Speaker 1: Podcast, play Good, celebrating the holidays with the Taken a
Speaker 1: Walk podcast and celebrating our music friends. Well, Billy Payne,
Speaker 1: it is so great to be with you taking a walk?
Speaker 1: How are you my friend? You know, I feel good.
Speaker 1: It's been an intense month or so. It's the anniversary
Speaker 1: waiting for Columbus Tour kind Disorder, right, Yeah, it's forty
Speaker 1: five years, which is, you know, an interesting US a
Speaker 1: way till fifty years. But I think I think choosing
Speaker 1: forty five years is a good thing. I just turned
Speaker 1: seventy three in March. I play like I'm a twenty
Speaker 1: year old. But facts or facts, I love it. I
Speaker 1: love how you're playing. I love how the band is playing.
Speaker 1: So when did you first realize that you were hooked
Speaker 1: on being a music Well, I think that's an excellent questions.
Speaker 1: I'll twist it just a little bit and say that
Speaker 1: I realized that I was a musician first when my
Speaker 1: workshop teacher, mister O'Connell said, I'll give you a passing grade, Bill,
Speaker 1: but stay away from the sauce. I was an iconic
Speaker 1: photographer of our time. He didn't just capture the scene,
Speaker 1: he was part of the scene. Bob grew and it's
Speaker 1: so nice to meet you, and I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I went to the Pollo Theater for a
Speaker 1: benefit concert and much toomuch said, was John Yoga over there?
Speaker 1: And I took a couple of pictures when they were
Speaker 1: on stage, and then they were waiting for their car backstage,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people were taking pictures, snapshots, you know,
Speaker 1: like selfies were calling now and John at one point said,
Speaker 1: people are always taking our picture and we never see it.
Speaker 1: What happens with these pictures? And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: live around the corner from me. I'll show you my pictures.
Speaker 1: And he said you live around the corner. I said yeah.
Speaker 1: He said, well slip them under the door then, and
Speaker 1: I thought that was very neighborly, you know, And that
Speaker 1: was our first conversation, if you call out a conversation.
Speaker 1: When I went by the house, and I didn't quite
Speaker 1: slip under the door, I rang the bell. Much to
Speaker 1: my surprise, Jerry Rubin answered the door. I didn't know
Speaker 1: he did that sort of thing, but he asked if
Speaker 1: I was if they were expecting me, and I said no,
Speaker 1: and I just left the pictures. And later when we
Speaker 1: did get to friends. Joko mentioned that they were very
Speaker 1: aware of that, like, who was that, who didn't want
Speaker 1: to meet us? Who just dropped something off? You know? Well,
Speaker 1: Henry Dilts, it's so great to be with you here
Speaker 1: at Studio City taking a walk, yes, now crowded Ventura Boulevard,
Speaker 1: that first Crosby Stills Nash session. How did all that
Speaker 1: come together in that particular iconic album company. Gary Burton,
Speaker 1: my graphic artist partner, and myself both knew these three guys.
Speaker 1: We all know each other, especially in La. We all
Speaker 1: hang out of the troubador. Everybody knew what was what
Speaker 1: was going on, and we knew they were recording an
Speaker 1: album together, you know, and they needed pictures. Nobody had
Speaker 1: taken any pictures of them even to announce that they're
Speaker 1: singing together. So Gary and I said, up, let's go.
Speaker 1: Come on. We're getting this old Ford station wagon fifty
Speaker 1: something Ford station wagon and drive around La looking for
Speaker 1: a little spots to take interesting photos. And we found
Speaker 1: that little house. Graham had seen that house sometime earlier
Speaker 1: and said, I know, there's this great little house around here.
Speaker 1: And we found it and it was a couch in
Speaker 1: front of it. They sat there, we took a bunch
Speaker 1: of pictures, and Gary said the other thing that he
Speaker 1: said to me. The first thing was just shoot, everything
Speaker 1: going to happen filmed the Juba part. Second thing he
Speaker 1: always said to me was back up, back up, get
Speaker 1: the whole house. That Gary could saw that that whole
Speaker 1: house is interesting, and he said, back back up. I
Speaker 1: backed up across the street and I could see them
Speaker 1: on the couch at the bottom and the whole house
Speaker 1: around them. And so that's how that happened. To story
Speaker 1: with that is that they hadn't even named themselves yet,
Speaker 1: so when they sat on the couch randomly, it happened
Speaker 1: to be Nash Kills and Crosby. And then we looked
Speaker 1: at that in a slide show a few days later,
Speaker 1: it said, boy, someone said that would be a great
Speaker 1: album cover. But we're in the wrong order because now
Speaker 1: we just decided to be Causby filled in that that
Speaker 1: rolls off the tom right. So I said, no problem,
Speaker 1: let's just go back there. How long would it take
Speaker 1: for you to jump on the couch in the right order.
Speaker 1: I'll go click, click click, we'll have the same shot
Speaker 1: in the right order. And so we did a few
Speaker 1: days later, gotten Gary's Ford station wagon drove back and
Speaker 1: the house wasn't there with an empty lot. There was
Speaker 1: a bunch of sticks in the back of the lot.
Speaker 1: They bulldoed the whole thing down and made a parking
Speaker 1: lot at them. So they're sitting in the wrong order.
Speaker 1: And on that cover, La based singer, songwriter, multi instrumentalist
Speaker 1: and producer Grace gosted, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: This is like the most unique, probably interview podcast experience
Speaker 1: I've ever had. Take us back to the earliest point
Speaker 1: you could remember where you knew and I've heard you
Speaker 1: in other interviews describe this that you were going to
Speaker 1: be a musician. Gosh, well, you know, there's two points
Speaker 1: really that I speak about quite a bit, but I
Speaker 1: think that the biggest one for me. I was riding
Speaker 1: in the car with my dad and I heard Just
Speaker 1: Dance for the first time by Lady Gaga and sort
Speaker 1: of you know, this was in that same time period
Speaker 1: where I Kissed a Girl by Katie Perry came out
Speaker 1: and I was just getting exposure to like these big
Speaker 1: pop sounds as big pop musicians, and I just remember
Speaker 1: hearing that song and I listened to it four hundred
Speaker 1: more time, and I announced to my parents that that's
Speaker 1: what I was going to do. One day, I was like, Mom, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a pop star. And they were like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know sure, Danny Fields. It's so nice to be
Speaker 1: taking a walk with you in the lovely West village. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that used to be a little more racy and avant
Speaker 1: garde and experimental and young and gay and hold in
Speaker 1: next century. This was a famous worker story. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: a little read. Wait, this is the best called to
Speaker 1: see how the rep ricks Yep, he lived in that apartment.
Speaker 1: Oh he did after oh and one night after his concert.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of mind. Who brought home the tape
Speaker 1: of the commons. I loved him very much, and I'm
Speaker 1: not saying anything derogatory bout lovers. I never woulder. I
Speaker 1: loved in Romich, and he was a three guy. We
Speaker 1: put the tape on. The shows are a overt at all.
Speaker 1: It's like one or two in the morning, and you
Speaker 1: come by here. The windows were open. I swear the
Speaker 1: speakers were pointed out. Who was listening? There is performance
Speaker 1: earlier that night, and it's always everybody else within the
Speaker 1: square mile I'm taking a walk with Yrma Calcane. Well,
Speaker 1: you touched on teaching, and you've been a teacher really
Speaker 1: since the beginning of your career. Absolutely, So I moved
Speaker 1: to California in nineteen sixty two, and I've been playing
Speaker 1: the guitar for a while by that time, but but
Speaker 1: just hanging out. And you know, I was going to
Speaker 1: the University of Santa Clair at the time, and I'd
Speaker 1: already become friends with Paul Canner, who got me in
Speaker 1: the Jefferson airplane, which is another story, but but I
Speaker 1: was just you know, I got I played it open
Speaker 1: mics and stuff all the time, but you never got paid.
Speaker 1: And I remember Paul said, did you ever think about teaching?
Speaker 1: And I went, no, what would I teach? And he said,
Speaker 1: how about what you know? And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not a bad idea. So he got me into
Speaker 1: this little music store in San Jose and Stavi's Creek
Speaker 1: Boulevard and I started teaching. And I taught well into
Speaker 1: the first year of the airplane was together, and you
Speaker 1: really took to it. I really enjoyed the process, yes,
Speaker 1: but was it really like seeing, you know, the glow
Speaker 1: in somebody's eyes when they really connected with something. Oh,
Speaker 1: you were chanting, absolutely, you know. Yeah. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: you know, showing up and teaching some poor, hapless kid
Speaker 1: who really didn't want to take piano lessons, you know,
Speaker 1: because everybody really wanted to learn. But yeah, seeing people
Speaker 1: get it, it's still exciting. Taking a Walk with Buzznight
Speaker 1: is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts