Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftstt's podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is guitarist producer Kenny Greenberg. Kenny, how'd you get
Speaker 1: the gig playing on the road with Kenny Chesney?
Speaker 2: I got the gig playing with Kenny Chesney because I'd
Speaker 2: been playing on his records for a while and we
Speaker 2: became friends doing that. It's like when you overdub with
Speaker 2: someone and it's just you and the artist in the room.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to get to know somebody. And
Speaker 2: and then I went and did a tour with Bob Seger,
Speaker 2: and I sent him a couple of clips of playing
Speaker 2: with Bob, and I think a thing went off in
Speaker 2: his head. Oh, he plays live too, And so when
Speaker 2: he was going to do a tour in two thy twelve,
Speaker 2: he called me and said, hey, one of my guitar
Speaker 2: players quit, want to come out and play? And I said, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: And also knowing that Bob was winding down. Bob had
Speaker 2: told me a couple of times, I think I'm about
Speaker 2: to wrap it up, maybe one more, but that's about it.
Speaker 2: So I thought, well, I think I'll go play with Kenny.
Speaker 2: And it was a That's how I got the gig.
Speaker 1: Well, let's back up a step. How'd you get the gig?
Speaker 1: Played for Bob.
Speaker 2: Seeger playing on his records. I played on like two
Speaker 2: or three of his records, and he's just I can't
Speaker 2: say enough good things about him. He's just like a
Speaker 2: great guy to be around. He's one of those kind
Speaker 2: of guys that laughs all the time and he's just
Speaker 2: was awesome. And then we cut a couple things where
Speaker 2: we cut him kind of live. We had reached windings
Speaker 2: on the B three and I think when someone's called
Speaker 2: Gypsy and we cut it live RCA studio, everybody in
Speaker 2: the room and we stood up and played, and I
Speaker 2: think he recognized, oh, he stands up and he can
Speaker 2: play live. So he called me up and asked me
Speaker 2: to come out and play with him.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you feel about going on the road
Speaker 1: as opposed to being in Nashville, you know, being in
Speaker 1: the studio or losing gigs? What are your feelings?
Speaker 2: I mean, everybody, I'll put it to you this way.
Speaker 2: I think fifty you know, twenty years ago, I think
Speaker 2: studio players were more concerned about not going on the
Speaker 2: road and making sure they kept all the studio gigs.
Speaker 2: But the landscape has changed a lot, and most studio
Speaker 2: players have some kind of a road gig because the
Speaker 2: studio thing is just smaller now. So, I mean, there
Speaker 2: are a few exceptions, but I mean I know a
Speaker 2: lot of the guys that do are really the top
Speaker 2: guys right now. A lot of those guys have road gigs.
Speaker 2: And it's also worth noting that, especially in the country sphere,
Speaker 2: the road gigs are usually either just Friday and Saturday
Speaker 2: or Thursday through Saturday, and then you come back to
Speaker 2: Nashville and then you go back out and then you
Speaker 2: come back. So a lot of the sessions during the
Speaker 2: week you just don't miss. You know, they're still there,
Speaker 2: and everybody understands, Oh, you're out playing with Chesney. Wow,
Speaker 2: what a cool gig. So we also all have our
Speaker 2: mobile rigs in our hotel rooms and they send us
Speaker 2: files and we overdub and send them back.
Speaker 1: Okay, when we were scheduling this, you said you might
Speaker 1: have to cancel if work came through. Is it a
Speaker 1: last spinted thing or is this just a busy time.
Speaker 1: What's it like in a studio player in Nashville now.
Speaker 2: Well, it's just a lot of things come up at
Speaker 2: the last minute. And actually I had a couple people
Speaker 2: say I might need you either Wednesday or Thursday of
Speaker 2: this week, but we're not sure yet. So that's why
Speaker 2: I said that. And I'm also you know, is a
Speaker 2: full disclosure. I'm not a full time session guy and
Speaker 2: really never have. I've always produced records, written songs, played
Speaker 2: on the road. So there are guys who are much
Speaker 2: busier in the studio than me. I like to do
Speaker 2: different things, so I've always I've always done that, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe to my detriment. Maybe if I did one thing
Speaker 2: it might have been better, but I just really enjoyed
Speaker 2: doing different things, so I would have to say that
Speaker 2: I'm really not as concerned about losing sessions. And also
Speaker 2: the sort of arc of a session player, I'm probably
Speaker 2: on the backside of that because of my age. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just am.
Speaker 1: Well, how did you end up playing on Kenny's Records?
Speaker 1: To begin with?
Speaker 2: The way I got into play on Kenny's Records is
Speaker 2: his co longtime co producer. His name is Buddy Cannon.
Speaker 2: He's it's a wonderful guy, and the I was going
Speaker 2: to produce a record for Sony on an artist named
Speaker 2: Shelley Fairchild, and they said, man, what if we put
Speaker 2: you together with Buddy Cannon, who I'd never met, And
Speaker 2: this is in two thousand and early two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: and I said, man, Buddy Cannon, I'd love to work
Speaker 2: with Buddy Cannon.
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't.
Speaker 2: So we made a record on this artist named Shelley Fairchild,
Speaker 2: and Buddy and I hit it off, and he liked
Speaker 2: my playing, and probably in the fall, he said, what
Speaker 2: doul come and play on this Chesney record that I'm
Speaker 2: working on. So I went into a studio and did
Speaker 2: one day, and then I did another day, and then
Speaker 2: they had me on a tracking day and I was
Speaker 2: sort of in the band then, I mean not on
Speaker 2: the road in the band, but I was in the
Speaker 2: studio band, and we just hit it off right away.
Speaker 2: So I was fortunate to have that opportunity.
Speaker 1: Now in the ensuing years, when Kenny goes to make
Speaker 1: a record, how involved are you in making a record
Speaker 1: with Kenny?
Speaker 2: I usually play on the tracking date. The tracking date
Speaker 2: for those listeners that don't know, that's when you lay
Speaker 2: the foundation. Sometimes it's the whole song. Sometimes it's just
Speaker 2: the sort of rhythm track, basic foundation, And I'm usually
Speaker 2: there and I'm usually the leader and help arrange the songs.
Speaker 2: And but I will say that it's really his thing.
Speaker 2: I mean more and more as the years have gone
Speaker 2: by and he's become more confident in his record making.
Speaker 2: It is really his vision. I mean, he is is
Speaker 2: a guy who's like it's like not to digress. But
Speaker 2: when you play live with him, it's loose, it's fun.
Speaker 2: We jam, songs are extended. He throws out stuff at
Speaker 2: the last minute when we're in the studio, especially now,
Speaker 2: it's very very much his vision and very controlled, and
Speaker 2: this is what I want and this is how I
Speaker 2: want it to sound. And then he'll actually sing me
Speaker 2: the parts that he wants me to play. So I
Speaker 2: will say that it just answers your question. It's I'm
Speaker 2: pretty involved in playing. But it is really his vision.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, he say show up in the studio on
Speaker 1: Wednesday and then sing you the parts, or will he
Speaker 1: send you the material in advance?
Speaker 2: He sends me the songs him or Buddy Cannon send
Speaker 2: me the songs a couple of days before, and then
Speaker 2: I make a chart and make the Nashville number chart.
Speaker 2: And so I've heard the songs and I have an
Speaker 2: idea in my head about what everybody ought to play
Speaker 2: and maybe what we ought to do. And then we
Speaker 2: all get in the room and it's usually a fairly
Speaker 2: good sized band, and a lot of the band is
Speaker 2: his roadband, because he's got a great band now, so
Speaker 2: his road it's a good part of his roadband is
Speaker 2: in the studio as well. And we go in and
Speaker 2: we listen down to the song and we all hold
Speaker 2: our charts and the players and this is standard stuff,
Speaker 2: and the players have all heard it for the first time,
Speaker 2: and we listen down and Chesney says, I hate what
Speaker 2: they're doing on the intro. Do not do that. After
Speaker 2: I learned the intro overnight, you know, I got to
Speaker 2: learn how to play the intro. I learned the intro.
Speaker 2: And he goes, I hate the intro. Don't do that.
Speaker 2: So then we'll come up with a new intro, or
Speaker 2: we'll just lay a bed and he'll say, I want
Speaker 2: to think about the intro. I'm going to come back
Speaker 2: to you with my idea when we overdub of what
Speaker 2: I think that intro should be. He really likes to
Speaker 2: take a basic track and think about what he wants today.
Speaker 2: He's very thought and it is really really his vision
Speaker 2: of how he wants the songs to be. Whereas when
Speaker 2: I first started recording with him, which is sort of
Speaker 2: the era of Heman Ways Whiskey and Living in Fast
Speaker 2: Forward and some of those kind of stadium rock songs,
Speaker 2: it's pretty loose. I mean, we just go in there
Speaker 2: and jam and play live solos, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: the way those records are. He doesn't do that as
Speaker 2: much anymore. He's kind of more thoughtful about how he
Speaker 2: wants to do it. And you know, really, for better
Speaker 2: or worse, as an artist, he's changing and he's doing
Speaker 2: different things, and it's probably a good thing.
Speaker 1: Okay. He originally worked with Barry Beckett, famous and Muscle Sholes,
Speaker 1: and then he went to work with Buddy. He's been
Speaker 1: working Buddy for eons. Now, what's Buddy's special sauce.
Speaker 2: Buddy is he is really like he's with Kenny because
Speaker 2: Kenny is so hands on and such a song guy
Speaker 2: that Buddy just kind of sits at the back of
Speaker 2: the room and it doesn't say much and Buddy and
Speaker 2: Kenny comes in and goes, Hey, the intro, this is
Speaker 2: what I want to do. There's and we start, and
Speaker 2: we go and we start to record the song, and
Speaker 2: Buddy hits the talk back and he's got this sort
Speaker 2: of southern drawl, kind of a slow talking guy, and
Speaker 2: he goes like it's too fast, and then and we go, oh,
Speaker 2: it's too fast, and he's right, and then we slow
Speaker 2: it down and then we start to record it, and
Speaker 2: then he'll say he'll say, Kenny, this isn't a great
Speaker 2: key for your voice. We need to we need to
Speaker 2: change the key. So we'll try and change the key.
Speaker 2: So Buddy just sort of direct from the back, and
Speaker 2: he doesn't have an ego. He's very cool about stuff.
Speaker 2: You can't piss the guy off. He's just gonna sit
Speaker 2: back there, and but he has really really great things
Speaker 2: to say. That's sort of how he's not a I'll
Speaker 2: put it this way. You're not gonna spend hours moving
Speaker 2: around microphones on guitar cabinets with Buddy. He doesn't care
Speaker 2: about that. He's more of the big picture guy.
Speaker 1: Okay. Some people Jimmy Iavin famous for being on the
Speaker 1: phone while he's producing records. Rick Rubin, you know, is
Speaker 1: constantly telling the band to do things by themselves. Where
Speaker 1: he shows up is Buddy there paying attention the whole time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he's paying attention. He's sitting in the back of
Speaker 2: the room. He's actually he's the first guy there and
Speaker 2: he's sitting in the back of the room. He's got
Speaker 2: an assistant that's always there with him. He is very
Speaker 2: much paying attention. He's not on I've never seen him
Speaker 2: on the phone, you know, he just sort of sits
Speaker 2: back there. And yeah, he's also been making the Willie
Speaker 2: Nelson records for a long time. He's he's been making
Speaker 2: all those records.
Speaker 1: Have you worked with Buddy on anybody else at this one? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I worked on a Willie Nelson record. I worked on
Speaker 2: a Jamie Johnson record, a couple other things. He's brought
Speaker 2: me into overdub on just on and off. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: work with the Willie record I worked on. It was
Speaker 2: really fun.
Speaker 1: So what's the style of making a Willie record?
Speaker 2: It was more loose and let's move fast. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of people there, a lot of people in
Speaker 2: the control room. His bus was parked out back. Everybody
Speaker 2: wanted to go on the bus and smoke pot is.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a kind of a circus. And but my
Speaker 2: great experience with that record. I've played on a couple
Speaker 2: of his records, but on the record that Buddy did
Speaker 2: we cut on my birthday. We cut got to Serve Somebody,
Speaker 2: And so I didn't tell I didn't say it's my
Speaker 2: birthday because I didn't want the whole thing where they
Speaker 2: give me the cake and you know, so I just
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking, this is freaking amazing. I'm playing with Willie.
Speaker 2: I can see him in the vocal booth across the studio,
Speaker 2: and we're playing got to Serve Somebody, which I love
Speaker 2: that song. I mean, it's so and so we're playing
Speaker 2: that song. But my story about it is is that
Speaker 2: so we do two or three takes and Willie's playing
Speaker 2: his guitar the way he plays guitar, and he plays
Speaker 2: through this weird old Baldwin amp and it I don't
Speaker 2: think there's a ground on the plug, and the radio
Speaker 2: station was coming through and they were having trouble with
Speaker 2: the amput. But we're cutting the song and his amp's
Speaker 2: kind of kind of noisy, but he's playing the way
Speaker 2: he plays.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: It's Willie Nelson. So we cut Serve Somebody and we
Speaker 2: get into the oultro of the song, and a lot
Speaker 2: of times in the studio, on the outro, which is
Speaker 2: the end part of song, you can kind of jam
Speaker 2: stretch out and they'll edit that out or do what
Speaker 2: they want to do, but it's always fun for us
Speaker 2: to do. So we're cutting surf somebody. We get to
Speaker 2: the end of the song and Willie plays a little
Speaker 2: bit and then I answer him, and then he plays
Speaker 2: a little bit, and so we're having this conversation and
Speaker 2: we're playing and I'm thinking to myself, it's my birthday.
Speaker 2: I'm trading licks with Willie. He's playing Trigger, the famous guitar.
Speaker 2: This is freaking amazing. And I was so excited and
Speaker 2: and and I knew that his part was a little
Speaker 2: rough in his amp was making some noises, but who cares,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: I get the record and they replaced it with Jim
Speaker 2: Horn on sacks on the outro. So so our little
Speaker 2: conversation we had is gone, and they've got this wailing
Speaker 2: sax solo, which was really great, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: Jim Horn is he's Jim Horn, you know that played
Speaker 2: on all those great records, and it was it was great.
Speaker 2: But I was like, oh man, you know, so that's
Speaker 2: that's my story from that record.
Speaker 1: I mean, Baldman was a piano maker that made amplifiers
Speaker 1: for like ten minutes. At the end of the sixties
Speaker 1: early seventies.
Speaker 2: They make this big, tall solid state amplifier called the
Speaker 2: Baldwin Exterminator. And if you see Neil Young play, he
Speaker 2: has a couple of old Vinage Fender amps. He's got
Speaker 2: these pile of amps he plays through live, and in
Speaker 2: the middle of it, he's got a Baldwin exterminator and
Speaker 2: it has a very particular, weird solid state sound. But
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, Willie with his very unusual classical guitar,
Speaker 2: gut string guitar, it's got a mic in it. That's
Speaker 2: the empty plays through. I think, I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: that's the ampies always played through. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: but that's what he had.
Speaker 1: So he plays the same guitar he plays with live
Speaker 1: with a hole in it. That's what he records with.
Speaker 2: That's what he records with, that same guitar, and it
Speaker 2: was just it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. You talk about creating a chart. Tell
Speaker 1: my audience for those who don't know about creating a chart.
Speaker 2: A chart is it's really you know. I think if
Speaker 2: you were in a on a string session in la
Speaker 2: you would get a transcription with the notes and a
Speaker 2: full score that you would read off of, and you
Speaker 2: would find the guitar part and play those notes, and
Speaker 2: you would read those notes. We don't really do that
Speaker 2: in Nashville. What we do is they have a thing
Speaker 2: called the number system, and each like, if you're in
Speaker 2: the key of C, a C is a one, a
Speaker 2: D minor is a two with a with a negative
Speaker 2: sign next to it, and you do a little bit
Speaker 2: of transcription in the case of where you might notate
Speaker 2: above it that you're going to one measure, you're going
Speaker 2: to play a one chord and a two minor, but
Speaker 2: the two minor starts on the two and and you'll
Speaker 2: make a little notation of the notes above it. And
Speaker 2: so everybody knows how to read a little bit. But
Speaker 2: the reason that my understanding of the reason why the
Speaker 2: Nashville number system came into being because country music and
Speaker 2: acoustic music uses acoustic instruments. If you change or even
Speaker 2: forget about that, if you just change the key, if
Speaker 2: you do it once and the singer goes, oh, it's
Speaker 2: too high. So you're in the key of D, so
Speaker 2: you got so you go down to you go down
Speaker 2: to B flat. Well all the all the names of
Speaker 2: the chords have changed, but if you use the number system,
Speaker 2: it's just the intervals of the chords, so the numbers
Speaker 2: stay the same. So you read the same chart. Does
Speaker 2: that make sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's.
Speaker 2: That's And also because guitar players use KPO's, so the
Speaker 2: song might be in G, but you may kpo up
Speaker 2: three frets and you're playing out of E, and so
Speaker 2: you're looking at the guitar and you're playing an E chord,
Speaker 2: but it's really a G chord. But if you if
Speaker 2: it's just a one, if the song's in the key
Speaker 2: of G, it's just a one. No matter where you are,
Speaker 2: it's just a it's a It simplifies things and it
Speaker 2: makes it easy to adapt and change.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the road as we're jumping around here.
Speaker 1: You know, you talk to a lot of artists. They
Speaker 1: love the hour two on stage and the rest of
Speaker 1: the time is dreadful. What's it like for you?
Speaker 2: It's you know, I have to say, you know, I
Speaker 2: didn't really start to tour. Until I was in my fifties,
Speaker 2: I just was always playing club gigs or I would
Speaker 2: occasionally do a one off with somebody in a large
Speaker 2: hall or something, but I was never really and when
Speaker 2: I was really young, I was on the road in
Speaker 2: the van, but that's different. I was in my twenties
Speaker 2: and that's a whole other thing. But my experience with
Speaker 2: Bob c Or We're out for three months, and it
Speaker 2: was difficult for me on the days off because it
Speaker 2: was my first time doing that, and I didn't enjoy
Speaker 2: it was fun being in Pittsburgh for three days in
Speaker 2: exploring the city and whatever, but I didn't like playing
Speaker 2: a gig having two days off. Playing a gig having
Speaker 2: two days off, that was foreign to me because I
Speaker 2: hadn't done that in a long time and when I
Speaker 2: was a kid on the road playing gigs, we were
Speaker 2: played every night. So for me, I didn't really love that,
Speaker 2: but I adapted to to it and actually had a
Speaker 2: great time because the gigs were just so incredible. I mean,
Speaker 2: playing with Bob is just like, this was incredible. It's
Speaker 2: a great experience. So it was all new. But then
Speaker 2: I went right from that to Chesney, which is you're
Speaker 2: either out Friday and Saturday and then you come right back,
Speaker 2: or you're out Thursday through Saturday and you come right back.
Speaker 2: So it's I really love it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you go out and come back, everybody
Speaker 1: fly on the same plane. Or does can he take
Speaker 1: his own transportation?
Speaker 2: Well, he's got his own plane, so and he's got
Speaker 2: a full time crew. And so the way it works.
Speaker 2: When I first went out with him, he was pretty
Speaker 2: separate from us, and we would either take a bus
Speaker 2: and the band has her own vie and his organization
Speaker 2: is so big, it's like a hundred people. So you
Speaker 2: have this army of buses and the band has her
Speaker 2: own bus. It's a very comfortable and nice bus. Or
Speaker 2: if we were going to the West coast, we'd fly
Speaker 2: and we'd fly out Southwest or American or whatever. In
Speaker 2: the last four years, since the pandemic, we have a
Speaker 2: newer band, and I mean his other band. His old
Speaker 2: band was great. It was kind of more of a
Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, like a country rock
Speaker 2: bar band, which was really fun and there were great guys,
Speaker 2: but they were guys he had come up with, but
Speaker 2: he was sort of separate from them and they weren't
Speaker 2: studio guys, and now the band is more he feels like,
Speaker 2: in my mind, I think he feels like we're more
Speaker 2: his equals or something. I'm not sure if that's the
Speaker 2: right way to say, but what I'm getting around to
Speaker 2: saying is that we'll fly on his plane. Some of
Speaker 2: the time. He'll call and say, hey, guys, let's it'll
Speaker 2: call the band and say, do you guys ride with me?
Speaker 2: So we'll jump on the plane and ride to Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: We'll leave it four in the afternoon and get there
Speaker 2: at seven, zip over and play the gig, get back
Speaker 2: on the plane and be home at one in the morning.
Speaker 2: And that's that's a that is a luxury. And so
Speaker 2: we do that sometimes and it's great because we have
Speaker 2: great conversations and we talk about recording and what we
Speaker 2: want to work on, and everybody's in it together. But
Speaker 2: then sometimes we're on the bus and I don't mind
Speaker 2: the bus. I actually like the bus. I think the
Speaker 2: thing I like the least is flying commercial. That's it's
Speaker 2: just hard.
Speaker 1: Okay. When you do have downtime, how do you entertain yourself?
Speaker 2: I do yoga, I like to work out, and then
Speaker 2: I have a traveling pro tools rig and whatever records
Speaker 2: that I'm working on, or songs that I'm writing, or
Speaker 2: whatever i'm doing. I'll set up my stuff in my
Speaker 2: hotel room and work. And there's something about being in
Speaker 2: a hotel room where I'm not distracted. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to take a break and go up and hang out
Speaker 2: with my wife or run up to the store or something.
Speaker 2: I'm just there. I get a lot of work done
Speaker 2: and actually really like that. And the other guys in
Speaker 2: the band all do the same thing. We all do
Speaker 2: the same thing. We're all in our rooms with our
Speaker 2: pro tools, rigs, And I think if you talk to
Speaker 2: most bands on the road, a lot of the guys
Speaker 2: will say, yep, I've got my ableton or my logic
Speaker 2: or whatever they use. It's on my laptop and I'm
Speaker 2: in my room and I'm working on stuff. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot they can do during the day.
Speaker 1: Well, in the old days, if you're doing twenty six
Speaker 1: dates in thirty days, you were burnt crisp on both ends,
Speaker 1: you know, So when you want to work today, you know,
Speaker 1: are you awake enough for being a musician? You can
Speaker 1: run on empty? How does it work?
Speaker 2: I go to bed early. I'm gonna go to bed.
Speaker 2: And really, I almost hate to say this, it's almost embarrassing,
Speaker 2: but the when we play and we get done in eleven,
Speaker 2: we play like from nine to eleven, kind of sort
Speaker 2: of somewhere in there, and then by the time you're
Speaker 2: back at your hotel room or whatever you're doing, it's midnight.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's usually the latest time ever up. And
Speaker 2: I still get up early, but most of the time
Speaker 2: I go to bed early, and I get up really early,
Speaker 2: and I get a lot done in the morning. That's
Speaker 2: and if I need to, I take a nap in
Speaker 2: the afternoon.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, Canny sometimes play stadiums, sometimes play sheds,
Speaker 1: as big a building as he wants. You're there, you're performing,
Speaker 1: and it is a perform it's in front of fifty
Speaker 1: thousand people. How do you calm down in an hour
Speaker 1: such a you can go to sleep.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to answer that, and I don't
Speaker 2: really ever think about it. There's something about playing his gig,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of different than other gigs. I don't
Speaker 2: know how to answer this exactly. It's I'm in it's exciting,
Speaker 2: and you run around and there's tons of people and
Speaker 2: it's very very loud, you know, and it's but it's
Speaker 2: there's this weird I'm kind of relaxed doing it. I
Speaker 2: enjoy it so much. And if I'm having a good night,
Speaker 2: I do this mindfulness. It's the meditation that I do.
Speaker 2: And if I'm having a good night, I can get
Speaker 2: into mindfulness while I'm playing, and I just sort of
Speaker 2: stop thinking and just play, and it's this very relaxing
Speaker 2: and I just look out at all the people and
Speaker 2: all the lights, and I'm a side man. I'm over
Speaker 2: on the side, even though I get to step out
Speaker 2: and plate, so all those and stuff, I'm a side man,
Speaker 2: and so I can sort of watch the world from
Speaker 2: my little side of the stage and look at all
Speaker 2: the people and all the crazy shit they're doing. Or
Speaker 2: if we're outdoors the lights at a festival, you know,
Speaker 2: and if I'm in a good place, which isn't every night,
Speaker 2: but when i am, I get into this mindfulness thing
Speaker 2: where I just play and that's a really great place
Speaker 2: to be. And then when I get done, I'm not
Speaker 2: I'm not stressed or i'm not jazzed. I'm just sort
Speaker 2: of relaxed. And it's easy for me to either get
Speaker 2: on the bus. I'm usually the first one to sleep
Speaker 2: on the bus. I'm also way older than everybody else,
Speaker 2: but it's like I can.
Speaker 1: I could just get.
Speaker 2: On the bus, have a whatever, coconut water because I
Speaker 2: don't drink, and go to sleep.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about mindfulness and how you get in
Speaker 1: that zone.
Speaker 2: It's it's a discipline and I move in and out
Speaker 2: of it, and it's like a meditation practice and it's
Speaker 2: a Buddhist thing that it started that way. But there's
Speaker 2: tons of mindfulness apps, Like Sam Harris has a great app.
Speaker 2: I'm a big Sam Harris fan, and he has a
Speaker 2: daily meditation that's very mindfulness based. And there's also ten
Speaker 2: percent Happier, which is also a great app. And that
Speaker 2: the guy that has that app is the guy that
Speaker 2: was a he was a newscaster. I can't remember his name,
Speaker 2: but it's his app. And you just try to stop
Speaker 2: your mind from going on the treadmill and thinking about
Speaker 2: what I gotta do tomorrow, what just happened, what do
Speaker 2: I regret, what do I wish happen? You know, you
Speaker 2: just sort of let that go and I find that
Speaker 2: I play my best when I stopped thinking and there's
Speaker 2: a there's a mindfulness expert named George Mumford. Have you
Speaker 2: ever heard of him? He no, he has a book
Speaker 2: out and he was he's a sports guy and he
Speaker 2: with Michael Jordan was the first guy I did it
Speaker 2: with was Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan's thing on the court
Speaker 2: was mindfulness and talked to him by George Mumford. And
Speaker 2: so what he did was it was the same thing
Speaker 2: where you stop thinking, you forget about the people out there.
Speaker 2: I mean they're still there and you still see him,
Speaker 2: but you just let go and you play your best.
Speaker 2: And he also worked with Kobe and a couple of
Speaker 2: other people, but he was a he works with sports
Speaker 2: people and gets them. It's sort of a way to
Speaker 2: unstress and to play their best. So I find in
Speaker 2: playing music as far as performing and actually in the
Speaker 2: studio sometimes too, if I can shut off the noise
Speaker 2: and just and it doesn't always work. There's some days
Speaker 2: where you just you can't shut it off. You know,
Speaker 2: there's stuff you're thinking about, or you got to do
Speaker 2: something tomorrow and you're stuck thinking about it. But if
Speaker 2: I or are you thinking about yourself?
Speaker 1: Do they like me?
Speaker 2: Do they not? Like me. Do they like what I played?
Speaker 2: Do they not like what I played?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: But if you can stop that and just let go,
Speaker 2: you're still aware. I play my best that way, So
Speaker 2: playing gigs, I play my best when I do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you avoid making mistakes when you're playing live?
Speaker 2: Practice? For me, I'm a big practicer. I get up
Speaker 2: in the morning and I practice every morning. And if
Speaker 2: I I mean, once you're out on two and you've
Speaker 2: played songs a bunch, you don't have to practice the
Speaker 2: songs as much. But for me to avoid to get
Speaker 2: my hands to do what my brain is thinking, I
Speaker 2: have to practice. It's like a physical thing. Some people
Speaker 2: don't have to. I absolutely have to. So for me,
Speaker 2: I get up in the morning and I practice, and
Speaker 2: I get my hands going, and then like for instance,
Speaker 2: Friday night, tonight Night's Wednesday Friday. I'm playing with Pat mcgloughlin.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you know who he is. Yes,
Speaker 2: if you ever get a chance to see him play live,
Speaker 2: it's the greatest. He's amazing to play with. But it's
Speaker 2: for me. It's a lot of playing. And he likes
Speaker 2: me to play a lot, and he'll send me I'll
Speaker 2: probably get it tonight or tomorrow. He'll send me an
Speaker 2: MP three and say, here's the new songs I just
Speaker 2: wrote I want to do, so I have to learn
Speaker 2: those songs. Or sometimes I'll also say sometimes we get
Speaker 2: there and he just starts playing new songs and we
Speaker 2: follow him. He's a great bandleader and so but what
Speaker 2: I'm getting around saying is that the next couple days
Speaker 2: I'll work on playing his songs. Even though it's just
Speaker 2: a club gig, it's not being recorded. No one cares.
Speaker 2: It's a club gig. You know, there'll be a lot
Speaker 2: of people there, but playing at this club called Third
Speaker 2: and Lindsley. And but for me to really enjoy myself
Speaker 2: and to be able to relax and play great, I
Speaker 2: have to practice and learn what I'm going to do,
Speaker 2: and then I make less mistakes. I still might make
Speaker 2: a few mistakes. I mean, that's just going to happen.
Speaker 2: But yep, that's what I do.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you're on the road with Kenny, how many musicians,
Speaker 1: backup singers, how many performers?
Speaker 2: We have a six person band and there is drummer,
Speaker 2: a bass player. We have this female bass player named
Speaker 2: Harmony Kelly who's just freaking great. She's like the crowd favorite.
Speaker 2: And then the keyboard player, Wyatt Beard, he's the band
Speaker 2: leader and he sings all the backgrounds and actually on
Speaker 2: the record sings all the backgrounds. He's a great background singer.
Speaker 2: And then there are three guitar players and one guy
Speaker 2: sort of is the guy. Well, actually the other two
Speaker 2: guitar players both play like well. One guitar players are
Speaker 2: great banjo player. He'll do all the banjo stuff and
Speaker 2: all the mandolin stuff, but he plays and he plays
Speaker 2: a lot of acoustic guitar. And then the guy that
Speaker 2: stands next to me, John Conley, he plays fiddle, a
Speaker 2: little bit of mandolin, acoustic and electric. And then I
Speaker 2: used to play a lot of acoustic and and electric.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of more doing just electric playing now I
Speaker 2: mostly do that. And so there's it's a six person band.
Speaker 2: That's kind of how it works.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to go on the road and
Speaker 1: this is a well oiled machine, how far in advance
Speaker 1: do you start to rehearse.
Speaker 2: Well, i'll tell you about this year. We're going to
Speaker 2: do the Sphere again, So we're going to rehearse starting
Speaker 2: in March. We'll do about a week and a half
Speaker 2: and we'll that first week will just makes you our
Speaker 2: sounds are good. Our front of house guy, Robert Scovil,
Speaker 2: who's like the famous front of house guy that was
Speaker 2: Tom Petty's guy for a long time. He's really great.
Speaker 2: He'll be there, we'll get our sounds. We'll maybe change
Speaker 2: some things this year for our sound and so we'll
Speaker 2: do that for the first week and then we'll get
Speaker 2: so that'll be like a week and a half in March,
Speaker 2: and then in April we'll probably do two weeks of
Speaker 2: rehearsal and we'll learn all the new stuff that we're
Speaker 2: going to do, all the changes that we're going to make.
Speaker 2: And I think we're playing a couple of festivals at
Speaker 2: the end of April, and then May and June we'll
Speaker 2: be at the Sphere and we'll do probably a week
Speaker 2: on a sound stage in Las Vegas that has this
Speaker 2: mini sphere thing technology where it's similar and it has
Speaker 2: the surround speakers so they can get the same on
Speaker 2: going and we'll spend you know, maybe four or five
Speaker 2: days there and then we'll be in and we'll start playing.
Speaker 2: But I also will say that Kenny does not like
Speaker 2: to rehearse, and I don't think he'll mind me saying this,
Speaker 2: and we'll so. Rehearsing with him is a great gig
Speaker 2: because you get he'll book you for the week and
Speaker 2: we'll do Monday and Tuesday and we'll run through stuff
Speaker 2: and he'll go, man, you guys sound great. He said,
Speaker 2: let's stick the rest of the week off. What do
Speaker 2: you think and we'll go.
Speaker 1: Sounds good to us.
Speaker 2: He does not like to rehearse this. It's funny because
Speaker 2: he's so meticulous about everything else in the video and
Speaker 2: the lights and the recording. He just sort of leaves
Speaker 2: the live thing up to us as long as we
Speaker 2: don't take advantage of that. You know, if you take
Speaker 2: advantage of it, we're gonna hear about it.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, okay, Kenny has a lot of
Speaker 1: production forgetting this. If you're just going out at a
Speaker 1: normal summer, do you then go to Pennsylvania or some
Speaker 1: other place to rehearse with all the production.
Speaker 2: For about a week. Yeah, And usually in my experience,
Speaker 2: we go to Tampa. I've done this two or three
Speaker 2: times with him. We did one time in Nashville. We
Speaker 2: went to Jacksonville one time, but he kind of likes
Speaker 2: the water and likes having his boat nearby. So we go.
Speaker 2: We going down to Tampa and and we rehearse for
Speaker 2: a week and that's really fun. I mean, you're the
Speaker 2: tours are about to start. Everybody's super stoked and excited. You
Speaker 2: meet the new crew people, and there's a lot of dinners,
Speaker 2: and everybody hangs out and there's a real I think
Speaker 2: a lot of big road artists would tell you that
Speaker 2: there's a culture and a family to their to their
Speaker 2: road thing where everybody hangs out and you and with
Speaker 2: Kenny's thing, because it's in a stadium, they have this
Speaker 2: whole thing set up with a bar in a grill
Speaker 2: backstage and they're grilling, you know, fresh seafood and it's
Speaker 2: pretty fun.
Speaker 1: So what was your experience playing the Sphere.
Speaker 2: My experience playing the Sphere was I really really enjoyed
Speaker 2: the setup and we did I'm in my studio right now.
Speaker 2: You can see it's a studio we're in, and we
Speaker 2: did some of the content here at my place, which
Speaker 2: would be the music before the show starts and as
Speaker 2: the show starts, and some in between song stuff. So
Speaker 2: I got to see some of the content. It was
Speaker 2: exciting coming up with sort of cinematic sounds to start
Speaker 2: the show, and so we did that in my studio
Speaker 2: and I loved all that. That was great. I'm really
Speaker 2: into doing music for film and TV now, so this
Speaker 2: is sort of a parallel to that, and that was
Speaker 2: really good. And I really enjoyed the first week at
Speaker 2: the sound stage where we dialed in and we changed
Speaker 2: the arrangements and we're trying new things. Everybody's super excited.
Speaker 2: We're having a great time. And the first couple of shows,
Speaker 2: it's kind of amazing being in there. I mean, it
Speaker 2: sounds really great in there, and you know, you see
Speaker 2: the whole you know, the three sixty spectacle of it.
Speaker 2: And I also mentioned, especially in light of the past
Speaker 2: few weeks, is that for this past week, is that
Speaker 2: while we were at the sound stage, the Dead was
Speaker 2: doing their their last set of dates and we had
Speaker 2: passes to get into the sphere, so I went and
Speaker 2: saw the Dead a couple times, which was just absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2: I can't say enough good things about what a great
Speaker 2: band they had become, you know, sort of a new
Speaker 2: I've heard you mentioned it in your email. It was
Speaker 2: kind of a it's a different thing now, but it's
Speaker 2: and they're tight in a different way that they weren't
Speaker 2: tight before. And also the whole culture of the dead
Speaker 2: looking at all the people, and I just I really
Speaker 2: loved it so so I enjoyed that week, and the
Speaker 2: first couple of shows were great, and then after that
Speaker 2: it was because we had the floor open and the
Speaker 2: people were down on the floor. It was just like
Speaker 2: a regular Kenny Chesney show. It was not like I
Speaker 2: heard that Vince Gill has this famous quote that everybody
Speaker 2: I've heard ad nauseum where he says, it's the most
Speaker 2: amount of people I've played for that weren't watching me.
Speaker 2: And I did not have that experience. I felt like
Speaker 2: it was pretty normal. It was kind of like a
Speaker 2: regular big gig and it was exciting and the people
Speaker 2: were very excited at the front to see all that
Speaker 2: was going on, but they were watching us too. And
Speaker 2: but then being stuck in Las Vegas for another six weeks,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I don't drink or gamble, and it
Speaker 2: was like one hundred and seventeen degrees out and I
Speaker 2: don't really love Las Vegas. It's kind of a dark,
Speaker 2: dark place.
Speaker 1: I'm with you on that. When you're on stage with
Speaker 1: the band. You know with Kenny's band, you know most
Speaker 1: of the people there, they know the hits, they may
Speaker 1: know more. They're just thrilled to be there. But the
Speaker 1: what degreed does the band lock in certain nights and
Speaker 1: it's better certain nights the other nights? And when do
Speaker 1: you feel that? And when do you feel it?
Speaker 2: Mesh, I think it's inevitable that every night isn't perfect.
Speaker 2: And part of the beauty and the magic and the
Speaker 2: mystery of music is it's always different. And we play
Speaker 2: through two amplifiers, We play loud guitars through two amplifiers,
Speaker 2: and they sound different. They sound different every night, especially
Speaker 2: when you travel that they sound different. And I think
Speaker 2: that's a good thing. And it's not always great, But
Speaker 2: this particular band is just it's kind of a special
Speaker 2: group of people. We've just discovered. This band came together
Speaker 2: at the end of the pandemic quick aside and once
Speaker 2: again not to guest any aspersions on the guys that
Speaker 2: aren't in the band anymore. Two of the band members
Speaker 2: would not wear a mask or get tested or any
Speaker 2: of that kind of stuff. So when we all started
Speaker 2: to go back out in twenty twenty two. You had
Speaker 2: to you had to do that, and they refused to
Speaker 2: do it, couldn't so, and it was an opportunity to
Speaker 2: have a new band, which is probably and they were great,
Speaker 2: they were great players, but it was probably time to
Speaker 2: have a new band. This is an exceptional band. And
Speaker 2: we also record on our own and have a record
Speaker 2: out that gets played on No Shoes Radio, and we're
Speaker 2: in the process of recording a second record. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we're and what is that bill as the name of
Speaker 2: the band is Rosie and the Revival, and the reason
Speaker 2: it's part of the reason it's called that is we
Speaker 2: At one point he wanted to do a whole lot Rosie,
Speaker 2: which is a ac DC song, and so our bass player,
Speaker 2: Harmony Kelly, she can really soul shout and she can
Speaker 2: sing really high, so she could sing that's not Bond Scott,
Speaker 2: that's the other guy whatever his name is. It's that guy.
Speaker 2: It sing but he sings really high, so she could
Speaker 2: do that. So we we we did that song and
Speaker 2: we rehearsed it at a sound check and Robert Scovil
Speaker 2: was recording all the soundchecks so we could check our
Speaker 2: parts and everything, and he made a little mix of
Speaker 2: that and we listened back to it and went like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, just sounds amazing. So on our record is
Speaker 2: the first time we played that our sound check our
Speaker 2: that's on the record, so that's hence the name. So
Speaker 2: so she's kind of Rosie, but she doesn't sing all
Speaker 2: the songs, and so then we did. So then through
Speaker 2: the rest of that tour, we did we would record
Speaker 2: our sound checks. We did a Tom Petty song, we
Speaker 2: did a song by the Stones, and we did a
Speaker 2: meters instrumental. So I in my studio, I kind of
Speaker 2: cobbled that together and then I also write songs, and
Speaker 2: a couple of the other people in the band write songs.
Speaker 2: So we came to my studio, we recorded those songs
Speaker 2: and we really liked it. We played it for Kenny.
Speaker 2: He loved it, and so I just we came up
Speaker 2: with the idea to call the record sound checks and
Speaker 2: tape decks, which is apropos of what of what of
Speaker 2: what we did? And so yeah, that's out and it's gotten.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like a huge hit record or anything,
Speaker 2: but for us, it's been great. And he'll we'll play
Speaker 2: a gig and he'll have us do one of our
Speaker 2: songs on the gig. You know, he's very gracious in
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: So how much equipment? What equipment do you bring on
Speaker 1: the road?
Speaker 2: I mean the overall thing is huge. I mean it's
Speaker 2: a stadium gig. So but I like to play through
Speaker 2: a Marshall amplifier and the other two guitar players they
Speaker 2: do a lot of switching of instruments, and they do
Speaker 2: there's this sort of thing that guitar players do now
Speaker 2: where they play a lot of different guitars. Like if
Speaker 2: you go see whoever, they're changing guitar every song. I
Speaker 2: kind of bugs me. And when I when I.
Speaker 1: See like.
Speaker 2: A clip of Exile on Main Street that tour, Keith
Speaker 2: is playing a strat the whole night. So I have
Speaker 2: this firebird guitar and unless it's in a weird tuning
Speaker 2: or I have to switch guitars or play a baritone guitar,
Speaker 2: which is a low tuned guitar, I just play a
Speaker 2: fire through a Marshall and my setup is is pretty simple.
Speaker 2: I have amps off stage that are miked.
Speaker 1: So where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Cleveland and moved to Louisville in
Speaker 2: the sixth grade and moved to Nashville right when I
Speaker 2: turned twenty one.
Speaker 1: Okay, so did you play music before the Beatles or
Speaker 1: was more you saw the Beatles and you got to
Speaker 1: pick up.
Speaker 2: I saw the Beatles in the Hall deal, the standard deal.
Speaker 2: But I also around that time heard I heard the
Speaker 2: Beatles and loved that, and I didn't really play. And
Speaker 2: then I heard of Jimmy Hendrick's record, like when I
Speaker 2: was in grade school, and that was it. I was it,
Speaker 2: and then I had to get a guitar, and then
Speaker 2: I just I didn't. I just played in your typical
Speaker 2: garage band, maybe at a high school dance or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: What'd your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: My parents are in Cleveland. We grew up in this
Speaker 2: sort of working class, middle class area and my dad
Speaker 2: was an engineer, a mechanical engineer. My mom was just
Speaker 2: a housewife. And like when I was young, I would
Speaker 2: say we were working class. Then as my dad started
Speaker 2: to do better, we were middle class, you know.
Speaker 1: And how many kids in the family.
Speaker 2: There's three. There's three of us. I'm I'm the youngest,
Speaker 2: and two brothers. And it's also interesting that in Cleveland
Speaker 2: it was an entirely Jewish part of town where there
Speaker 2: was nobody that wasn't one of us. We're all Jews
Speaker 2: living in this area. And looking back on that, that
Speaker 2: was a really great thing. The whole ethnic of the
Speaker 2: northern ethnic culture.
Speaker 1: That was that was good. So what happened to your
Speaker 1: two brothers? How did their lives play out?
Speaker 2: My next oldest brother who I'm very very close to,
Speaker 2: that's a couple of years older than me. He's a
Speaker 2: therapist and he's in Santa Rosa above San Francisco. And
Speaker 2: then my oldest brother, who's a good bit older I'm
Speaker 2: not very close with. He was a classical musician, but
Speaker 2: never really did that well and he got into sales
Speaker 2: and then his life just sort of fell apart and
Speaker 2: he's had a lot of health problems.
Speaker 1: Well, if he's a classical musician, sounds like there was
Speaker 1: a lot of music in the home growing up.
Speaker 2: There was. Yeah, there was a lot, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: And did your parents make you take piano lessons?
Speaker 2: No, but I played trombone and they got me trombone lessons.
Speaker 2: They didn't like the guitar thing very much. They sort
Speaker 2: of discouraged that. But I enjoyed trombone and play in
Speaker 2: the youth orchestra. I played in the band and I
Speaker 2: played cello in the orchestra, so I was always very
Speaker 2: involved in those things, and my parents were very much
Speaker 2: behind that, but they didn't like the thing of playing
Speaker 2: in garage bands and loud. I had a amp and
Speaker 2: a guitar in my room and I blasted really loud
Speaker 2: and play along to Hendricks and Cream and you know
Speaker 2: those kind of records. Then they were not into that
Speaker 2: too much.
Speaker 1: Well, if you play the trombone in the cello, are
Speaker 1: you the kind of guy who can pick up anything
Speaker 1: and figure out how to play it. No, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I have to practice and work at everything. I also
Speaker 2: play steel guitar, and I love playing steel guitar. I'm
Speaker 2: not really great at it because I don't play it enough,
Speaker 2: but I have to really work at something. And I
Speaker 2: played bass, so on a lot of the things that
Speaker 2: I record here at my studio, I play bass. I
Speaker 2: play guitar. I can eke out a key part, you know,
Speaker 2: just sort of get a sound and play some chords
Speaker 2: because I know the notes. But I'm not really a
Speaker 2: keyboard player. Yep, that's what I do.
Speaker 1: And what kind of kid were you? Were? You good?
Speaker 1: In school. Did you play spoards? Were a loaner? Did
Speaker 1: you have friends?
Speaker 2: I was kind of a loaner. Our family was a
Speaker 2: very dysfunctional family, and we once we grew up in
Speaker 2: I mean, we didn't know this as kids, but once
Speaker 2: we grew up, especially when my brother is a therapist,
Speaker 2: we realized that my dad was on the autism spectrum,
Speaker 2: probably a little closer to Asperger's, but he was. He was,
Speaker 2: And so he was this guy that I kind of
Speaker 2: didn't know. He was a guy that was around, but
Speaker 2: I didn't. I had no relationship none with him, and
Speaker 2: my mom was in the hospital all the time. So
Speaker 2: we kind of raised ourselves. I didn't have any I mean,
Speaker 2: I can tell you to an extreme amount, I had
Speaker 2: zero parental supervision in any way whatsoever. There's just I
Speaker 2: mean I did. I could come and go as I please.
Speaker 2: I could stay all night and show up the next day.
Speaker 2: And it's kind of weird, you know, so, and that's
Speaker 2: probably not the best way to grow up.
Speaker 1: Why was your mother in the hospital.
Speaker 2: She just had all kinds of health issues and she
Speaker 2: was we also learned we learned this out actually late
Speaker 2: in her life. She was adopted and had a very
Speaker 2: rough start, and she was just a really messed up person,
Speaker 2: like a very angry, messed up person. And once again
Speaker 2: I just sort of there was these people that I
Speaker 2: lived in the same house with them, but I did
Speaker 2: not really have a relationship with them, and so music
Speaker 2: was my escape.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I was grateful to have that. That's kind of how
Speaker 2: I escaped.
Speaker 1: So you live in outside Cleveland, you move moved to Louisville.
Speaker 1: How is that different?
Speaker 2: It was night and day because my dad had gotten
Speaker 2: a better job and we lived in the suburbs and
Speaker 2: there were no Jews, and so.
Speaker 1: It was it was weird.
Speaker 2: It was a little weird, but you know, I in
Speaker 2: junior high school. In high school, I had some really
Speaker 2: good friends and I played in some bands, but I
Speaker 2: also got in a lot of trouble and I got
Speaker 2: into drugs, and it was sort of I was just
Speaker 2: sort of the trying to figure myself out. And because
Speaker 2: I didn't have any supervision, I did some things I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have done and was around some people I shouldn't
Speaker 2: have been around. I actually got arrested a couple of times,
Speaker 2: and yeah, so it was but actually my I had
Speaker 2: one really really great friend named Jeff Sipperman, who was
Speaker 2: Jewish as well. We were the two Jewish kids at
Speaker 2: our school. There's probably a couple others, but as far
Speaker 2: as I can remember, it was the two of us,
Speaker 2: and we both moved to Nashville together. He played bass,
Speaker 2: So we moved together to Nashville to seek our fame
Speaker 2: and fortune at the ripe age of twenty one or
Speaker 2: twenty I guess I was just turning twenty one my moved.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we get there, are you playing in bands
Speaker 1: in high school?
Speaker 2: I'm playing in like garages and rehearsing and basements. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sort of doing it and sort of kind of
Speaker 2: doing it, but not really. I mean, I would have
Speaker 2: a guitar. Then I wouldn't have a guitar. Then I
Speaker 2: would have a guitar, and I'd been playing trombone and.
Speaker 1: So sort of, yeah, what point did the bell go off?
Speaker 1: I want to do this for a living.
Speaker 2: I went to college for a year and I always
Speaker 2: got really good grades, and I got an academic scholarship
Speaker 2: and to where to Bradley, to Bradley University, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't in the music program, but I took a improvisational
Speaker 2: music course for at that time was an unusual thing
Speaker 2: to have. And I had my guitar and amplifier at
Speaker 2: the school in my trombone, and the music teacher was.
Speaker 1: Really great, and.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of different people. There wasn't a specific
Speaker 2: person like a mentor or anything like that, but they
Speaker 2: really encouraged me. And what I realized is that I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be in college, that I wanted to play.
Speaker 2: And so I moved back to Nashville and got a
Speaker 2: gig in a Holiday Inn lounge band.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, back to Nashville or Louisville.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I met.
Speaker 1: I moved back to.
Speaker 2: Louisville and I lived at my girlfriend's house and her
Speaker 2: parents were splitting up and no one was ever there.
Speaker 2: So I was living at my girlfriend's house. I was
Speaker 2: like eighteen, and I got a gig and a Holiday
Speaker 2: Inn band, and once again, my best friend Jeff was
Speaker 2: playing bass, and we had this this lounge gig and
Speaker 2: we were getting paid like three hundred dollars a week
Speaker 2: to play and we're like, this is amazing and so
Speaker 2: and we just were having a ball.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: That's when I started to think I had quit college
Speaker 2: and I was practicing all day long and trying to
Speaker 2: learn new things, and we met there. There was a
Speaker 2: showcase bar in Louisville called the Lemon Tree and they
Speaker 2: had like touring bands would play there, and we saw
Speaker 2: this kind of outlaw country band play and we went
Speaker 2: and we would go there because they would play later
Speaker 2: than we played, and we would go there and see
Speaker 2: who was playing. And there was this one band playing
Speaker 2: there and the drummer, who's this very friendly guy, were
Speaker 2: talking to him and saying, hey, we playing a holiday
Speaker 2: inn band, and he said, you guys need to move
Speaker 2: to Nashville. This band was from Nashville, and the drummer
Speaker 2: was saying, you guys, what are you doing up here?
Speaker 2: This is the wrong place to be. So we actually
Speaker 2: went down for a weekend when I was twenty and
Speaker 2: stayed at his house and went to a couple of
Speaker 2: clubs in Nashville and he sort of took us around
Speaker 2: and we said, that's it, We're coming to Nashville. So
Speaker 2: we came back to Louisville, gave our two weeks notice,
Speaker 2: put all of our stuff in my car, and this drummer,
Speaker 2: Rich Kallus, this artist he was playing with, had a
Speaker 2: single out and they were going to go on the road,
Speaker 2: and his wife was six months pregnant, and he said,
Speaker 2: you guys can save my house for free. So someone
Speaker 2: was there with my wife, so she's not there by herself.
Speaker 2: And so Jeff and I looked at each other and said,
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: This is it.
Speaker 2: We got it. We got a way to go. So
Speaker 2: we loaded up our car and on February second, nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Eight, we moved to Nashville. A couple of questions. You
Speaker 1: mentioned Jimmy Hendricks, why I realized the opportunities came up,
Speaker 1: but you didn't think of moving to LA I mean
Speaker 1: in the seventies, Nashville, you know, was very country, not
Speaker 1: like today where it's influenced by rock and roll.
Speaker 2: I think to be really well, there's there's two reasons.
Speaker 2: We loved the whole outlaw movement. Like we love Johnny Paycheck.
Speaker 2: We're really in it. And this was before take this
Speaker 2: job and Shove it his Like earlier records we thought
Speaker 2: they were just great. The Whalen record, Dreaming My Dreams
Speaker 2: and Rambling Man to Us. Those records were more rock.
Speaker 2: And this is like nineteen seventy seven, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: to us, those records were more rock and roll than
Speaker 2: like Kansas. There was this rawness to that, and there
Speaker 2: was the guitar, the way it sounded, and in particular,
Speaker 2: there's a Hank Junior song called Feeling Better and it's
Speaker 2: actually Reggie Young on guitar. It's Reggie Young and Whalen
Speaker 2: on guitar and something about that song. It was country,
Speaker 2: but it had this raw it was kind of the blues.
Speaker 2: I don't know that. I think that song came out
Speaker 2: maybe in seventy seven, and that was our song. We
Speaker 2: heard that song like that is the most bad ass
Speaker 2: shit I've ever heard. Said they're making it in Nashville.
Speaker 2: Let's go to Nashville. And on the other side of it,
Speaker 2: you know, to be honest, is that New York and
Speaker 2: LA were intimidating. They were far away, and Nashville was
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty miles away, and we had a
Speaker 2: free place to stay. So I really didn't have a plan.
Speaker 2: It just seemed the next best thing. I didn't have
Speaker 2: any kind.
Speaker 1: Of like looking into the future.
Speaker 2: I had no freaking idea what I was going to do.
Speaker 2: We just we just moved there.
Speaker 1: Okay, those records you mentioned the Outlaw country records. At
Speaker 1: that time, I'm living in LA. We don't even have
Speaker 1: a station that's playing country when I would drive cross
Speaker 1: country when I lived on the East coast. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you were in the hinter leands, you know, there'd be
Speaker 1: an AM station you're you know, turning the value to
Speaker 1: hear that. So what did you get exposed to this stuff?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I think because we had this. We were playing with
Speaker 2: this lounge singer who was into country music, and we
Speaker 2: played kind of more. We played some Whalen and we
Speaker 2: played some whatever was of the day, good hearted Woman,
Speaker 2: some of those Willies songs, and we just so we
Speaker 2: found those records and we just liked it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't really know the answer to that question. It's
Speaker 2: a good question to ask. I think we just sort
Speaker 2: of discovered that. I would also say my friend Jeff,
Speaker 2: he was this very, very bright guy who sadly enough
Speaker 2: was an addict and ended up it killed them. But
Speaker 2: he was just this really bright guy and he just
Speaker 2: found these records. So we found these early Haggard records,
Speaker 2: and the guitar playing on those early Haggard record they're amazing.
Speaker 2: And I just listened and it was so kind of
Speaker 2: raw and funky sound, and I just liked it so
Speaker 2: And it's funny because I'm not a great country guitar player.
Speaker 2: I'm really more of a blues guitar player. But there's
Speaker 2: something about those records that I liked, and I just thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: so Nashville is really close. We're just going to go
Speaker 2: down there with no plan. I have any plan.
Speaker 1: Okay. Would your parents see about you dropping out of college?
Speaker 2: They were not happy about it, but typical of my parents,
Speaker 2: they just sort of didn't say much about it.
Speaker 1: You were living on your own money, You weren't asking
Speaker 1: for any money, or were you.
Speaker 2: I was totally on my own. I've pretty much always
Speaker 2: been on my own. I got a scholarship for college,
Speaker 2: an academic scholarship. They didn't have to pay for anything.
Speaker 2: And when I moved to Nashville, I mean when I
Speaker 2: moved back to Louisville, I got a job at this
Speaker 2: life like home depot type place, and I found an
Speaker 2: apartment that was I think it was one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five a month, and I had a job that
Speaker 2: I could walk to and then I got a car
Speaker 2: soon after that for like no money, almost I bought
Speaker 2: an old car and so I was just on my own. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now you show up in Nashville. You're babysitting
Speaker 1: the pregnant. Wait, what do you do? You don't know anybody.
Speaker 2: Well, here's what happened. I've told the story a bunch
Speaker 2: of times, and this is I mean, this is what happened.
Speaker 2: So we drive in my car on February second. We
Speaker 2: drive to Nashville, and we have a place to stay,
Speaker 2: and we go there and the wife of rich Sharon,
Speaker 2: Sharon callus. She's there. She's got a room set up
Speaker 2: with a couple of mattresses that me and Jeff can
Speaker 2: stay in. And we each had like our little funky suitcase.
Speaker 2: We dropped it off, but I had my amp in
Speaker 2: my car. And as we were driving to Sharon's house,
Speaker 2: we heard there's a bar that had twenty five cent beer,
Speaker 2: and we said, this is our first night in Nashville,
Speaker 2: let's go celebrate. And it was called the Long Branch Saloon.
Speaker 2: And so we go to the Long Branch Saloon is
Speaker 2: twenty five sent beer and we go in there and
Speaker 2: there's a guy like on a construction palette that you know,
Speaker 2: you would stack bags of I don't know, feed or whatever.
Speaker 2: He's on there with his electric guitarists little pa playing
Speaker 2: the blues. And I'm always been a blues nerd. So
Speaker 2: he's in there playing and I just went up to
Speaker 2: him and his name was Bobby Bradford. And I went
Speaker 2: up to him and I said, we just moved to town.
Speaker 2: We have our guitars in the car. Can we play
Speaker 2: with you? He said, bring them on in. So we
Speaker 2: got our I got my amp out of the trunk,
Speaker 2: Jeff had his bass, he plugged it into the PA.
Speaker 2: I got my guitar and we played with Bobby. He
Speaker 2: loved it, and he said, I've been looking for guys
Speaker 2: that like the blues. And so he had a gig
Speaker 2: there on Monday nights, and he had a Wednesday night
Speaker 2: at this Vanderbilt bar called the Villager. And so literally
Speaker 2: the night we got there, we had two nights a
Speaker 2: week of gigs. And then this thing happened where we
Speaker 2: just became the Vanderbilt band, like right away and right away,
Speaker 2: and then we added dates and we would play frat parties.
Speaker 1: And this is with Bobby Bradford with who.
Speaker 2: This is with Bobby Bradford. This happened in the space
Speaker 2: of about six weeks. Okay, it just I don't I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm telling you this is I tell the story and
Speaker 2: I think about it going like this is impossible, but
Speaker 2: this is what happened. It's like it was this wonderful,
Speaker 2: amazing thing where all of a sudden it was packed
Speaker 2: every night we played, and it was Vanderbilt Kids. And
Speaker 2: Bobby was a biker and he was in his thirties
Speaker 2: and so he had and he was affiliated with I
Speaker 2: don't remember the name of the biker club, but one
Speaker 2: of the where they would wear the jackets, you know, right,
Speaker 2: and with their names on the back of it, and
Speaker 2: like the Fortune Seekers. I don't I can't remember the
Speaker 2: name of it. And so those guys would all show up.
Speaker 2: So we would play at the Villager and it would
Speaker 2: be wall to wall with these club bikers and Van
Speaker 2: Dey Preppy's students, and it just became a scene. And
Speaker 2: so then Bobby Bradford was in the process of leasing
Speaker 2: this like funky boat house on the outskirts of town,
Speaker 2: and he made that into his blues club and they
Speaker 2: had a place to live in the back. And this
Speaker 2: was about June, so we got there in February. This
Speaker 2: is in June. He leases the club. Me and Jeff
Speaker 2: move into the back of this bar, and we're playing
Speaker 2: five nights a week at this bar. And although he
Speaker 2: had let we advertise it at Vanderbilt, so here comes
Speaker 2: all the Vanderbilt students and the bikers, and I've got
Speaker 2: a five night a week gig. That is how I
Speaker 2: got started.
Speaker 1: Okay, at that point, what was the dream, Bob? You know?
Speaker 2: Man, I don't know, because I felt like I would
Speaker 2: regularly think what am I doing here? Or people would
Speaker 2: say to me, what are you doing here? You're like
Speaker 2: a rock guitar player. Why are you well? You know,
Speaker 2: I would go like, I don't know. I'm in this
Speaker 2: blues band and everybody likes us, and I'm twenty one
Speaker 2: years old. I don't know what I'm doing. And the
Speaker 2: and we ended up having a quote unquote manager, and
Speaker 2: we took a church bus and converted it and put
Speaker 2: our ants in and played all around the South. We
Speaker 2: had a little bit of a following. It was not
Speaker 2: really a great band, it was, but it was a
Speaker 2: great experience. And I don't know what I was doing.
Speaker 2: But what ended up happening is that Bobby wisely, in
Speaker 2: the early part of the week he would have songwriters
Speaker 2: come play, like where they do the guitar poll, and
Speaker 2: they'd be in a circle and it was a place
Speaker 2: for them to come play. So I would do the
Speaker 2: exact same thing where I would say, Hey, I play
Speaker 2: in the week on I'm in the house band for
Speaker 2: the weekends. Can I come back you up? And you know,
Speaker 2: a songwriter would say, yeah, back me up. And so
Speaker 2: the eventuality of that would be that one of those
Speaker 2: songwriters would say, I'm going into the studio to make
Speaker 2: a demo tape of my songs. Why don't you come play?
Speaker 2: I'll pay you forty dollars And it's like, incredible, I
Speaker 2: get to go to the studio. So that's how I
Speaker 2: got into the studios.
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening with Jeff.
Speaker 2: What ended up happening with Jeff is we did about
Speaker 2: a year hit that bar, maybe a year and a half,
Speaker 2: and then it was just a disaster of a business
Speaker 2: and you could see that it was not going to
Speaker 2: work out. And Bobby was into drugs and selling drugs,
Speaker 2: and Jeff, who was from a well to do family
Speaker 2: and he got in with the biker crowd and started
Speaker 2: shooting dough. And once he started shooting dope, he became
Speaker 2: addicted and I would pick him up for gigs and
Speaker 2: I would go into the house and they'd all be
Speaker 2: half passed out with the needles, and it was a drag.
Speaker 2: And he went to prison because he got caught selling
Speaker 2: heroin or writing fake prescriptions. He went to prison twice.
Speaker 2: One time got caught with heroin, the other time he
Speaker 2: was writing fake scripts. He got out the second time
Speaker 2: and immediately went and shot dope and overdosed and died.
Speaker 2: Very sad.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a sad story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was my mate.
Speaker 1: Jumping back, you're working with songwriters in the studio? What's
Speaker 1: the step after that?
Speaker 2: That went on for a long for I mean I
Speaker 2: was not I did not immediately get into being a
Speaker 2: session player. It was really that I was in this
Speaker 2: band and I would occasionally go into the studio with songwriters.
Speaker 2: But maybe I had a tiny bit of a reputation.
Speaker 2: But what happened is a couple of years after the
Speaker 2: Bobby Bradford Blues Band, there were other bands around town.
Speaker 2: There's this really great songwriter named Dave One who has
Speaker 2: since passed away, and he had a hot band around town,
Speaker 2: and I started playing with his band. And there was
Speaker 2: a singer named Jimmy Hall who was in Wetwillie and
Speaker 2: he moved to Nashville and he was playing gigs around.
Speaker 2: So I found myself before I was a session guy.
Speaker 2: I found myself being the guy that played in five
Speaker 2: different bands. I was like twenty three, you know, I
Speaker 2: played in a bunch of different bands. I was just
Speaker 2: around town. So then Dave One would get a chance
Speaker 2: to make another record, and he had a band called
Speaker 2: the x Rays, and this writer named Don Schlitz who
Speaker 2: wrote The Gambler. He produced that record, and I got
Speaker 2: to play on the record, and I met Don and
Speaker 2: then played on some stuff for Don, and then met
Speaker 2: all the people from the publishing company he was with
Speaker 2: and then played with them. And then I played with
Speaker 2: three or four of the other bands I was in.
Speaker 2: Somebody would go in and record, and I would show
Speaker 2: up and record, but I was very much on the
Speaker 2: outside of the session. It was still very much of
Speaker 2: a good old boy kind of a closed thing. But eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, or occasionally I would get called for something,
Speaker 2: or I'd play on a songwriter's song, and that an
Speaker 2: artist would cut that and the producer would say who's
Speaker 2: playing that guitar? And they would the song and say, well,
Speaker 2: say it was me, and I would be invited to
Speaker 2: come over dub or track on that song. And that's
Speaker 2: kind of how I made my way into the session scene.
Speaker 1: Well, at what point did it turn the corner?
Speaker 2: It turned the corner when I was in this band.
Speaker 2: Two things happened. I got into this band. It was
Speaker 2: a blues band called the Kingsnakes and we would play
Speaker 2: at the Bluebird every Monday night. And the drummer was
Speaker 2: James Stroud, who was a famous record producer and drummer
Speaker 2: from Muscle Shoals and hear it's from Jackson actually, but
Speaker 2: was in the Muscle Shoals scene. And the famous studio
Speaker 2: player Glenn Wharf was on bass. And so we'd play
Speaker 2: every Monday night and we made a little record and
Speaker 2: that band became the band to see. Everybody would everybody
Speaker 2: who was in town would be there on Monday night,
Speaker 2: from you know, whoever, from Bonnie Rait to whoever they
Speaker 2: somebody was in town, they would be there at see
Speaker 2: us play. And so that and then I produced a
Speaker 2: couple of demos on an artist named Alison Moore, and
Speaker 2: she got a record deal on MCA and Tony Brown
Speaker 2: signed her. And I made that record and played all
Speaker 2: the guitars on it, and so Tony started to use me.
Speaker 2: So right about the mid and late nineties, those two
Speaker 2: things happened and I found myself playing on a lot
Speaker 2: of records.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you meet Alison Moore? And how did
Speaker 1: you say? I'm the guy that produced the demo?
Speaker 2: I met Alison Moore because I had right before that,
Speaker 2: I had There's this guy named Wally Wilson. I know
Speaker 2: I'm probably saying all these names.
Speaker 4: To your little I know the audience can do the
Speaker 4: research in it. Yeah, yeah, who the hell are all
Speaker 4: these people he's talking about? So this guy who was
Speaker 4: in the Kingsnakes with me named Wally Wilson, who is
Speaker 4: who was a mentor? He was a songwriting mentor to me.
Speaker 4: It's a lot older than me. And you remember the movie, uh,
Speaker 4: The Apostle with Robert Duvall. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 4: ever see that movie where he's this kind of wild
Speaker 4: guy that picks fights, and so Wally Wilson is a
Speaker 4: cross between the Apostle and fog Horn. Leg Horn He's
Speaker 4: this Texas loudmouth character. And he was in the band
Speaker 4: and we wrote songs together, and he somehow met Aaron Jacovis,
Speaker 4: who was an a and are Virgin, and Aaron was
Speaker 4: hanging around Nashville because Nashville was starting to change and
Speaker 4: things were starting to happen. So Aaron's hanging around Nashville.
Speaker 4: Wally is writing for Sony Tree. He's writing at Sony.
Speaker 4: So Aaron is, I guess we're looking for songs for somebody,
Speaker 4: because Wally is the most likable guy you will ever meet.
Speaker 4: And I mean, he's just this, He's a character, and
Speaker 4: he says the craziest shit. So Aaron and Wally become friends,
Speaker 4: and Aaron says, Aaron says, I've been assigned Joan Biez.
Speaker 4: What am I gonna do with Joan byas she's on Virgin,
Speaker 4: I don't know, And and Wally goes, well, we should
Speaker 4: make her record and write.
Speaker 2: All her songs. And so Wally says, We're going to
Speaker 2: San Francisco, by God, and we're gonna go write songs
Speaker 2: with Joan Bias. This is way, he said it. So
Speaker 2: so Sony Publishing bought us tickets. We went and got
Speaker 2: so we went to Joan's house and hung out with
Speaker 2: her and wrote songs with her, and Wally's going, JONK,
Speaker 2: we're going to produce your record. And Joan just loved
Speaker 2: Wally and said okay. And so when we made a
Speaker 2: record on Joan with Aaron, and we ended up making
Speaker 2: two records with her, and so Aaron after that said hey,
Speaker 2: I heard the singer name Alison Moore and she's amazing.
Speaker 2: Why don't you cut some sides on her? I said great,
Speaker 2: And so he also spoke to Tony Brown, so Tony
Speaker 2: Brown was into signing her. So Tony Brown, through Aaron Jacovis,
Speaker 2: paid for me to take Alison into the studio to
Speaker 2: cut some songs. And one of the songs we cut
Speaker 2: was called Soft Place to Fall, which ended up in
Speaker 2: the movie The Horse Whisperer and was nominated for an
Speaker 2: Academy Award. So that's that's that's how I got started.
Speaker 2: That's how I got that gig.
Speaker 1: Okay, most musicians, especially those who are not the front person,
Speaker 1: are incredible networkers. Were you working it in Nashville? Were
Speaker 1: you getting to know everybody, hang everybody, talking to everybody.
Speaker 2: No, I've never been a good networker. I just always
Speaker 2: feel and I did go up to people and say hey,
Speaker 2: I'd love to play with you, and I still do that,
Speaker 2: but I am not a networker. I am not good
Speaker 2: at that. I think it would be fair to.
Speaker 1: Say, Okay, so you're playing the guitar and now through
Speaker 1: Wally you get this opportunity. At what point do you say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I want to be a record producer.
Speaker 2: That was it. I think when we had our band,
Speaker 2: The King Snakes and we actually made a record for
Speaker 2: CURB Records. We got a record deal, but it was
Speaker 2: kind of ridiculous because nobody would go on the road.
Speaker 2: They were all I mean, our drummer was the head
Speaker 2: of us, the head of CBS Records. It's ridiculous there
Speaker 2: was but we made a record and we actually played
Speaker 2: a couple of festivals, but it was there's no way
Speaker 2: we're going to go on the road. And so I
Speaker 2: was really involved in the production of that record and
Speaker 2: just loved it and felt like I don't want to
Speaker 2: not play guitar and just produce records. I want to
Speaker 2: play and I like to write song, but I want
Speaker 2: to do this too. So I started doing it, and
Speaker 2: we're in this story to get married. I get married
Speaker 2: in the place where were before Joan Biaz. There's sort
Speaker 2: of a friend group, you know, how you come up
Speaker 2: with your group of friends, and you know, we had
Speaker 2: there was a lot of these songwriter guys. It was
Speaker 2: always a sort of left of center folks, you know.
Speaker 2: And Ashley Cleveland was in that friend group, and everybody
Speaker 2: loved her. She's an amazing singer, and everybody's talking about, Oh,
Speaker 2: she's so great. So we're we're in the same friend
Speaker 2: group and we're all coming up together. And Ashley's writing
Speaker 2: for Warner Chapel and she's making demos and I get
Speaker 2: to play on her demos, and then she starts playing gigs.
Speaker 2: And that was another one of the gigs I had
Speaker 2: was I was locally playing with her. She didn't travel
Speaker 2: and play gigs. She had a small daughter, but she
Speaker 2: had a publishing deal on Warner Chapel and she's playing
Speaker 2: around town and I'm in her band. But we're not
Speaker 2: a couple. We're just friends. And she's seeing other people
Speaker 2: and I'm seeing other people. And we had this sort
Speaker 2: of unique experience where we were you know, you're playing
Speaker 2: a band with somebody of your friends, give each other
Speaker 2: a hard time, and I always say, like, you know,
Speaker 2: what a loser that guy as you were with, you know,
Speaker 2: And she'd give me a hard time about who I
Speaker 2: was seeing, and we just we were buds for a
Speaker 2: long time. And then she got a record deal on Atlantic,
Speaker 2: and I was fortunate to get to play on her
Speaker 2: record because I was in her band, and we sort
Speaker 2: of fell for each other while she was making that record,
Speaker 2: and we after our first date, we got engaged two
Speaker 2: weeks later. So all of our friends we were like, okay,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, you're like what you know, because they
Speaker 2: didn't even know that we were together, you know, and
Speaker 2: we were all really good friends, but I was sneaking
Speaker 2: over to her house at night and nobody knew it,
Speaker 2: you know, for a.
Speaker 1: Couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: And then we were a couple and we said, well,
Speaker 2: we're getting married, you know, and they're like, this is
Speaker 2: not a good idea, you know. And thirty five years later,
Speaker 2: you know, we're still married.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're married. She has a major labeled deal. How
Speaker 1: long after? She says she has a young daughter. Now
Speaker 1: you have to support a family. Do you feel like responsibility,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not like a drifter anymore, I got to
Speaker 1: go out and earn a living.
Speaker 2: Bob, I don't no. I think I was already kind
Speaker 2: of doing pretty good by that time. I just bought
Speaker 2: my first house.
Speaker 1: She must be doing pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had bought my first house. I was doing okay.
Speaker 2: And the weird thing about in Nashville, you know, in
Speaker 2: the eighties and early nineties, is you could play gigs
Speaker 2: five nights a week in clubs and get paid. I
Speaker 2: supposed now, like it is everywhere, you have to wait
Speaker 2: six months to get a gig. There's five bands on
Speaker 2: the bill, no one gets paid. The audience is all
Speaker 2: the other people waiting to play and their friends. So
Speaker 2: but back then, you know, so I was doing that,
Speaker 2: and I was starting to get record dates, and I
Speaker 2: had enough that I bought the small house. So I
Speaker 2: was kind of I never really That's another thing where
Speaker 2: it just I just sort of rolled with it.
Speaker 1: I think, So, how many kids do you have at
Speaker 1: this point?
Speaker 2: We have three? So her daughter she had before we
Speaker 2: were together, her name is Becca. I adopted her because
Speaker 2: the dad was never in the picture. And then we
Speaker 2: had two together. And an interesting thing is the you know,
Speaker 2: a good year before we were a couple. She did
Speaker 2: a showcase at a bar for I'm at erdigin to
Speaker 2: at her deal, and we sound checked in the afternoon
Speaker 2: and an Ahmet and his entourage were going to come.
Speaker 2: And it was a big deal, I mean a huge
Speaker 2: deal for Ashley. Was a good like that's like career,
Speaker 2: you know, a door opening, you know, a major moment
Speaker 2: in her life. So after we sound checked, I said, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll take your daughter and we'll go to McDonald's. And
Speaker 2: so I took her daughter to McDonald's. And then I
Speaker 2: had just bought the house but hadn't moved in, and
Speaker 2: it was close by this bar, and so I took
Speaker 2: the daughter and said, hey, just so we can drive
Speaker 2: around and you can eat your drink or shake and whatever.
Speaker 2: Here's this house I'm going to buy. And a year
Speaker 2: later she's living in that house, which is kind of
Speaker 2: an amazing, kind of an amazing thing, you know. To me,
Speaker 2: it was amazing.
Speaker 1: What are your three kids up to today?
Speaker 2: That oldest daughter, she had a long run of addiction,
Speaker 2: as did Ashley, but she's doing really, really great now.
Speaker 2: She actually works at an addiction center in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: My son is an actor in Brooklyn. He has his
Speaker 2: Masters in theater and he's getting a few things to doing. Okay.
Speaker 2: And then my youngest is also in New York and
Speaker 2: runs the grant writing program at Columbia.
Speaker 1: Wow. Was Ashley addicted when you were with her?
Speaker 2: No, she had actually recently gotten out of treatment. But
Speaker 2: after we got together, and you know, if you're in
Speaker 2: AA and NA, it's never about what the other person does,
Speaker 2: it's about what it's really about.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, for instance, we have people over, we'll have
Speaker 2: some wine and serve wine. We won't drink wine, but well,
Speaker 2: you know, that's just what. So we would go out
Speaker 2: and I would occasionally have a glass wine. I never
Speaker 2: really drank much. And actually we always say, you have
Speaker 2: yourself a glass of wine. I'm in AA, but it's
Speaker 2: totally okay, And so I did that. But it ended
Speaker 2: up that, like right after we got married, she was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I guess it's okay if I have a glass of
Speaker 2: wine too, And it very quickly went down the tubes
Speaker 2: from there and and but she pulled out and she's
Speaker 2: been sober for almost thirty years. Yeah, she's doing great.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you've been talking about this studio that you
Speaker 1: have when did you build this studio and to what
Speaker 1: the level is it built out? And what do you
Speaker 1: do there?
Speaker 2: I got this. We bought this house at the end
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety six, and we bought it half built.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those houses that's on a hill.
Speaker 2: So from the front it's two stories and from the
Speaker 2: back it's three. So the lower level, which is the
Speaker 2: same size as the main level of the house, I
Speaker 2: made into a studio like a I slowly built it
Speaker 2: like a couple of years after we moved in here,
Speaker 2: and it has a drum room and a vocal room.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a full on studio. And so we
Speaker 2: made after Ashley's first record, we made her records here
Speaker 2: a lot. I do a lot of overdubs here. All
Speaker 2: of the film and TV stuff I do, I do
Speaker 2: top to bottom here.
Speaker 1: We did the.
Speaker 2: Chesney Bands record here. I just produced a song on
Speaker 2: a really interesting guy that comes out Monday, and we
Speaker 2: cut the whole track here. And so I'll work here.
Speaker 2: I'll always do my overdubs here, like I'll do the vocals,
Speaker 2: and if I need to prepare the drums, I got
Speaker 2: a great, great drum room. We'll redo the drums but
Speaker 2: if I have the budget, I like to go to
Speaker 2: the Sound and Porium or Ocean Way and cut my
Speaker 2: basic tracks and then bring it back over here. But
Speaker 2: I'm you know, Bob, the budgets, they're smaller, and especially
Speaker 2: for the stuff I do, a lot of times I'll
Speaker 2: just make the whole thing over here because it's affordable
Speaker 2: and I can still get paid if I do it
Speaker 2: over here.
Speaker 1: And what kind of equipment do you have in the room.
Speaker 2: I have pro tools, which is how I'm recording this now.
Speaker 2: And I have really really good mic pres I have
Speaker 2: some vintage mics, I have some newer mics. I've got
Speaker 2: vintage amps. I've got a piano in the other room.
Speaker 2: I've got some I got some pretty decent gear.
Speaker 1: Okay, what was it like when Ashley lost her major
Speaker 1: label deal? Uh?
Speaker 2: I think for her, her entire recording career was always hard.
Speaker 2: It never really worked out. I remember she had her
Speaker 2: she had her first record, and she lost that deal.
Speaker 2: Then she got signed to this label called Reunion, which
Speaker 2: was a Christian label and was part of Arista. So
Speaker 2: the idea was, Okay, we know she's a Christian artist
Speaker 2: and her songs are spiritual.
Speaker 1: At least will do a cod.
Speaker 2: Deal with Arista, and so that record, that one was
Speaker 2: nominated for a Grammy, and we went to the Grammys
Speaker 2: and Clive was there, and Clive came up to us
Speaker 2: and said, man, I love your voice, but you have
Speaker 2: to sing about God, and as she was going, well, yes,
Speaker 2: actually I do. You know. So it's always been this
Speaker 2: thing where it was always a struggle. It was it
Speaker 2: never nothing really ever worked out. I would probably say
Speaker 2: I think she'd be okay with me saying that.
Speaker 1: And what's the status of her music like today?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, through the different record labels in the
Speaker 2: making records, she got three Grammys and so she had
Speaker 2: a lot of critical acclaim and which is very satisfying
Speaker 2: and made her feel like the work she was doing
Speaker 2: was worthwhile. I love some of the records we made.
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of the work we did. About fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago, her voice started to change and singing became
Speaker 2: not as much fun, and so she sort of stopped
Speaker 2: doing it. But at the same time, she wrote a
Speaker 2: book called Little Black Sheep, and it wasn't like a
Speaker 2: big hit, but it got some notice and did well,
Speaker 2: and she wrote a second book and she started to
Speaker 2: lead retreats. She would do recovery retreats, women's retreats, religious retreats,
Speaker 2: and she also works at a church now and is
Speaker 2: a spiritual counselor.
Speaker 1: So her.
Speaker 3: I without a doubt her second career has been more
Speaker 3: successful and more satisfying than her first.
Speaker 2: She's really in a great space.
Speaker 1: Okay, you moved to Nashville in the seventies. What's it
Speaker 1: like being a Jew in Nashville then? And what's it
Speaker 1: like being a Jew in Nashville today.
Speaker 2: I think back then it was like it made me
Speaker 2: feel like an outsider. I never really got much discrimination.
Speaker 2: I mean occasionally somebody would say something in the good
Speaker 2: old boy world, you know, but I think with musicians
Speaker 2: were musicians and we're all in it, you know, it's
Speaker 2: a brotherhood and that like there was this keyboard player
Speaker 2: from Muscle Sholes. It was actually originally from New York,
Speaker 2: but he made his name and Muscle shows named Steve
Speaker 2: Nathan who who was Jewish, and he came up and
Speaker 2: was playing and there were a few of us and
Speaker 2: it's like if you played good, and I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody really cared, honestly, And now it's just it's wide open.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, you've been in Nashville nearly fifty years. How
Speaker 1: is Nashville The town changed.
Speaker 2: It's night and day. It's so completely incredibly different, and
Speaker 2: there's some good things and there's some not good things.
Speaker 2: The it was this kind of small, sleepy town that
Speaker 2: had some artists, little corners of artistry, and there was
Speaker 2: the publishing business and all the country songwriters and the
Speaker 2: record making and but it was a sleepy little town.
Speaker 2: And now it's like the number one tourist destination. They're
Speaker 2: they're blowing up buildings, property has gone through the roof,
Speaker 2: they've overbuilt. It's kind of a mess. So there's great
Speaker 2: stuff about it. There's a lot of energy here and
Speaker 2: you know, I you know, and I read in your
Speaker 2: emails you talk about, you know, the country music is
Speaker 2: kind of the thing, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 2: energy in that. And there's a lot of people that
Speaker 2: come here and there's a lot of great people doing
Speaker 2: great stuff. But it's it's it's a little bit like
Speaker 2: how can I say, It's like we've gotten a little
Speaker 2: bit too big for the size we are. It's a
Speaker 2: little out of control.
Speaker 1: And tell me how the music business has changed in
Speaker 1: this interim.
Speaker 2: Uh, I think in Nashville, as opposed to some other places,
Speaker 2: it's fairly healthy. I think the record companies don't know
Speaker 2: what to do the I think that it's kind of
Speaker 2: a mess, and that they don't know how to sell
Speaker 2: records and artists don't know how to get across. I
Speaker 2: almost feel like that the quote unquote country music industry
Speaker 2: is probably more messed up than the Americana indie industry,
Speaker 2: which is also here, is huge, right, They're thriving and
Speaker 2: and you know, there's some country records that are doing
Speaker 2: really good, you know, and but it's kind of a mess.
Speaker 2: And from the musicians standpoint, we get paid less for
Speaker 2: doing more work. So yeah, it's I mean, it's that's
Speaker 2: sort of a fractured answer, but it's kind of a
Speaker 2: fractured place.
Speaker 1: And what about the old saw of you know, writing
Speaker 1: gigs and music grow, et cetera. What's the status of
Speaker 1: that today?
Speaker 2: The writing thing is, you don't it's hard to get
Speaker 2: a publishing deal and get paid to write. Where it
Speaker 2: used to be, you'd get a publishing deal, you'd get
Speaker 2: fifty grand a year, and you'd write songs and they'd
Speaker 2: pay for your demos. And you'd have a band, and
Speaker 2: there was a whole industry of the younger players.
Speaker 1: That come up.
Speaker 2: You play on Sony demos and Warner Chapel demos and
Speaker 2: and uh, that's what you did. That is completely gone.
Speaker 2: And it's completely gone because they don't pay the songwriters
Speaker 2: for the most part, and they have to make their
Speaker 2: own demos because there's no budget to take a band
Speaker 2: into the studio, so you have to use pro tools
Speaker 2: and ableton and logic and make your own demos. And
Speaker 2: then in the last year there's this thing which really
Speaker 2: we could have a whole separate discussion on called Suno
Speaker 2: s U n O. Have you heard of that? Yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah you can. What songwriters do is you take you
Speaker 2: even on your iPhone, you sing the song and play
Speaker 2: your guitar and input into so into Suno, and in
Speaker 2: thirty seconds it spits out a full blown demo and
Speaker 2: they're not bad. They're just not bad. So I've played
Speaker 2: on a number of things recently where you hear the
Speaker 2: song writer's demo and go, oh, it's a Sono demo,
Speaker 2: you know right away. And the one particular experience I
Speaker 2: had was for Chesney, had somebody pitched him a song
Speaker 2: that he really liked. It's like weeks ago, we go
Speaker 2: into the studio and he plays us a song and go,
Speaker 2: oh shit, it's a sono demo. And the problem with
Speaker 2: it for us as the players is that a lot
Speaker 2: of times it'll play, it'll come up with a thing
Speaker 2: that's sort of a steal guitar but not really and
Speaker 2: it's a guitar and it's this synthesis of the two.
Speaker 2: So Chesney goes, I love that part.
Speaker 1: Let's get that.
Speaker 2: Guy in there. They call the songwriter and the songwriter goes,
Speaker 2: it's I have to full disclosure. It's a sono demo,
Speaker 2: and so Jessney says, can you play that part? And
Speaker 2: I go, you know, sort of it's gonna sound different
Speaker 2: because that's not that's like two different instruments that have
Speaker 2: become one instrument. I fucking don't know what it is,
Speaker 2: you know, So you come up with something that's kind
Speaker 2: of similar to that, but it's not exactly that. And
Speaker 2: but now Suno you can take individual tracks, so if
Speaker 2: he wanted to, I mean, there's there's copyright issues and
Speaker 2: I don't know how all that. They're in the middle
Speaker 2: of trying to get that worked out. But it's like
Speaker 2: he could take that part and put it into his
Speaker 2: recording if he wanted to, you know, but we didn't.
Speaker 2: He chose not to do that. But yes, Suno has changed.
Speaker 2: It's dramatically changing things. But I ascribed to the thing
Speaker 2: of that that it's just change, and it's it's like
Speaker 2: what a drum machine did, or it's what a synthesizer did,
Speaker 2: or the first time they had a sequencer, and you'd
Speaker 2: have all these cheesy demos that they used a sequencer.
Speaker 2: It's like, and occasionally you'd have a song that would
Speaker 2: have a sequencer part in it. It's you still have
Speaker 2: to come up with a great lyric and a great
Speaker 2: melody and the stuff. I've seen writers try to input
Speaker 2: just a word and say, make a great song of that.
Speaker 2: It can make sort of a generic song from it,
Speaker 2: but something that's deep and has soul and really says
Speaker 2: something special. I don't think it's there right now. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's going to do that. So it's the tools.
Speaker 2: It's just a tool.
Speaker 1: Okay, you got this work with Testney coming up the
Speaker 1: sphere and other dates, anything else in the schedule going forward.
Speaker 2: Uh, I just cut a song that I'm excited about
Speaker 2: on a singer songwriters, a very young guy from Kentucky
Speaker 2: and he is from a rural Kentucky like way back
Speaker 2: in the woods. But he's like a really good lyricist,
Speaker 2: kind of like a towns van Zandt type guy. So
Speaker 2: he has a song coming out on MLK Day. Is
Speaker 2: that is that Monday?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it's called American War, And it's from the perspective
Speaker 2: of the guy that lives out in the country that
Speaker 2: doesn't have any money, and it really doesn't take sides.
Speaker 2: It says, you know, you know, red or blue, you
Speaker 2: know you're both at fault, you know, and we suffer,
Speaker 2: you know, where it war with both of you, both sides,
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's a good song. And he came
Speaker 2: over to my studio and played me his other songs.
Speaker 2: They are really good. So he's not signed yet. He
Speaker 2: got a publishing deal. But the way I found out
Speaker 2: about him is Universal is interested in him. So he's
Speaker 2: going to put the song out on Monday, and I'm
Speaker 2: hoping that he gets some traction and I can have
Speaker 2: a budget and I can make more songs with him.
Speaker 2: As I thought he was really really good and the
Speaker 2: Chesney band is in the middle of making another record,
Speaker 2: so I'm doing that and though and then just some
Speaker 2: regular sessions, like next week, I have a blues record
Speaker 2: that I'm playing on that I'm excited to go do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So just that's that's kind of a good cross section.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned TV and film work. What's the status
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: I write for a company called Big Yellow Dog, and
Speaker 2: they have a number They have a film and TV
Speaker 2: department and they call it sink like writing for sinc.
Speaker 2: And I do that a lot. And in the past
Speaker 2: year I've gotten a number of things placed and I
Speaker 2: really really enjoy that a lot. And I like to
Speaker 2: write words, but I don't write lyrics in the sense
Speaker 2: of a country lyric is. I'm really not a country guy,
Speaker 2: you know. And so the music I write is more
Speaker 2: outside the box, for lack of a better word, And
Speaker 2: I like that. They send me a brief from like
Speaker 2: we're looking for songs for land Man, and here's how
Speaker 2: they should be. So I get with the writer and
Speaker 2: we try to write something and we record it over here,
Speaker 2: sing it over here. And so I'm doing a lot
Speaker 2: of that and it's for me. It's something I really
Speaker 2: want to pursue in this next chapter of my life
Speaker 2: because I really really enjoy it, and having gotten a
Speaker 2: couple of things, it makes me feel like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: can do this.
Speaker 1: Okay. Do you only get paid when it gets synced?
Speaker 2: Or you only get paid when it gets synced? You
Speaker 2: don't get anything before? That's the And luckily I can
Speaker 2: play sessions and play gigs and can support myself and
Speaker 2: I can do this.
Speaker 1: And how about do you play any gigs in town
Speaker 1: or only on the road? Yep?
Speaker 2: I'm playing with Pat McLoughlin this Friday, and he has
Speaker 2: a new record out called what is the name of
Speaker 2: the record. It's called Nashville after Dark. I don't love
Speaker 2: that title, that's what it's called. But it's him playing
Speaker 2: live in a club and he didn't know, we didn't
Speaker 2: know that we were being recorded. It's just a board
Speaker 2: two mix, so it's very raw. But man, Pat is
Speaker 2: the best, He's just the greatest. In playing with him,
Speaker 2: the musicians, when we get done playing a gig with Pat,
Speaker 2: we always say, after the gig, we stand around backstage
Speaker 2: and go, that was the greatest gig I've ever played.
Speaker 2: And I'm not making this up and I'm not exaggerating.
Speaker 2: Pat McLoughlin is the hidden secret of He is the greatest.
Speaker 2: Playing with him is like, I can't tell you what
Speaker 2: that does for my soul and for the other guys
Speaker 2: to play with him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: As a writer, he's been really successful and he writes
Speaker 2: like a lot of those little more recent John Prime
Speaker 2: songs of John Prime and the Dan auerback stuff, all
Speaker 2: those records of Dan makes and Pat, you know, and
Speaker 2: they're writing songs on all of them. So I have that.
Speaker 2: And then on Sunday there's a guy from Manchester, England,
Speaker 2: I'm named Johnny Lucas who has a band and plays
Speaker 2: gigs and I wrote a song with him, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go up and play with his band. I'll just
Speaker 2: play a few songs with his band on Sunday. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I love playing clubs.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've been talking to Kenny Greenberg, guitarist, producer, works
Speaker 1: with Chesney. Heard the story of how he made it. Kenny,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking all this time
Speaker 1: with my audience. Man, thank you.
Speaker 2: I read all your emails. I love it. You know,
Speaker 2: we're on the same page on a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: So it was honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Great to hear the stories until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob Lefstad's