brazil, which I was in 1974.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: I went down there with my friend, Oscar Castro Nevis
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: from Sergio Mendez and, uh, recorded, uh, a record in
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: a couple of days. And, uh, that was technically, although
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: it never made it out of Brazil, uh, my, my
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: first album. And, um, and so, later on, I, I
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: ended up doing some work with Sergio Mendez, and, and I,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: of course, I met Dave Grusin, and Dave was involved
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: in Brazilian music, because he was the arranger on all
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: that Showbeam material that was the big hits back then,
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: and it was even on the Sergio Mendez cuts, uh,
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: Dave was playing some of the keyboards for Sergio, and, and, uh,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: but Sergio had the vision, and, and, uh, and, and
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: had those, those commercial hits back then. So, um, and
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: I met Carmen. I was at a concert in Los Angeles.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: I went to a concert to see my friend Jeff
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: Lorber play, and Carmen was there with her brother.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't know her.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: And at an intermission, her brother recognized me, and we
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: were all outside on the patio, and her brother said, oh,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: there's Lee Rittenhour. And Carmen, I had just done an
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: album a couple years earlier, a few years earlier, called Rio,
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: and I had recorded a lot in Brazil in 79.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Now we're up to about 1984, and we're at this concert,
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: and we're out on the patio, and she comes up
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: to me, and she says, I'm a friend, we had
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: friends in common, Arisi and Paulina da Costa. Paulina's, of course,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: one of the most famous percussionists in the world, maybe
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: the most famous, and an incredible player that played on
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: all of Quincy's stuff, and Quincy Jones' stuff, and.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: I played on.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: His records, and he played on my records, so Paulinho
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: and Arisa have been dear friends over the years, and so.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: She came out to me, she said, we have this
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: friend in common, and I said, of course, you know,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: and who is, and then I said to myself, wow,
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: who's this lovely girl, and so she said bye-bye, and
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: she didn't know anything about me, she thought maybe I
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: was married or something, And the next day, we both
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: call our friend to see, hey, what's up with that
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: girl I met? And what's up with Lee? And it
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: took us a while to.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Get together, but we got together.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: What year is this?
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: When I met her?
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: That was 1984. Okay. Now, had she grown up in Brazil?
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: She grew up in Brazil, but her....
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: Her father was, uh, involved in, um, having, uh, they,
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: they were involved in music and he had kind of
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: a music company that at the time was, uh, putting
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: music in big department stores. That was the first time
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: that was kind of happening back then. And, uh, and
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: her brother played guitar, still does. And, and, uh, so
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: she was very involved. She, she has great ears and, and, uh,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: and then she ended up doing her own art and
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: music projects through the years and she brought Joan Gilberto
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: to New York to play and record and perform at
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: her events so she's been very involved in music and
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: then of course we have our son Wesley who has
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: played in my band for years now and has turned
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: out to be a great drummer and has his own
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: band and doing all sorts of stuff so Music's part
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: of our life.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: To what degree was it culture shock or things you
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: had to work through being married or involved with a
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Brazilian woman?
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: That's an interview in itself.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: I think Carmen was and is to this day very
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: international in the sense that her family spent a lot
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: of time in the States and Carmen has lived in
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: New York and lived in L.A. and spent time in Europe.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: She's quite versatile. It was kind of perfect in the
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: sense that I was already traveling the world. She was
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: doing these art and music projects. in various places in Japan,
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: in New York, in Brazil.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: So it.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Was quite natural for us to get together. We had
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: to chase each.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Other around the globe a little bit.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: And in those days, the phones were not quite as friendly.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: So you spent a zillion dollars on cell calls.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: And back then, you've been together 40-odd years. Did she
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: go on the road with you, or did you always
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: go out by yourself?
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: No, no. Carmen, to this day, travels quite a bit
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: with me whenever possible. And now that Wes plays drums
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: regularly with me, she tries to travel especially to the
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: places she likes.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned this hit, which you've remade on the
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: new Ronnie Scott's album. Irrelevant of you, your talent, your career,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the business has changed. Anybody can record. We can record
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: a song right now and get it on Spotify tonight. Okay.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: So the big issue is notice, attention. To what degree
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: does that affect you knowing that it's harder to reach
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a larger audience?
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: So frame the question one more time. I understand the general.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: household names, they can make a record today and no
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: one will listen to it. Okay. Even the Rolling Stones
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: had a recent record. If you look at the number
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: of streams, really anemic. And they're the Rolling Stones. They
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: want to go on tour. They can sell, you know,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: 50,000 seats in stadiums. Okay. But in this case, you're
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: making a record. you had a certain level of commercial
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: success in that sales heyday. We no longer live in
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that era. So a lot of those acts, they can't
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: get motivated and they don't even make new records. Okay.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: So where do you fit into all that?
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: Well, I think, uh, first of all, when the internet
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: exploded years ago and music could be around the world
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: in a second, uh, I considered that a good thing
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: because the kind of music I make, some of it
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: is vocal oriented and I don't sing myself, but I
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: have guest singers and people that work with me who
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: sing as we've talked about. But 80% or maybe more
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: of my music is instrumental. And so the fact that
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden the internet exploded and The music
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: was in the U.S., but now it's in the Ukraine,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: or it's in Germany, or it's in Japan, or it's
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: in China, or it's in France, or it's in South America.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: It's all over the place, right? And so, especially for
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: an instrumentalist, that I considered just a bonus, because it
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: immediately went out all over the world for those fans
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: of mine that followed Lee Rittenhour.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Or we're aware of Lee.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: And I was making this kind of guitar-driven melodies and
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: rhythms and.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Blah, blah, blah.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: So that worked in all these different countries. As opposed
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: to somebody singing just in French, right? Their music still
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: didn't translate to Japan or maybe even the U.S. or
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: other countries, right? So English obviously translates a little better,
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: but still.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: If you were a big U.S.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: Playing Southern rock in the U.S. singing in English, it
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: may not have been as popular in China. And I'm
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: not saying my music was popular everywhere, but.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Some of my audience was everywhere.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Have you found there have been gig opportunities as a
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: result of this? Oh, 100%. 100%.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: So, you know, those of us that were players that
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: loved to play and had good bands playing with us,
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: young or old, whether it was Wesley Rittenhour or Dave Grusin,
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Then.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: We could take this band and play anywhere.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so... Why record an album, live album now?
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, that's an excellent question because every gig,
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: the engineer for every band in the world is recording
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: off the monitor desk and they have that nice performance
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: and they go home with that. And on top of that,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: everybody takes out their phone and records the band if
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: they want to. even though the promoter gets up and says,
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: no recording here at this theater. And then the first thing,
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: the artist gets up. But why did I decide to
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: make a live recording and put it out?
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: And we'll find out ultimately if that matters to people.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: But I think it does because my fans know that
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: if I was serious enough to make a live record
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: at Ronnie Scott's, it's a record that sounds, first of all,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: like the studio. It gets back to what I said,
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: that the audience doesn't know that it's a live record
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: until the audience sound comes in. It's like when I
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: listen to, and I'm not putting myself in this category,
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: God bless them, but when you hear the... amazing Keith
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: Jarrett play the piano, and so many of his records
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: are live, right? Because he's creating that music as part
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: of that performance then, and it's like this incredible sound
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: on the piano, and it's most of the time it's
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: solo piano Keith Jarrett, and you're listening to this record,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: and then you forget that it's live, and you don't
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: even realize it's live until the very end where the
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: audience comes in, and you know, and, and so a
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: little bit, we went for that kind of thing where the,
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: we wanted, I wanted to create the sound like a
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: Lee Rittenhour record, because I'm, I'm kind of a, an
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: audiophile nut, and my, my, a lot of my fans are,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of people have used my, when
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: they used to test records in stereo stores, one of
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: the guys they used to use to test those records
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: was Rittenhour Records. And so I'm very flattered by that
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: because I'm a nut about having the sound really good.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: And my engineer, Don Murray, is the same. So anyway, it's...
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: I'm happy that we could make the live record and
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: release it as a written hour live record, not just
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: something off the board.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Okay. Now, many people, when they're going to release a record,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: we're talking here right now. That's part of promotion. But
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: there are other people on social media. They interact with
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: their fans on a regular basis. To what degree do
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: you have a presence online today? And to what degree
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: do you interact with your friends?
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, well, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked it.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: I'm terrible online. And I'll tell you the main reason
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: is that, you know, and so many of the young
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: artists and some very talented young artists, you know, and
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: maybe also not so young artists, some established artists, they
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: get online every morning and and all times of the day,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: and they're talking to their fans, and they're on the
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: social media, and they're saying what they had for breakfast,
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: and they're talking about their new song, and how they
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: wrote it, and all that stuff. And I'm a little
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: more private than that. I have no presence on social media.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: My production manager that works for me, and my son, Wes, And,
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm aware of my pages. It's not like
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: I have nothing to do with it. But for me,
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: it takes too much of my time. And I'd rather
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: be playing the guitar and making music or writing a song.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just say it's hypothetical. I said, Lee,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: if you spent an hour a day online, your audience
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: would increase by 40%. What would you say?
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Well, I should do that. And if you're the record company,
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: that's what you would tell me, and I should definitely
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: do that. Will I do it?
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Probably not.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, irrelevant of posting, to what degree do you utilize
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the Internet?
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: As far as social media?
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: No, anything.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, well, just like ours. young assistant here, he's on
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: his phone the whole time, you know? It's like, we're
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: all on.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Our phones the whole time, you know?
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Are you too?
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Well, when I'm not playing the guitar.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: And are you, do you have like some specific hobby
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: you're looking up or is it guitar stuff or old friends?
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: What tends to eat up your time on the phone?
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: No, it's, it's, it's more, it's probably my time gets
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: eaten up like a lot of people. We, we read
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: the news on the, on the phone and, keep up
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: with all the crazy shit going on. And, um, so, um, and, and,
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: and that's the way the morning with the morning coffee
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: probably goes, you know, you, and, and, um, I'm kind
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: of normal that way, but I, I don't think I'm,
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: I'm crazier than most when it comes to reading the
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: news in the morning. You know, we used to have
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: a newspaper, an old fashioned newspaper, right? And, uh, uh,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: I was out of, friend's house, an older friend's house recently,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: and that person had a newspaper on their table. And
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: I said to that person, I said, wow, the newspaper
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: still exists. That's so cool.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. We are not, LA is inherently a spread out place,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: but you're in the far out regions. Okay. The nature
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: of being a musician is inherently social. You're playing in
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: a band. You're going on the road. But in terms
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: of personality, are you a homebody? Or are you getting
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: together with people all the time? Or are you keeping
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: up with your buds? What's your personality like?
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: Well, again, that's where the Internet comes in. You know,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: it's like we can.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Talk to people.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: I have friends all over the world and sometimes relatives
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: all over the world. And so you can stay in
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: touch with a lot of people that way.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: You know, even.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: out here at the beach and, and, and I have
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: friends in town, you know, you're on your iPhone with
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: them either on video or audio more than driving through
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: an hour and a half of traffic to go see them.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: You know, that's, that's just the way of the world.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Okay. But there are certain people you connect with every day.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Friends.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Friends or musician friends, whatever.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Well, again, production people that work with me, because I
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: work a lot.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: You know, I like.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, define work.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Making music.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, you could be making music right here.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: And the business of music.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, so here's something we should actually, because I've got
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: to go pretty soon, we can talk.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: All day, and you're a great interviewer. Thank you. But
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: the business of music.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: is very important for the musician, whether you're just starting
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: out or whether you're a seasoned pro. The music business
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: is very important for the musician to control his own destiny.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a manager, that
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: you shouldn't have an agent, that you shouldn't necessarily have
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: a record company. All those things can make a huge difference.
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: You know, a music attorney, all the business of music, right?
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: But I've always said that an artist, a musician, and
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: you don't have to be an artist, you can be
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: a sideman, or you can be a composer at home,
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: you know, writing for movies or TV or for commercials
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: or whatever your craft is in the music area, it's important,
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: very important that you understand the business of what you're
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: working in. if you are working professionally. Because what used
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: to happen in the old days, I think it still
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: happens now, but maybe in a different way. In the
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: old days, you'd get a manager, and then the young
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: artist would think, okay, now I can just concentrate on
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: my music. And then And you'd expect, you'd think, well,
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: this manager did good for so-and-so and he was recommended
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: or she was recommended. And so I'm going to sign
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: with them and give them 15% of everything I make.
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: And then I have an agent who also gets a
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: percentage to get all the shows, you know. And so
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: pretty soon, you know, a big percentage of your income
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: is going to folks that if they're great, it makes
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: a huge difference. But what used to happen in the
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: old days is that sometimes the manager would not do
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: so well for you, right? And then you wondered why
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: your career was not going forward. And supposedly the manager
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: was supposed to do everything and you're supposed to just
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: make your music. That's not reality you know and so
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: i had that experiment one time i signed with a
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: couple of managers back in the early uh 80s and
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: i was having a lot of success and uh commercially
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: and with the record company and in those days you
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: were signed to a traditional record company and i was
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: signed to electoral records and the president of the electorate
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: that time was joe smith fantastic guy I had a
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: great relationship with Electra Records, and I had a great
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: relationship later with GRP Records, which was Dave Grusin's label
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: with his partner, Larry Rosen. And the first label I
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: was with was with Epic Records, and that was just
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: for a couple of years before I moved over to Electra.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: So for the most part, the labels have been very solid.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: But how you talk to the president, the vice president,
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: the A & R guy that helps you choose the material, the...
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: the production people who are helping you with the record,
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: you know, now I'm on mascot records, which is a
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: great guitar based record label out of Holland in Amsterdam. Right. And, uh,
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: that's who this new record live at Ronnie Scott's. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: I've worked with, uh, those guys before.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: And they're all, they're all great people.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: Cause they're also, most of them are players and, uh, and, uh,
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: The president of the label really understands music and understands
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: the guitar and understands the nature of what we're doing. So,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: you know, now there's more labels like that. Back in
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: the day, in the 60s, well, starting.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: In the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, all the way up,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of those days, the label was saying.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: Well, you should try to copy this guy and have
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: a hit record like this.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: Guy.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: And you should be more like this person so we
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: can sell more millions of records. And then the artist goes, well,
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: I have nothing to do with that artist that they
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: want me to sound like. And you want me to
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: write those kind of songs? And you want me to
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: record those kind of songs and get those kind of
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: singers and And I don't even like that guy's stuff,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: you know. And then you try to explain what your
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: creative thing is. And a lot of times in those days,
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: you know, the manager was in the middle of supposedly
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: helping you do this.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: And it never worked. It never worked.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: And so I had a couple of managers where finally
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: I would ask them, I did an experiment. the last
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: year I was with them, I said to myself, I'm
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: going to do a little test. I would go to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: them and say, what do you think? Should I do
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: this or should.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: I do that?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: The one guy would say, oh, you should definitely do this.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: Then I knew the opposite was the correct answer. Then
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: when they said, oh, no, no, you shouldn't do that.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: You shouldn't do, no, don't do that.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: Don't go there.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Then I knew that was the answer, that I should
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: do it. And so I did this for about six
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: or eight months with these guys. And then I realized,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: I said, wait a minute, I shouldn't be with these managers.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: But then what I really realized, because they were good
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: managers for different kind of artists or different kind of
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: songs and different genre. And they were very good professionals,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: but not for me. So that's the thing. You have
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: to figure out where you're at musically and where you
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: are business-wise and kind of where you fit in. And
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: you can have a dream and you can try to
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: get better. And there's always people that can help you
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: get there. But picking the right people to help you
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: get there is as hard as picking the right song.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: So do you have a manager now? No. So you're
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: the manager.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Is that working out for you?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Fantastic.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: I have a production manager that works for me that
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: goes and gets X, Y, Z done.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: And we have a meeting many mornings and many afternoons.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: And of course, in today's world, you don't have to
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: have your production assistant sitting at a desk for eight
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: hours a day.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: That's for sure.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: You know, really, Jazz Fusion came to the forum, front
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: of the market with Miles Davis in the late 60s, 70s. Then,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: of course, we had Weather Report. We had the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: What is the status of both? You said you're not
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: really a jazz guy. We put jazz at extreme. We
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: go to Jazz Fusion. We go down. That music on
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: that end of the spectrum, what is the status of
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: this today? And is it an issue of the audience
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: not understanding it? And how could they be led to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: understand it?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: Well, again, you know, that gets to where you start
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: to either choose to have a smaller audience or a
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: broader audience. And sometimes... having a broader audience means making
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: some of the music more accessible, which maybe means making
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: it more melodic or maybe making it more rhythmically interesting.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: And today is especially challenging because.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: There is so much music out there.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: And, you know, everybody can listen to 25 songs on
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: their phone before they get to work, you know? And, uh,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: so it's, uh, so it's, it's, but I, I think
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: those same things exist even for the young players and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: the young artists and, uh, uh, the people coming up,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: you know, because they are creating music, uh, um, in
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: their bedrooms or in a bigger studio or on their
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: phones or on their iPads and on computers and they're
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: writing and they're getting together with people and still playing
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: and sometimes going out on the road with their young
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: band and making headway. And you still have to reach
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: the people. Like, for instance, in 19... Let me make
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: sure I got the year right. In 1977, now I'm
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: going back 100 years.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Believe me, I was aware.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: So I started to play with my own group a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: little bit around town, right? And I was already successful
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: as a studio musician, but now I was starting to
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: make my own records. The first album for Epic was
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: called First Chorus. The second record was Captain Fingers. So
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: I'm at the Roxy Theater on Sunset Boulevard, and all
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, you know, Captain Fingers comes out and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: starts to make a little noise, and the record company's coming,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: but so is the audience coming, right? And so I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: play a tune called Morning Glory, which was, I think,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: on the Captain Fingers album. I'd also gotten signed, luckily,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: by JVC Japan, Around the same time, I got the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: Elektra deal, and Joe Smith was nice enough to say,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: can I do the JVC records for Japan and do
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: the rest of the records for you? And he said,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: and Japan was so far away in those days that
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: Joe said, yeah, just make sure the records don't come
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: over here.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: And in those days, that could kind of work.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: And so I was making two records a year, one
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: for Elektra and one for JVC, so it was an
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: incredible time. Anyway, so I came up with this tune,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Morning Glory, and I'm at the Roxy playing this tune.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: Oof, I'm out of tune here. I'm going to tune
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: the guitar real quick here.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: So....
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: And so on and so forth.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: So the tune was my first kind of melodic melody
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: where the audience recognized the tune. And I noticed, you know,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: some guys were saying, hey, Lee, what was that tune
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: you played? That was such a cool tune. Play that
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: tune again. And I said, well, that was called Morning Glory.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: And they said, yeah, man, that's a nice tune. And
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: so that became on the JVC record and then on
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: the U.S. record became a pretty popular tune for me
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: an instrumental and then later we did a vocal version
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: of it with uh bill chaplin with him singing the
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: hook but um you know that was the first time
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: i noticed that a certain song it was something that
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: the audience was looking forward to hearing it didn't matter
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: that i was playing instrumental i was playing a lot
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: of guitar stuff you know it was it was like
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: and then before that, several years before that, before I
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: had all these deals, I was playing every Tuesday night
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles. And the Baked Potato,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: still they're going strong. And Wes, my son, plays there
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: with his band sometimes and everybody else plays there. And
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: in those days, you know, every Tuesday night we'd play
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: there for years. So we do sessions all day long
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: and movie dates and record dates and, you know, working
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: for Dave Grusin and Quincy Jones and and doing all
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: these big records, and then go at 10 o'clock at
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: night and play till four in the morning at the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: Baked Potato, and then get up and do an 8 a.m.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: call for another movie date. You could only do that
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: in your.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: 20s.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: But those were great times, and people were coming into
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: the Baked Potato to hear this fusion stuff and pop
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: and funk and all the stuff we were playing. I
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: wrote this tune that was kind of my first fusion tune.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: And at the time, Al DiMeola was coming out. John
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: McLaughlin was coming out. Jeff Beck was more of jazz
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: rock at the time. But some people were, and Weather Report,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: as you mentioned. So all these bands were coming out
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: and guitar players and doing some kind of version of
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: what we ended up calling fusion or jazz fusion. And
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: so this one tune I wrote, and I was starting
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: to play it every Tuesday night, and it was a
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: hard tune to play, and sometimes you know, it ended
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: up on the new live album, and we still play it.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: And so the.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: Title, and I'm going to tell you the title in
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: a minute, was, it was, I had written the tune
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: and I didn't have a title, so I'm playing it
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: at the Big Potato in the 70s, right? And this
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: one fan, and I never know who this fan was,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: and he kept calling me, hey, Captain, what's happening, Captain?
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: What you playing tonight, man?
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: Come on, man.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: I'm here every Tuesday to hear you play. And then
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: I started playing this fast fusion tune, right? And I
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: didn't have a title for it, and then he said, Captain, man,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: those fingers were flying tonight, Captain Fingers.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: And so he named it. I have no idea where
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: he is.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: You know, if he hears this interview, he should surface.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: And I want to thank him for that title. And
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: so anyway, that was funny how that period brought on
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: all that fusion and combination of rock and jazz. And
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: those club days were great at the Baked Potato then
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: because Joni Mitchell would come in and Eric Clapton came
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: in and all the weather report guys would come in,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: and it was quite a hang on Tuesday nights.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: So is there any studio business, any gig business, playing
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: with your friends, or is it really at this point
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: in time just your career? Do people call you up
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: for any kind of outside gigs, or is it just
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: your music at this point?
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: It's mostly.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: my music at this point, you know, I still get
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: calls occasionally. Most of the time, um, you know, I,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: I just, I'm, I just say I'm, I'm not available
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: because I, I don't do regular sessions anymore. Once in
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: a while, some specialty, uh, project will come up where
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: somebody wants me to do Lee Rittenhour on their record
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: and be Lee Rittenhour, you know.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: Uh, do I get called?
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: Just to be part of the orchestra to play in
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: a regular part like I did in the 70s or 80s?
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: And would I take that? Probably no.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you've got this whole board of effects. What's
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: going on down here?
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the little miniature board that goes on the road.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: It's amazing what happens in today's world. And then there's
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: a bigger board over there and there's another board that
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: I'm probably in about my you know, the boards used
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: to be that big, you know, and Steve Lukather and
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: I and Mike Landau and all the guys that were
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: studio rats and, you know, we would just joke about
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: this stuff, you know, of how big the boards were.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: You know, sometimes the boards were so big because the
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: effects were also bigger, you know, and they were taking
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: up space. And even though you were sitting most of
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: the time at a session reading a rhythm chart or
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: a chart that had a lot of notes on it, Uh,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: you'd almost have to, you know, move your, have your
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: chair on wheels so you.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Could move down the, you know, so I mean, so what.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Do you got here?
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the, the, uh, you know.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: I've got a, uh, This great Rodenberg that I've been
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: working with, again, this is a distortion unit that Lukather
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: and a bunch of people use.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Sorry, Quincy.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: Quincy's used to loud sounds.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: There's another pedal on the other side. What's the pedal on.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: The other side?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a wah-wah pedal. And then this is a
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: little unit that's a digital unit that's called a tone print.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: and it's just a great little unit that has banks
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: of sounds, and you just dial it in. Most of
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: the time, this pedal board is designed for my live work.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: When I'm recording on my records, sometimes I just go
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: straight into an amp, and I use the effects that
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: are on Logic Audio or on Pro Tools or whatever.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: And once in a while, I'll use an effects board,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: either this one or the slightly bigger one over there.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: And so it all depends on the music I'm making,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: you know. Every time is slightly different.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. Jeff Beck famously went from
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: a pick to no pick. And I talked to him
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I didn't ever talk to him about that.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: What do you think was going on there?
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: Well, the same thing that goes on for so many players,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: It's like.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: You know, Wes Montgomery was famous for, he.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: Kept practicing.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: He had three gigs that he was working in a factory. And,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: you know, it was before he was successful and before
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: he was Wes Montgomery.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: And so he and his.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: Wife had a new baby and he had to practice
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: softly in the living room. So he was using a pick,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: the way the story goes. But then he put the
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: pick down because the pick was making too much noise.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: So he started practicing late at night with his thumb
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: so he wouldn't wake anybody. And so that became his
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: sound after a while. And then Joe Pass, the famous
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: jazz guitar player, was doing so much chord melody work
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: that he was also an incredible pick player, but he
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: didn't need the pick half the time when he was
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: doing all this stuff. you know, all this melodic stuff
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: with the chords. So, you know, I have nails, you know,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: and I was trained classically with Christopher Parkening and other
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: people when I went to USC.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: And so....
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: And I go back and forth between the pick and
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: the nails and then the thumb. Then I end up
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: holding the pick between my fingers and... So.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: You know, most of the guys will tell you after
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: they've been doing it a lifetime, like, however you can
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: get the music out of the instrument, you're going to
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: So going to college, plus or minus?
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Going to music college?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: Well, for me, music education is everything. So however you
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: can get it. Now, I went and studied with a teacher.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: My dad.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: Was fantastic. My whole family was great about supporting me
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: doing music.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: What did your parents do for a living?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: Well, my dad wanted to be a professional piano player
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: and was a great kind of, for lack of a
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: better word, a honky-tonk kind of piano player. And he
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: grew up in Michigan, and when he was a teenager,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: he'd sneak into Detroit and go play with the bands
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: and then come home late at night. And his parents
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: found out that he was sneaking out as a teenager
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: and going into town and playing and, and they weren't
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: going to have anything to do with that. So they
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: dissuaded him, you know, kind of tried to X him
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: out of being a professional musician. And so when I
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: showed a big interest in music.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Uh, what precipitated your interest?
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I grew up in the era of the guitar, right?
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: So, you know.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're born in 52. Right. I'm one year younger
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: than you. And there was, you know, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Jan and Dean, whatever. Then the Beatles hit. Was it
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: the same for you? Was there something specific there that said, okay,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: this is... Because all of us got electric guitars after
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. You know, we formed bands. And you, I remember,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, I was playing with my friend.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: He goes, now we're going to change keys. And I go,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I'm out. Okay. But what was the tipping point for you?
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: you know, I ended up getting an acoustic guitar when
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: I was eight years old, we'd moved to a new
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: neighborhood in Los Angeles, outside of LA and, uh, in
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: a suburb.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: And, uh, I was.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: Introduced to a friend who was playing, uh, acoustic guitar
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: and singing. And he, he, this, this young kid loved
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: the Kingston trio and the Kingston trio was very.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: Popular at the time.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: And, uh, So, you know, my mom and dad got
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: me an acoustic guitar and I'd go over to this
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: kid's house and we'd play Kingston Trio tunes. Turns out,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: I soon got very interested in the guitar.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: This was like a nylon folk string guitar?
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden I started taking lessons
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: and I was going through the teachers like in the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: South Bay where I grew up. of Los Angeles, and
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: I was going through the local teachers at these stores,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: left and right, you know? So pretty soon, I was
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: better than the teachers.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: Just to be clear. Quickly. You got the bug. Were
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: you the kid who went to school and came home
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: and practiced all day?
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: 100%.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: I was practicing. I had no interest in school, and
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: I had no interest in social life. I got obsessed
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: with the guitar. I was practicing 8, 10, 15 hours
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: a day. you know, the parents got worried about me
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: a little bit because that's all I did. That's all
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: I wanted to do. And then it was an era
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: where my father heard about a big band in the
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: Torrance area of Southern California. It was called the Esquires.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: And so I went down there and I was 13
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: years old or something. All the other players were in college.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: And And I was playing these parts and playing in
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: this band and doing well. And then the college saxophone
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: players in the band and the trumpet players and the
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: keyboard players, everybody started asking me if I wanted to
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: do what was called casuals. And casuals were where you'd
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: go play at weddings and bar mitzvahs and birthday parties
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: and whatever kind of event, you know, and.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: You got paid for it.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: So here I was, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: driving all over town when I got my sister's car
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: and playing at these places and playing all different kinds
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: of gigs, playing all the standards and playing all the
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: party tunes. But it was all about the guitar for me.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, are you the only kid?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: No, my sister, I have a wonderful sister who's four
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: years older and she loved music, but she had nothing
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: to do with music. And of course I was, and
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: I tell the famous story because she still comes to
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: the shows, right? And when she's in the audience, I
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: introduce her and I tell the audience, like her name's
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: Linda and Linda used to, I used to practice scale
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: so much in the family room and I would practice
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: through the amplifier, right? And, you know, I'm practicing these
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: scales for hours and hours and hours. And she was
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: trying to study for school or something and she'd come
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: and slam the family room door and she said, is
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: the only thing you know how to do is play scales?
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Just to be clear, at that time, what was the dream?
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: What was the dream?
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: For you.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: To be a professional musician.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: Not to be a star on stage or that too? No.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to be able to make a living
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: playing the guitar.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how'd you end up going to USC?
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: Well, so.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: I had another person in that big band, the leader
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: of the big band, say to my dad, at least
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: you should study some classical guitar and some acoustic and
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: classical guitar would be good for him and so my
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: dad got me the classical guitar and then I started
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: researching and there was a young guy who was just
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: a few years older than me named Christopher Parkening and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: Christopher for years and decades now has taught at Pepperdine
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: but he was.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: Also in his early 20s.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: And he was already recording on Capitol Records. And he
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: was kind of the heir apparent to Segovia, a lot
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: of people said. And his earliest records are amazing. But
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: unlike me, he didn't want to be the artist. And
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: his dad forced him to practice. And his dad sat
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: in the room and watched him practice.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: Like Andre Agassi or something.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And so Chris wrote a book about this years ago,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: so I'm not saying anything I shouldn't because it's all
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: been in print. And he did not want to be
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: that artist. But for me, I wanted to do anything
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: and everything. And so when I got my first record deal,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: that was fantastic. When I was doing three sessions a
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: day times seven or eight, seven days a week sometimes, you.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: Know, I was happy with that too. But I was
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: always pushing to do a little more.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: But how did you end up going to USC?
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: So Chris ended up teaching there. And he got a
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: gig teaching there. So I said, I'm going where Chris
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: Barkening is.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: And was it worthwhile? Well, yes.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: At the time, you know, USC was expensive, obviously still is.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: It's like a God, it's like buying a house now.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: And so, but they only had a classical department then.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: They had no pop department, no jazz department, no big band, nothing.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Classical.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: And it was led by the strings, you know, the
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: violins and violas and cellos and basses and then the orchestra.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: And then finally, Christopher Park, and they brought in classical
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: guitar to have. And so I went there to study
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: with Chris. And so Chris, I think, left shortly after,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: but I.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: Stayed at the school. And then I.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: Got so involved with the music department that I suggested,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: I said, what if you had a class for the
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: classical guitar players to learn how to play something else
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: besides classical music? So the fact that someday most of them,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: the majority of them, are not going to be the
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: next Segovia or Christopher Parkin. They're going to have to
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: earn a.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: Living playing the guitar.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: And so we brought in a guy that I had
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: recommended that was Chris Parkin's uncle.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: His name was Jack Marshall.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: And I had met Jack along the way, probably through Chris,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: but also through Dave Grusin, who by that time I
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: knew And Jack was scoring film scores and TV shows.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: And so Jack started teaching this class once a week
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: to the classical guitar players to play something besides classical.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: That was going very well. And then two and a
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: half years later, I did not finish the school. I'd
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: only gone two and a half years to SC. I
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: quit because already at 22, I was getting very popular
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: as a studio musician. So I told my parents, I said,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: I gotta go work. I got all these opportunities to
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: work with Grusin and Quincy Jones and Pink Floyd and
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: Steely Dan and all this stuff and all these movie
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: dates and TV dates. And my dad said, yeah, I
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: get it.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. From the moment you drop out, does your career
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: continue to go up? Were there ever moments you go, God,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: this is not going to work?
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a little bit egotistical of me, or
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: it sounds that way. But fortunately, the trajectory was always up. But,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: you know, but I worked for it. I worked my
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: ass off for it, you know.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: And so, okay, you're a guy in school. You're playing
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: casuals in the South Bay. How did you connect with
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: Grusin in the studios?
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: Well, again, I met along the way. Remember when we
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: were talking about the Bossa Nova?
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: And so.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: I'd also be going to clubs, and I'd be hearing
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: who else was playing. And somewhere along the line, I
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: met this wonderful guitarist friend, Oscar Castroneves. And he was
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: the guitarist for Sergio Mendes and for Shobim. And he
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: was my connection to Brazil. And so when I went
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: down to Brazil in 74, I was 22 years old.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: And I fell in love with Brazilian music even that time.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: And Oscar was down there and he introduced me.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: Why did you go?
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: Because I was in love with.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: You know, apparently Brazil and Brazilian music. And that was
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: before Brazilian music. I mean, Brazilian music had gotten popular
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: in 68 with show beam and ostrich Roberto and, and
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: all of that. And Oscar was part of that whole team. So,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: so then I went down there in 74 and, and, uh,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: recorded a little bit down there and, and hung out
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: with Sergio Mendez and with show beam and, but mostly
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: with my friend Oscar. And, uh, and, and, uh, and
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: so when I came back, uh, I got on a session,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: Sergio hired me to play on a session, and I
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: was 22 or something like that, and Dave Grusin had
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: just done all this incredible work for Sergio Mendez, and
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: they had the big hits with Sergio back in those days.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: And so uh, Dave was on the session and I,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: I met Dave and, and the next thing, you know, uh,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: Dave called me for one of his movies. And, uh,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: I think it was, it was a movie that he
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: did right. The big movie that I got to play
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: on a lot was called three days of the condor. Sure.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: And terrific movie actually was with Redford.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: And, uh, And so, and in those days, you know,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: Dave was just all the sound effects with the delays
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: and the wah-wah pedal.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: And all that stuff. And plus I could read very well, right?
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: So I started.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: Working for Dave and Dave's name, like it was for
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: his whole life, was golden in this town. So all
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: of a sudden I went from one session a week
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: to working with Dave Grusin and everybody hearing, well, who's
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: this 22-year-old working for Grusin? If he's good enough for
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: Dave Grusin, he's good enough for us. So all of
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: a sudden, the contractors, which were all the movie contractors
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: that did TV shows and movies and stuff, started calling me,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: and I ended up working for everybody, you know, just
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: like that.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: How did that segue into working, as you say, with bands,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, et cetera? Well.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: Then I became a popular studio musician, right? And then
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: I started to work with Quincy Jones.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: You work in studio, you work in movies, TVs. How
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: do you make that transition?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: Well, the transition was, I mean, if you were part
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: of the team that was working on the movie and
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: the TV industry, but at the same time, I was
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: also working on records that started with Sergio Mendez and
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: then led to Dave Grusin and then Dave Grusin. led
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: to Quincy Jones, and Quincy Jones led to everything. And
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: so it was, you went from film and TV, but
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: the records were, they were all kind of, everything wasn't
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: too separate. It was all kind of together.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, what I know about musicians is they're incredible networkers.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: Doesn't really happen by accident. So were you there, are
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: you working it a bit?
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: Other than the fact that, you know, the.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: Jay Graydons and the David Fosters and the Ray Parker
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: Juniors and the Paulina DaCostas, the Michael Lamardians, all the
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: Dean Parks, all the Larry Carltons, all those guys.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: We were in love with music and in love with
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: making it and in love with doing as many cool
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: things as we could.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: Do, you know.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: So, you know, I don't remember working it to work
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: with Pink Floyd, but I got the call to lay
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: on the wall to play some additional acoustic guitar, you know.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: And I used to get called for Steely Dan quite
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: a bit, but they always called, like, what are you
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: doing tonight? And I don't know if that meant I
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: was the fifth call or the first call, but, you know,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: it was usually I was busy. So I only played
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: on Asia, you know, and that was pretty much it.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: You know, I got, I know I got called for
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 3: other stuff, but I was rarely available. You know, Quincy
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: was different in that sense that Rittenhour, what are you doing?
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: I said, what are you doing today? I said, oh, Q,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, man. I'm, I got two movie dates. I'm
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: booked all day long. And he said, well, what are
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: you doing later? I said, well, I don't think I
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: get home until after 10 or 11 tonight.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: And he said, that's okay. Come down afterwards. Quincy was incredible.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: So you'd go down to some studio at, you know,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: sometimes at close to midnight, you know. He was something else.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how did they decide whether to call you
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: or to call Dean Parks or to call Ray Parker Jr.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: Well, again, why do they call a certain actor to
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: do a certain role?
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: The director, the producer.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: Wants a certain look, wants a certain sound.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing in music. Maybe I had a flavor....
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: That one of the other guys didn't, or they hoped
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: I had some flavor that the other guys didn't, or,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: you know, or, or they needed somebody who could double
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: the saxophone part and read.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: Their ass off, you know, or, or there's a million reasons,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Okay. So Luca, they're.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: Back on Luca.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: There's a pretty good friend of mine's telling me he
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: was hot. He was working all the time. One of
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: the older guys tapped him on the shoulder and said, Hey,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: Everybody's got their period of time, and then it's over.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: You're the hot guy now. You better find something else
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: to do. And that turned into Toto, okay? So was
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: it similar to you? How did you become less about
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: working for other people and more of working for yourself?
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: Well, if you're a studio musician, there's two choices. There
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: are several choices. You can stay as a studio musician forever,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: and have a very good career, and especially if you
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: get established and you're able to work in multiple genres.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: Let's say you can work pop records, you can work
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: R & B records, you can work rock records, and
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: then you can work on TV and film scores. And
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: so let's say you're doing all of it. Some guys
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: choose just to do that. My buddies, Mitch Holder, Tim May,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: Tom Rotella, they're all amazing studio musicians. And some of
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: them have careers where they've also did their own records. But,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: you know, a couple of those guys I just mentioned,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: they were studio, studio guys. Dean Parks has always, he's
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: always been the top studio guy, you know, and he
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: remained that. And to my knowledge, he might have done
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: one of his own records one time, but that wasn't
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: really what Dean wanted to do. I wanted to make
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: my own records. I wanted to have the Lee Rittenhour sound.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: I wanted to write songs. I wanted to produce. I
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: wanted to travel the world. I wanted to keep growing,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: you know? So I was more like, we used to
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: go hear Howard Roberts play at Dante's and Howard Roberts was,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: you know, making these kind of slightly corny records on Capitol,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: but he had the Howard Roberts sound and the Howard
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: Roberts style and, and, My buddy again, Dave Grusin, was
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: hiring Howard to play on those movie dates. Howard was
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: one of the top dogs. And then Barney Kessel was
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: the same. That was before my time. But Barney was
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: an amazing jazz player that played with everybody, but also
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: an amazing studio player. So if you were in LA
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: or New York, you usually, and if you were somewhat versatile,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: and you had something to offer these people, you had
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: the choice, you know. Now, Victor Feldman, do.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: You know who Victor is?
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: And so, Victor wrote Seven Steps to Heaven for Miles
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 3: Davis when he was in his early 20s, right?
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: And Miles asked him to go on the road at
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: that point.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: Now, this was in, correct me if I'm wrong, but
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: I think early 60s. And so... Victor was an incredible vibraphonist, drummer,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: piano player. Victor Feldman was the only piano player that
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: played on every Steely Dan record.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: That's saying something.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: And because those boys had their favorite musicians, and Victor
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: was just amazing.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: So I, you know.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: But the reason I bring him up is that he
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: chose to be a studio musician and stay that way.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: In today's world, Steve Lukather, Lee Rittenhour, Marcus Miller, any
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: of the guys that are in the last 10, 20,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: 30 years had the option of staying, working in the
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: studios or being a producer or a writer or you know,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 3: or a producer and director. Uh, but a lot of
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: us had the, the opportunity to start doing our own records,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: you know, look at, look at there, you know, he, he,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: he formed Toto along with David page.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: And, and then he, Steve ended.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: Up, uh, doing his solo records as well and doing
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: tons of studio work. And, uh, so that's a little
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: more modern musician, you know, uh, Ray Parker Jr., an
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: incredible guitarist, and especially played this incredible rhythm guitar on
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: so many hit records and was so successful. And so
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: he as well chose to have his own records, you know.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: He decided not to travel as much as some of us.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: Lukather and I, you know, we're road rats, you know.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, but all that business kind of dried up for
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: the studio guys, right?
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: It still exists, you know. I mean, people.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: reinvent themselves to... We're going to have to wrap this up.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: I know I'm late.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Just a couple of questions and then we'll go.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: They warned me about you, by the way.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 3: They said, Bob really does these incredible interviews, you know,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: and he'll, he'll go on and he'll get you talking,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: you know, but it's been a pleasure, you know, but, uh, anyway, uh, whoops.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: Let me put that back on the floor. Um, I'm
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: not sure.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: So is there a business for studio players? Yes.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: Uh, I, I think, um, like one of the top, uh,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: studio guys, uh, Andrew Sinigo now is, is kind of like,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: a young Rittenhour and Lukather, and he's one of the
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: guys that's doing it today. And so there's still young
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: guys and established guys coming up still doing it. You
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: don't hear about it, but, you know, movie soundtracks are
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: still happening, right? And the difference is that there's big
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: orchestra dates going on, And, and still that's happening with
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: the string players and the horn players and the percussion
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: sections and the big rhythm sections. But at the same time,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: there's a ton of composers that have a room like
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 3: this in their house and are doing all the Netflix
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: shows and prime shows and Apple TV shows. There's more
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: production than ever, you know?
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, your first record deal was epic. Did they
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: find you? How did that happen?
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: Um, There was a, kind of by chance, you know,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 3: there was a, I got called to play by a
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: producer on an album by a jazz fusion drummer at
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 3: the time, Alphonse Mouzon.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 3: And I played on Alphonse's record, and there was a
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 3: producer there, who had.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: Uh, a deal.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 3: He was an older guy and he was more of
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: an executive producer. Jerry Schoenbaum, I believe was his name.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: And he had a deal at Sony. And so then
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, uh, you know, they, they, you know,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 3: they said, Lee, we could probably, and I was 23,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: I think. And, and, uh, you know, young and ready
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 3: to go, you know, and, uh, So then at the time,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: they said, let's hook it up. So then I did
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 3: the first album, then I did Captain Fingers with them,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 3: and then moved on from there.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: So you say you're a road rat. How many gigs
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: a year do you do?
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm, okay, the real road rat, the way
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: we define road rat is B.B. King.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: So B.B.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: Used to, you know, How many days are there in
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: a year? He would be out about 300 of those days.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: And had about as many children too.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 3: But he was amazing. I used to play rhythm guitar
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 3: on some of his records. And I don't mean to
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: change the question you just answered about how many days
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 3: I play on the road. But I got to tell
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: one story about Bebe is that there's certain kind of
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: genres that and the blues is one of them, but
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: it can be any kind of genre in today's world.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: Some artists are just more comfortable being out on the
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: road all the time. I obviously love my studio. I
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: love making records at home. I love being at home
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: with my wife and my son, who's a drummer, as
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: I said, and Wes has got his career going, and
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: I got my golden retriever here, and so.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: We're cool. So I like being home, but I also
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: like being on the road. And so I'm.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 3: More of a 50-50 guy. But BB King was always
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: on the road. And so the guys used to tell
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: me in BB's band and BB's crew, because he had
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 3: this crew that kind of helped move him around the planet,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: that sometimes BB had his favorite bus. He had his
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 3: own bus. That was kind of his bus. Then the
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: band was in another bus, and the crew was in
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: another bus, and they moved all over the U.S., right?
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: And so B.B., sometimes when he was rarely home for
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: a while to take a break, the bus was parked
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: in front of his house, and they would get the
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 3: bus all cleaned up and take care of it and
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: refresh it and stuff for the next tour. And if B.B.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: couldn't sleep in his own bed, He'd go out and
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: sleep in the bus.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: Willie Nelson, supposedly, too. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: No, Willie was completely like that.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: I worked on a Willie Nelson record as well.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, B.B.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: And Willie cut from the same cloth.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: That's not my cloth, you know. I'm not one of
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: those guys.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: Well, if there's 365 days in a year, how many
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: do you want to work?
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: I'm probably out.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's a good question. I don't know. You know,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: I do very often what I did this last weekend.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: I was up in Seattle playing six shows for a
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: long weekend and then come home. And then the next
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 3: weekend I go someplace else and I'm home.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: Then I go back. You know, today a lot of
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: people do that. They're more in and out.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: But I don't know, anywhere from 100 to 150, you know.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, at this point in time, now you were a
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: studio musician. Most of that stuff you don't get any royalties, okay?
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: And you had your records. How's it worked out financially,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: and do you need to play these gigs to make
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: it work?
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: Well, that's like in any field, you know. If your
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 3: overhead is more than the money you're making, then you
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 3: got a problem, you know.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: Are there any royalties coming in or not in your world?
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, there's SoundExchange, you know, which all of
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 3: us get for also, you know, there is a Sideman
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: SoundExchange rate and there's, you know, so it all kind
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 3: of works out. You know, it's worldwide now, so it's
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 3: different than, is it traditional in the sense that the royalty,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: you know, the other day I got a pretty big
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 3: check from Japan Victor those folks over there and then
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: also from Electra Records and so once in a while
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: when you least expect it a check will show up
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: and you go wow and you know it's hard to
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: keep track of that stuff because you'd think you'd have
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: some company monitoring that but About the time you think
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: you'll never get paid again from one of these records,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 3: then some money shows up, you know.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: So what about legacy? To what degree are you concerned
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: about legacy?
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: Legacy for myself?
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm too young to think about that.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: Well, let me ask the same question in a different way,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: where it's actually slightly different. Is there something, you know,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: you obviously are a player. You have all this history,
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: all this experience. Is there something in your mind, a
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: next step you want to get to?
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: I'm happy enough just to keep growing and keep making records.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 3: I always am thinking about another project and something that
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 3: is somewhat unique, you know.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: And I'd love to tell you the next idea, but
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: I won't, you know.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: And let's just stop for a second. You don't have
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: to tell me, do you know what it is? Yes. Okay.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: And, uh, so, um, um, I've always been a pretty
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: good planner and thinker. And usually when I put something
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: in my head that I want to do from a
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: music point of view, it happens, you know? And, uh, so, uh,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 3: and that keeps me exciting and, and, uh, I still
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: love playing the guitar. I think that's the most important thing,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: you know, that you kind of can keep the family
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: balance and try to keep the money balance, which is
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: hard in anybody's life today, you know, and survive in
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: this world where everything is at our fingertip and yet
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: everything seems far away. And, you know, and depending on
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 3: your political spectrum, there's that whole thing too, you know, but,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 3: you know, we just keep going. But what I tell
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 3: the audience before I play a show these days is
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 3: that I said, you're all here tonight and I appreciate that.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 3: And I said, let's concentrate on the music because everything
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 3: else is so noisy. You know, that life is so
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: noisy that, you know, the music is a nice thing
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 3: to be. It's such a healthy thing for our lives
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: to have music.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: And do you listen to anybody's music other than your own?
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: Most of the time, I don't listen to my own.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: What would you listen to?
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I listen to, have you got another hour?
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: I have another hour. You don't have another hour.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 3: No, we have in our house, I'm lucky enough to
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 3: have one of these great sound systems, the Sonos system.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: So not here in the studio because the studio is
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: isolated for making music and recording music and mixing and
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 3: whatever else. But in the rest of the house, the
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: Sonos system's at a touch of our phone or iPad. And,
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: you know, I'll go from listening to Bill Evans to
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: Jimi Hendrix to you name it, you know. And Wes
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: will put on his new bands. And, you know, we
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: have music in the house. You know, I'll put on
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: the African music and I'll put on jazz and we'll
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: put on, sometimes some classical, depending on what it is.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 3: And we just listen to everything, and it's floating through
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 3: the whole house.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: Is there music playing all the time?
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: All the time.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, final question. Who are your guitar heroes?
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, man.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: Well, of course, Mr. Wes Montgomery. We'll start with him.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: And then.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: Howard Roberts from the earlier days, Joe Pass, who I
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: studied with, you know. uh, Jim Hall for sure. Uh,
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 3: those are the older guys. And, uh, uh, you know,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: there's Schofield and Matheny, all the, the guys that are Stern,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 3: all the guys that are my, uh, are at my
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 3: age group and have done great things with the guitar.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: I respect and love all those guys as well. And, uh,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: and then, you know, of course, Jeff Beck and Clapton and, and, uh, Luke,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: you know, and, uh, Gotta love Luke, you know. He's
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 3: such an amazing guitarist and done such great music with
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 3: his band. And then, and you know, not to diverge
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: for one song or a second, but David Page, who
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: was the other co-founder of Toto, David and I used
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: to do casuals together when we were teenagers.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: You know, so.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah, yeah. Well, You can still do that, but
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: this doesn't work out.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: Things don't work out. We can still maybe get a
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: wedding gig.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: But now, on the wedding gigs, everybody's on a click track,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 3: and they've got programmed stuff, and now it's much more produced.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: Much more expensive for the person who books it. Okay, Lee,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: I know you've got to go. I want to thank
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: you so much for taking this time with my audience.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: Well, Bob, you have Quite a podcast.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: And congrats. And you're very knowledgeable about everything, you know.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 3: And the next time, we'll talk about Quincy. Quincy, stretch, stretch, stretch.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: He said, let's go, Dad. All right. Thank you.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye. Till next time. This is Bob Lefsetz.