Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Fifth Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today's see the legendary senior songwriter Tom Rush. Tom. Hi, Bob,
Speaker 1: it's good to see you. Okay. Now you had COVID
Speaker 1: tell me about that. Well, I don't recommend it. It
Speaker 1: was not fun. It was back in March. I was
Speaker 1: an early adapter um and I've just felt awful for
Speaker 1: about two weeks. It was five days of getting worse,
Speaker 1: five days of feeling like crap, five days of getting better.
Speaker 1: And I never got most of the typical symptoms. I
Speaker 1: just felt exhausted and achy all over, and I ran
Speaker 1: a little bit of a fever. But I just slept
Speaker 1: twenty hours a day at the at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the curve, and then I got better. And then a
Speaker 1: couple of months later I was having heart palpitations in
Speaker 1: the duck. Told me I should wear a heart monitor
Speaker 1: for two weeks. I did. I mailed it in. He
Speaker 1: calls me a five thirty on Friday, because these things
Speaker 1: never happened Tuesday morning and says, basically, get your ass
Speaker 1: to an ambulance and have them bring you to Mass General.
Speaker 1: And I said, excuse me, what are you talking about
Speaker 1: and he said, we're concerned you might have an event.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, what kind of event? And he said,
Speaker 1: well the text the technical term is sudden cardiac death.
Speaker 1: And that that got my attention, and in fact, I
Speaker 1: didn't go straight in I because that's the kind of
Speaker 1: guy I am. I went back to where I was
Speaker 1: living and had a nice dinner with a glass of
Speaker 1: wine and when in the next morning, uh, and they
Speaker 1: put a pacemaker in me. They discovered, quite accidentally, totally
Speaker 1: unrelated to any heart palpitations, that my heart rate was
Speaker 1: going down to twenty three beats a minute, and so
Speaker 1: they put a pacemaker in and now I am pretty
Speaker 1: much invincible. Okay, for those of us out of the know,
Speaker 1: what exactly is a pacemaker? And do you know you
Speaker 1: have it in you? Oh? Yeah, yeah, there's a little
Speaker 1: bump in my chest. I mean, I'm I pretty much
Speaker 1: have to bow out of all the bathing suit competitions
Speaker 1: from from now on. They weren't going well anyway. But no,
Speaker 1: it's it. Basically, this pacemaker. They do different things this one.
Speaker 1: If my heart rate goes below fifty beats a minute,
Speaker 1: it will kick in and keep my heart rate above
Speaker 1: fifty beats a minute. And when it does kick in,
Speaker 1: are you aware of that? No? Okay, So other than
Speaker 1: the bump, it's totally, you know, transparent. You don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. No, No, it doesn't bother me a bit. Okay.
Speaker 1: What do they think caused it? They don't know. But
Speaker 1: I think I think COVID caused it. I really do.
Speaker 1: When I was in the cardiac word at mess General,
Speaker 1: which is locally referred to as it's in Massachusetts General Hospital.
Speaker 1: Locally it's referred to as Massive Genitals. But when I
Speaker 1: was in the cardiac word there, uh, the nurse observed
Speaker 1: that they had a lot of COVID survivors. And this
Speaker 1: is at a point when less way, less than one
Speaker 1: percent of the population were COVID survivors. So it made
Speaker 1: me think that maybe COVID causes heart problems. And how
Speaker 1: do you think you got it COVID? I think I
Speaker 1: got it on a plane. I was doing gigs in Florida,
Speaker 1: and uh, I had a week off and then more
Speaker 1: gigs in Florida, and I was gonna I came back
Speaker 1: to Boston for my week off and started feeling crummy
Speaker 1: on on day three, Day four, of the week off. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: all the all the other gigs were canceled. And fortunately
Speaker 1: my daughter was staying with me and she took care
Speaker 1: of me. And and then she got the same bug
Speaker 1: she had. She tested negative, but she had to have
Speaker 1: had it. She had the same symptoms. And now I
Speaker 1: know you frequently worked with Matt Nakoah. Was he on
Speaker 1: that gig with you? He was? He didn't get it.
Speaker 1: He didn't get it. There were several people that I
Speaker 1: was hanging out with it didn't get it. So I
Speaker 1: think I got it on the plane coming north. And
Speaker 1: then have you gotten the vaccine. I've just I'm three
Speaker 1: days away from being totally invincible. I've had my second
Speaker 1: shot almost two weeks ago. Okay, Now, if one goes
Speaker 1: to your web page, it appears that you've been doing
Speaker 1: live gigs during this interim. Tell us the story there. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I think that the website may have been um misleading.
Speaker 1: I'm about to do this this coming Saturday, the twenty March.
Speaker 1: I'm about to do a show at the Birchmure in
Speaker 1: in Alexandria, Virginia, which will be my first live gig
Speaker 1: this year. The website, I think is should be telling
Speaker 1: you that this, that and the other gig have been
Speaker 1: rescheduled until I guess what I was saying. You know,
Speaker 1: I follow you pretty closely, but it seemed like you
Speaker 1: were putting it out there that you would play private,
Speaker 1: socially distanced gigs. I was doing that. This was I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out ways to ways to survive this
Speaker 1: and the public gigs were being canceled, and I figured, well,
Speaker 1: it's you know, the weather is nice. This was in
Speaker 1: the fall. I'm in the northeast, and uh, so I
Speaker 1: put out this thing and said, hey, let's do some
Speaker 1: private shows outdoors, properly distanced outdoor, private shows with small
Speaker 1: gatherings and uh and it worked. I did, you know,
Speaker 1: five or six of them, and I paid the rent
Speaker 1: and and then winter set in. So that's over. I'm
Speaker 1: hoping to kick it back into action, uh in a
Speaker 1: month or so when the weather is up here. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: you will also put your price on the website. You
Speaker 1: said you normally get paid ten thousand dollars. Is it
Speaker 1: a factor of age and you just don't care anymore,
Speaker 1: because certainly this is a business where you could do
Speaker 1: the same gig and the price could vary widely, so
Speaker 1: people are really loath to quote a price. Well it's
Speaker 1: you know, the and the price does very widely. It depends,
Speaker 1: you know, if I have to fly to Australia to
Speaker 1: do it, it's gonna cost more than if it's just
Speaker 1: down the block. Um. But um, I'm basically I was
Speaker 1: basically giving about a fift discount on private shows and
Speaker 1: and people signed up for them so great. Um, But
Speaker 1: then that was shut down because of the weather. And
Speaker 1: then I started this Rockport Sundays series on Patreon. Before
Speaker 1: we get into the Patreon thing, you know, to what
Speaker 1: degree do you have to work to make your nut?
Speaker 1: And we talk about different musicians are in different levels,
Speaker 1: and also there are a lot of very household name
Speaker 1: musicians who have high overheads. So when this shut down,
Speaker 1: where you starting to freak out or this was just
Speaker 1: impacting your lifestyle? Or he said to god, I could
Speaker 1: keep myself busy. Well, it was a little of each.
Speaker 1: I mean the cash flow. The twenty was shaping up
Speaker 1: to be the best year ever from a you know,
Speaker 1: business standpoint, and then just mid March just stopped. Okay,
Speaker 1: well let's stop. Why was twenty so deep into your career.
Speaker 1: Sixty years into your career, why was shaping up to
Speaker 1: be the best? I can't answer that more. You know,
Speaker 1: I was getting more bookings for you know, for bigger crowds.
Speaker 1: I think I've gotten better over the years. Bob Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Un Let's that's one thing people don't realize
Speaker 1: about getting older. You know that all this focus on you,
Speaker 1: we do get wiser. In many cases, we do get better.
Speaker 1: But you were answering the question about the cash h oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the cash flow, it just went off the cliff. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of overhead because I don't
Speaker 1: have a band uh these days, as you say, I
Speaker 1: worked with Matt Nicola. Uh and he gets paid when
Speaker 1: I get paid. Uh. And Matt is actually to go
Speaker 1: back to the Rockports Sundays. He's been participating on a
Speaker 1: lot of those those little episodes. But I don't haven't.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of overhead, but I do.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got I got to pay the rent,
Speaker 1: and now I've got to pay my wife's rent. She's
Speaker 1: she's off in Wyoming now, um, and you know, health
Speaker 1: insurance and I've got a kid in college and stuff
Speaker 1: like that so um, I was invading savings and decided
Speaker 1: I had invaded savings about enough, and I should try
Speaker 1: to figure out how to how make some money. And
Speaker 1: I also it's partly I just I love playing for people,
Speaker 1: and I was I was suffering audience deprivation syndrome, and
Speaker 1: so tell us about the patriar. Well. I checked out
Speaker 1: a bunch of different platforms. I was living in Rockport, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and I wrote this instrumental years ago called Rockport Sunday
Speaker 1: that people seem to like a lot. And I thought, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe I'll do this. I'll put out put out
Speaker 1: a video clip of one song or a story perhaps
Speaker 1: every Sunday, and it'll be a subscription series and it
Speaker 1: costs ten bucks a month at the bottom at the
Speaker 1: bottom level, and you get it. You get a song,
Speaker 1: a video clip of me in the kitchen, very casual.
Speaker 1: The production values are good because I've got a guy
Speaker 1: who's very professional doing the audio and video. But I'm
Speaker 1: very casual. I haven't done one in my pajamas yet,
Speaker 1: but you never know. Um, And I'll sing a song
Speaker 1: for you, tell you a story about the song, sing
Speaker 1: a song, and that's it, and that song will then
Speaker 1: be available for eight weeks, uh, and it will then
Speaker 1: disappear to make room for whatever the newest thing is.
Speaker 1: And some weeks I tell a story. I told the
Speaker 1: story of Clint Eastwood and the Hashish Brownie, and I'll
Speaker 1: tell the story about skinny dipping with Janis Joplin's some okay,
Speaker 1: you know it just as a teaser for those of
Speaker 1: White Side Up. Tell us the story of skinny Dipping
Speaker 1: with Jannis. No, no, no, Bobby, you have to subscribe. Okay,
Speaker 1: somebody someone Is it already off the eight weeks or
Speaker 1: could they still get it? No? I haven't done the
Speaker 1: Janis Chaplin one yet, but that was okay, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a taste of that. I was on the Festival
Speaker 1: Express tour across Canada and it was quite an adventure.
Speaker 1: It was a bunch of musicians on a train, The
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the band Delaney and Bonnie Ian
Speaker 1: and Sylvia um on and on, and we went across
Speaker 1: we wanted. We started in Toronto, ended in Calgary. And
Speaker 1: when we got to Calgary, this was the best party
Speaker 1: I have ever been to. It was we kind of
Speaker 1: regarded the stadium shows that we had to stop and
Speaker 1: do as unwelcome intrusions into the flow of the party.
Speaker 1: We got to Calgary and the promoters had hired the
Speaker 1: municipal swimming pool so that we could all go for
Speaker 1: a swim, which was very sweet and much appreciated, and
Speaker 1: of course all of these hippie musicians wanted to go
Speaker 1: skinny dipping, which horrified the pool officials. But it was
Speaker 1: our pool, you know. They couldn't stop us. But they
Speaker 1: did have a rule, hard and fast rule that anyone
Speaker 1: with long hair, which was everybody, had to wear a
Speaker 1: bathing cap. And my my mind is permanently scarred by
Speaker 1: the sight of seeing Leslie West of Mountains coming out
Speaker 1: of the changing room wearing nothing but a bathing cap
Speaker 1: over his afro and a second bathing cap upside down
Speaker 1: over his beard. You can't unsee something like that. And
Speaker 1: uh now, on that festival press, certainly Janis Joplin was
Speaker 1: a famous drinker with Southern comfort during that day and
Speaker 1: maybe even today. To what degree did you partake in substances? Well,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of substances on that On that train,
Speaker 1: alcohol was very popular. We in fact drank the train
Speaker 1: dry about four hours out of Toronto, which was the
Speaker 1: first and we remember we stopped, We made them stop
Speaker 1: in a prairie little prairie town, went into the liquor
Speaker 1: store and bought everything, every every bottle in that store.
Speaker 1: Went back on the train and we continued on, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was a very it was a very strange experience.
Speaker 1: I'm sure for the staff on the train. These were
Speaker 1: guys with jackets and little red bow ties who were
Speaker 1: used to dealing with families on vacation and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they've got a train full of hippies, you know,
Speaker 1: smoking dope and doing god knows what um but they
Speaker 1: were it was all It was very cool. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing Janice job I was I was talking with Delaney
Speaker 1: or Bonnie Bonnie Bramlett of Delaney and Bonny. I was
Speaker 1: chatting with her. Janie comes running in and says, Bonny, Bonny, Bonny,
Speaker 1: you've gotta come. I'm doing an interview with Time magazine.
Speaker 1: And I just realized that you and I are the
Speaker 1: same person. You've got to come and participate in this
Speaker 1: interview with me. And so she gets and I trailed
Speaker 1: along because I wanted to find out how it was
Speaker 1: that Janis and Bonnie were the same person, and Bonnie
Speaker 1: was talking about how talent was. It was a gift
Speaker 1: from God, but it was also a curse in a way,
Speaker 1: because because God had given you this gift, you were
Speaker 1: obliged to go out and share it with people, and
Speaker 1: it means leaving your family and leading a very difficult
Speaker 1: life out on the road, and but this is what
Speaker 1: God demands of you. Janis, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: talking about how great it was to be a rock
Speaker 1: star because you get laid a lot. Somehow, they were
Speaker 1: the same person in Janis's mind. Just going back though,
Speaker 1: when you were on the road, to what degree or
Speaker 1: in your career did you partake of drugs, whether it
Speaker 1: be marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or anything. I did. I did
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff, U pot. Of course it was
Speaker 1: kind of derry gur I did too much cocaine for
Speaker 1: a while, and I actually stopped cocaine because I got
Speaker 1: ahold of some pharmaceutical coke and it was so good
Speaker 1: that I was so pissed that I had been spending
Speaker 1: all this money on garbage, been snorting mothballs. I just stopped.
Speaker 1: I never got involved in the harder stuff because when
Speaker 1: I was a little kid, I was sickly and I
Speaker 1: got a lot of injections and I developed a real
Speaker 1: aversion to needles. So anything that involved a needle, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. Get that thing away from me, which served
Speaker 1: me well. Okay. Also, you had a very big birthday
Speaker 1: about a month ago. How does that affect you emotionally? Well?
Speaker 1: Not much. I mean, I'm I'm feeling good, I think, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm writing more than I ever wrote. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm having a lot of fun with Rockports Sundays and
Speaker 1: very much looking forward to getting back on the road.
Speaker 1: Uh So the only the only part of it was
Speaker 1: it was a you know, a big birthday bash scheduled
Speaker 1: for the Whang Center in Boston, which is this absolutely
Speaker 1: dropped at gorgeous seat hall, and we were going to
Speaker 1: get all kinds of guest artists and Garth Brooks in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, put together happy birthday video clip for the
Speaker 1: occasion and it had to be canceled. So basically, Bob,
Speaker 1: I have suspended aging. As soon as we can do it,
Speaker 1: we'll have my eightieth birthday party at the Wing Center. Okay.
Speaker 1: So what's your relationship with Garth Brooks? Uh, he's he's
Speaker 1: credited me many times over the years as being one
Speaker 1: of the first people his dad, I guess played some
Speaker 1: of my albums for the kids when he was when
Speaker 1: he was little, and he was he came to like
Speaker 1: my music a lot. So that's that's really the only
Speaker 1: connection I've never met the guy. Um. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: talk about being very creative and writing at this particular
Speaker 1: point in time, but on some level, which is interesting
Speaker 1: from an outside observer, the landscape is identical to when
Speaker 1: you started. When you started first, you know, there was
Speaker 1: fifties rock, rank Sinatra, then the teen idols, and now
Speaker 1: we have teen idols again and everything spread out. So
Speaker 1: what do you think about this change in landscape and
Speaker 1: what motivates you today. I guess what motivates me is
Speaker 1: is again, I love to play for people. I love
Speaker 1: to get up on stage and make people laugh and
Speaker 1: cry and you know, dig into their emotional uh, their
Speaker 1: emotional life. I get. I get a big a lot
Speaker 1: of pleasure out of that. Um. The landscape is because
Speaker 1: of the Internet, is totally different. You know, when I
Speaker 1: started out, if you didn't have a record deal, you
Speaker 1: did not exist, because it was the record companies who
Speaker 1: got you on the radio and got you written up
Speaker 1: in the magazines and and that sold tickets and um.
Speaker 1: But without that you were invisible. Now any kid with
Speaker 1: a laptop can you know, make music in their bedroom
Speaker 1: and put it up on the internet. And some of
Speaker 1: it's terrible, some of it's wonderful, but you don't need
Speaker 1: the record company anymore. Um. And it's become very confusing.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole the whole genre question has become
Speaker 1: very muddy. It used to be, you know, there was jazz,
Speaker 1: there was classical, there was folk, There were blues and
Speaker 1: raw u and that was about it. And I remember
Speaker 1: actually my first album came out on a little private
Speaker 1: label in Cambridge, and I went into the Harvard Coope,
Speaker 1: the local record store, and they'd put my album under
Speaker 1: Blues in the blues section. And I went to the manager.
Speaker 1: I said, excuse me, I do some blues, yes, but
Speaker 1: I also do traditional folk material. And he said okay,
Speaker 1: and he took took my albums and put him in
Speaker 1: the folks section. I said, well, wait, wait a second.
Speaker 1: I yes, I do some folk, but I also and
Speaker 1: he finally, after a couple of more of these, he said, okay, kid,
Speaker 1: and he put me in miscellaneous, and I learned my
Speaker 1: lesson not to argue about categories. But now there's so
Speaker 1: many categories. I mean, I want to Actually, I'm thrilled, Bob,
Speaker 1: to be able to announce that the last night I
Speaker 1: won all the Grammys, every single every single one of them.
Speaker 1: Anybody that's as otherwise it's false and that's false news.
Speaker 1: Were you ever nominated programming? To be honest, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I don't think so well except you went there. What
Speaker 1: is your thought about the Grammy organization in the Grammy winning?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's I I've fallen so far away
Speaker 1: from the industry um that I don't really pay much
Speaker 1: attention to it. I mean, it's it's great for the
Speaker 1: folks who wins something, but I'm not sure what it means.
Speaker 1: It means that a bunch of people with a very
Speaker 1: uh skewed point of view voted for them. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean they're good. It just means they're popular with
Speaker 1: a certain, very restricted crowd. So, um, I don't I
Speaker 1: just don't put a lot of stock in it. Okay,
Speaker 1: now you have very ring levels on peach. We tell
Speaker 1: us about that. Well, I started out with just one
Speaker 1: that they call them tears. And the tier that I
Speaker 1: started out with was the ten dollar a month tier
Speaker 1: where you get every Sunday a brand new song or
Speaker 1: a story or and then I added a bunch more
Speaker 1: tiers for so for twenty five bucks a month, you get,
Speaker 1: of course the song or the story, but you also
Speaker 1: get pages from a book I'm writing. And it goes
Speaker 1: all the way up to a thousand dollars a month
Speaker 1: where you get a private concert at the end of
Speaker 1: so many months, and uh, you know, some zoom chats
Speaker 1: zoom chat once a month and some special treatment. Is
Speaker 1: one one of my thousand dollar guys wants me to
Speaker 1: come up with an instructional video teaching him how to
Speaker 1: play the Dreamer, which is a song I think it's
Speaker 1: one of my better songs, not not better known, but anyway,
Speaker 1: he's he wants me to and I will got to
Speaker 1: come up with an instructional video and he will learn
Speaker 1: how to play the Dreamer. Okay, that begs the question
Speaker 1: of these people are paying Does that affect your relationship?
Speaker 1: And this also blends to you know, you tour sort
Speaker 1: of on a circuit, do you tend to know your fans?
Speaker 1: Does that good or is it a burden? What's that like?
Speaker 1: I don't know the the you know I do. I
Speaker 1: do see some of the same face as it shows.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I do when I remember
Speaker 1: is when I hit the stage and say, how many folks,
Speaker 1: how many? How many of you guys have never been
Speaker 1: to one of my shows before, and about half the
Speaker 1: crowd will put put their hand up, so it's not
Speaker 1: the same people coming back every time. UM. The the
Speaker 1: Patreon series of rockports Sundays, I get a lot of comments.
Speaker 1: People can write comments, and I respond to as many
Speaker 1: as I can. UM, and I've noticed that some of
Speaker 1: the same people comment every week. UH. The song goes
Speaker 1: up at midnight Eastern time, midnight on Saturday and Sunday morning.
Speaker 1: I've got, you know, an inbox full of comments from
Speaker 1: Patreon and UH, and some of the same people are
Speaker 1: commenting each time. But the feedback is really positive. It's
Speaker 1: almost as good as live applause. Let's just assume we
Speaker 1: had to cut you off from the feedback. Would you
Speaker 1: be able to survive it? Would it would cut out
Speaker 1: a lot of dopamine, the dopamine rush from the the
Speaker 1: applause or the feedback is part of what's part of
Speaker 1: what's in it for me. Uh yeah, I want to hear.
Speaker 1: I want to hear what you think. I want it
Speaker 1: and hopefully you like it. If you don't like it,
Speaker 1: then I'd like to know that too. Okay, at this
Speaker 1: point in time, are you still concerned with growing your audience?
Speaker 1: You know, how do you deal with that? Because as
Speaker 1: you say that, the game has changed, we don't have
Speaker 1: the record company push and there's so much in the channel.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm very I'm very uh focused on growing
Speaker 1: the audience. I mean, it's actually one of the exciting
Speaker 1: things about the Rockport Sunday Series online. I keep it
Speaker 1: keeps me up at night that there are seven and
Speaker 1: a half billion people on the planet that haven't signed
Speaker 1: up yet. But I know that having you know, been
Speaker 1: on Bob left It's podcasts. Are you're going to the
Speaker 1: moon now yet? Year? Fasten your seat belts. Absolutely No.
Speaker 1: I think the potential for growth is is terrific on
Speaker 1: the Internet because there really is no ceiling. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a potential, but there's so much there. Do you find
Speaker 1: in this Internet era of last twenty years, when everybody's
Speaker 1: got more questions than answers that your audience is increasing
Speaker 1: or maybe you can't even tell it all well, the
Speaker 1: online audience, UM, you know, I've got I also sent
Speaker 1: out a newsletter from my uh website, tom rush dot
Speaker 1: com and you can sign up for the newsletter at
Speaker 1: tom rush dot com. Um, and people seem to like
Speaker 1: that a lot. I get silly. I try to keep
Speaker 1: it amusing, and people seem to be amused. So I've
Speaker 1: got you know, about fifteen thousand people there, but that
Speaker 1: could easily you know that, you know, I would love
Speaker 1: to see that grow as well. UM. And as for
Speaker 1: the you know, the the the lie of audiences. Of course,
Speaker 1: right now it's really restricted. I'm playing the Birch Mirror
Speaker 1: this coming Saturday. It's a five hundred seat room. They're
Speaker 1: only selling two tickets. H and some of the other
Speaker 1: gigs coming up in May and June or that couldn't
Speaker 1: be the same kind of thing. Either they've they've moved outdoors,
Speaker 1: or they're gonna have restricted capacity and hopefully, hopefully sometime
Speaker 1: in the fall something this will, um, this will start
Speaker 1: to loosen up. So what's the key to a great show?
Speaker 1: I wish I could well, of course me well, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a given. You're here, we're talking to you have
Speaker 1: a profile, but you know you're there. Do you feel
Speaker 1: that you have to convince them? Or you're singing rock,
Speaker 1: you're singing no Regrets and you're thinking about your next
Speaker 1: connection at the airport. No, I'm in the best of worlds.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very focused on the on the audience. Um.
Speaker 1: Part of the fun for me is figuring out who
Speaker 1: this audience is. I visualize an audience as being a personality,
Speaker 1: and it's been striking to me. I used to play
Speaker 1: clubs way way way back in the day. I'd be
Speaker 1: it would be a two week gig, show up, you know,
Speaker 1: and play every night for two weeks, and it was
Speaker 1: really amazing how different the audience was from night tonight.
Speaker 1: It was the same town, the same demographic, the same weather,
Speaker 1: but the audience would be totally different each night, and
Speaker 1: I would have to figure out who that audience is,
Speaker 1: who what that personality is, and then basically play to
Speaker 1: that person Some audience is really like the funny songs,
Speaker 1: so I do more funny songs, and some like the touching,
Speaker 1: introspective stuff. The the sensitive ship. As my lead guitar
Speaker 1: player used to call it. And so, especially when you
Speaker 1: had a band, to what degree did you have a
Speaker 1: set listen? To what degree depending on the audience did
Speaker 1: you change your repertoire and to this day, Well, I
Speaker 1: I know what song I'm gonna start with, I know
Speaker 1: what song I'm gonna end with, and in between I'm flexible. Um,
Speaker 1: I do have to One of the disadvantages to having
Speaker 1: a band is you have to stick to the songs
Speaker 1: that the band knows. Um. Whereas solo, I don't have
Speaker 1: that problem. And with Matt, I can throw a new
Speaker 1: song at Matt and he will play it as though
Speaker 1: he'd been doing his entire life. He's quite an amazing talent.
Speaker 1: I should throw in Matt Akoa dot Com into the conversation.
Speaker 1: He's we've been playing together for about six years, but
Speaker 1: he's got his own career which is burgeoning, and I
Speaker 1: don't think he's going to be backing me up for
Speaker 1: too much longer. I'm hoping when he's playing stadiums he'll
Speaker 1: let me open the shows. Okay, you went to Harvard
Speaker 1: to what degree? Does that inform your music in your career?
Speaker 1: I don't know that Harvard Harvard, If anything, I was
Speaker 1: an English major, and when I'm writing, I tend to
Speaker 1: be intimidated by the idea that Blake would never say
Speaker 1: anything that's stupid. You know Shakespeare. Oh No, I'm nowhere
Speaker 1: near that level. Um, So that was a little bit intimidating,
Speaker 1: although it did expose me to a lot of really
Speaker 1: amazing writing. What was important, I think was being in Cambridge,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts at that time, the early sixties, when there was
Speaker 1: such a vibrant folks scene going on, and being able
Speaker 1: to hang out at the Club forty seven in Cambridge
Speaker 1: was a coffeehouse that was one block from my dorm
Speaker 1: roo and this was the place they hosted the local kids,
Speaker 1: as all their coffeehouses did, but they also brought in
Speaker 1: the legends, and you could sit in this little adc
Speaker 1: room and listen to Maybelle Carter or Flattened Scrugs or
Speaker 1: Sleepy John Estes. They brought in a lot of the
Speaker 1: blues guys, and I adored the blues guys, partly because
Speaker 1: I was an English major and and just love what
Speaker 1: these guys could do to syntax. Okay, so at what
Speaker 1: point did you pick up the guitar. I picked up
Speaker 1: the guitar as a little kid, I was forced to
Speaker 1: take piano lessons for about twelve years, and I hated it.
Speaker 1: Nobody explained to me, it's a little bit like studying
Speaker 1: English at Harvard. Nobody explained that these were great books
Speaker 1: because people loved to read them. It was your grim
Speaker 1: duty to study and analyze them. Piano was not fun.
Speaker 1: It was an exercise and manual dexterity. Nobody explained that
Speaker 1: this music was great music because people actually liked it. Um.
Speaker 1: But I had an older cousin named Bo Beals and
Speaker 1: Bo and b Beals I'm not making this up used
Speaker 1: to come visit. Um. They were my parents best buddies.
Speaker 1: And bow Bells was in my eyes as superstar heat.
Speaker 1: This guy could take a lettle cigarette, flip it back
Speaker 1: into his mouth, dive in the swimming pool and blow
Speaker 1: smoke bubbles from underwater. I mean, when you're ten, that's huge.
Speaker 1: And he played the ukulele, and Bo taught me how
Speaker 1: to play the ukulele and taught me a bunch of
Speaker 1: silly old songs that Abdula bo bol Amir and my
Speaker 1: father's whiskers and um, and that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And that's where I just you know, came to realize
Speaker 1: that music was fun. And then as I got older,
Speaker 1: the uku lele turned into a guitar because I thought
Speaker 1: it was more manly, and um, I got really swept
Speaker 1: up in the rock and roll scene in the late fifties.
Speaker 1: I heard my first Josh White recording when I was
Speaker 1: around sixteen. Changed my life. I just I'd never heard
Speaker 1: a guitar played like that. I've never heard songs like that.
Speaker 1: And then I hit Cambridge and there was all this
Speaker 1: music going on, all different flavors and stripes, and I
Speaker 1: just got sucked up into it. So what was it
Speaker 1: like growing up in the fifties with the rock and
Speaker 1: roll era, Elvis, etcetera. Well, it was. It was absolutely magical.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember Bill Haley and the comments doing
Speaker 1: rock around the clock and thinking this is different. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then more and more and more kept coming, and
Speaker 1: there was it was a fabulous outpouring of talent. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were all these really talented people who were not
Speaker 1: like one another. Every single you know, Elvis was not
Speaker 1: like Fats Domino, who was not like the Everly Brothers.
Speaker 1: They were each each and everyone was a totally different
Speaker 1: flavor and it was very exciting and it but the
Speaker 1: whole thing only lasted how many years, four years maybe,
Speaker 1: and then it was gone and what was on the
Speaker 1: radio next was really kind of boring in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I think in the minds of a lot of people,
Speaker 1: which is why the people in the Cambridge folk scene
Speaker 1: were so excited about discovering this music that nobody was
Speaker 1: trying to push down their throats on the radio. You'd
Speaker 1: have to go to the you know, the used record
Speaker 1: store and look for seventy eight and discover this stuff
Speaker 1: that it was totally new, and it must have been.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a certain irony in a bunch of
Speaker 1: Harvard kids sitting around singing about how tough it was
Speaker 1: in the coal mine or on the chain gang. But
Speaker 1: we felt that we made up in sincerity what we
Speaker 1: lacked an authenticity. Okay, you heard that Josh White record.
Speaker 1: Did you pick out the note yourself? Or did you
Speaker 1: take lessons? Or how did you get up to speed?
Speaker 1: I would I just listened to those records over and
Speaker 1: over and over and tried to figure out how he
Speaker 1: was doing what he did um and was moderately successful
Speaker 1: at that. I mean, he was he was playing by himself.
Speaker 1: Or with a bass player. Um, so it was not.
Speaker 1: His guitar parts weren't obscured by a lot of instrumentation
Speaker 1: and uh other stuff. But I was pretty good at that,
Speaker 1: and then I also was fairly successful at figuring out
Speaker 1: what the blues guys were doing. One of the cool
Speaker 1: things about the Club forty seven, though, was when these
Speaker 1: blues guys played there, or whatever, the bluegrass guys or
Speaker 1: the Scottish balladeers. There was usually a party at been
Speaker 1: Betsy Shiggins House after the show, and you could go
Speaker 1: to this party and ask these people how do you
Speaker 1: do that thing you do? And they would tell you
Speaker 1: it would show you. It was quite amazing. Okay, so
Speaker 1: do you show up at Harvard with your guitar in
Speaker 1: its case? Um? Yes, I did. I did, and fairly
Speaker 1: quickly I got a There was a radio show on
Speaker 1: Harvard's uh FM station called Balladeers, and I somehow inherited
Speaker 1: that show. The guy that was hosting Balladeers was graduating
Speaker 1: or moving away or whatever, and somebody said, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to take it over? And I said, well, okay.
Speaker 1: And it was a show where the host played a
Speaker 1: little bit, but you had to have guests come on.
Speaker 1: Every week there would be a different guest, and this
Speaker 1: meant that I had to start habituating the coffee house
Speaker 1: is going to the hoot nannies to recruit guests to
Speaker 1: come on my show. Uh and I. The tradition was
Speaker 1: to have local kids as the guests. I also branched
Speaker 1: out and started getting people like like Josh White or
Speaker 1: Odetta or Pete Seeger to come on, but mostly it
Speaker 1: was the local talent, and so I had to go
Speaker 1: to the hooting nanny's and listen to people and decide
Speaker 1: who I wanted to invite. I discovered that you could
Speaker 1: get in for free if you had a guitar with you.
Speaker 1: I then discovered you could get in for free if
Speaker 1: you had a guitar case with you. So I would
Speaker 1: put a six pack in the guitar case and head
Speaker 1: off to the hooting nanny and I got caught one
Speaker 1: night at the the Golden Vanity Club in Boston. Hey kid,
Speaker 1: get on stage. You got in for free. I had
Speaker 1: to borrow a guitar. I was terrified, but I got
Speaker 1: up and I did twenty minutes or something and apparently
Speaker 1: was good enough. I have no idea what I did.
Speaker 1: I was so so scared. But about a week or
Speaker 1: two later, the owner calls me and said, whoever is
Speaker 1: playing to night got sick and could you come down
Speaker 1: and be a substitute folk singer. So nice. I did
Speaker 1: that for a little while, and it's pretty much been
Speaker 1: downhill ever since. Bob. Okay, let's go a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: The Balladeer show was on? How often once a week?
Speaker 1: And how long was it? It was thirty minutes? Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: I certainly remember this folk era, the folk boom and
Speaker 1: the hoot Ninnies. But for those people, and you know
Speaker 1: we're going out, we're on the wrong side of the curve.
Speaker 1: But explain what that scene was like. Well, now they're
Speaker 1: called open mics, but basically it was, you know, a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids would come and bring their guitars and
Speaker 1: there'd be an mc and uh. I can't remember. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you had to audition to get into the hoots,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think it was if you
Speaker 1: owed up with a guitar, you could get up and
Speaker 1: do two or three songs. And how many of these
Speaker 1: places were there? Oh? There were in the in the
Speaker 1: greater Boston area there were probably a dozen. And was
Speaker 1: there a palpable scene. Did you feel like you were
Speaker 1: part of something bigger? You said, well, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: just what I'm into. No, I think that, Well, there
Speaker 1: was definitely, in my mind there was a scene because
Speaker 1: there was a lot of overlap. There were people who would,
Speaker 1: you know, go and play this club and then that club,
Speaker 1: and um, in my mind, the Club forty seven was
Speaker 1: the flagship of the fleet and they definitely had there
Speaker 1: was a click there and I wanted very much to
Speaker 1: be part of that. And it took a while, but
Speaker 1: I finally got got welcomed into the Club forty seven scene.
Speaker 1: And how long did that take? Well, I'm trying to think.
Speaker 1: I UM. I was playing at a place that called
Speaker 1: the Unicorn in Boston. The manager there felt that the
Speaker 1: best way to build an audience for an artist was
Speaker 1: to have them play every same day every week, and
Speaker 1: so I was playing every i don't know Tuesday at
Speaker 1: the Unicorn, and sure enough, and you know, an audience
Speaker 1: started to accumulate after a while. That guy Byron Leonardos
Speaker 1: then went over. He was recruited to come manage the
Speaker 1: Club forty seven. Uh, and he basically brought me with him. Right,
Speaker 1: you remember how much money you were making. Oh it
Speaker 1: was it was big bucks, Bibe. I think you know,
Speaker 1: on a good night you could clear ten dollars. But
Speaker 1: ten dollars was a hundred dollars then, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that. It was probably seventy three dollars. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: certainly you know it was enough. It was enough to
Speaker 1: buy a six pack and have some fun. But who
Speaker 1: else was on the scene at your profile of that. Well,
Speaker 1: Joan Bias had kind of grant graduated from that scene.
Speaker 1: She shet up and gone. She would show up once
Speaker 1: in a while. But um, other people on the scene
Speaker 1: were Jim Queskin's jug band, Um Jeff and Miriam Muldar.
Speaker 1: That one of the striking things about the Cambridge scene,
Speaker 1: I think, Bob, was that it was basically an amateur
Speaker 1: scene in the good sense of the word. Uh. These
Speaker 1: are people playing because they loved the music, not because
Speaker 1: they had professional aspirations. There was, you know, a psycho
Speaker 1: pharmacologist banjo player who was who was very popular, uh,
Speaker 1: but he didn't plan to be a professional banjo player.
Speaker 1: There was a typewriter for Pairman who was a mandolin player,
Speaker 1: high harmony singer. It was great, but he didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: plan to go on the road or anything. So there
Speaker 1: were a lot of really really talented people who were
Speaker 1: not headed for professional life. The ones that did go
Speaker 1: pro or myself, Jim Queskin of course, um, Jeff Maulder,
Speaker 1: Maria maldar Um. It was a fairly small selection. Okay,
Speaker 1: since you mentioned Jim Queskin, were you familiar with the
Speaker 1: mel Liman family. I was, and it was a very
Speaker 1: puzzling thing. Mel was. For the listeners who don't know Mel,
Speaker 1: he was. He was a harmonica player, pretty pretty good one.
Speaker 1: But he also became a guru. Somehow this guy attracted
Speaker 1: to a family. UM not quite like the Manson family.
Speaker 1: They weren't. They didn't do anything as bad as the
Speaker 1: Manson family. But it was, at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty uh strange cult that Mel assembled
Speaker 1: around him. Jim question was and is still a part
Speaker 1: of that family. Uh Mel Mel died, but the his
Speaker 1: his gathering still is together in California, and I guess
Speaker 1: they have a pretty successful construction business. Um it keeps them,
Speaker 1: keeps them going, but questions still out there playing. I
Speaker 1: went to see him. It was probably it was before COVID,
Speaker 1: so a year and a half ago maybe, and he's good.
Speaker 1: He's still as good as ever. He really engages the
Speaker 1: audience and draws him in, gets them going. So how
Speaker 1: did you make your first record? I was playing at
Speaker 1: the Unicorn on a weekly basis. Guy named Dan Flickinger
Speaker 1: came in and said, do you want to make an album?
Speaker 1: And I'd heard that a couple of times before, nothing
Speaker 1: had come of it, so I said, yeah, sure, and
Speaker 1: he actually showed up Ah dragging this tape record at
Speaker 1: the size of an oven dark dragged it down the
Speaker 1: flight of stairs into the basement and recorded two nights.
Speaker 1: I remember him saying that it it was unethical to inter cut,
Speaker 1: to splice, you know, take the first half of the
Speaker 1: song from night one and the second half from night to.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that was morally indefensible. I later learned it
Speaker 1: was he didn't know how to splice tape, he didn't
Speaker 1: know how to edit um. But it was put together
Speaker 1: Tom Rush live at the Unicorn on Dan Flickinger's little
Speaker 1: non existent label like Hornew which was Latin for Unicorn
Speaker 1: or Greek I think um, and he distributed out of
Speaker 1: the back seat of his whatever, his studebaker. But it
Speaker 1: was an odd thing because I had an album and
Speaker 1: nobody else did, and it somehow made me mortallygitimate. I was,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, a more serious artist because I
Speaker 1: had an album. Never mind that it was, you know,
Speaker 1: on a made up label. You know. I think we
Speaker 1: pressed three hundred copies. I've seen him go for three
Speaker 1: hundred bucks on eBay now. But and then that lasted
Speaker 1: for about a minute, and then Vanguard and Prestige Records
Speaker 1: came to town and started signing up everybody except me.
Speaker 1: I could couldn't get a real record label to sign
Speaker 1: me up. And finally Paul Rothschild, working for Prestige, did
Speaker 1: sign me up and I made my first, my first
Speaker 1: album for a real label with Paul. By the time
Speaker 1: I graduated, I'd made I put out two albums, um,
Speaker 1: which probably explains why I didn't get better grades, I
Speaker 1: would assume so. And to what degree did your profile
Speaker 1: at school change as result of having these two albums?
Speaker 1: I don't think not not by much. I mean, the
Speaker 1: school was one thing, that folks scene was another thing.
Speaker 1: There was a little bit of overlap. But um, most
Speaker 1: of the people in my dorm had no idea what
Speaker 1: I did, except I made you know I made noise
Speaker 1: playing the guitar when they wished I wouldn't. Um, So
Speaker 1: there wasn't There wasn't too much overlap at that stage. Then,
Speaker 1: you know, when when I became better known. I think
Speaker 1: the class of sixty three now recognizes my name, but
Speaker 1: not not back then. Okay, so you graduate, what's your
Speaker 1: next step? Well, actually, before I graduated, I took a
Speaker 1: year off. I was on the verge of flunking out,
Speaker 1: and in fact I did flunk of course, and I
Speaker 1: decided I must, I must take a break or I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna get kicked. The obvious question from this era
Speaker 1: is what your parents say about that They were They
Speaker 1: were you know, I think they were supportive. I mean
Speaker 1: they thought forever that I'm going through a phase. My
Speaker 1: mom wanted to know to a dying day when I
Speaker 1: was going to get a real job. Um. But I
Speaker 1: had flunked one course. I don't remember having a talk
Speaker 1: with my parents, and I'm sure I must have, but
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I want to take a year off. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Harvard at that point would let you, and then
Speaker 1: maybe they still do, would let you withdraw if you
Speaker 1: were in good standing, let you withdraw any time you want,
Speaker 1: come back any time you want. I was not in
Speaker 1: good standing. I had to actually withdraw and reapply to
Speaker 1: get back in. So it was a risky, risky proposition.
Speaker 1: But I felt pretty convinced that I was going to
Speaker 1: flunk out and be kicked out if I did do this.
Speaker 1: So I took a year off and I went to
Speaker 1: I started traveling around and doing concerts New York, got
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia, I got to Florida a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and discovery that I really did love playing for people,
Speaker 1: still do, and that I could make just about enough
Speaker 1: money to to live. Not nothing more, but I could.
Speaker 1: I could make enough money to pay the rent and
Speaker 1: buy some cheap groceries. Um. And then I went back
Speaker 1: and finished up my three semesters. I quit in the
Speaker 1: middle middle of my junior year, so I had three
Speaker 1: semesters to go. I went back actually did very well
Speaker 1: because I knew what why I was there. I was
Speaker 1: there for a diploma. There was nothing, nothing real antic
Speaker 1: about it. I went I wanted to get that diploma
Speaker 1: and then move on, and uh so I did, and
Speaker 1: then continued living in Cambridge for a little while before
Speaker 1: I moved to New York City, New York is where
Speaker 1: the action was. That's where my record company was. I
Speaker 1: made one more album for Prestige with Paul Rathschild. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of a funny transition there. Paul. Paul moved
Speaker 1: on to Electra Records, where he was there ace producer,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to go to and Jack Holsman at
Speaker 1: Electra wanted me on the label, but I had a
Speaker 1: contract with Prestige. So I went to Prestige and I said,
Speaker 1: can I get out of my contract? And said no,
Speaker 1: and I so I bluffed. I said, Okay, screw it.
Speaker 1: You know I have a Harvard diploma. I don't need
Speaker 1: this music ship. I'm going to quit show is um.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you what. I'll make one more album
Speaker 1: for you if you'll let Paul Rothschild produce it. And
Speaker 1: they weren't happy with Paul at all, and they were
Speaker 1: convinced that Jack Holsman would never let Paul produce for
Speaker 1: another label. So they said okay, kid, and so Paul
Speaker 1: and I went in the studio and we recorded my
Speaker 1: second Prestige album, which is all folky, just me and
Speaker 1: Fritz Richmond on washtub base. The next week we went
Speaker 1: into a different studio and made my first Electra album,
Speaker 1: which actually hit the market before the Prestige album came out,
Speaker 1: because Prestige didn't know that this was going on in
Speaker 1: the background. And that's actually the album that Garth Brooks's
Speaker 1: dad played for him. What did Prestige ultimately say? What
Speaker 1: did they say when they found out that you had
Speaker 1: pulled a fast one on them? Well, they didn't have
Speaker 1: They didn't have much to say about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was out of there, so they might have been
Speaker 1: yelling at me, but I couldn't hear them. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: you were famously the first to record so many legendary
Speaker 1: singer songwriters, Jackson Brown, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor. How did
Speaker 1: you end up with their songs? Well, it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a different story, uh, for each one I was
Speaker 1: I had made. Oh how many albums did I make
Speaker 1: for Electra? I made the first one, and then I
Speaker 1: think in any case, I was running out of traditional
Speaker 1: folk stuff that I was interested in doing. My next
Speaker 1: to last album for Electra was a bit schizophrenic. It
Speaker 1: was folk on one side and late fifties rock and
Speaker 1: roll on the other. And then I owed them, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I owed them more albums, and I didn't
Speaker 1: have any more songs that I was really excited about doing.
Speaker 1: I was playing a club in Detroit, Michigan called the Chessmate,
Speaker 1: one of my two week gigs, and this young slip
Speaker 1: of a girl named Joni Mitchell came in one night
Speaker 1: and I gather she'd been playing there as part of
Speaker 1: a duo with her then a husband, Chuck Mitchell, on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, but she just started writing songs and
Speaker 1: she wanted me to hear some of these new songs
Speaker 1: because I might record one or two. And she came
Speaker 1: in and did a little fourth song guests set that
Speaker 1: just knocked me off my feet. Um. I asked her
Speaker 1: if she had any more songs. She said, no, but
Speaker 1: give me a minute her words to that effect, And
Speaker 1: then a few weeks later sent me a tape with
Speaker 1: six fabulous songs, one of which was The Circle Game,
Speaker 1: which I named the album after. She actually apologized on
Speaker 1: the tape she that I've just finished writing this. It's
Speaker 1: not much good. I'm so embarrassed, but here it is,
Speaker 1: and I am ended up naming the album after it.
Speaker 1: Um Jackson Brown was being published. He was not really
Speaker 1: a performer. At that point, he was a writer and
Speaker 1: he was being published by Electric so I had access
Speaker 1: to his demo tapes and that's how I met Jackson.
Speaker 1: James Taylor. Um, it's a bit odd. I had a
Speaker 1: roommate on my Cambridge apartment. I had a roommate named
Speaker 1: Zach Weasner who was part of a band called the
Speaker 1: Flying Machine that James was in. It was James band.
Speaker 1: And Zack kept saying, you got to hear it this
Speaker 1: guy James. And I kept saying, Zach, would you just
Speaker 1: pick up the living room please? And I didn't meet
Speaker 1: James back then. And then Paul Rothschild said, you gotta
Speaker 1: you should hear this. You should get together with this guy.
Speaker 1: And I remember we sat on the floor in an
Speaker 1: empty room, no furniture, at the Electra offices in New York.
Speaker 1: We sat on the floor with a real to real
Speaker 1: tape recorder and James sang, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: half a dozen songs into the tape recorder for me. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he was you know, I just I loved him.
Speaker 1: But the the thing was that here were these here
Speaker 1: were these songs that they weren't the other side of
Speaker 1: the Moon from folk music. They were informed by that
Speaker 1: kind of sensibility, but they had they were much more literary.
Speaker 1: They had a lot more chords. Uh, there just fabulous songs.
Speaker 1: Um And I've been accused of ushering in singer songwriter
Speaker 1: Erro with the the Circle Game album because it was
Speaker 1: the first, you know, time James Jackson and Janie were
Speaker 1: presented to a wider public um. But I wasn't really
Speaker 1: looking to uh looking to introduce an era or or
Speaker 1: discover anybody. I'd really just I wanted to meet girls, Bob.
Speaker 1: That's why I was in the working for you. Yeah, no, literally,
Speaker 1: how was that working for you? Well? It worked very
Speaker 1: well at the time. Okay, And what kind of guy
Speaker 1: were you? Different girl in every town or you know,
Speaker 1: hometown honey or what was it like? Well, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was a different girl in every town kind of
Speaker 1: kind of a scene for a while. I mean I
Speaker 1: did have I did have a girlfriend, Jill Lumpkin, who's
Speaker 1: on the one standing behind me on the Circle Game album.
Speaker 1: Um and that lasted for a few years, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, I was basically the traveling musician. So I
Speaker 1: was working for you. Yeah, I was working for me.
Speaker 1: Now uh, the cover of that album with Joe that
Speaker 1: was shot by Lynda McCartney Linda Eastman. At that point
Speaker 1: it was she was I didn't know her. She was
Speaker 1: assigned by Electra to take take me out into a
Speaker 1: Central park and shoot some pictures, and um, I got
Speaker 1: to know her a little bit later on. She'd keep
Speaker 1: in touch over the years. I remember at one point
Speaker 1: getting a note from her as playing somewhere on Long Island,
Speaker 1: and she sent me a note saying that she and
Speaker 1: Paul were in the neighborhood, might stop by, but it
Speaker 1: didn't happen. So what was it like with the Beatles, Kid? Well,
Speaker 1: I you know, I had I loved the Beatles a lot,
Speaker 1: with everybody else. I mean, it was hard to resist
Speaker 1: that thing um that they did. But I don't think
Speaker 1: it changed. I didn't. I didn't want to become a
Speaker 1: Beatle or you know, imitate them. I was. I was
Speaker 1: doing my own thing and the folk was was morphing
Speaker 1: into folk rock at this point, and I this is
Speaker 1: this is when I started getting a band, and we
Speaker 1: started getting louder and traveling more vigorously and more relentlessly.
Speaker 1: There was a five year period when I think I
Speaker 1: had ten days off, But did you feel like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, the British invasion is happening and it's killing
Speaker 1: my career, it's killing the whole scene I'm in. I
Speaker 1: don't remember thinking that. No, I don't remember thinking that.
Speaker 1: I think my take was that there are a lot
Speaker 1: more people interested in music now than there were before,
Speaker 1: and it might might you know, I didn't have the
Speaker 1: you know, the Beatles were We're huge with the with
Speaker 1: the teeny boppers, and that wasn't my crowd anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: how'd you end up switching to Columbia after the Circle
Speaker 1: Game album? My contract with the Lecture was up, and um,
Speaker 1: Jack Holsman was willing to renew the contract but not
Speaker 1: improve on it, and Columbia was willing to make a substantial,
Speaker 1: a much better offer. So I moved over there and
Speaker 1: it was a very There was a bit of culture
Speaker 1: shock there, because a Lecture really was a family and Jack.
Speaker 1: You know, if you had a problem, you go to
Speaker 1: Jack and talk to him about it, and if he could,
Speaker 1: he'd fix it. Um at Columbia you had to make
Speaker 1: an appointment to talk to anybody's secretary, big big building
Speaker 1: with everybody had to wear who had to wear a
Speaker 1: tie and uh, very very corporate, wholly entirely different different
Speaker 1: scene there. But they did have you know, they had
Speaker 1: a lot more marketing muscle than Electra, and they you know,
Speaker 1: they could make a lot of noise, which was good. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I never sold the tonnage for them that
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of their acts were selling. But
Speaker 1: they made money on me. The way the deals were structured. Basically,
Speaker 1: they paid for the record production, but then they also
Speaker 1: would build against your royalty account that the production costs
Speaker 1: were building against your royalties. And I was making I
Speaker 1: don't know, twenty cents an LP and they were making
Speaker 1: a couple of dollars in LP, so they were in
Speaker 1: the black very quickly, but working off a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar production budget. Plus then they would they would add
Speaker 1: you know, promotional stuff to your production budget, to your
Speaker 1: royalty account and paying it off at twenty cents a
Speaker 1: copy just wasn't happening. So they made money on me.
Speaker 1: I never I never got royalty checks. I would make
Speaker 1: some money off of the production budget when the album
Speaker 1: was made. But again, you know, the part of the
Speaker 1: part of the the benefit was if you didn't have
Speaker 1: a record deal, you didn't exist there. You know what
Speaker 1: they did for me was they got my name out there,
Speaker 1: They got me on the radio, they got me written
Speaker 1: up in the magazines, newspapers which sold tickets to the shows,
Speaker 1: which is always where I've made my living is you know,
Speaker 1: on stage. I've never I've never found recordings to be
Speaker 1: really profitable. I've made some on my own label that
Speaker 1: have you know that, Yes, I've made money on him,
Speaker 1: but but you know, on stage is where I've made
Speaker 1: my living forever. So on those Clubbia electoral records, are
Speaker 1: you still in the red? Are you ever getting royalty checks? Well?
Speaker 1: I actually, um, the last album for a lecture, Ladies
Speaker 1: Live out Laws, was put on too. No wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, wait a minute, Ladies Live out Laws.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of a kirk kerfuffle there. Um,
Speaker 1: if I may go off on a sidetrack. They were.
Speaker 1: They had to deal with me where they had to
Speaker 1: renew my contract every year by a certain date. They
Speaker 1: failed to do that. This is the electoral Columbia, This
Speaker 1: is Columbia. They failed to do that. Um, And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here, and they said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't leave. If you leave and make an album
Speaker 1: for somebody else will sue. So I got a lawyer,
Speaker 1: and the lawyer gave me basically said yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta do what they say. The lawyer then within about
Speaker 1: a month went to work for Columbia, So I think
Speaker 1: I might have been getting bad advice. But we made
Speaker 1: this the Ladies Live Outlaws album to be the final
Speaker 1: album and I was. Then then they dropped me because
Speaker 1: it didn't sell as well as they had hoped. So
Speaker 1: instead of being out on the street on my own volition,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I went on the street because
Speaker 1: Columbia had had dropped me, which made getting a new
Speaker 1: deal a much more difficult thing, and I didn't in
Speaker 1: fact make another album for quite a while. Then they wanted,
Speaker 1: decades later, wanted to make a retrospective on me, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to record one new song, which John Levinthal
Speaker 1: produced um, but we made that a separate deal. It
Speaker 1: was not not the same under the same contract. So
Speaker 1: I did make money on that one on the retrospective,
Speaker 1: The very best of Tom Rush actually turned to profit
Speaker 1: for me. Uh, And then I didn't record for thirty
Speaker 1: five years after Ladies Live outlaws or actually I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say that. I made a couple of live albums on
Speaker 1: my own label. We're profitable. What was going on for
Speaker 1: thirty five years in your mind? And what were you
Speaker 1: doing that well? And for a while I was courting.
Speaker 1: I was courting the major labels, unsuccessfully trying to get
Speaker 1: a deal with you know, uh, with a major. And
Speaker 1: because that didn't work out, I didn't I didn't go
Speaker 1: back in the studio. I was, you know, I was touring.
Speaker 1: I was making, you know, making good money touring, figuring
Speaker 1: out how to connect with my with my audience. Um,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was a it was a
Speaker 1: strange thing. It was a strange period of time because
Speaker 1: the record industry had decided somewhere in the seventies that
Speaker 1: that their audience, their core audience, was eighteen to twenty
Speaker 1: three years old, and the demographic that had built the
Speaker 1: record industry, the baby boom, was no longer eighteen to
Speaker 1: four years old. They basically the record industry let them
Speaker 1: walk out of the room. I remember being at a
Speaker 1: meeting at Columbia where they were talking about how do
Speaker 1: we get the baby boom to buy our records? That's
Speaker 1: really important we've got to get the baby boom buying
Speaker 1: our records. And some poor schmuck stood up and said
Speaker 1: maybe if we made records they wanted to buy, they
Speaker 1: would buy them. And there was this awkward silence and
Speaker 1: the guy sat back down and the conversation continued about, well,
Speaker 1: how do we get these people to buy the records
Speaker 1: we're making? Um? Anyway, I you know, I knew that
Speaker 1: my audience was still out there. They couldn't all have
Speaker 1: died at once. It would have been in the newspapers.
Speaker 1: So how do I connect with them? And so I
Speaker 1: started a you know, a mail order, snail mail campaign,
Speaker 1: build a mailing list, and I took out ads in
Speaker 1: New Yorker and sold albums through the mail and it
Speaker 1: and it worked. You know, I wasn't selling tonnage by
Speaker 1: any means, but it was profitable. Okay. Was it depressing?
Speaker 1: Uh no, maybe maybe it should have been. UM, but
Speaker 1: it was a challenge, and I felt I was meeting
Speaker 1: the challenge and it was you know, my what I
Speaker 1: was trying to do was working, okay. But at some
Speaker 1: point you moved into he I'm sure, and you said
Speaker 1: I'm gonna become an agent. M hm. So you actually
Speaker 1: did pivot there at some point. Well, I moved to
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. There was a there was a point early
Speaker 1: seventies UM when I uh, a lot of my buddies
Speaker 1: were moving to the West Coast because that's where the
Speaker 1: action was now. And I decided, I'm burned out. I
Speaker 1: want to go where the action isn't and I went
Speaker 1: back to New Hampshire where I grew up, and I
Speaker 1: bought a farm. I had six acres with the house
Speaker 1: in the middle, and I basically rolled up the driveway
Speaker 1: and quit showbiz for about six months. And then I
Speaker 1: got an audience deprivation syndrome kicked in and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to to play for people again, and so I
Speaker 1: started on a very small level. Um you know, I
Speaker 1: got a I got a secretary and she called the
Speaker 1: venues that I used to play and booked me. And
Speaker 1: and then I decided, well, there's some other artists, you know,
Speaker 1: the people I'm excited about, but they're they're just starting
Speaker 1: out in their careers. So as long as I'm booking,
Speaker 1: why don't I try to book them as well? And
Speaker 1: so Christine Lavin and Patty Larkin, Bill Morrissy Um and
Speaker 1: a few others. I started started booking them within my
Speaker 1: little booking agency, which was not profitable because we were selling,
Speaker 1: you know, getting maybe two fifty bucks a night for
Speaker 1: these people and there's just no way to you know,
Speaker 1: pay the phone bill and the heat and the electricity
Speaker 1: and the salaries and make that work. So I was
Speaker 1: funding the operation by going out on weekends and doing shows.
Speaker 1: And I remember there was there was an eye opening moment.
Speaker 1: I did a show somewhere and I broke a string
Speaker 1: in the last song of this of the evening, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have another gig for three weeks. And I
Speaker 1: got to the next gig and I opened my guitar
Speaker 1: case and the string was still broken. I said, not,
Speaker 1: something's not right with this picture. And so I started
Speaker 1: slowing down and basically and at that point, I had
Speaker 1: a house fire that's pretty much destroyed the house and
Speaker 1: the the studio and the office space we were using.
Speaker 1: So I at that point scaled way back and just
Speaker 1: I was still booking myself for a little while. I'm
Speaker 1: now working through Skyline Music, which has been great. Um,
Speaker 1: but I got you know, I got back on the road,
Speaker 1: and one thing led to another, and I finally ended
Speaker 1: up signing up with Appleseed Recordings and went back into
Speaker 1: a real studio with Jim Rooney, my old buddy UM
Speaker 1: producing down in Nashville. And that was on the one hand,
Speaker 1: it was kind of disorienting because I had not been
Speaker 1: in a digital studio. Everything was analog in my head
Speaker 1: and I just couldn't adjust my brain to the idea
Speaker 1: that I would come out of the vocal booth and
Speaker 1: say I think I sang a little bit flat on that,
Speaker 1: and the engineer would interrupt me and say, I fixed it.
Speaker 1: I said, I, but I came in a little bit late.
Speaker 1: I fixed it. Why am I here? Why don't I
Speaker 1: just sing one note every note once and go home? Um?
Speaker 1: But it really is. It's a it's a you know, major,
Speaker 1: major step forward. It makes recording a lot more fun,
Speaker 1: a lot less tedious. And then I made my second
Speaker 1: album of Voices, my most recent one with Jim Rooney
Speaker 1: and Nashville, and that's the first album I ever wrote
Speaker 1: all the songs on. I'd always done mainly other people's
Speaker 1: songs a couple of my own, and I didn't set
Speaker 1: out to write an entire album, but I just when
Speaker 1: I sat down and looked at the song list, I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I wrote all of these, and I think it's my
Speaker 1: best album, and at this point I've got enough enough
Speaker 1: new songs for another new album. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: at what point, like if the Circle Game ironically has
Speaker 1: legendary songs by others that you first recorded, but also
Speaker 1: a couple of your own legendary compositions, So what point
Speaker 1: did you start to write and how did you balance
Speaker 1: whether you wanted to use other of people's songs or
Speaker 1: your own. Well, if you I'll back up to that
Speaker 1: first Live at the Unicorn album. There's a song on
Speaker 1: there called Julie's Blues, and I'm I'm uncertain as to
Speaker 1: whether I should say that I wrote it or assembled it.
Speaker 1: It's almost entirely compiled of floating verses, which is the
Speaker 1: folklore term for verses that appear in a lot of
Speaker 1: different songs. So there are a lot of lines in
Speaker 1: there that I lifted from this blues or that blues,
Speaker 1: and I assembled the song. I don't feel I really
Speaker 1: wrote it, but technically it's you know, the copyrights in
Speaker 1: my name, so I wrote that. The second one was
Speaker 1: on the Road Again, um, which I just actually served
Speaker 1: up yesterday for Rockport Sundays because I'm on the road
Speaker 1: again going to Alexandria to play the Birchmere UM and
Speaker 1: that that was based age that that song is from
Speaker 1: what I call the Rand McNally school of songwriting, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about a trip to Florida. And then the third
Speaker 1: song I ever wrote was No Regrets, which came about
Speaker 1: because my girlfriend Joel Lumpkin, who was on the cover
Speaker 1: of UM of the Circle Game album, had come to Boston.
Speaker 1: She wasn't my girlfriend at that point. She came to
Speaker 1: Boston and spent the weekend with me, and I had
Speaker 1: never at that point spent an entire weekend with anybody before,
Speaker 1: three days and three nights in a row. And I
Speaker 1: took her back to Logan Airport on Monday morning to
Speaker 1: put her on the plane, and it felt strange walking
Speaker 1: away alone. And I went back to my apartment and
Speaker 1: and started working on No Regrets, which is about the
Speaker 1: end of a long relationship where it feels strange walking
Speaker 1: away alone, feels strange lying awake along and feel strange
Speaker 1: living my life alone. UM. And then we actually did
Speaker 1: have a long relationship and we broke up, and the
Speaker 1: song came true. But that was the third song I
Speaker 1: ever wrote, and it's the one that's been covered by
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of a lot of people. Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash and Waylon Jennings. And where's Julie Lumpkin today, Jill Lumpkin?
Speaker 1: Excuse me, Jill Lumpkin. I've been out of touch with
Speaker 1: her for quite a while. But my understanding is she's
Speaker 1: in in India. While we were together, I sent her
Speaker 1: to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. I
Speaker 1: paid for tuition to go there, and she got into
Speaker 1: the clothing trade and ended up spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time in India. My understanding is that she moved there,
Speaker 1: she adopted a young orphan kid, and that young orphan
Speaker 1: kid is now a very wealthy man who bought her
Speaker 1: a house and has basically taken care of her, which
Speaker 1: I think is a fact fact. Do you know how
Speaker 1: the kid became so wealthy? I do not. But she
Speaker 1: never got married. You ruined her for that. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about that. I don't think she ever got married.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure she didn't. Okay, and you've been married twice,
Speaker 1: I have been. It's well, I'm I'm currently married, yes,
Speaker 1: But your first marriage, how do you definally decide ty
Speaker 1: the nod? What killed that? Well, it was being on
Speaker 1: the road so much. Um, I was just I was
Speaker 1: a rotten husband basically being on the road so much.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have two boys from that marriage,
Speaker 1: and I feel badly, but I was also not a
Speaker 1: very good dad for them. I'm hopefully a better dad
Speaker 1: now than I was back then, but I was just
Speaker 1: gone a lot. And you know, my my wife, Beverley,
Speaker 1: got got sick of it and moved out and and
Speaker 1: we got divorced. And did she ever get remarried? She
Speaker 1: did not? Okay, And what's your relationship with those sons today?
Speaker 1: It's good, one of them in Scotland, one of them
Speaker 1: in Arizona. But we're you know, we're in touch on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. And you have a younger daughter too.
Speaker 1: I have a daughter who's just twenty one, uh, a
Speaker 1: senior halfway through her senior year in college. And and
Speaker 1: are we have We have a very good relationship. But
Speaker 1: you know, when one goes to see you live, there's
Speaker 1: tons of humor. You know, you say, well, I decided
Speaker 1: to have my own grandkids, etcetera. To what degree is
Speaker 1: humor important in your life at in your show. I
Speaker 1: think it's essential. It's essential in life. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just especially now, there's so much grim stuff going on.
Speaker 1: I would rather laugh than cry. So I will try
Speaker 1: to figure out where the where the funny side of
Speaker 1: things is and go there. And I think for the shows.
Speaker 1: I learned very early on Bob that if the audience
Speaker 1: likes you, they are much more apt to like the
Speaker 1: song you're about to do. So I would. I started telling,
Speaker 1: you know, stories about the songs, or stories that weren't
Speaker 1: about the songs, to try to, you know, lighten the
Speaker 1: mood and you know, draw the crowd in and it
Speaker 1: and it worked to the point where I now get
Speaker 1: requests for the stories. Tell the one about the guy
Speaker 1: from New Hampshire. It blows my mind. But I put
Speaker 1: actually put out an album called Rolling for Owls that
Speaker 1: is a compilation of silly stories and funny songs. Somebody
Speaker 1: said you should really compile. I was all into on
Speaker 1: an album and I did, and people seem to like
Speaker 1: it a lot. I have to warn people do not
Speaker 1: drive while listening to this album, because I've had I've
Speaker 1: had many people to say I almost went off the road.
Speaker 1: You know the song. The stories the same every night. Um,
Speaker 1: they evolve, they evolve. I remember one once in your
Speaker 1: you questioned the veracity of some of my songs, some
Speaker 1: of my stories, and I think my reply was that
Speaker 1: my stories are not just true, there in many cases
Speaker 1: better than true, having been polished, not unlike gemstones in
Speaker 1: the tumbler of time. Now you mentioned you have an
Speaker 1: agent you're very happy with. What is your view on managers?
Speaker 1: I have had bad luck with managers, um, and so
Speaker 1: I currently do not have a manager. I am my
Speaker 1: own manager, which is a lot like trying to be
Speaker 1: your own dentist. Um, it's probably not the smartest thing
Speaker 1: to do. But um again, I just I've had bad
Speaker 1: luck with managers, managers giving me bad advice and getting
Speaker 1: me to do things that didn't work out, and so
Speaker 1: forth and so on. It's not like, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: be a rock star to day if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: this crummy manager. But I just, you know, I seem
Speaker 1: to do okay. And are there certain songs who absolutely
Speaker 1: have to play in every show? Um? I I would
Speaker 1: say no, although there's a list of songs from which
Speaker 1: I should do some I mean, my crowd comes. I've
Speaker 1: got a problem in that I've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: new songs that I think are really good, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the audience thinks they're really good. But the fact is
Speaker 1: they came to hear the songs they know, and so
Speaker 1: I've got to scratch that itch for them. I've got
Speaker 1: to do something from I've got to do either Urge
Speaker 1: for Going or Circle Game or No Regrets or These
Speaker 1: Days or Driving Wheel or who do You Love? Or
Speaker 1: you know. There's a certain certain number of songs that
Speaker 1: I've I've got to I've got to do five or
Speaker 1: six of them during the course of the evening. But
Speaker 1: the good news is, having been doing this for fifty
Speaker 1: eight years, there's quite a long list that I have
Speaker 1: to choose from. Every time I've seen you've done the
Speaker 1: Panama Limited because their shows, you don't do it. Oh yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: And so now fifty eight years in you don't have
Speaker 1: the choice. But if you could do it all over,
Speaker 1: would you be, ah, you've a professional musician, or would
Speaker 1: you have done something else? I think, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine having more fun doing anything else. My
Speaker 1: you know, my career path was not really set having
Speaker 1: graduated from Harvard with an English lip degree. There's no
Speaker 1: straightforward career path there except to be an English teacher. Um,
Speaker 1: and I certainly didn't want to do that, So I
Speaker 1: don't know what else, what else I would have I
Speaker 1: would have done. I want to see David Geffen at
Speaker 1: one point when I was shopping for a record deal,
Speaker 1: and I knew David from from earlier on in his
Speaker 1: career and in my career, and I pitched him the
Speaker 1: idea of signing me up to UM asylum. And he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I I thought she wanted a producer's job and A
Speaker 1: and R an A and R job. And I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, having you know, having picked songs from Jonny
Speaker 1: Jackson and James that might have been a a reasonable
Speaker 1: notion that, okay, this guy's got good ears, But I
Speaker 1: really had no interest in in doing that. You know,
Speaker 1: I love getting in front of an audience. And with
Speaker 1: the time you have left, anything you want or need
Speaker 1: to accomplish, well, I'd like to get Rockports Sundays up
Speaker 1: closer to that seven and a half billion subscribers. Mark. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got three books in the works, maybe four,
Speaker 1: depending on how you count them. Um. I definitely want
Speaker 1: to make another album with Jim Rooney and Nashville Records,
Speaker 1: some of these new songs that haven't haven't seen the
Speaker 1: light of day yet. Uh Um. I'd also like to
Speaker 1: you know, the Club forty seven. It was very important
Speaker 1: to me and at one point, Um, I now own
Speaker 1: the name Club forty seven and I've done shows under
Speaker 1: that banner, and the theme of those shows is I
Speaker 1: get a couple of well known artists and a couple
Speaker 1: of newcomers together and I browbeat everybody into playing with
Speaker 1: one another. You can't just go out there and do
Speaker 1: your regular thing. You've got to you know, you've got
Speaker 1: to sing harmonies with this kid, or you've got to
Speaker 1: play you know, guitar behind this kid, or this kid
Speaker 1: has to sing harmonies with you. Um. And the audiences
Speaker 1: love it because they get to hear I mean, the
Speaker 1: newcomers are monstrously talented, they're just unknown, and so the
Speaker 1: audience goes home thinking, Wow, I just heard something really special.
Speaker 1: So I would love to do some Club forty seven
Speaker 1: and shows in the vein of rockports Sundays. I would
Speaker 1: love to get different artists that are their buddies of mine,
Speaker 1: maybe some that aren't. I would love to call, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd love to call Garth Brooks and say, do you
Speaker 1: have is there a kid that you're really excited about?
Speaker 1: Would you like to come do some songs with me?
Speaker 1: Where you know, you do a song, I do a song,
Speaker 1: We do a song together, the kid does a song,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll, you know, try to get this kid noticed.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's partly why you know, I've enjoyed working
Speaker 1: with Matt Nikola so much as I do think I
Speaker 1: have helped get his name out there. I've helped him
Speaker 1: move along his audience. He's got a you know, a
Speaker 1: different audience than I do, but my audience loves him
Speaker 1: to bits and they are now part of his audience.
Speaker 1: Just going back to the books for a second, because
Speaker 1: I know on the Patreon, in addition to the music,
Speaker 1: you also reveal or distribute other information that might be
Speaker 1: part of the book. So is there one main book,
Speaker 1: like an autobiography that you're working on? The books? Well,
Speaker 1: part of what I'm what I'm doling out to the
Speaker 1: do a month crowd is pages from the the book
Speaker 1: of lyrics that I'm writing. Um, there's the lyrics to
Speaker 1: my songs with maybe a page or two of backstory
Speaker 1: about the song and what I was doing at this
Speaker 1: point in my life. It's becoming a little bit of
Speaker 1: an autobiography. Um. But then the main autobiography is kind
Speaker 1: of stalled stalled out the other book that and then
Speaker 1: there's a novel that I'm only writing from my own entertainment.
Speaker 1: I write it because I want to find out what
Speaker 1: happened is next. I don't think it will ever happen
Speaker 1: to see the light of day, probably. But the other
Speaker 1: book that I'm having fun with is um called Roadmap.
Speaker 1: Working title Roadmap and subtitle is why you probably don't
Speaker 1: want to be a touring musician. And it's a story.
Speaker 1: It's just stuff about you know, how to do a
Speaker 1: sound check, how to conduct an interview, how to keep
Speaker 1: mentioning rockports Sundays even though you're not being asked about it. Um,
Speaker 1: what does a manager do as opposed to an agent?
Speaker 1: Band dynamics? You know, how to conduct a rehearsal, how
Speaker 1: to read an audience, how to do a sound check? Um.
Speaker 1: And I've got about I don't know about three fifty
Speaker 1: pages so far. How many more do you are you
Speaker 1: are going to be necessary before you whittle it down.
Speaker 1: I'm what, They're very disorganized now. So basically, part of
Speaker 1: the part of what's good about the Patreon model is
Speaker 1: that it forces me to work on these things because
Speaker 1: I've got to you know, next Sunday, I've got to
Speaker 1: put something out, So I've got to finish up this
Speaker 1: thing that's only half finished. Um but that book, you know,
Speaker 1: I've just written a page or two or a paragraph
Speaker 1: or ten pages every time something occurs to me. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I've covered the same turf twice three times in
Speaker 1: some cases, and then there's gonna be gaps where I
Speaker 1: didn't write something that should have been written. So basically,
Speaker 1: I just I need to organize that and get it,
Speaker 1: get it shaped up and presentable. And you know, you
Speaker 1: do these things rockports Sunday and you have these live performances.
Speaker 1: So they all done it once and then dribbled out
Speaker 1: or do you get together once a week. No, they
Speaker 1: it's it's complex enough to get everybody in the same
Speaker 1: rooms that we we record a bunch at once and
Speaker 1: then serve them up. Okay, well, I'll look forward to
Speaker 1: next Sunday. Thanks for taking the time here, Tom, I
Speaker 1: know you've got to get back to work for the deadline,
Speaker 1: so thanks for doing this. Oh thanks for having me
Speaker 1: on pleasure until next time. This is Bob Left Sex