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Feral Zone 31 DOYLE GRISHAM AND NED HENRY MAKE THEIR OWN WEATHER · Troubled Men Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Inside the feral zone. Greetings, feral listeners. Welcome back. Inside the Feral Zone. I am Renee Komen, operating from an undisclosed location. Now, many of you know the Feral Zone is a sister podcast of the Troubled Men Podcast. It appears in this space from time to time, and this is one of those times. Now this might be the earliest we've ever started a podcast in the history of the whole operation. The sun is shining bright outside. It's already blazing hot in New Orleans. Here sitting the home of one of our guests. He's a songwriter, singer, guitar player. He's recorded a couple of solo records that I played on over the last few years. And his most recent release is make youe Own Weather that just came out last week. We have a big record release show tonight at Chicki Wawa and we're gonna get into all that and much more. But without further ado, the great Mr. Ned Henry. Welcome, Ned.
• 1:17
  Speaker B: Renee, thanks for having me on the show.
• 1:19
  Speaker A: Yeah, man. Yeah. It's quite an undertaking that you've achieved here. You know, this is a long time coming.
• 1:28
  Speaker B: Well, this project's been about a year and a half in the works.
• 1:31
  Speaker A: Right, right. But I mean, you've been writing songs your whole life. I know some of these songs date back.
• 1:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, some of these songs date back to when I was like 15 years old.
• 1:41
  Speaker A: Right on. Well, it's always good to be able to clear the books, you know.
• 1:44
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 1:46
  Speaker A: So this is the second record I've done with you. I don't know. Did you. Have you recorded other records before those?
• 1:54
  Speaker B: So I did a. An ambitious double album when I was, you know, my wife was pregnant with both of our kids. I did one record when she was pregnant with the first one and the second disc of the compilation when she was pregnant with the second.
• 2:11
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 2:11
  Speaker B: It was a very ambitious 24 song record that at the time I was very proud of. And now it's kind of a demo when I listen back to it.
• 2:20
  Speaker A: Sure, sure.
• 2:20
  Speaker B: Well, it was done on Marantz. Four tracks.
• 2:22
  Speaker A: Oh, right on. Yeah. Well, those were great, those four track machines, man. That started in the whole collapse of the recording industry. That was the leading edge when everybody still had millions of dollars of equipment. And I thought, oh, you're going to make a record in your bedroom that'll never go anywhere. Well, but in fact, these records that we've done, we've done over at Blue Velvet Studio with the great tiny Tom Stern. And he's brought in a number of people that I play in a whole bunch of different bands with we had Russ Broussard on drums, myself playing bass, John Foale playing guitar. And then you've had other people that accessed Casey McAllister playing some keyboards and maybe some guitar. He's up there in, what, Virginia now, I think.
• 3:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:17
  Speaker A: And who else have you had on these?
• 3:19
  Speaker B: Well, on that first album, we had Doug Garrison. We had you.
• 3:23
  Speaker C: Oh, right, right, right.
• 3:24
  Speaker B: And we had Casey. And most. Some of those guys I knew through Tom, and some of some people, like you, I knew through my work.
• 3:34
  Speaker A: Right. And I think actually our first encounters may have been you being a fan of the Iguanas.
• 3:41
  Speaker B: When I first moved here in 92.
• 3:43
  Speaker C: Right.
• 3:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. You were our go to band.
• 3:45
  Speaker A: Nice. Yeah. So, you know, that's the thing about New Orleans, is it's so small. You're going to run into the same people over and over again.
• 3:53
  Speaker C: So.
• 3:54
  Speaker A: And this. It took me a long time to understand this, but I explained it to my children right off the bat is don't make any enemies. You don't absolutely have to make. Because those people, you think you're going to move on. No, you're going to see those people over and over and over again. They may be deciding whether or not you get a loan. They may be your. Your child's little league coach after that.
• 4:17
  Speaker B: You know, it's a small town.
• 4:19
  Speaker A: It's a very small town. And. And yes. And it runs on relationships, so 100%.
• 4:27
  Speaker C: So.
• 4:28
  Speaker A: So, yes, we. We first. You were. You were my veterinarian at one time, and not mine personally, my animal.
• 4:34
  Speaker B: We took care of all your parasites, Renee.
• 4:37
  Speaker A: Well, I may need to check in with you again because I may have picked out a few more. Picked up a few more. Been on the road with the Iguanas and Sunny Landis, so who knows where, you know. In fact, our other guest I'll bring up. Maybe I should just get him in. Well, so for this record, you brought in the big guns.
• 4:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. So this was really cool. This whole record actually came out of sort of a personal struggle I had. I had a problem with my hand.
• 5:04
  Speaker A: Oh, right.
• 5:04
  Speaker B: My fretting hand. And when I came through it on the other side, I was just so grateful to be able to play guitar again. I'm like, man, I am not going to take this for granted. And it's time to write some songs and get in the studio and not take it for granted. I could play again. And that's where my journey here involved connecting with this hand doctor who, turns out he's in New York, and one of my clients Connected me with him when I was trying to navigate this issue.
• 5:40
  Speaker D: And
• 5:43
  Speaker B: I had a zoom call with this guy, and he holds up his business card to the zoom camera and it says, keep the music playing on the bottom. And I was like, oh, wow, what's up with that? He's like, well, 99% of my patients or musicians with hand problems.
• 5:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:00
  Speaker B: And so he said, I see your 504. I'll be down at Jazz Fest in a couple weeks, so I want to check your hand out in person.
• 6:07
  Speaker A: Oh, nice.
• 6:08
  Speaker B: And I said, oh, you. Are you a big Jazz Fest guy? And he's like, well, a couple of my patients are performing the fairgrounds. And I said, oh, who? He's like, well, I can't say because of hipaa, but let's call them Rick Ragger and Heath Hitchards. And anyway, this guy came down here and I got together with him and he, you know, he examined my finger and he said, look, so for now, you've got an issue that you need to adapt to. And so we need to put light gauge strings in your guitars. Get a capo. Get some guitars and alternate tunings, get a slide and. And work around your issue now. Learn to adapt to it.
• 6:55
  Speaker A: So he never actually did any surgery on you?
• 6:57
  Speaker B: No.
• 6:57
  Speaker A: Oh, wow.
• 6:58
  Speaker B: There was no surgery. Okay. It was. It was luckily right. In fact, he. He talked me out of going that route, which. Which was great. But he. He really gave me, like, a life lesson. And that's where this album is called make youe Own Weather. And most of the things on here come from that experience of, you know, you can't dictate your circumstances, but you can dictate how you respond to them.
• 7:23
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: And so it led to this new batch of songs and this recording session that, you know, went on for a while because this is not my primary job. But at some point, Tom said, man, we need a pedal steel on this. On this one track. And, you know, I'm trying to think who we could call. And, you know, I was thinking, why not reach out and see if I can find Doyle Grisham, who is Jimmy Buffett's longtime pedal steel player.
• 7:50
  Speaker A: Right.
• 7:51
  Speaker B: Who I've been a fan of since I started listening to music. And Doyle played on. On Jimmy's albums from the early 70s and then forward, and it's been touring with him since like 2000.
• 8:02
  Speaker A: Right.
• 8:03
  Speaker B: So I sent off a song to an email address that I found on the Internet, and. And Doyle himself reached back out, and as I recall, he said, I like your Song, Are you asking me if I would play on this? And I'm like. And I had just said in my email, any chance Mr. Grisham could listen to my song? And he said, are you asking me if I would like to play on it? And I was like, would you? And he said, if I said yes, what would you want me to play? And I said, whatever you feel. And then he said, I'll do it.
• 8:40
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 8:40
  Speaker B: And he sent back this amazing track, and then he said, you got any more? And it kind of went from there.
• 8:48
  Speaker C: Cool.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: Cool. Well, I guess as good a time as any to go ahead and finish the introduction for our very special guest we have in town from Nashville. He's a legendary pedal steel guitar player with Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band. For more than 25 years. He's had an amazing career going back to the 1950s, including recording with artists such as Chet Atkins, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Kitty Wells, Mel Tillis, Kenny Rogers, Len Anderson, on and on. He's also a record producer and engineer and studio manager at Fireside Studio in Nashville for a number of years. We're going to get into all that and more with him. But without further ado, the great Mr. Doyle Grisham. Welcome, Doyle.
• 9:35
  Speaker C: Thank you very much, man. Glad to be here.
• 9:37
  Speaker A: Rene, man, such an honor. You know, it's like, it's hard for me to think about things more than one step ahead of time. And as I was. We had a long, great rehearsal yesterday with you. Played for about three hours together. As I'm driving, as I'm driving home, I'm thinking to myself, why am I not having Doyle on the podcast? How can I let this opportunity pass me by?
• 10:04
  Speaker C: Glad you thought. Glad to be here.
• 10:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. So we had to wrangle some. Some. Some schedules around, but here we're meeting in this. This lovely undisclosed location here in the heart of uptown New Orleans. So, Doyle, well, first of all, do you do many, like, remote recordings these days? Like Ned's project, where you're, you know, somebody sends you tracks and you.
• 10:28
  Speaker C: Yeah, I do a lot of that for the Parenthead group. They call themselves Trop Rock now.
• 10:35
  Speaker A: Right.
• 10:36
  Speaker C: But, you know, that's Jimmy Buffett's followers. People don't know that, but, yeah, I do. Over a period of years, I do. I guess outside of Ned's, I've done maybe six to ten songs this year. Yeah, it's the first year for different people that just, like I say, they're doing a project like Ned did, and they want to put Steel guitar on it. So they send me the truck and I. I put my part on it and send it back to them and. Right.
• 11:05
  Speaker A: They drop it in and they mix
• 11:07
  Speaker C: it and put in their computer or wherever and fix it. And that's. That's kind of how it's done nowadays.
• 11:12
  Speaker A: Right. We got into that a lot during the pandemic when nobody could be in the same room and. And then people got their setups and got used to doing it. And I mean, people were doing it before that to some degree, but it really is.
• 11:25
  Speaker C: Well, in my day of playing studio work in Nashville, sometimes we were real lucky. Sometimes we'd be doing six to 10 sessions a week, and we'd always joke about, well, I wish we could phone our part in. Yeah, almost get to that point. Sure, sure.
• 11:45
  Speaker A: Now I want to get into that. So you got to Nashville like in the 60s, huh?
• 11:51
  Speaker C: Yeah, 66, I think, is when I showed up there.
• 11:56
  Speaker A: But your career goes way back to. You're from Texas, huh?
• 11:59
  Speaker C: Yep. Yeah, I'm from right in the center of Texas, which is big farm country. And I did my share of that when I was growing up. But yeah, that's where I'm from. And when I was right out of high school, I moved to Dallas and started playing locally there. And also playing on a Saturday night show called the Big D Jamboree. It was kind of a local copy of Grand Ole Opry, but back in its day, back in the 50s, it had. I guess it was broadcast mostly over the south, but it had a radio show that broadcast every night. I mean, it was Saturday night. It's like the Grand Ole Opry. But then, for whatever reason, I think a lot of the artists just like on the Louisiana Hayride, which is another version.
• 12:50
  Speaker A: Right. I was gonna say out of Shreveport. Yeah, yeah, same thing.
• 12:53
  Speaker C: All those artists became big enough. They moved to Nashville. So the shows kind of lost their spontaneity or their.
• 13:02
  Speaker A: They didn't have the talent.
• 13:03
  Speaker C: Yeah, they didn't have the talent anymore and just had local people who hadn't proven themselves yet. So they just kind of folded. And a radio network didn't want to invest in a show that really wasn't.
• 13:18
  Speaker A: Didn't have the big stars.
• 13:19
  Speaker C: Right. People on it.
• 13:20
  Speaker A: So you. You started off as a regular electric guitar player, right?
• 13:24
  Speaker C: Yeah, well, I was lucky enough to. I took guitar lessons when I was about 11 or 12 and had a good teacher and a good course. So by the time I was 14 years old, I was playing in church bands and this and that. Then in the next, within that year or maybe next year, I started playing locally with some of the bands that were playing nightclubs and.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: While you were still in high school. While you're still a teenager.
• 13:52
  Speaker C: Yeah, I was like 14 or 15 and I, you know, I guess I was a decent player because I'd have to be decent enough to replace an adult. Sure, sure. They could have hired now.
• 14:04
  Speaker A: Now, do you come from musical family? Your parents play?
• 14:08
  Speaker C: Not necessarily. My uncle played out in bands, but mostly just my parents. We just listened to Radio Mambo. They always had the radio in a country station. And we listened to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights, that type of thing.
• 14:25
  Speaker A: They were okay with you going out and playing?
• 14:27
  Speaker C: Oh, sure, yeah. In fact, it's kind of strange people don't believe this, but see, I've had driver's license since I was 14. When you lived on a farm you could, if you had to haul stuff into town, which I did.
• 14:40
  Speaker A: Right.
• 14:41
  Speaker C: You could get, I mean just driver's license like we all have. It was a legitimate driver's license. 14 years old. So I could, once my dad saw that I was going to be responsible enough, they quit going with me unless they might come out on a Saturday night.
• 14:59
  Speaker A: Just to watch me.
• 15:00
  Speaker C: Just to watch me. But not to chaperone.
• 15:02
  Speaker A: Right, right. You were living it as an adult since your 14 or 15 years old.
• 15:09
  Speaker C: And I had sense enough to not betray that trust.
• 15:15
  Speaker A: Right.
• 15:16
  Speaker C: And so I was a pretty good kid, you know, and probably mostly out of necessity, but I tried to be anybody.
• 15:24
  Speaker A: Right. Well, you know, if you don't learn those responsible habits, if you develop bad habits early on, you usually don't wind up lasting, you know.
• 15:32
  Speaker C: That's true.
• 15:34
  Speaker A: You don't wind up whatever, you know, 60 something years later. Still, still, you know, being successful.
• 15:42
  Speaker C: Well, who knows, Maybe it's helped me all through these years.
• 15:45
  Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. So what kind of artists were playing in the Big D jamboree?
• 15:52
  Speaker C: Well, actually they had local talent that were well known in the area. But also they would have a guest artist ever Saturday night. And we had to back those artists up. Just like we had a rehearsal yesterday for that stuff. We'd have a rehearsal at 6:00 or 6:30 to learn their songs, you know, but just things like that, I mean, they would have Grand Ole Opry guest stars. And the reason they could afford that is because it was a split bill. There was a club down the road called the Longhorn Ballroom. I mean it was a big. It was owned by Bob Wills. Oh, the Western Swing dude back in the day. But a guy named Dewey Groom bought it and what he would do is split the bill with the Big D Jamboree on the artist. So they'd play on the Big D Jamboree, and then when they got through, they'd go to this nightclub and play the rest of the night, do an appearance there, Right. So it was like Grand Ole Life. It was big artists like Dottie West, Farron Young, Webb Pierce, just anybody you could name that was popular on the Grand Ole Opry would probably come and play at the big DJ Amboree.
• 17:08
  Speaker A: Right? Now. You and I were talking yesterday after, after the rehearsal and I was bringing up some names like, you know, George Jones and Johnny Paycheck. And you were saying, oh, yeah, I was tight with both of those guys.
• 17:18
  Speaker C: You. Yeah, I knew both of them. In fact, I knew George off and on since I was probably 15, 16 years old.
• 17:26
  Speaker A: Was that how you met them, through the Big D Jamboree?
• 17:29
  Speaker C: Yeah. I'll tell you a funny joke about George, a funny story later on, when I was about 18, I was working some shows with him and he wanted to hire me to travel, but I kind of turned it down because I just didn't know whether to. I'd never traveled like that before and I didn't know whether to trust it. But the story I'm going to tell is when I was right before I started playing these nightclubs and things, I was trying to sing. I was like 12, 13 years old. So I was on a local Friday night show in Waco, Texas, which was just about 20 miles north of where I was born. And I was like one of the local guests. Just come out and sing two songs or whatever, or three or four, but whatnot. George Jones was a guest. And we're talking about, this is probably about 1956 or so, and I didn't know it, that he wrote a lot of songs for artists. So I went out and part of my show, I remember I sang a song called you done me wrong. Why, baby, why? Several other songs. I didn't realize he wrote them. When I come off stage, he met me or just saw me backstage. He said, well, thanks for my show for me. I didn't know what he meant.
• 18:51
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 18:51
  Speaker C: But he had written those songs for those artists. He wasn't popular then.
• 18:57
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 18:58
  Speaker C: Except locally in Texas. But then he became, you know, nationally known a few years later. But that's. That was my first meeting with George.
• 19:09
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 19:09
  Speaker C: But then like I say later on, maybe four or five years, four Years or so. I. I had to work a string of shows with him for a private promoter and he offered me a job. He was putting together his first band to tour with. And I wish I'd have taken it now, but at the time, I don't know, I just turned it down.
• 19:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you do what seems right at the time.
• 19:33
  Speaker C: Yeah. But like I say, I wish I'd have done it now. It might have been a good experience.
• 19:37
  Speaker A: Sure, sure.
• 19:38
  Speaker C: And it made me feel good that he wanted me to do it because he was already. He'd already had a song called White Lightning. Oh, yeah. And several other songs, maybe two or three others that were. Got national acclaim.
• 19:50
  Speaker A: Right.
• 19:50
  Speaker C: So he was on his way to being a big star and. But I don't know, something just scared me off about it.
• 19:57
  Speaker A: Right. But then you wound up recording with him.
• 20:00
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Later on I did. I recorded some with him.
• 20:03
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 20:03
  Speaker C: And. But he was a great singer. He was one of my favorite singers.
• 20:09
  Speaker A: Holy cow. Yeah. No, and great songwriter, like you said, man.
• 20:13
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 20:14
  Speaker A: And tremendous personality, I mean.
• 20:16
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 20:18
  Speaker A: That's only one joy. He had a storage life, that's for sure now, so. And I was mentioning Paycheck yesterday. Yeah. Now again, you met him in Dallas.
• 20:28
  Speaker C: Is that same thing. I made him at the Big D jamboree. He was a. He had already started getting some acclaim because as we talked about, he wrote a lot of great songs.
• 20:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 20:39
  Speaker C: And he wrote for a publishing company that had a record label called Little Darlin. And so within the last 20 years, they put out a compilation of the songs he had written. And you were talking about how what a great songwriter he was. But at this time, we're talking about early 60s, maybe 63 or 4. He was a guest on this Big D jamboree show that I played in the band and we actually became good friends, as I was telling you. We. We'd play our show and he would probably go to the. To the Longhorn Ballroom and finish out the night and I'd go play another club and they would. Sometime we'd meet 12, one o' clock at his motel room. I'd set up my steel and he'd get out his guitar and we'd sit there and sing and play, just me and him, all night long.
• 21:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, people know of paycheck. I mean, the average citizen listener from Take this Job and Shove it, you know, that. Which is, you know, a great song. People saw it as a joke song, but it's really, you know. And he still sings great. But I mean that version of Paycheck is only the latter day.
• 21:54
  Speaker C: It is, yeah. He was a totally different person. I mean, you know, as you well know, I mean people may know he got in a lot of trouble later on in life and wound up shooting a guy in a bar.
• 22:09
  Speaker A: Did some prison time.
• 22:11
  Speaker C: Yeah, he did some prison time and then when he came out, he still had a career and he started touring. But it, you know, there was a lot of complications to his touring, you know, and sure he didn't. Health wise, he didn't last very long. You know, he was, he probably died within 5, 6 years of his popularity. His biggest popularity right in the, I guess late 70s, early 80s right now.
• 22:36
  Speaker A: Now. But back in the, in the days when y' all were, were hanging out in Dallas together, he was clean shaven and, and you know, as we were talking about yesterday, wrote all these great ballads, you know, I think we sat
• 22:51
  Speaker C: there and played all night long and probably didn't even have a beer. Yeah, he certainly wasn't into any kind of substance at that time. I didn't know what substance was.
• 23:00
  Speaker A: Uh huh.
• 23:00
  Speaker C: You know, in this manner of what people have, you know, cocaine and all that.
• 23:05
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 23:06
  Speaker C: But no, I don't know if we even, we might have sipped on a beer. But we were just there to play music.
• 23:14
  Speaker A: Just about the music.
• 23:15
  Speaker C: Yeah, man, we were, we were all gung ho. We were young. Sure. Music, you know. Sure, sure.
• 23:21
  Speaker A: Well, so, so you know, you're, you're there playing with all these top names. What causes you to leave there and go to Nashville?
• 23:32
  Speaker C: Well, just because I wasn't doing it at the level I wanted to do studio work. I was doing some in Dallas, I was doing studio work and I was also playing on some jingles, local jingles, mainly playing guitar.
• 23:47
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 23:48
  Speaker C: The guy, a friend of mine would hire me to play because I could read music enough to play simple notes that he wanted on the street.
• 23:54
  Speaker A: Could read charts. Right.
• 23:55
  Speaker C: Yeah. But I went to Nashville to get into the mainstream studio work. That's what I really wanted to do. And eventually it took me a long way around the bush to do it, but I finally got to do most of what I set out to do.
• 24:10
  Speaker A: Nice. Now you went there on your own or with a group?
• 24:14
  Speaker C: Well, actually I went there, I was working. It was hard to explain. I was tied up with the service. I knew I was going to have to go into the service. I'd already been drafted. And in the meantime I found out I could leave the army draft thing and Join a Naval reserve. I'd still have to do active duty. It was a special plan they had during the Vietnam War. So I became a Naval reserve active member, but also had to do two years active duty. But in the meantime, while I was getting, getting this all set up, I was. People around Dallas knew I was going in the service. It's kind of hard to get a gig.
• 25:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:07
  Speaker C: And so I was calling around, trying to find if I could get some kind of work because I really didn't know when they were going to send me on active duty.
• 25:16
  Speaker A: Uh huh. It was like, it was like a woman being pregnant. They're like, oh, you're not gonna last long here. So I don't want to invest time in you.
• 25:24
  Speaker C: I know.
• 25:24
  Speaker A: Interesting.
• 25:25
  Speaker C: So just out of the blue, some guy named Billy Thompson, who used to work with Hank Thompson, the big western swing band leader, he was booked. He had a gig in Wichita, Kansas. He asked me if I'd want to go up and play on Saturday night with him. So we drove up there. But it was a club big enough to where they had guest artists. They had a regular band like us, but they had guest artists every week. And a guy named Roy Drusky, who was on the Grand Ole Opry was that guest that night. Well, ironically, his steel player was quitting the next day and they asked me if I'd want to start playing in his band. So it was a chance to get to Nashville. So I said yes. And I. In fact, he was playing the next day in Houston. Now this is Wichita, Kansas. To Houston. I drove all night long, get on the stage with him. No rehearsal, because I knew most of his stuff.
• 26:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:26
  Speaker C: And we played the show. I came back through Dallas. I didn't even ask the reserve unit if I could move to Dallas. I said, send my records to Dallas. Yeah, I move, I'm going to Nashville.
• 26:38
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 26:39
  Speaker C: So I went up there and started playing. And then I was supposed to go on active duty within two or three months, but somehow my records got misplaced or lost. They didn't call me to set up immediately leaving, and I didn't push it. So I wound up staying in Nashville another year, year and a half, getting established with the local musicians and working the Grand Ole Opry with Roy Drusky. And then finally they found out that I hadn't gone on active. Beauty. And I had to eventually go in and do my time.
• 27:16
  Speaker A: Caught you up.
• 27:16
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's how I got to Nashville.
• 27:18
  Speaker A: Well, it shows you. Timing and proximity is everything in life,
• 27:22
  Speaker C: you know, it's being at the right
• 27:24
  Speaker A: place at the right time and being prepared enough to take advantage of that opportunity.
• 27:29
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I always say it's who you know sometimes, but a lot of times it's who knows you.
• 27:34
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:36
  Speaker C: Because if they're not aware of who you are, you're not going to get anywhere anyway.
• 27:40
  Speaker A: Sure, yeah, yeah.
• 27:41
  Speaker C: But it. No, that's how I got to Nashville. It was a long way around, but.
• 27:45
  Speaker A: Right. Well, that must have been a thrill, huh? I mean, like having listened to the Grand Ole Opry with your parents on the radio as a kid, and then now you're playing. Did you. Did you call your mother up excitedly? Listen, make sure you listen to the opera. I'm playing this, of course, because I
• 28:04
  Speaker C: never thought I'd ever make it. I had the dream, right? You just never know, you know? And I didn't know if I was even good enough. I knew I played decent, but who knows, you know?
• 28:13
  Speaker A: Well, so. So when you get there. Well, let me go back a little bit now. As a young pedal steel player, who were you listening to? Who were you trying to emulate or what?
• 28:23
  Speaker C: Well, at that time, there was about three big steel players. There was Buddy Humans, I say big famous, right. Guy named Jimmy Day, who played similar to Buddy. And then there was a guy on the west coast called Ralph Mooney. He had a style that really, these other guys, they could play about anything. They could play melodies, they could play fast. But Ralph Moody just had a style where he played licks. If you heard him play on one song, you've heard him play on just about everything. But he had a style that stood out. He played on the. He started out playing with a guy named Wynn Stewart. That was a. He actually came from Bakersfield, that era and played in Vegas for a while and. And then he recorded in la. He had a big record called Wishful Thinking back in the early 50s. But Ralph Mooney played that style. It was just. It was a. You might call it a hokey style in a way, but it was just licks. It wasn't a melody of any sort. Most of these other players would fill with kind of a. If somebody was singing a line, they'd kind of fill a melody line that was similar to what the guy just sang. But Ralph would play licks, he'd just play fancy. Not fancy, but just outstanding licks. It would just pedal pulls and stuff like that. Like you'd bend a guitar string. Just effects more than anything.
• 29:51
  Speaker A: That sounded very, very much like the instrument. Very idiosyncratic, the sound of the pedal
• 29:57
  Speaker C: steel, as pedal steel does, is pull those notes. So he was just using it as it was set up to do.
• 30:03
  Speaker A: Right.
• 30:04
  Speaker C: But the other guys were a little bit more sophisticated players. That didn't take anything away from Ralph Mooney's playing, but they played more melodic. Ralph played. He played outstanding licks.
• 30:15
  Speaker A: So you kind of combined all those things.
• 30:17
  Speaker C: Yeah, I tried to play like any of them. It depends on who I was playing with and what song they were singing.
• 30:23
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 30:23
  Speaker C: And me not have played long enough or anybody here heard me play to have so called a style, I had to copy all these people. Right. And when you work with the Grand Ole Opry people, they kind of expect you to play their records the way they were recorded.
• 30:40
  Speaker A: Right.
• 30:40
  Speaker C: We played live because I. I hadn't really got in the studio then. And the Nashville producers wasn't going to trust a young new musician until you could prove yourself somehow.
• 30:53
  Speaker A: Right.
• 30:54
  Speaker C: But in fact, when I was working with Roy Drusky, I tried my best to get him to use me on some of his recording sessions, but he said his producer wouldn't allow him to do it. And I understand that because they can't take a chance. They're obligated to the record company to get a certain amount of songs done at a certain length of time for a certain price, and they can't take a chance on somebody that might show up, can't do the job, and then they'd have to replace him or go into extra expense.
• 31:26
  Speaker A: Right.
• 31:26
  Speaker C: So I understand it.
• 31:28
  Speaker A: So in those days, those recording sessions, I mean, people think about like Zoom, you know, putting something on a digital and sending it through email. At those times y' all were cutting on, were those mono recordings?
• 31:40
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. Everybody had to do it at once time.
• 31:43
  Speaker A: Right. So you'd have a big room. How many musicians would be in the room at one time? Maybe like 15.
• 31:50
  Speaker C: Well, yeah, sometimes. Let's take a. Let's take a Roy Orbison session, for instance. On one his record, you might hear a tremolo guitar. You might have somebody else playing guitar licks. You may have a bass guitar just kind of doubling the electric bass or the upright.
• 32:08
  Speaker A: The upright. Right. And maybe a Tic Tac base too.
• 32:11
  Speaker C: Sometimes you want to have a person for each one of those posts.
• 32:15
  Speaker A: Right.
• 32:16
  Speaker C: You couldn't. There wasn't no, no overdubs. We called it overdubs where you could add your part later. That came many years later.
• 32:23
  Speaker A: Right.
• 32:24
  Speaker C: So, yeah, you had to. You had to ever. What you wanted on that record had to be in the studio and everybody
• 32:31
  Speaker A: had to do their part perfectly every time you rolled tape because you didn't want to be the guy who. You wouldn't last long if you were the screwing up that you wouldn't last
• 32:42
  Speaker C: long and you wouldn't be very popular at that moment if you caused many retakes, right? Somebody, one person messed up, that's what it took.
• 32:49
  Speaker A: You know, even me thinking about at the beginning of my career, my recording career, it was all on, you know, on tape, you know, 24 track or 16 track tape. And you know, editing was all destructive. If you did an overdub, you necessarily had to, had to go over what you'd already played. So you had to be someone who could not only fix a mistake if there was one, but you know, do it in a way anyway. I think about the way we do it now. You know, you can do one or two takes and guys like, oh, we got it there. We can cut and paste, you know. And I think no, we used to have to walk out there and be an adult and stand in front of the microphone or stand up on the floor and play from start to finish without any mistakes. That's how we were trained.
• 33:36
  Speaker C: Oh, that's right. And I'll tell you how instilled that was in most people's minds. There was a lot of records that I say a lot. There were a few that were released with mistakes on them. Oh sure, because the record felt so good, right. And it wasn't a big outstanding mistake. But that was so instilled in even artists minds to. In later years, I wound up being on a compilation album with several artists. One of them was a guy named Webb Pierce. Had records in the early 50s that we're talking about, right? Where he had to do it, they had to do it all the way through. This was like in probably the late 70s, early 80s, I'm talking about. So he, Webb probably wasn't tuned in. He had, he didn't do as many studio singing sessions. He wasn't as popular as he was. So he wasn't tuned into the new way of recording. So we were recording multi track, you know, several. Where you could fix your part, right? Well, somebody mentioned I might have been me or something. I need to redo that section, you know, so and so Webb said, well, he ain't talking like that. He said, well, if it ain't got a mistake on it, it ain't gonna be a hit anyway. He was instilled into that old way
• 34:58
  Speaker A: of thinking, sure, sure, sure. Well, yeah, humans aren't attracted to perfection. Humans are attracted to humanity.
• 35:05
  Speaker C: There you go.
• 35:06
  Speaker A: So, you know, if the track has life to it, it's breathing, you know, the human mind will. Will gloss over something that. A slight imperfection for the greater purpose.
• 35:18
  Speaker C: Well, that's what they went for at the time and they still do, but now. So we have the capability of redoing parts and almost reconstructing the song. Sure, sure. But that's where they thought in the day and the record company wanted that. They just wanted something that felt good, that would get a lot of airplay and sell records and make the artists popular enough to tour.
• 35:40
  Speaker A: Right. Let's man this. It's such a, such a pleasure to, to. But let's, let's take a little break here and everybody out in the feral nation knows what to do. Go get yourself another drink and we'll be right back.
• 36:09
  Speaker D: Just south of Highway 90 a little east of the Regales In a bubble nearly off of a map we're flying on a trapeze. It's fine to be living in the sunshine Catch a few breakers breaking in the brine Cruise the coast in the catac Carolina Cruising over the state of mind why you can feel it when you're crossing the border Never too late to leave it behind A simple cure for a state of disorder when you cruise over the state of my life.
• 37:31
  Speaker A: And we're back, back inside the feral zone. Back with our guest, the great Doyle Grisham and my special guest, Ned Henry. I'm not sure which one is more special. They're both very special. I am Renee Coleman and as always on the podcast, you know this is a listener supported operation. We have the Venmo and paypal links right there in the show notes of every show. We have the, the Patreon links, the Troubleman podcast T shirt link, all that stuff. Follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram and rate. Review and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to it. Give us five stars. Helps us a lot. Cost you nothing. And you can find all my dates this summer on my Renee Komen Facebook page or the iguanas dates page, iguanas.com Enough of that. Back to our guest, the great Mr. Doyle Grisham sitting here with Ned Henry. Great Ned Henry. And so, Doyle, we were talking about your career in Nashville there. So you get into the recording scene now. I know you played with the great Lynn Anderson for many years out on the road.
• 38:44
  Speaker C: Yeah, I toured with her back in the mid-70s till actually, till she passed away in the 2010 or somewhere in that area. But no, she was. And she'd been a friend. She was one of the first people I met when I came to Nashville.
• 39:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 39:03
  Speaker C: In fact, she worked for a publishing company that had a record label called Chart Records, and I think that was. Might have been the first label that Paycheck was on. But anyway, back in those days, to make extra money, I wrote what they call lead sheets. To get a song published now, you just send in a cassette or a CD of that song, and they have to have a physical recording of the song. To copyright your song back in those days, you had to have a lead sheet. It had to be written out with the melody. Melody and the chords and the words. I did that on the side to make some extra money. And Lynn Anderson was a secretary at this chart record label thing. And actually they had an office right across the hall from Roy Drusky, who I was playing with on the Opry, and a guy named Lloyd Green, who was the top. One of the top steel players at that time around Nashville and still is. Yeah, but she was across the hall. So when I'd go to visit Roy Rusky or go to visit Lloyd, I'd stop in to say hello to her. And she found out that I could do this lead sheet thing. So I made a few bucks, you know, she'd give me songs to write so they could. So they could publish.
• 40:23
  Speaker A: Right.
• 40:23
  Speaker C: But you had to get them copywritten, you know? So that's how I met Lynn.
• 40:28
  Speaker A: Now, I guess Nashville is kind of one of those towns like New Orleans, a small town within. Within that community.
• 40:34
  Speaker C: It is. At that time, when I moved there, there was only 300,000 people there.
• 40:38
  Speaker A: Right. So if you got any kind of good or bad reputation in that town, the word traveled fast.
• 40:45
  Speaker C: It moved, right? Yes, it would.
• 40:49
  Speaker A: And, man, looking at this list of people that you record with during that period, it's crazy, you know, besides Lynn Anderson, England Dan John Ford Coley, Dr. Hook.
• 41:02
  Speaker C: I didn't know you had all those.
• 41:05
  Speaker A: Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul and Mary. Yeah, all these people. And that's when you first encountered Jimmy Buffett, huh? You first played on. On his records in the early 70s.
• 41:15
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 41:15
  Speaker A: Huh?
• 41:16
  Speaker C: Yep. It was probably about 72.
• 41:19
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 41:20
  Speaker C: In that area. How I met Jimmy, I was working with a group on the Grand Ole Opry. Now, this was after I'd worked with Roy Drusky. I'd already gone into service, done my time, and I was.
• 41:32
  Speaker A: Now, did you have to go to Vietnam?
• 41:35
  Speaker C: No, I was in. During that time frame, right.
• 41:37
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 41:38
  Speaker C: But no, I was actually. I got sent to an Airdale squadron. And I was a typist. They call them a yeoman Navy. And they just happened to. When they pulled my billet to send me somewhere, they sent me to this naval air squadron. It wasn't even. It's just a division of the Navy. It wasn't a real Navy, although I was a real Navy. And the essence of speaking. But no, I spent my whole. I think I was telling Ned, I spent my whole active duty and reserve time and never was on the ship, but I was in the Navy. Nice, nice.
• 42:13
  Speaker A: Well, good thing, because we needed you in the music business. Couldn't have you turn out to be cannon fodder. So you're meeting Jimmy after you'd done your time in the service.
• 42:27
  Speaker C: I was working with a group called Tom Paul and the Glaser Brothers. Now, Tom Paul went on to be associated with Willie Nelson in the outlaw thing. And when that first started. But anyway, at this time, we're talking about 1971, 72, we were recording with Tom Paul and the Glaser Brothers because I got to play on there. They had to deal with the record label where I could play on their record. And even though I was just in their band and hadn't really done an immense amount of popular. Well, I say popular studio work where people would know I was on the record. But anyway, we were recording the Christian and Tin Cup Cellist, two of Jimmy Buffett's songs he had written. Well, I didn't know him, you know, I'd never even heard of him. And we took a break, and this guy walked up to me and said, hi, I'm Jimmy Buffett. I just signed a major recording deal with ABC Dunhill Records, and I'd like you to play on my next record. That was surprising to me. Cause I couldn't see. We wasn't that far into the session. I couldn't see where he had heard me play enough to even want me to be associated with him. But I'll be darned. About two months later or a month or so, they called me and set up the sessions. And I did. From that time on, I did, I think, three other albums with him. About 75, he changed producers. Norbert Putnam started producing him instead of Don Gantt. And they cut Margaritaville. And that kind of pushed Buffett out of a kind of a country. He was almost country in his early days, but it pushed him more into a country. Kind of a pop rock, country. Right vein, you know. And actually from that was about 1975. I didn't see much of him. He'd call me to do an occasional overdub, but I didn't see him until 99 when he asked me to tour with him now.
• 44:29
  Speaker A: So back in 99, you did some more recordings with him that.
• 44:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, he called me back to do another complete album instead of just an overdub. And it's called Beach House on the Moon. And I didn't know it, but he was talking to people behind the scenes, said, I'm gonna have him in the band.
• 44:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now, the band at that time still had all fingers. Taylor was in the band, of course,
• 44:54
  Speaker C: Mike Utley, Robert Greenwich, who just unfortunately recently passed away.
• 44:59
  Speaker A: Great pan steel player, best in the world, probably. Right, Right. So that's when. So my band the Iguanas, was signed to Margaritaville starting in, like, 93. And so for about four years or so, we were opening for him, and all those guys were still on the band. So I got to hang around, have. Have dinner with all those guys every day and see them play. And they.
• 45:20
  Speaker C: Yeah, they were there when I came in, too. And plus, I know the Fingers and Mike Utley from the early Buffet recordings.
• 45:28
  Speaker A: Right.
• 45:28
  Speaker C: Back in 72, when Buffett really didn't even have a band, he was putting people on his label. I mean, his. On the album, he was naming his band Marvin Gardens. And people like that, you know, he'd make up names.
• 45:41
  Speaker A: Right.
• 45:41
  Speaker C: Because he didn't have a band.
• 45:42
  Speaker A: Right.
• 45:43
  Speaker C: And when he first started touring, he only took fingers, maybe, And a guy named Roger Bartlett, who was his first guitar player.
• 45:51
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 45:52
  Speaker C: And it was a long time, really, before he had a band. And probably the. The 80s or early 90s before he ever had the band that I came into in 99, I mean, we had 11, 12 people in the band.
• 46:07
  Speaker A: Right. That was a big band. Still had the. The PM Band, I think, was the rhythm section still at that time.
• 46:13
  Speaker C: Yeah, they were the Peter Murray Group. They were from St. Louis.
• 46:17
  Speaker D: Right.
• 46:17
  Speaker C: When Buffett, I think it was in the 90s or so, he decided to make a change from his normal. And they were already like a trio. And he hired them kind of as a nucleus of the band and then built around that kept Robert Greenwich and Utley and all those other people.
• 46:36
  Speaker A: Fingers still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 99, you start touring with Buffett now, you'd already had. You'd spent years in Nashville managing the studio and touring with Lynn Anderson. And I know, like, during all that time and I guess continuing at. When you were touring with Buffett, they don't tour 12 months a year. So you do a few months in. You go back to Nashville, do some sessions, and it was a good balance, huh?
• 47:05
  Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was good. And one. One kind of helped the other, or at least working with Buffett didn't hurt me any.
• 47:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:12
  Speaker C: At studio at that time, work had kind of. It started phasing out in the 90s, you know, because people could do it at home. AI wasn't in them, but. But they could do home recordings. It took people that were doing studio work, took them out of the studio. A lot of people lost some of their accounts and.
• 47:33
  Speaker A: Right.
• 47:33
  Speaker C: Plus some of the old timers that used to play on all the records, they were getting up in years and passing away.
• 47:41
  Speaker A: Right.
• 47:41
  Speaker C: But. But it was. Yeah, it was. I had to kind of split the difference a little bit. But we only toured about 10 weeks a year with Buffett. People think we were gone all the time, but we weren't. It was mainly from May until September. It was just a summer job, so to speak.
• 48:02
  Speaker A: Right. Y' all would go out and play all those sheds.
• 48:04
  Speaker C: Yeah. First time. The first year or two, we did three weeks at a time. We'd go out for three weeks, come back in, we might be off a month, and then we go out for three weeks more. Then it got down to where it was two weeks at a time. Right. And we went out a little bit more often, but it wasn't extensive. About 10 weeks a year.
• 48:25
  Speaker A: Now, going back, some of these people that you recorded with, you know, during all the time that you're. You're playing with Len Anderson, and then. And then during your Buffett tenure, mentioned some of them, as in the intro, you know, George Jones, Reba McIntyre, Randy Travis, Mel Tillis, Kitty Wells. I'm leaving some out, but, I mean, giants, you know, what was it like working with? So. So when you. When you recorded with Kitty Wells, was that a big session?
• 48:57
  Speaker C: Actually, I didn't. I don't know how that got.
• 48:59
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. All right.
• 49:00
  Speaker C: That's.
• 49:00
  Speaker A: That's not correct.
• 49:01
  Speaker C: Well, I'll tell you the. I read one day where somebody had listed I played with Ernest Tubb.
• 49:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 49:07
  Speaker C: He had carried a lot of famous musicians. That never happened either.
• 49:12
  Speaker A: Okay, well, that's how it gets into the zeitgeist.
• 49:16
  Speaker C: It sounds good. I'll accept it. It really didn't happen. Okay.
• 49:20
  Speaker A: All right. But you did record with George Jones?
• 49:22
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah, I did a little bit, you know.
• 49:25
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 49:25
  Speaker C: And then enough to say, I'll record with it.
• 49:27
  Speaker A: Right. And then an odd one here, Tiny Tim. Was that.
• 49:31
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 49:31
  Speaker A: You record? You did record.
• 49:32
  Speaker C: I did, but see, what people. You know, to explain who Tiny Tim was, he had that tip, though.
• 49:39
  Speaker A: Right, right. Appeared on Johnny Got Married on Johnny Carson show, was a very famous cultural figure during the late 60s, early 70s.
• 49:49
  Speaker C: Yep. But see, people don't realize he was like Jim Neighbors. He was a pop singer.
• 49:55
  Speaker A: Right.
• 49:55
  Speaker C: His voice was as mellow as Jim Neighbors, you know, if people ever really heard him sing. And so that's. We were doing a. An album of pop music with Tiny Tim. I think he was using his real name, which I can't remember.
• 50:12
  Speaker A: Right. I don't remember.
• 50:14
  Speaker C: In fact, I played more guitar on that than I did steel.
• 50:18
  Speaker A: Okay, so. So on sessions, you were not playing exclusively pedal steel. You're still playing with.
• 50:22
  Speaker C: Sometimes I'd play acoustic guitar and I might open up steel might be a session where they only needed steel on one song. And sometime I might play an extra guitar or electric guitar or something. But anyway, this was. I was working for a producer that I would play guitar or steel for. And because it was more pop stuff, I think I wound up because he was doing stuff. Some Ronstadt stuff and things that had had guitar.
• 50:55
  Speaker A: Sure, sure, sure. I guess steel kind of puts it into a certain. Certain genre right away. As soon as people hear that, they think, oh, this is a country record.
• 51:03
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:03
  Speaker C: But he was. He was just a Dean Martin type of singer.
• 51:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:07
  Speaker C: People don't realize that because he had his fame doing that gimmick novelty hit. Yeah, right. Right.
• 51:13
  Speaker A: Now, this other record I want to talk about that. This Randy Travis Duets record that you played on.
• 51:20
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 51:21
  Speaker A: And which. Which put you in. Now, was that a thing where y' all cut all the tracks and then other people came and did the. Did the vocals or were you there
• 51:30
  Speaker C: same time they were there?
• 51:32
  Speaker A: So all these people. Amazing. Roy Rogers. Roy Rogers. I mean, were you around Roy Rogers?
• 51:40
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 51:41
  Speaker A: He must have been a.
• 51:45
  Speaker C: He was pretty funny on his own.
• 51:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 51:47
  Speaker C: And he come in dressed in his Roy Rogers.
• 51:51
  Speaker A: Really?
• 51:51
  Speaker C: Yeah. He lived the part.
• 51:54
  Speaker A: Full singing, cowboy attire. Nice.
• 51:57
  Speaker C: And Dolly Parton was there. Chet Atkins, now Chet.
• 52:02
  Speaker A: Chet, Vern Gosden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Chisels in Stone. I love that song. Chisels in Dinstein.
• 52:09
  Speaker C: He was a great singer.
• 52:10
  Speaker A: Oh, man. Incredible.
• 52:11
  Speaker C: One of my favorite. But. And then a lot of the people. I tell you a funny story, though, about who's the blues guitar player?
• 52:20
  Speaker B: B.B.
• 52:20
  Speaker A: king.
• 52:21
  Speaker C: B.B.
• 52:21
  Speaker A: king.
• 52:22
  Speaker C: He was on that.
• 52:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 52:24
  Speaker C: Well, we were recording. We were recording. Or Starting to record. And I noticed they had me down in the mix a little bit. And sometimes they had. They would route everybody out to a mixer that was at your station and you could turn yourself up.
• 52:40
  Speaker A: Right.
• 52:40
  Speaker C: I'm not sure if that was the case or not during this time. But anyway, I didn't say anything because I knew I could. If I couldn't hear well enough to play, I could always. Mike could redo my part. And I figured they had me down because they didn't want to offend Bibi BB he might not like still. Well, I'll be out of the blue. He said, turn that steel guitar up. I want to hear some country music.
• 53:05
  Speaker A: Right.
• 53:06
  Speaker C: I could just see everybody in there turning red with rage. He actually said that.
• 53:12
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 53:13
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 53:14
  Speaker A: And so Chet Atkins, you know, the master. What was your experience with him?
• 53:20
  Speaker C: I really didn't see Chet that much.
• 53:22
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 53:22
  Speaker C: He. Well, I. Let me put this way. I was a Chet when I started playing guitar. His style was one of the first I Learned. So at 14 years old, I could play at. It sounded like Chet Etkins.
• 53:35
  Speaker A: Right.
• 53:35
  Speaker C: And when I came to Nashville, though, I used to pitch some songs every now and then for this Glazer publishing company. And I. At that time, you could actually walk in and. Or either. Maybe call ahead and make an appointment with Chet Atkins to just sit down and he would take your. It was reel to reel tapes. He would take a tape, play it. It play about 30 seconds to a minute. If they saw something they liked, they'd say, I'll keep that. Or if they didn't, they'd take it
• 54:08
  Speaker A: off and say he was still listening to song pitches.
• 54:11
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I was around him a lot on some of the TV shows, but I never talked to him a lot.
• 54:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 54:17
  Speaker C: And I would like to have. But I just didn't like to bug those people. Sure, sure. The same way on the Randy T.R. travis Sessions. He was there, but I didn't really speak to him.
• 54:26
  Speaker A: Right. Right. Now it's. It's interesting how. How many guitar players of all these different genres, you ask them and they go, well, Chet Atkins, you know, like Johnny Winter, you know, he talks about. He played the way he played technically because of Chet Atkins, Sonny Landreth. When I talked to him, he said,
• 54:46
  Speaker C: chet Atkins, what is luck with. I was playing guitar, you know, Chet had that style. It was kind of the thump style where you play the bass with your thumb, you pick the notes with your fingers. Well, that was his style. But I learned a lot when Chet wasn't using that Style. He was playing other things that had neat harmonies to them. So I learned a lot about different versions of harmonies by listening to some of his records.
• 55:13
  Speaker A: All the inversions, he could play all the.
• 55:15
  Speaker C: Play that one style.
• 55:16
  Speaker A: Right.
• 55:17
  Speaker C: He would just stretch out and play like a normal guitar player. Right.
• 55:21
  Speaker A: Man, oh, man. Well, we're kind of on the downslope of the podcast here, wrapping up, but, you know, I can talk to you for five hours and maybe we'll come back. Well, you know, Ned was saying yesterday we weren't sure we were going to be able to pull this off here this early in the morning. He was saying, well, if this gig goes well, which it looks like. I mean, the gig is very well subscribed so far. We have lots of tickets sold. You know, all indications are this is going to be a big hit tonight. I had people calling my wife yesterday going, so this band that Renee's playing with, that looks incredible.
• 55:59
  Speaker B: It is incredible.
• 56:00
  Speaker A: And so we're going to do that tonight, and hopefully, you know, we'll be able to come back in the fall, maybe do another one and have you backdoor Doyle, have. Have you on the podcast.
• 56:10
  Speaker C: I appreciate you rearranging your schedule to do it this morning.
• 56:13
  Speaker A: Oh, well, man, you have to seize life, seize opportunities, as we've discussed already. So, Ned, to have Doyle here sitting in your home and playing on your gig tonight, it's got to be a dream come true for you.
• 56:32
  Speaker B: Well, this whole thing is amazing. First of all, I mean, this. All you guys playing with me on this project. All you guys.
• 56:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker B: You and John Grow and John Fall and Russ, Dex Daly is incredible. And have Doyle on this is. I mean, I can't imagine for me a more full circle.
• 56:49
  Speaker A: Right.
• 56:50
  Speaker B: Kind of moment. I've been a Jimmy Buffett fan since I was a little kid.
• 56:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 56:54
  Speaker B: When I met him at a restaurant and he was friendly to me and he. And then he played guitar at the restaurant after dinner.
• 57:01
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 57:01
  Speaker B: And when I was looking at colleges when I was in high school, we planned our college tour around Buffett shows up and down the East Coast.
• 57:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:08
  Speaker B: Driving up, down in a van and then. And I've loved pedal steel. It's always been my favorite instrument since I was a little kid.
• 57:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:15
  Speaker B: And to. To become acquainted with and then become a friend of Doyle is absolutely amazing. And I mean, that's. That's a dream come true, for sure.
• 57:23
  Speaker C: It goes both ways. Well, because he's got great songs, and I enjoy playing on the. They're so melodic. It gives me room to think and to play what I feel.
• 57:34
  Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah. I was going to compliment you on the record came out so good, man. You know, it has. I was telling you the other day in rehearsal, like, listening to the whole thing a couple of times, you know, hearing it finished, which I never heard it finished until recently, you know, I did my part and we moved on, you know, and you put all this other stuff on it here back, and it's all mixed and it's like, wow, man, that really. That really holds up, man. Really. And. And it has a quality that for some reason I can't put my. Well, I can possibly, but this Beach Boys record, the Beach Boys Love youe, which was recorded as a solo Brian Wilson record that. Then the record company said, well, we need a Beach Boys record, so let's take this and put all the guys singing on it. We'll overdub them and that. But it has a. A certain, like, playful innocence to it, but an earnestness, you know, humor. Has all this stuff and the playing is great and the songs are, you know, really, really hold up, man. And your singing is really solid.
• 58:37
  Speaker B: I really appreciate it. But y' all are the ones that really brought this to life. And I really appreciate the Beach Boys comment because I have people ask me what kind of music it is, and I never know what to say. But I've been a Beach Boys fan forever. I really, really love harmony.
• 58:50
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 58:51
  Speaker B: And maybe that comes through in the music.
• 58:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that stuff and some of the voicings of the vocals, or maybe that's part of what catches me or something. But, yeah, something ineffable about it that I just started dawning on me. Oh, wow. For some reason, this reminds me of that. Even though I know you're not going for that, but, you know, it's American music, so, you know, it's all. It's all cross pollinated in every possible way. Well, man, looking forward to playing the gig tonight and, you know, so glad to have met you, Doyle, and thanks again for coming on the podcast.
• 59:27
  Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
• 59:28
  Speaker A: So for our guests, the great Doyle Grisham, great Ned Henry. I am Renee Komen from Inside the Feral Zone signing off.
• 59:38
  Speaker D: Woke up drowning in the icy black ocean in the middle of a long, long summertime dream
• 59:52
  Speaker A: where the sun was
• 59:53
  Speaker D: shining in all of the commotion Swallowed up by silence so it would seem. I could do much worse. Yeah. But I could do better. That's how it really feels at this stage of the game. It's a state of mind. You try to make your own weather? In a manner of speaking? Time is aflame? And so I'm walking With my heart wide open? I wanna feel life deep? Wherever I go? It's a state of mind? You try to make your own? Own weather? Most of the time? We're all in it together? We're on the same road? Sam? And so I'm walking With my heart wide open? I want to feel love deep? Wherever I go? It's a state of mind? Try to make your own weather? Most of the time? We're all in it together? We're on the same road? We're all in it together? We're on the same road? Ra.