Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #150: Alan Paul / Allman Brothers History / Living in China / Playin in the Band

Transcript

#150: Alan Paul / Allman Brothers History / Living in China / Playin in the Band · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
• 0:15
  We are live with musician, writer, journalist and podcaster
• 0:22
  Alan Paul. Welcome.
• 0:23
  What's going on? I'm so happy to have you here.
• 0:25
  Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
• 0:28
  You forgot to say bomb. Oh man.
• 0:32
  Oh yes, of course. I apologize and I'm so excited
• 0:38
  to talk about so many things. You are the Allman's Brothers
• 0:42
  Authority, I would say, and I'm sure that I hope you agree.
• 0:47
  And I've kind of wanted to talk about for my own sake a little
• 0:51
  bit because I'm pretty familiar with a lot of their history.
• 0:53
  But I'm sure. But you're, you know, you really
• 0:55
  know the, you really know the, the depths and get into the
• 0:58
  weeds of things. And I would love to do that.
• 1:00
  I love learning, you know, the lore and the depths of the
• 1:03
  background of, of, of my favorite bands.
• 1:05
  And, and then you had quite a reputation and career in China
• 1:10
  and I want to talk to you about China and I want to talk to you
• 1:13
  about journalism. So there's a bunch of places I
• 1:16
  want to I want to go to. But if so, if some, if you're
• 1:20
  just introducing someone to The Allman Brothers Band, what are
• 1:24
  you? How are you describing it to
• 1:25
  them? And what are you telling them?
• 1:27
  Is the like the foundation of the spirit behind the band?
• 1:31
  I'm telling that I'm doing open their wallet and buy my books.
• 1:35
  No kidding. Well, The Allman Brothers for me
• 1:40
  are the the Great American band. You know, you can certainly make
• 1:45
  a strong argument for the Grateful Dead and and some of
• 1:48
  the same things apply to them. I just for my own and, and I
• 1:52
  wouldn't really argue with anyone who, who, who said that
• 1:55
  and the Grateful Dead probably have had a deeper cultural
• 1:58
  impact in a lot of ways, but both of them it so, so at that
• 2:04
  point it's a matter of taste and I just prefer the The Allman
• 2:06
  Brothers. I'm, I'm more of a Blues guy,
• 2:08
  you know, I listen to a lot of Blues and jazz and The Allman
• 2:12
  Brothers are that intersection where they brought Blues and
• 2:14
  jazz and improvisational music and they, they had more of a
• 2:19
  swing than the Dead and really more than any rock bands.
• 2:24
  And that was in part, well, it was because of all of them.
• 2:26
  I mean, this, the six original members, each of them was
• 2:29
  responsible for it. But it's, it's that music that
• 2:32
  for me hits me in my, you know, I feel like music and art you
• 2:37
  can appreciate with your, your mind, you know, could be
• 2:39
  intellectually satisfying, cerebral.
• 2:42
  It can be emotionally satisfying, like in your heart,
• 2:46
  and it can be sort of each in the gut or you, you know, like,
• 2:50
  like in this sort of very visceral way.
• 2:52
  And for me, The Allman Brothers touched all of those at the same
• 2:55
  time. And I don't find that much music
• 2:58
  that engages all three of those erogenous zones, so to speak,
• 3:04
  you know, intellectually fulfilling, emotionally
• 3:08
  fulfilling and has that guttural, you know, thing that
• 3:12
  that people love about rock'n'roll.
• 3:16
  And, and so that, that that's what does it for me.
• 3:19
  But they also the, the other thing about them is that they
• 3:21
  were so diverse and highlighted by the fact that they had two
• 3:27
  singer songwriters who were really great and very different,
• 3:31
  and Greg Allman and Dickie Betts.
• 3:33
  And so because each of them in their own right, had they never
• 3:38
  been in The Allman Brothers, probably could have had pretty,
• 3:40
  I'm sure, you know, successful solo careers and they would have
• 3:44
  been quite different solo careers, you know, and then
• 3:46
  bringing the two of them together with that incredible
• 3:49
  band is what what makes them so unique.
• 3:51
  So yeah, it's the breadth and the depth of their music.
• 3:56
  Yeah, and what's really cool about The Allman Brothers,
• 3:58
  similar to the Dead, is that, and I want to talk a little bit
• 4:03
  about some of the history, but that they've gone through a lot
• 4:05
  of changes in the band, like you mentioned, you know, and and,
• 4:08
  you know, famously, but again, if you don't know anything about
• 4:10
  this, there's they suffered 2 found, you know, foundational
• 4:15
  and monumental deaths in 7172. Their break, I think their first
• 4:20
  album was in 69 or 68, So just a couple of years after they, you
• 4:24
  know, they started and their music like you can listen to
• 4:29
  Allman Brothers show from, you know, the Fillmore East and 70
• 4:32
  in the 70s and get one type of style.
• 4:36
  And then you can go back to the 80s.
• 4:39
  You know, in the dreams, the whole dreams album in the whole
• 4:41
  that whole that whole era. And you kind of get something
• 4:44
  else. And then, and then you get the
• 4:45
  2000s where you get Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks and you
• 4:49
  get JMO and you get, and you get like, I mean, the 2003 and 2008
• 4:54
  tours in particular. I know, I know I've listened to
• 4:56
  a bunch of the concerts from and I mean, they're just as as far
• 5:01
  as the music and as far as the, the, the, the song choice and
• 5:07
  the, and the variety in the set lists.
• 5:09
  It just felt really, really sophisticated.
• 5:11
  So and the Dead had, you know, had a very similar, had a very
• 5:15
  similar repertoire in this in the sense that, you know, as
• 5:18
  band members would come and go and sometimes come and go from
• 5:20
  this world, you know, that their their style would change.
• 5:24
  And Pig Pen died. They missed a lot of that, you
• 5:27
  know, a lot of that, those great Blues numbers that that that,
• 5:30
  that kind of just went to the wayside and they became a little
• 5:32
  bit more country oriented. So, so I don't know what you
• 5:35
  think about that, but to me that's kind of what stands out
• 5:37
  also. And for all these bands, there
• 5:40
  are member there are fans who, you know, will say it was never
• 5:45
  the real band after. So you know, he had some old
• 5:49
  dead heads and say I never listened to them after pig band.
• 5:51
  You know, that was that was what I loved.
• 5:54
  And certainly Allman Brothers fans.
• 5:56
  There's a contingent of I never listened to them after Dwayne
• 6:00
  and and you could take you know, and I understand that, but I
• 6:05
  think ultimately it's a mistake. I mean, certainly there are
• 6:09
  bands we lose a member and never are able to successfully move on
• 6:14
  and replace it. I don't think that's led.
• 6:17
  Zeppelin comes to mind. Yeah, well, they didn't even
• 6:20
  try, right. They, yeah, they, they, they
• 6:22
  made that decision. But yeah, I mean, when when Pig
• 6:27
  Pen died and they added Keith and they went in a very
• 6:30
  different direction and then opened up this whole other area
• 6:33
  that that had a sort of jazz tinge, almost prog, rocky
• 6:37
  approach. And then you had with the All
• 6:45
  Brothers. I mean, after Dwayne, I know
• 6:47
  that for people there, including some of the band's management,
• 6:51
  to some extent, even the band, it seemed impossible that they
• 6:55
  would continue. They didn't know exactly how
• 6:58
  because Dickie Betts was such a great guitar player and he rose
• 7:03
  to the fore, but he never was a leader.
• 7:05
  And Greg was the obvious person to be the leader because of the
• 7:09
  name. But Greg was a very introverted
• 7:12
  person who was also sort of a mess after Dwayne died.
• 7:15
  So musically, it ended up. In what sense?
• 7:21
  In what sense was he a mess? Is that what you mean?
• 7:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so even before Dwayne
• 7:30
  died, I mean, Greg was struggling with substance abuse
• 7:33
  issues always, you know, with, with alcohol and with opioid,
• 7:37
  heroin specifically. I mean, he just did everything,
• 7:40
  cocaine, a lot of cocaine. And when Dwayne died, he went
• 7:45
  into a depression. I mean, Dwayne was not only his
• 7:50
  brother, he was only a year older, but he was really the
• 7:54
  father figure. Their father had been murdered
• 7:55
  when they were, I think, two and three or three and four years
• 7:59
  old. So they grew up without a
• 8:02
  father. Their mother never remarried.
• 8:05
  And Dwayne, by virtue of his personality, which was
• 8:08
  incredibly aggressive, take charge, you know, became the man
• 8:13
  of the house at basically age 4 or five.
• 8:15
  And he always called Greg babe, bro much for a baby brother.
• 8:21
  And I think Greg pretty much did what what Dwayne said.
• 8:25
  And you know, when The Allman Brothers Band first form before
• 8:29
  they were The Allman Brothers Band, Greg was the last member
• 8:32
  in. And I get different stories from
• 8:35
  different people, but I, I, I think they both had a little bit
• 8:38
  of hesitation about being in a band together, which they had
• 8:42
  just, you know, they had done for years when they from when
• 8:44
  they were teenagers until that point.
• 8:47
  I'm actually in a band called the Hourglass, which had gone
• 8:51
  out to LA and ended sort of badly.
• 8:53
  And Dwayne split and they barely spoke for about 6 months.
• 8:58
  Greg was a little bitter about Dwayne bit of abandoning him out
• 9:01
  there and pick up being under his thumb a little bit, I think,
• 9:06
  and Dwayne felt that Gregg was a little unreliable.
• 9:09
  Anyhow, they they were they they it was clear and and some some
• 9:12
  of the guys have always said that they had to bug Dwayne call
• 9:16
  Gregg because they you know, they all knew what a great
• 9:19
  singer and songwriter. Well, what a great singer was.
• 9:22
  His songwriting was just really beginning.
• 9:26
  Jamal, who was the first member that Dwayne hired, is insistent
• 9:30
  that Greg. Dwayne told him from the start,
• 9:33
  I'm going to put this band together and then get my
• 9:34
  brother. Greg's the only one who can sing
• 9:36
  in the band I'm thinking of. So Jamo tends to be really
• 9:40
  reliable. So I'm going with Jamo.
• 9:41
  So I think Dwayne always planned on having Greg in the band.
• 9:45
  But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a unique situation, a unique
• 9:50
  dynamic. And their ability to keep adding
• 9:53
  members, as you said, is, is is also unique.
• 9:56
  And after Dwayne passed away, you know, they played as just a
• 9:59
  five man band for a year. And I think they did a
• 10:02
  remarkably good job. I don't like listening to those
• 10:05
  shows that much. I I find them a little sad.
• 10:08
  You can hear the holes, but would you listen to it with an
• 10:11
  open mind? I think it's, it's quite
• 10:14
  remarkable what they pulled off. And then when Barry died just
• 10:18
  pretty much exactly a year later, there went a similar
• 10:22
  situation and they added Lamar Williams, who was Jamie's best
• 10:27
  friend from growing up and continued to roll.
• 10:30
  And they became a bit different. And I should, I forgot to
• 10:32
  mention before that they had finally sort of replaced Dwayne,
• 10:37
  so to speak, with Chuck Lavelle. So they replaced him with
• 10:40
  another great soloist, but on piano and set a guitar, which
• 10:44
  was a really way to handle that. It's like you're literally not
• 10:49
  asking anyone to come in and play Dwayne's Parks.
• 10:52
  You're just looking for another instrumentalist to fill out the
• 10:55
  sound, add to the power. And what eventually happened is
• 11:01
  Lamar and Chuck had a real jazz vibe and a sort of swingy thing.
• 11:08
  And so it changed the direction quite a bit.
• 11:10
  And at times Dickie was would get a little upset about how
• 11:13
  jazzy it got. You know, he used to make fun of
• 11:17
  of Chuck and column Chopin and Rachmaninoff and stuff like
• 11:21
  that. But I think I think it it was
• 11:25
  great and the music really stands up if you listen to the
• 11:27
  live shows from 1973 and and sometime since 74 started to get
• 11:32
  a little a little shaky in there.
• 11:34
  But J MO, Lamar and Chuck developed this like
• 11:39
  synchronicity with each other that eventually spun off when
• 11:42
  the band broke up to become the band C level, which was, you
• 11:46
  know, over at least with a jazz influence, sort of fusion, a
• 11:49
  instrumental, mostly music. It's really cool to hear how how
• 11:56
  how you could, you know, you look for a good player to kind
• 11:59
  of fit in this band, this noise, this sound that you guys have,
• 12:06
  you know, the very subjective, personalized sound that you guys
• 12:08
  have made and you kind of want them to fill in.
• 12:11
  But you're also inviting in someone else with a lot of other
• 12:14
  influences, like you said, and it's going to inevitably have an
• 12:18
  impact on the music, you know, And I, and I think that that
• 12:22
  that the, that the audiences can be, or the fans could be the
• 12:28
  most challenging people to persuade, you know, to, to, to,
• 12:32
  to change their minds about, about the sound, You know,
• 12:34
  because we're committed to The Allman Brothers that we know and
• 12:37
  that we love. And, you know, and even though
• 12:39
  you got this new sound and you're playing the same songs,
• 12:41
  it sounds like you're, you're, you know, like you're, you're,
• 12:43
  you're the, the, the roots are coming from different places.
• 12:47
  You know, that's. That's definitely true, but
• 12:51
  counterfactual that is that right after that New Dan came
• 12:56
  together after Dwayne had passed away.
• 12:59
  There's one they had Peach. Yes.
• 13:01
  Well, you'd teach. Then the next album, Brothers
• 13:04
  and Sisters, by far the biggest album ever, and they had their
• 13:06
  first hit was Ramblin Man. And so I guess they developed a
• 13:10
  lot of new fans. But yeah, it it, you know, to go
• 13:14
  back to what you said at the very beginning, it, it is sort
• 13:16
  of stunning to think about that Dwayne really was only a member
• 13:19
  of The Allman Brothers Man for 2 1/2 years.
• 13:21
  And, you know, the band eventually lasted 45 years, you
• 13:25
  know, until 2014. And I've written some stuff
• 13:29
  about it that and I've re shared it and I will again on my sub
• 13:33
  SAC, which is called low down and dirty.
• 13:37
  But you know, that the extent to which Dwayne was still sort of
• 13:41
  the driving force of the band until the end, 45 years later,
• 13:46
  42 years after he had died, 43 years after he had died, really
• 13:51
  quite remarkable like that. He could have set that up,
• 13:54
  especially that he because he didn't sing and he didn't really
• 13:57
  write songs. And that's really unusual for
• 14:00
  for an instrumentalist to have that much impact on a band from
• 14:06
  a not front person perspective. But I think until the very, very
• 14:09
  end, there was an element of the band that when there was a
• 14:13
  decision that had to be made, it was still sort of what would
• 14:15
  Dwayne do, you know? Which I think is pretty cool.
• 14:21
  Yeah, he was dead. He was like the the guiding
• 14:22
  spirit of the band. It's a cool concept.
• 14:25
  It's a really cool concept. I and what's I mean, like you
• 14:29
  said, I mean, people don't like to think about this, but I think
• 14:32
  Deading Company has been playing almost as almost as long.
• 14:37
  No, I guess it's not really true, but Deading Company's been
• 14:39
  going on for what, since. Since Jerry died in 95 till till
• 14:44
  now. I mean, there were there were
• 14:49
  all kinds of other things what happened with with various
• 14:53
  members of the Grateful Dead. I mean, but it what?
• 14:56
  But it wasn't dead and company until 2116 or something like
• 15:01
  that. So it was really.
• 15:04
  And then you know that, OK. Gotcha.
• 15:05
  Yeah, and that. Ended with Bobby's passing,
• 15:10
  which is, you know, still sort of shocking because he was, he
• 15:13
  was so everywhere that it's hard to believe he's not not with us
• 15:19
  anymore. Yeah, I've talked to a lot of
• 15:21
  people about it. I've talked to a lot of people
• 15:24
  about it since since he'd passed.
• 15:26
  And what's funny is that they almost the universal reaction
• 15:29
  from the dead fans have been like like they're sad that he's
• 15:34
  gone. They're kind of in shock and
• 15:35
  they're like, but we not like like there, there was an
• 15:39
  immediate, there's almost like a sense, like there wasn't a sense
• 15:41
  of tragedy. There's a sense of more
• 15:43
  celebration of his life when he died, shocked that it happened,
• 15:45
  but more celebration than I think type of tragedy that that
• 15:49
  so many of our favorite, you know, musicians kind of we, we
• 15:53
  associate with the with the way that they that they leave this
• 15:55
  world. Yeah, well, Bob, who I, you
• 15:59
  know, interviewed quite a quite a few times and I didn't have
• 16:02
  like an same kind of in depth relationship with him that to do
• 16:05
  with some of these guys in The Allman Brothers.
• 16:07
  But well, you know, I knew Bob pretty well and was around him a
• 16:11
  fair amount. And he was very matter of fact
• 16:16
  in the way he talked about death in a way that always struck me.
• 16:18
  So he would talk about Jerry. He would say when Jerry checked
• 16:22
  out, you know what I'd say when Jerry left this mortal coil,
• 16:25
  those were the two phrases he used.
• 16:26
  But he said that several times, you know, when I was
• 16:29
  interviewing him, he's like, well, after Jerry checked out
• 16:32
  and the first time I heard him say that it was a little bit
• 16:37
  striking because you're like, wow, you know, that that that
• 16:40
  sounds almost. But I think that he really
• 16:42
  believed in an afterlife and left this mortal coil.
• 16:48
  To me, it was his way of saying, you know, then moving on to the
• 16:51
  immortal coil. That's how I heard it.
• 16:54
  And so that's what I thought of right away when I, when I heard,
• 16:59
  I was shocked because I, I had heard rumors that he was sick,
• 17:02
  but I, I didn't, I didn't know any details at all.
• 17:06
  I don't think anyone did as far as I know.
• 17:07
  And so I, yeah, I wouldn't have been shocked to hear that he was
• 17:12
  ill, but to hear that he was suddenly gone was shocking.
• 17:15
  And then I, I thought about that.
• 17:17
  And I think that the morning that people went through
• 17:20
  certainly was for him as a person, but it was also for the
• 17:24
  reality that this is is done and the music went forever.
• 17:30
  And you know, there's great bands like Joe Russo's almost
• 17:33
  dead and dark star and the fact that Phil and Bobby and you
• 17:39
  know, they played with so many people.
• 17:42
  So you have Otil was in denim company for years doing Otil and
• 17:45
  president. He'll he'll forever have a piece
• 17:48
  of that flag. I imagine John Mayer will
• 17:52
  eventually do something Dead related.
• 17:54
  And then Graham Lashville, son has been very active and slow.
• 17:58
  So, so many people. Yeah, he was great.
• 18:01
  Yeah. And, And so those guys ran like
• 18:03
  a Grateful Dead university for the last like, decade or 20
• 18:08
  years or something That that's how I look at it.
• 18:10
  And so they, they, they minted a lot of PhDs in that music.
• 18:14
  And so certainly the music's not going anywhere, but, you know,
• 18:17
  Dead and company wasn't the Grateful Dead, but it was a
• 18:22
  strong echo of it, I guess. And, and having Bobby up there
• 18:29
  was a huge part of that. And so you could you could feel
• 18:33
  like you're at a Dead show. And I don't think there'll ever
• 18:36
  be anything again played like that.
• 18:38
  So, you know, I feel, I wish, I wish I'd gotten to see Dwayne.
• 18:43
  I'm happy I got to see Jerry and, and, you know, go to quite
• 18:48
  a few shows and, and live in the world where, where these guys
• 18:51
  did and see Greg, you know, 100 times or whatever the heck I
• 18:54
  saw. And, you know, it's, it's, it's,
• 18:57
  I feel I feel lucky to have had these experiences and, you know,
• 19:01
  not just with them, but certainly very much including
• 19:04
  them. But you are lucky, I mean, and
• 19:08
  you know what, you're also lucky because I know that I, I bet
• 19:11
  that in 20 years from now, you know, someone's going to say to
• 19:14
  you, you know, you went to Tedeschi trucks at the Beacon,
• 19:18
  you went to Billy Strings, you know, in Newark.
• 19:20
  Like, what was that like, you know, in 30-40, fifty years from
• 19:23
  now? And I listen like, you know, at
• 19:25
  the end of the day, I thank God. I think that the musical torch
• 19:29
  that they, I, I for many years I thought that, you know, great
• 19:32
  music was gone. It turns out I just didn't know
• 19:34
  where to look. And it was really, you know, and
• 19:36
  for a couple of years it was really sad.
• 19:37
  And then I've discovered a whole new world of just incredible,
• 19:41
  incredible music and cross genres.
• 19:44
  And one thing I actually didn't want to ask before we talk about
• 19:47
  China a little bit was a lot of the music scene in this late
• 19:53
  60s, early 70s did revolve around the coasts like San
• 19:58
  Francisco, CA, Los Angeles and the whole Laurel Laurel Canyon
• 20:03
  scene, New York. What were the Altman?
• 20:07
  What were The Allman Brothers doing?
• 20:08
  Where were they geographically? What was going on culturally
• 20:11
  that that really like, because you know that the that the dead
• 20:14
  came from obviously psychedelia and like Bob Dylan came from
• 20:17
  this whole folk beat scene. The Allman Brothers have, you
• 20:22
  know, such a swampy. But warm and fun and chaotic,
• 20:27
  you know, kind of noise that I mean, it really feels it.
• 20:31
  It feels beat like beauty and chaos all at once.
• 20:35
  And I'm sure that's influenced with their actual, you know,
• 20:37
  where they're from and and where they're where they were, where
• 20:40
  they were coming up as a band. Yeah.
• 20:42
  What? What can?
• 20:43
  You tell me a little bit about that, yeah.
• 20:45
  So it's not really as simple of a story like as the dad who were
• 20:48
  decidedly from San Francisco. You know, The Allman Brothers
• 20:52
  came up in Macon, GA, but none of them are from Macon, none of
• 20:56
  them are from Georgia. But that they moved there after
• 20:59
  they formed. They formed in Jacksonville, but
• 21:02
  the only one actually from Jacksonville was was Butch
• 21:05
  Trucks. Greg and Duane were from Daytona
• 21:09
  Beach, FL, but they had moved that, you know, they were also
• 21:13
  from Los Angeles, so to speak. I mean, they had been out there
• 21:16
  with the hourglass and they had had some very real experiences.
• 21:19
  I mean, their first gig after they moved to LA in 67 was
• 21:24
  opening for the doors. It was Summer of Light by fire,
• 21:27
  you know, at and they played the Whiskey a Go Go, they played
• 21:30
  with Buffalo Springfield, they hung out with Neil Young, the
• 21:33
  Nitty Gritty Dirk Band, Jackson Browne.
• 21:35
  They saw Taj Mahal, which is what well, they, they had some
• 21:39
  real influence from California, you know, they that they brought
• 21:44
  back again. Dwayne then was a session
• 21:48
  musician for a while at Muscle Shoals.
• 21:50
  So he played with Wilson Pickett, he played with Aretha
• 21:53
  Franklin, he played with. While.
• 21:55
  Skaggs and Somebody owe me a dime, which is just one of one
• 21:58
  of my favorite tracks. It is from that.
• 22:02
  So they had a lot of experience that Jamo had a fascinating
• 22:07
  history. I mean, he had tour, you know,
• 22:09
  he's from Gulfport, Ms. that ended up in Macon because he was
• 22:14
  playing with different R&B musicians.
• 22:17
  He played with Otis Redding, he played with Percy Sledge.
• 22:20
  You know, when Matt When a Man Loves a Woman was a giant hit,
• 22:24
  He, you know, played with Joe Tex, who was a giant star,
• 22:27
  Clarence Carter. So he had had all these great
• 22:30
  experiences. Barry Oakley had played with
• 22:33
  this band Tommy Row in the Romans, who was sort of like a
• 22:36
  pop garage band and then ended up in Florida after being on the
• 22:39
  road with them. And Dickie Betts and Barry had
• 22:41
  been in this band called The Second Coming, which was kind of
• 22:44
  a psychedelic rock band who the keyboardist of Wynans who went
• 22:49
  on to play with Stevie Ray Vaughan in Double Trouble.
• 22:51
  So even though form they were between I think 20 and 25, Barry
• 22:58
  and Greg were the youngest and Dickie and Jamie were the oldest
• 23:02
  and Butch and Duane was Jordan in the middle.
• 23:05
  But so the oldest of them was 25, the youngest was 20, but
• 23:08
  they still had so much experience that they all brought
• 23:12
  together, you know, from Otis Redding to and Aretha Franklin
• 23:18
  to, you know, having played shows with, with Crazy with the
• 23:23
  Doors and Buffalo Springfield in LA.
• 23:25
  So that was a lot. So like Dickie Betts said to me
• 23:28
  one time when I asked him about that, I sort of said, how were
• 23:31
  you guys so mature at such a young age and and such a good
• 23:35
  band so quickly? Because they formed at the end
• 23:37
  of March 1969. They played their first proper
• 23:41
  gig billed as The Allman Brothers.
• 23:43
  They had done these jams and stuff on May 1st in Macon and
• 23:48
  they recorded their first album in August.
• 23:51
  That was a lot, you know, really fast.
• 23:53
  And Dickie said, well, we weren't a garage band, we were a
• 23:57
  nightclub band. Everybody had played a lot of
• 24:00
  shows before we ever met or did anything together.
• 24:04
  So. But I think that the mate that
• 24:08
  that the place where the make and sound really came together
• 24:11
  in his most heard in the all brothers to me is brothers and
• 24:17
  sisters. That's an album that that that
• 24:20
  we're Dick. You know, after Dwayne had
• 24:22
  passed away, Dickie. Well, the one of the last things
• 24:27
  he recorded with Dwayne was blue sky.
• 24:29
  That was one of the first times that Dickie brought a little bit
• 24:31
  of a country influence and and then rambled man, they really
• 24:35
  leaned into that. And so I think that that album
• 24:39
  is where the the country is making Georgia Red play kicked
• 24:45
  in a little bit and had a huge influence on modern Nashville
• 24:49
  now. And all of what became known as
• 24:53
  Southern rock, which Allman Brothers never liked to be
• 24:55
  called, really sprung from their success.
• 24:59
  And sonically probably from brothers and sisters.
• 25:02
  But Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Wet Willie, the Outlaws
• 25:07
  all got a chance to be successful because of The Allman
• 25:10
  Brothers success. Before that, most man's was was
• 25:14
  really considered as a rock band.
• 25:16
  If you wanted to make it, wherever you were, you had to
• 25:18
  move to one of the coast, you know, and I mean.
• 25:22
  Right. Or play one of those big
• 25:23
  festivals with everyone that they did.
• 25:26
  Yeah. So they, they were just,
• 25:29
  they're, they're a unique animal, you know, it's just what
• 25:31
  makes them, to me, an endlessly interesting topic of
• 25:35
  conversation and why I can keep writing books about them and
• 25:38
  articles and talking about them because there was a lot, you
• 25:42
  know, it. There's a lot of stories that
• 25:43
  come together to make the one story.
• 25:45
  And each of the six original members are pretty interesting
• 25:48
  characters that deserve biographies in their own right.
• 25:52
  And then over the years you had a great characters like Chuck
• 25:54
  Lavelle, Derek Trotz, Warren Haynes who have stepped in, and
• 25:58
  they each have their own sort of fascinating story to tell.
• 26:04
  Yeah, yeah, it's a. It's a ton of fun.
• 26:07
  It's a ton of fun. And you know what, it's it's the
• 26:10
  reason why I love musicians like Bob Dylan, for example, who I
• 26:17
  can never get him. So it's always fun to try to
• 26:20
  figure him out. You know, like every time you
• 26:22
  think you get a deal. Yeah, everything.
• 26:23
  Every time you think you get Dylan style, you know, you
• 26:26
  listen to another album or another live bootleg set that he
• 26:28
  releases and you're like, dude, I don't even know anything on
• 26:31
  here. Like I don't, I don't, I don't
• 26:32
  know the music, I don't know the style.
• 26:34
  I don't even know, I don't recognize the voice over here.
• 26:36
  And, and and it forces you to kind of do homework.
• 26:39
  And I think that, you know, such an enduring in such an enduring
• 26:42
  band again, you know, with such, even though is so rich for a
• 26:46
  short of time they were together.
• 26:48
  It's it's a band that was together, like you said, 45
• 26:50
  years. That's it's there's there's got
• 26:52
  to you. You've got to go through a lot
• 26:54
  in order to do so. But what's also cool is that as
• 26:58
  they would change the way that they would play this.
• 27:00
  I don't even know that they would even add so many of dozens
• 27:04
  of dozens of like Billy Strings or the Grateful Dead or even
• 27:07
  Bruce Springsteen would kind of you know, they, they, they love
• 27:11
  to cover songs and play a lot of fun different covers and really
• 27:14
  change up the setlist quite a bit.
• 27:15
  I feel like The Allman Brothers typically had fairly regular
• 27:19
  setlix and setlist rather than the difference between them
• 27:22
  would be the type of gaming that they would play.
• 27:24
  That's true for the most part. It changed after that, after
• 27:29
  2000 in one after Dickie Betts was out of the band and Warren
• 27:34
  came back in and Warren had left for a few years and came back
• 27:37
  and replaced Dickie basically. And that's when the Dickie and
• 27:40
  Warren era began. I'm I'm sorry, Warren and Derek
• 27:44
  era began. And Warren, you know, was more
• 27:49
  schooled in the jam band ethos and certainly in the Dead World
• 27:52
  by then. He had played shows with them.
• 27:54
  And he, just like we can't keep playing the same.
• 27:57
  He had been working on Dickey for a long time.
• 28:00
  You know, did I lose? You.
• 28:04
  No, I'm here, Efron. Do you hear me?
• 28:11
  I think I might have lost the feed.
• 28:14
  I still have you. I mean, I still have myself, but
• 28:16
  I don't know if you hear me, maybe we should.
• 28:27
  Should we dial back in? Am I still here?
• 28:44
  Damn back. And yeah, you just froze up all
• 28:48
  of a sudden. Hey everyone real quick if
• 28:50
  you're enjoying the show, click subscribe and rate the show. 5
• 28:54
  stars helps a ton. Thanks so much.
• 28:57
  All right. We're back.
• 28:58
  Sorry about that. As you were saying, I'm sorry.
• 29:00
  Yes. Well, Dickie was should you go
• 29:03
  all the way back to the origins of The Allman Brothers.
• 29:05
  They played pretty much the same setlist every night and they
• 29:09
  would vary it a little bit. It wasn't literally the same
• 29:12
  set, but basically each tour had a set list and they they sort of
• 29:15
  stuck with that and very, very different than the great for
• 29:20
  them from the very beginning, who were playing wildly
• 29:23
  different set lists. And I don't think This is why
• 29:27
  they did it. But in the end, that put a great
• 29:29
  value on every show. You know, with the tapes that
• 29:33
  they were recording because of Bear, I was in Stanley.
• 29:37
  But because the shows are so different, not just in
• 29:40
  performance but also in the actual setlist, every show
• 29:43
  becomes like its own album. You know, that The Allman
• 29:46
  Brothers didn't quite do. Now Warren, after they reformed
• 29:52
  the 1989 really worked on Dickie and wanted to change the setlist
• 29:56
  up. Greg to some extent and Dickey
• 30:00
  to a larger extent where hesitant to do that because
• 30:03
  that's just not how they did things.
• 30:04
  And so he eventually got Dickey to go to two set list.
• 30:09
  So they would have like on a tour an A list and AB list.
• 30:13
  And so you can kind of figure it out, like, Oh, well, let's see,
• 30:16
  I'm going to the show on Thursday, so I'll get the show.
• 30:20
  They played on Tuesday before Wednesday's show.
• 30:22
  And. And you could literally bank it.
• 30:24
  Then eventually, they went to three set lists, and Dickie
• 30:27
  wouldn't really go past that. After that, he was out of the
• 30:30
  band in 2000, and Warren came back.
• 30:32
  They started really varying the set list.
• 30:35
  Yeah. In the last, I guess 14 years of
• 30:38
  the band, from 2000 to 2014, their set lists were quite
• 30:43
  varied. Yeah, it's fun.
• 30:45
  Yeah, maybe still not as much as the dad, although maybe and and
• 30:49
  and Warren did the set list and he, you know, would always take
• 30:52
  him to Greg for OK's. And obviously Greg could change
• 30:55
  things and stuff, but Warren was very, very thoughtful about it
• 30:59
  and always had an intent and purpose to this as he put
• 31:02
  together. Listening to the I was just
• 31:05
  listening before he came on to Don't Think Twice, It's All
• 31:08
  Right with Susan Tedeschi sitting in and you know what?
• 31:12
  I listened to Last Day between to probably 5 different versions
• 31:16
  of that song. You know, I listened to Susan's
• 31:18
  version, I listened to with the with the with Kentucky Trucks.
• 31:21
  I listened with Allman Brothers and I'm so happy that they do
• 31:27
  that. And I'm so and, and you know,
• 31:29
  the other thing that, you know, that we talked that we touched
• 31:31
  on about, you know, how different genres bleed into each
• 31:34
  other. You really, really get a sense
• 31:36
  for it. And you know, after 2000 that,
• 31:39
  you know, there's just so many different influences that are
• 31:41
  that that are bleeding in musically to the to the setlist
• 31:45
  and to that type of music that they're playing.
• 31:47
  I wanted to talk to you now, please, a little bit about
• 31:50
  China, because I'm really, really fascinated about the
• 31:53
  country in general, the people, the society, the world.
• 31:57
  What were you doing there? How'd you get there?
• 31:59
  And tell me about your fame. Well, I'll tell you about.
• 32:03
  All of that, but before I just want to preface it with one
• 32:06
  thing. China changes so fast that and
• 32:13
  I've been back for almost 20 years now.
• 32:16
  So and for a while I was going back to China quite a bit, but I
• 32:20
  haven't been there since 2017. I think I had a trip planned in
• 32:26
  2020 that I had to cancel. Forever.
• 32:30
  It's changed. Really fast in China and they've
• 32:32
  really changed a lot since the pandemic.
• 32:35
  So. But having said that, I went to
• 32:39
  China in 2005 because my wife, who's a journalist, Rebecca
• 32:44
  Blumenstein, she's actually the president of NBC News now.
• 32:49
  Cool. Yeah.
• 32:51
  Something I don't talk about that much.
• 32:52
  I mean, not, I mean, I'm proud. I'm very proud of her.
• 32:56
  You know, we did together a long time and I've watched her whole
• 32:58
  career and helped her where I could and everything, but it's
• 33:02
  just, you know, whatever. But.
• 33:03
  But I don't talk about it that much.
• 33:05
  But she at the time worked at the Wall Street Journal and was
• 33:10
  Bureau chief for for tech and telecom.
• 33:13
  And somehow on conversation one day came up, she wasn't that
• 33:17
  that there was a Beijing Bureau chief job was open.
• 33:20
  She's telling another friend about it.
• 33:22
  And not even like that she was going to go for the job, but
• 33:25
  that it was like an example because she was talking about
• 33:30
  like, I don't know what I'm going to do next.
• 33:31
  But there's always something like even this just came up and
• 33:35
  we were just like having lunch with our little our kids.
• 33:37
  I mean, my son Eli was four years old.
• 33:40
  It was it was a friend of his mother.
• 33:42
  So I guess, you know, we were with him and I was like, China.
• 33:47
  That sounds cool. And she was like, would you
• 33:50
  actually move there? And I said, yeah, they got wood.
• 33:54
  And she was sort of shocked because in the previous year, I
• 33:58
  had been very discouraging about moving.
• 34:01
  There was a possible job opening that she was interested in
• 34:03
  within the Journal. Two of them, one in Washington,
• 34:06
  DC and one in San Francisco. And I sort of like really was a
• 34:12
  web. Like we had three young kids
• 34:18
  then. My kids were, I think, about 2-4
• 34:21
  and seven, and I have a pretty good support network here.
• 34:26
  We live across the street from my aunt and uncle.
• 34:29
  We have some other family around.
• 34:30
  My sister lived nearby. And it was really important to
• 34:34
  me. You know, I was doing this music
• 34:36
  writing at the time. I was a staff writer for Guitar
• 34:39
  World still and a slam magazine, basketball magazine.
• 34:43
  That's a whole other part of my life that nobody knows about.
• 34:46
  But I used to get the. Magazines in high school and
• 34:48
  print them and take their posters, yeah.
• 34:53
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was a senior writer
• 34:55
  for SLAM for 10 years before I'm used to China, so that's
• 34:59
  awesome. Whole other.
• 35:01
  Yeah, so. And I kept writing for them
• 35:03
  until not that long ago. But yeah, I was hesitant to give
• 35:08
  up my life here and my support because I just thought, you
• 35:12
  know, if we moved to San Francisco or Washington or
• 35:16
  something, I'm going to be sitting alone in a house in a
• 35:19
  suburb where I don't know anyone with these three kids.
• 35:22
  I'm going to go insane. But China, you know, in a way it
• 35:28
  was it was obviously more extreme, but it also was
• 35:31
  temporary, you know, like we could keep our house and rent
• 35:33
  it. The you know, it was like, and I
• 35:36
  just thought this will be like amazing.
• 35:38
  I've never lived abroad and like, what's the worst case
• 35:44
  scenario that I hate it. I'll still be like smarter and
• 35:47
  and you know, more well-rounded person on the other end.
• 35:51
  So what the heck. And so she was sort of shocked
• 35:56
  and and then our friend was there was sort of like acting
• 35:59
  like the like a mediator. She's like Alan.
• 36:01
  So you really would go Rebecca, would you actually be a
• 36:04
  candidate? She's like, I might be.
• 36:06
  And so we left this lunch was all that She would go in on
• 36:09
  Monday and put her hand up for the job.
• 36:13
  And she did. And Long story short, you know,
• 36:17
  she got it. And it was sort of a fluke,
• 36:19
  really, because they tended to send China experts there, you
• 36:24
  know, for obvious reasons. And there wasn't on at that time
• 36:28
  one person who was supposed to become the Bureau chief China
• 36:32
  wouldn't give up a visa to because they didn't like some
• 36:35
  articles he had written. And someone else dropped out and
• 36:39
  so they didn't have a China expert.
• 36:41
  And so they just wanted to send someone they trust.
• 36:43
  Rebecca had done great work. So she came home one day and she
• 36:47
  was like, are you serious about moving to China?
• 36:50
  Because this is moving along and they're actually taking
• 36:53
  seriously. And I could still like just say
• 36:56
  I've changed my mind. But it's like getting to the
• 36:58
  point where pretty soon that will be causing me a problem.
• 37:02
  So were. You were you anxious about this
• 37:04
  at all? What are you thinking?
• 37:07
  You know, I, I wasn't, I was surprisingly not anxious until I
• 37:12
  did have AI did have a few moments, but but for the at
• 37:15
  first, I really was like, let's just do it.
• 37:17
  You know, I the Guitar World had had a new owner.
• 37:21
  They started saying that I was on salary at Guitar World, which
• 37:25
  was amazing, you know, so I was able to stay home, be with my
• 37:28
  kids. You know that, I mean, they did,
• 37:30
  I had to get daycare and stuff for them but, and so I could
• 37:33
  work. But I was, you know it, it's
• 37:36
  from where I live. And the way I looked at it at
• 37:38
  that .2 of us commuting into the city was just going to be too
• 37:42
  much, you know, But one of us commuting in and then I was here
• 37:48
  and I could be flexible and again, as I said, some family
• 37:50
  around. So if I really couldn't do
• 37:51
  something, I had some backup. Yeah, Well, but, but Guitar
• 37:55
  World had a new owner and they were starting to basically say
• 37:58
  it was getting close to where they were going to cut me off of
• 38:01
  gallery or make me come in the office.
• 38:03
  And I didn't really want to go back.
• 38:04
  I worked in the office. I got total for six years.
• 38:07
  I didn't really want to do that again with the lifestyle we had
• 38:10
  built up. And I was doing this stuff for
• 38:11
  slam and some other stuff. So I was like, you know, my
• 38:16
  sweet little gig here is going to wrap up sometimes fairly
• 38:19
  soon. And this time sounds so cool.
• 38:21
  Let's just do it. I was born in Anchorage, AK.
• 38:27
  Parents. Yeah.
• 38:28
  My dad is a pediatrician and he joined the Indian Health Service
• 38:34
  and I'll call the Native American Health Service to
• 38:36
  provide medical care to Native Americans.
• 38:39
  And they had a choice of going to Sitka, Alaska or somewhere
• 38:42
  Arkansas to a reservation, and they chose Alaska.
• 38:46
  And it was a very defining thing for them.
• 38:49
  You know, they stayed after he was out of the service.
• 38:52
  They moved to Anchorage for a couple years, which is where I
• 38:54
  was born. And so I guess I and I talked to
• 38:58
  my parents about it and I remember my father said, look,
• 39:01
  you know, you can't say no to this.
• 39:04
  Like the Alaska was defined our lives in many ways like that we
• 39:07
  could have never predicted. And if I bet it will do that for
• 39:12
  you and it turned out to really be be that that was good advice.
• 39:18
  And it's correct, it's to find our lives.
• 39:20
  And and my wife's parents actually did something similar,
• 39:23
  maybe not quite as extreme, but they had moved from Detroit,
• 39:27
  where she was born or she was actually where they have lived.
• 39:31
  And they moved when she was six or seven years old and she had
• 39:33
  two younger little sisters. They moved to rural Maine for
• 39:38
  three years. And so I guess both of us had
• 39:41
  this concept in our growing up that you could do something
• 39:44
  crazy when you have kids and it's OK.
• 39:47
  Yeah. So China, you know, I didn't
• 39:49
  know what I was going to do over there.
• 39:51
  I didn't. And it just became like my world
• 39:55
  opened up in so many ways and my whole life and career.
• 40:01
  I mean, not even not just for a second to ignore like personal
• 40:04
  growth and family growth and stuff, but just strictly
• 40:07
  focusing on the career. You know, I took a risk because
• 40:11
  I gave up these steady gigs. But I, you know, didn't lose my
• 40:15
  relationship with the magazines. And it opened up so much.
• 40:19
  You know, eventually I became a columnist for the Wall Street
• 40:22
  Journal writing about living as an expat.
• 40:26
  So it gave me, and I've been, I mean, as much as I love the
• 40:29
  music and the guitar stuff, I was getting a little frustrated.
• 40:33
  That's why Slam was so much fun, because I, I didn't, but you
• 40:36
  know, I, I liked, I could have written about news, politics and
• 40:40
  whatever. And so that's what was a lot.
• 40:43
  Of fun at that time too by the way that the NBA was really
• 40:46
  really awesome you know for the at that point of time yeah it.
• 40:50
  Opened up possibilities. And then when I went and the
• 40:52
  slam stuff, opened up a lot of stuff in China because
• 40:56
  basketball is huge in China and the Olympics were coming.
• 41:01
  And so, you know, I did a ton of basketball there.
• 41:06
  And then I ended up getting a gig for NBC for the Olympics.
• 41:09
  I worked at the 2008 Olympics, sweetie.
• 41:12
  What was that like? That was amazing.
• 41:16
  Yeah, it was Oh, man, what you think we do Like I just like,
• 41:20
  just like some cool experiences that you had with them, because
• 41:23
  I I would love to hear about that with the Olympics.
• 41:25
  Specifically. Yeah, sure.
• 41:27
  Well. OK, so give me a second.
• 41:30
  I'll, I'll get to that. So by the time the Olympics
• 41:34
  came, I have been in Beijing for three years.
• 41:36
  I had that city on lockdown. Like I really knew what was
• 41:40
  going on there. I was writing that column for
• 41:42
  the Journal. I'd done that at that point, I
• 41:44
  think for two years. So I was very connected in the
• 41:47
  expat world because of that and because I had formed this band
• 41:51
  with three Chinese guys over that last that third year or so
• 41:55
  by the time of the Olympics that have been going for about a
• 41:57
  year, I was very connected into this Chinese sort of arts and
• 42:02
  hipster world through my Chinese bandmates.
• 42:07
  And so the the NBC hired me. They called it the Beijing
• 42:12
  Blogger like to be like the, the voice of local stuff, sort of.
• 42:16
  So what my assignments were really like, I had a full pass.
• 42:21
  I could go to anything at the Olympic, but they really wanted
• 42:26
  me to focus on Chinese stuff like, so I would I focus on on
• 42:31
  events that Chinese were really into that Chinese were likely to
• 42:35
  win because that was sort of my gig and I just went around.
• 42:39
  I thought, yeah, I had my end. My I still keep my credentials,
• 42:43
  my, my Olympic credentials. I keep them in a.
• 42:47
  Yeah. That because of course, yeah, it
• 42:54
  was a it was a, it was a highlight.
• 42:58
  It was just an incredible experience.
• 42:59
  So that so. Yeah, you could say he's even
• 43:02
  worth moving there just to have that opportunity, you know, just
• 43:05
  that well. I worked for like a year, you
• 43:07
  know, I was like, I got to work. I got to get a press pass for
• 43:10
  the Olympics because it was such a big thing looming over us.
• 43:13
  And somebody's I don't, I don't. Some of a friend of mine,
• 43:17
  somebody said who who had worked in sports marketing, it's like
• 43:21
  you got to work for NBC. Like NBC runs the Olympics.
• 43:23
  If you can get, if you that's, that's like the number one goal.
• 43:27
  Spent like a year figuring that out.
• 43:29
  And you know, my wife's at NBC News now she's done a lot of
• 43:34
  cross pollination with NBC Sports.
• 43:36
  She was the first person. We try to connect them together
• 43:39
  a bit and one of the people she ended up dealing with is the guy
• 43:43
  who hired me for the Olympus. He's still there and he he knew
• 43:48
  he knew that I was her husband and brought it up to her.
• 43:51
  So that was a great experience. But that was only like 3 weeks
• 43:56
  out of almost four years. And but I mean, I was still and
• 44:02
  the band was a completely. So yeah, tell me about the band.
• 44:05
  How'd that happen So? It's just incredible.
• 44:09
  So when I went over to Beijing, you know, I thought, well, you
• 44:12
  know, I, I didn't have that much financial pressure because I was
• 44:15
  doing, I've been working so hard because, you know, we have three
• 44:18
  kids, We're paying daycare bills and our mortgage and we're not.
• 44:23
  And when I went over there, I didn't really have to work
• 44:26
  because what we had this expat package like our housing was
• 44:30
  pretty much free, you know, child care was not free, but
• 44:34
  like way cheaper. It was just like financially, it
• 44:37
  took a big burden off of me at that time.
• 44:40
  So my idea first year was I was going to play a lot of guitar,
• 44:43
  what I wanted to really. And, and, and at the end of the
• 44:46
  first year, I was sort of disgusted with myself because I
• 44:49
  had barely played at all. I hadn't found anyone to play
• 44:52
  with and I tend to not practice very much if I'm not actively
• 44:56
  doing a project. So I came home that summer after
• 45:01
  my first year and I had a jam session with some friends here
• 45:05
  and in Maplewood, NJ. And then I bought a new guitar
• 45:11
  to sort of inspire me, which was an Epiphone 335 because I have a
• 45:15
  335 that I love right here. It's a 197335.
• 45:21
  Nice. I didn't want to travel to China
• 45:26
  with that because it's too fragile.
• 45:28
  So I left it with my brother. And so I bought a an Epiphone
• 45:32
  cheap knock off of that guitar. Basically loved it.
• 45:35
  Played it on these jam sessions. I was really fired up.
• 45:38
  I'm going to play a lot of music.
• 45:39
  I go back to China, they get that thing.
• 45:42
  They made me check it. I open up the case and the head
• 45:44
  socket broke it off. No, I was really depressed, I
• 45:48
  guess kind of like put it back in the case and threw it under
• 45:50
  my desk for a little while. And when I was like, I got to
• 45:53
  get this fixed. So I started asking around.
• 45:56
  It's a very broken head. Sock is very fixable, but you
• 45:59
  need someone who knows what you're doing.
• 46:01
  And so I started inquiring. A couple people recommended this
• 46:06
  guy, Woody Wu, who had a repair shop in Beijing and he spoke
• 46:11
  English because he was just back from three years living in
• 46:15
  Australia. I contacted Woody and because I
• 46:19
  wanted to get good treatment. You know, I said this Alan Paul
• 46:23
  from Guitar World, and it was kind of funny because before,
• 46:26
  like over the years when I went in guitar stores, I would never
• 46:28
  tell people here that I was from Guitar World magazine.
• 46:31
  I would be embarrassed I couldn't play, mostly in the
• 46:36
  shred era, you know, they would expect me to play like that.
• 46:39
  But in China, you know, I wanted to make sure that he paid
• 46:41
  attention to me. And it totally worked, You know,
• 46:43
  he wrote me back. He's like, I looked you up.
• 46:48
  You've interviewed so many of my heroes, I would love to help
• 46:51
  you, blah, blah, blah. We made an appointment, brought
• 46:54
  him the guitar. He met me.
• 46:56
  He was about 12 years younger than me at the time.
• 46:59
  I think I had just had my 40th birthday.
• 47:01
  He was 28 And did he have an Australian?
• 47:04
  Accent from Learning English there a.
• 47:06
  Little bit he had yeah, a little bit he had a yes, he had a, he
• 47:10
  had a little bit of a strange accent, but yes, it leaned
• 47:12
  towards Australia and he had an Australian wife also and he,
• 47:17
  which is how he had moved there. He he is covered in tattoos.
• 47:22
  He had a big nose ring. He was wearing like aviator
• 47:25
  glasses when I met him. And metal is pretty popular
• 47:28
  there. In fact, I had gone to like a
• 47:30
  tribute to diamond bag there concert because I saw it.
• 47:33
  Listen, I'm like, that's wild. Yeah.
• 47:38
  I figured Woody was a metal guy and and all those years on staff
• 47:42
  at Guitar World. I mean, I, I did not just my
• 47:44
  passion stuff, but lots of you know, I interviewed Metallica
• 47:47
  and Megadeth, everyone, I mean, whoever like, you know, I had to
• 47:51
  write a certain number of features a month and whatever
• 47:54
  they needed I did. And I just kind of figured
• 47:57
  that's the stuff he had read. But then, you know, he got the
• 48:00
  guitar. The guy was going to fix it.
• 48:01
  He brought it to and we worked it all out.
• 48:03
  And then he said, oh, I'd love to talk to you about your
• 48:05
  experiences. We sat down, he took his Jean
• 48:07
  jacket off and he had a tattoo look in his whole left upper arm
• 48:13
  of Stevie Ray Vaughan all. Nice.
• 48:17
  And that was actually what he had read, it turns out for me,
• 48:21
  was stuff about Stevie Ray. And I had written the liner
• 48:25
  notes on the Stevie Ray Vaughan box set, which was fairly new at
• 48:28
  the time, I think a few years old.
• 48:30
  And he just couldn't believe that the guy who wrote that, you
• 48:34
  know, sitting in the shop that had walked into his shop in
• 48:38
  Beijing. That was wild to him.
• 48:41
  But to me, it was wild. Like, I mean, I just found 28
• 48:45
  year old Chinese guy with a tattoo of Stevie Ray Vaughan.
• 48:49
  So we were both sort of delighted to find each other and
• 48:53
  surprise, you know, he thought I was a big deal.
• 48:56
  I thought he was a big deal really, you know, And then we
• 48:59
  exchanged numbers and stuff and I just thought like, oh, I got
• 49:03
  this Chinese friend, maybe he'll take me to some cool bars and,
• 49:07
  like gigs and, you know, I meet some cool bands and stuff.
• 49:11
  And then when the guitar was ready, he invited me.
• 49:14
  You know, he told me it was ready and he said I'm ply of a
• 49:16
  gig with a kind of cool band, like on Wednesday night, you
• 49:20
  know, do you want me to? Do you want to come see us?
• 49:22
  I'll pick and pick it up there. So yeah, that would be great.
• 49:26
  So I did. And the band was actually really
• 49:28
  cool. And he said to me before, you
• 49:30
  know, he showed me the guitar. It was great.
• 49:31
  And, you know, China was really, at the time, it was all cash,
• 49:36
  cash society. They went from cash to cashless
• 49:38
  really fast with no credit card in between.
• 49:40
  It's all paid by app. But anyhow, it was totally cash.
• 49:45
  And they were like, you didn't get anything without cash in
• 49:48
  advance. And the first sign that Woody
• 49:50
  was a different kind of Chinese guys, he was just like, yeah,
• 49:53
  the bills in the case, just, you know, we'll figure it out.
• 49:57
  And I was like, OK, so then he's like, hey, do you want to jam
• 50:00
  with us? Well, I said sure.
• 50:04
  He said, all right, I'll make sure the guitars tuned and leave
• 50:06
  it on stage and we'll call you up.
• 50:08
  And I'm like, all right, just, you know, I love the best year.
• 50:11
  So, you know, just tell me the key when I come up and make it a
• 50:15
  repetitive songs that, you know. Oh, no problem.
• 50:18
  There was. So he called me up and they did
• 50:20
  that. It was a very like pink floydy
• 50:22
  song, sort of like a Blues and E And I play mostly and I think I
• 50:28
  played a solo. It was fine.
• 50:31
  It's not like I killed it or anything, but it was, it was
• 50:34
  fine, you know, And then I got off and then I sat back down and
• 50:38
  then the, the guy introduced me. He said like in Chinese, we have
• 50:44
  a very famous American journalist, rock journalist
• 50:49
  here, Alan Paul, you know, they introduced me.
• 50:51
  I'm like, oh, that's nice, you know, And I, I kind of waved.
• 50:55
  I was just sitting by myself at a table drinking a Qingdao, you
• 50:58
  know? Then he said something else and
• 51:02
  I but it was all in Chinese. And I understood the first part,
• 51:05
  but I sort of lost him on the second.
• 51:06
  I didn't understand some of the verbs and I was like, he's
• 51:09
  talking about me, but what is he saying?
• 51:12
  Then I realize everyone's clapping and looking and what he
• 51:15
  was doing was calling me back up and basically like he was going
• 51:21
  to walk off stage and just give me the band.
• 51:23
  And I had a little, I was sort of freaked out.
• 51:27
  I had a little bit of a fight or flight, almost ran, but you
• 51:31
  know, there wasn't, I wasn't that strong.
• 51:33
  So yeah, so I went up and I was just like, jeez, what am I going
• 51:36
  to do, you know? And nobody speaks English except
• 51:39
  Woody. Woody was playing lap steel, I
• 51:42
  should have said. And he's cool.
• 51:44
  Yeah, it's cool. He was really good.
• 51:46
  So I was trying to think what would sound good with lap steel.
• 51:48
  So I played deep L and Blues, you know, that song.
• 51:55
  And I played Dead Flowers, which probably got a little tricky
• 51:58
  because it's an easy song, but it has some changes that if you
• 52:02
  don't know what you might not expect.
• 52:04
  And then I played a really dumbed down version of
• 52:07
  Southbound, like without the basically.
• 52:10
  And it was cool, you know, like my expectations were so low, but
• 52:15
  I was just like, hey, I didn't below it.
• 52:17
  And people seem to like it, you know, that was cool.
• 52:20
  And that was that. And then it's pretty diverse.
• 52:22
  It's a pretty diverse kind of set list, no?
• 52:25
  Yeah. Well, it was literally off the
• 52:27
  top of my head. I know like the what you know,
• 52:32
  because I was I was so thrown in there like what what will I not
• 52:35
  mess up that the other guys can pick up and that I'm comfortable
• 52:39
  singing. You know, that was, that was
• 52:41
  more the issue for me, actually been playing with the Stinging
• 52:45
  and he loved it. Yeah.
• 52:47
  And so then afterwards, you know, Woody said to me, I
• 52:51
  thought your singing was great, which is I was like, wow, OK,
• 52:55
  really. In retrospect, my singing was
• 52:57
  probably better than my guitar playing, but I was more
• 52:59
  confident in my guitar playing and my singing.
• 53:03
  You know, I shouldn't have been. But so.
• 53:08
  Yeah. So he was like, I'd love to do
• 53:10
  more stuff with you. And I had an American friend who
• 53:13
  owned a really nice restaurant and I had played there a couple
• 53:17
  of times with other people. I had started like sitting in
• 53:21
  with people and jamming a bit, but and she wanted me to host a
• 53:25
  joke. Find these.
• 53:25
  Places when you're going to have to sit in with people like, you
• 53:28
  know, I think a lot of people. Show that that that place where
• 53:33
  where where was near my house. It was a kind of a really cool
• 53:37
  expat hang out, but a very it was a it was a mixed Chinese
• 53:41
  expat crowd and the owners were a couple with a Chinese man and
• 53:46
  an American woman. That was another one, you know,
• 53:50
  and I never would have sung in public in this much.
• 53:52
  I sang with these guys. I sat in with there because I
• 53:56
  had got, I was friendly with her and I got these other guys to
• 53:58
  gig there and she said to me also, I love your singing.
• 54:02
  You know, I'd, I'd be cool for you to host an open mic here.
• 54:06
  And I wasn't confident enough to like play like host an open mic
• 54:10
  by myself. But I like the sound of two
• 54:14
  guitars more than one guitar. And he has I'm not really a
• 54:17
  leap. I'm not like a finger picker who
• 54:19
  can like carry it by himself. I mean, I can for a song or two,
• 54:23
  but well, once I met Woody, he's like, I'd love to do more with
• 54:27
  you. I said, hey, you know what?
• 54:28
  I have an open invitation to host an open mic.
• 54:30
  You want to like work up a set and we'll do that.
• 54:33
  And he said, sure. So basically we did that, and
• 54:37
  then a friend of mine who was another American guy, was a
• 54:40
  great saxophone player I had jammed with a few times.
• 54:44
  I invited him. I just thought he'd play a song
• 54:46
  or two. But he ended up playing the
• 54:47
  whole set and we worked up a set list that had, I don't know what
• 54:54
  was in it. I mean, probably all those songs
• 54:56
  I mentioned maybe. And then I don't know.
• 55:01
  That's what love will make you do.
• 55:04
  Meet me in the morning. Did they know all this stuff?
• 55:07
  Were they willing to learn it? Was it like, what was the
• 55:09
  reaction? What was that like?
• 55:12
  Yeah, Woody didn't know most of that stuff, but was willing to
• 55:17
  learn it and he knew who all the people were for the most part,
• 55:21
  but he know it really well. The crowd, like those initial
• 55:25
  crowds, those were mostly act that that place was a mostly
• 55:28
  expat crowd, which made it kind of easy because I had been there
• 55:31
  for a year, I guess a year and change by then I knew a lot of
• 55:35
  people. And so I had a lot of friends
• 55:37
  there and they were just kind of into like seeing their buddy
• 55:39
  play. Sure.
• 55:42
  Then we we went through a few different we had like a
• 55:46
  different upright bass player for a while and we had a
• 55:48
  percussion player. I we're going to keep a really
• 55:51
  acoustic and then percussion was the cool guy was that African
• 55:55
  guy was a music teacher at my kids school who played in a
• 55:59
  really cool reggae band. Actually.
• 56:02
  There was a lot of interesting people floating around Beijing,
• 56:05
  like there really were. And.
• 56:06
  And eventually when Woody realized like that we were
• 56:09
  getting better and better and we played some stuff, he went and
• 56:12
  got an amazing drummer and bass player and a bass player 1st and
• 56:17
  then the drummer. And that was sort of our second
• 56:20
  year as a band. And that's when it became really
• 56:25
  a band. So it was all like just kind of
• 56:28
  everything we did before that was just like laying the
• 56:30
  groundwork to get to that. Yeah.
• 56:32
  And these guys were incredible. And I I, you know, I had this,
• 56:39
  there's ABB King song called You better not look down if you want
• 56:41
  to keep on flying. And that was sort of my mantra
• 56:45
  because I had a lot of things in China happened to me that I
• 56:49
  couldn't believe were happening, you know, like writing the
• 56:51
  column. It was successful and forming
• 56:54
  the band and then the band, you know, and, and I was just like,
• 56:58
  I can't think about this stuff too much.
• 57:00
  I got to like stay in the moment and keep reacting because I have
• 57:04
  learned, you know, even like on the gigs, you know, if I allowed
• 57:08
  myself to wander my brain even for a second, I would mess up
• 57:13
  the song, you know, if I even was like, oh, where's you know,
• 57:18
  Rebecca? I thought she was coming or it's
• 57:22
  really crowded. I hope so and so got in or
• 57:24
  anything, you know, anything that wasn't what I was doing, I
• 57:27
  would then realize I messed up. So something that's actually
• 57:30
  something I really like about performing.
• 57:32
  You know, I like that a lot of like I I'm a big skier.
• 57:35
  I like that about skiing. I started playing hockey in
• 57:38
  Beijing. I I never have again.
• 57:40
  I like that about hockey. Like if you quit focusing for a
• 57:44
  second, you're you're. I do jiu jitsu.
• 57:47
  It's the same thing, yeah. Yeah, I like, I like that.
• 57:50
  And it took me a while to realize that about myself.
• 57:52
  The devils that brought out a part of me that's in a good way.
• 57:56
  It's very therapeutic. And so it was just step by step.
• 58:00
  Like I never would have formed the band thinking like, I'm
• 58:04
  going to form a great band and we're going to make like a run
• 58:06
  at, at something. And it was just one thing after
• 58:10
  another. We got those guys and they were
• 58:12
  really good. And then Woody was like, you
• 58:15
  know, we could actually be a good band, but are you willing
• 58:19
  to, like, rehearse and, like, arrange these songs?
• 58:22
  Because we were still sort of just jamming every time we got
• 58:25
  together. And I said, yeah, you know, he
• 58:28
  wrote me when I was home on, like, a long summer break.
• 58:31
  And he said, we have to have a meeting about the band when you
• 58:33
  get back. I was like, OK.
• 58:35
  And I was sort of dreading it because I thought he was going
• 58:38
  to say that he want. He was, you know, And when we
• 58:43
  got together, he basically was like, you know, we could keep
• 58:47
  doing what we're doing or we could try to be a real band if
• 58:49
  you're willing. And he was actually told me
• 58:51
  later of surprise that I said yes because he knew how busy I
• 58:54
  was and with my kids and stuff. But to me, the opportunity,
• 59:00
  first of all, to do it in China was obviously incredible.
• 59:04
  But even beyond that, like just the chance, like the meeting
• 59:08
  that I had with these guys, like if I had been starting a band
• 59:11
  here, I wouldn't have been able to get that quality of musicians
• 59:16
  at the level I was at at that point.
• 59:18
  And they were great and I knew it.
• 59:20
  And I, and that made me get better, you know, fast because
• 59:27
  I'm not going to be the weak link.
• 59:28
  I mean, I maybe I still am going to be the weak link, but I'm not
• 59:31
  going to be that weak. And the like, yeah, I really
• 59:35
  worked. I really, really worked on music
• 59:37
  in a way I hadn't quite before. Always something I did for
• 59:41
  years, but not but that much focus, intent.
• 59:44
  I never approached it the same way like I approached my writing
• 59:47
  of like really thinking and putting in the time and really
• 59:52
  focused effort to get better and learn things and.
• 59:55
  Do you find your mic more surgical now, or more much more
• 59:58
  nuanced about music in general? You know, I'm probably I'm, I'm
• 1:00:05
  a lot better in a lot of ways. I'm certainly have a lot more
• 1:00:07
  experience, but I don't think I've, in some ways I'm probably
• 1:00:11
  not as good because I'm playing in this band now, friends of the
• 1:00:15
  brothers, which is great. I put it together with Junior
• 1:00:18
  Mack and Andy Alanard, who played with Jamo and Dickie
• 1:00:23
  Betts, respectively, yours and we're doing all my brothers
• 1:00:25
  stuff, but we've put together an incredible band.
• 1:00:28
  But I just play acoustic guitar in that band.
• 1:00:31
  And so my I've gotten, we've learned a lot of songs and my
• 1:00:35
  right hand has gotten amazing because I'm playing with two
• 1:00:38
  amazing drummers and a bass player.
• 1:00:40
  But it's different than like in, in so the Chinese band, the name
• 1:00:45
  was Woody Allen, which is pretty funny, our names.
• 1:00:49
  But in Woody Allen, I mean, I was carrying the band.
• 1:00:52
  I mean, because I was often the only guy playing chords.
• 1:00:56
  We went through different things.
• 1:00:57
  I played electric guitar. Woody played lap steel in
• 1:01:00
  electric guitar and slide. I mean, I'm sorry, in harmonica.
• 1:01:05
  But we eventually realized, like, our sweet spot of a sound
• 1:01:08
  was with him playing lap steel and me playing acoustic.
• 1:01:12
  And that made us really unique. And so eventually I quit playing
• 1:01:15
  electric in the band and he mostly quit playing electric.
• 1:01:20
  And so, and then we still had Dave's in sax player.
• 1:01:23
  So our we had a killer rhythm section and the front line was
• 1:01:26
  Alto sax, acoustic guitar and lap steel.
• 1:01:30
  It's a pretty different sound, you know, it sounds really cool.
• 1:01:33
  Yeah. Easy for us to sound like music
• 1:01:36
  on. Spotify or online?
• 1:01:38
  It's not it. It was, and unfortunately, my
• 1:01:42
  Chinese record label seems to have disappeared.
• 1:01:44
  Oh, dear. We did record an album called
• 1:01:47
  Beijing Blues. I'm going to get it back out.
• 1:01:49
  I I, I own the copyrights, all this stuff.
• 1:01:51
  I I can totally do it. And I and I will.
• 1:01:54
  Yeah, yeah, I'd. Love to hear it.
• 1:01:55
  I'd love to. I'd love to share it for sure.
• 1:01:57
  Yeah. It's it's.
• 1:01:58
  It's pretty cool, you know, And I had never really written songs
• 1:02:01
  before. I had written a lot of half
• 1:02:03
  songs, but I hadn't really finished that many songs.
• 1:02:06
  And I wanted to start writing original music for the band.
• 1:02:10
  I mean, we we knew it was an imperative and it's fun.
• 1:02:14
  This is where like my journalism cross with it in a way, because
• 1:02:17
  I remember thinking, OK, what should I write about?
• 1:02:19
  Well, I thought of the way Robbie Krieger from The Doors,
• 1:02:24
  the first song he ever wrote, was like my fire because Jim
• 1:02:27
  Wilson at a rehearsal was like, you know, I'm writing all the
• 1:02:30
  lyrics when you guys write some damn songs.
• 1:02:33
  And he told Robbie, told me that Jim told him sometime just focus
• 1:02:38
  on the elements, you know? So that's where he came up with
• 1:02:41
  fire. So he's like, what element?
• 1:02:42
  Fire. OK, fire, fire.
• 1:02:46
  And yeah. So I thought of that.
• 1:02:48
  I was like, well, what are the elements of Beijing pollution,
• 1:02:52
  you know, at that time that it's improved a lot.
• 1:02:55
  Yeah. The time the air was really bad.
• 1:02:58
  I mean, it was often like this thick, soupy thing.
• 1:03:01
  So I just wrote the first line. They say the sun is shining, but
• 1:03:05
  I don't see it anywhere. And because that was all
• 1:03:09
  experience, Like, you could look, you could look at the
• 1:03:11
  weather map, you know, and it would show a sunny day, and you
• 1:03:15
  look outside, and it was like totally fog.
• 1:03:18
  That's crazy. So, yeah, so I just started
• 1:03:22
  writing from my experience, you know, and then turned out that
• 1:03:25
  our bass players, amazing Chinese musician named John
• 1:03:29
  Young was a great songwriter and he brought a sort of bringing
• 1:03:32
  some songs in in Chinese. And so then we became a
• 1:03:35
  bilingual band. It was probably still like 70%
• 1:03:40
  English maybe, but yeah, we started doing more and more
• 1:03:44
  Chinese songs, which was cool, you know?
• 1:03:46
  And, and it wasn't a Chinese guy singing English.
• 1:03:52
  He didn't understand or English speaking guy, me singing bad
• 1:03:58
  Chinese. It was an American guy singing
• 1:04:02
  in English and a Chinese guy singing in Chinese.
• 1:04:05
  And I, you know, I think that's better.
• 1:04:06
  So yeah, it was, we had an amazing run.
• 1:04:10
  We recorded this. How long do you?
• 1:04:12
  Guys play for. We play well.
• 1:04:16
  We had like 1 full year in that edition of the band, you know,
• 1:04:21
  actually from yeah, like from September until like July when I
• 1:04:25
  moved. No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
• 1:04:27
  I moved in, you know, a year and a half, year and a half, Sorry.
• 1:04:30
  And, and it was incredible. We were just really kind of
• 1:04:35
  gaining a next level. We won this award as best band
• 1:04:40
  in Beijing, which was incredible in a reader's poll from That's
• 1:04:45
  Beijing Magazine, and it was incredible.
• 1:04:48
  And then that got that got us attention and we toured a bunch.
• 1:04:52
  We played all over the country. We played big festivals.
• 1:04:58
  It was what are the what? Are the people there like what's
• 1:05:01
  the what's the society and culture they're like?
• 1:05:03
  Do you find you just like could slip right in and just say
• 1:05:05
  you're you're OK with? Yeah, I mean, again, just to
• 1:05:09
  reiterate what I said at the beginning, I mean, China has
• 1:05:12
  changed so much that I can. But yes, Chinese people are
• 1:05:17
  very, very open. They're they're, they have a lot
• 1:05:20
  in common with Americans. They they tend to be pretty
• 1:05:25
  China centered, just like people here are America centered, the
• 1:05:28
  big countries that don't have to think about the rest of the
• 1:05:30
  world that much, unlike a lot of other places in the world.
• 1:05:36
  And they're very family oriented and they like to have a good
• 1:05:40
  time and they're not automatons. You know, people I think have a
• 1:05:44
  vision of them being like North Korea.
• 1:05:47
  It's not like that. We were also there during sort
• 1:05:49
  of a golden era was opening up quite a bit.
• 1:05:52
  There was a sense that both politically and economically
• 1:05:56
  things are changing. Certainly economically on there
• 1:05:59
  were way more middle class people there were great.
• 1:06:01
  I think 600 million people out of poverty, yeah.
• 1:06:04
  I mean, it's one of the great success stories, you know, for
• 1:06:07
  all the laws and issues they had, it was also interesting.
• 1:06:13
  I mean, you're Jewish, right? That's right.
• 1:06:16
  Well. I I'm Jewish too and and my
• 1:06:20
  Chinese bandmates were fascinated.
• 1:06:22
  O Tai ran is Jewish person in Chinese.
• 1:06:25
  O Tai means Jewish and ran as person and they had great
• 1:06:31
  reverence for O Tai ran. A lot of it based on 1st
• 1:06:36
  stereotypes, but you know, like, oh, you know, you know, Jewish
• 1:06:43
  people are like us. They had a sense that they're
• 1:06:46
  like Chinese more than other Westerners.
• 1:06:49
  Are they like they care about family and education.
• 1:06:57
  That's that's that's what I'll say those and and they're good
• 1:06:59
  with money, you know, and that that was the stereotypes they
• 1:07:02
  had and that and they were positive stereotypes as far as
• 1:07:05
  that goes. And they had they had, in my
• 1:07:08
  experience, very was all only positive to be an old tyrant in
• 1:07:12
  China. Most people just didn't care.
• 1:07:14
  But I mean, I remember at one point the Chinese bandmates
• 1:07:19
  were, it was like Christmas or Easter, some, some holiday and
• 1:07:23
  they were surprised that I was available like that.
• 1:07:25
  I didn't wasn't doing formally stuff or whatever.
• 1:07:28
  And I said, you know, Wilshire Otayran, you know, I'm, I'm
• 1:07:32
  Jewish and like, oh, kind of like, oh, now I get it.
• 1:07:40
  But it was, it was just another interesting part of the
• 1:07:42
  experience. We went to a really cool
• 1:07:44
  synagogue there called Kahila. Fishing was inherently, you
• 1:07:51
  know, the, the only options there was that or Chabad.
• 1:07:57
  So in fact, we had our kids Sunday school at Chabad because
• 1:08:01
  they they had a they're. Very into education.
• 1:08:04
  Chabad, yeah. And they were willing to like,
• 1:08:06
  let us run our own school sort of like they didn't try to
• 1:08:09
  impose their their style on us, which was which was great.
• 1:08:14
  And yeah, but other than Chabad, that the synagogue was it.
• 1:08:21
  So people from, you know, modern Orthodox to very reformed
• 1:08:29
  reconstructionists and everything in between came
• 1:08:32
  together. And so we had, I'll call them
• 1:08:35
  non denominational services. You know that, You know, I'm
• 1:08:39
  sure everybody would have liked it to be.
• 1:08:41
  Some people would have liked rolls, some people would have
• 1:08:43
  liked last, but we but nobody really cared because it was also
• 1:08:48
  just a wonderful community. And it's an interesting
• 1:08:51
  experience. You know, it's like I live in a
• 1:08:53
  place that's, that's, I don't know, there's, there's plenty of
• 1:08:57
  Jewish people. My kids had Jewish and non
• 1:08:59
  Jewish friends, but everybody knows that the, you know, our,
• 1:09:02
  our schools are public schools are off for all the holidays.
• 1:09:06
  Certainly the non Jewish people are very, very well aware of the
• 1:09:10
  holidays of the religion and bar mitzvahs and everything else.
• 1:09:15
  And so it's easy to just continue with with, you know,
• 1:09:19
  whatever you're doing. It was an interesting experience
• 1:09:22
  for me to go over there where nobody cared and most of our ex
• 1:09:26
  pet friends were not Jewish. It would have been very easy to
• 1:09:30
  just not do it. And and what do you?
• 1:09:34
  Think kept you tied down? You think they're tied to it?
• 1:09:39
  Well, my wife is a little more observant to me, so she would
• 1:09:41
  never not do it. Be honest.
• 1:09:44
  It was and I, I don't know. So I'm not sure how I would be.
• 1:09:48
  I don't think I would either, actually, but I might and she
• 1:09:51
  definitely wouldn't. No, it was very meaningful.
• 1:09:54
  It was, it was, it made it more because it was more thoughtful
• 1:09:57
  because, because it was a choice.
• 1:09:59
  Like you couldn't take three years off and nobody would have
• 1:10:02
  been any of the wiser. You know, it was, it was really
• 1:10:05
  like, do I want to do this or not?
• 1:10:08
  I had the same. I had the same experience.
• 1:10:10
  I, I, I grew up in a Rockland County is all Jewish, you know,
• 1:10:12
  all, all, all enormously Orthodox.
• 1:10:15
  And I found that I, I, you know, I went to College in Binghamton
• 1:10:19
  and I, I moved to Seattle and I, I moved to South Florida, but
• 1:10:24
  you know, a quieter part. And I found that the smaller
• 1:10:26
  communities where you don't take for granted the fact that, you
• 1:10:30
  know, all your neighbors down the block or you know, that
• 1:10:32
  there's 10 restaurants that are all kosher and available, you
• 1:10:36
  know, and, you know, the question becomes, do you, you
• 1:10:38
  know, do you really want to do it or not?
• 1:10:41
  That's when it becomes the most meaningful I've found.
• 1:10:43
  So I pursued the small communities.
• 1:10:45
  Yeah. And, and the addendum to that is
• 1:10:49
  that, well, look, like, I remember going to, you know,
• 1:10:53
  like High Holiday Holiday services, we're like, it was
• 1:10:57
  really something because like nobody knew where I was or what
• 1:11:01
  I was doing. That was really like, you know,
• 1:11:03
  we, we, we didn't have a building.
• 1:11:05
  We, we used like a ballroom at an Athletic Club where they
• 1:11:09
  were, they were very nice and kind of, but it was like there
• 1:11:13
  was whatever, 100 of us or probably less 50 or 70 of us may
• 1:11:17
  be in this room. And we were like the only people
• 1:11:21
  in the city of 9019 million, you know, And whoever was at the
• 1:11:26
  Chabad, you know, I have no idea how many people that was.
• 1:11:29
  So yeah. It, it, it, it, it was kind of
• 1:11:33
  felt special and, and, and meaningful.
• 1:11:35
  And then we also got to have three New Year's, you know, you
• 1:11:37
  know. Yeah.
• 1:11:39
  New. Year and you know, December 31st
• 1:11:43
  and Jewish New Year. So more New Year's is better.
• 1:11:45
  I I recommend everyone to pull more New Year's as many as we
• 1:11:48
  could. Get So yeah, we still saw.
• 1:11:50
  A red Chinese New Year. So we do all three.
• 1:11:52
  In fact, this I have this red bracelet on was my wife and I
• 1:11:59
  actually are both year of the Horse, which is this year.
• 1:12:02
  And we went out to dinner on Chinese New Year with some
• 1:12:04
  Chinese friends in New York. And when they realized we were
• 1:12:10
  year of the Horse and we weren't wearing anything red, they got
• 1:12:13
  very, very upset. And they carry these around just
• 1:12:17
  for people who are the year of the Horse.
• 1:12:20
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:12:21
  You're supposed to have read on all year because you're actually
• 1:12:24
  considered vulnerable. Oh, yeah.
• 1:12:26
  I. Was going to ask what it
• 1:12:27
  signifies. What does it signify it?
• 1:12:29
  Just it's, they don't use this word, but my, my understanding
• 1:12:33
  of it is it's sort of warding off evil spirits, warding off
• 1:12:38
  luck or whatever. Because evil eye Yeah, you're
• 1:12:40
  considered vulnerable during your year.
• 1:12:44
  It's cool that these. Superstitions exist everywhere,
• 1:12:46
  dude, because you go, you go to the, you go to the, you know,
• 1:12:49
  you go to Israel, you go, you go to the Kota, you go to the
• 1:12:51
  Wailing Wall. And people give you the exact
• 1:12:53
  same red bracelet, red string bracelet for the exact same
• 1:12:56
  purpose, to protect you from evil eyes.
• 1:12:58
  Yeah. I I don't know whether you know,
• 1:13:00
  And they're two different universes.
• 1:13:01
  Yeah. It's yeah, I, I, yeah, I don't
• 1:13:05
  know what the IT. Well, Chinese people
• 1:13:07
  traditionally will wear red underwear during during their
• 1:13:11
  birth year because that way they always have red on.
• 1:13:13
  That's the easiest way to make sure you always have red on.
• 1:13:16
  It's just by a bunch of red underwear and wear it.
• 1:13:19
  So my friends who gave this to me were like, yeah, either buy a
• 1:13:22
  bunch of red underwear or keep this on.
• 1:13:24
  And so it's only been like a month, but I've kept it on so
• 1:13:27
  far. I hope you.
• 1:13:28
  Good luck continues. Well, I.
• 1:13:31
  Did realize 12 years ago, you know, which would have been my
• 1:13:35
  last year of the horse was 2014. That was a year one way out came
• 1:13:41
  out which was like changed my life in a good way.
• 1:13:44
  So I wasn't protected, I did not have red underwear or red string
• 1:13:48
  bracelet and I had good luck. But now that I know I'm not
• 1:13:53
  taking my chances, so. I just showed my high school
• 1:13:56
  class The Matrix and there's a scene where don't worry about
• 1:13:59
  the vase is like, what vase? And he turns out knocks it down
• 1:14:03
  and she's like, that one is like, but the question is, if I
• 1:14:06
  didn't say anything to you, would you have knocked it over?
• 1:14:08
  You know, like, did I put that in your head and you know that
• 1:14:11
  make that happen or did you, you know, or not going to happen
• 1:14:13
  anyway? Yeah.
• 1:14:14
  Once you know, you got to protect yourself.
• 1:14:15
  So that's where I am. Well, I.
• 1:14:17
  Wanted to, you know, one of the things that came to mind to me
• 1:14:22
  about your this whole story about this China, that about
• 1:14:25
  your band experience in China, is there's such a really there's
• 1:14:31
  such a fun value to like low stakes, no consequence fun and
• 1:14:37
  whether that's jamming or whether that's open mics or
• 1:14:39
  whether it's doing things like that.
• 1:14:41
  You know, I I think we've I think that, you know, if you
• 1:14:43
  look back to some of the best shows that people talk about or
• 1:14:46
  some of the best bands or concerts, a lot of them happen
• 1:14:48
  in these like smaller environments before the bands
• 1:14:51
  get enormous and before they start filling stadiums.
• 1:14:53
  Like you hear about a great performance at the you know, a
• 1:14:56
  club, you are a little like, you know, fifty person, you know,
• 1:14:59
  venue, whatever it is, And I feel like I I and and there's so
• 1:15:07
  many opportunities. I think I I feel that people can
• 1:15:09
  have to kind of make this magic happen on a regular basis and
• 1:15:13
  all you got to do is just get out there, make it happen.
• 1:15:15
  We feel like, oh, well, that's not really this kind of world
• 1:15:18
  anymore. Like we don't really have that
• 1:15:19
  anymore, But I think your story indicates that we do have that.
• 1:15:22
  And I I think it's really exciting.
• 1:15:24
  Yeah, thank you. I'm looking.
• 1:15:26
  I was looking for a place, can't quite find it.
• 1:15:30
  And this is my book. I wrote about it, the experience
• 1:15:32
  called Big in China. We.
• 1:15:37
  Yeah. OK, I'll, I'll, I'll read you a
• 1:15:41
  little bit of this. This was the place we ended up
• 1:15:44
  playing called Jung Hu Juba downtown.
• 1:15:48
  And I realized it took me a while to realize this, that
• 1:15:50
  Woody was happy to play out in the expat places, but he didn't
• 1:15:55
  start booking us gigs downtown with the Chinese people that he
• 1:15:58
  knew until he felt like the age 1.
• 1:16:02
  Yeah. But this place was amazing.
• 1:16:04
  It was actually owned by musicians, A couple of the guys
• 1:16:07
  who were in that band that I jammed with that that first
• 1:16:10
  night. You say you entered.
• 1:16:12
  You entered Jung Hu through a small stone entryway covered in
• 1:16:16
  the colder months with a heavy blanket, and walked down a short
• 1:16:19
  hallway into a charming courtyard filled with a few
• 1:16:21
  picnic tables. The bar nestled against the back
• 1:16:24
  wall to the left was a small room with a foosball game and a
• 1:16:28
  few tables occupied by young, hip Chinese who are playing
• 1:16:31
  cards, strumming acoustic guitars, sipping tea or beer and
• 1:16:35
  smoking like chimneys. To the right of the courtyard,
• 1:16:38
  through a French door, was a rectangular room that could
• 1:16:41
  squeeze in 50 people. A tiny stage was in front.
• 1:16:44
  There were no toilets. To relieve yourself, you had to
• 1:16:47
  walk 20 yards down the dark coupon to public facilities.
• 1:16:50
  The owner was Woody's former bandmate, a happy go lucky hit,
• 1:16:54
  the saxophonist named Tian Chow. So eventually and we became like
• 1:17:02
  the house band there as much as we could.
• 1:17:05
  And there was one night we played there on their first
• 1:17:08
  anniversary party and and all these there was like a famous
• 1:17:12
  Chinese musician. They were got up and jammed with
• 1:17:14
  us and band was just cooking. It was so good.
• 1:17:17
  And I remember thinking after I was like, I always wanted to
• 1:17:21
  find like the great band in the cool little place.
• 1:17:25
  And now I am the great band. That was incredible.
• 1:17:30
  That was one of the first you better not look down if you want
• 1:17:32
  to keep them flying moments. And and that night, that
• 1:17:37
  anniversary night we had to end, they wanted us to keep playing
• 1:17:41
  because our bass player had like a, a good paying gig that he had
• 1:17:47
  to go off to until he made his money.
• 1:17:49
  And we're like, well, we're going to have to wrap this up
• 1:17:52
  because. And a guy in the crowd was like,
• 1:17:55
  I can. Play bass.
• 1:17:57
  A random guy got up and played with a couple songs with us.
• 1:18:00
  It was just stuff like that. It was, it was really, really
• 1:18:02
  fun. And you know, I feel really
• 1:18:05
  lucky to have had that experience and to have brought.
• 1:18:09
  And when I came back to America, I wrote the book Big in China.
• 1:18:14
  And you know, I've been a little bit off of writing about the
• 1:18:16
  other music stuff. I mean, I never stopped, but it
• 1:18:19
  certainly was doing a lot less of it.
• 1:18:21
  And it was cool to have been live it instead of write about
• 1:18:25
  it. And then that opened up a lot of
• 1:18:27
  doors for me because for a lot of reasons, I but in a very
• 1:18:32
  direct way. Butch Trucks read my book Big in
• 1:18:35
  China and loved it. And they're nice.
• 1:18:38
  They're about turning the guys on to The Allman Brothers.
• 1:18:41
  Yeah. Because of that, a year or so
• 1:18:43
  later when I started proposing to do One Way Out, Butch was
• 1:18:47
  really supportive of me and a big help and.
• 1:18:50
  Wow, awesome and. So what's he, what's he like?
• 1:18:55
  Well, but Butch was a complex guy.
• 1:18:58
  He, he was very smart. I mean very well read, very
• 1:19:04
  knowledgeable about physics, about philosophy, about a lot of
• 1:19:09
  things. He had great ideas.
• 1:19:12
  You know, he started Mugus, which was like a streaming
• 1:19:15
  service and streamed the 2000, I think 8:00 and 9:00 all my
• 1:19:19
  brothers runs at the Beacon. And it totally flopped as a
• 1:19:22
  business, partly because it was just really expensive to run and
• 1:19:26
  it wasn't people didn't quite have enough broadband yet not or
• 1:19:30
  wasn't widespread enough. But I mean, basically he started
• 1:19:34
  nugs.net. I don't know when they started,
• 1:19:37
  but a bunch of years before that I think 2:00. 1011 or 12 years
• 1:19:41
  12 he. He had great ideas.
• 1:19:42
  He was smart. He had a, a really bad temper,
• 1:19:46
  you know, so that was like the, the, the, the, the downs, the,
• 1:19:51
  the, the negative sides of Butcher, just that he, he really
• 1:19:53
  had a bad temper, which he he got really mad at me after we
• 1:19:58
  had gotten really quite close. And from about 2015 to 16, he
• 1:20:03
  didn't talk to me. And it was over something that
• 1:20:06
  was really silly in my mind. I did I was in the wrong,
• 1:20:11
  something I left out of the book that he finally realized.
• 1:20:13
  But it was a very minor thing that could have been addressed
• 1:20:16
  in a conversation. But that was that was how Butch
• 1:20:20
  could be. And luckily.
• 1:20:21
  That all ended and we had some really nice time together in the
• 1:20:24
  last year they had he, you know, he put together the band that
• 1:20:27
  became late Breyers, which was put and J MO and Mark Quinagas
• 1:20:32
  and Otil. So the whole Allman Brothers
• 1:20:34
  rhythm section with Jack Pearson and Bruce Katz and keyboards and
• 1:20:39
  my friend Lamar Williams Junior, which I really got to know.
• 1:20:42
  Lamar and I went on the road with them a few times and rode
• 1:20:46
  the bus and we had some great times.
• 1:20:49
  And I'm, I'm very, very thankful that I that I did and that Butch
• 1:20:53
  and I were on very good terms when he passed away.
• 1:20:57
  And his death was shocking to me and UPS.
• 1:21:00
  It still is. You know, he died by suicide.
• 1:21:04
  Nobody. I didn't know that.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah. There was no sense that that was
• 1:21:09
  imminent. Nobody wasn't what?
• 1:21:11
  One of those things. I think it was an impulsive act.
• 1:21:15
  He had a gun. It's another reason that I don't
• 1:21:17
  think people should have guns in their house.
• 1:21:19
  And Butch wasn't a big gun guy. He wasn't that kind of guy.
• 1:21:22
  Actually. Nobody really knew he had a gun.
• 1:21:24
  Like he had it just in a dorsum or it wasn't, it wasn't like a
• 1:21:27
  gun guy. So yeah, it's, it's still really
• 1:21:32
  upsetting to me. And it's just like any suicide
• 1:21:36
  leaves the people behind with so many questions and feelings to
• 1:21:40
  kill, you know? So yeah.
• 1:21:43
  Yeah. I even look back at the year
• 1:21:45
  that he was so mad at me. It's like maybe I should have
• 1:21:48
  been more, you know, that not that had nothing to do with
• 1:21:51
  anything, but you just start looking back and questioning
• 1:21:54
  every interaction and relationship.
• 1:21:57
  And I certainly wish that he had known how much support there was
• 1:22:02
  for him and and the outpouring that happened when he died.
• 1:22:06
  And I wish there was some way he could have seen that while he
• 1:22:09
  was alive. You know, I wish I could have
• 1:22:11
  written some big article about him like that, a video him or
• 1:22:14
  what, whatever. That would have gotten a lot of
• 1:22:16
  attention. Let him see how much people
• 1:22:18
  loved him. Yeah.
• 1:22:20
  So. And a personal level, I personal
• 1:22:23
  belief is that, you know, I, I do believe in, in some in that,
• 1:22:27
  that, you know, when you close our eyes here, that, that, you
• 1:22:30
  know, that's not the end of it all.
• 1:22:31
  And I, you know, so I, I, I, I, I, I personally don't feel, I
• 1:22:35
  feel like when that happens that people do see that, you know,
• 1:22:39
  especially if there's an outcry of love and outpour of love.
• 1:22:42
  But unfortunately, we the living never get, we living here never
• 1:22:46
  get to never comfort in the same way.
• 1:22:49
  Yeah, exactly. You know, this is really been so
• 1:22:54
  much fun. I had such a pleasure hearing
• 1:22:58
  you. I I not only your story, but
• 1:23:00
  also getting some of your perspective on things, I think
• 1:23:03
  is a lot of fun and really, really interesting and you gave
• 1:23:05
  me a lot to think about and it's.
• 1:23:09
  We'll touch base again. We'll be back when when I have
• 1:23:12
  the next book ready. I'm.
• 1:23:14
  Looking forward to it. I think it's going to be, I'm
• 1:23:15
  really excited about it and hopefully you can hustle it out
• 1:23:18
  as quickly as possible. I'm.
• 1:23:19
  Working on it. Yes Sir.
• 1:23:22
  Thanks. And I take care.
• 1:23:23
  Thank you so much. You're.
• 1:23:24
  Welcome. Bye.