Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Jeff Hanna

Transcript

Jeff Hanna · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Jeff Kenna, the Nitty Nitty Dirt band. Jeff,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Thanks Bob, happy
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to be here. Man. So the band just released a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: new album, Dirt. Does Dylan tell me the backstory? Why Dylan?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Why now? Well? Um, we we wanted to get into
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the studio with this latest version, this latest lineup from
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the band, and uh, we had not done any recording.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: We thought, you know, we know, we talked about doing
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a single source songwriter sort of you know, one source,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan in this case, and he was the name
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: that kept coming up. It just seemed a real natural,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: uh spot, because he has a zillion songs and you
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: can go anywhere musically with his material. Um, so there
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: you go. That was kind of it. And we've we've
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: recorded some of us. We recorded you Ain't Going Nowhere
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: several years ago, which is one of our favorite Darling tunes.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah that listen from the opening track on Sweetheart of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the Rodeo. Not enough people knew that back then, but
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: one of the great tracks. When are the great tracks? Absolutely? Okay,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So when you go to make a record today because
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: you've been in the business and excess of fifty years.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: The old days, pre internet, you had to get a label.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: They gave you the money. How did you do with
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: this time? This time? Actually, when we went into the studio,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: we did not have the label. We just went and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: took out a loan, you know, basically, and started recording.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: We started recording this album. Wait wait, wait, what what
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: one sect? Did you literally take out a loan? No?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: But okay, you'd ever know with people's finances, well, you know, Uh, no,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: you don't. And we were lucky enough to have a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: few bucks saved up from twenty nineteen. We actually started
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: recording this album uh in early March of and recorded
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: eight tracks. Jumped down the bus on marchall on March
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: eleven and played uh story. We jumped on the bus
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: on March tenth and played our first and last shows
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: of March eleventh. In March twelfth, that was it. Curtain
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: came down, end of story. We got guys that live
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: all over the country. There four of us live in Nashville,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: but uh two of the two of the longtime guys,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Fadden and Bob Carpenter. Bob lives in Los Angeles
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and Jimmy lives in Sarasota, Florida. So then lockdown came
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and that was it. We just sat for a while.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Ray Ray Kennedy, who's our producer, um and I'm sitting
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: in his studio right now. Uh he uh basically locked
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the studio up as well. There was no activity. You know,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: everybody kind of hunkered down, as they say, Okay, when
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: things started to loosen up, very specifically, when did you
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: get back in the studio. You know, I think I
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: think the first time I even came by the studio
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: was probably in you know, early summer of uh, you know,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: we were all getting out and about, but it was,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: you know, we were I don't know, we were pretty
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: careful about where we went. And Ray Ray had been
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: doing some work with Lucinda Williams he produces Lucinda and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and Steve Earle as well, and uh as as as
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the summer started coming to a close, we started talking about,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: you know, let's get back in there and listen to
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: these let's listen to him and we had the rough
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: mixes that we had done in early March, but we
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: we weren't sure if this album was ever again. We man,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't know what was going on at all. Nobody
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: knew if they're ever gonna tour again, Nobody ever knew
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: if they were going to finish records that were you know,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in the process and the progress, and uh, we finally
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: got back in in I think guess it was fall
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: of and we started talking about The Times They Are Changing,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: which we which was the last track we recorded in
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the first batch of sessions, and it was like, well,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you know, let's finish that. It's all it's always timely,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's it's one of Dylan's you know, best known, but
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: also just it's on point, always that tune, you know.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And that's when we started calling up our friends and
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: see if they wanted to come in and sang on
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the song. So specifically who sang on I mean, I know,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: but from my audience, who's sang on The Times They
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Are Changing? Jason isbel Uh, the War Entreaty, Michael Trotter,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Jor and Tania Trotter, Um, Roseanne Cash, Steve Earle Uh
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and my wife Matresa actually came in. Matraca Burd came
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: in and sang harmony with the track that we do
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: with Roseanne Okay, do you have ongoing relationships with all
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: those people or was that through Ray? How did those
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: people ultimately get on the record. It was it was
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: mostly just because I've known these folks. You know, I've
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: known Steve since the eighties when we got we both
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: we both kind of got to Nashville the same time
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: hit music Row in the early eighties. Steve roll Uh,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Roseanne I've known for a very long time. We've done
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: recording in the past. Um Uh, we're entreaty. Actually met
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: them um at Tell your RDE Bluegrass festival back in
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Emmy Lou Harris introduced us and we hit it off
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and we've been friends ever since. Jason Isabel I've known
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: for I guess I've known Jason for on ten years,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I think. So it was, you know, I I figured
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: that the appeal of the song would be enough, I
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: think to get them in the door. And they're they're
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: really generous, wonderful folks. Everybody that took part in the recording, Well,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: that begs a question. But living in Nashville a long time,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: you started in southern California. What's different about Nashville than
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: all these other music places. You make it sound like
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: everybody's living, you know, in the same little village and
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: they all come over. What's it really like, you know
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: before before COVID let's let's give that coffee up. Now
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: that's a good point. Um, well, i'll tell you. You know,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: you and I have talked about this in the past.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: But we started in southern California. We can go into
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the sort of history of that later if you want.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But um, when we came up in the folk clubs
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in the late sixties, there was a real community going on.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: You know, all the folks that hung out at the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Ash Grove and the Troubuta or we would go to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: each other's houses or apartments or back porches or whatever,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: get out the guitars and start singing, you know, and
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and you know, my my songwriter friends, we swapped songs
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: as as time went on and as people started becoming famous.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: You know, uh, they've hit the road. We never see
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: each other. And Los Angeles says, you know, is a
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: much more you know, geographically spread out kind of scene.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So the little pockets of living up in the Hollywood Hills,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: you know, Laurel Canyon, great example, gets used a lot better,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: was a real deal. Um, that kind of change and
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: people started moving out to the valley or to the
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: beach or whatever, or they're just on a Jettera tour
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: bus somewhere. When I moved to Nashville in immediately it
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: was like, holy cow, this community thing really reminds me
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: of what it was like in l A in the
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: late sixties and early seventies. Um so, and I love
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that and I still I still believe that that exists
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: to a large degree. You know, Okay, let's go back
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to the record. So he decided to do Dylan, you
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: had certain trucks cut, you were finishing times. They are
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: a change, and did you have to do more recording?
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And how did you ultimately choose is what songs to do?
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: The sonctuous is an interesting one. You know, his catalog
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: has hundreds of songs in it, and they're all great. Uh.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: The the sort of acid test for us was if
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: we sounded good singing and playing them, you know, we started.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: You know, there's so many of Dylan. So many of
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Dylan's tunes to me sound great with an individual singing
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: them in terms of like cover land, um. And then
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: there are others that you know have maybe bigger, wider
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: chorus is more anthemic. Uh so we we know, we
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: just started breaking it down and we weren't you know,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: we ended up with a period that really kind of
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: starts in the sixties and ends in like the mid
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: late seventies in his catalog. That wasn't by design. Those
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: were just the tunes that landed the best with us.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So we got in with you know, we got we
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: started with about eighties songs and by the time we
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: got to the studio, we whittled it down to about
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: thirty or forty. Then we started playing them and the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: stuff again that that really you know, stuck to the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: wall were the ones we stayed with. And so what
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: are some of your favorites on the album? Oh? Man,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: my favorites. I mean it's really I love the times
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: they're changing. I gotta start with that. I mean that
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: that came out so great, and I love I love
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the generational and and just you know that the just
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: you know, different voices coming from different different rooms and
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: it was just, I don't know, kill me. I'm very
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: fond of that. Uh. I shall be released with our
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: friends Larkin Poe, Rebecca and Megan Level. Those sisters are
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: just they're incredible and they came in and sang and
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: make and Megan also played lap steel guitar. Beautiful Job
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Girl from the North Country, which features actually my son Jamie,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: who's been in the band for you know, we got
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the last year, but he started playing with us in Uh.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: He sang lead on that, so you know, the father
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: son thing is deep. You know, we got the blood
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: harmony going. And I love that track. Ross Holmes, our
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: field player and Bob Carpenter, uh, who played accordion on
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that track, just created this kind of Celtic cinematic landscape. Uh.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: And I just I just love it for that reason.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: And plus it's a great song. I love the tune
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Country Pie, which is when I was surprised you did that,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: because you know, nothing's really obscure, but that's not something
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that comes to mind of the average person. No, it
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: does not. And but actually Bob Carpenter brought that up.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I remembered it in passing from Nashville Skyline.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: But it was one of those tunes like Randy Day
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Women twelve and thirty five where they're just having a blast.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And he said, well, you know, if what if we
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: cut it, I don't know try to harken back to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the jug band days, which totally landed well with me
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and Jimmy because we were the jug Me and Fat
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and we were the drug band guys. And we ended
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: up recording it live in the studio. We sat around
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: one microphone and kind of moved in for our solos,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and it just was so much fun. It was. It
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: was really cool and I love it because it does
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: it sounds like jug band music with a little gypsy
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: jazz thrown in on the fiddle, the violin um, and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it's just it's a Dylan rob you know. He has
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: a great sense of humor, clearly, that's for sure. So
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the album is done, how do you get a label involved?
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: That was? This is beyond, This is behind the scenes.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: This is where guys like our manager, Brian Panics, and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: our other manager. We've got three of them, Jason Hanky,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: who's great, and Ken Levitan, who is that you know,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the head honcho over there at Victor Management. They put
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: their heads together and they sent around, They sent some
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: tunes around. We had a little amount a handful of
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: stuff that we had finished up, and uh, we ended
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: up with these folks up in New York called m
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: R I, which is interesting. We all went m A right,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that's perfect for a bunch of old Now is that
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the m R I that's part of Megaphors? It is yep. Well,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Megaphord has got a long history of show of hard
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: rock stuff. I know, they did put out Sammy Kershaw Records, etcetera.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So so you make a deal with the m R I.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Needless to say, the landscape is completely different. There are
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: so many people playing. What are your expectations. Well, first off,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: it's a partnership with our little imprint which is m
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: g dB Records. Um, we just you know, the fact
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that they love the record really helped, you know, and
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: they want they pointed up Pony depth with some you
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: know promotion money and publicity money that really helped you know. Uh,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and they have a great distribution, uh team, So we're
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: really happy to be over there. It's funny my son Jamie,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: who's like, you know, he and Ross Holmes are the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: kids in our band. Um relative to all of us
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: especially they're uh, you know, Jamie is like m R.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I love that, you know, because they did the early
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Metallica records, if I believe think you know, and it's
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: like this is so cool Dad, So yeah, I love that.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: But they you know, they've they've done a bunch of stuff.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: They I think they got there. You know, they got
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: their toes in the jam band world as well, and
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: all of it made sense. That's like, as you know,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: anything goes in the world we live in. As far
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: as records, now, we've done it up and down every
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: which away, you know. So but it's it's just fun
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to be putting out a record. Okay, let's go back
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to the beginning. So you're born in Detroit, you end
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: up in Long Beach filling those details, Well, my dad
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: when I was eight years old, my dad was in
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: he started in the building car he was you know
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: that dad was several generations of Detroit guys. So he
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: was in a car business building them. Actually he was
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: an engineer and he was also an aeronautical engineer, so
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: he was like, you know, knew how to build an
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: airplane basically. So he got into the aircraft business. And
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: we moved to Phoenix in nineteen fifty when I was
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: eight years old and fifty five, and that was a
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: great place to grow up. I mean it was you know,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: we were all like, you know, all the cowboys in
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the movies and TV, and like there's all this desert
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and sawaro cacti and cactuses and it was it was
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: really fun and you know, but it was kind of
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: like that period of my life was kind of like
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: being an army brat because but then my dad got
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a job offer about six years later in uh In, Colorado,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: So we moved to Littleton, Colorado, and uh he worked
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: for Martin Marietta back then, and then a couple of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: years later he got offered a job with North American
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Aircraft in uh. I believe they were based out of Downy, Um, California,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: so home of the carpenters. And that's right exactly. And
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I got some carpenter stories, but you don't need him.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Uh great folks, Uh, but he uh yes, So we
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: moved up. We picked up and left Colorado and moved
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: to kind of inland because I love the beach. But
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: we you know, the first morning I woke up in
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Downy it was like, oh man, look at that fog,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: look at that concrete. Where's the beach, where's the trees?
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Because I just left Colorado, by the way, so I
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: was a little bummed out. Then we moved across town.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: We were renting a house when we moved across town
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to North Long Beach, and uh, I went to Jordan
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: High School, North Long Beach, California. Okay, filling in some details.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: How many kids in the family. I had three brothers. Yeah,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: well I had two more brothers. Sorry, And where were
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: you in the hierarchy? I was a middle kid, Okay.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: With all that traveling, you know, either you end up
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: isolated as a kid, or you feel that you you
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: get the skill to fit in. And did you get
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: that skill? Did that help you ultimately in the music world? Well,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: you know, first day of any new school for any
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: kid anywhere, I don't, you know, regardless of their social
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: skill set, it's tough, you know. Uh, But I think
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I think the first day that I went to Jordan's
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I met this kid named Bruce Kunkle, who ended up
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: being one of the founding members of the Dirt Band,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and we hit it off. In North Jordan High was
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: kind of sounds like a movie. I mean, it's it's
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: like Rebel without a cause. I think I think of
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: the I can't remember what was this lad? Was a
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Jim Stark? Was that the name of the James Dean character.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: I think it was. I want to say, I don't remember, yeah,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: you know, and sorry, i'd look it up, but you know, anyways,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: but I remember James Dean's character just come into that
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: new school, you know, and he's the outsider, and you
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: got kind of the you know, we'd call him the socias.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: You know that the absolutely remember that you got. Okay,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: now we're speaking the same language, Bob, the socials and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the greasers. And also throw in the surfers also, so
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: even though I'd never surfed, I became one. I became
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: a surfer, you know U And Bruce was one of
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: those kids. So we bonded. We started talking. It's like, hey, man,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: you got a guitar, and yeah, I got a guitar.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: I don't really know how to play it. This is
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: me talking to Bruce and he said, well I do.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So we were like also folkies. We love acoustic music.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So he showed me some chords and he showed me
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: where the chords went to, what part of a song,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and it was like the clouds parted. Man, it was
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: such a it was a huge moment for me. It
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: was an epiphany. And we you know, we became great pals.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Right then give us a year. This is nineteen sixty.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I think it started in the fall of sixty one, Okay,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and this is when the folk boom is really starting
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to rage. Oh yeah, ultimately hooting Nanny on TV, etcetera. Okay,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: so you start playing guitars with Bruce tell us the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: next step in your musical evolution. We were like and
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: we were in the musical evolution. It was it was
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: kind of sample. I can't remember. Also, I had an
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: older brother, my brother Mike, and he would bring he
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: brought home at Kingston Trio Record and he brought home
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: he might have done that while we're still living in Littleton, Colorado,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: kingson Tira Trio record, Uh, Peter, Paul and Mary. I
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: loved both of those groups. I mean they were then.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Joan Bayaz and Joan Bayez was like my gateway drug
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: because she was on Vanguard Records, and Vanguard Records always
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: advertised their other artists and their other releases on the
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: inner sleeve of the vinyl. So number one is I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: love Jones voice, still love her voice. But she recorded
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: with a band called the Green Bar Boys, a great
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: bluegrass band. UH appeared on several several tracks on her records,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and that was like, man, I liked that music. That's
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: kind of cool. I've never really heard blue grass, so
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: she got me into that. But then I started looking
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: at these pictures and there's this guy Doc Watson on
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the back of the record. Yeah, and there's Mississippi John
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Hurt on the back of the record. And I'm like, oh,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: both this is interesting, Claire, I think Clarence. Actually, I'm
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: trying to remember. There was another label called folk Ways,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: which was another huge deal for us as folk puppies,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: you know. Uh. That created kind of a deeper dive.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And then also Bruce and I weren't afraid to like
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: hit we neither of us had a driver's license at
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: this point, like fifteen. We weren't afraid like hitchhike down
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach was which was
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a huge club in the sort of fledgling folk rock
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: and uh folk music, uh circuit, so we could see folks,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you know, or go all the way up to l
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: A and go to the Ash Grove, which was really
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: our hang as well. This is you can see people
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: like I got to sit ten ft away from Mississippi
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: John Hurt, you know, and watch that guy play when
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I was sixteen, uh, and that was life changing for me.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Same deal with Doc Watson, same deal with Bill Monroe,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the New Law City Ramblers, you know down in long
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of those folks, oh Man, Sunny Terry and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Brownie McGhee two of my absolute favorites. A lot of
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: those folks would you know, play the ash Grove and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: getting the car and drive down to Huntington's Beach and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: play the Golden Bear as well. So you can see
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: him twice in the course of two or three weeks.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Lightning Hopkins, Merle Travis, it was it was man kid
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: in the candy store, and the irony was I mean,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say the irony, but that the interesting thing
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: for me as a kid, how fortunate we were, as
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: these surfer kids from l A getting to hear, getting
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: to have this experience that we didn't grow up in
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Kentucky or in the Mississippi Delta or in the you know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the hills in North Carolina and have those back porch experiences.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And yet there we were getting to see our heroes
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: up close. It was really great. Okay, so you're immersed
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: in the Sceme tell me more about your particular playing
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and the Mason element of your career. Well, you know,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: we at the tail end of my high school. Uh,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: when I was a senior in high school, me and
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: my buddy Bruce in another couple of pals of mine
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: start had a jug band called the Illegitimate Jug Band
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: because we thought that was a cute name. Plus we
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: didn't have a joke. So okay. But for those of
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: us who were around back then, jug bands were a thing.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Of course on the East Coast you had the gym
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Queskin jug Band and School Loving School Queskin was like
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. Okay, So explain for people who missed that
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: scene what a jug band was. Well, you know, musically,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you take a lot of the mountaineer roots, country blues
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about acoustic blues and ragtime music, and you
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: throw them all into a cattle kettle, you know, and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you at this gumbo. Uh. That's what jug band music
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: list us. And it was again the question jug band
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: were like they were so their imaginations were broad and wide,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and their talent was deep. I mean questing himself, great
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: guitar player, singer, Uh, Jeffrey Mulder, his future wife Maria
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Dematto I believe her name was when she before they
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: got married yet Maria Mulder, Oh my gosh, Fritz Frisch, Richmond,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: the guy that played upright, I mean sorry Washtub Base
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: and jugg Gregor jug player, uh mel Lyman on harmonica.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, they were they were so good, just killed us.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: So we learned a bunch of their tunes right away.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: And then the Love and Spoonful came along, you know,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and there here here, these guys were writing their own
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: music and kind of you know, I mean, to me,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the two bands that I love the best in the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: mid sixties American bands were the Birds on the West
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Coast in the Spoonful on the East coast. They brought
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: it off from me and again me and Kunkle, you know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: we stuck out our thumbs and hitchhicked up to Hollywood
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: to see both the Birds and the Spoonful play at
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: this club called The Trip. That was an amazing experience
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: as well. You know, here's these kids, you know. A
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: year later, the Dirt Band were opening at the Golden
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Bear for the Love of Spoonful, which is pretty cool, okay,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: but you u you get together with two friends and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you form a band under what the impossible drug being,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, and take it up from there
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: as the old legitimate jug band. But then, you know,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and a couple of months later, I'm going to college,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: which was really brief Long Beach Community Community College, which
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: we call a long was Long Beach City College. We
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: all call it Long Beach Shitty College because you know
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: it made sense. Uh. And first semester, you know, I
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: spent more time sitting on the common with my acoustic guitar,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: hanging out with these folks that are really just meeting there.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: You know. Uh, it was so you know, it was
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: like a snapshot of of young folkies sitting on the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: lawn ditching school. And I met this guy named Ralph
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Barr And I met a kid named Les Thompson. I
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: met a kid named Jimmy Fadden Bruce Kunkle. By the way,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: it was going to another school because he got better
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: grades than me. He went to Long Beach State College. Um,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and uh, so here's Bruce Bruce across town. But Ralph
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and Les and Jimmy and I'm leaving somebody out jeus h,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: it'll come to me. Uh anyway, so we're sitting around
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and we're talking about where do you guys hang out. Well,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: there's this guitar store in Lung Beach called McCabe's, and
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: there were two of them, the famous one that you're
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: you know, which is of the San Monica But yeah,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: and there were there were two. At one point there
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: were three of them. There was one that was in
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the Ash Grove and I think they lived they lived
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: in the True Bodover for a little while, and the
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: one that's been in Santa Monica forever. And there's Long
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Beach McCabe. So we started hanging out after school or
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: ditching school and hanging out at McCabe's. And you know,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: they were the guys. The proprietors were really kind to
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: us and let us drink their coffee and sit around
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and pull guitars off the wall, and we all learned
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: a few skills as guitar repairman as well. So we're
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: sitting around and we're going, well, we got a bunch
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of guys, why don't we have a band? Why not
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: start a band? Was like, well, none of us really
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: wanted to dive into like allectric guitars based and drums.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: We love the Beatles like everybody, but you know, we
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: we were that was we were really acoustic snobs. So well,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and I said, hey, how about a joke band? You
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: guys ever played jug band music? And then yeah, we
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: like question. I said, Ah, so fun, it's really great.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I'll call my buddy Bruce up. So me and Bruce
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: and Less and Jimmy and rap uh got together and
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: you know, oh and eventually this guy, Jackson Brown joined
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the band. I should point out that was the sixth guy.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Uh we uh so we just went to my mom's
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: garage and started, uh you know, practicing for nothing. By
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the way, because we weren't playing any gigs. There's a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: little club in southern California called the Paradox, which if
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you know the song the Barricades of Heaven Jackson song
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: he name checks it, and a bunch of us you
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: know kids hung out in that club. Is a really
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: tiny place, but they had a talent contest going on.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: So the jug Our jug Band, which we a long
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: story about the name, but if you want to hear it,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you in a minute. We jumped up there
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and kind of made up a name and jumped up
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and started playing these talent contests, and when they kept
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: carrying us over a week, one week two, you know, Uh,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: there was no one number, by the way, it was
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it was yeah, anyways, it wasn't the voice. Um, well
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: what just because I can't remember where was the paradox.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: The paradox was in the city of Orange, California, right
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: next to Tustin, California. So uh, as we jokingly said,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: it was behind the Orange Curtain, right of course, you know.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So we were hanging out there and and uh there
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: was a guy that met named Steve Noonan that hung
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: out there who was among the first guys I knew
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that actually wrote his own songs, Uh Jackson who I
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: met Jackson when he was fifteen years old. I was sixteen. Um.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: And uh, the guy Greg Copeland, who was a great
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: poet and it was a fine lyricist, and he, you know,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: has shown up on a lot of Steve's Steve Steve
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: uh sorry Noonan's records. Uh and I Jack Jackson and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: he wrote them together as well. And Tim Buckley, the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: great Tim Buckley. Those guys are hanging out and there's
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Mary McCaslin and Jennifer Warrens and uh a
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: lot of cool acts came and played there. It was.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: It was a good comedy room too. You see, people
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: like Pat Paulson, this kid named Steve Martin showed up
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: there once in a while. But uh uh so we
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, that's kind of where we honed
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: our skills. Was was the paradox. It is also the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: first place that they actually paid us to play, which
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: which was May nineteen sixty six. Okay, at this point,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: is it the nitty Gwitty Dirt Band? Yeah, it is,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: it is, So tell us the story of the name. Well,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we're sitting around trying to come up with
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: a name that didn't sound like everybody else's, you know,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the Grateful Dead, We're Mother Something's
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: mother and Warlocks whatnot. But before the Warlocks there there
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: was a jug band name too. There there's something yeah
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I can't either, but it's there on the Google or
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: the wiki. Yeah, you know, and the jug band thing
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: was it was a deal. Um, so we didn't want
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: to call ourselves a jug band. That maybe that carried
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: over from illegitimate, but it was like one of the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: guys the thing was Ralph Barr said, how about the
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: dirt band, because dirt really made sense to us. You know.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: We all had these dusty cowboy boots and uh, it
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: just kind of, I don't know, it's like depression era tunes.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You're seeing these the sort of Woody Guthrie era black
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and white photos in your head, and a lot of
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: that music came up from that era, the thirties. So
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: that was great. So we're the dirt band for about
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: a week once again in my mom's garage. Um, and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I was going the tail end of my college career.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: I was in a political science class and my professor
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: said something about let's just get right down to the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: real nitty gritty, and I'm like, I don't. I didn't
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: hear another word he said. And I came into the
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: next rehearsal I went, I got it, you know, because
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the nitty gritty just sounded like the sound of a
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: washboard to me. Plus they had this great sort of
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: getting right down to it, you know, and in terms
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of nitty gritty, dirt band kind of worked. I can't
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: say it real fast or after midnight, you know, but it's, uh,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: it's stuck. So there you go, Naty goody dirt band.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Love it or hate it there it is okay, so
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: you're getting paid at the paradox. What's the next step. Well, um,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: we had a couple of different guys that were this
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: started sniffing around to be managers. There was a guy
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: named Billy James that was Jackson Brown's friend. Who was
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: you know Billy's I think he probably have heard of Billy.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Billy was in an our man at Columbia Records, and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: he he has some ends in the record biz and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: he was starting to manage folks. I think he was
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: kind of managing Jackson on the side. And then, uh,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Jackson was out to leave the band and this mutual
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: friend of all of ours, John McEwen, uh, started playing
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: with us. And John's brother was a fleet Bill McEwen
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: was a fledgling manager at that point. He had a
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: couple of acts, a couple of folk acts he was
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: working with. You know, he hadn't really busted into the
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: big time, but he he was enthusiastic, a really hard
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: working guy. So we went with Bill um and he uh,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: you know, we made a little demo at gold Star
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Studios up in Hollywood, I know, right, and uh, we
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: started going around. We would actually remember we went to
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Capitol Records in I think the guy's name was al
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Do Lory, who's an a and our guy. Uh, we
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: did a little demo for them, a little kind of
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: audition in the studio. The Dirt Band were really popular
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: at this point, I mean in southern California, lines around
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the block. We're doing three sets to night Fridays and
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Saturdays at the Paradox. Then we started playing down at
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the Golden Bear song. We had not yet made it
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: up to Hollywood. But and what what was the material?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Originals were covers, Oh, it is all covers we wrote.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: We wrote a couple of kind of jug bandison. Well,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: this guy, the former member of our band, Jackson Brown,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: has some great He wrote a song called Melissa that
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: was a great jug band tune. He had another one
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: called It's been Reigning here in Long Beach, great jug
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: band tune. So we started cutting Jackson stuff, but not cutting,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: but learning because at this point we're not really recording.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: So the repertoire a lot of Jim Quest and stuff,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of you know, we got into some of
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the like original stuff like the Memphis Jug Band, and
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you know, we found a way to sort of uh,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: you know, assimilate some sort of you know, skiffle band
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: songs and string band songs from the twenties and thirties
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: and incorporate them into our style now with John McEwan
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: on the five string banjo. We even did a couple
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: of bluegrass members but with a wash board in the
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Washington base as a rhythm section. So these kids, again,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the kids are really god man. We got when Jackson
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: was still in the band, our friend and Moses who
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: was the editor at Tiger Beat magazine, which was Tiger
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Beat was there was no Rolling Stone. So I remember, right,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: my mom cut out this couple of pages from Tiger
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Beat because there's a picture of us with Jackson and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the band, and they're writing about the doors as well,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and they're writing about the Buffalo sprankfields, just to give
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you context. All there were we're team magazines and sing
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Out magazine for the folkies of course, you know. But
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: h so we're getting this, there's this like buzz about
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: our band. So finally, after being courted by not a
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: half a dozen record companies, we uh, we ended up
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: at Liberty Records. Now Liberty was already part of them.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: My Capital are still independent with Simon Waronker. I think
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that they were I think it was Liberty Imperial. We're going,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: of course we are Imperial records. Fats Domino were like,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, we all had Liberty and Imperial Records in
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: our collections as kids, so we're pretty impressed, you know.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: So they signed us. The first thing they did welcome
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: to the music business, was you guys are great, Let's
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: change everything. So the one one of the things that
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that we got with a producer named Dallas Smith more
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: on Dallas in a minute. But they wanted us. They
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: didn't like they didn't think no anybody would buy the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: jug band music. And we're going, wait a minute, have
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: you heard the Love and Spoonful? And they're yeah, but
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: they're they're electric. So how about some folk rock? You know,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: folk rock was a big deal. You had the Birds,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: and you had you know, and you had the Springfield
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: and you had the Turtles at the Association doing a
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: little of that as well. There's this this thing, right
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and we're like, okay, we can sing those songs, but
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: we're a jug band. Can we do both? There? Like sure?
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: So we went in the studio. First day we walked in.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: There's about a half a dozen session guys there. We're
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: all freaking out going what you know, what what if
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: we do? We're all still cocky teenagers, I might add.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And and some of these session guys were amazing and
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: we became friends over the years. These are guys like
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the Wrecking Crew. Those guys are there. It's amazing. And
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: we met Leon Russell through that, we met our buddy
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: what's his name, sorry, from Bred David Gates. David Gates.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: David Gates arranged this, arranged His first string arranging job
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: was on Buy for Me the Rain, So we'll get
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: to that in a in a second. So our first
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: album totally schizophrenic half of his jug band, the other
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: half is folk rock songs. Steve Noonan our buddy from
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the Paradox, Jackson Brown. Both of them attributed songs um
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: and well. I think we actually did a couple of
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: uh Bruce kunkle Uh. There was a song called song
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to Utah, who was his girlfriend who would become his
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: first wife as well. We did that and it was
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: it was fun. I mean, none of the music. I'm
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: not embarrassed by any of the music, although we sound
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: so like like we're ten when I hear it. I
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: was saying, we are singing. So did they let you
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: play on the album? Or we played on every track?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: We played on every track, but it would be like
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the six of us and a bass player and a drummer,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and you know, we're wailing away and all of a sudden,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: it's like here play an electric twelve string Ralph or
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Buddy Ralph bar Um John played banjo. You know, we
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: kind of process that he put a mute on it.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: That made it some a little different kind of I
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: don't a little more psychedelic. So also there was that
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: everything was psychedelic. So the Dirt Band, all of a sudden,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: that didn't hurt our popularity at all. The is that
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: loved us for our jug band music loved by From
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Me the Rain as well. So our record was a
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: top ten single up and down the West Coast and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: up and down the East Coast. I remember because he
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: cousin Brucey Morraw, Bruce Morrow, you know, uh played our records.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of my friends that grew up
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: on the East coast, like you heard by From Me
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the Rain on the radio or the West coast. There's
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: another story. The record actually got banned, so that killed
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: it at another if you want to hear the story, yeah, yeah,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: well uh. The B side of the song was a
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: song called candy Man, which was written by the late
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: great Reverend Gary Davis. In the In the song it
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: said I'd do anything in this god almighty world to
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: have my candy Man home. So set that aside for
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: a second. Had nothing to do with Buy from Me
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the Rain. The A side, Uh, there's a guy that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: There was a program director somewhere in the either the
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: southern US or the Midwest, the work for a station
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: that was part of a big chain of stations owned
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: by a guy, Mr McClendon. I believe his name was
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Gordon McClendon. Let's get this. Program director comes home one
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: night and his daughters in her bedroom with her little,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you know, miniature fort rpm record player, and through the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: door he sings these long haired British guys singing, let's
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: spend the night together. You know, flings opened the door.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: What the you know? What? How? What who is this?
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: You know? He comes into the station the next day,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: gets on the horn and it's like there's this terrible
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: disease going through our you know, coming at us. From
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the airways. You know, these this horrible you know, breaking
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: down the Moray's of America. The Rolling Stones were at
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the front of it. So he calls his boss, Mr.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: McClinton and says, we gotta do something about this. So
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: they they banned Let's Spend the Night Together. They banned
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Strawberry Fields slash Penny Lane. They banned Devil with a
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Blue Dress by Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels, and
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: they banned by from Me the Rain slash Candy Man
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: by the Dirt Band because we were blaspheming saying we
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: got almighty World, which you know, okay, and just well,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Newsweek magazine and Time both wrote about it, and we
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: thought pretty cool company Beatles Stones, Mitch Rider and us,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: you know. But unfortunately, in terms of the business side
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: of things, the A side of the record didn't do
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: it there, you know, it was an innocent victim here.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: So our record at that point, I think is around
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: forty it's in the mid forties. With a bullet, we'll
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: get ads were climbing the charts. Like I said, the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: popularity is growing from the coast inward. The next you know,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: forty five with a bullet one week with a parachute.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: The next week dropped like a rock, done Gone. So
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: that was kind of depressing, but again, welcome to the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: music business. And as we know, here we go. This
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: is how radio can work. And censorship. Okay, before we
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: continue the story of the band, what did your parents
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: say about you dropping out of community college and pursuing
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: this career. They really they were incredibly supportive. And I
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: should point out my dad was the fourth and four
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: generations of West Point graduates, so whoa, whoa whoa. Okay, yeah, yeah,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: and also a peace nick I might add. My dad
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: was you know, he went to World War two and
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: came home with shell shock PTSD and A and A
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: and a shirt full of metals, including a purple heart.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: But you know, when we got into Vietnam, he was like,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I started talking about it right away. I was like,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I don't want to go, you know, blah blah blah.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: So none of us did. How did you get out?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I got because I flunked my physical uh you know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: and like the rest of the guys in the band,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: we were lucky enough to to be able to get
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: around it, you know, hooker Crook. We didn't want to go.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I had friends that were two years older than me
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: in high school that never came home, and I was
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: like this, and then of course it wasn't World War two,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: it wasn't signed up here as like what is this
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: war about? And that was just you know, unbelievable, you know,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and that's a that's a you know, you're conflicted. We're
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: all conflicted being from that generation about our buddies who
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: went off there and fought in Vietnam and why we
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: were so lucky to not have to go. Okay, So
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the first record is all of a sudden installed. What
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: happens after that? Uh? First record installed? Then we did
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: it that, We did a second record. The first river
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: was eponymous, you know, dirt band on a sitting on
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: a steam shovel, get it, dirt band um. The second
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: record was called Ricochet, kind of using the same formula again.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: We put out a single called Truly Right that was
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: written by uh, this group called Maston and Brewer, and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: the brewer was Mike Brewer who came to fame later
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: as part of Brewer and Shipley. Really cool song. They
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: had the same vibe as they would later. You know,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: we're just barely denting the charts. I think we gotta
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: pass because we'd have some popularity. Bruce Kunkle left at
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the in the middle of that record. He wanted to
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: go electric. He he become a a real fan and
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: devote of the mothers of invention. He want. He was
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a really imaginative cat still is really great guy, but uh,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: he moved on and Chris Darrow at the after that
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: album came out, Chris Darrow joined up. This is late sixties, um,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: And if you want to talk about Christophers I got
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to but well, yeah, you know, he's sort
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: of the unsungen here. We're sort of zel Us in
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: a million acts. How did you know Chris just from
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: hanging out? So we were fans of the Mad Mountain
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Ramblers and the Dry City Scat Band, which is another
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: band that Chris was in, and then he and Dave
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: and and uh Solomon Feldhouse started a band, a guy
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: named Max Buddha started this great band called the Kaleidoscope,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: who are legendary early world music. Played all kinds of stuff.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: They are electric and acoustic, and you used like East
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Indian instruments like the d and the size and but
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: also like you know, altric guitars and banjo and electric
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: fiddle and crazy god, what a great band. So Chris
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: had just left the Kaleidoscope and we bumped into him
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: somewhere and he said, man, you guys looking for another guy.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: We're like yeah, and he said, I'd love to play
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: with you guys. He was kind of into jumping back
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: into the acoustic world again. As soon as he got
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: in the band. You know, he started playing fiddle and
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: that's kind of where the Cajun thing that influence in
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: our band came up. He has some really good original
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: tunes and I remember and we did we did an
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: album called Rare Junk, uh that you know about this time,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I should point out, you know, we're still having no
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: luck in the studio, although on on Rare Junk they
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: finally let us record our jug band songs by ourselves,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you know, with the caveat that we had to do
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: like three songs that had a room full of musicians,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: sometimes a horn section or a string section. So we said, okay,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: we'll do that, but just kind of leave us alone, please,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and they were like, we don't care. You're not selling records.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: So we you know, we made a little foray into
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: what we might call a country rock. We recorded a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: cover of Reason to Believe, the great Tim Harden song.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Our buddy Bernie Leaden came in and played acoustic guitar
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: on that. That's how that was our association with Bernie started.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm glad that we sort of you know,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I look at those records now as our kind of
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: farm team training earn while you learn experience with our band. Um, okay,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: let's stay with the earn. Will you learn? Needless to say,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: in that era, having a record deal put you in
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: a completely different class from everybody else. So how did
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: you feel about yourself? How was the band surviving monetarily?
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: How often were you playing live? What kind of money?
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: What was going on? I couldn't even tell you about
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the kind of money. I really don't have a concept now,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I can't. I just remember, Uh. At one point we
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: were this is by from and the Reins a hit, right,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: So we had a really uh we had a booking
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: agent that had a really great imagination and they decided
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I think it was a p A at the time. Gosh,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I can't even remember. I believe it was. We've been
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: with all of them at some point in another, some
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: settled letters um and they sent us up to San Francisco.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: We played the film More by the Way a couple
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: of times. The first time was with a band called
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Clear Light and also Blue Cheer, who were built as
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: the world's loudest rock and roll and they were, I
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: mean they were, they were amazing, So I understand we
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: had probably the quietest band they had ever played the
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: film More Us jug Band, Nobody's Plugged In and Blue Cheer,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: you know which was It was fun. Man. We went
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: to San Francisco. I still got a film More poster.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: We headlined that gig and it was really cool. And
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: then a few weeks later are Are The aforementioned agent
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: said want you guys to play at the Basin Street West,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: which is a jazz club in San Francisco and opening
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: for the great legendary organist, Mr Jimmy Smith. Okay, that
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: made no sense at all, but they were doing they had.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: They also represented Jefferson Airplane and and I think the
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Airplane played on a bill with Gosh, I can't remember,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe it was Miles Davis. It was also
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: just kind of wacky. The one thing that came out
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: of the Basin Street West gig that I really dug.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: There was a band called the Blues Project that was
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: playing the film War that week, and that included a
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: guy named Steve Katz. Uh, Danny was what was Danny's
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: name the guitar player, sorry, uh, Jenny Calb and Al Cooper.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: So Alan, Danny and Steve came in probably to see
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Smith play, but being ex Folky's all of them
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: as well, they dug the jug band music and Al
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: we really we became fast friends with Al. That still
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: remains to this day. So you know, that would that
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: would be that just became an ongoing thing and it
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: was great. That was the coolest thing about it, getting
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: to meet Al big fans of everything he ever did,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and then we live and learn.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: So we're by the way, we couldn't afford to stay
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco while we're playing the Basin Street. We
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: lived across the bridge in Mill Valley at this in
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: this little fucking motel called the Fireside In. It's the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: first place I ever heard gunfire, actual real gun fire
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: outside motel room. One night. We were so I mean,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: at this point, we really were like down to season stamps,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: literally and we had no money because it was I
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: can't remember why. I just remember Jimmy Fadden, Jimmy Fadden's
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: little brother, Terry, God bless him. Jimmy calls Terry and
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: we said, you gotta get Terry up here. We need
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: a roadie. So Terry came up and the first thing
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: we said to him was do you have any cash?
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: And Terry he was this, he's still around. He's just
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: the best guy, really great kid. So yes, he loaned
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: us the twenty bucks that he had and we bought
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: some groceries, you know, a lot of peanut butter sandwiches.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: We actually got into fried cheerios, which were pretty good.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: You know. It was, you know, anything, we're scrambling. But
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: cool thing about hanging out in in Mill Valley was
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: right next to Saucelito. There was a club. I believe
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the club was called the Arc. It wasn't like a
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: river boat or a house, and it was the art.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: It was like a I think they bought one of
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: those old you know what do you call those wheels,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: paddle wheel steamships, and it was docked so you walked
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: onto this, you across the little plank and that you're
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: in this club. Well, we saw a Moby Gray play
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: there a bunch because we were you know, we were
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: only playing weeks, so we'd have like Moby Grapes playing
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: for three nights and we're like, that's the best band
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: we've ever heard, and this electric thing is pretty cool
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: by the way, you know. So they were they were
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: a perfect example of like taking a bunch of guys
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: most of them started in folk music and really took
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe the song sense. There was something
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: about it that was just different. And they what a
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: great band, you know, mysterious, legendary, cool, cool group. You know.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: At the same time we're we're doing these festivals, were
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: playing with the Jefferson Airplane again and playing with the
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Doors a bunch uh the Buffalo Springfield. I remember playing
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: with an early version of Stepping Wolf. Um. It was
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: really cool, you know. In our jug band day, I
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: might add, when we were playing places like the Ash Grove,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: we opened for Lightning Hopkins, Memphis, Slim Good, Lord uh
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Man's lipscumb Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee again. So we're
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: learning a lot. This is like school for us. A
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: lot of the great bluegrass acts again, New Lost City Ramblers,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: whom I loved, and they were an old timey group
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: that included uh what what was his name? John Cohen?
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: I love John Cohen and uh Pece Seeger's brother Mike Seegar. Ridiculous.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I mean that the as sponges. We were so lucky.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: You know, we're absorbing all this stuff. But also, you know,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: we're hearing these kids are these guys that used to
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: hang around and play folk music in the back room
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: became this band called the Rising Suns, which was Ray
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Cooter and Taj Mahal. So we're like, oh yeah again,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: they're taking this influence in this gift um and turn
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: it into their electrifying So we started. You know, we
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: bought a bass and and a half. I bought a
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: drum kit. I should point out real quickly that we
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: made this movie. We were in this film for three minutes,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: but it took us three months to do it in
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the woods and the wilds of Oregon. The film was
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: called Painter Wagon Major motion picture, actually the most expensive
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: film up to that point that had ever been made
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: by Hollywood. Saw it. Oh yeah, you know what, it's
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun to watch now, But it was
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Lee Marvin, this guy that had been making these spaghetti
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: westerns named Clint Eastwood, and this great actress, uh, the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: great late grade Jeane Sieberg. There was this crazy part
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: for her because she'd done all these amazing sort of
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: artie films, you know. Uh, she was a serious, serious actor.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: So there we are. We're playing a drug band. Basically
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: we were, you know, it was all these mining was
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: the gold rushing California. That was the premise. So it's
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: all these uh you know, these miners up you know,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and we're slogging through these mining gold mining, you know,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: trying to pan for gold or dig these tunnels. And
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: it's a comedy, a musical. And we did this song
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: called hand Me Down that Cannabians. And we were up
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: there for three months. There's a bunch of guys from
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: southern California. Three months in a town the population was
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: about I think, I don't know me, I'm exaggerating just
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: because I can. And we had nothing to do. We
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: were so bored, and we started kind of getting at
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: each other and you know, picking on each other things
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: that we didn't care about. We started caring about that
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: we didn't like, and there was this tug and pull
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: about musical direction. Well, I remember Chris and I that summer,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: and I might you a little off on my timeline,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: but Sweetheart of the Rodeo was out and music from
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Big Pink was out, and I heard music from Big
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: Pink and I didn't want to play guitar ever again.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: I wanted to play drums. I wanted to play drums
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: like Leo on Hell you know, and and Ringo was
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: really getting into that Tom Phil thing that he did,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: so well, uh you know. I I've learned how to
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: play drums from one of the guys that played in
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: the Mothers of Invention, a guy named Denny Bruce, who
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: was kind enough to show me how to play along
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: to first record Ruby Tuesday. Um, good Bye Ruby Tuesday
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: by Da Dad Da dadda Dada, that Snare Phil and
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: that was it. Man. I wanted to learn drums, and
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Chris is going, hey, man, we need to take the
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: band in a country rock direction. This thing is so happening,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you know, he says, my buddies, like Chris HILLMTT was
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: one of Chris Chris Darrow's buddies. So these guys are
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: doing this thing. It's so cool. And the birds and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: like they hire Clarence White now, who's playing this great
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: b bender guitar, telecaster and everything shifting the place are
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: shift in here musically, and it made sense because we
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: all love country music, we love blue grass, and we
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: were just getting a little tired of making records for
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: a company that didn't really care about Joe band music anyways,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: and we were kind of ready to move on in general.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: So we got back to l a after after three
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: months in Oregon, which was lovely, by the way, except
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: for the part that we were so just bored stiff,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: and we got our record companies like, you know, you guys,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: have one more record on your deal, Let's do a
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: live album. We're like whatever, Sure, So we played the
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Tributor for a week. Well, our opening act was this
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: band called Pogo, and Poco was Poco before you know,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Walt Kelly the Cartoonists, decided that he's going to sue
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: them if they didn't change their name Poco original lineup.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: For me, honestly, I never saw the Beatles play, but
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was in the Cavern Club watching
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: the Beatles play. They were so damn good. I mean,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the harmonies were ridiculous and I was a fan already
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: of Richie Furres from the Buffalo Springfields. You got Ritchie,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you got Jim Messina on guitar, you had the great
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Randy Meisner on bass and high high harmony, and George
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: Grantham singing drummer. I'm like, yep, George Grantham singing drummer,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Levin Helm singing drummer. That's the thing I filed that away.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: So we're opening for Poco Dirt Band. Honestly at this
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: point we're on our last legs and the opening act
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: is the Beatles. So they would come off stage every
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: night and they're high five in each other and they're
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: just whoop, whoop, whoop, and the nicest guys I might add,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: you know, and we're just like, we're struggling to try
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: to play some kind of sort of country rock, folk
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: rock stuff. The one thing that worked was working really
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: well was a Cajun song called Alligator Man. I played drums,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Chris Darrow played uh fiddle on it, and it was
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: really a Cajun rock tune. That thing would end up
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: mattering a few months later. So at the end of
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: that run, super depressed, we're like, what are we going
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: to do with the band. The band's tugging and pulling
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: in different directions. Uh, you know, some of the guys
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: wanted to sort of do the country rock thing. You know,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Chris and I are talking to each other going, we
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: can't really pull this off, you know, we it's not
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: And then our buddy Ralph bar and his wife Holly
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: wanted to do like a folk duo thing, and their
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: friend Dwayne Almand was going to produce a record on him.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: So they're drifting over here. There was some you know,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: business arguments about whether or not we're with the right
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: manager or not, as it just got toxic, and Chris
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and I are gone, man, let's just start. Let's just
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: let's walk away from this thing. So we did, you know,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: not a lot of arguments somebody had. Everybody was just
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: tired and burned out, as burnout as you can be
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: at twenty one. Um, So Chris and I started this
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: band and it was me and him and uh, this
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: great drummer named John Ware who would go on to
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: be the drummer for the first National Band and Emmy
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Lou Harris's Hot band. Johnny Ware terrific drummer, great guy.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Another art student from Claremont where Chris lived, uh and
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: John London on base and John London whose real name
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: was John Keeney. He grew up his best friend was
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Michael Nesmith. So John had been working on the set
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: of The Monkeys as as Michael stand in, and he'd
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: been playing in a band called the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: which was Michael one of Michael Murphy's Martin Murphy's first bands.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: So these guys are cool, man. We we started working
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: up tunes and it's fun, and Chris and I are
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: writing a bunch of songs. Johnny Ware wrote a couple
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and it was like we're often running. It was like
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: country rock cool, and I'm trying to come up with
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: a country rock band I name, and it's like, how
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: about buck Wheat buckwheats a cool, cool sound meaning buck
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Wheat not the Little Rascal's character, uh or wheat straw,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: or like, how about I don't know, Southern Pacific. That's
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: a pretty good name. Nobody liked that, so uh So
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Chris and John, being way hipper than I were, said,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: how about the Corvettes? Totally ironic? That does not sound
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: nothing can sound further from a country rock band name,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, these guys are a couple of
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: years a couple of years older, far far hipper than
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I was. I went cool, what are the corvettes? And
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: then John London he brought Chris Derrek. I sorry. John
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: London brought Michael Nasmith into one of our rehearsals, and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Michael has been hired as a producer. He got a
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: production deal with Dot Records. He says, I want to
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: sign you guys to a deal, a singles deal. So
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: we cut some sides with Michael, which was really fun.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Got to know him really well, really great cat, one
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: of my favorite people ever. We're starving. They put out
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: a single I think, and it didn't really stick, and
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: they put they started to put out another one, and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: out of the blue, our dear friend Linda ron Stat
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: calls us up. She's you know, the Stone Ponies are
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: broken up. She's now a solo act. She said, I
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: need a band. Would you guys be my band? She
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: loved the way Chris, she loved the way John and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: John the rhythm section was great. We were friends. She
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: was kind to me. Bee. I'm like, I wasn't bringing
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: a whole lot, but I was a good harmony singer.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: And then Chris's fiddle. She loved that Cajun fiddle thing.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: And Chris Blay lead guitar really well. So it's Linda
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Ronstat and the Corvetts. We hit the road and man, wow,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: it was amazing for a thousand reasons, one being we
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: all had giant crushes on Linda, of course because he's
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Lenda Ron's that and one of the greatest singers that
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: ever lived. And so I'm learning to sing harmony with
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Linda and this is really cool. And we're doing songs
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: like silver Threads and gold Needles and oh, different drum
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: every night. She had a song called some of Shelley's
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Blues that Michael wrote that I just loved. We're saying
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: a long long time. You know, she's god. She took
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: the only Daddy that Will walk the line great whale
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: and Jennings song turned it into only Mama that will
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: walk the line, and she mean it was just killer.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: We The only time I ever played with the whiskey
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: was in Linda's band, So this is really fun. And uh,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: several months go by, I think, you know, I think
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: it's around six months. We're doing the corvettes, and Linda
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: and I ran into John McEwen at a Poco show
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: ironically at the Golden Bear, and we looked at each
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: other and said we could do this. Let's give it
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: another shot. So we called up Les Thompson who was
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: in immediately he just as long as I get to
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: play electric bass, yes, less you can play electric bass.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Turned into a really good bass player, great bass player
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: by then, and Jimmy Fadden who was also picking up
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: the drums. So Jimmy and I are both playing drums,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: and Jimmy was becoming a really great allectric guitar player
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: along as his legendary harp skills as well great harmonica player.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: But we're like, we need to singing drummer. We all
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: agree we need to leve on or we needed George
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Grantham and uh a friend of ours and Mitral friend
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: of ours knew this guy Jimmy Ibson who had just
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: moved out to California. He was from Philadelphia, went to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: school in Newcastle, Indiana, and moved out to l A
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to become a star. And he was having the kind
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: of experience that the rest of us were. You know,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: so if he's been playing you know, these pick up gigs.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: His his roommate was this guy named Kevin Kelly, one
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: of his roommates who was playing with that version of
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: the Birds. And then he had another roommate later on
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: named Danny Danny Lotomoser, who was a folk rock kind
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: of guy. So mutual friends. We got introduced to Ibby.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: We called him maybe because we had two Jimmy's at
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: this point. Uh, and he comes over, we play drums
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: with us. Were like, this is really great, and he's like, well,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: let's stick around after class. We're already impressed by his drumming.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: Everybody splits. Me and Jimmy are sitting there with a
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: couple of acoustic guitars and he's a really good guitar player,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: I come to find out. And we already knew he
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: could sing, but we started singing Everly Brothers songs and
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: it's like, oh man, we got It's like I gotta fill,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I gotta don However, you know, we would switched back
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: and forth and I was in heaven. Man, this is
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: like become my favorite singer, well next to Linda that
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I'd ever sung with. And we had this thing. We
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: had this bland that was like like brothers singing together.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Turned out if he could play the bass, he could
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: play a lectric guitar, he could play a little bit
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: of clarinet, a little bit of pianos like man, and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: he writes songs. So he'sa Meanwhile, what's happened to Chris
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Daryl Chris darrells? He Chris stayed with Linda the Corvettes.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Bernie Letton came in and took my place in the Corvettes.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: So this is the first time Bernie who eventually you
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: know the deal. Bernie stays in the band, played with
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: the Corvette for a while, then he went off and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: played with the Burrito Brothers for a while. Chris continued
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: playing in that group, and then he got us. He
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: got signed I believe again either to you A or
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Liberty EO By Perhaps I'm sorry I have a little
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: brain fire here. But he had a solo deal and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: made some really really great records, among them artist Proof,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: which is my favorite. I think he became friends. He
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: and Peter Asher became friends. Chris ended up and fiddle
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: on Sweet Baby. James uh Our buddy John London from
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: the Corvets played bass on Shoot. He played bass on
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: on the song Sweet Baby James on that record. Meanwhile,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: John Lennon and John Ware started a Bama John with
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Michael Nesmuth. So so you got the two Johnnies and
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Mike Nesmuth. They got the first national band going, which
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: it was another one of the great underrated country rock
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: bands of all time. I think, uh so, yeah, so
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: the Dirt band re kind of re uh imagined as
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: this country rock band. And then how do you wind?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: You rehearse? Now your deal is done with Liberty? So
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: what happens? Well, my deal I was done with Liberty
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: because I had to get out of my record deal.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: They still had me under contract, and I pulled a
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: trick on them and got out of that. I called
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: up the president of Liberty Records and I kept calling
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: him and call him. There's no email back then. I
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: couldn't slide a note under his door because security wouldn't
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: let me through. And I'm like, because I wanted to
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: sign this deal with Dot Records with Mike Nesmuth and
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: his I believe it was Bud Dane, and I kept
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: calling and They're like, Nat, who who's this calling? He'll
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: call you back. Never called. So finally I got on
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: there and they said who's calling and I said, um,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Tommy Boys. Tommy Boys and Bobby Hart wrote Last Train
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: to Clarksville. They were huge hit singers, his huge his
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: songwriters in l A. At the point, but gets on
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: the phone Tommy, how are you, babe? And I'm like,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: I'm great, And then I listened for a couple of
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: more minutes of small talk. I said, actually, this is
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: Jeff Hannah and he goes, oh, Jeff, how are you doing?
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: What are you up to? Long time no speak. He says,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: I'm actually kind of trying to get out of my
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: record deal, and he goes, no problem, come by tomorrow.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: You know, he signed a paper let let me go. Yeah,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I was was worth anything to him, but it was
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: a sweet thing to do. I appreciated that. So Bill
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: McEwen again, we go play the Troubadour and uh, people
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: like this, they liked this band. We Meanwhile, we rehearsed
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: for like three months. Les Thompson's dad had was at
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Sea Bring jukebox distributor, and we rehearsed in his in
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: his warehouse in Long Beach. So we were a wood
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: shed and it was like I think it was the
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: first time since my mom's garage that we really would
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: shed it and it was fun. Man Jimmy Everson's bringing
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: in songs by this kid that he met at a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: party named Kenny Loggins. We recorded four Kenny songs and
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: nobody had ever heard by the way or heard of
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: at that point. Did a couple of you know, originals.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: I there was a song that I used to sing
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: with the Corvettes called The Cure that ended up on
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: the record. But a lot of covers Randy Newman living
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Without You, Um, shoot, who else do we cover? Michael
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Nesmuth So Michelle's Blues. That's one of the first songs
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: I learned to sing with Linda and I worked it
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: up with Jimmy Ibbotson and him singing lead, me singing harmony,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: and that fit really well. Um, you know, and I
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: whatever we did, Buddy, how we did, we were huge
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Buddy Holly fans. We did Ray Van on that record,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: an old blues tune called travel and Mood some bluegrass.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: We did the Great Earl Scrugs instrumental called Randy Lynn
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Rag Clinch Mountain Backstep, Ralph Stanley tune. You know, it
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: was a it was a a mash up you know,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: the dirt band was always instill our eclectic. Okay, So
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: how did you end up pack on Liberty and how
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: did Bill mceuwan end up being the producer? Well, that
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: was one of the deals. When Bill came back into
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: the picture. He had matured as a manager and as
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a producer and he just kind us. He went to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: these guys that said, look, come see these guys at
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Drew Badur and we you know, they still hired us
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: because they liked us when we were a drug band.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: He came in and love the band, and Bill said,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: here's the deal. I want to produce him and they
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: were like, well, okay, fine, cut a couple of sides.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: We cut a couple of sides. They loved it. So
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: he stayed on and Bill remained our producer through I
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: don't know four albums I think uh. And he was
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: a great managed, superman and incredibly and a visionary musically,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: you know, and he knew his stuff. He knew to
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: use good mix. He got a great engineer, engineer Mr
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Dino Lapis, who was a staff engineer at World Pacific
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: and Liberty and a couple of these studios where we
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: started out. But he knew how he wanted the band
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: to sound. He wanted to record this stuff. Well, he
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: wanted the drums and bass and the alleged guitar and
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: you know, the acoustic instruments. Great vintage gear wasn't vantaged
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: back then, but really great analog gear. And that record
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: signed awesome, I thought, you know, so we were proud
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: of what we were doing. And at the tail end
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: of the sessions, you know, we found this other song,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Mr bo Jangles. Okay, but how did you how did
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: he make a deal with Liberty which you've just gotten off. Uh,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: he just said we're gonna start from scratch. It started
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: because Bud Dane loved the band. He loved this new
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: incarnation of the band. So they wanted to sign us.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Because just as folk rock and and sort of whatever
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: jug band music were popular in sixty seven, now it's
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and like country rocks, the thing, baby, you know,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: the Palomino Club is jumping in North Hollywood. The Trouger
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: is now home to you know this band, Long Branch,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Penny Whistle, uh and Poke Poco. Now the Burrito Brothers
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: would come by now and again play and it was
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: it was a thing uh, you know, even even the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: singer songwriter stuff, Lynda's stuff, Jackson Brown had just gotten signed,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: uh Dan Fogelberg. This new vibe was very much in
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: line with the country rock stuff. So they wanted to
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: jump on that bat that bandwagon, and they we played
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: him a couple of tracks, played them Ravan and Shelley's Blues,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: I think, and they loved them both. So so you
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: find Mr. Bo Jangles, Yeah, uh, never heard the song
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: in my life. Didn't know who Jerry Jeff was. We were.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: I was coming home from rehearsal one night and I
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: heard I'm driving I lived, and I think I lived
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: in Seal Beach, driving a few miles from Long Beach
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: to Seal Beach, got my radio on his FM radio,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: old school, no back, announcing they'd play fifteen songs without
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: telling you who it was, and I heard, probably flipping
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: the dial, I heard probably the last two verses in
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: the last chorus of Mr. Bo Jangles. But as soon
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: as I heard it, I pulled the car off the
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: road and you know, shut shut the engine off so
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: I could really hear it great, And I was really
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: got this lump in my throat hearing this story about
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: this old guy and his dog, and the melody was
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: beautiful and a great I mean, a compelling story. So
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: next day I came running into the warehouse and I'm like, guys,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: you know, basically, I'm like, I got the final piece
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: to the puzzle here, Guys. I heard this great song.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: And we have started using an accordion and mandolin as
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: well together on our records. And we started talking about
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: we were big fans of the band, and the band
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: had done that on the song Old Rocking Chair on
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: the on their uh, their second album, the Brown album,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: and I like, we started talking about that would really
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: be the way to do this acoustic guitars. We brought
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: in this kid named Russ Kunkle to to sort of
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: set about the drums, and uh, Jimmy Fadden had a
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: really great drum arrangement, but you know he was he
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: was mad enough to like hand the sticks to Russ
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: for that one. We all did that, you know, we did.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: We We occasionally have session guys come in because they
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: played better in the studio. So we cut the song. Uh,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Everson, I didn't finish my story, so Jimmy Everson
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: immediately went that's Mr Bo Jangles When I said, what's
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: this song called? He had a forty five rpm in
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: the trunk of his car under the spare tire, scratched
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: all the hell, and so we we stacked We stacked
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: pennies on the needle of the record player to get
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: it to track better. Actually misheard a couple of the lyrics,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: which we recorded it that way, you know, later on
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: became a huge hit with the wrong words in a
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: couple of places. But Jerry Jeff, whom we met later
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: forgave us because the sold a million copies. He was
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: a happy camper, you know. So um yeah, So we
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: we put the whole album together. Bill McEwen had this
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: cool idea where he left a lot of the in
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: studio chatter and count offs and laughter and just the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: fun stuff. He left a lot of that on the record,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: which we really dug you know. It was like, uh,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: the curtain being pulled back a little bit. And later
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: on our fans really dug it as well. And he
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: actually had this recording of this old guy, this guy
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: who was his wife's uncle, Charlie, that he had recorded
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: on a portable two track recorder years before in in
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: Up in northern California, Uncle Charlie talking and playing the guitar,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: and he brought us to his house and he said,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I want to play you guys something, and we little
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: joint pass it around, lowered the lights, and Bill had
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: this amazing you know. He had a great stereo and
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: I know you're a lover of this stuff, the ack
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Apps voice of the theater speakers, and we're just like
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: leaning back in the chair like the old jbl ad,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: you know. And he played he played Uncle Charlie into Mr.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Bo Jangles, this guy talking and then a dog starts
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: singing and then he cuts right to that boom ba
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: dabba dabba guitar figure and we're like in tears. This
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: is like I don't know how he came up with it,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: but it was a genius move. So we love it,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: and we're like thinking, we're thinking, but yeah, that's not
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: the hit. It's gonna be some in Jelly's Blues, or
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be house A Through Corner, or it's gonna
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: be Ray Van. So we put our single out. We
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: put out Shelley's Blues. I think it was the first single,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: and it's going up the charts. That's doing pretty pretty good.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: And now we started touring. We're touring on We're playing
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: college campuses. Man, I just watched that Carlin documented I
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: hadn't know if you saw it or not. Oh man,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: huge fan of George's, but in that moment that came,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: you know, when he's like, I don't want us saying
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: to a bunch of disinterested people eat eating their dinners
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: and drinking cocktails in these buttoned up, you know kind
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: of casinos or dinner theaters. I want to play two
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: kids going. I want to play the kids that are
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: like us, you know, they were the same sensibility. So
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: we started playing college campuses and these folks are loving us,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: and we're like, we found this audience. The record starts selling,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: but the single starting to lose its legs a little bit.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, the station in Shreveport, Louisiana, late
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: night Chuck starts playing Mr. Bo Jangles and the phones
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: light up. These people want to hear this song. They're
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: just like, you're regardless of the fact that's a four
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: minute waltz, can't dance to it about an old guy
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: and a dog. It's it's landing, it's resonating with people.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Super compelling, and we get this call. Then it starts
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: spreading in these other FM stations again late night where
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: it's free form radio, they start playing it. Record Comany
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: calls us, we're gonna pull Shelley's Blues and you're We're
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: like what, and yeah, we're gonna put out Mr. Bo
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Jangles and we're going, oh geez, we're screwed. They're never
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: gonna and we will love the song, make no mistake
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: about that. Well, we'll figure our careers over their planning.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: They're they're gonna go with this, you know, this slow
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: song and story song. People have to pay attention. We
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: were so wrong, you know, as my wife likes to say,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: we had our elbows on the pulse of America. Totally
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: missed it. So they put it out. Things stayed on
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: the charts for several months, had slow burned, but a
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: good in the best kind of way, you know, slowly
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: going up the charts. Got up to number nine, stayed
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: there for a couple of weeks. Really actually, I mean
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: really the biggest single ever, had sold a million copies.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: Finally got to talk to Jerry Jeff on the telephone
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: one night. You know, we're all drunk and you know,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: backslapping on the phone. He decided to move to Austin, Texas.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: I think he felt like this kind of this gave
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: him another It really turned up his self confidence and
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: it was happening, you know. I think he was on
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: his way to l A. And he made a left
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: turn and went to Austin. And the rest is Austin
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: history for sure. And we became buddies. We played a
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: bunch over the years. Love playing with Jerry Jeff. But yeah, there,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: it was there. It was that album and you know,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: and that led to other stuff down the road for us.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: Um So how do you ultimately put together? Will the
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: circle be unbroken? Direct link to Mr bo Jangles. We're
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: playing these tours and uh, we start playing in the
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: South and we're all kind of kids, you know, long
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: haired kids from l A. We're going are They're gonna
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: beat the ship out of us? Down there is like
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: easy Rider. I was like, no, there was some of
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: that going on, and make no mistake, but uh, we're
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: playing these college campuses and it was so cool. So
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: we're playing Vanderbilt University and there's this kid named Gary Scruggs.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: Gary Scruggs was Earl Scruggs as oldest son. He and
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: his his brother Stephen Randy, they're hearing Mr. Bo Jangles
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: on the radio and there they become fans of the band.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Sees the Uncle Charlie album, pulls it out of the
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: bend and he's looking at the back of the record
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: and he goes, WHOA, there's Randy Lynn Rag that my
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: dad wrote about my little brother Randy. This instrumental takes
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: it home. They love the album. So to get his
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: dad interested, he plays Randy Lynn Ragg for for Earl.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: Earl hears it and it's like that boy can play
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: that five string and that band's sounds pretty good. Never
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: heard a washboard on it, Glad Scruggs record. So with
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: that as the hook, Gary, who knew the dean at Vanderbilt,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: set up a meet and greet for us and the
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Scruggs family and John McEwen, especially as just shaken in
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: his boots so stoked that he's gonna meet Earl Scruggs,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: but also his hero is gonna be watching, so we
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: knew they were there. We played our set. We actually
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: killed it. It was a really good set, went backstage,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: toweled off a little bit and in comes to Scruggs
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: family and we're hanging out and immediately this is like
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: long lost family these folks. The bond the friendships became
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: lifelong friendships. From that moment, we you know, finally talked
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: to Earl into playing a song on the five string.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: And it was a great night, you know, and Louise
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: Louise Scruggs, one of the great figures in the music business,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: went the pioneering women in the music business, and who
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: was Earl's manager as well. You know, we just had
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: a great time. And when we bonded on music and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Earl had just started the Earl Scruggs review had left
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: Lester Flat Flat Scruggs had broken up, and Earls wants
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: to play country rock kind of you know, with the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: blue gass sensibility as well. So he's on his way
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: out the door after a couple hours of hanging out
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: and he says, well, if you boys would ever like
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: to do some recording, I'd love to get in the
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: studio with you. He closes the door and we're what
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: just happened. Earl Scruggs invited us to record. You know.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: It turned out that he was friends with the birds already,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: and you know, the music community in Nashville was not
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: his conservative and if you're painting in broad strokes, sure,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: it seemed like everything was Roy Acuff and the grand
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: old opry, you know, and it was kind of the
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: country polity and thing. As far as country music mainstream
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: was going on, it was pretty commercial, not a lot
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: of acoustic based stuff. A few months later, um Bill
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: McKuen called each of us and he said, I got
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: an idea. He said, what if we take Earl's idea
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: of you guys recording with him and expand the concept
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: to where it's you guys and your influences get in
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: the studio, we're the band, and we're playing with guys
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: like Girl. We started talking about the wet if Stock, Watson, Merle, Travis,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: who we already knew because of our jug band days.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: We opened from Merle at the Ash Grove in l A.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, these different ideas. We wanted to
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: get Bill Monroe he did not want to play on
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: the record, and Bill McEwen and John, both of them
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: were fans of the great Lucrass singer Jimmy Martin. So
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: he said, well, let's let's try to get Jimmy Martin.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: So me and John were we read our bands moved
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: from l A to Colorado. Now this is early seventy one,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: Spring of seventy one. The Earl Scruggs review is playing
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: a club called to Lagi in uh In Bowlder, Colorado.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: And I was gonna say, your buddy Chuck Moore as
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: your friend, and I love Chucky, one of my one
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: of my favorite people in the world. First time we
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: met Chuck, he's running in the place Earl Scruggs reviews
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: playing there. We'd already played there some so we were pals.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: We could walk in for free. In the back door.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Earl's playing there. We watched the said it was great.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: John offers to drive Earl back to the hotel. I'm
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: in the back seat of the car. John turns to
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: Earl and said, says haltingly because he's so nervous. He's like,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: would you would you consider actually playing on our record?
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: And Earle took a second and said I'd be proud to.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: And we're like dumb struck. Go back to the hotel,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: hang out with Earl and the kids against some more
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: picked till the wee hours I went home, John stuck
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: around for a while longer. I think over the course, now,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: this is what Gary told me, and this is what
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Earle actually wrote in his book. He said, over the
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: course of the evening, Earl mentioned why not can get
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: some of the other old timers. This is before Bill
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: had called us, by the way, so I don't know
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: who had the idea. It doesn't really matter at this point,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: does it. But what does matter is that Earl agreed
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: to do it. And he was so cool and so
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: gracious and so forward thinking in terms of music. So
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: with Earl Scruggs, we had Earl in our pocket. Now.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Next week John went to see Doc and Merle Watson
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: at the same club in Boulder, Too Loggy. John asked
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: Doc if he'd be interested. He said, hey, Doc, we're
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: doing a record with Earl Scruggs, which how would you feel?
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: And Doc was like, yeah, anything if Earl's on and
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: I'm in. And to his credit, Murrell Watson, the late
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Great Murrell Watson, doc son great guitarist, said you know,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, Daddy, I played some of their
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: stuff and you really like their singing as well. So
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: again the second generation the same as it was with
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Earl and his family. His kids loved the band, brought
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: him in. Doc's kid loved the band, so you got
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: already it's we're setting kind of a tone for the record,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: which is this multi generational thing. After that, we got
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: on the horn with Louise Scruggs and she and Earl
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: authored to you know, um opened some doors for us
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: when we came to Nashville. Meanwhile, Bill mcwhen with John
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: and Toe went and had a meeting with our president
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: of Liberty Records, who was a guy at that point
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: named Mike Stewart. We got this top tanks top ten
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: single Mr. Bo Jangles on the chart. Bill and John
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: came in there and said, we want to cut a
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: bluegrass record, and my set, uh okay, let me get
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: this right. You got you don't want to follow up
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: Uncle Charlie with a another country rock record. We do,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: but first we want to do this bluegrass record. And
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: he said, well, I think the budget was like seventeen
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: grands something and it was under twenty tho dollars. I'll
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: give you, you you know, seventeen thousand to make the record.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: Odd figure and Bill and John are like done, great,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: So we go to Nashville. He said, I think you
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: guys are crazy, but I trust your instincts because boj
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Angles is a big hit, you know, and Shelley's Blues
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: did pretty good, and how Supo Corner did pretty good.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: We saw some albums and we kind of got you know,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: we have our foot in the door at radio now.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: So we went to Nashville. We we hung out with
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: the Scruggs family. We're meeting all these great folks. Jody Mafis,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: who was the drummer from the Scruggs Review, his dad.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: His parents were Joe and Rosalie Mathis, who were legendary
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: pickers from the Grand Old Opry and the UH and
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the Louisiana Hayride as well. And it was like, man,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: this is so cool. We're meeting all these folks who
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: are not what we're thinking. By the way, next generation
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: folks that pretty much invented the genre. Got to point out,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: this is like fifties and sixties, and they like us
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: and they want to hang out with us. We're spending
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: all day at the Scrugs family's house, just picking and
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: hanging out. Meanwhile, Earls brought in the great Vassar clements
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: on fiddle and the great Junior Husky on electric bass.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: Remember John Sanda too early says, who's this fiddle player?
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Vassar kind of name is well and he goes. Earl said, well,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: that's his name is Vassar Clemens. And John said was
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: he any good? And Earl said he'll do great story
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: and that was classic us, by the way, never lost
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: that teenage cockiness about like so and and uh. We
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: wanted to get the great Flatt and scrugs doboro player
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: Josh Graves, but he was playing with Lester Flatt and
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: Lester wouldn't let him play on the record. Unfortunately, later
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: on we finally got to record song with Josh and
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: went amazing. But we got uh, legendary country picker Mr
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: Norman Blake agreed to come in and play do bro.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: So we got this band that includes you know, Junior
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: on upright basse uh and Vasser on fiddle. And by
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: the way, these guys were like again, instant pals, the
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: coolest cats, and they they didn't you know, they thought
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: nothing to hang in a bunch with a bunch of
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: hippies from l A or the mountains of Colorado, and
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: we just bonded with the music, and they were also
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: like wise cracking guys, and most of the session guys
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: I've ever met in life have been the funniest people
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: I've ever met, you know. Uh, So we rehearsed for
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: about a week. I think, you know, maybe it's I
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe it's a little shorter. We went to
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Martin's house. Louis Louise Scruggs helped us get Jimmy
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: on board, and uh we went to his house and
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: learned how to sink some proper bluegrass harmony for the
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: sessions that we were going to do with him. And
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: here comes Monday, and we got in the studio and
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: we recorded. I guess I think for five days. I
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: believe it was all you know for audio files. We
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: recorded quarter inch thirty ips live analog tape and it
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: sounded like a million it was so good. But you
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: burned through tape quickly that way, and tape wasn't cheap
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: even back then. We're at Woodland Sounds Studios, one of
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: the great studios, legendary, still there today, thank goodness, because
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings saved the place. They bought
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: it when it looked like it was going to get
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: hit by the wreck and ball. God bless them and
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: I love them so much. Um So we walked into
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: Woodlands set up and man, we set up set us
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: up in a circle so there weren't a bunch of
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: baffles separating the musicians. You know, typically you don't want
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: that bleed. You don't want to hear the banjo in
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: the bass players Mike, or the washboard and the guitar
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: players Mike. But we would just go, okay, Jeff face
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: the wall when you play the washboard. You know. We
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: figured it all out and it sounded so good. The
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: little the cross talk between instruments actually added to the
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: the musical integrity of the record. Plus we could see
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: each other, so this is like backporch stuff and it
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: was so much fun and visual accues. We're mixing the
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: record as as musicians, not as you know, the mixed
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: down later and Bill McEwen ran a separate tape machine
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: that caught all captured all those conversations, all those you know,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: starts and stops, and you know, we we recorded all
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: this music and jump back on the bus a few
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: days later and left it to build all those tapes Okay,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: it ends up coming out as a triple records set.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: Trying to think would even have that many records? All
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: all things must pass? How did the record company agree
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: to have three records? And then the record started to
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: do this slow burn? What was the perspective from the inside.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: From the inside, they were still you know, they and
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: we did manage I might add to get Roy a
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: coff on board, by the way, after he heard some
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: of the music he was in, so like, yeah, we
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: got the king of country music and mother Mabel Carter
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: who came in with Earl scrugs that that connection. So
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: the record companies like, yeah, okay, it's a bluegrass album.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: They asked, got three five songs as pretty long, live
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: out of talking, a lot of blue grass, a lot
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: of where's the hit, no hits? Well, so Bill did.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: They allowed him the latitude to go get a ah,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: to go do some mock that you get to show
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: them some of the artwork that he was doing with Dean,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: our friend Dean Torrance, who know Dean from Dana Jeane
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: Beach Boys, all that great guy, amazing graphic artists as well.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: So Dean and Bill got in there and started designing
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: this stuff, and it was like, I think he showed
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: them kind of a rough. He played him the record,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: but showed him a rough of the visuals for the record.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: And they said, okay again because we're burning it up.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: We're selling tickets in concert. You know, our our rep
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: is still pretty good. And they said, fine, as long
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: as you deliver another studio record within the next six months.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: And we did. But this, you know, meantime several months
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: go by. This is like we've gone from summer into
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: the summer of seventy one to the spring of seventy two,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: and Bill after months of you know, putting together the
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: package and do all that editing, of conversations that went
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: like beautifully you know, gosh, I mean seamlessly into the
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: tracks on the record. Uh, it finally comes out and
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: like you said, slow Burn, that's a record literally that
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: I think we took out an adder two and billboard
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: or you know what a cash box Back then, I
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: don't think radio and Records was even up and running yet.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: Who's cash cash box and Billboard? And the f M
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: DJ's college stations especially who had nobody's telling him what
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: to play? They started playing Doc Watson doing Tennessee stud.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: You know, that's my favorite you know what, I knew
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: that and it's one of my favorite songs of the record.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: And if you can imagine, I mean, I gotta just
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: say I told you earlier. You know. I'm I'm fifteen,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: sixteen years old listening to Doc Watson play the guitar
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: and sing lifetime hero of Mine and I'm leaning visual
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: literally we didn't have a separate Mike. I'm leaning over
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: Doc's shoulder singing harmony on Tennessee stud. He's like, where's
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: that harmony? Man? You know now, I'm like over here, ah,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: you know, and that's I got that. Such a great track.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Fadden invassor Clemence at fiddle. That's amazing what they
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: played on that. So college picks up on it. Yeah,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: they pick up on that, and they're playing you know,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: Lost Highway that was feature Jimmy it Wasson and and
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: and Honky talking with Fadden and they're playing all these
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: great scrub stuff Nashville Blues, you know, of course, the
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: title track Will the Circle Be Unbroken? I saw the
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: Light with Roy Acuff and people are listen, man, if
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: I had a any for every and people from the
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: rock and roll side years later. I didn't like country music,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: you know, the southern kids, that was their parents music.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: So they just, you know, they just didn't want to know.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: You a little rebellion, rock and roll, that's ours. Country music,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: bluegrass that's yours. Right here come these long Hairs all
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: of a sudden. The music looks like the Buffalo Springfield,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: but it sounds like this other stuff. And here's these
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: young guys singing and playing along. Somehow, whatever influence we
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: might have had to help sort of expose those artists. Look,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not stupider. Yeah, I'm humbled enough to know that
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: mother maybe ill Carter kids, it's Earl scruggskis is roy Aka.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: But you know they a lot of the younger generation
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: weren't into that music. Doc Watson's folk boom career had
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: had cooled off a little it. But man, I'm so
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: proud after the fact that that that might have had
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: a hand in that and also expanded the world of bluegrass.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: Those festivals changed, and we can talk about that later
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: if you want, But back then bluegrass festivals were strictly traditional.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: Then acts like the Earl Scruggs Review, the Dirt Band,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: John Hartford New Grass Revival. They start showing up. It's
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: like the dope smokers showed up, you know, or at
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: least started smoking dope in front of people. There's some
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: blue grass bands that okay, let's jump forward. You ultimately
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: do two more of those, uh will the circle be unbroken? Records?
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: You then start to have soft rock success at the
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: end of the seventies. My favorite of your recorded songs,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: you have Harmony, which I really love your a co
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: writer on. Then how do you decide to have go
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: to Nashville, cracked the country market, have a string of
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: hit and then ultimately go to Russia. That's a lot,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: that's unpacking a lot, but quickly I should I should
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: give a shout out to Bob Carpenter. But yeah, my
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: co writer on Harmony, and I think it's that's the
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: first time you ever wrote about us. My buddy George
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Massenberg came into the studio and said, do you read
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: the Leftist Letter? And I said, what's that? And he
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: showed it to me and I subscribed, And you know,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: and you were so kind. That wasn't even a single
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: lot I don't think should have been. And I wrote that, Yeah,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: very proud of that song Nicolette Larson bless her Heart.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: She sang on that as well. But yeah, so that
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: was on the Make a Little Magic album. We did that,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: and Nikki sang on that, and we we'd had that
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: hit American Dream with Linda. Well, both those songs. This matters,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: this part of it. They became pop is both of them.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: It was like our first big hits since bo j Angles.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: They also charted on the country charts without any real
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: effort on our part, but they I guess, you know,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: the country radio was now opening up a bit. There
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: were bands like Alabama. They were making a big splasher radio.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: And I remember somebody playing me an Alabama record and
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I get that. It's got sort of
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: an Eagles vibe or a dirt band vibe or Burrito's vibe.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: It's the California. It's the California country rock that we
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: were playing in the seventies. Only now they're making these
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: records on music Row. So we went, we went to Nashville.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: We made a record with a great producer, Mr Norbert Putnam,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: who had done you know who was a legendary session
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: guy here for years. He was part of that you
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: know the Nashville Cats, the early six one five guys,
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: you know. And he had produced our buddy Jimmy Buffett
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: and and our friend Dan Vogelberg as well, made great
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: records with them. So we cut that. We cut the
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: song Dance Little Gene that was written by my buddy
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Ivison. Then we went in the studio also with
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: Richard Landis to cut some more tracks. Three more tracks
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: cut in l A. So we got in the studio
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: cut some stuff and he had just had this big
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: hit of what was the song, Oh Angel of the Morning,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, God, And that's a great record, by the way,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: I love Juice Newton Killer made a brilliant record on it,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: and he kind of using that formula with us. And
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: we did the song called Shot full of Love that
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: you said recorded. We did Andrew Gold song called Heartaches
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: and Heartaches. We did a again. This is where we're
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: getting at least have an opinion about the cover songs.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: Um Marshall Crenshaw song called Mary Anne. We cut those
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: three songs, went back to Nashville. And this is, by
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: the way, this is now we're still on Liberty Records,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: so we're not we're getting we got the guys in
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: l A that are kind of calling the shots for
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: their country music career. So they want to put out
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: the Richard Landis stuff, you know, sort of in partnership
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: with the the that which is now Liberty Nashville. Uh.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: And we didn't really know those folks. Great folks, Jim
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: Fogel song, great record guy. So they put out Shot
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: full of Love. Then it becomes the top fifteen hit
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: for the band, and we're like, this is pretty cool.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: But then same thing happened, like Mr. Bo Jangles Station
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: starts spinning Dance Little Jeane, which was a song that
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: was kind of like buried in the record. So they
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: started playing Dance Little Gene. But they thought, well, maybe
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: we need to remix it and put a steel guitar
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: on it, which we loved. And our friend Larry Sasser,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: who was a great session guy, came in and put
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: and put steel on it, and we did a remix
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: with these two young producers, Paul Whorley and Marshall Morgan.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: They put they took that version of Dance Little Gene,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: went to radio with it and became the Dirt Band's
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: first top ten country single, and at that point Chuck Morris,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: uh had become our manager, and he's he become buddies
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: with Jim Ed Norman who was running Warner Brothers. And
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: we're like, oh my gosh, finally because we were the
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: bunny was the we idolized the bunny. You know all
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: those you know, all those acts on Warner Brothers that
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: we were crazy about, including Ray Cooter and your Bonny
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: Rate and Jah in the early days, uh, you know,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: in the offshoots everything, everything that was on Electra and
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: you know later on uh Asylum. So and here's Jim
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: Ed Doorman, who I met through my new friend Don
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: Handily years ago. And so Jim Ed been you know,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: he'd been arranging strings with those guys and he came
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: from Texas when they were called Shiloh, that band California.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: So Jim as the record company prisoner, Like how cool?
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: What could be cooler? And then our new buddies, Caul
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: Warley and Marshall Morgan, we're going to produce us. We
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: got in the studio and had a man an awesome
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: string of top ten singles with those guys. It was
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: like one after the other, you know. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: never wanted to go deeper than three singles, which was
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: I think kind of stupid. You know. Joe Glani changed
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: that later with our c A and they went five deep,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: because you make an album and they want you to
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: record five singles and then the rest is yours. So
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: the other two songs that didn't get recorded, we're typically
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: stuff that those are radio songs, you know, again the
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: record bills. But I love those albums that we made
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: with with Marshall and Paul and there, you know, we're
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: recording our own stuff and having you know, we're rolling
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: in it. We'd never had this consistency at radio ever
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: because rock and roll that's a that's a fish, that's
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: a fickle mistress there. You know, like Chris Rock said,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: here today, gone today. You're having all the success in Nashville,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: how do you end up going to Rush show? Well,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: Russia happened just before Nashville. We were a man, this
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: is so strange. We were we were in the middle
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: of that sort of you'll call it yacht rock now
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: if you choose to period where we had to make
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: a little magic and American dream and you know, we
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: all had sun tans and Hawaiian shirts on our records
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: and we were pretty swave trying to emulate Don Johnson,
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: I think more than you know anybody else as far
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: as the visuals went. We uh, so we're making these
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: records and but we're still playing the same circuit. You know.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: People were fans of the Dirt Band from you know,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: not only American Dream and make a Little Magic, but
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: also from uh uh, the country rock stuff. So we're playing.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: We were playing in Washington, d c h. And we
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: get it. We play there and a couple of days
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: later we got this. Our manager Bill got a phone
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: call from somebody said they were from the State Department
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: and he just laughed and hung up on him because
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: we're right, you got a wrong number or you're pranking us.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: So they keep doing it. He keeps hanging out. Finally
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: accept the phone and said what do you want? And
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: they said, we represent the State Department and we are
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: part of a cultural cultural exchange program and we're interested
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: in the Dirt Band doing a tour of the Soviet Union.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: This is sevent and we kind of said why us
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: because they looked at a bunch of acts that Beach
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: Boys wanted to go there, and they were like that
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: we could think of a lot of examples that might
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: have made more sense. But what they liked about our
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: band was we covered a lot of music. There was
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: rock and roll, but there was also some country music,
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: you know, multi culturists. We had an African American in
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: our band, the great Jackie Clark Uh, which is you know,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure this out from the Soviet game.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter, great musician, great cat at. They said, do
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: you have a female singer in your baby? So we
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: do not. But so we asked a friend of ours
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: from mass and Jan Garrett to come take part, you know,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: so she tore over us as well, and we didn't.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: We went and did this tour of the Soviet Union
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: um and we got there first of May. May day.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: Literally look out the window overlooking Red Square and there's
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: all this, you know WHOA We're seeing missiles going through
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: Red Square and a lot of marching going on, and
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys in overcoats, you know who are
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: following us. This is the KGB followed us everywhere we went.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: It was kind of crazy because there was no communication.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: We had no there's no internet, so the only way
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: we could make calls back home was by ordering literally
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: ordering a phone call at x one hours like three
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: days ahead, and we're having to send a telegram man
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: old school say, I mean a carrier pigeon back home
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: so our friends, your family could get the message that
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be make sure you pick up the phone. Also,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: no answering machines, so we can talk for like three
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: minutes meantime. Though this is pretty fascinating to us, you know,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: we're like, this is myself and Jimmy Fadden and John
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: McEwen and our buddy Jackie Clark, who, by the way,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: came from the icon Tina Tina the Icon Tina Turner review,
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: great musician and Jackie played his ass off gud. He
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: was a great guitar player, singer, bass player, played piano
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: as well. Came from a church gospel background amazing, loved
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: wearing a cowboy hat and dressing in nudis suits and
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: like Manuel cluing, which I got a giant kick out of,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: we all did. We all bought a bunch of suits
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: from Manuel's our buddy John Cable, who was a friend
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: of ours from Colorado. They were on board for I
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: don't know about a year and a half. Jackie and
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: John so we started this tour and we went to
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: Soviet Georgia, drank moonshine with the kind of this guy's
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: like kind of a godfather figure in and he was
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: the mayor of this time. What was the name of it,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: shoot Deblisi, I think anyway, Uh, if I got that wrong, sorry, folks,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not looking at my history book. So drank moonshine
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: with him, which was fun. We've got Yeah. So we
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: had a couple of days off, played in Georgia. That
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: was really great, just getting hot, by the way, hot
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: and muggy nowhere conditioning in the Soviet Union. So we're like, yeah,
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: we're torn in the south again. Here's Georgia. Here's Georgia.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: Next thing we play in uh yet a van. I
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: believe it was in uh in Armenia soccer stadium. Five
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: thousand people inside, ten thousand people outside trying to get in.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: There was a riot. I don't there was a riot.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think anybody got hurt. But we're gone. And
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: by the way, we had heard from the jump that
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: these folks aren't gonna respond to your music if they
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: don't clap loudly. Understand, these people are rushing the stage,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: standing on their seats, going nuts. Crazy bunch of folks
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: in our media. We were loving it because it felt
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: like rock and roll us. We're playing as loud as
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: that our little p a that we brought with us
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: it could stand. Uh. We played Latvia, which was great,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: and that was the one place that was kind of
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: the least Soviet of the Soviet Union. I mean everywhere
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: so far Georgia and you're and Armenia is pretty shut down.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: You know. The the authorities did not want us talking
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: to fans. They didn't want folks hearing about America, honestly know,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: and they would detain them. They'd throw them in jail,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: you know, if you know, for a couple of days.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: If they were lucky. Some of them were beaten. We
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: find out later, which awful. We go to Latvia all
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, people are dressing hipper, the
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: women are wearing makeup, and it was like it looked
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: like Europe to us. It didn't because the Soviet Union
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: was really great. That that country was in black and
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: white literally, um, and Armenia was kind of crazy, but
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: again still you know, feeling that kind of Eastern European
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: oppression at that point. But Latvia, we come to find out,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: fought back hard. You know, they were like Ukraine during
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: World War two, is right now. And then they pull
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: us aside and we toast. We'd you know say, basically
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: screw bres Well. We drank a little laka. Uh. We
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: had a great time with them, they were wonderful. Then
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: we went to the Soviet Union and again you know,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: our our our guides are emissaries who really sweet interpreters,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: really really fine folks because you know, they were used
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: to dealing with with creatives, with artsy FARTSI people because
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: they had they were doing ballet and different you know,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: different tours with a cultural exchange. There again pulling us aside.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: They're not gonna really you know, they're not going to
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: be that excited. You know, don't be offended if they
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: do the golf clap, you know. So they're rushing the stage,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: you know, they're coming up and throwing bouquets of flowers
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: on the stage, and we're smirking because we were used
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: to entertaining people and you know, kind of getting a
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: rise out of them. So we love that. So we
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: played in uh, I guess it was Leningrad went back
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: to my we closed it out of Moscow. We did it.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: We did it. Uh a TV broadcast to hundreds of
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: millions of people, one station, one TV, one channel. So
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: that was pretty great. That was fun. Um. And then
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: we got back on a plane and went back home.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: And this is after a month there. And I remember
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: we had a layover in in Belgium and Brussels and
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: just remember walking off that plane just like, oh my gosh,
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: everything's in technicolor. Again. I felt like latvia, you know,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: it's like you want to coke with ice, Yeah, because
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: again we're sweating to the hits. It was a long tour.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: We were all really homesick, and uh, it was. It
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: was pretty remarkable. It had a huge impact on us,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: you know, as people. Okay, looking back at this amazing career,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: how have you done financially? You know, we kinda I
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: mean honestly through the early years, ay, I should say
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: part of it, we didn't give a crap but make
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: and money. So if we had, if we had, if
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: we had enough dough to buy some groovy clothes, you know,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: maybe a jacket from North Beach leather in l a
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: or a cool pair of cowboy boothe you know, everybody
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: got their favorite jeans and they didn't cost thirty bucks
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: back then much less. Um, keep us in some cool
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: shirts long as the families were fed, you know, and
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: and stuff didn't cost very much. I didn't. I didn't
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: buy my first new car until I was almost thirty.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: I think, so we're poking along. As long as we
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: get to play, we're cool. We didn't start. I didn't
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: notice till Bob Carpenter and I and our friend Richard Hathaway,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: who was playing in our band in nineteen eight as well.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: We co wrote Make a Little Magic, and those checks
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: were big, and this is pop music, and I was like, man,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: we all loved writing songs. But I didn't realize like
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: our friends, you know, from the Drubadour, who are seeing
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: some substantial coin from you know, Jackson's records and the
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: Eagles records. JD. Souther. Uh oh, yeah, that's kind of
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: kind of cool. So we got lucky and we wrote
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: this hit song and we got signed to Ask Gap
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: and they actually had signing bonuses unrecoupable, So yeah, it
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: was kind of kind of up. The Anny a little bit,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: had a little money in the bank, has so much
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: money that I didn't know anything about you know, it's
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: ten ninety nine cash, so I didn't put anything aside
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: for taxes to pay my taxes. I'm like, what what taxes?
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Got a huge bill. Actually had to take a loan
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: out with my folks at the end of that year.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: That never happened again, God bless them. But I was like, yeah,
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: you make you can make money writing songs, because again,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: we're making why don't we were? I think we're paying
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: ourselves a salary. I guess enough to enough to live on.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't a huge amount of money. And uh,
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: you know when we got um, the records were all
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: cross collateralized, so we have a hit record that would
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: go into the next record that might be a stiff
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: So all the money kind of evened out, and like
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: the average was, you know, hey, here's a here's a
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: couple hundred, here's a couple of grand maybe. So we
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: did honestly, man, you know, we got paid for doing this.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: That was our attitude. How lucky are we? But as
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: we got you know, as we started raising families, um,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: we you know, and then started making some of this
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: right songwriting income, it became a little different game. We
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: did not live in palaces. Uh. I mean, I'd like
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: to say that the peaks and the valleys were less
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: extreme in our band, and I think I'm grateful for that,
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: because we didn't fall off of Everest, you know, and
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: land way down into f Valley. It was always it
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: was always a little hill and then the car cruises
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: down the backside. So I think we were you know,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: we were pretty seasoned by the time we were in
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: our mid thirties and came to Nashville. And then again
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: we're right in half the hits, two thirds of the
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: hits it country your radio, so they're starting to pass
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: that mailbox money again. It's pretty cool, and we got
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: and we got this. The career made sense now. And
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: you know, Bob, you came up in a time where
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: nothing was genre specific, you know, and I those those
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: those FM stations. I love the bit that you wrote
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: about the Raspberries. The other day. Hearing your songs on
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: AM was like, that's pretty cool. FM was where the
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: fun was. Flatt and Scruggs. Literally I heard Earl Scruggs
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: and Lester Flat segueing into Foxy Lady by Jimmie Hendricks
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: on FM radio, especially college radios so cool. But now
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: country music sign FM and rock and roll and you
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: got the A O R charts and we found this
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: home and country music. They were so welcoming, and I
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: tell you they liked They liked us because twelve years
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: earlier we had done Will the Circle Be Unbroken? So
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: they thought these guys are legit. They don't have to
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: prove to us that they love country music, because we
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: know they did because they made a record with Roy
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: Acuff and Mother Maybell Carter and Roy I'm Sorry and
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: and Earl Scruggs. So uh, we had our foot in
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: the door. And they and again they had placed some
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: of the popists, you know, Magic and American Dream. So
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: we're lucky we got he had great producers. We always
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: had an ear towards outside material because as much as
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: we loved writing songs and we were all good at it,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: I'm proud of the songwriters in our band. Um, if
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: we heard a song like stand a Little Rain that
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: was written by our buddies Don Schlitz and Donney Lowry,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: we weren't going to not cut that great song. Rodney Krawll,
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: who had written American Dream, he comes with in with
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: a song called Long Hard Road the share Propper's dream,
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: great tune, and you could hear that song on Americana
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: Radio now very easily. Rodney's skills are profound. So that
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: was the first number one our band ever had. We
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: never had a number one record until we put out
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: A Long Hard Road Country Radio. But we had this
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: run and we got you know, like all of us,
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: we got a little spoiled with it. It's like we're
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: gonna put out a single, it's gonna go to number
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: one or top ten or top five. That started falling
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: off a little bit towards the end of the country career,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: the radio career, i should say. But man, country music
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: fans are loyal. And when you combine the country music
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: fans from the eighties into the nineties with um our,
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: you know, the country rock fans and the bluegrass fans
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: from the seventies, that makes for a really, really great
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: fan fan base and a really loyal one. And we
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: love those folks. They've stuck with us. Okay, So you're
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: one of the few bands who sustained in excess of
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: fifty years and had hits and success in different genres
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: at different times. There are bands on the road that
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: you know, had huge hits at the end of the
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: sixties and seven. He's never had any other action and
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: they're touring on that. Whereas you've had these multi successes
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: in as I say, in different areas. Do you feel
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: that the Nati Guitty Dirt Band gets enough respect? Would
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: you like a victory lap to impress people on success
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: or you're just chugging along, little engine that could. As
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: long as you can play and the fans come, you're happy. Honestly,
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: We're so grateful to be the little engine that could
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: and keep making records and have fans that allow us
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: to do anything. And listen, man, we made some we've
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: recorded some tunes or tracks, and I'm not going to
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: mention that. I was just like, what were we thinking
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: back way back when? Some of them during the jug
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: band era, some of them during the yacht rock era.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: But I'm really proud of everything, especially that we've done
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: since you know, the early eighties till now um and
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: the and the seventies records kind of leap frog and backwards.
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: I I you know, our fans allow us the latitude
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: to try anything, and I'm so grateful for that. Well, Jeff,
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: this has been amazing. You know, as I say, we
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: really could have gone on for a couple more hours,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: going into detail about the second and third will the
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: Circle be unbroken, records, the yacht rock era, and of
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: course the temporary change of the name and the changing
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: cast of characters. But I think we've come to the
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: end of the feeling we've known for today. All right, man,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you so much. I want to thank
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: you so much. And you really illuminated stuff, even for me.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: You really made the southern California scene come alive. And
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: I wasn't here until the seventies, and I've read about
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: this stuff, but to talk to someone who was actually
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: there and go to the paradox, etcetera. You really, you
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: know these stories I've heard and haven't heard, you really illuminated.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: So in any event, I want to thank you so much.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Bob Gays talking about until next time. This
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: is Bob left Sins