Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today's guitarist, mandolinist, singer, songwriter Dan Timinski.
Speaker 2: Dan, good to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 3: Very happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Okay, you were born in Rutland, Vermont.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2: And did you grow up in Vermont?
Speaker 3: I grew up in Vermont. Yeah, the sprawling metropolis of
Speaker 3: West Rutland, Vermont, I say jokingly. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 3: home for me up until you know, the mid late
Speaker 3: eighties before I moved south.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I spent a lot of time in Vermont.
Speaker 2: We had a house in Manchester, and I went to
Speaker 2: college in Middlebury, which are like a half hour in
Speaker 2: either direction, or forty five minutes from Rutland. What was
Speaker 2: the music scene like for you growing up?
Speaker 3: That's funny, you'd say, man, I used to deliver Coca
Speaker 3: Cola to Manchester. The music scene for me was something
Speaker 3: you had to search for a little bit. I was.
Speaker 3: I was lucky enough to have parents who liked the
Speaker 3: music enough to go somewhere every weekend for you know,
Speaker 3: to hear some live music, and they dragged me along.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of it. You know, it might
Speaker 3: have been a country bar, it might have been a
Speaker 3: square dance, fiddle contest, bluegrass festival, in an array of
Speaker 3: whatever live music there was. I got. Uh, I got
Speaker 3: all the access we could. But we had to drive,
Speaker 3: you know, we had to We had to seek it out.
Speaker 2: Okay. Were your parents musicians or do they play a
Speaker 2: lot of music in the house.
Speaker 3: My parents were not musicians. My mother did, uh did
Speaker 3: sing a little bit. And way back in the day,
Speaker 3: my first memories of seeing anyone player sing was was
Speaker 3: my mom singing. And uh so she was you know,
Speaker 3: definitely lies in my influences. And uh, but there were
Speaker 3: more music fans. I mean, we didn't go for for
Speaker 3: her to perform anywhere, you know, we went out to
Speaker 3: hear whatever music was playing. And uh, I got a
Speaker 3: lot of access early in my life to live music.
Speaker 2: Okay, but how about playing records at home or listening
Speaker 2: to the radio.
Speaker 3: There was some playing of music at at my house,
Speaker 3: but it was not I wouldn't say it was a
Speaker 3: music filled house. It was not. It was a it
Speaker 3: was a television field house. It was it was there
Speaker 3: was I remember like on Sundays my dad would would
Speaker 3: religiously play the Polish Poka Hour. There was a radio
Speaker 3: program where I listened to Polish Poka music for an
Speaker 3: hour on Sundays. It was actually funny. It was called
Speaker 3: the Polish Poka Hour and it was two hours of music,
Speaker 3: very very strange, but so there was that there. I
Speaker 3: never had a music collection. I was never a listener
Speaker 3: of music. Account of recorded music, I don't. I can
Speaker 3: still count all the recordings I have ever purchased on
Speaker 3: my on my fingers. I've never I've never really never
Speaker 3: had any recorded music and and didn't grow up with it.
Speaker 3: My brother back in the day had some. And I
Speaker 3: can name a few albums. The few albums that I
Speaker 3: have listened to, I've listened to religiously, and I've studied them,
Speaker 3: and I can I can tell you all the parts
Speaker 3: of all the players on all those records. But that's
Speaker 3: just a very small handful of recordings.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what records did your brother have that you remember?
Speaker 3: Well? The Double O forty four record was the reason
Speaker 3: I'm playing music right now. The JD Crow in the
Speaker 3: New South Uh with Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs and
Speaker 3: Tony Rice and Bobby Sloan. That was the record that
Speaker 3: was my by far, far and above every other thing,
Speaker 3: my biggest influence. That was the record I listened to
Speaker 3: over and over and over again. That was back when
Speaker 3: I wanted to, when I thought I was a AO player.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean I lived in Vermont in the era
Speaker 2: when you're growing up and basically was AM radio and
Speaker 2: there might be a small FM station, but you heard
Speaker 2: a lot of pop hits and occasionally you would hear
Speaker 2: a country song. I remember flipping the dial on my
Speaker 2: sixty three Chevy convertible and hearing Joe Lean for the
Speaker 2: very first time. So in terms of your environment, A,
Speaker 2: were you listening to the radio or B were you
Speaker 2: were growing up? Was it really more of this country stuff? Er?
Speaker 2: Was everybody listening to pop?
Speaker 3: All my friends growing up listen to rock and roll?
Speaker 3: It was they were. They were all rockers, Boston Journey
Speaker 3: and ac DC and def Leppard and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: The radio stuff. My parents when they did listen to music,
Speaker 3: they listened to a lot of old time country music.
Speaker 3: So I got a lot of you know, everything from
Speaker 3: Kitty Wells to Hank Williams too, you know a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of the old time country music was
Speaker 3: was part of their thing. They loved to, uh, to
Speaker 3: listen to the Opry. You know, they talked to you
Speaker 3: know dearly about the Grand Old Opry was their their
Speaker 3: their high mark of of all of music. But they
Speaker 3: liked old time country music. And I got a little
Speaker 3: bit of that, but I got just a lot more
Speaker 3: live old time country music. We would go listening to
Speaker 3: whatever bar bands that were around. And you know, my
Speaker 3: my very first influences were was a man named Smoky
Speaker 3: Green in upstate, New York, and he was my first
Speaker 3: time performing with anyone on a stage was with Smokey.
Speaker 3: I think I was six years old at a little
Speaker 3: club and.
Speaker 2: Uh wait, wait wait, wait wait wait wait, you were
Speaker 2: six years old and you were performing. What were you doing.
Speaker 3: That the very first time? Uh? I just I remember
Speaker 3: I was with my parents who were listening to a band,
Speaker 3: and I asked my mother if she would ask the
Speaker 3: band if I could sing a song with the band,
Speaker 3: and I think, to shut me up, she said, if
Speaker 3: you want to sing a song with him, you go
Speaker 3: up and ask him somewhere. And I was pretty shy kid.
Speaker 3: I really didn't speak much. I didn't I wasn't very outgoing,
Speaker 3: but somewhere I found the courage to walk down that
Speaker 3: aisleway and I went up to Smoky Green and I
Speaker 3: tugged down his pant leg and he turned around and
Speaker 3: looked for me and then had to turn his head
Speaker 3: down to realize it was a little kid. And I said,
Speaker 3: can I sing a song with you? And he said
Speaker 3: why sure? And I sang. I sang, please Daddy, don't
Speaker 3: get drunk this Christmas John Denver song. And I remember
Speaker 3: standing up there with my knees knocking together, literally scared
Speaker 3: to death. But I sang the song, and when I
Speaker 3: was done, everyone applauded, you know, and made a big
Speaker 3: deal of it. And that feeling, that excitement, that nervous
Speaker 3: energy has stayed with me, you know, for the you know,
Speaker 3: the next fifty years.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's set the stage a little bit more. Would
Speaker 2: your parents do for a living?
Speaker 3: My dad was a mechanic. He was a a transmission
Speaker 3: and rear end specialist, and in his uh later years
Speaker 3: of his his work, he was a fleet mechanic for
Speaker 3: Coca Cola. He was the guy in charge of keeping
Speaker 3: all of the the vehicles running for the Coca Cola
Speaker 3: company there in Rutland. And my mother she she didn't
Speaker 3: really work my whole life growing up, but I remember
Speaker 3: her having a job as a cashier. She was a
Speaker 3: head cashier at a department store. You know, middle class.
Speaker 3: Uh nothing nothing real real exciting and lines of work.
Speaker 3: At least as I saw it, music was I was.
Speaker 3: I was kind of the first one to well my brother,
Speaker 3: I'll i'll say it was much older than me. So
Speaker 3: my brother and I we were the first ones to
Speaker 3: uh had any other direction than mechanics.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just you and your brother only two kids?
Speaker 3: No, we have a sister. My brother was the only
Speaker 3: other child that that was was musical, although if you
Speaker 3: were to have to, you know, she won't admit it
Speaker 3: to anyone. My sister actually has a beautiful singing voice,
Speaker 3: she just will not let anyone hear it. My brother
Speaker 3: and I played some music together out with for for
Speaker 3: other people.
Speaker 2: Okay, so where are you in the hierarchy? Are you're
Speaker 2: the middle kid, the youngest kid.
Speaker 3: I'm the baby by a lot. My my brother and
Speaker 3: sister are nine and eleven years older than I am.
Speaker 3: And I came along. I was, I was the I
Speaker 3: was the surprise. You know a dozen years later, and.
Speaker 2: How did your brother and sisters lives play out.
Speaker 3: My sister still lives in in Vermont, in in the
Speaker 3: house that that I grew up in actually, and uh
Speaker 3: and my brother we played music together and we're close
Speaker 3: for for a lot of the years growing up, but
Speaker 3: grew apart. I haven't haven't had a close relationship with
Speaker 3: my brother in years. So I know he's still up
Speaker 3: in the New Hampshire area, and my sister is in Vermont,
Speaker 3: and I made my way to eventually Tennessee.
Speaker 2: When you say you don't have a close relationship, do
Speaker 2: you have any contact at all or not for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: No, it's a it's a difficult situation as sometimes siblings
Speaker 3: do or brothers do. They they fall apart, and I
Speaker 3: won't go into deep circumstance, but yeah, none of my
Speaker 3: none of my family have a relationship with with my
Speaker 3: brother anymore. He kind of decided that he was gonna
Speaker 3: sever all paths to to basically everyone. So I don't
Speaker 3: know anyone in my family who has a relationship ship
Speaker 3: with my brother anymore. He kind of just went am
Speaker 3: I A for me many years ago? The well everyone
Speaker 3: else as.
Speaker 2: Well, Okay, so you're growing up in Rutland, you have
Speaker 2: this experience over the state line singing. At age six,
Speaker 2: you go to school. Are you in the school plays?
Speaker 2: Do you start to perform?
Speaker 3: Not even a little bit. No, it was there was
Speaker 3: a clear line draw man. That was my escape life
Speaker 3: that I got on the weekends in school. Had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with any of the arts. No. No. In
Speaker 3: high school, I eventually, you know, for vocational I took
Speaker 3: welding and metal fabrication.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what kind of kid were you?
Speaker 3: Were you?
Speaker 2: Good at school, good at sports, bad loaner, spark of
Speaker 2: the party.
Speaker 3: As a kid, Let's see, it's hard to describe yourself
Speaker 3: as a kid. I mean I've heard a lot of
Speaker 3: other people describe me as kids, and some people's opinions vary.
Speaker 3: As a kid, I was, I was I was very quiet.
Speaker 3: I was very to myself. I was very I wasn't
Speaker 3: quick to engage, you know, I mean to you know,
Speaker 3: to to really open it up. I mean, I had
Speaker 3: parents that, though they traveled and you know, did a
Speaker 3: lot of things together, my parents fought a lot every week.
Speaker 3: Really of my life, I've seen a lot of violence,
Speaker 3: and I and and I just I didn't engage with
Speaker 3: anyone I really tried to. That's like at school, I
Speaker 3: was like in my own little bubble I was. I
Speaker 3: didn't really I only had a couple of friends. And
Speaker 3: as it, you know, turned into high school. You know,
Speaker 3: I would say more on the outcast part of school.
Speaker 3: I mean I was intelligent. I was able to make
Speaker 3: any grade I wanted in any of the classes. But
Speaker 3: I gave about enough effort to make my see and
Speaker 3: pass and got out of school as quickly as I could.
Speaker 3: Didn't didn't care for school.
Speaker 2: It was a different era. My parents fought a lot,
Speaker 2: and they hit us a lot, but they stayed together.
Speaker 3: So what was your situation, Well, my parents stayed together.
Speaker 3: My parents didn't hit me, They didn't hit the kids.
Speaker 3: They hit each other. That My parents were brawlers. You know.
Speaker 3: My mom was a fighter. She could she could whip
Speaker 3: a man's butt. I mean you you wouldn't want to
Speaker 3: tangle with with either one of them. Really. They both
Speaker 3: came from really big families. Dad had ten brothers and
Speaker 3: sisters and my mom had sixteen brothers and sisters, and
Speaker 3: they all grew up having to fight. They all grew
Speaker 3: up having to fight for everything. With each other. And
Speaker 3: you know the families were were close, yet not close.
Speaker 3: They fought amongst each other. I mean, two boys and
Speaker 3: a girl from one family married two girls and a
Speaker 3: boy from the other family. Wow. So we had a
Speaker 3: lot of family turmoil. And you know there was there was,
Speaker 3: There was a lot going on growing up. You know,
Speaker 3: some some stayed close, drifted apart. It was just you know,
Speaker 3: I I I couldn't deal with the with with the
Speaker 3: fighting and the the what I felt was was it
Speaker 3: was a lot of it was very negative. I was
Speaker 3: I really was looking for for a way out from
Speaker 3: day one. You know, from when I was a little kid.
Speaker 3: I knew I couldn't wait to get away and play music.
Speaker 3: I knew I was a musician when I was very small.
Speaker 2: Oh okay. Was everybody in that same area of West Rutland.
Speaker 3: Very close Yeah, West Rutland and Rutland, A lot of
Speaker 3: them were, I mean in the surrounding towns. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so was it like on the weekends they would
Speaker 2: all get together.
Speaker 3: No, that wasn't. You know, we had we would go
Speaker 3: and visit some family. It wasn't. It wasn't like that
Speaker 3: type of family. There were just two big families that
Speaker 3: happened to have some you know, some marriages that went,
Speaker 3: you know to two boys and a girl married two
Speaker 3: girls and a boy. So we had some connections there
Speaker 3: for a while. There were a row of us on
Speaker 3: Clarendon Avenue where I lived. There were a bunch of
Speaker 3: a line of Timen, you know, in five or six
Speaker 3: houses in a row were Timinsky's and the Timinski's and
Speaker 3: the Woodies. It was go back in the day. Man.
Speaker 3: There were just there were There were a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Okay, So how many generations was your family in America?
Speaker 3: My grandfather, my dad's father, came over from Poland, and
Speaker 3: my mom's parents were here for generations.
Speaker 2: Okay, So at what point do you start to play
Speaker 2: an instrument.
Speaker 3: I started playing when I was five or six. I
Speaker 3: started playing a mandolin and I played and because I
Speaker 3: was you know, I I I was good at it,
Speaker 3: and you know, everyone told me I was good at it,
Speaker 3: and you know, I just I kind of played around
Speaker 3: with it until I was probably twelve. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: I really say my music started. I got bit by
Speaker 3: the bug when I was twelve. I that JD. Crow
Speaker 3: record and it was like a beacon from the sky
Speaker 3: just came down and sucked me up. I couldn't think
Speaker 3: about anything else but that, the sound of that banjo.
Speaker 3: And it turns out, I discovered years later it was
Speaker 3: really the relationship the banjo had with the other instruments,
Speaker 3: particularly the guitar, that I really fell in love with.
Speaker 3: But in my mind, all I could think about was
Speaker 3: that banjo.
Speaker 2: So you pick up the mandolin. Was there a mandolin
Speaker 2: in the house or did you ask your appearance to
Speaker 2: buy you one.
Speaker 3: My brother was in the military. He was stationed in Virginia,
Speaker 3: and he came home on leave one weekend with a mandolin,
Speaker 3: and he just happened to leave the mandolin at the
Speaker 3: at the house with me. He saw that I liked it,
Speaker 3: and he left the mandolin and I and I just
Speaker 3: tinkered around on the on on that little little harmony mandolin,
Speaker 3: little round teardrop style mandolin. That. Uh, that was my
Speaker 3: first my first answer.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you didn't have any lessons.
Speaker 3: Oh heck no, there were no. There were no lessons.
Speaker 3: There was no There was not even there was. There
Speaker 3: was me in a bedroom and and you know, trying
Speaker 3: to make more noise than was being made outside of
Speaker 3: the bedroom, you know.
Speaker 2: So how did you know how to tune it?
Speaker 3: It was in two I mean when I got it,
Speaker 3: it was in tune. I mean basically in tune. And
Speaker 3: I I always had an ear for tuning. I didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, we there were no tuners. We just you know,
Speaker 3: I could tell if it was a little too high
Speaker 3: or a little too low. And I could tune it
Speaker 3: right from the very right from the very start, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So from age six when you pick up the
Speaker 2: mandolin to age twelve, when you get inspiration hearing the
Speaker 2: krone and stuff, are you playing country songs on the mandolin?
Speaker 2: What are you actually doing?
Speaker 3: I'm playing songs on the mandolin and traveling to bluegrass
Speaker 3: festivals and playing in jam sessions and playing a little
Speaker 3: bit with my brother. My brother played the guitar and
Speaker 3: sang and I would sing. Really the only reason I
Speaker 3: sing at all is was to sing with, you know,
Speaker 3: with my brother. I didn't really ever care to sing.
Speaker 3: I always like to play. And there was just there
Speaker 3: were spar shows and my parents would take me places.
Speaker 3: I did radio shows when they were spots, you know,
Speaker 3: Smoky Green had a radio show. My parents would take
Speaker 3: me there, I would play and just sing anything I could.
Speaker 3: I mean, it wasn't particularly bluegrass until I was a teenager.
Speaker 2: Okay, So from six to twelve you were doing all this,
Speaker 2: or after twelve.
Speaker 3: From six to twelve, I was still going to shows
Speaker 3: and concerts and festivals and anything that my parents could
Speaker 3: get to. I went some somewhere most weekends. You know,
Speaker 3: there was some music somewhere. We would travel to it,
Speaker 3: and then I would go home and try to you know,
Speaker 3: I would more than anything. When I was playing manteline,
Speaker 3: I would sit and watch television and play whatever the
Speaker 3: music I heard on the television was all the theme
Speaker 3: songs to all the shows, the commercials, whatever little jingle
Speaker 3: would come on. I would just you know, I would
Speaker 3: just learn how to mimic, you know, whatever I heard.
Speaker 3: I wasn't really interested in. I never really learned a
Speaker 3: bunch of songs. I just it was a toy. From
Speaker 3: when I was six to twelve. It was just something
Speaker 3: I played with. I never really really tried to learn anything.
Speaker 3: It was just I played it because I could.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now you're twelve, you get this great inspiration.
Speaker 2: How does your life change?
Speaker 3: Well, I tell my parents that I want a banjo,
Speaker 3: and they they looked at me, to quote the line
Speaker 3: from that movie, they looked at me like I had
Speaker 3: lobsters crawling out of my ears. They said, there are
Speaker 3: no banjo players around here. There are no music stores
Speaker 3: that we know of. I mean, where would we even
Speaker 3: get a banjo? And I was adamant. I said, I
Speaker 3: want a banjo. And we found a music store in Castleton,
Speaker 3: Vermont that had banjo's, a couple of banjo's hanging on
Speaker 3: the wall, not very expensive, pretty, you know, very very
Speaker 3: entry level instruments. And they they got me a banjo
Speaker 3: like two months before my thirteenth birthday. And I took
Speaker 3: that banjo and I did everything wrong you can do.
Speaker 3: I I knew what it sounded like. I was. I was.
Speaker 3: I was quick enough to be able to decipher these
Speaker 3: are the notes I want to hear, but somehow was
Speaker 3: not smart enough to figure out how the finger pattern went,
Speaker 3: so my fingers are crossed. Compared to other banjo players,
Speaker 3: my h The main technique in a banjo is your
Speaker 3: thumb would cover the fifth string and the fourth string predominantly.
Speaker 3: Your middle finger would cover the first and second string,
Speaker 3: and your first index finger would cover the third, you know,
Speaker 3: the third and the second string, it kind of stays
Speaker 3: in the middle. Somehow I learned to have my index
Speaker 3: finger covering that that you know, D and B string,
Speaker 3: and I learned my my middle finger was in the
Speaker 3: middle on the G string. My fingers are just crossed
Speaker 3: around backwards from everybody else's. And I did that for
Speaker 3: a couple of years before anybody noticed. By the time
Speaker 3: anyone noticed, I'd already developed a unchangeable pattern I could play,
Speaker 3: so I never I never went back. So I have
Speaker 3: one of the more unique banjo right hands from teaching myself,
Speaker 3: you know, I I tell everyone, if you have it
Speaker 3: when you're getting started, take some early lessons, learn some
Speaker 3: technique out of the gate. It would it'll so help
Speaker 3: the new musicians out there who want to learn, because
Speaker 3: I found that. For me, it was out of a
Speaker 3: stumbling block with the banjo. And then, of of course
Speaker 3: I didn't know at the time my career was really
Speaker 3: going to be on a guitar, you know, mandolin and
Speaker 3: guitar mostly, so the mandolin and the guitar were pretty translatable.
Speaker 3: I played that mandolin early on.
Speaker 2: Let's just stay with the banjo. What was your inspiration
Speaker 2: for saying you wanted to play the banjo.
Speaker 3: I heard JD. Crow in the New South. I heard J. D.
Speaker 3: Crow play I'm Walking, Yes, indeed, I heard him play
Speaker 3: Old Home Place. And when I heard that, there was
Speaker 3: something about that music, particularly the double O forty four record.
Speaker 3: That's the record that I studied that I listened to
Speaker 3: that I can you know, I can play every note
Speaker 3: of every instrument, of every solo on the whole red
Speaker 3: you know, I've studied that record inside and out. It's
Speaker 3: the one that spoke to me. Who knows why any
Speaker 3: particular piece of music speaks to anyone person, but that
Speaker 3: one grab me right to the right to the core.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now you're playing the banjo. Are you playing
Speaker 2: the banjo with anybody else?
Speaker 3: Now? I'm playing the banjo with again with my brother
Speaker 3: uh Stan, and we we ended up starting a band
Speaker 3: called Green Mountain Bluegrass. And we we held that together
Speaker 3: for about five years, and we ultimately played up and
Speaker 3: down the East Coast. You know, by the by the
Speaker 3: time we were you know, had played a few years.
Speaker 3: We played from Maine to Florida, anywhere we could, any
Speaker 3: bluegrass festival. I mean, you know, we were we weren't
Speaker 3: making any money. We were just we were just so
Speaker 3: gung ho to go and play. And yeah, anytime I
Speaker 3: could get in any jam session at any bluegrass festival,
Speaker 3: I was the guy that walked around with a with
Speaker 3: a banjo out of the case on, you know, strapped
Speaker 3: on walking around looking for jam sessions. I just it's
Speaker 3: I lived it every every every moment of every day.
Speaker 3: That was what was in my head.
Speaker 2: So it was not matter like with a rock band
Speaker 2: that you were playing with the kids in school.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. In fact, there was the kids
Speaker 3: in school had no idea what I did. They eventually
Speaker 3: found out that I that I played a banjo, and uh,
Speaker 3: and I really took you know, that was from the
Speaker 3: school aspect and my my, the friends that I had
Speaker 3: growing up, you know, that was more. I was more
Speaker 3: probably ashamed of that, or I was hiding it. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't Uh, they didn't think bluegrass music was cool.
Speaker 3: They were rock and rollers. So you know, I didn't
Speaker 3: tell them I was out playing banjos. I just I
Speaker 3: went on the weekends and did my thing and then
Speaker 3: had a different life while I was while I was home.
Speaker 2: So at these festivals, you just showed up. These were
Speaker 2: not paying gigs where there was somebody booking the gig,
Speaker 2: whether it be an agent or yourself or whatever.
Speaker 3: Correct though it was a little bit of both. I mean,
Speaker 3: when we had the band Green Mountain Bluegrass, we would
Speaker 3: book any festival that we could, and then we would
Speaker 3: go there and camp out for the weekend. We would
Speaker 3: go and we would play our show whenever our show was,
Speaker 3: but we were really there to drink and party and
Speaker 3: pick and have the best time we could. We just
Speaker 3: camped out and you know, it was like vacation every week.
Speaker 2: And does that scene exist at all today.
Speaker 3: The bluegrass festival scene. I mean, I still like to
Speaker 3: go to the bluegrass festivals for the same reason I
Speaker 3: don't have the freedom I once had to go and
Speaker 3: walk around and you know, jam bust with with a
Speaker 3: banjo on my on my shoulder. But I still like
Speaker 3: festivals for the same reason. I still walk around. I
Speaker 3: still enjoy watching everybody get together and it's an amazing
Speaker 3: it's an amazing sense of community. Man. The bluegrass festivals
Speaker 3: are what ultimately won me over and why I stuck
Speaker 3: with this this music.
Speaker 2: Okay, for those people not in this world, can you
Speaker 2: define bluegrass.
Speaker 3: You know, it's that's a question I have heard so
Speaker 3: many times, and I've heard so many people ask it.
Speaker 3: You asked that question. It's a it's a difficult question
Speaker 3: to answer. I mean bluegrass music. To me, it's it's
Speaker 3: the evolution of mountain music. It's it's it's the music
Speaker 3: that that people played with the simplest instruments they could find.
Speaker 3: You know, they played what you would early call that.
Speaker 3: Some might call it country music or old time country music.
Speaker 3: It was not too unlike bluegrass music. I think when
Speaker 3: bluegrass kind of got its its niche was simply Earl Scruggs,
Speaker 3: you know, three finger banjo, and then of course you
Speaker 3: had Bill Monroe with some high harmonies, and you had
Speaker 3: some influential bands that played that style of music. But
Speaker 3: you know, everyone there are a lot of opinions of
Speaker 3: what bluegrass music actually is. You know, it's it's a
Speaker 3: typically it's a guitar, bass, a banjo, and a mandolin
Speaker 3: and a fiddle. That's if you play that and sing
Speaker 3: certain songs, I think, well you have bluegrass music. But
Speaker 3: opinions vary a lot on what bluegrass actually is. It's
Speaker 3: fun to hear the different interpretations. I've spent a lifetime
Speaker 3: trying to explain it and also trying to interpret other people's,
Speaker 3: you know, opinion of what bluegrass music is. Not everyone agrees,
Speaker 3: and that's even within hardcore bluegrass bands. Lifers can still
Speaker 3: argue about what bluegrass music actually is. You know, it's
Speaker 3: funny to me. I mean, I like all types of music,
Speaker 3: and bluegrass music is the core. It's the heart of
Speaker 3: what I do. And if you identified as bluegrass, then
Speaker 3: there it is bluegrass music.
Speaker 2: So what point did you pick up the guitar.
Speaker 3: When I joined Alison Krause Union Station.
Speaker 2: So you weren't playing the guitar before that, you were
Speaker 2: just playing banjo and mandolin.
Speaker 3: Correct, I mean I had access to a guitar, like
Speaker 3: I knew how to play a you know, I could
Speaker 3: play GC and D. I could play the court, you know,
Speaker 3: of course, but I never no, I never had a
Speaker 3: guitar of my own. I never had no. I didn't
Speaker 3: really the guitar was was not my thing. I spent
Speaker 3: all my time those formative years trying to play a banjo. Again.
Speaker 3: I played mandolin just because it was like a toy.
Speaker 3: It was fun. I played the mandolin, but I spent
Speaker 3: all my years, you know, playing the banjo, and I
Speaker 3: honestly I wanted to join Alison Krause's band as the
Speaker 3: banjo player. I was. I was mortified the day I
Speaker 3: found out ron Block got the job and and I
Speaker 3: didn't have a shot at that anymore. I never dreamed
Speaker 3: I would get asked to be the guitar player. And uh,
Speaker 3: when I was, I immediately went shopping for a guitar
Speaker 3: and and you know, sat in the sat in the woodshed,
Speaker 3: as as they would say, and uh, and tried to
Speaker 3: play ketchup, you know. And I spent a hell most
Speaker 3: of my career playing ketchup because that was that was
Speaker 3: kind of my last instrument. But turns out it was
Speaker 3: the instrument I was meant to play. It's the instrument
Speaker 3: I enjoy playing, you know, the most. It was. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize the love I had for a guitar
Speaker 3: until late in my career, I mean until after I
Speaker 3: was a guitar player.
Speaker 2: You know, some musicians can pick up any instrument and
Speaker 2: within a short period of time play it is that
Speaker 2: who you are.
Speaker 3: That's how people would describe me. Probably that knew me
Speaker 3: growing up, I mean that was part of our stick
Speaker 3: in the Green Mountain blue grass days. I would play
Speaker 3: a song where I would, you know, run around and
Speaker 3: play all the different instruments on the stage. I was
Speaker 3: never a deep catalog on any one instrument, but it
Speaker 3: was easy enough for me. Yeah, I mean, there's there's
Speaker 3: a relationship. Once you can play one, you kind of
Speaker 3: have an understanding of the next one. And I think
Speaker 3: a lot of the players that play bluegrass music that
Speaker 3: are really that can really play any one instrument well,
Speaker 3: can probably pick up most of them and play, you know,
Speaker 3: the ones that you know, most people that can play
Speaker 3: anything with a pick can play anything with a pick.
Speaker 3: You know. Fiddle is a different category altogether. I think
Speaker 3: you have to be a totally weird person to play
Speaker 3: a fiddle, which is I'm that weird person. I mean,
Speaker 3: when I'm home, that's the only thing I really pick
Speaker 3: up here around the house anymore for my own enjoyment.
Speaker 3: I like playing the fiddle, but again as a toy
Speaker 3: because it's just fun to pick up and play. I
Speaker 3: don't I don't try to make any money play in
Speaker 3: a fiddle.
Speaker 2: Well, let's say I dropped a clarinet at your house
Speaker 2: and I came back a week later. Would you be
Speaker 2: able to play it?
Speaker 3: I would probably be able to play something you wouldn't
Speaker 3: want to hear. Yeah, I mean it's uh yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: I'll pick up anything and try to make music out
Speaker 3: of it. Yeah, I've. I've always kind of been that
Speaker 3: type of a tinkerer.
Speaker 2: So you graduate from high school, you get your direloma, Yes,
Speaker 2: but you get your diploma. How do you see your
Speaker 2: life playing out? What do you what do you want
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 3: Boy? At the at the point of graduating. I mean, I,
Speaker 3: like I said, I I wanted to play music gosh forever.
Speaker 3: Like I I couldn't wait to go and play music.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I think I spent I spent a
Speaker 3: little point as a teenager thinking I wanted to play baseball.
Speaker 3: You know, I was. I was a pretty decent baseball player.
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, I could probably play baseball. It's
Speaker 3: gonna sound silly, but there was a point past that,
Speaker 3: you know, the years leading up to graduation, I wanted
Speaker 3: to play foosball. I wanted to uh, I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a professional football player. I thought that would have
Speaker 3: been an amazing Okay.
Speaker 2: Wait wait wait, I was always a shitty foosball player.
Speaker 2: But the people put a lot of time in. You know,
Speaker 2: they could work it, et cetera. You gotta put a
Speaker 2: lot of time in to be a good foosball player.
Speaker 3: I may have more time on a foosball table than
Speaker 3: I have on instruments. Growing up, there was a foosball
Speaker 3: my brother had. I had a foosball table from the
Speaker 3: time I could see over the edge of it. There
Speaker 3: was a foosball table in the rec center that we
Speaker 3: you know, the place where the kids hung out at school.
Speaker 3: I've always played foosball and I got I got my
Speaker 3: ten thousand hours in. You can't see this on the podcast,
Speaker 3: but I'm wearing this is my foosball shirt.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, this is my foosball shirt.
Speaker 3: It says, that's yeah. The shirt I'm wearing literally is
Speaker 3: a foosball shirt. No I am. I'm all about the
Speaker 3: game of foosball. So there was a like I said, okay,
Speaker 3: you know, there was a point I wanted to play foosball.
Speaker 3: But when I by the time I actually graduated, I
Speaker 3: knew that I was going to, you know, play music somehow,
Speaker 3: some way, somewhere, I didn't know where, I didn't care
Speaker 3: where I just I knew I was a musician.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's stop for one second. Is there some sort
Speaker 2: of profe foosball.
Speaker 3: League, now, ye know, there is, of course there is there. Well,
Speaker 3: so let's back up back in the day now, when
Speaker 3: I was playing foosball and hearing about these people in
Speaker 3: the in the you know, mid late seventies and early eighties,
Speaker 3: foosball was actually quite a big deal. There were million
Speaker 3: dollar tournaments. There's a million dollar tour. People were winning
Speaker 3: huge prizes. I mean, this is gonna be hard to believe,
Speaker 3: but it was the sixth biggest money sport that you
Speaker 3: could get into. If you were Wow, if you go
Speaker 3: back to the you know, mid late seventies, it was huge, right,
Speaker 3: you were stars, you were on talk shows. You know,
Speaker 3: you were doing the Tonight Show, if you were a
Speaker 3: big foosball Well, anyway, I loved the game. I always
Speaker 3: love to gain. So still now you skip ahead, now,
Speaker 3: all these years later, it is reduced down to very very,
Speaker 3: very very small compared to what it used to be.
Speaker 3: The There are only, to my knowledge, two professional foosball players,
Speaker 3: and by that I mean people who act actually make
Speaker 3: their living playing foosball. Only there are a couple guys
Speaker 3: todd Ler, Fredo, Tony Spraderman, not necessarily in that order,
Speaker 3: but there are a couple guys that make their living.
Speaker 3: And there's still a foosball tour that travels all over
Speaker 3: the country, all over the world. Really yeah, I still
Speaker 3: go to tournaments everywhere. I'm from here to Colorado to California, Texas,
Speaker 3: the Northeast. There are foosball tournaments everywhere. I play music,
Speaker 3: so it's really hard to catch a lot of them
Speaker 3: for a lifetime. I took thirty two years of my
Speaker 3: life off of foosball. The last major foosball tournament that
Speaker 3: I played was in nineteen eighty nine. Okay before a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago. Two years ago, two and a half,
Speaker 3: I guess now, I got back into foosball. I randomly
Speaker 3: saw it on the internet. Got me thinking about some
Speaker 3: guys that I used to know. I looked them up
Speaker 3: online and lo and behold, I start getting the speeds
Speaker 3: of Come to the foosball tournament in Lexington the tour kickoff,
Speaker 3: and I thought, well, that sounds like me. So I
Speaker 3: I show up thinking I'm gonna, you know, step right
Speaker 3: back in the way I was and I realized, you know,
Speaker 3: the foosball players got really good between when I was
Speaker 3: when they are now. Right, But I'm still a decent
Speaker 3: you know, Like I went my first tournament back, I
Speaker 3: meddled in a couple of different events, won a little bling,
Speaker 3: and I and I drove home with table number eight
Speaker 3: in my trunk and put it in the garage. And
Speaker 3: you know, for you know, the past close to three years,
Speaker 3: I've been I've been leaning over a foosball table, trying
Speaker 3: to get the trying to get my chops back.
Speaker 2: Okay, but isn't foosball a little bit like tennis that
Speaker 2: to really be good you have to practice against someone
Speaker 2: who's pretty good themselves.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is absolutely wow. Okay, this is what people
Speaker 3: don't consider is and you have nailed it, absolutely nailed it.
Speaker 3: To be at the highest level of well anything, you
Speaker 3: have to play against the highest level players. So foosball,
Speaker 3: absolutely you have to be able to play against great players.
Speaker 3: But we have an advantage now that I didn't have
Speaker 3: when I played all that foosball in the eighties, seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties. There was no Internet, there was no YouTube,
Speaker 3: there was no If I wanted to watch a master
Speaker 3: play foosball, I had to drive for hours and stand
Speaker 3: over a row of rows of people and try to
Speaker 3: catch what little information I could. Now I can pull
Speaker 3: up any of the top players in the world on
Speaker 3: YouTube and study their every move. Watch everything they do,
Speaker 3: Watch how they react to certain shots, Watch how they defend,
Speaker 3: watch what There's just so much information that you can
Speaker 3: glean now from watching that. I'm fascinated with it. So I,
Speaker 3: you know, I spend my I spend my time studying
Speaker 3: so that I know the players. When I show up
Speaker 3: to the tournaments and and I've done well, I've you know,
Speaker 3: I I'm uh, I'm still a formidable competitor when it
Speaker 3: comes to foosball. I've played enough against the time I mean,
Speaker 3: I've played against the world champion. I've played I've been
Speaker 3: in the pits with the best players in the world
Speaker 3: and held my own.
Speaker 2: You know, it's okay. As I say, I was never
Speaker 2: a good foosball player, but when foosball became a big
Speaker 2: deal in my life, it was the machine you put
Speaker 2: money in, and then they had tables you could take
Speaker 2: it home, but they were not of the same level.
Speaker 2: Is there a standard foosball table like did every all
Speaker 2: the tournaments are on.
Speaker 3: There is and it depends on where you are in
Speaker 3: the world as to what table it is. Right now,
Speaker 3: in America, the current league table is called the Tornado Table,
Speaker 3: but it has changed through the years. When I first
Speaker 3: started playing, it was a ts tournament soccer table. They
Speaker 3: called it the Million Dollar table Ts table, and then
Speaker 3: it switched to the Dynamo Table, and then it switched
Speaker 3: to there's still there's still some other branches. There's a
Speaker 3: Warrior table, there's a Warrior tournament series, or at least
Speaker 3: there used to be, but now it's Tornado.
Speaker 2: And is there any real difference between these professional level tables?
Speaker 3: Huge difference if you're good on a let's say there's
Speaker 3: a there's a Bonzini circuit, Like if you play in Europe,
Speaker 3: you'll play a lot on Bonzini tables. And if you're
Speaker 3: a good Bonzini player, that does not mean you're a
Speaker 3: good Tornado player, and vice versa. They're completely different skills.
Speaker 3: I mean, it takes it takes a while to really
Speaker 3: develop the touch. I mean it's it's like if you're
Speaker 3: a guitar player and you're gonna all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: say you're gonna switch to a different instrument. Well, you
Speaker 3: know how to hold a pick and you know how
Speaker 3: to press a string down, but there's a whole different
Speaker 3: set of variables that you have to learn to be
Speaker 3: able to play from table to table. And there are
Speaker 3: tournaments like international tournaments that have multi table tournaments where
Speaker 3: you have to play one match on a Tornado and
Speaker 3: then the next match on a Bonzini and the next
Speaker 3: match on there's. Yeah, it's it's interesting. So there are
Speaker 3: there are people who are great at at each one
Speaker 3: and there's there's only a few players that are really
Speaker 3: masters on all of those tables. You know right now,
Speaker 3: the man his name is Tony Spraderman. He's the guy
Speaker 3: to look you know, He's the guy I watch. He's
Speaker 3: he's he's my foods, my current foosball hero and uh
Speaker 3: I befriended him, met him at a few tournaments and
Speaker 3: got to got to play against him a little bit.
Speaker 3: And it's the most fun I could probably have right
Speaker 3: now at this point in my life, is to stand
Speaker 3: against one of those high level players and play foosball.
Speaker 3: That is the I will not see that level of
Speaker 3: adrenaline and anything else I do at this age in
Speaker 3: my life. No, nothing even close.
Speaker 2: Well, it's exciting. Switching gears back to our narrative. So
Speaker 2: you graduate from high school, do you get a day
Speaker 2: job or you immediately play music? What what happened?
Speaker 3: I did. I graduated from high school and my dad
Speaker 3: was a fleet mechanic for the Coca Cola company, and
Speaker 3: he asked me if I wanted to go to work
Speaker 3: for him as as an assistant mechanics assistant and when
Speaker 3: I worked part time, and I thought that'd be excellent.
Speaker 3: So I went and I took a took this job
Speaker 3: with my dad that if I was smart, if I
Speaker 3: was a smarter kid, I would have stayed right there
Speaker 3: with that job because it was perfect. It was really
Speaker 3: good pay, you know, compared to everyone else. It was
Speaker 3: really good hourly pay. And I could pick my own hours.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to go untill noon if I didn't
Speaker 3: want to, you know, I just I just had to
Speaker 3: work twenty hours a week. It didn't matter what twenty hours.
Speaker 3: But after a few months of doing that with my dad,
Speaker 3: actually not even a few, probably two months I think
Speaker 3: I worked with my dad, they needed a driver and
Speaker 3: they asked my father. They said, can your son drive
Speaker 3: one of these trucks. And of course my dad he says,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, he can drive that thing. Never I'd never
Speaker 3: been behind the wheel of a truck like that in
Speaker 3: my life, right, But he goes, oh, yeah, he can
Speaker 3: drive it. And they said, do you want a job,
Speaker 3: you know, driving? They said it'd be another you know,
Speaker 3: three three more dollars an hour, and you'll get to
Speaker 3: work some overtime and you know a lot more money benefits.
Speaker 3: And they I said, yeah, sure, I took this job
Speaker 3: driving Coca Cola truck delivering down to Manchester. And uh,
Speaker 3: couple things. First of all, I'm really really bad with directions,
Speaker 3: Like I am the poster child for the for the
Speaker 3: you know, the Google Maps. I need to follow that
Speaker 3: blue line wherever I'm going right. Well, back in the day,
Speaker 3: there was you know, we didn't have that. We had
Speaker 3: a sheet full of instructions and it was so I
Speaker 3: was taking an extra two hours a day just spending
Speaker 3: just being lost trying to find places. Right. It was
Speaker 3: the worst job I could have ever had. But during
Speaker 3: the course of that job, that is when I knew,
Speaker 3: be on the shadow of a doubt, that there was
Speaker 3: there was nothing that would keep me from playing music.
Speaker 3: I was looking for literally the first opportunity I could
Speaker 3: for a for a music job. And it turns out
Speaker 3: that after I had that job less than a year,
Speaker 3: I think I maybe eight months, I delivered Coca Cola
Speaker 3: maybe seven months, seven or eight months, and I got
Speaker 3: an offer from the Lonesome River Band and they asked
Speaker 3: if I was interested in and in playing with him,
Speaker 3: and and at the time again I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to be banjo. Turned out it was they really
Speaker 3: wanted the mandolin player more than they wanted the banjo player.
Speaker 3: But at the thought of taking a bluegrass job, I was,
Speaker 3: You've never seen a person happier to walk in and
Speaker 3: give his notice to a company. I was. I walked
Speaker 3: in literally giddy. I said, well, sorry, boss, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be able to keep this job,
Speaker 3: you know, I was. I was out. And then of
Speaker 3: course that first I think the first three years combined.
Speaker 3: I went back and saw this in my in my records,
Speaker 3: my first three years, my tax record showed a I
Speaker 3: made nine thousand dollars for three years combout three years together,
Speaker 3: nine thousand dollars, and uh, probably one of the happiest
Speaker 3: times in my life. Couldn't. I was. I was on
Speaker 3: top of the world. Man, tell me about it.
Speaker 2: Forgetting the money. What were you doing that made you
Speaker 2: so happy?
Speaker 3: I was. I had moved away from home. I moved
Speaker 3: to Virginia. I was on my own. I was away
Speaker 3: from any stigma that bluegrass wasn't cool. I was now
Speaker 3: in an area where were They honestly didn't take you know,
Speaker 3: the area that I moved to, they didn't take to
Speaker 3: a lot of northern people moving into that area. But
Speaker 3: I was. I excelled in the bluegrass world, and I
Speaker 3: was accepted, you know, just with open arms everywhere I
Speaker 3: went because of the music. And I got to basically
Speaker 3: redefine myself as who I was. I got to I
Speaker 3: got to have a clean slate and say this is
Speaker 3: this is who I am. You know, I I dropped
Speaker 3: some habit that certainly would have killed me or at
Speaker 3: the very least ruined me had I not moved away
Speaker 3: and taken the music job.
Speaker 2: You know, And what kind of habits are we talking about?
Speaker 3: Oh stuff you don't want to go in on into
Speaker 3: this podcast. I'm sure you know, just uh you know.
Speaker 3: I was. I didn't grow up. I didn't have the
Speaker 3: happy fluffy childhood, and I turned to I turned to
Speaker 3: anything I could turn to to mask it, and I
Speaker 3: did any drug I could find until it was gone.
Speaker 3: Didn't matter what it was. You know. Luckily I never
Speaker 3: found anything that was really hard, or I might not
Speaker 3: ever made it out as you know the way that
Speaker 3: I did. But I like I I got an offer
Speaker 3: to move away, and I got to wipe the slate clean.
Speaker 3: I got to say this is who I am now,
Speaker 3: and I let I let some things go.
Speaker 2: Okay. But traditional, I mean, I understand that lifestyle. Drumont
Speaker 2: is a blue state. Now you go back forty or
Speaker 2: fifty years a different state, much more rural, much more red,
Speaker 2: much more local people living on the edge. But traditionally
Speaker 2: one gets in the music business and it's the so
Speaker 2: called sex drugs in rock and roll. You're telling me
Speaker 2: you got into the band and then you went straight.
Speaker 3: Music for me was never the sex drugs in rock
Speaker 3: and roll. So yeah, the type of music I played
Speaker 3: did not. I never found anyone that was doing cocaine
Speaker 3: and acid and mushrooms and taking pills and like, there
Speaker 3: was just none of that and any of the music
Speaker 3: that I was playing. The worst, the worst thing I
Speaker 3: ever saw, basically, really in my whole career of playing music,
Speaker 3: the worst thing I've ever seen with any of the
Speaker 3: musicians that I've ever run. I mean, I've seen you know,
Speaker 3: I've seen weed smokers. That's that's the height of the
Speaker 3: big drugs, you know. And the music that I've played
Speaker 3: there's there's been. It's been a really clean existence. And
Speaker 3: then of course I ended up with Alison Krause and
Speaker 3: Union Station, which arguably one of the cleanest, most moral
Speaker 3: bands that you'll you'll ever you'll ever know of, you know,
Speaker 3: and maybe in history. So I just for me, my path, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it it was a it was a clean up process
Speaker 3: for me. I I was where I I can see
Speaker 3: it is kind of fun. I never thought about it
Speaker 3: that way. Normally you would grow up pretty clean and
Speaker 3: then hit the music and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you know, the debauchery starts. But no, it was the
Speaker 3: other way around. I was. I was close to my
Speaker 3: demise at a at a young age, trying to mask
Speaker 3: who knows what, you know, whatever a kid is trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, hide from. I was hiding from it. And
Speaker 3: I got to start over, man, I got to I
Speaker 3: got to move away from any influence that I had,
Speaker 3: and it was it was an amazing point in my life.
Speaker 3: The only thing I really gave up that you know,
Speaker 3: was was Who's Ball?
Speaker 2: So how did the Lonesome River Band know you to
Speaker 2: find you to ask you to join the act?
Speaker 3: They had played a show in upstate New York in
Speaker 3: the mid eighties that the band that I was had
Speaker 3: with my brother, Green Mountain Bluegrass, was the opening act
Speaker 3: for So we had played the same night in this
Speaker 3: music hall in upstate New York. And after we had
Speaker 3: played the show together, we hung out for a little while,
Speaker 3: had a drink. We're talking because it was it was
Speaker 3: a big deal for us. We were opening up for
Speaker 3: a genuine southern bluegrass band. That was a big deal
Speaker 3: for you know, this this little bluegrass band from from Vermont,
Speaker 3: and uh we just we met him back then, and
Speaker 3: I guess a couple of years had passed and I
Speaker 3: think they were they were looking for a banjo player
Speaker 3: and as the the guy who they had called, they
Speaker 3: wanted to hire this guy named Kevin Church. I know
Speaker 3: that Tim Austin had called Kevin Church and said, Hey,
Speaker 3: would you'd like to play banjo? Kevin said no, I'm
Speaker 3: into the gig that I have right now. He says,
Speaker 3: but have you thought about that kid Dan to Minsky?
Speaker 3: And Tim said, who is Dan? To Minsky? He said,
Speaker 3: remember you played with that band from Vermont. He says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: he had remembered me from the show we played. So
Speaker 3: he just he called and asked if I was interested
Speaker 3: in coming down and trying out, And again he really
Speaker 3: didn't make me any offer. In fact, he said, well,
Speaker 3: right now, where we need a couple of musicians, you know,
Speaker 3: where we had two members leave and there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of work. And if you'd have to move here,
Speaker 3: you couldn't take the job and still live in Vermont.
Speaker 3: You'd have to move to Virginia. And if you moved
Speaker 3: to Virginia, you're gonna have to have some other job
Speaker 3: to support yourself because we're not making enough money to
Speaker 3: support you. So just you got to know what you're
Speaker 3: getting into. And man, all I could hear was do
Speaker 3: you want to play bluegrass music? That's the only that's
Speaker 3: the only thing that registered in my mind. And I said, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: And I went there and I was you know, I
Speaker 3: took whatever whatever jobs I could to support myself until
Speaker 3: the music finally got to a point where it supported me.
Speaker 2: So there were three years you with the Lonesome River Band.
Speaker 2: How often did they work and at what point in
Speaker 2: the tenure, if at all, could you give up your
Speaker 2: day job.
Speaker 3: Well, the day job really wasn't much of a job
Speaker 3: anyway to start with. So really the bulk of any
Speaker 3: money I made was was with the band. I mean,
Speaker 3: the first three years that I worked with the Lonesome
Speaker 3: Ever Band, there was no money, but I was with
Speaker 3: them a total of five years. The last couple of
Speaker 3: years we actually got we had redesigned how we had
Speaker 3: done things. I was making a little more of a
Speaker 3: little bigger cut of the money, and we were working more.
Speaker 3: I mean, by the time Ronnie Bowman came in the band,
Speaker 3: we had reconfigured. We actually started to actually take off.
Speaker 3: It was a very It was some turmoil in my
Speaker 3: life because it was a weird timing. When Alison asked
Speaker 3: me if I wanted to join Union Station. I was
Speaker 3: such a huge Union Station fan at that point in time.
Speaker 3: I didn't care if it was on guitar, I didn't care.
Speaker 3: She just said, would you learn how to play a
Speaker 3: flute and join this band? I would have said yes,
Speaker 3: that was where I was at at that point in time.
Speaker 3: But when she asked me to join the Union Station Band,
Speaker 3: we were at the height of what the Lonesome River
Speaker 3: Band had ever done in their career. We had just
Speaker 3: one album of the year with carrying the tradition, we
Speaker 3: were starting to pretty much get to name our festival.
Speaker 3: We could play, you know, places we weren't able to
Speaker 3: play previously. So it was a tough decision to take
Speaker 3: the job with Alison. I ended up taking this job
Speaker 3: and didn't stay with her except maybe four or five months,
Speaker 3: maybe five or six months. I went back to the
Speaker 3: Lonesome River Band. I don't know if a lot of
Speaker 3: people know this. I took the job with Allison and
Speaker 3: didn't stay went back to the Lonesome River Band for
Speaker 3: another year or year and a half before I was
Speaker 3: asked again if I would consider coming back to the
Speaker 3: Union Station and then of course I went back, and
Speaker 3: you know the rest is history.
Speaker 2: Okay, how did Alison find you the first time?
Speaker 3: Through the recording that I had done with the Lonesome
Speaker 3: River Band. The very first thing that I did with
Speaker 3: that band was a record called Looking for Yourself and
Speaker 3: Somewhere or another they had heard that record and she
Speaker 3: she uh that I got my name through through that record.
Speaker 3: I apparently liked it enough to call. I remember the
Speaker 3: first time I got a call from Alison's band. It
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't Alison Crouse who called me. It was
Speaker 3: actually Alison Brown, who was playing banjo in the band
Speaker 3: at the time, and they had called and asked if
Speaker 3: I would consider coming aboard, and I gave him a
Speaker 3: hard no. Man. I was at that point in time,
Speaker 3: I was so into the Lonesome Riverband. I had just
Speaker 3: taken the job. It was the early years of the LRB.
Speaker 3: I didn't you know. I wasn't ready to leave before
Speaker 3: I figured out what we had. And it wasn't until
Speaker 3: a couple of years later that I really became infatuated
Speaker 3: with Union Station. And when I got the offer again,
Speaker 3: there was no way to say.
Speaker 2: No, okay, so why did you leave and then come back?
Speaker 3: I felt guilty that I was letting my brothers down.
Speaker 3: I felt like Ronnie and Tim and Sammy were you
Speaker 3: just you have a kinship when you have a band,
Speaker 3: you travel that many miles with people that you're close to.
Speaker 3: You just I felt like I was letting my family down,
Speaker 3: and I felt like there was you know, I was.
Speaker 3: I was well they were first of all, they were relentless.
Speaker 3: They they wanted me back, and they let me know
Speaker 3: in every way, shape and form get me back. You know,
Speaker 3: I'll give you. I'll give you a little I'll give
Speaker 3: you one little gem here that a lot of people
Speaker 3: don't know that this is funny, but the song that
Speaker 3: Ronnie Bowman wrote was actually one of the songs that
Speaker 3: got me back. Ronnie Bowman wrote a song called you
Speaker 3: Gotta Do what you Gotta Do. If you're familiar with
Speaker 3: the Lonesome River Band, you might know this song. It's
Speaker 3: a song about a girl that says when when the
Speaker 3: songs the song reads, I just got a call from
Speaker 3: my good girl today. She said she must be going
Speaker 3: on her way, that there's better things on down the line,
Speaker 3: and I won't try to change her mind. It seems
Speaker 3: she seems to think we're better off this way. But
Speaker 3: my heart it breaks in two. I can't believe we're
Speaker 3: really through. And the song goes on and on and
Speaker 3: it's this man pleading to a woman. But what people
Speaker 3: don't know is Ronnie wrote that song about me going
Speaker 3: to Alison, he says, and though I though I want
Speaker 3: you to stay, you're leaving any way, but you gotta
Speaker 3: do what you gotta do. And that was the song.
Speaker 3: So he sings me this song, you know, and I
Speaker 3: and I cried like a baby. And it was just
Speaker 3: because my heart was already broken that I felt like
Speaker 3: I'd let him down. And yeah, somehow it got the
Speaker 3: best of me and I after about four or five months,
Speaker 3: I think five months maybe with Alison, I explained that
Speaker 3: I couldn't do it. I had to go back to
Speaker 3: the Lonesomeriver Band, and then we went back and recorded
Speaker 3: one or two more things. I forget after, but I
Speaker 3: felt like it was a meat, you know, A year
Speaker 3: back with the Lonesome River Band and I was scratching
Speaker 3: my head wondering what I was doing because in my mind,
Speaker 3: the ultimate music was being made by Alison Crouse and
Speaker 3: Union Station. They were the to me. They had the diversity,
Speaker 3: they had the depth, the multi dimensional sound. Lonesome River
Speaker 3: Band for me, it was a really that was we
Speaker 3: were kind of we had one specialty thing, you know,
Speaker 3: that we did. We weren't as diverse, we weren't as
Speaker 3: multi dimensional with our material. I felt like to me
Speaker 3: as as Union Station was. There was just I was
Speaker 3: fascinated with the way they were just they seemed like
Speaker 3: they were outside of music altogether. They could do anything.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it just it seemed so big to
Speaker 3: me when I got when I got the call to
Speaker 3: go back the second time, I couldn't say I couldn't
Speaker 3: say no. I wanted to be a part of that
Speaker 3: type of music that was not just the same song
Speaker 3: over and over again that I felt like I was
Speaker 3: doing with the Lonesome River Band. By that point, I
Speaker 3: was a little bit over what we were doing and
Speaker 3: ready to ready to be with Alison.
Speaker 2: Okay, just to be very specific, because the way you
Speaker 2: said the story earlier that you wanted to be the
Speaker 2: banjo player, but somebody else got that role. And then
Speaker 2: she asked if you could play guitar, So literally, you're
Speaker 2: playing in the rondsome river band, you're making these records.
Speaker 2: She got a hold of you and said, did you
Speaker 2: want to play banjo on a granulartle level?
Speaker 3: What? No, I never got a I never got a
Speaker 3: banjo offer for Alison in Union Station. With the times
Speaker 3: when I when I had befriended that whole bunch. The
Speaker 3: whole time I was with the Lonesome River Band, I
Speaker 3: would still go to the Allison shows if I could
Speaker 3: make one, and sometimes I would jump up on stage
Speaker 3: and sing a song with her, you know, I would
Speaker 3: guest up on stage and do a song here there.
Speaker 3: In my mind, I always wanted to be the banjo
Speaker 3: player in that band. I always hope that if Alison
Speaker 3: Brown were ever to leave, that she would ask me
Speaker 3: to play banjo. And when they got ron Block in
Speaker 3: that band, it was just settled. You know. I was
Speaker 3: out of that altogether. Same thing with the Lonesome River Band.
Speaker 3: When I took that Lonesome River Band job, I thought
Speaker 3: I was taking the banjo job, and I only played.
Speaker 3: I only ever played one show on the banjo with
Speaker 3: the Lonesome River Band because they needed both. And they
Speaker 3: said we could find a banjo player if you'd be
Speaker 3: willing to play the mandolin. So I said, sure, I'll
Speaker 3: play mandolin until we can find the right guy, and
Speaker 3: then I'll play band. You know, I never did get
Speaker 3: to play banjo, which was the whole point for me
Speaker 3: growing up. Playing was all I ever wanted to do
Speaker 3: was play a banjo for any band, right that was
Speaker 3: my that was my dream. But no, I got the
Speaker 3: guitar job with Alison, you know after well wait, just.
Speaker 2: A little bit slower, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in order, I took the job with the Lonesome
Speaker 3: River Band, right. I played with the Lonesome River Band
Speaker 3: for three or four years before I think close to
Speaker 3: four years before I moved over to Alison. I moved
Speaker 3: to Alison Crouse Union Station, played for about four or
Speaker 3: five months, went back to the Lonesome River Band and
Speaker 3: played for No, No, No No.
Speaker 2: I got the order.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I'm missing the question.
Speaker 2: So you go on stage, somebody calls you and says, hey,
Speaker 2: we want you in the band, but you got to
Speaker 2: play guitar. How does it literally go down?
Speaker 3: Oh? How it goes down? Was on April twenty fifth
Speaker 3: at Merle Watson Memorial Bluegrass Festival. I was getting ready
Speaker 3: to go and play with Alison, you know, a guest
Speaker 3: spot and ether she was playing at Merle Fest and
Speaker 3: I was going to go up and play a guest
Speaker 3: spot as I normally was, as I was doing at
Speaker 3: that endy time, I was around him. I was getting
Speaker 3: up because we were friends. I was jamming with him and
Speaker 3: Tim Stafford came up to me and said, hey, Dan,
Speaker 3: I want to talk to you because I'm getting ready
Speaker 3: to put my notice in with Alison, and I feel
Speaker 3: like she's going to come running to you directly, so
Speaker 3: I wanted you to have some time to think about
Speaker 3: it before she puts you on the spot, just as
Speaker 3: a courtesy. Right. So, now I'm really nervous, and I'm thinking, well, okay,
Speaker 3: he's gonna quit. That doesn't mean she's going to come
Speaker 3: to me, right And then it couldn't have been half
Speaker 3: an hour later I see her be lining towards me.
Speaker 3: She goes Dan, She said, I need to ask you
Speaker 3: a question, and I said, okay, what do you got?
Speaker 3: She said, Tim Stafford just put in his notice. She said,
Speaker 3: do you want the job? And I said, I absolutely
Speaker 3: would would love to, you know, like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I would love the job on guitar. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: what do I gotta do? And the only thing that
Speaker 3: she said was I don't want you smoking wheed and
Speaker 3: I said, no problem, that's a deal. And I took
Speaker 3: the job and couldn't couldn't imagine what, you know, what
Speaker 3: that job would ultimately bring to my life. I mean again,
Speaker 3: that was and then, of course I had that job
Speaker 3: for about five months until I felt so guilty about
Speaker 3: leaving the Lonesome Riverband that I went back. But yeah,
Speaker 3: she came to me at a bluegrass festival and said, well,
Speaker 3: actually the first thing she said, she says, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to be able to have you sing with
Speaker 3: us today, and I said, okay, cool. And then of
Speaker 3: course she explained why and asked me if I wanted
Speaker 3: the job, and I said.
Speaker 2: Sure, Okay, when you join Alison Kraus, you know, she's
Speaker 2: this teenage phenom. Then she's getting some credibility credit she
Speaker 2: always had credibility, She's getting more outside of the bluegrass world,
Speaker 2: getting more acclaim. Then she has a hit with baby
Speaker 2: Now That I've Found You. Then she has a song
Speaker 2: moments like this on the Twister soundtrack, the original nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six Twister. Have that happened? Where was that relative
Speaker 2: to your tenure?
Speaker 3: I was coming on right in the so I jumped
Speaker 3: on board right in time to be on the Baby
Speaker 3: Now that I Found You track. That was my entrance
Speaker 3: into the band. When she was doing the Baby I was,
Speaker 3: I was on the Twister track, and you know, of
Speaker 3: course everything from from Baby Now that I Found You on.
Speaker 2: Just to stop there for a second. I mean that
Speaker 2: had been a hit in the sixties by the Foundations,
Speaker 2: I believe. Did anybody there think that, Wow, this is
Speaker 2: going to be hit record.
Speaker 3: I have never No, it's my short answer. No. No,
Speaker 3: I mean at least I sure didn't. I mean, you
Speaker 3: get you get used to kind of putting bluegrass or
Speaker 3: anything that's even related to it in this little box
Speaker 3: of you know, something that's set aside from mainstream or
Speaker 3: you know, popular music, so you never think hit song,
Speaker 3: you know, like that. When when we did Baby, you
Speaker 3: know Baby Now that I found I mean I remember
Speaker 3: again that was one of the things I loved about
Speaker 3: the band was that they didn't necessarily tried to conform
Speaker 3: to a bluegrass mold. They just played music with those
Speaker 3: bluegrass instruments. Didn't matter what the music was, they just played.
Speaker 3: They had We were a bluegrass oriented, you know, pop band.
Speaker 3: She played everything, and I remember Baby Now that I
Speaker 3: found you. First of all, I think that had drums
Speaker 3: that had a little bit of percussion on it, and
Speaker 3: I remember I've always that at that time, I had
Speaker 3: a little stigma with anything. It's like, man, you know,
Speaker 3: bluegrass music doesn't have to have the drums. Man, I thought,
Speaker 3: stepping out. I don't know if that's a good idea,
Speaker 3: if it's a bad idea. But the truth is that
Speaker 3: every time, you know, she did something different and that
Speaker 3: was you know, and stretched in the music it was
Speaker 3: it was exciting for me. So to get to be
Speaker 3: on that I didn't know. I didn't I didn't even
Speaker 3: consider whether a song like that could be a hit
Speaker 3: or could be you know, looked at in popular music,
Speaker 3: and then you know, boom, the majority kind of grabbed
Speaker 3: onto it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you joined at that time. Obviously the year
Speaker 2: two thousand with the Old Brother soundtrack is a turning
Speaker 2: point for you personally. But in that interim, that five
Speaker 2: or so years with Alison Krause, tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Best time in my life, I mean interesting time in
Speaker 3: my life. We're talking about now I have kids for
Speaker 3: the first time in my life. So now I'm juggling.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just stop for the second here. Where and
Speaker 2: when do you meet your wife?
Speaker 3: I meet my wife right before I moved to Virginia
Speaker 3: to join the Lonesome River Band. I met her maybe
Speaker 3: a month or a month and a half maybe a
Speaker 3: couple months before I left. I just I had just
Speaker 3: met her, and then I moved to Virginia.
Speaker 2: She was in Vermont.
Speaker 3: She was in Vermont. I met her from Vermont.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, you moved to Virginia. Then what happens with
Speaker 2: the relationship.
Speaker 3: Well, so I moved to Virginia with a with a
Speaker 3: very good friend of mine. His name is Tag Leon,
Speaker 3: who I really credit with gosh, maybe my whole career,
Speaker 3: because I would not have moved to Virginia to join
Speaker 3: the Lonesome River Band if my buddy hadn't said I'll
Speaker 3: go with you. Because I told them the circumstances. I said,
Speaker 3: I'd never be able to afford it. It seems impossible,
Speaker 3: you know. I was. I wanted to take the job,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know that I could. And Tag was
Speaker 3: the one who gave me the the push, said hey,
Speaker 3: I'll go with you. So my buddy moved down with
Speaker 3: me to Virginia for the first I think four or
Speaker 3: five months, which, of course, I maintained a long distance
Speaker 3: relationship with Alisa, my first wife, and ultimately she moved
Speaker 3: in when Tag moved out, like a half a year later,
Speaker 3: and I've you know, she moved to Virginia to be
Speaker 3: with me, and then we got married a couple of
Speaker 3: years later.
Speaker 2: So you said she was your first wife. How many
Speaker 2: times you've been married.
Speaker 3: Twice? I was twice. I was with Alisa, my first wife,
Speaker 3: through most most of my career until eleven twelve years ago,
Speaker 3: and I've been with my new wife now for four years.
Speaker 2: To what degree did being a traveling musician negatively impact
Speaker 2: your first marriage and how does one maintain a steady
Speaker 2: home life being a traveling musician.
Speaker 3: That's a good question, and I don't think there's any
Speaker 3: one formula. It depends on the two individuals and how
Speaker 3: they are compatible with each other. I mean, my wife
Speaker 3: knew what I did when she moved down. She knew
Speaker 3: I was a musician. It was always music first. But
Speaker 3: the truth of the matter is as you spend more.
Speaker 3: And I mean I had years where I was home
Speaker 3: a lot. I had years where I was not home
Speaker 3: at all, just so busy, just gone most of the year.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine what it's like to be the person
Speaker 3: left at home while someone else is gone. I can't,
Speaker 3: you know. I've tried to wrap my mind around that,
Speaker 3: and I just I think it takes a special person
Speaker 3: to be able to be married to a musician and
Speaker 3: allow that much of your time with that person to
Speaker 3: be away. And again, it's easier to be connected now,
Speaker 3: I think than it is or than it was in
Speaker 3: that era where now you have FaceTime and you like,
Speaker 3: you can feel like you're right there with someone anytime
Speaker 3: you want. I didn't have that with my first marriage, right,
Speaker 3: So just different. A lot of time away makes it
Speaker 3: very difficult, you know, in a host of many ways,
Speaker 3: for different reasons, for different people. You know, I thought
Speaker 3: things were were fine right up until the day I
Speaker 3: discovered that they weren't right I was. I was informed
Speaker 3: one day that it wasn't fine and that it was
Speaker 3: going to have to you know, And I never I
Speaker 3: never dreamed, because in my mind I didn't. If I
Speaker 3: was home three days a year, that's what I was home.
Speaker 3: I was. I'm still, I'm married, I'm a dad. This
Speaker 3: is what I do. You just you just take it, however,
Speaker 3: you know, you just do whatever you can. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, who knows if I would have if it
Speaker 3: would have been a different point in time, or in
Speaker 3: some ways tried harder, or if just been ultimately closer.
Speaker 3: You know, I got married to a person when I
Speaker 3: was when I was young, and I don't think either
Speaker 3: of us necessarily knew what we wanted long term and
Speaker 3: a person we just both came from relate from upbringings
Speaker 3: where we wanted someone that would be peaceful and easy
Speaker 3: to be around. And that was the common ground that
Speaker 3: I had with my first wife. We just didn't fight,
Speaker 3: We didn't argue, we didn't we just we just both
Speaker 3: had the we're going to get along. If there ever
Speaker 3: was anything that started to be like turmoil or negative,
Speaker 3: we just moved and shifted gears and went on to
Speaker 3: something else and just and just lived. And it worked
Speaker 3: for me and it didn't work for her.
Speaker 2: So how many kids do you have in what are
Speaker 2: they up to?
Speaker 3: Now? I have three children of my own and now
Speaker 3: my my new wife has children, so we have we're
Speaker 3: a brady bunch. Now she has three and I'm a
Speaker 3: grandpa with three of mine and then have a step
Speaker 3: grandchild of my my new wife has a grandchild. So
Speaker 3: my kids are you know, they're they're all grown and
Speaker 3: doing their own thing now. I mean they're they're I
Speaker 3: have my daughter hard to believe is now in her thirties,
Speaker 3: but they're like they're they're twenty seven, twenty nine, and
Speaker 3: thirty one. So and let you know, I had them
Speaker 3: every two years. And both my boys are into golf.
Speaker 3: They are exceptional golfers and are both in caddy program.
Speaker 3: They're they're they're both golf caddies. And when they're not
Speaker 3: when they're not caddy, they're on the course playing. They
Speaker 3: they're on a golf course every day they can be.
Speaker 3: My daughter lives in uh in, Kentucky with her husband
Speaker 3: and three children and is one of the most amazing
Speaker 3: people I know. I could go on, are you get this?
Speaker 3: You know it's you know, are your kids off the payroll?
Speaker 3: My kids have been off the payroll for for so man,
Speaker 3: My kids were not. I had the three easiest kids
Speaker 3: that literally asked for nothing, wanted nothing, all went their
Speaker 3: their own way quickly upon growing. I mean they yeah,
Speaker 3: my kids have been self sustaining most of most of
Speaker 3: their lives. They were I had three pretty easy ones.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I went through it and in
Speaker 3: some situations, you know, I went through with my daughter
Speaker 3: and at at one point in time, my daughter ended
Speaker 3: up with UH with a drug problem in her late
Speaker 3: teens and had to seek some some help. And I,
Speaker 3: you know, I spent some while a while really afraid
Speaker 3: I was going to lose her. It broke my heart
Speaker 3: because I felt like it was a point in time
Speaker 3: that I wasn't there for her in a way that
Speaker 3: I could have been. And ultimately she she got some
Speaker 3: help and and I learned some things along the way,
Speaker 3: and she is in the minority of numbers of people
Speaker 3: who have the type of problem that that she had
Speaker 3: and turn it around and is now one of the
Speaker 3: most Like went back to school and got her high
Speaker 3: school She had drop out of high school and went
Speaker 3: back got her high school degree, then went got a
Speaker 3: college degree, getting a got a nursing degree. She's, uh,
Speaker 3: she's a powerhouse. She's she's had three kids, you know,
Speaker 3: and because of the drug problem. Three natural child no
Speaker 3: two natural child birth, just twins. She had twins naturally.
Speaker 3: Her husband and her her husband now and her both
Speaker 3: really they've they devoted their life now to to rehab
Speaker 3: and getting other people clean. And uh, he has a
Speaker 3: corporate job in Kentucky at one of the big rehab
Speaker 3: centers down there, and right now she's at home still
Speaker 3: somehow going to school and raising three kids. She's like
Speaker 3: the powerhouse of women that you could ever find. Exceptional person.
Speaker 2: You said that going through her addiction and rehab, you
Speaker 2: learned a few things. What did you learn about yourself?
Speaker 3: You had to go through forty hours as a parent,
Speaker 3: so she had to do thirty days in this place.
Speaker 3: Where as a parent and as the person who had
Speaker 3: to spend like I think it was close to forty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars was the check that I had to
Speaker 3: write for that one. You had to do forty hours
Speaker 3: of schooling yourself as a parent. And I thought I
Speaker 3: knew a lot more because I had fought my battle
Speaker 3: with drugs. Right, I had done everything you could do. Like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I didn't do heroin. I didn't know what heroin was.
Speaker 3: That wasn't luckily it was never presented to me. Probably
Speaker 3: would have done it as a younger person. But when
Speaker 3: I when I ultimately learned about addiction and learned what
Speaker 3: what some people have control over others don't have control over,
Speaker 3: I found that I myself. The lesson for me was
Speaker 3: I thought I always looked at it as a way
Speaker 3: where man, if you know it's killing you just say no, right,
Speaker 3: I just had this this common sense that Okay, enough
Speaker 3: is enough, you know, if it's hurting you stop it already, right,
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until I did my my forty hours,
Speaker 3: you know, in the program, until a doctor put it
Speaker 3: to me like this, And I wasn't aware of the
Speaker 3: stat that one out of ten human beings have an
Speaker 3: attict gene that if they do get addicted to something,
Speaker 3: they stay addicted to it. Even if they come off it,
Speaker 3: there's still they're an addict for life. One out of
Speaker 3: those ten people are unlucky. Right. Well, for me, I
Speaker 3: fell into the category of someone who could say no.
Speaker 3: I mean I have been addicted to different things, horrible things,
Speaker 3: but was able to say enough is enough. I could
Speaker 3: say no, and a true addict can't say no. And
Speaker 3: a doctor explained it to me like this. He said,
Speaker 3: it is it, he says. Try to understand this. If
Speaker 3: you were a diabetic and you needed insulin to stay
Speaker 3: alive and someone looked at you and said, damn, it
Speaker 3: just make more insolent, he said, that's what it's like
Speaker 3: to be a true addict. You just don't have the
Speaker 3: ability to say just say no. It's a matter of
Speaker 3: life or death to an addict in a different way
Speaker 3: than I saw it, So I never looked at addiction
Speaker 3: that way. I looked at it as people just making
Speaker 3: bad choices. And though sometimes it is that, as often
Speaker 3: as not, it's people introduced to something that they no
Speaker 3: longer have a power to say no to. And those
Speaker 3: are the people who need a community around them to
Speaker 3: help them. And it's it's again I've said for a
Speaker 3: lifetime that what I love about Bluegrass was the community.
Speaker 3: It's what saved me. It's where I felt safe. It's
Speaker 3: the same way through through the rehab process. You know,
Speaker 3: the community had to change before the habits changed. And
Speaker 3: she dug her way out of an enormous hole that
Speaker 3: I'm just so proud of, you know, because she has that.
Speaker 3: And then in turn, once she started having children, couldn't
Speaker 3: take any pain medicine to have these have these children,
Speaker 3: and I just thought, wow, you know, how do you
Speaker 3: how do you? How do you have twins? How do
Speaker 3: you have one? You know, forget about twins. So it's
Speaker 3: it was, you know, it was an experience, but again
Speaker 3: part of the building block whatever. You know. However, she
Speaker 3: was being prepared to be the person she needs to
Speaker 3: be right now. I mean, she's the strongest person that
Speaker 3: you could probably find. And uh, and I just she
Speaker 3: just sent me a video too. She just uh she
Speaker 3: just got baptized, uh a week ago and she sent
Speaker 3: me a video and I just I just couldn't believe
Speaker 3: it because she's a stubborn one. And uh, as she
Speaker 3: put to me, you know, after she says, you know,
Speaker 3: she says, you know, I'm a stubborn one. She says,
Speaker 3: it took God a long time with with me. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: but uh, she just continues to impress me in every way.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to say it now. I'm just
Speaker 3: not bragging about my kiddies, but uh, I have. I
Speaker 3: have very talented, beautiful, smart kids that hopefully are good people.
Speaker 3: You know, the what I can say about my kids
Speaker 3: is all the reports that I have from other peoples
Speaker 3: who from other people who have met my kids have
Speaker 3: been glowing. And that's the That's kind of the the
Speaker 3: biggest thing you could want as a parent is to
Speaker 3: think that your your kids represent you well and that
Speaker 3: you know, people see them as good human beings. And
Speaker 3: I have three precious human beings.
Speaker 2: Okay, going back to how we got started, on this,
Speaker 2: you know, in the middle of nineties. Start to play
Speaker 2: with Alison. You're doing your thing. She's the queen of
Speaker 2: her world. How does T Bone Burnette come along? How
Speaker 2: does the old brother thing come along? And how do
Speaker 2: you end up singing Men of Constant Sorrow?
Speaker 3: So at the time all that was going down, our
Speaker 3: manager was Denise Stiff, and I think now Denise Stiff
Speaker 3: she had and T Bone and the Coen Brothers had
Speaker 3: had hired Denise to help wrangle talent for the for
Speaker 3: the movie. You know, she kind of she was one
Speaker 3: of those people who knew everyone, and they discovered her
Speaker 3: and employed her to find people. And of course, you
Speaker 3: know Alison Krause, Union Station one of her main client.
Speaker 3: And and so when we discovered that they were doing
Speaker 3: a Coen Brothers movie, the whole band Allison Union Station,
Speaker 3: we're all big Cohen Brothers fans. We thought, man, if
Speaker 3: there's any way to be any part of this, please
Speaker 3: let's do it. So we found out they were having
Speaker 3: auditions and we went as a band to audition. We
Speaker 3: didn't even know what for. We just went to play
Speaker 3: them some music and see if there was anything that
Speaker 3: was going to line up for the movie, and of
Speaker 3: course that's all I knew at the time, as we
Speaker 3: were going in as Alison Krause Union Station and see
Speaker 3: if we could be a part of this movie. And
Speaker 3: that was exciting just in and of itself. And we
Speaker 3: did our thing, and we talked for a while and
Speaker 3: met Joel and Ethan Cohen, and we met T Bone,
Speaker 3: and you know, everyone seemed to get along and they
Speaker 3: liked the music and seemed like we were gonna be
Speaker 3: involved in some way. So our days finished, and I
Speaker 3: remember as we were walking out, we were literally walking
Speaker 3: toward the door, and we got just about to it,
Speaker 3: and Denise, our manager, turned around to T Bone and said, hey,
Speaker 3: t Bone, have you cast George Clooney's voice yet, because
Speaker 3: Dan right here she goes. I just thought, she goes,
Speaker 3: Dan might be a candidate for George's voice. And he said, well, no,
Speaker 3: we haven't, and they and they looked at me and
Speaker 3: they said, well do you want to you want to
Speaker 3: come back maybe tomorrow on audition. Right now, this is
Speaker 3: this has dropped out of the sky. I had no
Speaker 3: idea this was coming. I don't think anyone did until
Speaker 3: she just happened to think of it and said hey,
Speaker 3: Dan might be a candidate. So they said, would you
Speaker 3: come back tomorrow? And I said sure. So I go
Speaker 3: home and I well, I remember leaving. I remember calling
Speaker 3: my wife and saying, hey, let's you know, I'm going
Speaker 3: to do this audition. Looks like this voiceover thing, right,
Speaker 3: And she goes, oh, a voiceover, that's great? What is that?
Speaker 3: You know? And I explained, well, in this case, it
Speaker 3: would work out to where you would go to the
Speaker 3: movies and you're going to see George Clooney on the
Speaker 3: big screen and you would hear my voice coming out
Speaker 3: while he's singing. And she pauses and she goes, damn,
Speaker 3: that's my fantasy, right, So and I've been telling that
Speaker 3: joke for you know, for for twenty years now, but
Speaker 3: it seemed so far fetched to me that, you know,
Speaker 3: going back the next day, I went as much for
Speaker 3: the ridiculousness of it as as I ever thought that
Speaker 3: I would actually get this this part, because it was
Speaker 3: just too weird. I didn't think I sounded anything like
Speaker 3: George Clooney when I hear him talk, I hear me.
Speaker 3: I just didn't hear any anything, right, So I decided
Speaker 3: to go back and I, you know, asked what to do,
Speaker 3: and they said, well, either come back, and they said,
Speaker 3: they gave me two choices of songs. They said, you're
Speaker 3: either that. We either want you to do Rank Stranger
Speaker 3: or Man of consten Sorrow. They said, you pick one
Speaker 3: and do it. So I showed up the next day
Speaker 3: and I picked Man of Constan Sorrow and I did
Speaker 3: Man of Constant Sorrow for now, who knows. Now, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that it would have been different, but what
Speaker 3: if I had to pick Rank Stranger? Would the song
Speaker 3: have been different? About to try it out with a
Speaker 3: different song? Right, So they give me so anyway, So
Speaker 3: they tell me do one of these songs. So I
Speaker 3: do Constant Sorrow and they they say, right when I'm finishing.
Speaker 3: First of all, it would be really you. You would
Speaker 3: have loved to have been there, because just as I'm finishing,
Speaker 3: and now, mind you, I'm doing a version much different
Speaker 3: than what ultimately made it in the movie, I'm doing
Speaker 3: a version that was higher, faster, less funky. Right, and
Speaker 3: just as my song finishes in walks the Fairfield four
Speaker 3: who everyone knows from you know, from the Old Brother soundtrack,
Speaker 3: and when they walked through the door, literally my guitar
Speaker 3: was still ringing, and they came in and started singing,
Speaker 3: all of them when they filled this hall with a song,
Speaker 3: and they sang the whole song, and when they got done,
Speaker 3: everyone was clapping and they were hugging each other, and
Speaker 3: like it was this whole big thing, right, And I've
Speaker 3: probably dramatized it in my mind now, but it was.
Speaker 3: It was so fantastic. And they finished up, and I
Speaker 3: remember t Bone looking at me and said, hey man,
Speaker 3: great job. We'll call you, which which was how you
Speaker 3: know this the same words I've heard, you know, after
Speaker 3: losing a lot of different gigs. You know that's no
Speaker 3: big it's no big thing. Just you know, it either
Speaker 3: works or doesn't. So I leave and I'm just, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking it was ridiculous in the first place that
Speaker 3: I even't got an audition and went home. And the
Speaker 3: next day, pretty early in the day, the phone rang
Speaker 3: and I picked up the phone and it was t
Speaker 3: Bone Burnett and he said, Dan, he says, well, he said,
Speaker 3: I've been talking with Joel and Ethan and listen, when
Speaker 3: we see George Clooney singing, we hear your voice coming out.
Speaker 3: Do you want this gig? And of course, of course
Speaker 3: I said yes, and and and then by your uncle
Speaker 3: man A's. Then then my world change. You know, I
Speaker 3: had no idea what was what was to come from this?
Speaker 3: You had asked before? Did I did I sense if
Speaker 3: now that I found you was a hit song? Not
Speaker 3: even even less of this because now we're just we're
Speaker 3: playing weird bluegrass music movie soundtrack. And I've been a
Speaker 3: part of a couple of different movie soundtracks that again,
Speaker 3: didn't you know? They're not nothing? Is that big a
Speaker 3: deal that oh brother became right, So we're doing this
Speaker 3: this part. And here's the thing that that people don't know,
Speaker 3: or a lot of people don't know. We we got
Speaker 3: to be in the movie. So we're we're filming now.
Speaker 3: While they're filming the movie in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and t
Speaker 3: Bone comes up to me and says, hey, George wants
Speaker 3: a chance at singing this song. Would you go into
Speaker 3: a recording studio we have booked tomorrow and would you
Speaker 3: play this song with with Clooney. Now, you have to
Speaker 3: understand the position in life I'm at at this point
Speaker 3: in time, and what I know and what I don't know,
Speaker 3: and and where I am all all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: out of the sky drops this chance to record with
Speaker 3: George Clooney. That's ten times bigger deal to me than
Speaker 3: singing the song myself and doing this weird voiceover right.
Speaker 3: I actually get to go in the studio with the
Speaker 3: man and record it. So of course I say yes.
Speaker 3: And the next day we go into the studio and
Speaker 3: there's George Clooney and I'm in there and we're running
Speaker 3: over the song. And now George can sing. People you know,
Speaker 3: say I did it because George Clooney can't sing. That's
Speaker 3: not true. George Clooney can sing. He likes to be
Speaker 3: really I've heard him be really hard on himself right
Speaker 3: about Well, I just looked up and they weren't digging
Speaker 3: it right. And that's that was not the case at all.
Speaker 3: If he could have got through the whole thing without
Speaker 3: making a mistake, he could have sang it. But we
Speaker 3: tried the song and we're playing it and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden he makes it, sings the wrong word, says, ah,
Speaker 3: dang it, let me start it again. So I start
Speaker 3: the song again and he tries it again, messes up.
Speaker 3: We try it again and he messes up. Now meanwhile,
Speaker 3: he's self conscious because you know, he's not sure that
Speaker 3: he he a singer himself. Whatever reason, right, he walks
Speaker 3: out of the room, takes his headphones off and looks.
Speaker 3: He walks up to me, and he says, Dan, he said,
Speaker 3: we're in here on a day off. He says, I
Speaker 3: don't even know what we're doing. He says, this is crazy.
Speaker 3: He says, I'm going to make He said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to make you a deal. He said, I'll act and
Speaker 3: you sing. And he stuck his hand out to shake
Speaker 3: my hand, and I shook his hand, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: I'll act, you sing. I'm thinking, oh, come on, man,
Speaker 3: Like my whole world was crumbling right in front of me.
Speaker 3: Now I've now he doesn't now he's not going to
Speaker 3: do it, and we're back to this thing that you know,
Speaker 3: who knows how it's going to be now, right, So
Speaker 3: I call back home and I tell you know, and
Speaker 3: I'm explaining to my wife at the time. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm all bummed out. He didn't want to do it,
Speaker 3: I said, you know, he said, all act you sing.
Speaker 3: I said, can you imagine right now, skip ahead a
Speaker 3: couple of years down the road, had he sang that
Speaker 3: song which he could have no doubt about it, he
Speaker 3: could have sang it. Had he sang it, I would
Speaker 3: have made my three hundred and sixty dollars for the session,
Speaker 3: like I was used to making for a session of
Speaker 3: just drumming a guitar for a couple. That's good pay
Speaker 3: for how I was brought up. Had he sang it,
Speaker 3: I would have made my three hundred and sixty five
Speaker 3: dollars and never been any none the wiser, and I'd
Speaker 3: have moved on. But because he said, all act you sing,
Speaker 3: I got to pay off my house and buy new cars,
Speaker 3: and then buy another house, and then put my kids
Speaker 3: through college and do I got to do more from
Speaker 3: him saying all act you sing than I ever dreamed
Speaker 3: in a thousand eons a person who played a banjo
Speaker 3: could ever ever ever do in music. It was it
Speaker 3: was the life. It was the thing that absolutely changed
Speaker 3: everything for me. I mean, I never I mean up
Speaker 3: to that point, you know, I was I was making
Speaker 3: musicians pay. I mean, I was getting calls to keep
Speaker 3: my you know, I was having to wire money to
Speaker 3: keep my lights on. My lights would get turned off,
Speaker 3: you know, every couple of months. It seemed right, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, my house is paid off, we have
Speaker 3: new cars, there's money in the bank, no credit card bills,
Speaker 3: no any It was the life life changer of life changers.
Speaker 3: You couldn't I couldn't imagine. And then on the spiritual side,
Speaker 3: it it made me rethink how I listened to music
Speaker 3: in the first place, because I was not happy with
Speaker 3: how it had to be recorded. It was one take,
Speaker 3: there were no fixes. If you did something wrong, you
Speaker 3: just had to do the song over. It was just
Speaker 3: there was no I was used to technology. Man, you
Speaker 3: could go on a stead. Was the beauty of a
Speaker 3: recording studio is you get to capture the best, very
Speaker 3: best of your best and if it's not you can
Speaker 3: do it again. And if this line isn't the best,
Speaker 3: well you can do that, like you can make a
Speaker 3: really great representation of what you're able to do in
Speaker 3: a recording studio. And old brother Art Thou was the
Speaker 3: complete opposite. It was organic. It had to be one take,
Speaker 3: one microphone, No, there was no headphones, there was no nothing. Man,
Speaker 3: You just sat down, literally, I was sitting down playing
Speaker 3: in that stupid can. Man. It was the weirdest thing
Speaker 3: for me. It was not I was not satisfied with
Speaker 3: my performance, but to say, to put it the best
Speaker 3: way I can. When I was done, I couldn't believe
Speaker 3: they wouldn't let me go in and fix any lines,
Speaker 3: or that it had to be one take. I would
Speaker 3: have much rather. I would have much rather done it
Speaker 3: in a different in a different way. And then after
Speaker 3: I learned what the magic of that whole project was,
Speaker 3: it was it was the beauty of what music actually
Speaker 3: is and how it's a how why live music is
Speaker 3: so great, and it's something I've always been an advocate for.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've always loved live music. But after Old
Speaker 3: Brother Yeah changed the way I listened to music too.
Speaker 3: Didn't just change my life financially, changed my life spiritually
Speaker 3: the way I went after music from that point forward.
Speaker 2: Okay, just to dial down on this for one second.
Speaker 2: You literally only sang the song once or you did
Speaker 2: multiple versions of the song from beginning to end.
Speaker 3: Oh. I sat in that studio and sang till I
Speaker 3: was horses. I could be I probably did the song
Speaker 3: thirty times or more front to back, and then I
Speaker 3: think we kept the first or second take when it
Speaker 3: was after I did it, like literally, that's you know, studios.
Speaker 3: I sat and I did it over and over. And
Speaker 3: this is the thing, this is what was killing me
Speaker 3: was I had so many performances that were well, if look,
Speaker 3: if I just go fix the line that I messed up,
Speaker 3: that's the perfect performance, right, And it was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: this is this has to be one take pure, had
Speaker 3: to be organic like this is. And this is a
Speaker 3: credit to the Cohens into t Bone all the music.
Speaker 3: I mean, they made sure that instruments we played that
Speaker 3: we recorded with the microphones that we used. They made
Speaker 3: sure that everything was that era. We recorded in microphones
Speaker 3: of that era, with instruments of that era, and we
Speaker 3: did it one time through from beginning to end, because
Speaker 3: that's the way they did it in that era.
Speaker 2: Okay, T Bone is a legendary producer. As I say,
Speaker 2: this is sort of a real strip down recording thing.
Speaker 2: But did he do anything as a producer that direct
Speaker 2: you or give you insight that change your performance?
Speaker 3: This was absolutely I mean for starters. I mean there
Speaker 3: were times where when I found myself wondering what is
Speaker 3: he doing? Because these people are just in there doing
Speaker 3: whatever they want to do. Like when we did like
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that we played. He just threw
Speaker 3: us into a room and said play. He didn't say
Speaker 3: do this, do this, He didn't, you know, He just
Speaker 3: said play and we played. And I think part of
Speaker 3: his genius is understanding what chemistry works, and if it's working,
Speaker 3: just let it do its thing. If it's not working,
Speaker 3: then you might have to steer a little bit. And
Speaker 3: when it came down to the version that I did,
Speaker 3: particularly the solo version where it was just the guitar
Speaker 3: and the voice of Manecon's sorrow, there were so many directions.
Speaker 3: In fact, I had never had to be so conscious
Speaker 3: of a visual while I played up until that point.
Speaker 3: Like it was. They kept telling me, you have to understand,
Speaker 3: if you sing into this can and you knock him dead,
Speaker 3: you're going to make fifty dollars. Now, this is way
Speaker 3: back when you're going to make like you're going to
Speaker 3: be rich. Now. They said, you're hungry. They said, you
Speaker 3: just stole a chicken so you could eat. You're that hungry.
Speaker 3: You're so hungry, you just stole a chicken. They said,
Speaker 3: you just sold your soul to the devil. Your fingers
Speaker 3: are flying. They said, you're you're trying to play rock
Speaker 3: and roll, but it hasn't been invented yet. You're just
Speaker 3: you're trying to knock it so far out of the part.
Speaker 3: You're just trying to blow them away. Now play a
Speaker 3: man a consasar And it was you know, it was
Speaker 3: it was. It was strange. There was so much direction
Speaker 3: of what was going on visually while that was going
Speaker 3: down that. Yeah, it was an interesting process to see
Speaker 3: how they go about making something fit a movie. You
Speaker 3: know that was because that that that was a that
Speaker 3: was a strange one. It They made it in such
Speaker 3: a way where it stood on its own, just as music,
Speaker 3: but that soundtrack was all very specific to the scenes
Speaker 3: that they were playing behind.
Speaker 2: Okay, movies are a long detailed process. You seing the
Speaker 2: stuff how long til the movie comes out? And listen, people,
Speaker 2: whenever you're involved in a movie, people are super positive
Speaker 2: and frequently most times the movie is not successful. So
Speaker 2: what was your experience of the movie actually being released?
Speaker 3: So they first announced that they were gonna let us
Speaker 3: let us see the movie in Nashville, everyone who worked
Speaker 3: on at all, the people who performed and their families,
Speaker 3: and they were gonna have a private showing and at
Speaker 3: the Bellcourt Theater here in Nashville, and so we of
Speaker 3: course got ready to go see this movie, and we
Speaker 3: knew it was a big deal and it's a Coen
Speaker 3: Brothers and I had no idea what to expect, even
Speaker 3: though I had seen some of the script and read
Speaker 3: several of the scenes and you know, and been involved
Speaker 3: in shooting of some of it. Boy, when you're there
Speaker 3: shooting the movie and you're not actually looking back on
Speaker 3: the camera to see what they filmed, you still don't
Speaker 3: have any idea of us going. And I remember sitting
Speaker 3: down to the movie and it blew like it blew
Speaker 3: me away. Like though, first of all, I'm a huge
Speaker 3: Coen Brothers fan, and I got you know, I had
Speaker 3: a lot of schooling on how it was tied to
Speaker 3: the Odyssey, you know, going in, so I got a
Speaker 3: lot of this. Like, the movie to me was fantastic. Right.
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting there loving the movie, and then comes
Speaker 3: the song and I hear my voice right come out,
Speaker 3: and I, for lack of a better way to describe,
Speaker 3: I've never been more embarrassed in my life. I sunk
Speaker 3: down in my seat. I sunk down in my seat,
Speaker 3: and I got I tried to disappear like I was
Speaker 3: trying as hard as I could to implode and just
Speaker 3: be and just to to it, just to a singular nothing.
Speaker 3: It was the strangest I can't hard to explain. I
Speaker 3: was like it was embarrassing and of course everyone collapsed
Speaker 3: and everyone's looking and every you know, and it's a
Speaker 3: big it's a big to do, and it was how
Speaker 3: was the first time I'd had quite that much attention, right,
Speaker 3: And it was it's it's weird to be the the
Speaker 3: the person everyone's looking at, you know, because at this
Speaker 3: point I've had a career with Alison and I was
Speaker 3: really good at knowing how to stand beside that the
Speaker 3: person everyone's looking at. That's an easier job supporting role,
Speaker 3: was what I felt like. I was, you know, tailored
Speaker 3: for now to be the guy. You know, it was
Speaker 3: uncomfortable to just to For no better way to explain it,
Speaker 3: it was it was extremely uh nerve wracking in the
Speaker 3: first you know, the first especially the first year, you know,
Speaker 3: following then after you get that much attention, you know,
Speaker 3: after after a little while that that attend you know,
Speaker 3: you you it doesn't feel as strange, it doesn't feel
Speaker 3: as you know, there there is now there is no embarrassing,
Speaker 3: you know, now it's pure joy, like the attention from
Speaker 3: old Brother that I get because it's still now, it's
Speaker 3: twenty five years later, and when I do Constant Sorrow Live,
Speaker 3: the cell phones still come out. You just see everyone
Speaker 3: responded like it's it's amazing. And to think that you
Speaker 3: get to be a part of everyone's life like that,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it's it's it turned from embarrassment
Speaker 3: when I first started to pure joy when I when
Speaker 3: I you know, hear it and see it. Now it's
Speaker 3: it's come around to where it's you know, the fascination.
Speaker 3: You know, it's still fascinating, and the fascination continues with people.
Speaker 3: I mean, I still do interviews about Oh Brother. You know,
Speaker 3: there's not too many things you can say. Twenty five
Speaker 3: years later, it's still still on the platform, and Oh
Speaker 3: Brother is kind of one of those things.
Speaker 2: Okay, the movie's going to be released. I remember going
Speaker 2: on Napster or whatever downloading your song. This is a
Speaker 2: song many people have sung, Rod Stewart saying it, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure, Bob Dylan saying it, etc. Yours is a
Speaker 2: one listen version, Okay, and it's really amazing and it
Speaker 2: it was successful. Was there any concept of you and
Speaker 2: the people you work with saying this is gigantically successful,
Speaker 2: let's follow it up.
Speaker 3: Man. So yes, there was of course a thought of
Speaker 3: of that, and I was I was approached to UH
Speaker 3: to potentially do a solo record, you know after after that.
Speaker 3: Now we have to go back and look at where
Speaker 3: I was at this point in time, and Uh, I
Speaker 3: had just done I just signed on to do a
Speaker 3: record with this this record label that my friend Tim
Speaker 3: Austin and and ex bandmate. He was the guy who
Speaker 3: ran the Lonesome River band that I played with for
Speaker 3: those years and UH, and I was scheduled slated to
Speaker 3: do a record for him, and t Bone asked if
Speaker 3: I wanted to do some sort of a project, you
Speaker 3: know after you know, this thing and I and I
Speaker 3: had to tell him. I said, well, I'm doing this
Speaker 3: other bluegrass record, you know, I've got to do. And
Speaker 3: he goes, well, he goes, he goes. It's kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're ever going to do anything, you know,
Speaker 3: let's we either need to do it or you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to do something else, well then whatever.
Speaker 3: So I go to you know, I go to Tim
Speaker 3: and I remember talking to talking to him at the time, saying, Hey,
Speaker 3: I've got a chance to do this thing with with
Speaker 3: T Bone, and he goes, Man, he goes, you got
Speaker 3: to be kidding. He goes, you can't. You can't let
Speaker 3: me down on this record. I can't have this record.
Speaker 3: This is this is gonna end. He goes, My label
Speaker 3: will fold if you don't do this record. He goes,
Speaker 3: especially now right. So in my mind, now I go back.
Speaker 3: If if I wanted to be that guy, I could
Speaker 3: have said, sorry, sue me, whatever you got to do.
Speaker 3: I got to do that, you know, I got to
Speaker 3: take advantage of this. Right. Had I not had I
Speaker 3: not been with Alison Krause and Union Station, there is
Speaker 3: no doubt in my mind that I would have taken
Speaker 3: the opportunity to follow that up with whatever T Bone
Speaker 3: wanted to do. I mean, if he would have said, hey,
Speaker 3: I want you to do you know this, this way, this,
Speaker 3: this way, let's just try it, I would have done
Speaker 3: anything to try it. Right. But I was and I
Speaker 3: don't know how to really even get people to understand
Speaker 3: I wasn't just content. I was so content with the
Speaker 3: job that I had with Alison in Union station that
Speaker 3: I was even uncomfortable stepping outside of the you know,
Speaker 3: I was uncomfortable at that point stepping into a spotlight
Speaker 3: being that guy that everyone was looking at. I thought
Speaker 3: it was just such an awesome thing that now, of course,
Speaker 3: after old Brother, even though the Alison job was great
Speaker 3: before Old Brother, well it was you know, multi multi
Speaker 3: times greater. After the work picked up, the prices went on,
Speaker 3: I mean, everything was better. So when it came right
Speaker 3: down to it, it was just more important to me
Speaker 3: to see if I couldn't, you know, help my buddy
Speaker 3: do what do what he needed to do with his mission.
Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, when I wait,
Speaker 3: everything in the basket, the only thing that really mattered
Speaker 3: to me was I was playing with Alison in Union Station,
Speaker 3: and I've got the greatest job that I you know,
Speaker 3: what you could look at as a lottery winning type
Speaker 3: of job, you know, like that was I had the
Speaker 3: job of jobs. I didn't really have to do anything solo.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until so many, so many years after that
Speaker 3: I really found any DESI you know, like I don't
Speaker 3: know in some ways, I guess late Bloomer. I mean
Speaker 3: now that I'm doing solo now, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: see how I I ever conceded to to doing anything
Speaker 3: else like I love, I love what I do now.
Speaker 3: It's and when I had the opportunity to, I just
Speaker 3: didn't see it. I just wanted to be a bandmate.
Speaker 3: I wanted to step away from that spotlight. It didn't
Speaker 3: it didn't appeal to me in a way that made
Speaker 3: me want to want to try to follow it up.
Speaker 3: But there was an opportunity way back when.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, talking about your greatest kids, how'd you end
Speaker 2: up working with a vichy.
Speaker 3: Oh? Getting to so this one, this was another one
Speaker 3: that that stepped out of left field. I never saw coming.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have imagined how this would profoundly change my
Speaker 3: life because this one really this I mean, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: brother arguably is a bigger hit. Well no, not arguably,
Speaker 3: I mean it's statistically a such so much of a
Speaker 3: bigger hit than than Man of consa Sorrow, it's not
Speaker 3: even funny. I get a call from my assistant one
Speaker 3: day who says, hey, we just got a reach out
Speaker 3: from this DJ who wants to know if you will
Speaker 3: sing a song on his record, And I said, okay,
Speaker 3: what goes you know he does d M, and I
Speaker 3: had to ask what EDM was. I did not know
Speaker 3: what the term ed M stood for. She she tells
Speaker 3: me electronic dance mix, you know this stuff in clubs
Speaker 3: that goes and I laughed and I was like, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, okay. I said, how about uh, how about
Speaker 3: thank you but no thank you? This This was my
Speaker 3: answer just it was just flat I thank you but
Speaker 3: no thank you. Those are my words. And being the
Speaker 3: quality person that she is in a shout out to
Speaker 3: Shelley for this one. Thank you Shelley Calabresi for this one.
Speaker 3: H She goes, would you like to hear it before
Speaker 3: we give an official no thank you? Right? So I think, well, sures,
Speaker 3: you know, if send me the song, that's that's that's
Speaker 3: fine whatever. So she goes, okay, that's She goes, I
Speaker 3: figured you would say no thanks, but you know, let's
Speaker 3: listen to it and then, you know, then we'll give
Speaker 3: an official no thank you. So she's sending me the
Speaker 3: song and all I know is she's sending me this
Speaker 3: song and I and I she told me a vichy, right,
Speaker 3: So I go through my mind and I think, who
Speaker 3: do I you know? Who in my world would know
Speaker 3: this this cat right, And my daughter really was the
Speaker 3: one who popped into my mind because my girl at
Speaker 3: the time was nineteen and she listened to everything. I
Speaker 3: mean she would she would listen. She would follow up
Speaker 3: a CDC with mel Tormae. I mean she would listen.
Speaker 3: She listened to the whole spectrum of music. So I
Speaker 3: texted her right really quickly. Well, because I wanted a
Speaker 3: quick response, I figured I would text her instead of
Speaker 3: calling her. You know, she was a teenager. They'll respond
Speaker 3: to a text immediately. If you call them, they won't
Speaker 3: pick it up anyway. So I text her. I said, hey,
Speaker 3: you ever heard of this guy a EGI? And she
Speaker 3: responds immediately, she goes sweetish DJ. He's a genius. He's
Speaker 3: probably my favorite artist. Why when I'm thinking, oh wow,
Speaker 3: so I said, I type up, I think he wants
Speaker 3: me to do a song on his next record. And
Speaker 3: I see the bubbles coming up. You know that she's
Speaker 3: responding to my text and it's one word bullshit. This
Speaker 3: is what And I can't believe it's my little girl
Speaker 3: right now in my mind, my little halo wearing, cherub
Speaker 3: cheeked little angel of a daughter. You know, is cussing
Speaker 3: at me online. So now I'm thinking, okay, how do
Speaker 3: I respond to this? What do you what do you know?
Speaker 3: What are you saying? And as I'm texting now, the
Speaker 3: phone rings and it's her and I answer. I go hello.
Speaker 3: She goes, Dad, are you messing with me? Because if
Speaker 3: you're messing with me, I'm not in a place right
Speaker 3: now where I can't even handle it. Because she started
Speaker 3: going higher and faster. She she she went nuts on me,
Speaker 3: ending up and saying, if this is real, if this
Speaker 3: is actually happening, and this is real, if this is
Speaker 3: an offer and you don't do it, I'm out. That's
Speaker 3: what she says. And I'm thinking to myself, you live
Speaker 3: on your own. I'm not paying your bills. You're already
Speaker 3: What do you mean? I said, what do you so?
Speaker 3: What do you mean you're out? And she goes, just
Speaker 3: try me, So I thought, wow, this is serious. Just then,
Speaker 3: as she's saying just try me, my phone buzzes and
Speaker 3: it's the song that just showed up from my assistant.
Speaker 3: So I tell her, let me let you go. I
Speaker 3: got to listen to this song. It just just showed up.
Speaker 3: I'll let you know how it turns out she goes,
Speaker 3: oh my god, it doesn't matter what it is to it.
Speaker 3: So I hang up and I listened to the song. Now,
Speaker 3: the song is not the big fantastic version everyone knows,
Speaker 3: you know. The demo of the song was just a guitar.
Speaker 3: It was two strings on a guitar, just going boo
Speaker 3: dud do do do do d right, and a vocalist
Speaker 3: sang the song I for. I don't know how else
Speaker 3: to put it. I loved it right. It was the
Speaker 3: right key for me, it was the right tempo for me.
Speaker 3: The message was was that bringing people to get like
Speaker 3: everything about that song I did, like I love Now
Speaker 3: in my mind, I'm envisioning how it sounds to me,
Speaker 3: like everything I hear upstairs in this this brain of mind,
Speaker 3: you know, has a banjo in it, right, so I'm
Speaker 3: hearing like kind of the the bluegrass version. I ultimately
Speaker 3: ended up doing myself right, but I I can hear
Speaker 3: myself doing it. So I called back my assistant and
Speaker 3: I tell her, hey, listen, I said, I just listened
Speaker 3: to the song. I said, I don't know how to
Speaker 3: say this, but I love it. It's killer. I said,
Speaker 3: let's do it. I said, listen. What's the big deal?
Speaker 3: I said in I said, listen, we do the song.
Speaker 3: Who cares? No one ever hears it? So what we've
Speaker 3: done it, it'll make my daughter happy, right, This is
Speaker 3: all I'm thinking. I'm thinking, we'll do this song, no
Speaker 3: one will ever hear it, and I'll just move on.
Speaker 3: And then I do this song. He doesn't have any
Speaker 3: version of it, he says, can you just do it
Speaker 3: to a click track? So I sang the song with
Speaker 3: no music. I just stood in the studio and I
Speaker 3: took my guitar and I hit a note being I
Speaker 3: don't even know if I used the guitar. I think
Speaker 3: you might have hit a note on the piano. Hit
Speaker 3: the geno, he said, here's the note, here's it is.
Speaker 3: So I hit the genoe and I just started singing
Speaker 3: it right to a click And I sang the song
Speaker 3: and sent it away to Los Angeles where a Vichy was.
Speaker 3: And you know, i'd never met the man. I just
Speaker 3: sent him a vocal across the air waves skip ahead,
Speaker 3: just like not many weeks later, not many weeks like
Speaker 3: just like a like. A couple few months later, that
Speaker 3: song was number one in sixteen different countries at the
Speaker 3: same time. It was a global smash that I couldn't
Speaker 3: imagine and I and I was unaware of it because
Speaker 3: I really don't listen to radio. I don't listen to anything. Right.
Speaker 3: I just got a call from my buddy one day
Speaker 3: and my buddy caused me. He says Ti Minsky. He goes, man,
Speaker 3: you got to hear what's going on. He goes, someone's
Speaker 3: out there. Someone is ripping you off. And I said,
Speaker 3: what they said? Someone is ripping you off. There's this
Speaker 3: dude out there and it's it's like it's just like
Speaker 3: edm stuff. He says, but they are copying you to
Speaker 3: a t. They said, it's one hundred percent you know,
Speaker 3: it's one hundred percent a Dan to Minsky rip off.
Speaker 3: And I said, do you mean a song called Hey Brother?
Speaker 3: And he goes yeah, And I said, dude, that's me.
Speaker 3: He goes, how can that be you? He goes, your
Speaker 3: name's not on anything? And I said, well, I was
Speaker 3: worked for hire. You know, correct my name. You won't
Speaker 3: find my name on it. If you look up any
Speaker 3: of their stuff, you don't see Dan Tominsky. Well turns
Speaker 3: out I gotta I gotta look back. That's that's one
Speaker 3: of the biggest things I've ever you talk about the
Speaker 3: one that got away. If my name could have been
Speaker 3: attached to that, I can't even imagine what the sound skin.
Speaker 3: I'm like I it would have dwarfed anything, you know,
Speaker 3: old brother Wawreth I ever did. It was ridiculous. But instead,
Speaker 3: you know, that's how I got a one time payment,
Speaker 3: which was, you know, wonderful. At the time, I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, great, and then you know, later on I
Speaker 3: got a writing deal in My publisher said do you
Speaker 3: have any idea how much money that song made? And
Speaker 3: he gave me a quick rundown, and it was. It
Speaker 3: was embarrassing, man. It was a lot of zero's, a
Speaker 3: lot of commas. That song was was absolutely the most
Speaker 3: fantastic thing to be a part of in it And
Speaker 3: though you know I didn't get rich from that one
Speaker 3: in particular, what it led what it led to in
Speaker 3: my life, man, And I wouldn't have without it, period.
Speaker 3: I just simply wouldn't have what I have now. Without it,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have had the courage to write the songs
Speaker 3: that ultimately led to the Southern Gothic record. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have had the courage to write any bluegrass stuff, which
Speaker 3: have has turned into everything that I'm about now. So
Speaker 3: you know that that getting to work with with Tim Bergling,
Speaker 3: who the world knows as avicy that was. That was
Speaker 3: one of the biggest things I could have ever been
Speaker 3: involved with, and I am so I'm so thankful for
Speaker 3: the opportunity to get to be involved in that one
Speaker 3: because it's it's just it's led to an uncountable well
Speaker 3: of things I wouldn't have without it.
Speaker 2: So presently, what's your deal with solo and Alison Grause?
Speaker 3: Uh oh, I am no longer a member of Alison
Speaker 3: Krause Union Station. They will be touring and putting out
Speaker 3: some music and it will just be with with someone
Speaker 3: different than than myself. I'm doing Dan Tominsky. I have
Speaker 3: got the solo career machine started and couldn't imagine veering
Speaker 3: away from it. It's taken me, it's taken me fifty
Speaker 3: plus years now to get to steer this ship, and
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't lose my grip.
Speaker 2: You're a very loyal guy. There are two very big
Speaker 2: stories that you told with loyalty. Ay, how hard was
Speaker 2: the decision to leave Union Station? And it's like I
Speaker 2: was talking to Jerry Douglass. He can come and go.
Speaker 2: Why couldn't you come and go?
Speaker 3: I could come and go. There there were a lot
Speaker 3: of circumstances that probably led up to I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: Jerry has a different situation than I have to be
Speaker 3: able to to come and go. I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: I if I wanted to, I think I I mean, well, no,
Speaker 3: I know I could have ided, you know I had.
Speaker 3: I made this decision honestly, more last minute than I
Speaker 3: than I ever thought I would. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 3: feel at first when it was first proposed to come
Speaker 3: back and they were gonna, you know, Allison was gonna
Speaker 3: have Union you know, do another Union station thing. I
Speaker 3: was first shocked. I I never I I really thought
Speaker 3: it was done. I mean, it had been eight eight
Speaker 3: plus years since, you know, since there was any consideration
Speaker 3: of anything. So when I first hearted, I didn't. I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe, you know, that she wanted to do something.
Speaker 3: So I had to consider it. And my first thoughts were,
Speaker 3: and I'm and I'm gonna play the loyalty card. It
Speaker 3: felt like it was something that I had to do.
Speaker 3: I couldn't see myself saying no, because I felt like
Speaker 3: there was a world of fans, and there was a
Speaker 3: band of people, and there was there were too many
Speaker 3: things that that, you know, too many people. I would
Speaker 3: be letting down if I didn't do it. And I said,
Speaker 3: you know, let's you know, let's let's do whatever whatever
Speaker 3: we're going to do. And I got you know, we
Speaker 3: spent our time together, we worked up songs. There was
Speaker 3: I was actually going to do a bunch of probably
Speaker 3: sing more songs than I would have in the past,
Speaker 3: on this new thing they were about to put out,
Speaker 3: and in the process, somewhere in the middle, I couldn't
Speaker 3: do it. Somewhere somewhere in the middle, I felt like
Speaker 3: I was letting go of my identity. And it's kind
Speaker 3: of hard to put in words. I think the best
Speaker 3: way I could explain it is, I've spent my lifetime
Speaker 3: being other people's versions of myself. I was first, you
Speaker 3: know what, I only sang in the first place so
Speaker 3: I could accent my brother, you know, I was his
Speaker 3: version of what he needed. Then I joined the Lonesome
Speaker 3: River Band, and I never got to do what I
Speaker 3: wanted to do. With the Lonesome River Band, I did
Speaker 3: whatever they needed me to do, and that was fantastic,
Speaker 3: So I did it. Then I joined Alison Krause and
Speaker 3: Union Station, which, don't get me wrong, I loved every
Speaker 3: aspect of it, but I was what she needed me
Speaker 3: to be. I wasn't still playing what I wanted to
Speaker 3: play in the band, you know, I had to adapt
Speaker 3: and be someone else's version of myself. And I feel like,
Speaker 3: for the first time in my life, and at this point,
Speaker 3: I get to be my version of myself for the
Speaker 3: better or for the worse. When people hear what I'm
Speaker 3: doing currently, they get decisions that I am making about
Speaker 3: myself versus decisions someone else was making. And if it
Speaker 3: came down to doing another Alison Krause project, I didn't
Speaker 3: feel like I had the control to be me I was,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't. I didn't want to be steered
Speaker 3: as much as I was having to be steered with,
Speaker 3: whether it be song selection, how I sang those songs,
Speaker 3: the there you know, a lot of a lot of particulars.
Speaker 3: I mean, I reached a point in my career where
Speaker 3: I get to steer the ship and I feel like
Speaker 3: if I let go of that, I won't get it back,
Speaker 3: and I'm not willing to do that I'm gonna stick
Speaker 3: with the solo.
Speaker 2: Okay, before we wrap it up. How good a golfer are.
Speaker 3: You depends who I'm golfing against. There are some people
Speaker 3: I can whip handily. There are some people I would
Speaker 3: never bet a nickel against. Good as a relative term
Speaker 3: when it comes to that game. Uh, the game of
Speaker 3: golf is one of the hardest games that I've ever
Speaker 3: I've ever took up. And some people would say I'm
Speaker 3: a very good golfer, and then some people would say,
Speaker 3: you know, he's a hack. Just depends on who I'm
Speaker 3: playing next to. Golf took up my foosball void, you know,
Speaker 3: when I stopped playing foosball in nineteen eighty nine and
Speaker 3: all through the nineties, and you know, I took up
Speaker 3: golf kind of fill that void. So I have that
Speaker 3: OCD personality to where anything I spend my time doing,
Speaker 3: if I'm not going to be able to do it well,
Speaker 3: I'm probably not going to do it at all. So
Speaker 3: golf was the same I I ate, you know, Drank
Speaker 3: slapt everything was was golf for a for a period
Speaker 3: of time, and I think at one point in time
Speaker 3: golf died just had me ranked as the number five
Speaker 3: musician golfer in the country. Now that being said, there
Speaker 3: are a bunch of musicians that I would never bet
Speaker 3: a nickel against because there's a lot of good golfers
Speaker 3: out there. But Uh, at one time I could hold
Speaker 3: my own. Now I play a lot more for fun
Speaker 3: than I do for UH. If I'm serious about anything
Speaker 3: I play anymore, it's foosball, not golf.
Speaker 2: Okay, when did you take up golf?
Speaker 3: Uh? When I moved to Virginia. When I when I
Speaker 3: moved away from home, when I let foosball go, literally,
Speaker 3: I that's I. I made a switch because I found
Speaker 3: a buddy of mine that I moved to Virginia with
Speaker 3: is Uh is a golf pro, Tag Leon. I got
Speaker 3: to give Tag a shout out. He's now the head
Speaker 3: golf pro at at in Southern Pines, North Carolina, at
Speaker 3: Talamore Golf and Resort. He has a fantastic facility down there.
Speaker 3: People should go check out Talamore. But Tag moved down
Speaker 3: with me, and I had a roommate that was a golfer,
Speaker 3: and I, you know, I remember seeing his clubs and
Speaker 3: he had a bunch of golf shoes. I remember, like
Speaker 3: I thought, thought to myself, who would have that many
Speaker 3: pairs of shoes? It was. It was blew my mind
Speaker 3: right because he had like eight pairs of golf shoes.
Speaker 3: And anyway, we went out one day and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: give it a try, and I remember taking a I
Speaker 3: was big into baseball, right. I wanted to be a
Speaker 3: baseball player so I could hit it hard. But I
Speaker 3: was a horrible golfer. But I took it up and
Speaker 3: I started going to the driving range for fun, and
Speaker 3: before you knew it, I was trying to keep a
Speaker 3: score and realized how bad I was, and then decided
Speaker 3: I was going to have to really get serious in practice.
Speaker 3: And you know, I spent as here. I got to
Speaker 3: thank old brother. You know that along with being able
Speaker 3: to take care of my house payments and everything else
Speaker 3: that I came along with that, I was able to
Speaker 3: join a country club and have a place for my
Speaker 3: family to hang out and play. And I have my
Speaker 3: two boys. They're definitely into golf right now. Because of
Speaker 3: you know, it's my fault. I had them around the
Speaker 3: golf course all while they were growing up, and now
Speaker 3: they're both I have two fantastic golfers for boys. They're
Speaker 3: both in the plus handicaps there. They can quit me
Speaker 3: so easy. They could. They could either one of them
Speaker 3: could beat me with one hand. And I can't stand
Speaker 3: it because I'm so competitive. But you know, golf, I
Speaker 3: took up golf when probably nineteen ninety ish.
Speaker 2: Okay, your peak, How much were you playing and do
Speaker 2: you play at all?
Speaker 3: Now? My peak, I played seven days a week. I
Speaker 3: played every single day, and I practiced before and after
Speaker 3: I played. I mean I played every day. And when
Speaker 3: I did that, I played most days. I mean I
Speaker 3: played minimum five days a week. Or let's just say
Speaker 3: every day that I was home. Every day that I
Speaker 3: was home, I played golf all through my kids going
Speaker 3: to school. The routine was I would drop them off
Speaker 3: at school, go play golf all while they were in school,
Speaker 3: stand on the driving range and hit balls until it
Speaker 3: was time to pick them up, Go pick them up,
Speaker 3: and then I was home. So yeah, I played golf
Speaker 3: every day. You know. In my peak my best scores,
Speaker 3: I've shot a sixty seven was my best score. I
Speaker 3: shot a couple of sixty nine's and I never got
Speaker 3: down to a scratch. I was a one handicap was
Speaker 3: my best I got to be a a one handicap,
Speaker 3: where my kids one of them's a plus four, one
Speaker 3: of them's a plus six. It's grotesque what they do
Speaker 3: with the game. But I played a lot when I played,
Speaker 3: now not nearly as much I do not. I enjoy
Speaker 3: the game so much more now than I enjoyed it
Speaker 3: when I was trying to be good at it, because,
Speaker 3: like I said, the OCD thing, I couldn't enjoy it
Speaker 3: for trying to always improve. And if you're trying, really
Speaker 3: trying to improve, you simultaneously or frustrated with your performance,
Speaker 3: you kind of have. You know, improvement comes with not
Speaker 3: being satisfied with where you're at. So I've taken a
Speaker 3: shift to the point where I really enjoy playing the game,
Speaker 3: don't worry about a score as much. Still can probably
Speaker 3: shoot a goods. You know, I'm my best score of
Speaker 3: the year. My last year, I shot seventy two one time,
Speaker 3: so I was one over par. That was my best
Speaker 3: score of the year. I shot close to par once.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm captain seventy eight. I shoot a lot
Speaker 3: of seventy eight, so that seems to be my my
Speaker 3: go to number. I can play well, I shoot seventy eight.
Speaker 3: I play like crap. I shoot seventy eight. It's my number.
Speaker 2: Did you take lessons to learn how to play golf?
Speaker 3: No, I've never taken lessons to learn how to do anything.
Speaker 3: And again I would say the same thing to golfers.
Speaker 3: If you are starting out the game, take a couple
Speaker 3: early lessons, because one of the things that really did
Speaker 3: hurt me in my golf game is I ingrained a
Speaker 3: few really bad habits early on that I carried over
Speaker 3: from baseball that really made me struggle with golf. I
Speaker 3: had to unlearn a few things that I taught myself
Speaker 3: that I could have easily avoided had I taken some
Speaker 3: early lessons. So I don't think you necessarily have to
Speaker 3: take lessons the whole time you play, unless you're doing
Speaker 3: it as a profession. But to get the fundamentals down
Speaker 3: early on so that you can do so that you
Speaker 3: can practice correctly from the start, I think is a
Speaker 3: huge bonus. And I would recommend it to anyone that,
Speaker 3: even if they don't think they need lessons, go ahead
Speaker 3: and take that lesson and then decide after if you
Speaker 3: if you want to use that or not.
Speaker 2: Okay, how often do you play now.
Speaker 3: Golf. You know, my wife likes to play golf now,
Speaker 3: so I try to get out once a week, you know,
Speaker 3: if I if I can. I mean, I'm more fair
Speaker 3: weather now, if it's if it's cold, or if it's windy,
Speaker 3: or if I have a hangnail, or if you know,
Speaker 3: whatever my TV reception isn't good, whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 3: anything will keep me from playing now. You know, it's
Speaker 3: got to be all the conditions have to be right.
Speaker 3: But if the weather's nice and and I have somebody
Speaker 3: who's willing, I'll still go out and knock it around.
Speaker 3: I mean, I still love the game. I've been trying
Speaker 3: to get into it a little bit more as of late.
Speaker 3: So this this year, I plan on playing more golf
Speaker 3: than I played last year because I'm I'm determined to
Speaker 3: get you know, a little bit. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's fun for me now, but it's not as fun
Speaker 3: if I'm nowhere near as good as I could be.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna practice a little bit this year and
Speaker 3: try to find that happy balance where I can, you know,
Speaker 3: play a little more and still have fun with it.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're playing golf. What's the status of your career now,
Speaker 2: how much you're working, how much do you want to work,
Speaker 2: and any specific goals at this point.
Speaker 3: Well, I still want to work. I mean I'm I'm
Speaker 3: not you know, I'm at the point now to where well, well,
Speaker 3: you know, heck, I have to work. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I still got to keep these lights. I still got
Speaker 3: to keep the light bol paid. So I have to work.
Speaker 3: Fortunately for me, I love my work. So it's it's
Speaker 3: it's it's been a it's it's kind of been a
Speaker 3: nice situation to be able to to go after something
Speaker 3: that you enjoy doing. I mean, I've never felt like
Speaker 3: I've worked ever. I mean I've I've traveled to play music.
Speaker 3: I mean traveling that's the hardest thing that I do.
Speaker 3: And as far as how much do I want to travel,
Speaker 3: you know, if I play, if I play fifty, you know,
Speaker 3: or to sixty dates a year, that is that that's
Speaker 3: like my high end. That's as much as I would
Speaker 3: want to go. I mean, I I don't like traveling
Speaker 3: like I once did. I've said this for a while now.
Speaker 3: I have played for a long time. I have played
Speaker 3: for free. I only get paid to travel. You pay
Speaker 3: me to travel and I'll play for you for free.
Speaker 3: That's how it works anymore. And uh, I don't want
Speaker 3: to stay out on the road. I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I enjoy my home life. I enjoy
Speaker 3: my my wife, I enjoy playing golf. I'd like to
Speaker 3: spend a little more time. I'm, you know, enjoying my
Speaker 3: my Uh, how do how do I put it? I'm
Speaker 3: I'm I'm not you know, I'm not anywhere close to
Speaker 3: giving up yet, but I'm I've started the back nine,
Speaker 3: so I'm trying to ease into it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you ultimately had two gigantic successes. Okay,
Speaker 2: you're doing what you're doing. You gotta work, you got
Speaker 2: to keep the lights on in the back of your
Speaker 2: mind everything, and well, you know, i'd like to get
Speaker 2: back to that spotlight before I go here.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean this is the I mean, at the
Speaker 3: at this point, I'm able to you know, it's I'm
Speaker 3: finding I'm finally and I say finally because i haven't
Speaker 3: been for a bulk of my career, but I'm finally
Speaker 3: happy in in the center portion of that stage. Like
Speaker 3: I I'm enjoying what I get to do now versus
Speaker 3: what I've done in the past. I mean, I'm I've
Speaker 3: talking to an audience, getting to tell jokes, getting to
Speaker 3: steer if you will. Man, it was an acquired taste
Speaker 3: for me. It wasn't something I started out loving, but
Speaker 3: once I got a taste for it, I can't see
Speaker 3: myself ever doing anything else. I mean, I am a
Speaker 3: I'm a I'm an entertainer. I mean I want to
Speaker 3: be on that stage. I want to play for the people.
Speaker 3: I mean again, traveling isn't as easy as it once was.
Speaker 3: I don't want to I don't want to try to
Speaker 3: do one hundred dates a year, you know, But I
Speaker 3: want to make sure that I do dates that you know.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure that I get to go
Speaker 3: out and connect with people, because at this stage of
Speaker 3: the game, when I get to connect to an audience,
Speaker 3: it's the happiest I can be in the music arena.
Speaker 3: And I don't see myself ever stopping that.
Speaker 2: Well, Dan, you tell a great story. You've filled in
Speaker 2: a lot of details that I've always had questions about.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you for taking this time with
Speaker 2: my audience.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, listen, I don't know if I've done
Speaker 3: if I've done all that. But but I have enjoyed
Speaker 3: your time and uh and it is get the fun,
Speaker 3: you know. It's fun to get to talk about the
Speaker 3: things at length that you don't necessarily get to touch
Speaker 3: on in other formats. So I really appreciate what you do,
Speaker 3: and I hope we can do it again sometime.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a lot of stuff we haven't covered, but
Speaker 2: we've come to the end of the feeling we've known
Speaker 2: for today till next time. This is Bob left six